Reasonable Authority Figure / Web Original

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• In Atop the Fourth Wall: The Movie, Allen is Linkara's liaison with the government and tries his best to ensure that neither party gets in each other's way. He reveals in his first meeting with Linkara that he convinced his higher-ups not to assassinate Linkara once he got his hands on Comicron-1 in exchange for his promise not to use it to influence political affairs, and eventually managed to talk them out of having professional snipers monitoring Linkara's apartment after he saved the world from the Entity.
• Explored in the short story The Big Bitch
• Epic Rap Battles of History: In "Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney", when the two devolve into childish insults, Abraham Lincoln interrupts and reroutes the debate back to the actual issues at hand, then accurately assesses the faults of both sides while also acknowledging the valid points they make. Three seasons later, he interrupts again in "Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton" to shut down Trump's blatantly racist rant, and also chews out Hillary for assuming that Trump's campaign would self-destruct without her having to put up a real fight. In general, of the authority figures shown in the series, Lincoln is the one portrayed most sympathetically and the one who seems most fit to be in charge. And he refuses to make fun of a show without watching it first.
• Heroes Save the World: Several of the Children have approached adults about what is happening. While they were met with disbelief, this gave way to acceptance after receiving proof of superpowers.
• In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, the Emperor himself. Bitter and caustic as he may be, he's genuinely upset at what has become of the Imperium and is slowly trying to put it back the way it was before the Horus Heresy, even considering letting the aliens join his nation (manly ones that do melee,though, disqualifying the Tau despite their other desirable traits).
  • The Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard tries to be this to a very minor extent among his fellow High Lords. He tries to impede them from weakening the Imperial Guard, by keeping laxatives and air legal.
  • Ecclesiarch Descius, despite his organization being disbanded by Imperial order, still tries to fulfill this role and stop Karamazov from killing the Custodes. The Emperor rewards him by letting him keep his job despite not being big on the whole "God Emperor" thing, which Descius is eternally grateful for.
• Kane Pixels' The Backrooms features a downplayed case of this with ASYNC, the research institute attempting to investigate The Backrooms for potential storage and residential needs. Contrary to what you might expect from such a horror story, they stray away from many usual tropes associated with an Evil, Inc.: their grunts are all reasonably well-equipped and take heavy safety precautions while exploring the Backrooms, including requiring all workers to report on injuries or other potentially anomalous activity that they might unknowingly bring back. When going over footage taken from one of their workers encountering an especially surreal and dangerous thing, the researchers and advisors appear genuinely unsettled and concerned, sealing off the area of concern and adding more precautions to ensure future safety. Unfortunately, their reasonable genre savvinness only goes so far considering they're still trying to exploit the Backrooms, and reality begins to pay the price for it.
• Mahu: Though they are often cold and calculating, most of the rulers of both the Commonwealth Republic of "Crownless Eagle" and the Galactic Commonwealth of "Second Chance" are reasonable people seeking only the best for their nations.
• The "Denazra" plot line produced by ''NatOne Productions' invokes this trope frequently. While there's a fair amount of inefficiency and dithering, the Coalition generally seems to be a benevolent organization trying to get a bunch of different species to join together and fight against a common foe. Unfortunately, they're still losing.
• Nightmare Time: Duke is by far one of the most competent adults in the Hatchetfield multiverse. He's a social worker who not only makes every effort to help Hannah in her abusive home, but also believes her when she describes her supernatural experiences to him, and brings in his friend Miss Holloway, since she's a witch and thus far more equipped to deal with this sort of thing than he is. He also believes in Lex's innocence when she's forced to take the fall for her mother's criminal activities, and complies with her wishes to not have Hannah put into foster care, despite how terrible their home life is, understanding that given her experiences, Lex has every reason not to trust the system, or people who work for it, like him. He realizes that Lex is probably right that being forced into foster care be even worse for Hannah's well-being, and instead focuses his energy on making her home life bearable.
• Arthéon from Noob seems to be this. Notably, he and his Ragtag Bunch of Misfits guild ended up involved in the second novel's plot because he was willing to follow a lead given by a random player nobody else was believing.
• The Lord of the Supreme Council in The Questport Chronicles.
• RWBY:
  • Calm, level-headed and flexible, Professor Ozpin always pays attention to his students and takes any "extra-curricular", rule-bending or breaking in his stride. He offers Blake Belladonna an open door for advice after implying he knows her White Fang links; he bends the rules to make use of Team RWBY's headstrong pursuit of villains, ensuring they gather intel while having trained protection. According to Raven Branwen, he used to do the same for Team STRQ. While the students he's cool, the adults are warier about whether he's doing the right thing. Later, the heroes turn on him after learning his big secret, but eventually reconcile after he and they all learn a lesson in balancing doing the right thing with maintaining trust.
  • A subverted example with General James Ironwood. He's introduced as a reasonable person, being supportive and encouraging of the protagonists during their sparse interactions through most of the series. Once Team RWBY arrives in Atlas and works with Ironwood professionally, it turns out he's actually stubborn, uncooperative, dismisses concerns about negative policy impacts, refuses approaches that share power and responsibility with those who aren't loyal to him, and his decisions are influenced by his PTSD. Eventually, the pressure becomes too much for him and he descends into a villainous spiral that makes him as dangerous a threat as Salem.
  • Councilwoman Camilla notes there's no evidence that any kingdom is planning to attack Atlas, and Ironwood's embargo is hurting their relations with the other nations. Sleet questions whether Ironwood's information could possibly be true, but she deduces no one would tell such an outlandish lie.
• Both the headmistress and the head of Security at Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe. The headmistress turns out to be one of the great superheroines of the 20th century, and the head of security turns out to be a highly trained ex-special Forces military expert. So maybe the people who hired these guys count, too.
• Wolf Song: The Movie: Damien is this for the various wolves who have been forced to flee to the Barren Lands and essentially acts as a reasonable father figure for his own loose pack and his own character arc is largely centred on him reconciling with his estranged daughter. He might not be perfect, but he has good intentions and is willing to do anything if it means protecting his family and his pack, even calling out the alphas during the tournament scene for sitting back while the Death Alpha is busy subjugating an unknown though large number of packs, and is willing to sacrifice his own wellbeing if it means the Death Alpha’s plan can be stopped
• A large part of the reason that Skitter became a Villain Protagonist in Worm was because none of the authority figures she ever encountered were reasonable. That said, Miss Militia, a superhero in Brockton Bay promoted to lead the local superhero team after her predecessor's retirement, is unquestionably evenhanded and responsible.

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