What lore do you ignore?

I pointed out in my prior post that it was a combination of inaction and sabotage, not solely the latter alone. Giving the Ancients space to build up false hope and come to their own solutions is irrelevant when her reaction to the Convocation coming up with creative solutions is to wipe out everyone who survived the Final Days. None of the writing surrounding Venat is particularly consistent, granted, though one thing that is consistent is her decision to refuse to reveal the true cause behind the Final Days or express her concerns in full without deflection and deception.

If a character is well aware that a devastating event is going to wipe out the majority of the planet's population and they have the ability to either prevent it or at least forewarn the population that such is about to happen then they are a hero if they try to mitigate such things. If, instead, they allow for such an event to take place in the name of a Saw-esque style test of suffering then they are a villain.

It's as simple as that, really.

Let's imagine, for a moment, that Merlwyb learned that Leviathan was being summoned in secret and was due to unleash a tidal wave of devastating proportions upon the city of Limsa Lominsa. Merlwyb doesn't tell anyone what she knows and leaves the city abruptly.

The tidal wave strikes and destroys the city. The majority of the inhabitants are either dead or heavily wounded...and those present decide to do what is necessary in order to rebuild and survive.

Oh, but wait! They didn't react to the horrific even in the 'correct' way. So despite being understandably traumatised they also need to die...according to Merlwyb, who then kills the remaining survivors and replaces them with a completely different species bereft of their former culture, memories and remaining loved ones.

Scale that up to a global scale and you have...the Sundering. An act that, if aimed at the game's protagonists would never be deemed 'necessary' and an 'acceptable cost'. So there's really no obligation for anyone else to just shrug and go along with such consequences. It's what happened in the story due to how it was written, but that doesn't make it correct - especially for those of us who do not engage in the story as a self insert eager to have whatever benefits the Scions and a handful of other characters serve as the constant priority in the narrative.

Personally I'm interested in the world-building as a whole in a setting that I invest in as opposed to specific characters. If there's no consistency with the world-building and established morals, then I am going to be inclined to point it out especially in a game that is often obnoxiously preachy about 'dOiNg ThE rIgHt ThInG' elsewhere.

This is why I regret that a good deal of this was glossed over in a condensed, non-literal "walk down memory lane" scene instead of a concrete, explicit example or two to prevent people from disregarding it and running with whatever impressions / theories they most wanted to preserve, anyway. The entire Amaurotine civil war is artificially condensed into a scene of Venat having a verbal conversation with a small crowd, each using their words to symbolize the motivations and actions of their represented factions. If feel like if we had seen something more explicit, a lot of these discussions would not be happening because there would be much more solid evidence to point at than, "Well, how do you extrapolate this scene in a way that makes sense with your claim?" - especially with regard to the accusation that Venat did nothing try to dissuade their civilization from the course it was on.

That's the rub, isn't it? If the direct consequences of Venat's actions had been shown in full then I imagine that would make her look worse rather than better. The game is pretty much crystal clear that acts of mass death being deliberately inflicted upon another group of beings is not something to gun for in every other circumstance outside of the Sundering. I think a lot of people were on board with the idea of accepting the Sundering as a thing that happened if it were treated as something avoidable, highly unfortunate and disgusting.

It doesn't help that for years around these parts it was insinuated by some that no matter how tragic the circumstances or sympathetic the motives, there is never a 'justification' for genocide.

Fast forward to Endwalker and...how strange! It turns out the pretty mother goddess figure didn't cause the Sundering by accident at all. It was a deliberate, purposeful act against innocents who never saw it coming. Suddenly such acts went from 'never justifiable' to 'grim and unfortunate necessity'.

I personally don't care which character or characters anyone here roots for or supports. What I oppose is the strange swarming on anyone who is even remotely critical of Venat despite some claiming to be 'weary' of discussing the Ancients. I can understand that perfectly but unless people want these circular arguments to carry over into Dawntrail as well then there really needs to be more of a genuine effort to agree to disagree.

All that aside, the situation isn't really helped by so much of the game's lore now either being at risk of being retconned on a patch by patch basis or just hidden away in obscure side stories or interview snippets.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

My read is that she actually didn't do either of these. She doesn't accept her place in The Time Loop; the scene right after Ktisis basically has her saying that she'll look for other options if at all possible. It just seems like those options weren't really viable. ANd yet, we know she was pursuing them even before the Sundering, because of the Anamnesis Anyder discussion.

But even when we have completed the time loop, we know she's not sticking to it: remember that when we meet her in the Aetherial Sea, we learn that her plan is several layers more complicated, reliant on both events that happened afterwards that couldn't have been part of what we told her (specifically, tagging Meteion) and multiple factors we didn't even know were on the table after we left her alone (for example, the Ragnarok).

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Yes, she says she'll be looking for other options, but to me that just sounds like the precursor to the two possibilities I listed. Either she discovers some alternative path that plays out in a split timeline we'll never see, or the single timeline remains as it is and always was: she searches for alternatives, finds nothing and concludes that she cannot deny that the Sundering is the only viable route that might still save her people - and it needs to be emphasised that whatever reading the fans ascribe to it, it appears to be the intent of the story writers that from Venat's own viewpoint, the ancients and modern humanity are the same continuous people so she believes she is ensuring the survival of her race and not destroying it.

As for your "additional factors", yes, she has clearly put a lot of work and thinking into setting up additional elements outside of what we were able to tell her - essentially solving the puzzle of "why would I tell them to flee?" with "maybe it's all a ruse to get them to build a starship capable of reaching Meteion" - but she is still locked into complying with the bigger parts of what we told her, and is not fully free to act. Imagine how she must have to think about the calamities occurring on the earlier shards - if this is fated, should she try to intervene? Would it be futile? Can she bring herself to sit idle while it happens because it is a necessary event on the road to reaching the WoL's present?

And to come back to the argument that started this tangent, the point here is that she is not in control of people's fates. She can do her best, lay what plans she can to help bring about her goal, but knowing she can plan on other people acting a particular way in a particular circumstance is not the same thing as having control over their fate.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Yes, she says she'll be looking for other options, but to me that just sounds like the precursor to the two possibilities I listed.

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I think there might have been like, "two-point-five" broad possibilities, to her, at the time: either she can sufficiently change the course (in which case multiple different possibilities exist) or she cannot change it, regardless of what would happen if she did. Some references to it read as, "Your trip to Elips and what I do from here may change your future." vs. "Your trip to Elips and what I do from here may change my future, making it separate from yours." vs. "Your trip to Elips and what I do from here may create a Bill & Ted Dad's Keys kind of situation." In the end, the true boundaries of which ingredients from which are included in "The Conjunction" are left kind of agnostic from the WoL-centric perspective of the story, imho. I tend to interpret it as kind of a mix of Dad's Keys + It Was "Always" Dad's Keys (from the perspective inside the Source's cosmic spacetime bubble).

She remains optimistic that between her precautions and the Plot-Convenient Amnesia, perhaps things will work out, but that she's actually not going to take our story or our future for granted, she's going to try her damnedest. (Which people often just disregard as "she didn't tho" or "she obviously lied".) Especially in uh... <digs through knapsack>

CITATION:

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Yet I have faith in mankind's potential. As long as he believes in himself, there is naught he cannot achieve. So I will not give up on him. On us. You may find your world to be very different. Or perhaps the erasure of our friends' memories has sown the seeds of a conjunction between us. We cannot know until the moment is at hand. So shall I strive to do my best, taking naught for granted as I walk my path.

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Malgré tout, j'ai foi en l'être humain. J'ai toujours préféré voir son potentiel plutôt que ses limites, et c'est pourquoi je ne baisserai pas les bras. Une nouvelle histoire va s'écrire, séparée, je suppose, de celle que tu as connue. Encore qu'elles pourraient se rejoindre à un moment ou à un autre, compte tenu de l'amnésie de certains de ses acteurs... Qui vivra verra, comme on dit. Dans tous les cas, je tâcherai d'agir au mieux, en me gardant de prendre ton récit pour argent comptant.

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Doch ich hab stets an unser Potenzial geglaubt. Es wiegt schwerer als all unsere Fehler. Und deshalb werde ich nicht aufgeben. Die Welt, in die du zurückkehrst, ist womöglich eine andere. Vielleicht ändert sich wegen des Gedächtnisverlustes unserer Freunde aber auch nichts. Wie es wirklich sein wird, wissen wir erst, wenn die Zeit gekommen ist. Ich werde jedenfalls nichts als selbstverständlich ansehen und immer mein Bestes geben.

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けれど私は、人の可能性を愛した。不可能よりもずっと。…進む理由は、それで十分。この先に待つのは、あなたが知るのとは別の歴史かもしれない。あるいはエメトセルクたちが記憶を失ったことで、繋がる見込みも生じたのかもしれませんが…。どちらにせよそれは、繋がる瞬間まで知り得ぬこと。私はあなたから聞いたことをすべてと思わず、最善を尽くし続けましょう。

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On the contrary, her motives and declarations have been examined and countered a great many times - particularly in a joint community project where a number of lore enthusiasts came together to source their discussion points in one great, big analysis in the form of a video essay focused on Venat herself.

After spending a significant time posting the same sources across a number of different threads and seeing them dismissed or conveniently forgotten about a few pages later.

The video in question can be found here, with perhaps the most relevant section being the one aptly titled 'excuses':

https://youtu.be/fsk412wCrJY?t=1101

It's admittedly a long video so it might be worth watching it in chapters but everything is sourced from the game itself, various lore related interviews and short stories. I don't know where this idea that the people countering Venat's motivations aren't equipped with sources is coming from since it only takes a look through the post history of someone like Rulakir or Lauront to see that, yes, they do source a lot of their talking points and explain their reasoning and conclusions clearly.

Anyone is of course free to like and support 'cRyStAl MoMmY' but her motives are so paper thin and contradictory that they do not hold up under the slightest bit of scrutiny and they certainly wouldn't be accepted as something to cheer on if they were aimed at the Scions and their loved ones and civilisations as opposed to being inflicted upon the Ancients. Nor would most accept it being inflicted upon any of us in the real world, for that matter.

It doesn't help that - as myself and a handful of others have pointed out many times - it was common here for certain posters to embrace the stance prior to Endwalker that no matter how sympathetic the reasoning or desperate the circumstances there is supposedly never a justification for acts of genocide. Which mysteriously fell to the wayside as of Endwalker's revelations and this is all just really a last ditch attempt to try to cling to the idea that, yes, it was all very sad but it 'had to' happen and/or Venat 'tried' and 'had no choice'.

It's not controversial at all to point out that if she was deliberately withholding information from her people, allowing a disaster to strike and kill large swathes of individuals and also working to turn others against them then that was not making a genuine effort to save them. That is serving the role of an antagonist and saboteur.

Preserving mankind by wiping out the Ancients through an act of deliberate genocide and then replacing them with complete different species in a twisted form of eugenics doesn't really count as preserving mankind, I'm afraid. Which in itself is the main point of contention.

...but even putting all of that aside, the game chose to lean on some of the most lamest and controversial plot devices including mind wipes and time travel. It is being criticised for such as well, since such plot devices rarely lead to a consistent narrative. Then there's the numerous retcons that conveniently change established rules but only in favour of the protagonists which is also being called out.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

She says this as she's shuffling off the one person with knowledge of the future and thus the ability to alter events back to their own time. Then she proceeds to not make a single verifiable attempt to change the future and several known acts to ensure things went down the way you told her.

Her words at face value make you think she's preparing to fight Meteion, but when you look at her actions you realize her words were just to placate the WoL and get them out of the way so she could go do her genocide without her pesky little champion warning anyone else. This is the 40th half-truth she's thrown our way. Just like all the other half-truths she's told us on our journey.

We even offer to stay and help. Wonder why she didn't accept...

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I pointed out in my prior post that it was a combination of inaction and sabotage, not solely the latter alone. Giving the Ancients space to build up false hope and come to their own solutions is irrelevant when her reaction to the Convocation coming up with creative solutions is to wipe out everyone who survived the Final Days. None of the writing surrounding Venat is particularly consistent, granted, though one thing that is consistent is her decision to refuse to reveal the true cause behind the Final Days or express her concerns in full without deflection and deception.

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I'm sorry, but this is the lore subforum. We kinda need to take an evidence-based approach, where things the game produces has to be refuted only by things the game also produces. While Venat-as-Hydaelyn (much like the Ascians) is someone who lies by omission rather often (at least, as far as her relatively meager screentime permitted), you're going to need to prove a bit more substantially that she was doing anything like this, or that the Convocation had any 'creative solutions' that she was thoughtlessly stopping. Otherwise, this is like going into the PvP subforum and telling them that Frontlines is fair and balanced because the Mathromancer job you've imagined is a perfect counter to the DRK/AST/DRG meta.

I'm sure you feel very strongly, but until you can cite something, I'm not very convinced. If we just keep doing uncited stuff we end up way too deep in the weeds of presumed truths. If you're stuck, hit up Gamer Escape, they've basically got the whole game script recorded.

EDIT: Or, you can focus on the subject of the actual thread we're arguing in, and instead you can just say that you're ignoring what the game is saying to create an alternative narrative. Which I can't stop you from doing, but I'd like to know for sure.

It seems like a self-defeating argument to claim that Venat's mistake was in not getting rid of Emet, Lahabrea, and Elidibus before they had the chance to destroy multiple worlds and end countless lives in the future. In a way, it assumes that the Convocation members had no agency or choice of their own because they were somehow 'destined' to turn to evil no matter what happened.

An important element of the Anamnesis Anyder recording was that Venat refused to speak ill of the Convocation despite their tyrannical conduct. The EE Vol. 3 provides further context to this, because we now know that there was a large schism in society over this decision and a significant opposition to the sacrifices that was deliberately ignored by the Convocation (p.11). She would have been quite justified in condemning them.

My impression is that Venat's believed in Emet and that he could overturn his own promised future. This did turn out to be the correct decision in the end.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

This is why I regret that a good deal of this was glossed over in a condensed, non-literal "walk down memory lane" scene instead of a concrete, explicit example or two to prevent people from disregarding it and running with whatever impressions / theories they most wanted to preserve, anyway. The entire Amaurotine civil war is artificially condensed into a scene of Venat having a verbal conversation with a small crowd, each using their words to symbolize the motivations and actions of their represented factions. If feel like if we had seen something more explicit, a lot of these discussions would not be happening because there would be much more solid evidence to point at than, "Well, how do you extrapolate this scene in a way that makes sense with your claim?" - especially with regard to the accusation that Venat did nothing try to dissuade their civilization from the course it was on.

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They could do an explicit scene if they wanted her to stay a hero because she ends the argument with the eradication of an entire species. Imagine if they showed us what Emet-Selch saw besides in another game. His people incapable of speech, mutilated to the point they were no longer recognizable as people. You can't show that and have people go "But the leadership was tempered, so really, no choice but to kill every man, woman and child on the planet. What else are you supposed to do when 12 people are tempered?"

And given that Emet-Selch took actions to end his own life which would have gone against Zodiark's will and there isn't a single example of Zodiark attempting to do any harm to anyone and his heart was Elidibus, I'm not moved to believe Zodiark was a threat for which anyone needed to be killed. I believe the point Venat was making was that they'd rely too much on him and that would make them weak, rather than he was trying to gobble up the world or any nonsense like that. That feels like another reading required to sleep at night if you support Venat's actions.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

and it needs to be emphasised that whatever reading the fans ascribe to it, it appears to be the intent of the story writers that from Venat's own viewpoint, the ancients and modern humanity are the same continuous people so she believes she is ensuring the survival of her race and not destroying it.

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Then Valthry turning people into sineaters was fine because really they are the same people. Athena's experiments, also fine, there is an Ancient somewhere under those snakes and tree limbs. Multiple Ancients describe themselves as a separate species and we're told not to worry about 75% of them entering the lifestream because with their species gone they will come back as our species and therefore won't have creation magic.

Dey dead.

Culture. Biology. History. All gone.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It seems like a self-defeating argument to claim that Venat's mistake was in not getting rid of Emet, Lahabrea, and Elidibus before they had the chance to destroy multiple worlds and end countless lives in the future. In a way, it assumes that the Convocation members had no agency or choice of their own because they were somehow 'destined' to turn to evil no matter what happened.

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It wasn't a mistake. It was on purpose. She used them to exterminate her sweet children for which she sacrificed so much. Sure what she sacrificed wasn't hers to give, but hey. And she most certainly didn't spare him because she hoped he wouldn't rejoin the worlds. She spared him because she needed him to rejoin the worlds or she doesn't become a goddess.

I see certain posters are getting a bit better at masquerading as high school mean girls! Well done on that front I suppose. I'm not sure what the point of pretending that sources aren't being provided is when they clearly are and have been a great many times across numerous threads.

As an aside, I only bothered to weigh in because despite apparently being 'tired' of discussing the Ancients, the moment some random poster comes to the conclusion that Venat's actions were pretty messed up and posts as much there's a clear swarm from some of the usual suspects who attempt to deflect away from that and deflect the narrative and discussion elsewhere.

Though based on past interactions alone, I'm not inclined to take the claims of certain posters being here in good faith when they have a long and storied history of stalking, harassment, impersonation, homophobic commentary, sexist commentary and bizarre and deranged insinuations about 'secret Midlander fascists'. Then there's that time a certain someone came into Lore Lines - a Discord server set up with the intention of mostly discussing the game's antagonists in a place away from the official forum. Yet even there that individual tried to demand that any talk of Venat was rid of any mention of genocide or vilification.

Such actions have made it pretty clear to many of us that those responsible are not acting in good faith.

Since such evidence is spicy, I won't post it here for obvious reasons though I encourage those interested to message me in-game sometime and we can exchange Discord names (on a throwaway account if one prefers) and I can happily provide the rather numerous examples of exactly what certain posters claiming to be here for 'discussion' have been caught saying and doing in their spare time.

All that aside, though, it's rather disingenuous to pretend as if numerous posters have not provided sources that expose Venat as making a token, deceptive effort to save her people. I have done so myself, many times including in the prior post in this very thread. It's a bit too late to try and pretend as if the people criticising Hydaelyn are just stupid and do not get it.

The offer to agree to disagree still stands, of course. I'm not sure why some here are so invested in the idea of everybody insisting that Venat was correct. With the amount of blood staining her hands and the cost of her actions coming at the expense of a whole, it isn't really that unreasonable for someone to consider it to be too lofty a cost. Just as someone can choose to come to the same conclusion regarding the Rejoinings. Not everyone subscribes to protagonist centered morality, I'm afraid - and they certainly don't take their cues on such things from a video game of all things in the first place.

Though I'm increasingly convinced that some here secretly like the Ancients very much or have at least realised that the decision to tie them to pretty much everything has made it near impossible to talk around them when it comes to many aspects of the story.

It's still a while until Dawntrail, too, so I imagine the 'discussions' will continue right up until the expansion's launch and well beyond it.

Perhaps that is an unfortunate consequence of the game itself being little more than a Second Life clone for heavily modded characters awkwardly standing around in drama infested venues doing the bee's knees emote. As unfortunately witnessed in great numbers whenever anyone gets the thought to check Twitter for nice art of the game's characters only to find the FFXIV tag bloated with such things instead.