Tales from the Dawn #3: "A Question of Life" (Hermes)

I mean, the point of the story is to show that Hermes feels stifled when expressing his feelings, that's mostly what the first part is about. He expresses doubts about life and the ancients' place in the star, and the final goal of it all, and lo and behold, he saw all of his fears confirmed by his pet project. Rather than trusting in others' doubts about his conclusion, he offered the same solution he feels they did when he expressed his doubts: stiflement.

Hermes was the result of a society that pushed his mental health issues aside or did not validate them. But unlike the mankind of the present, he was an ancient. Immensely powerful beings that can act upon their beliefs with such magnitudes of scale that are almost godlike. In a way, he was both the best case for why individuality outside of debates was 'forbidden', where his individualistic needs and issues could lead to him abusing his massive power in a manner that eventually doomed his civilisation; and the worst case for it, as it was that pressure to conform that caused him to bottle up and seethe in his ennui and depression.

Hermes is a fascinatingly written character in that regard, in my opinion.

Hermes could never be treated or validated. By his own words anyone around him was willing to hear him out and console him, but he just took this as pity and scorned them. The truth is he didn't want to be "helped", he bristled at the nature of reality and society and wanted it all to bend according to him. More than to get a new answer that would satisfy him, he wanted the Meteion project to prove his ideas right. Like Venat says, nothing Hermes could ever have been told, either by his peers or by some space aliens, was ever going to change his mind or make him feel any better. Personally I think his perspective was due to his nature more than anything else.

The plot doesn't really pretend any differently either. Ultimately the only way anyone deals with him is by inflicting pain to make him bow and conform, and lying to him to make him useful. And eventually once he's no longer useful, we just damn his soul to hell.

But narratively, Hermes' problem is that he ends up being the ultimate villain of a story that doesn't really want to have "villains". So there was never any hope for him to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

Hermes could never be treated or validated. By his own words anyone around him was willing to hear him out and console him, but he just took this as pity and scorned them. The truth is he didn't want to be "helped", he bristled at the nature of reality and society and wanted it all to bend according to him. More than to get a new answer that would satisfy him, he wanted the Meteion project to prove his ideas right. Like Venat says, nothing Hermes could ever have been told, either by his peers or by some space aliens, was ever going to change his mind or make him feel any better. Personally I think his perspective was due to his nature more than anything else.

The plot doesn't really pretend any differently either. Ultimately the only way anyone deals with him is by inflicting pain to make him bow and conform, and lying to him to make him useful. And eventually once he's no longer useful, we just damn his soul to hell.

But narratively, Hermes' problem is that he ends up being the ultimate villain of a story that doesn't really want to have "villains". So there was never any hope for him to begin with.

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This sums up my sentiments on him as well... and on him as Amon. He seems to enjoy turning his own perceived failings into something to project onto mankind as a whole and condemn it for it.

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Originally Posted by Lustre

I can't stand hermes, dude's as deep as a puddle and comes across as nothing more than an over-emotional manchild who didn't deserve the position he held. This just confirmed what I already thought. They made him three characters in one and it was still hard to care about him, other than to express annoyance at the illogicality of his actions

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Agreed.

The Lore forums really be out here unironically claiming Hermes Lived In a Society, huh?

https://i.imgur.com/aBawWYL.jpg

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These short stories are rarely pure lore pure dumps of new information, and this year in particular has been more internal character studies, which doesn't make them invalid. And for Hermes- I'm thankful that he and Meteion got at least one (even if I am in the camp of wishing for some focus on any of the dozens of other options and societies instead of the Ancients - but if it had to be Ancients, Hermes was the only POV I think had anything remotely interesting or valuable to say at this stage. I want Ahewaan or someone from Yedlihmad or Palaka's Stand to have a short story, or at least Vrtra but I have a strong feeling his will be next year.)

Hermes as a character I loved his writing and his role, which this short story only enforced, even if I would not rank him in the top ten of a personal favorites list. And I know a key element to that is in my immediate family where no one is neurotypical, the sibling I am closest to has been hospitalized due to clinical depression more than once. Which is why every reveal of Amaurotine society was making my skin crawl, because even before EW and Hermes was introduced into the plot, I could see ones like him and their predictable anguish in a so-called Paradise. Hermes is a fantasy antagonist - but he is written where his coded depression feels far more realistic than Emet's pure fantasy's variation on an immortal's grief. Where Hermes's desperate actions -which he acknowledges are desperate and hypocritical (Not the Only Villain to Do This)- are harmful and hypocritical and the grasping to legitimize his feelings and existence.

My favorite minor details were the reasoning for Meteion's blue feathers and the spectrum of dynamis rich planets. But that's also the Green Lantern Mogo fan in me.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

Hermes could never be treated or validated. By his own words anyone around him was willing to hear him out and console him, but he just took this as pity and scorned them. The truth is he didn't want to be "helped", he bristled at the nature of reality and society and wanted it all to bend according to him. More than to get a new answer that would satisfy him, he wanted the Meteion project to prove his ideas right. Like Venat says, nothing Hermes could ever have been told, either by his peers or by some space aliens, was ever going to change his mind or make him feel any better. Personally I think his perspective was due to his nature more than anything else.

The plot doesn't really pretend any differently either. Ultimately the only way anyone deals with him is by inflicting pain to make him bow and conform, and lying to him to make him useful. And eventually once he's no longer useful, we just damn his soul to hell.

But narratively, Hermes' problem is that he ends up being the ultimate villain of a story that doesn't really want to have "villains". So there was never any hope for him to begin with.

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Oh my god. Hermes is the personification of Twitter geek community!

Thinking on it, there's one of 4 possible people for the 4th/final story. Hythlodaeus, Varshahn/Vrtra, Ahewann...and Azem.

So Hermes did eventually do what he was "supposed" to do, bury his negative emotions and conform to society's expectations.

And it looks like it worked, he became an upstanding public servant who worked for the good of the star until it was sundered. Even if his pain emerged generations later to cause even more destruction than ever.

I think there's something to be said about a society so demanding of conformity and blissful acceptance that someone can repress thier pain so hard that it emerges catastrophically generations later.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

I think there's something to be said about a society so demanding of conformity and blissful acceptance that someone can repress thier pain so hard that it emerges catastrophically generations later.

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It kind of feels like a stealth critique of Japanese society, though I don't think that was intended. I may also be reading into that too much.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

It kind of feels like a stealth critique of Japanese society, though I don't think that was intended. I may also be reading into that too much.

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I don't think it's that much of a stretch to suppose that a Japanese writer, living in Japan, may have drawn from Japanese society in her story that talks about how societies collapse.

Edit: I also know anecdotally that from a few of my east asian friends that mental health issues are very much not treated well a lot of the time in those countries, to the extent that Hermes as A Character With Mental Illness might be drawing on that fact too as a part of real life inspiration.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Thinking on it, there's one of 4 possible people for the 4th/final story. Hythlodaeus, Varshahn/Vrtra, Ahewann...and Azem.

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As much as I'm hoping that we won't get another story about the ancients, I would definitely like Hyth to be the focus character if we do get one. Maybe instead of extended focus on Endwalker events, we could get a wild day at the Bureau of the Architect or something.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

I think there's something to be said about a society so demanding of conformity and blissful acceptance that someone can repress thier pain so hard that it emerges catastrophically generations later.

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The game already touched on the "emerges generations later" but it was something to do with the erased memories specifically getting etched deep in his soul and emerging later – which of course was his darkest and most nihilistic moment and a degree of despair he could barely cope with.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

It kind of feels like a stealth critique of Japanese society, though I don't think that was intended. I may also be reading into that too much.

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*looks at Yotsuyu, a character from a Japanese-patterned nation whose character arc centers entirely around how she was expected to conform to society's standards and keep quiet about her pain so as to not upset social harmony, did so until it broke her; shares Hermes' author*

... maybe.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

These short stories are rarely pure lore pure dumps of new information,

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Actually, most of them kinda have been, although some of them were growing out of 'stuff we knew happened'. Going back to the ShB and pre-EW leadups, we have...

Shadow #1: Thancred getting recruited by Louisoix, and him rescuing First Minfilia/Ryne from Eulmore. Both scenes that we had no real details on before, but knew must have happened.
Shadow #2: Tataru and Krile blackmailing Estinien. We were specifically told this happened, but not the context or means.
Shadow #3: Omega in G'raha's timeline. Outright new info, from a character we didn't even know was there before.
Shadow #4: Emet and Hyth dealing with the Phoinix, with a flash-forward to Emet as Solus dealing with Varis. The former is all outright new info, the latter is filling in a relationship only implied before.
Shadow #5: The fall of Voeburt. While ostensibly taking place around the flashbacks in the ShB tank role quest, is entirely new scenes and mentioning characters and actions we didn't know about before.
Shadow #6: Seto and Ardbert. We knew full well they had adventures before then, we just hadn't seen them.
Shadow #7: Azem Versus the Volcano. Outright new info, the first glimpse of a character we'd only heard discussed. Also has a bit of Emet and Elidibus around Lahabrea's death, in the category of 'we weren't told it happened but assumed it did'. (Also the first Lodestone short story referred to in the game itself.)
Shadow #8: Future Biggs with G'raha and Midgardsormr. The former is 'we knew this happened', the latter is outright new.

Twilight #1: Yugiri during the war, with Gosetsu. Like the Seto story, we knew they had adventures but never saw them.
Twilight #2: Merlwyb and her father. I think this was entirely new information, I don't remember this coming up before.
Twilight #3: Fordola and Yda. Outright new information, we didn't know they'd met. Also technically a situation like Azem; this is the only writing about Actual Yda, we've only heard about her before.
Twilight #4: The Sennas form the new Gridanian government. Outright new info, we never knew they pushed for this.
Twilight #5: The Ishgard one. Mostly 'we knew this must have happened', although we never heard about Ishgard's children under Thordan before, so there's that.

This is just something I've noticed across this particular batch; rather different than the Shadowbringers stories, every story so far has actually been an event that we've either already been explicitly told about before now, or in Erenville's case 'the scene that happened right after the scene we were actually there for'. There's still new information mostly in the side details, but other than Krile and Erenville collaborating we haven't yet actually had a story about something we didn't already know fairly well.

Neither approach is bad, but it's definitely contributing to my Ancient fatigue to not only get half the year's short stories about them, but to not even have either of those stories be about something new.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

I think there's something to be said about a society so demanding of conformity and blissful acceptance that someone can repress thier pain so hard that it emerges catastrophically generations later.

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It's called getting kairos'd (then later sundered). Current fandaniel being extra is also due to mix of hermes and amon persona.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

It's called getting kairos'd (then later sundered). Current fandaniel being extra is also due to mix of hermes and amon persona.

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Other than the recurring dreams and desire to lift their respective people out of stagnation Amon has nothing to do with Hermes. He makes that point very clear over and over. That's typically how reincarnation works in media.

Amon is very obviously lying to himself about that, otherwise he would have just laughed it off when you brought up Meteion/Elpis in the Aetherial Sea.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

Amon is very obviously lying to himself about that, otherwise he would have just laughed it off when you brought up Meteion/Elpis in the Aetherial Sea.

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He straight up tells you he doesn't know who that is when you pick that option.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

Amon is very obviously lying to himself about that, otherwise he would have just laughed it off when you brought up Meteion/Elpis in the Aetherial Sea.

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I can't remember the conversation, but there's going to be a difference between (1) Amon while alive, who has scraps of knowledge about Hermes from recurring dreams; (2) Fandaniel the Ascian who has received more information about Hermes as the unsundered Ascians recall him, but does not identify with that past life and asserts his own identity over it; and (3) the soul of Amon/Hermes in the aetherial sea, with Amon's memories and personality presumably still dominant but maybe dissolving away or melding into the ongoing identity of that soul.

I really dislike that Asahi of all people got to come back and somehow claim dominance over Amon's fate while we were still trying to talk to him.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

He straight up tells you he doesn't know who that is when you pick that option.

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Whatever exactly is going on, he certainly should be aware of Meteion because she would have been a key part of the scene he dreamt of over and over. Whether he feels the same affection for her as Hermes is another question (which, again, I haven't rewatched the scene to see).

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

Amon is very obviously lying to himself about that, otherwise he would have just laughed it off when you brought up Meteion/Elpis in the Aetherial Sea.

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I hardly think he's lying to himself, because at the end of the day Amon is a scientist, he's a guy who does a lot of analysis and thinking. He holds Hermes' memories at a distance from himself and took VASTLY different things from them, essentially using them as proof of his own outlook more than anything else, but they aren't nothing. When we come down and call him Hermes, he reacts, but less in the sense of this really hitting home and more like if someone brought up something you didn't know anyone remembered from second grade; it knocks him off-kilter and gets him to talk, but it's very clearly (even directly stated to be) not something he holds too closely.

We never saw a pre-Ascians Amon, so it's impossible to say how much the full perspective of who Hermes is changed him if at all, but it's definitely not that it created a new gestalt entity. It's more that the Amon afterwards was 'Amon with a stock of Hermes' memories, which he mostly just took some REAL bad ideas from'.

We can get a few bits of information about pre-Ascian Amon; he was a genius Allagan scientist who was disgusted by his fellows' wanton cruelty and casual disregard for others' lives and the Empire's decadence leading to stagnation, and sought to break it out of the slump by resurrecting Xande. He wasn't what Amon was expecting though (wrong / no soul probs) and just went on a nihilistic war against the world. In Allag's minutes to midnight he learned that Emet-Selch set Allag up to fall, meaning regardless of his efforts it would fall one day or another. Allag's decline, Xande's nihilism, and Emet-Selch's manipulations all served to drive him to madness... and that was before Hermes' memories.

That said his soul is definitely Amon and not Hermes. He says so himself, shows little and less resemblance to his Ancient persona, and his Triple Triad card even says verbatim that he is wholly Amon. Personally I feel he identifies with Hermes more than he'd like to admit, but sees him as an identity he discarded a long time ago.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

These short stories are rarely pure lore pure dumps of new information, and this year in particular has been more internal character studies, which doesn't make them invalid. And for Hermes- I'm thankful that he and Meteion got at least one (even if I am in the camp of wishing for some focus on any of the dozens of other options and societies instead of the Ancients - but if it had to be Ancients, Hermes was the only POV I think had anything remotely interesting or valuable to say at this stage. I want Ahewaan or someone from Yedlihmad or Palaka's Stand to have a short story, or at least Vrtra but I have a strong feeling his will be next year.)

Hermes as a character I loved his writing and his role, which this short story only enforced, even if I would not rank him in the top ten of a personal favorites list. And I know a key element to that is in my immediate family where no one is neurotypical, the sibling I am closest to has been hospitalized due to clinical depression more than once. Which is why every reveal of Amaurotine society was making my skin crawl, because even before EW and Hermes was introduced into the plot, I could see ones like him and their predictable anguish in a so-called Paradise. Hermes is a fantasy antagonist - but he is written where his coded depression feels far more realistic than Emet's pure fantasy's variation on an immortal's grief. Where Hermes's desperate actions -which he acknowledges are desperate and hypocritical (Not the Only Villain to Do This)- are harmful and hypocritical and the grasping to legitimize his feelings and existence.

My favorite minor details were the reasoning for Meteion's blue feathers and the spectrum of dynamis rich planets. But that's also the Green Lantern Mogo fan in me.

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...........

You kidding?!

Ancient society would be agreeable, not condemnable to an autist. ~Signed, an autist.

If Sundered society was anything like all of the forumgoers here, telling me off and stifling me for having a view of life and reality and society then I'd probably try to do to Eorzea what Hermes subjected Eitherys to. And all of y'all would fight me, not pity me and invent reasons why I was secretly right about what I critiqued.

Also, I'm currently undergoing treatment for depression due to the deaths of the Ancients in Endwalker and how it made me feel compounded by the fact that I now live alone by myself.

EDIT: That was mostly a placeholder for an actual response because...wow. Senti, if this is giving you actual depression to that point, you should not be playing the game right now, and should take a break from it and these forums for a while. Seriously, it's not good for your mental health if it's causing you that much duress, and you need to avoid the thing causing the issues, including thinking about it (easier said than done in some causes, I admit).

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Twilight #1: Yugiri during the war, with Gosetsu. Like the Seto story, we knew they had adventures but never saw them.
Twilight #2: Merlwyb and her father. I think this was entirely new information, I don't remember this coming up before.
Twilight #3: Fordola and Yda. Outright new information, we didn't know they'd met. Also technically a situation like Azem; this is the only writing about Actual Yda, we've only heard about her before.
Twilight #4: The Sennas form the new Gridanian government. Outright new info, we never knew they pushed for this.
Twilight #5: The Ishgard one. Mostly 'we knew this must have happened', although we never heard about Ishgard's children under Thordan before, so there's that.

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Last year's stories tied directly into the EW role quests. (though we didn't know it at the time)

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

He straight up tells you he doesn't know who that is when you pick that option.

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He literally says, “How would you know that name?”

That’s the opposite of asking who someone is. Again, it’s extremely obvious if you look at the way he talks about himself in the Aetherial Sea, that he still identifies as Hermes. He talks about the things Hermes did in the first person.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Thinking on it, there's one of 4 possible people for the 4th/final story. Hythlodaeus, Varshahn/Vrtra, Ahewann...and Azem.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

As much as I'm hoping that we won't get another story about the ancients, I would definitely like Hyth to be the focus character if we do get one. Maybe instead of extended focus on Endwalker events, we could get a wild day at the Bureau of the Architect or something.




The game already touched on the "emerges generations later" but it was something to do with the erased memories specifically getting etched deep in his soul and emerging later – which of course was his darkest and most nihilistic moment and a degree of despair he could barely cope with.

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Personally, I've got this hunch that the final story is gonna be from Venat's perspective.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I hardly think he's lying to himself, because at the end of the day Amon is a scientist, he's a guy who does a lot of analysis and thinking. He holds Hermes' memories at a distance from himself and took VASTLY different things from them, essentially using them as proof of his own outlook more than anything else, but they aren't nothing. When we come down and call him Hermes, he reacts, but less in the sense of this really hitting home and more like if someone brought up something you didn't know anyone remembered from second grade; it knocks him off-kilter and gets him to talk, but it's very clearly (even directly stated to be) not something he holds too closely.

We never saw a pre-Ascians Amon, so it's impossible to say how much the full perspective of who Hermes is changed him if at all, but it's definitely not that it created a new gestalt entity. It's more that the Amon afterwards was 'Amon with a stock of Hermes' memories, which he mostly just took some REAL bad ideas from'.

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I agree with you, at least for the "being a science guy" art. Of course, I also think Amon's full of shite (and himself, of course) since for all his complaints and condemnation of mankind for it's ennui and cruelty he was literally heading up the Syrcus from where it all stemmed. Kiiiiiiiinda makes him look like a hypocrite. If he can lie to himself and block out his own culpability to that extent, then he can block out the fact he was Hermes too. Makes me take anything he claims with a big grain of salt, after all why wouldn't he wish to ignore the fact he was once Hermes, the man who would watch the world burn out of a petty grudge? It would belabour his point, and make his condemnations of mankind ring rather hollow indeed.

Hermes is one of the better written characters in Endwalker, but I think it's interesting how completely polarized a lot of the reactions to his character are - either his experiences are a damning indictment of Amaurotine society's lack of empathy and demand for total conformity, or he's just a self-obsessed jerk.

I think what's going on with him is pretty complicated, because he both has a point and doesn't. Despite what he assumes, I don't think there's any basis to think that the other Ancients genuinely don't care about him and are just looking for a basis to dismiss his feelings - Hermes seems blind to his own success and privilege in a sense, having risen to a very high station in society with lots of people around him genuinely happy to be working with him and helping him with his projects. Euauthe, who comes up in this story, expresses concern when you poke her in the game even when he's not around. But I do think it's fair to say that Amaurot lacks intuitive empathy when it comes to suffering, both of other people and of wild creatures. A lot of the flippancy with which they treat creations in Elpis, though not particularly remarkable when contrasted with our own treatment of animals in the real world, comes from being unable to really conceptualize fear and anguish because they've developed a culture that avoids causing those responses in people so effectively.

If you do the quests in Elpis, you discover that none of the problems with Ancient society that Hermes describes himself having are unique. You find Ancients both struggling to cope with the death of their peers, and having issues with the treatment of creations, as well as just some other non-conformist weirdos in general. However, what might set Hermes apart is that he's clearly severely clinically depressed; he's not sad for any reason wholly rooted in reality, his brain is just like that. He is and will probably always be melancholic by nature. In the real world, sorrow and loss are so common that most everyone can relate to them regardless of whether or not it's inherent, and this way even people who never really be fully content can find catharsis and self-acceptance through their communities. But the Ancient world, lacking this critical mass, leaves the small minority of people in that state where the only way they'll really find relief is to go out of their way to seek very specific connections with individuals... Which, of course, is one of the hardest things for a person who is already mentally fragile to do.

Feelings that cannot be released wholesomely turn poisonous. Hermes has obviously developed a complex where he sees himself as utterly alone, and that has become self-reinforcing. People not only don't get him, they don't care and want him to shut up. People are cruel and worthless, the world is cruel and worthless, he is cruel and worthless. It reaches the point where he can't even see beyond his own feelings to those others. When one of the Meteia dies, he can only conceptualize it in terms of how it's making him suffer. His once justified anger and empathy for the discarded creations of Elpis has now become putrid and solipsistic; his thoughts are not of their pain, but of his second-hand pain.

I think how people respond to him will largely depend on how they conceptualize mental illness generally. Is a society that cannot account for every type of mind flawed, or is it just those people who are flawed? We all draw lines regarding which types of dysfunction are deserving of sympathy and which are deserving of contempt. In our society, chronic depression is usually met with sympathy, but other issues like narcissism and sociopathy are considered flaws in an individual that they have the responsibility of managing, or else face punishment. And some, like bipolar disorder, are on the periphery in terms of social conception; some people are very sympathetic, while others will treat you like you're toxic waste.

If we eliminated suffering to the point that depression became incredibly uncommon, would it also be seen as a 'selfish illness'? Is the fact that we regard any mental illness that way at all a flaw in society? To what extent should society change to accommodate those on the fringe, and how should it change, when often all that binds a people together is shared experience in the first place?

I'd say that the reactions around Hermes' actions are actually surprisingly unified, on a point, in that everyone seems to acknowledge that what he did was wrong irrespective of whether they enjoy his character or not. It's just a question of whether you want to acknowledge that he actually belongs to Amaurot or whether you choose to other him. And this largely comes down to whether his behavior fits in with your narrative of them collectively being superior beings that were justified in mass slaughtering our people to get what they wanted.

I personally find Hermes' interactions with Emet throughout Elpis to be most interesting, in the way that they are foils as characters. Hermes is relatively non-confrontational, and given the option, he seems the sort to maintain the status quo simply to preserve the peace even if he disagrees. You do also get the sense, though, from both this short story and the Elpis events in-game, that he feels compelled to continue down this path simply because he's been pushed into a corner and 'there's no turning back'.

Emet is very much the opposite, in that he'll quite readily force a confrontation in the name of something that he believes in. There's no coincidence that the person who speaks just before Hermes crosses the path of no return on top of Ktisis is Emet. I just think that it's one of those 'emotional intelligence' situations in which you can see the blow-up coming a mile away, including the lighting of the match.

Most stories about fantasy races are by and large still a reflection of our own society on some level, because you can only write from your own reference point. We live in a society in which reason and thought are often viewed as superior to empathy and emotions. But our world is filled with both, and you can't alchemically separate them into twain like Lahabrea and not!Lahabrea did. It's also interesting that this distinction often gets unnecessarily gendered (see: first page of this thread). As humans living in an irrational world, we all need to learn to wield both aether and akasha equally well.

'A mind all logic is like a knife all blade, it cuts the hand that wields it.'

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Originally Posted by Lurina

Hermes is one of the better written characters in Endwalker, but I think it's interesting how completely polarized a lot of the reactions to his character are - either his experiences are a damning indictment of Amaurotine society's lack of empathy and demand for total conformity, or he's just a self-obsessed jerk.

I think what's going on with him is pretty complicated, because he both has a point and doesn't. Despite what he assumes, I don't think there's any basis to think that the other Ancients genuinely don't care about him and are just looking for a basis to dismiss his feelings - Hermes seems blind to his own success and privilege in a sense, having risen to a very high station in society with lots of people around him genuinely happy to be working with him and helping him with his projects. Euauthe, who comes up in this story, expresses concern when you poke her in the game even when he's not around. But I do think it's fair to say that Amaurot lacks intuitive empathy when it comes to suffering, both of other people and of wild creatures. A lot of the flippancy with which they treat creations in Elpis, though not particularly remarkable when contrasted with our own treatment of animals in the real world, comes from being unable to really conceptualize fear and anguish because they've developed a culture that avoids causing those responses in people so effectively.

If you do the quests in Elpis, you discover that none of the problems with Ancient society that Hermes describes himself having are unique. You find Ancients both struggling to cope with the death of their peers, and having issues with the treatment of creations, as well as just some other non-conformist weirdos in general. However, what might set Hermes apart is that he's clearly severely clinically depressed; he's not sad for any reason wholly rooted in reality, his brain is just like that. He is and will probably always be melancholic by nature. In the real world, sorrow and loss are so common that most everyone can relate to them regardless of whether or not it's inherent, and this way even people who never really be fully content can find catharsis and self-acceptance through their communities. But the Ancient world, lacking this critical mass, leaves the small minority of people in that state where the only way they'll really find relief is to go out of their way to seek very specific connections with individuals... Which, of course, is one of the hardest things for a person who is already mentally fragile to do.

Feelings that cannot be released wholesomely turn poisonous. Hermes has obviously developed a complex where he sees himself as utterly alone, and that has become self-reinforcing. People not only don't get him, they don't care and want him to shut up. People are cruel and worthless, the world is cruel and worthless, he is cruel and worthless. It reaches the point where he can't even see beyond his own feelings to those others. When one of the Meteia dies, he can only conceptualize it in terms of how it's making him suffer. His once justified anger and empathy for the discarded creations of Elpis has now become putrid and sophistic; his thoughts are not of their pain, but of his second-hand pain.

I think how people respond to him will largely depend on how they conceptualize mental illness generally. Is a society that cannot account for every type of mind flawed, or is it just those people who are flawed? We all draw lines regarding which types of dysfunction are deserving of sympathy and which are deserving of contempt. In our society, chronic depression is usually met with sympathy, but other issues like narcissism and sociopathy are considered flaws in an individual that they have the responsibility of managing, or else face punishment. And some, like bipolar disorder, are on the periphery in terms of social conception; some people are very sympathetic, while others will treat you like you're toxic waste.

If we eliminated suffering to the point that depression became incredibly uncommon, would it also be seen as a 'selfish illness'? Is the fact that we regard any mental illness that way at all a flaw in society? To what extent should society change to accommodate those on the fringe, and how should it change, when often all that binds a people together is shared experience in the first place?

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The main difference I see between real life society and Ancient society is the massive magickal power gulf, otherwise it quite resembles many places we live in now; at least when stood in comparison to the Sundered world. The World Sundered is essentially the third world country to the Unsundered World's first world. Not truly lacking in any real woes, but the disparity in the "idyllic nation" nature of them is nevertheless rather stark. I think the biggest differential however, is how in the real world we do not empathize with the magickal equivalent of a glorified school shooter. We support their victims, and nail that murderous son of a b***h to the wall. The moment you take your own suffering out on the innocent, you forfeit your right to understanding.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I personally find Hermes' interactions with Emet throughout Elpis to be most interesting, in the way that they are foils as characters. Hermes is relatively non-confrontational, and given the option, he seems the sort to maintain the status quo simply to preserve the peace even if he disagrees. You do also get the sense, though, from both this short story and the Elpis events in-game, that he feels compelled to continue down this path simply because he's been pushed into a corner and 'there's no turning back'.

Emet is very much the opposite, in that he'll quite readily force a confrontation in the name of something that he believes in. There's no coincidence that the person who speaks just before Hermes crosses the path of no return on top of Ktisis is Emet. I just think that it's one of those 'emotional intelligence' situations in which you can see the blow-up coming a mile away, including the lighting of the match.[/I]

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I'd say Emet's "reaction" and "method" are more justifiable, personally. "Forcing a confrontation" gets far more results, and with greater degrees of control over the outcome than Hermes' approach. Doing a Hermes and bottling up your feelings and misgivings, leads to precisely what we saw in Ktisis Hyperboreia. An explosion of your own negative feelings and biases that can no longer be stemmed or controlled. The flaw in Hermes' reasoning is his inability, or perhaps his unwillingness to see that others did care and were struggling with him. It's hard for me not to see him as a villain, due to his actions not what he suffered from. Once you inflict your own inner pain on the undeserving, you are no longer eligible for treatment and pity.

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Originally Posted by SentioftheHoukai

Ancient society would be agreeable, not condemnable to an autist. ~Signed, an autist.

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Ancient society is horrifying and condemnable to me.

Signed,
Another autist, although one that prefers not to use that term or to define herself by it.

You speak for you, and you're allowed to, but you do not speak for all of us; your opinion may be informed by your neurodiverse nature, but it is not the inevitable consequence of it.

Personally I think that Amaurot is the place we've visited that I'd least want to live (excepting, you know, legit uninhabitable regions). Mostly because it's way TOO conformist; I'm quite happy in my own niche, but I want to define it myself, not to have society declare it for me.

My own experience with autism (both my own and in knowing others with it) actually says that the most friendly nation to that experience we've visited is probably either Thavnair or Sharlayan. Weirdly, the deciding factor is probably more where your comfort zone for food is than anything else; they both have very... distinct culinary identities, for better or worse.

And to reiterate what RyuDragnier said: yeah, if you're legitimately in treatment for depression because of a fictional story, you should distance yourself from that story rather than continuing to embed yourself in it. It is clearly not doing you good.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Last year's stories tied directly into the EW role quests. (though we didn't know it at the time)

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They were, and I loved it. But I was going through to determine what we already knew that the stories expanded on, and showing that while most of ShB's were either outright new information or fleshing out something we'd only had lightly described before, this year's have been almost entirely focused on taking an event we've already had described to us to a relatively significant degree, and expanding on it even more.

Ancient society was unequivocally based and better than the sundered world in almost every way. I’d live there, cause the prospects look amazing.

I get too many Camazotz vibes from Amaurot most of the time... when is the Happiest Sadist going to show up to keep everyone in line and make them zombies..

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I'd say that the reactions around Hermes' actions are actually surprisingly unified, on a point, in that everyone seems to acknowledge that what he did was wrong irrespective of whether they enjoy his character or not. It's just a question of whether you want to acknowledge that he actually belongs to Amaurot or whether you choose to other him. And this largely comes down to whether his behavior fits in with your narrative of them collectively being superior beings that were justified in mass slaughtering our people to get what they wanted.

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I don't think there's a need to be so binary. You can think Amaurotine society was broadly good but still not believe it was perfect enough to justify the Rejoinings (if it's even possible to have a society perfect enough to justify the mass murder of sapient beings for), just like you can believe it was broadly bad and still not think it deserved to be exterminated. They're not superior, they're just a group of people. No more or less.

As for Hermes, like all renegades, he both is and is not a product and an indictment of his culture. Because human nature is self-contradictory, even the best societies will have a marginalized population at the periphery who are nevertheless products of the cultural core in their own way. Hermes is a shadow of Amaurot at large, possessing a nature that is unsatisfied by and rebellious of its values while still unconsciously replicating them at their worst. Amaurot encourages a unique (if not fundamentally remarkable) sort of conceit towards non-human life, one which Hermes indulges in constantly, until it becomes warped by his nihilism into conceit towards life in general.

Is he 'Amaurot's fault'? It depends on how you look at it, but in my (unhappily-held) opinion, it's idealism to think that a world where everyone is happy can be achieved just by balancing everyone's needs carefully. Whether by choice or sheer inertia, social resources are allocated based on general necessity. The empathetic muscles of Amaurot that could have helped Hermes (or people like Blaste, or hell, Athena) atrophied because the overwhelming majority of people were content. Could they have been made stronger without the rest of the population having to suffer proportionally? The story offers no suggestion that they could - the Final Days and the Sundering 'improve' the world for people like Hermes by spreading misery to everyone, and though a more subdued change would probably have also done the job, it would have still required a shift in collective experience - towards grief and loss.

Society can be optimized to marginalize and hurt the least amount of people, but once you get past that, it's a zero sum game. Again: Human nature is self-contradictory. Unless you control the natural variance of the human mind itself, some types of human minds will be unhappy. The individualist will chafe in a conformist world no matter how nice it is, while the conformist will feel aimless and lost in a individualist one, and this is true for countless other situations.

When it comes to forging the world we all have to live in, it's 'kill' or 'be killed'. In this one sense, at least, Hermes cannot be blamed.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Personally I think that Amaurot is the place we've visited that I'd least want to live (excepting, you know, legit uninhabitable regions). Mostly because it's way TOO conformist; I'm quite happy in my own niche, but I want to define it myself, not to have society declare it for me.

My own experience with autism (both my own and in knowing others with it) actually says that the most friendly nation to that experience we've visited is probably either Thavnair or Sharlayan. Weirdly, the deciding factor is probably more where your comfort zone for food is than anything else; they both have very... distinct culinary identities, for better or worse.

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This feels a bit silly, but as another autistic person, I have to agree I'd prefer to live in Amaurot than anywhere else in the setting. It's not even that I'm conformist - it just obviously has a much higher quality of life than all the other places. Amaurot is a society that is built contrary to what I'd personally want, but is nevertheless optimized way better than the alternative, in the same way than I'd much rather live under a modern dictatorship than in a free society in the middle ages. Even taking the most cynical approach to the setting, I'd much rather sulk at the fringes of the Unsundered World with my one or two other deviant friends where they probably have computers and I could conjure a really nice house and good food for myself every day than, I dunno, die of dysentery in Ul'Dah.

Anyway, putting that aside, I have to say I'm pretty surprised you listed Sharlayan as the alternative, since it's basically Amaurot but in the Sundered World, minus the robes (though there are still a lot of robes). It's a pretty conformist, conceited culture that sees itself as having a special role in terms of the rest of the planet, and has a lot of firmly-held ideas about how its people ought to live. All wrapped around a culture of scholarship and resolving everything through civilized debate. It even has the Greek! And the creepy giant magic science zoo!

You just don't get to be hot for 10,000 years.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

This feels a bit silly, but as another autistic person, I have to agree I'd prefer to live in Amaurot than anywhere else in the setting. It's not even that I'm conformist - it just obviously has a much higher quality of life than all the other places. Amaurot is a society that is built contrary to what I'd personally want, but is nevertheless optimized way better than the alternative, in the same way than I'd much rather live under a modern dictatorship than in a free society in the middle ages.

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I should say first off that my personal pick out of those two would be Thavnair. As I said, the big weight-puller there between the two is actually the food: I have it in me to gain a taste for the kind of food we know Thavnair makes, while I would only grow to loathe something like Archon Loaf more and more as I ate it. There's a lot more factors in both nations' favor, but that's actually a pretty big one.

We learn a lot about Sharlayan from the Studium quests, and through that we see that they're not actually enormously conformist; they all broadly care about the pursuit of knowledge, sure, but there's a lot of breadth in that, a lot of care about different needs. They're not perfect, but there is very clearly a lot of willingness to let people find their thing and excel at it; hell, Thancred got a PhD in espionage, if a society gives someone that it's clearly one that's got an interest in nurturing all kinds of expertise.

There's also the fact that we do see that when problems actually hit Sharlayan, they can handle it pretty well. Amaurot's admittedly got a kinda broken sample pick here, because we've only really seen Amaurot when something's going cataclysmically wrong, but it really does seem even from off-handed comments in stories and text that Amaurotian life can just turn lethal at the drop of a goddamn hat (mostly thanks to that whole 'every single person has the power to create whatever their mind can imagine even if they don't want it to' thing). Combine that with the fact my overall feeling is that they're not good at all at registering or helping when someone's not well mentally (it's not just Hermes as evidence now, but also Lahabrea) and yeah, I don't think I'd feel very safe, comfortable or welcome in Amaurot. Sharlayan at least seems to get it, and there's a fairly low chance of someone suddenly summoning a nightmare-beast in the middle of the street.

And then there's the government. (Which I have too many thoughts on for 3k characters.)

I've previously felt like this is a bit of a bad faith argument on my part, because we're not really supposed to look at Amaurot as a real society with real societal problems and more just as a parable, so as mentioned the time I did flesh this out, throwing stones at their political status feels akin to criticizing Mayor Quimby for not being good for Springfield. But if I am treating it as a real society, which I'd have to if asking 'where in the game world would I want to live', I have to point out that everything we learned about the Convocation as a government is a problem for me on some level. It's essentially a council of unquestionable god-kings who only have to answer to themselves, can only be removed from office by their own decision to leave, and who select their own new members. That's a recipe for what I see as inevitable corruption; it's only a matter of time until someone's going to get into a seat with ill intentions, nobody's going to be able to remove them, and they're not going to leave until they've done whatever their secret goal was, at which point they've appointed who-knows-how-many similarly bad actors in their wake. When I started working through that overall approach in 6.0 it felt like a completely isolated just-for-fun hypothetical of 'what if this was real', but 6.2 Pandaemonium has actually shown that... uhm, yeah, corruption both can and has happened already, got REALLY BAD, and the only reason it stopped was because the culprit wasn't one of the god-kings while the one who found it was. (And hell, it didn't exactly end there or end well either...) Sharlayan may be a democracy with a conservative majority and disappointing decisions, but at least it's a democracy, I as a random-ass citizen would have some power to change it, which I would not in Amaurot (or most other nations in FFXIV, but this isn't about them).

Also I'm pretty sure I don't get to be hot for ten thousand years. Maybe this is just pessimism about my looks, but I'm pretty sure you just get what you get for your whole life, and that's not necessarily 'hot' just because we happen to be surrounded by pretty people. Add to that that I can't tell exactly what Amaurot would feel about wanting to change your own appearance, but that as a trans woman I'd kind of need whatever society I'm living in to be cool with that, and... yeah, I'm not taking 'everyone is hot' as a given, that might just be a result of the fact you have to try pretty hard to get the character creator to produce someone who isn't hot.


EDIT: Ugh, I wish we could remove tags on threads, because I noticed when writing this that someone out there decided to be boring and edgy. The worst combo.

I don't really have the coherency of thought or the energy to put together a proper effortpost at the moment, but I did want to say I'm also a Neurodivergent (tm) person - and also a Lifelong Clinical Depression person (double tm?) - who found Amaurot and its society very appealing and even comforting. Specifically approaching it from those particular angles, even. So I don't think it's something that probably can be, or would be very useful to try to be, broadly generalized on that front, as obviously there's far from a monolith of opinion in that regard.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Also I'm pretty sure I don't get to be hot for ten thousand years. Maybe this is just pessimism about my looks, but I'm pretty sure you just get what you get for your whole life, and that's not necessarily 'hot' just because we happen to be surrounded by pretty people. Add to that that I can't tell exactly what Amaurot would feel about wanting to change your own appearance, but that as a trans woman I'd kind of need whatever society I'm living in to be cool with that, and... yeah, I'm not taking 'everyone is hot' as a given, that might just be a result of the fact you have to try pretty hard to get the character creator to produce someone who isn't hot.

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I don't have time to reply to all of this right now and the topic will probably have moved on by the time I do (summary of what I'd say: the stuff about freedom to research/work on whatever you like also applies to amaurot based on what we see in akadaemia anyder and with stuff like the cthonic horns, most amaurotines having no experience with non-consensual death means dangerous stuff probably rarely happens and we probably only hear about those examples because they're the few times action happens in such a generally peaceful world, and yeah the government is pretty dubious but the post-scarcity nature of the unsundered world probably leaves few incentives for power grabs, and we don't really hear enough detail to know if there are checks and balances) but to respond to this real quick, there's a line in Pandaemonium where Lahabrea says they can "alter their physical vessels" at will.

That's probably the origin of the hotness, and also the robes, since even how you look in their world is a display of creative vanity. Also, there's quite a few Ancients with opposite gender names both in the plot and hanging around Elpis, though I guess you can interpret that in different ways.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

This feels a bit silly, but as another autistic person, I have to agree I'd prefer to live in Amaurot than anywhere else in the setting. It's not even that I'm conformist - it just obviously has a much higher quality of life than all the other places. Amaurot is a society that is built contrary to what I'd personally want, but is nevertheless optimized way better than the alternative, in the same way than I'd much rather live under a modern dictatorship than in a free society in the middle ages. Even taking the most cynical approach to the setting, I'd much rather sulk at the fringes of the Unsundered World with my one or two other deviant friends where they probably have computers and I could conjure a really nice house and good food for myself every day than, I dunno, die of dysentery in Ul'Dah.

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I'm also autistic (I usually don't bring it up as I don't really feel like its relevant most of the time) and I agree with your points. Out of any of the civilizations in the game, Amaurot is easily the best one to live in in nearly every way, if not literally every way. Even living on the fringes of Amaurot's society would be preferable to living in a sundered one. In fact, if you gave me the choice to either live in Amaurot or our irl planet Earth, I'd probably choose Amaurot, and I'm not sure I can really say that for any of the sundered civilizations.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

Anyway, putting that aside, I have to say I'm pretty surprised you listed Sharlayan as the alternative, since it's basically Amaurot but in the Sundered World, minus the robes (though there are still a lot of robes). It's a pretty conformist, conceited culture that sees itself as having a special role in terms of the rest of the planet, and has a lot of firmly-held ideas about how its people ought to live. All wrapped around a culture of scholarship and resolving everything through civilized debate. It even has the Greek! And the creepy giant magic science zoo!

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Sharlyan is just Amaurot with added problems and none of the upsides. Although to be fair, that's the entirety of the sundered in general.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I have to point out that everything we learned about the Convocation as a government is a problem for me on some level. It's essentially a council of unquestionable god-kings who only have to answer to themselves

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And yet the system seems to work, at least in-game. The two most stable nations in the game (Sharlyan and Amaurot) are both run by councils of unquestionable god-kings who only have to answer to themselves. Every other nation is either crumbling, has serious problems with corruption, or has inept leaders. Thankfully for those nations, they have the scions to show up and fix all of their problems, but Sharlyan was the only major modern nation we've encountered to not be in a state of major disarray when we arrived.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

That's probably the origin of the hotness, and also the robes, since even how you look in their world is a display of creative vanity. Also, there's quite a few Ancients with opposite gender names both in the plot and hanging around Elpis, though I guess you can interpret that in different ways.

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As far as the Ancients and the question of their approach to sexuality and gender fluidity goes, there's also the implications with Artemis, too!

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Originally Posted by Lurina

I don't have time to reply to all of this right now and the topic will probably have moved on by the time I do (summary of what I'd say: the stuff about freedom to research/work on whatever you like also applies to amaurot based on what we see in akadaemia anyder and with stuff like the cthonic horns, most amaurotines having no experience with non-consensual death means dangerous stuff probably rarely happens and we probably only hear about those examples because they're the few times action happens in such a generally peaceful world, and yeah the government is pretty dubious but the post-scarcity nature of the unsundered world probably leaves few incentives for power grabs, and we don't really hear enough detail to know if there are checks and balances) but to respond to this real quick, there's a line in Pandaemonium where Lahabrea says they can "alter their physical vessels" at will.

That's probably the origin of the hotness, and also the robes, since even how you look in their world is a display of creative vanity. Also, there's quite a few Ancients with opposite gender names both in the plot and hanging around Elpis, though I guess you can interpret that in different ways.

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There's a few mentioned at least in passing, like those detailed here and here. Insofar as certain behaviours deviate from this, it is contrary to expectations. Generally speaking, their checks and balances only seem to come under strain when their general assumption of benevolence and altruistic impulses doesn't hold - but as with certain types of mental illness likely being rare in their world (hence more difficult to relate to/comprehend for the masses - and even so they made the effort to sympathise), so too would that be a rarity. The parental bond is implied to be one of gratitude rather than very close attachment generally, so even concerns like nepotism are unlikely to have been significantly present. More here:

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Words of Lahabrea Speaker: I know not what you're suggesting, but the keywards also hold some sway within the facility. Not even Master Lahabrea would be free from their scrutiny.
Words of Lahabrea Speaker: They are duty-bound to report any irregularities as soon as possible.

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Even Lahabrea's decision for Athena to assume the role of chief keyward is motivated by her being a brilliant researcher; he had been unaware of and shocked by her moral bankruptcy. It is with that in mind that he gave her free rein to experiment as she pleased.

At the end of the day, theirs is a society structured around the particular traits they had as a species - such as immortality, creation magicks and the echo, and general prevalence of altruistic impulses. All powers so natural to them that even children wielded them. I generally agree with your commentary on how a society can only optimise its positive traits subject to certain constraints, which means it's impossible to please everybody and retain individualised mental traits, but as far as a society could go about doing so, theirs seems idyllic to my eyes, and certainly, what flaws they had (and share largely with the sundered in kind, if not degree) certainly don't rise to the level, IMO, of warranting their annihilation.

The thoughts here are very interesting, on where you'd want to live in Eorzea. Looking on it, you can sort of see Amaurot and Sharlayan somewhat of the same city/civilization. Both push for learning about and bettering the world, both push for letting you enter the field you want, both openly encourage you to expand your mind and knowledge. The only differences I see are that Amaurot tries to lessen differences enough so there isn't much fighting between people, while Sharlayan lets you be yourself for good or ill. Both are ruled by councils, but one has its members chosen by previous ones, while the other has them seemingly elected into their positions. One is content with mostly ignoring what happens in the other parts of the world, while the other openly watches and keeps tabs on the rest of the world.

Two cities, the same yet completely different. Regardless of which one you go for, you want a place where you can learn, expand your horizons, study that which you want to study, and make the world a better place. The only difference seems to be how you want that city to function on a governmental level and how you want it to interact with the rest of the world.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

The thoughts here are very interesting, on where you'd want to live in Eorzea. Looking on it, you can sort of see Amaurot and Sharlayan somewhat of the same city/civilization. Both push for learning about and bettering the world, both push for letting you enter the field you want, both openly encourage you to expand your mind and knowledge. The only differences I see are that Amaurot tries to lessen differences enough so there isn't much fighting between people, while Sharlayan lets you be yourself for good or ill. Both are ruled by councils, but one has its members chosen by previous ones, while the other has them seemingly elected into their positions. One is content with mostly ignoring what happens in the other parts of the world, while the other openly watches and keeps tabs on the rest of the world.

Two cities, the same yet completely different. Regardless of which one you go for, you want a place where you can learn, expand your horizons, study that which you want to study, and make the world a better place. The only difference seems to be how you want that city to function on a governmental level and how you want it to interact with the rest of the world.

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Yes, I find this discussion to be very interesting. I'd never really thought about it before but there really are many similarities between the two cities and their philosophies. I suppose this would explain why, of all the cities on the Source, I would choose Sharlayan as my preferred place of residence if, y'know, I had to live there in real life. I find it very appealing and I probably was subconsciously seeing the similarities between it and Amaurot which I also treasure for its love of learning.