On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

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Originally Posted by Dikatis

While I do love a good, unrepentant villain, I'm not sure if Athena is meant to be seen as a "feminist" figure? FFXIV's setting as a whole is generally pretty feminist, between the core three city-states all being led by women and the general prevalence of women in positions of power (i.e. Roswen and the Sanguine Sirens, Lucia as the second-in-command of the Temple Knights, Livia as a Tribunus, Vergilia as Legatus of the IIIrd Legion e.t.c.). But Athena isn't really that? I guess she's in command of her own actions in pursuit of megalomaniacal self-empowerment, but she's not really a role model in any way?

I'll admit to not really reading things through a feminist lens much of the time, but I don't think sociopathy, megalomania, and general selfishness are traits to aspire for in a feminist figure. The subversion of the expectation that she must have SOME sympathetic reason for her actions makes her an interesting villain akin to Zenos, but again, I'm not sure if her lack of maternal instinct (or empathy in general) makes her someone to admire and emulate.

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Ah, when I say feminism, I don't mean that FFXIV was deliberately crafting a "feminist" character in Athena. I'm sure that wasn't the specific goal of the writers. I'm talking about my personal perspective on feminism, especially when engaging with media, and part of that is, to me, understanding that women are just as fully capable of covering an equally wide range of emotional, moral, and intellectual capacity as men do, including the lack thereof and the uglier possibilities. My feminism isn't about "what to emulate" or role models, most of the time, it's about respecting that women are full-fledged People and everything that that entails, good or bad.

Women are more frequently hit, in general, with what you said about "there must be some reason..." in a way that men usually aren't shackled to by default - and that I think often feels condescending and "comforting" to an audience in an obnoxious way to try to indicate that women are fundamentally "softer" creatures, who, if they turn to evil, must have been Wounded from that default in some way - and you only need to look at FFXIV's own array of female villains prior to Athena to see that, I think.

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Originally Posted by Dikatis

While I do love a good, unrepentant villain, I'm not sure if Athena is meant to be seen as a "feminist" figure? FFXIV's setting as a whole is generally pretty feminist, between the core three city-states all being led by women and the general prevalence of women in positions of power (i.e. Roswen and the Sanguine Sirens, Lucia as the second-in-command of the Temple Knights, Livia as a Tribunus, Vergilia as Legatus of the IIIrd Legion e.t.c.). But Athena isn't really that? I guess she's in command of her own actions in pursuit of megalomaniacal self-empowerment, but she's not really a role model in any way?

I'll admit to not really reading things through a feminist lens much of the time, but I don't think sociopathy, megalomania, and general selfishness are traits to aspire for in a feminist figure. The subversion of the expectation that she must have SOME sympathetic reason for her actions makes her an interesting villain akin to Zenos, but again, I'm not sure if her lack of maternal instinct (or empathy in general) makes her someone to admire and emulate.

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It's that a female character is used as a selfish megalomaniac villain, that such a story role is not confined only to male characters but allowed to be unlimited. If female characters were only villains would be just as tiresome.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Athena!

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I have to say, I was floored by that ending (in a good way.) Even media that allows for a great degree of complexity and depth in its female characters and avoids the usual potholes when it comes to writing women often cannot help but sink into that "becoming a parent changes you"/ "parental love conquers all" stereotype, so to see a mother not only not fall prey to that but be so thoroughly unrepentant in seeing her child as nothing but a test subject and manipulating their entire relationship from his very birth was huge. That's icy, even by Western media standards, and we're talking a JRPG here, where moms either wind up dead or as an inoffensive background character who hangs out the washing and wonders what to cook for dinner.

And dialling that back, reflecting on her relationship with Lahabrea and what it likely actually would have meant to her (absolutely nothing), and just how much that would mess with anyone's head, given how significant it clearly was for him... it's just overall psychopathic levels of cruelty, and while it is tremendous that a female character has been allowed to be so diabolically evil, my biggest takeaway is I don't think the poor guy even needed the sundering to jump off a ledge by the end of all of that, lol.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

(Athena post)

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I agree with the overall tone of your post, and likewise since tier 2 I've loved Athena from a feminist perspective of finally having a character that is so completely unapologetic and even uses her motherhood in the coldest, most despicable fashion. Let's just say I love that she's the openly narcissistic Ancient mom… The lines between her and Erich are so great. … even though I suppose it isn't really Erich then. Seriously. This story and its set up. MEH.

But it's the auracite twist still has me going "eh". It's not a full excuse that completely corrupted her. But I can't help but feel it dampens my enthusiasm a little, just because of the fact that it's there as a possibility. I think it's up to interpretation, but I take the exchange between Lahabrea and Erichthonios as tacit acknowledgment that she might have been a mother to him had it not gone this way, and that's what has me going "hm… shame". I don't think it's clearcut how much of this only happened because of the auracite's influence.
I just wanted her to have zero sort of anything that might even pass as an excuse. Maybe if I read your post enough and self-hypnotise I'll manage to forget this impression and fully revel in her glory like I once did before last Tuesday. I am looking forward to the Athena fan art this will spring, because there are quite a few pieces I've loved these past 9 months or so.

And her minion description just made me laugh. This Ancient narc mom knows how to deal with her simps!

Even putting aside glorious FEMINISM, the other aspect of what's consistently frustrating about the common media depictions of "a parent/mother's love always bears out in the end..." or what have you, is god, how infuriating and awful must it be for victims of that kind of abuse to have it reinforced that they should also factor in that deep deep down, their manipulative and abusive parents loved them, were really just putting on an evil face or hurting them for their sake, etc, etc, all the tropes we're so used to seeing?

It therefore really did feel remarkably good and brave and gutsy for the narrative to not just have Athena being herself, but also have Erichtonios confront that question head on, get the answer he got, and then be empowered to respond (with unabashed venom) in the way that he did, overcoming her influence and claiming his personhood and agency for himself.

As far as Lahabrea goes, I was sort of charmed (in that delicious Athena way) by the way she obviously was deeply disappointed that her husband (and later, us) simply didn't get it, because she truly sees her own perspective as obviously natural and reasonable, and is eager to have others agree with her. Part of what's terrifying about people like Athena is that there's something... not genuine, but also not fully fake, in their behavior in being interested in having someone as a partner or colleague, but also being able to flippantly and instantly reject you and throw you away like trash as soon as you "disappoint" them. In a way, I think that can destroy you even more thoroughly than if someone was just hateful and cruel from the get-go.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

I agree with the overall tone of your post, and likewise since tier 2 I've loved Athena from a feminist perspective of finally having a character that is so completely unapologetic and even uses her motherhood in the coldest, most despicable fashion. Let's just say I love that she's the openly narcissistic Ancient mom… The lines between her and Erich are so great. … even though I suppose it isn't really Erich then. Seriously. This story and its set up. MEH.

But it's the auracite twist still has me going "eh". It's not a full excuse that completely corrupted her. But I can't help but feel it dampens my enthusiasm a little, just because of the fact that it's there as a possibility. I think it's up to interpretation, but I take the exchange between Lahabrea and Erichthonios as tacit acknowledgment that she might have been a mother to him had it not gone this way, and that's what has me going "hm… shame". I don't think it's clearcut how much of this only happened because of the auracite's influence.
I just wanted her to have zero sort of anything that might even pass as an excuse. Maybe if I read your post enough and self-hypnotise I'll manage to forget this impression and fully revel in her glory like I once did before last Tuesday. I am looking forward to the Athena fan art this will spring, because there are quite a few pieces I've loved these past 9 months or so.

And her minion description just made me laugh. This Ancient narc mom knows how to deal with her simps!

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Thing is, the auracite would not have had that effect if she wasn't a narc in the first place. All that rock does is enhance traits already present in the person.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Even putting aside glorious FEMINISM, the other aspect of what's consistently frustrating about the common media depictions of "a parent/mother's love always bears out in the end..." or what have you, is god, how infuriating and awful must it be for victims of that kind of abuse to have it reinforced that they should also factor in that deep deep down, their manipulative and abusive parents loved them, were really just putting on an evil face or hurting them for their sake, etc, etc, all the tropes we're so used to seeing?

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I know you know I know I want to reply to this with a very obvious parallel… but I won't elaborate, because I certainly do not wish to see the lore forums suddenly erupt into a raging blaze. Not little ol' me!

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Part of what's terrifying about people like Athena is that there's something... not genuine, but also not fully fake, in their behavior in being interested in having someone as a partner or colleague, but also being able to flippantly and instantly reject you and throw you away like trash as soon as you "disappoint" them.

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I can't help but be reminded of the … (cringes) multi-layered… relationship between Petyr Baelish and Sansa Stark (in the books). While it hasn't progressed to that state thanks to the author's notorious procrastinating tendencies (and it is my right as a Book Snob to ignore any other sort of canon of A Song Of Ice And Fire that might exist), this terrifying undercurrent is absolutely there. And it's a horrific dark dynamic I love to read.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

I know you know I know I want to reply to this with a very obvious parallel… but I won't elaborate, because I certainly do not wish to see the lore forums suddenly erupt into a raging blaze. Not little ol' me!

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I can honestly say that really wasn't the primary thought in my mind when I wrote that bit! (The dog person bit, on the other hand? S-sorry, everyone.) It was more prompted by seeing feedback from other corners in terms of how they found Athena refreshing and, in some ways, important in what she depicts.

But I will say, in the case of GLORIOUS FEMINISM, this is part of why Venat falls flat as a character to me, even beyond the Sundering debate. She is, to me, so obviously calculated to hit all of those traditional Feminine and Feminine Strength/Maternal Love/Loving Core vibes used to soften up anything otherwise controversial about her character for the sake of audience appeal that much of the time it's difficult for me to even see her as a character, more or less. I think she does legitimately have charisma, and I liked her fine until the montage (I think I've mentioned ever since 5.2 I was hyped beyond belief for her character, because - a woman willing to be ruthless for her ideals!? Gimme gimme gimme!), however, the writing was petrified of allowing anyone room to actually perceive her as potentially "hard" or "ruthless" in how she went about things because that would compromise what they wanted for her to be as Loving Mother as possible in regards to her actions, given the writing corner they ended up in with her. There really isn't much there to sink your teeth in with Venat, beyond the inherent controversy of what she did, and the Good Vibes, unless you go full-bore reading against the grain of the text.

When I see people who use the controversy of Venat's actions to project traits onto her that simply do not exist in the text, I'm conflicted, because it's clear and been told to us time after time, that the bad things others perceive in her are simply 'not true.' But beyond people wanting to simply frame her as wrong or more ambiguous, a lot of these traits, even the more tame ones, would have made her more of a person. As she stands, she's nothing but a cookiecutter Mother Goddess archetype, and every opportunity the devs could have had to flesh her out as something more than that, they were either unwilling or afraid to expand upon, because they knew they were playing with fire, with what they'd written so far. She is like a dissonance incarnate, an outlier of outliers. Ironically, in their quest to make her 'like you' with that former Azem stuff, in their desire to make her actions come out of a place of faith 'in you,' I'm left with absolutely nothing of note to say about her. She's no different than any of the others who kiss the ground the WoL walks on.

Compare that to her counterpart on the other side of the coin, Themis, who we now just have so much to delve into about both his relationships with others and his personal values beyond just how he ties to some superficial theme. We've seen him at all turns of his life now, balancing his friendly, innocent mischievousness with the very tangible authority and composure that befits the role he has. I now feel like I can fully understand where his mindset and feelings are at the numerous points in his life, like I could Emet before him. With Venat, I can only speculate. And maybe that was intentional, what with the way the Watcher puts her on this pedestal of someone with unknowable vision, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't make for an exceedingly boring character.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

I have to say, I was floored by that ending (in a good way.) Even media that allows for a great degree of complexity and depth in its female characters and avoids the usual potholes when it comes to writing women often cannot help but sink into that "becoming a parent changes you"/ "parental love conquers all" stereotype, so to see a mother not only not fall prey to that but be so thoroughly unrepentant in seeing her child as nothing but a test subject and manipulating their entire relationship from his very birth was huge. That's icy, even by Western media standards, and we're talking a JRPG here, where moms either wind up dead or as an inoffensive background character who hangs out the washing and wonders what to cook for dinner.

And dialling that back, reflecting on her relationship with Lahabrea and what it likely actually would have meant to her (absolutely nothing), and just how much that would mess with anyone's head, given how significant it clearly was for him... it's just overall psychopathic levels of cruelty, and while it is tremendous that a female character has been allowed to be so diabolically evil, my biggest takeaway is I don't think the poor guy even needed the sundering to jump off a ledge by the end of all of that, lol.

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I love this because it circles back around to treating a previously considered anti-feminist archetype - the devouring mother - as now being bold and feminist again.

The devouring mother is an exclusively female archetype seen in for example the witch in Hansel and Gretel, she desires to eat her children and they way she does that is by rearing and pampering their child and making it love them, keeping them dependent and killing of their self-hood, instrumentalizing them for their eventual consumption.

This pretty neatly fits Athena too and it's precisely because it's a Japanese game that we see it, in the west such a character would likely be considered anti-feminist because it feeds into a previously established misogynist trope.

I completely agree with you though, I think Athena being an unrepentant villain is not only fresh, like who else do we have, Valens van Varro? But it's imo also feminist.

The devouring parent isn't exclusively female, though. Chronos ate his kids, too.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

I completely agree with you though, I think Athena being an unrepentant villain is not only fresh, like who else do we have, Valens van Varro? But it's imo also feminist.

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Not all of them may be as major as a central raid villain, or as over-the-top, but there's also the likes of Asahi, Nabriales, Teledji Adeledji, and some would argue Zenos (I'm not sure that I would, though, in his case), that I can think of.

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Originally Posted by Alleluia

The devouring parent isn't exclusively female, though. Chronos ate his kids, too.

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Yes, but he doesn't fit the archetype. He didn't fatten and smother his children but he was afraid of them taking away his position of power (which he got prophecied would happen). Chronos is distinctly unfeminine in that regard.

Another modern example that's less on the nose and more realistic would be Lysa Arryn from the Song of Ice and Fire series.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Not all of them may be as major as a central raid villain, or as over-the-top, but there's also the likes of Asahi, Nabriales, Teledji Adeledji, and some would argue Zenos (I'm not sure that I would, though, in his case), that I can think of.

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True, I love all of those guys.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

In contrast, the Source is so dull to me. It's a Forgotten Realms-ass fantasy kitchen sink with themes and motifs you can find anywhere, spread out without any underlying direction. I like some of the characters, but I don't give a damn about any of these factions and places - even the interesting ones like Gridania have had all their edges filed off since 1.0. When I hear people talk about how they hope the next several expansions get away from all this cross-dimensional stuff to focus on the Source, it makes me feel like I'm going insane. I don't wanna be here! It's so boring! Ahhhhh!!!!!!!!

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There are no words to express just how much I feel the weight of these words in my very soul. Sometimes I wonder if I was actually in any of these bog-standard fantasy worlds if I'd be just like the villains the stories wish for you to despise for the simple fact that I see no unique value in them. I don't know, it just feels like when you've seen one fantasy world you've seen them all sometimes. There's only so much blue mountains and yellow skies you can see before it begins to grow monotonous.

Either way, I feel more apathy in response to it than exacerbation.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

Yes, but he doesn't fit the archetype. He didn't fatten and smother his children but he was afraid of them taking away his position of power (which he got prophecied would happen). Chronos is distinctly unfeminine in that regard.

Another modern example that's less on the nose and more realistic would be Lysa Arryn from the Song of Ice and Fire series.

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Kronos had a very masculine way of devouring his kids. Namely, that he just straight up ate them with all the stereotypical forcefulness and headstrong that is exemplary of what most understand to be masculine. Where Kronos chose the masculine approach of simple violence, generally one would expect mothers to instead undermine their children to render them powerless. Honestly I don't feel the absolute most qualified to speak here, but from my own admittedly meagre understanding of the matter that's typically what people expect the difference to be. Feel free to correct any inaccuracy on my part, however.

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Originally Posted by TowaIsBestGirl

Kronos had a very masculine way of devouring his kids. Namely, that he just straight up ate them with all the stereotypical forcefulness and headstrong that is exemplary of what most understand to be masculine. Where Kronos chose the masculine approach of simple violence, generally one would expect mothers to instead undermine their children to render them powerless. Honestly I don't feel the absolute most qualified to speak here, but from my own admittedly meagre understanding of the matter that's typically what people expect the difference to be. Feel free to correct any inaccuracy on my part, however.

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The borders are as fluid as those between masculine and feminine in general I would say.

Kronos ate his children for he couldn't accept them overthrowing him and feared for his position of power. His devouring them is him claiming them as his to be undone as they originated from his seed. Thus Chronos represents a masculine tyrant obsessed with power and control.

The feminine approach would be to coddle the children, to manipulate them and keep them from developing any sort of agency of their own and keep them in total dependency, for the mother fears the independence of her children and thus to lose them and in turn herself, she identifies her children as her only source of meaning and love in life to the point she incorporates them into herself.

That's the way I understand it. Both are operating out of some sort of inferiority complex.

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Originally Posted by TowaIsBestGirl

There are no words to express just how much I feel the weight of these words in my very soul. Sometimes I wonder if I was actually in any of these bog-standard fantasy worlds if I'd be just like the villains the stories wish for you to despise for the simple fact that I see no unique value in them. I don't know, it just feels like when you've seen one fantasy world you've seen them all sometimes. There's only so much blue mountains and yellow skies you can see before it begins to grow monotonous.

Either way, I feel more apathy in response to it than exacerbation.

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The problem I see with this is that basically everywhere we go we get rid of all the problems, everything will eventually have all the edges shaved off. When people criticize the scions as sanctimonious goody-two-shoes to the point even an Estinien is now bland and a shell of his former self, I always ask myself why new characters would in any way be beyond that. Same with new worlds or unknown lands, if they did it with Eorzea, it will happen everywhere. Every long standing cast member will become one-note and at most "pretend" to be three-dimensional, like Gaius or Nero who nowadays fit the same mold as the scions, you can be sure they will never be at odds at least. Every Ishgard will have its Dragonsong War ended, every Norvrandt will become a Norvrandt after 5.0.

Put like that, Athena seems almost like a blend of the two, but I'm definitely not an expert in the mythology being cited or anything!

Venat needed to be a loving mother goddess, otherwise her character would fall flat. It made her decision to sunder the world even more difficult. If she was just like "You guys are a bunch of whiners! We're not going to beat Meteion with you guys! I'm sundering this world! Get wrecked!" then the story wouldn't work as well. The song Answers would lose its meaning.

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Originally Posted by Yuella

Venat needed to be a loving mother goddess, otherwise her character would fall flat. It made her decision to sunder the world even more difficult. If she was just like "You guys are a bunch of whiners! We're not going to beat Meteion with you guys! I'm sundering this world! Get wrecked!" then the story wouldn't work as well. The song Answers would lose its meaning.

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I feel like there's people who think this is some kind of put-on and she's not really like that. Which I also think is completely false; in Elpis she's still very motherly, it just comes off more like 'the group's resident Mom Friend' in large part because of the context. She's around equals that she knows she doesn't have to protect and who can take care of themselves, so she's a lot more relaxed than she was in... well, every other time we've ever seen her. She's still very supportive and caring, you can see the character we know from other scenes coming through, it's just more in the background.

Meanwhile, Athena's kind of always in Mom Mode, she's just an extremely awful mom.

The funny thing about the Mommy Hydaelyn idea is that I didn't feel Venat's characterization in the Elpis storyline really even gave us "mother". More like "playful, quirky aunt". Caring and supportive, absolutely, but I don't know if I'd say she seemed particularly parental, and nor did it seem to me that any of the other characters regarded her as such, though they certainly had incredible respect for her. Like the Azem that succeeded her, at least Emet and Hyth seem to think she's a little too whimsical for "mom friend" status lol.

And in a vacuum, that's completely innocuous; it still makes for a likeable character, if bland (and so is the alternative -- I'm not really arguing otherwise). Also, obviously, like Emet, she's perfectly capable of evolving over the years, and certainly she would've been changed by the transformation into Hydaelyn. And as Cleretic says, we aren't necessarily shown the full range of her character, under the unusual circumstances that we interact with her. But I think this discussion is interesting precisely because, to me, Venat was missing that parental through-line, one of the few things we previously knew about Hydaelyn, and it doesn't sound like that was everyone else's read.

Like ShB-Hythlodaeus versus his EW counterpart, Hydaelyn and Venat could have been completely different characters for all they resembled one another, imo. (The same could be said of Themis/Elidibus, I guess, but that identity crisis is built into his characterization in a way that reads as way more intentional to me.)

On the other hand, maybe that's meant to be the takeaway? That she (and Emet) is and was more than just our limited experience with her. Your mom is more than just your mom, etc.

One thing's for sure, though, and that's that Elpis's eyes were bigger than its stomach. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Originally Posted by Turnintino

Like ShB-Hythlodaeus versus his EW counterpart, Hydaelyn and Venat could have been completely different characters for all they resembled one another, imo. (The same could be said of Themis/Elidibus, I guess, but that identity crisis is built into his characterization in a way that reads as way more intentional to me.)

On the other hand, maybe that's meant to be the takeaway? That she (and Emet) is and was more than just our limited experience with her. Your mom is more than just your mom, etc.

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I mean, on top of that valid point of different contexts and experiences, there's twelve thousand years and some pretty significant events between Venat in Elpis and Hydaelyn in the present day. You can expect some major differences there, even if it's still clearly the same person beneath it. I think Venat's really helped along by the different 'steps' we get along the way, too; it might be a bit hard to buy Venat as Hydaelyn, but you can buy the Venat from Elpis as the Venat in the Anamnesis Anyder recording, and that Venat as the Venat from the post-Elpis flashback scene, and the Venat from 'the walk' in that scene as Hydaelyn. Meanwhile with Emet we've basically only seen him at the beginning and end of that journey, and it's... a bit of an ask to see them as the exact same person without some level of player-editorializing and guesswork, we saw very little of what was presumably a long, heavy journey.

There's nothing wrong with that difference, it's just that there is, indeed, a difference there.

Elpis serves as a bridge to the personalities and character dynamics created in the Tales from the Shadows stories, the latter which the average player isn't going to have read. The problem is that while Azem is the centerpiece of those stories, you can't really write them in directly without partially intruding on that sense of freedom that the player has to define their own character. Even if you recognize the fact that we are different people with the same soul, there's still might be a sense of feeling forced to live up to that trickster rabbit persona, if you don't normally go with dialogue option 2.

Venat is an intermediatory for this. As the former Azem, she can play the part described in the stories without Azem directly being involved. So you can still have Emet facepalming at her antics with Hyth cheering them on, and have a window into what it would be like with the Tales from the Shadows Azem in the scenes (hence 'the two Azems'). At the same time, she's also Hydaelyn, and is a Convocation veteran who deftly outplayed her juniors in a 4D chess match over the fate of Etheirys across twelve thousand years. She's as much a figure of matriarchal strength as Dench's 'M'. And much like with Emet, and Lahabrea, you're left to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory parts of their natures, simultaneously cordial and unyielding.

Pandemonium serves a similar role with Elidibus, in that it takes the hollow shell that we'd known until 5.3 and actually gives him a personality that we had only previously seen in Tales from the Shadows. The difficulty with Eldibus is the crux of that was defined in terms of his relationship to Azem, as a mentor figure that he looks up to and admires. The comparisons drawn between the Exarch and Eldibus during their showdown in 5.3 were quite intentional, as G'raha is very nearly Themis' parallel in our own interactions.

I don't think that the P11 moment was intended as a Zenos moment, as the OP suggests. Elidibus simply wants to measure for himself how he stood up to someone who's spirit he's admired for all his life. I feel like there's more to this interaction that could be fleshed out, but the limitation is going to be in the fact that you can't directly bring Azem into a scene. But perhaps we'll get more short stories around this down the line.

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Originally Posted by Yuella

Venat needed to be a loving mother goddess, otherwise her character would fall flat. It made her decision to sunder the world even more difficult. If she was just like "You guys are a bunch of whiners! We're not going to beat Meteion with you guys! I'm sundering this world! Get wrecked!" then the story wouldn't work as well. The song Answers would lose its meaning.

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To say "screw it" and finally just go ahead and dive into this potentially contentious comparison, I think the question is, is there any actual meaningful difference between Athena's ideals and goals and what Venat did wind up doing, beyond purely character-internal matters of "well, Venat felt bad about it"? Is there any real difference between them in terms of the proposed and actualized impact on the people who were living and breathing around them at the time they enacted their plans?

And secondarily from that, yes, Venat probably believed she was acting "for the greater good" with a further degree of sincerity than Athena, for whom her justification of "greater good" was more blatantly an afterthought compared to her personal ambition. And we got treated to a show of how Venat felt very, very sad about what she did to those around her, that I would - and have - argued was largely meant to cynically soothe the player so that we wouldn't feel badly of our mother goddess benefactor, in spite of what she did, and serve Endwalker's wider goal of reassuring the player "everyone is united in supporting you! No one is a bad person! Yay!" But either way, how much does that matter compared to the concrete reality of their actions, especially from the perspective of their victims? (Maybe we should ask Gaius?)

The answer of how much it matters is probably going to vary from person to person, of course. But I think Erich's rejoinder to his mother, the core reason why what she's doing is objectionable, still does apply just as much to both (and, yes, to Emet-Selch's arguments as well.) Erich's argument isn't about the question of Athena's sincerity, telling her her rationale is just BSing and she only cares about herself, if she was really doing it for the greater good it'd be okay - he actually takes her argument at face value, and it comes down to the impact and cost to those living around her, which is immutable.

To add on to this comparison, FFXIV's writing has had an extremely firm stance on the dilemma of 'sacrificing lives for the greater good' for just about its entire existence. Gaius, who saw the lives claimed in his conquest as a necessary demand for a world united under a single standard, was an antagonist to stand against. Emet-selch wanted to obliterate the lives on the shards and many on the source to revive the Ancient society, and how did the scions, and therefore the plot react? Yshtola went "You have murdered millions, and this we cannot condone." Alphinaud went "But what value is there in surviving when all our history, all our struggles will be erased? I cannot conscience such an act."

What Erich says to Athena is precisely the same standpoint that the game has always shared in regards to a character on the precipice of making decisions like this. The ends do not justify the means. That's the hill they stand on. This holds true universally, save for one, one exception. As far as the Ancients are concerned, Athena is just the more transparent, but I respect where they went with her character on the basis of what's been discussed above.

I think that is also comes down to what you interpret the "new life" that the Third Sacrifice was aiming to trade to Zodiark in order to swap out the souls from sacrifices one and two. For me it was obvious in the implications that the new life wasn't just constructs and plant/animal life (which even then, okay you've just environmentally devastated the planet back towards the state you had just made the original Zodiark sacrifices for) but that these new lives were beings that had inherited the souls from the Lifestream had had originally belonged to people who had died in the initial Final Days, including all the citizens of the other cities that weren't Amaurot, or souls of people who died long before it and thus didn't have the memories of the Final Days that could have triggered the Echo via the Star Showers. The Convocation and their followers, through tempering and the extremely potent survivor's guilt towards the sacrificed like Hythlodeaus are deciding to kill reborn-Azem. Those same souls on the chopping block once the Rejoinings are complete.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

sacrifices

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Not to fully retread old arguments, but keeping this focused on "Venat's individual motivations and actions" themselves as a potential foil or parallel to Athena - as opposed to a wider argument on the Convocation - Endwalker pretty firmly established that at least for Venat herself, (you could make an argument for her faction, who were largely kept in the dark about what she knew and what she intended), the sacrifices were the least of her concerns, and she was primarily motivated by the question of the Endsinger and her fears that the Ancients would eventually submit to total societal stagnation and nihilism, ala the Nibirun. This is reflected both in her not understanding why she would ever do what she did when you first give her the Endsinger-less and Meteion's report-less understanding of the future scenario, and the fact that whatever the "new life" was, Hydaelyn also chopped it up and effectively killed it all in the Sundering along with the Ancients.

For Venat herself, just like Athena (at least, the argument Athena put forth), the primary concern was indeed for her concept of "the greater good," and all forms of life around her were an acceptable sacrifice towards a future that would shape it.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Not to fully retread old arguments, but keeping this focused on "Venat's individual motivations and actions" themselves as a potential foil or parallel to Athena - as opposed to a wider argument on the Convocation - Endwalker pretty firmly established that at least for Venat herself, (you could make an argument for her faction, who were largely kept in the dark about what she knew and what she intended), the sacrifices were the least of her concerns, and she was primarily motivated by the question of the Endsinger and her fears that the Ancients would eventually submit to total societal stagnation and nihilism, ala the Nibirun. This is reflected both in her not understanding why she would ever do what she did when you first give her the Endsinger-less and Meteion's report-less understanding of the future scenario, and the fact that whatever the "new life" was, Hydaelyn also chopped it up and effectively killed it all in the Sundering along with the Ancients.

For Venat herself, just like Athena (at least, the argument Athena put forth), the primary concern was indeed for her concept of "the greater good," and all forms of life around her were an acceptable sacrifice towards a future that would shape it.

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"To try and reclaim those lives we lost by sacrificing yet more isn't wisdom. It is weakness."

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To put in a parallel - the Convocation is acting like Hephatios in P8 - wanting to sacrifice Erichtonios to bring back Athena. Venat and her followers were trying to save Erichtonios but Venat realizes that she can't, her attempts at least in the timeline that we are on have no outcome where she succeeded in convincing Hephatios not to kill Athena in the first place and now her attempts at reasoning with Hephatios won't stop him from killing Erichtonios. He's solely focused on restoring Athena, who in this case was far more a victim of Ultima's auracite. Now the writers would have allowed the WoL in a similar situation to just kill Hephatios and save Erichtonios. Venat's followers think she might be able to. Thanks to time-travel shenanigans, Venat knows she won't be able to save Erichtonios, but her blow that stops Hephatios from killing him is also going to transform Erichtonios into Claudien. And Claudien, unlike Hephatios, is willing to go hunt down Ultima the High Seraph and unlike Hephatios or herself, actually has the best chance of defeating Ultima (and free Athena to be reborn too). I totally get the anger that Venat was still killing Erichtonios to get Claudien- but Hephaitios was also trying to kill Erichtonios, and as the story is written I disagree that Hephatios was ever going to kill Ultima.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I feel like there's people who think this is some kind of put-on and she's not really like that. Which I also think is completely false; in Elpis she's still very motherly, it just comes off more like 'the group's resident Mom Friend' in large part because of the context. She's around equals that she knows she doesn't have to protect and who can take care of themselves, so she's a lot more relaxed than she was in... well, every other time we've ever seen her. She's still very supportive and caring, you can see the character we know from other scenes coming through, it's just more in the background.

Meanwhile, Athena's kind of always in Mom Mode, she's just an extremely awful mom.

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Soooo... Venat's closer to the Wine Aunt than the Mother? Eh, I guess it fits.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

I think that is also comes down to what you interpret the "new life" that the Third Sacrifice was aiming to trade to Zodiark in order to swap out the souls from sacrifices one and two. For me it was obvious in the implications that the new life wasn't just constructs and plant/animal life (which even then, okay you've just environmentally devastated the planet back towards the state you had just made the original Zodiark sacrifices for) but that these new lives were beings that had inherited the souls from the Lifestream had had originally belonged to people who had died in the initial Final Days, including all the citizens of the other cities that weren't Amaurot, or souls of people who died long before it and thus didn't have the memories of the Final Days that could have triggered the Echo via the Star Showers. The Convocation and their followers, through tempering and the extremely potent survivor's guilt towards the sacrificed like Hythlodeaus are deciding to kill reborn-Azem. Those same souls on the chopping block once the Rejoinings are complete.

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As much as I too think the third sacrifice was actual people, I'm not too sure just how much the distinction matters to the comparison being made. The fundamental morals the game has set and stood by since its inception are still being woven around a single individual in ways other weren't permitted to be. But it is what it is, and that is the story being told us. I'm too tired to fight this fight rn, tbqh.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

To put in a parallel - the Convocation is acting like Hephatios in P8 - wanting to sacrifice Erichtonios to bring back Athena. Venat and her followers were trying to save Erichtonios but Venat realizes that she can't, her attempts at least in the timeline that we are on have no outcome where she succeeded in convincing Hephatios not to kill Athena in the first place and now her attempts at reasoning with Hephatios won't stop him from killing Erichtonios. He's solely focused on restoring Athena, who in this case was far more a victim of Ultima's auracite. Now the writers would have allowed the WoL in a similar situation to just kill Hephatios and save Erichtonios. Venat's followers think she might be able to. Thanks to time-travel shenanigans, Venat knows she won't be able to save Erichtonios, but her blow that stops Hephatios from killing him is also going to transform Erichtonios into Claudien. And Claudien, unlike Hephatios, is willing to go hunt down Ultima the High Seraph and unlike Hephatios or herself, actually has the best chance of defeating Ultima (and free Athena to be reborn too). I totally get the anger that Venat was still killing Erichtonios to get Claudien- but Hephaitios was also trying to kill Erichtonios, and as the story is written I disagree that Hephatios was ever going to kill Ultima.

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No offense, but this isn't really a good parallel imo (and very confusing). Venat's reasoning to sunder is no longer about saving "erichtonios". Because in EW there's new factors that influence her decision; meteion, dynamis and the Nibirun Dead End.

Also

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her attempts at least in the timeline that we are on have no outcome where she succeeded in convincing Hephatios not to kill Athena in the first place

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are you implying that venat tried to prevent first and second sacrifice as well?

I think that Venat's statement that end "so I take nothing for granted as I walk my path" and the uncertainty that we were in a closed loop timeline or not until the Mothercrystal scene meant that Venat was trying to find solutions to the Final Days that wouldn't involve Zodiark or the Sundering, and by the nature of returning to our timeline we don't see if there are timelines where Venat was less cautious about not taking any steps that would butterfly away Zodiark's creation nor do we get to see the timeline where her pleading to the Zodiark worshiping survivors of the Final Days that focusing on trying to recreate their post-trauma memory of their past by offering up their present and future while not addressing what led to what had destroyed it and how to defeat its source which was still out there worked without having to Sunder. The game posits that the Endsinger wouldn't be defeated by the Ancients as they were without changing - until she pulls out the sword Venat is trying to debate that change of attitude without the change of the physical world. We also don't get to see the timeline where we arrive long before Hermes sent the Meteia into space and convince him via a life-changing road trip that there are answers to the doubts that plague him and other ways to find purpose and meaning in life than the only one he's been told - or no clear answers at all and that's okay.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

*shrug* Yoshida's comments about the Ancients rang true enough to me. As a location and collection of NPCs it ranked at its best as equal to Eulmore under Vauntry, with the same skin-crawling revulsion that I Did Not Like This Place.

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Honestly I'm still baffled as to why people treat the Ancient world as "peaceful town that hides sinister things/death cult/etc" horror movie trope, or that Pandaemonium and Elpis are a "gotcha!" against the Ancients. Sure they look like humans, but their biology and culture are very different they might as well considered as aliens. So why are we using our moral standard to judge them? What's normal to us may not normal for them, and vice versa. Saying that they're "scary" and "wrong".... no offense but I can't help but to see it as an intolerant act.

(also, even using our moral standard, what the Ancients did are far, far better than what humans did. Go ask the kidnapped women in sastasha which world is worse)

You know, I don't remember people condemning all those au ra tribes on Steppe, even though they have customs and cultures that's borderline criminal from our perspective. It's interesting that a lot of people doesn't extend the same understanding and tolerance to the Ancients. Why is that I wonder? Is it because the narrative tried to sell the Ancients way of living as a bad thing? Or was it born from jealousy of seeing how much better the Ancients world is compared to the sundered (and real life)?

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Something that has occurred to me about the 8UC timeline, although probably not an intentional thing, is that the Ironworks gambled with the exact right piece, as G'raha and the Crystal Tower actually wouldn't really help in the task of dragging them towards the Eighth Astral Era. They just don't really provide anything useful for the task at hand, which I read as basically a Mad Max or Fallout situation; facing both mass death and crop failings causing a lawless wasteland.

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After having the short story quoted here, I don't get why you fail to understand that the Ironworks didn't gamble anything for their future. They didn't wake up G'raha and invent time travel to save their present and future, they did it so to create an alternate reality where the 8th calamity is prevented even though it may result in them being erased. The moment Cid and others decided on this plan, we could argue that they have given up on their timeline. With how advance Omega and Allag technologies were, I doubt they couldn't build their own labyrinthos if they wanted to. Yet they focused (and imo, wasted) their resources on the time travel plan.

And funny enough, the game presents this as a selfless heroic thing. Never did once it give us the chance to doubt or disagree with it.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

But when it comes to the Elpis trip that part either is resolved and not a problem (to the players) or is an acceptable risk (to the characters), so it doesn't matter for the comparison often raised; moralizing about the 8UC decision doesn't help us when talking about the WoL's Elpis trip and the notion of them staying to save the Ancient world, so my brain just went 'what happens if we don't get caught up in that part', because we always do. And my conclusion is that the 8UC timeline is absolutely fine without G'raha (depending on what the Tower left behind I could even debatably see it being better), but the Source is screwed without the Warrior of Light returning.

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Just in case it's lost on you, we've been talking about time travel in Pandaemonium, not in Elpis (6.0). And as you might notice, Pandaemonium happens after we save the universe by beating meteion.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

I think that Venat's statement that end "so I take nothing for granted as I walk my path" and the uncertainty that we were in a closed loop timeline or not until the Mothercrystal scene meant that Venat was trying to find solutions to the Final Days that wouldn't involve Zodiark or the Sundering

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And yet we don't see any proof of this contigency/defense plan of her, not even in her walk scene.

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until she pulls out the sword Venat is trying to debate that change of attitude without the change of the physical world.

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If this is true, then she did a very bad job of trying to convince her people.

But this is interesting, as you said, the game posits that the Ancient couldn't defeat meteion because of dynamis. So why did she even bother trying to change everyone's mind about 3rd sacrifice? Shouldn't she just sunder them regardless?

We know she convinced some people and gathered allies - we don’t know who or how many -if the Twelve seen in Anyder were the only ones or even just the only ones alive, considering this was after the Final Days had just wiped out the vast majority of the planet and half of the population sacrificed to Zodiark. Seems rather obvious that the people Venat would have been recruiting to fulfill the criteria of Not the Convocation but also willing and able to actively search for a way to stop the Endsinger would have been people caught up in the destruction and chaos of the Final Days as it approached Amaurot or ones also willing to become Zodiark’s fuel. Or perhaps Venat’s sense of who fit the narrows qualifications of trustworthy and useful to solve the problem of the approaching apocalypse that would still threaten even after Zodiark put up the shield was so small that Venat put them in a safety bunker until after the first two sacrifices.

Because dynamis wasn’t just about swapping to a different magic source, and the only reason the Ancients would fail was because they biological can’t use it any more than the Garleans use aether. Yes, it is one of the main reasons and why the Venat solution that we play as in this game is as a mortal being. It was also the emotional mindset to look at the Endsinger’s Fermi Principle, recognize the emotion of despair that it created, and have developed a coping mechanism that wasn’t just straight denial of despair or embracing oblivion. The scenes in Thavnair pre-Elpis and everything post Elpis but particularly Ultima Thule was making the statement that thinking horribly negative emotion and life experiences is something you can avoid or shield yourself from isn’t going to work in the long run, nor should you expect to defeat it solely on your own. Nor that there is only one answer in how to solve it or find meaning in life that helps to combat that despair, as the later halves of Ultima Thule stress, but one way for sure not to solve it is to completely give up on survival and one way to win against it is having friends help you through it once and point out it’s a repeatable victory. Venat thought that the Ancients’ status quo was self-defeating and trying to argue a course-correction to defeat the Endsinger and stop another Hermes Despair Event from arising and to avoid the nihilistic fate of the worlds that transformed Meteion into the Endsinger.

The game tells you that this particular version of Venat’s plan worked and why- but not any other would or could. Our impasse is agreeing if that assessment is right or not.


Another impasse is that I don’t think the UnSundered World appealing or feasible for a MMO game setting and the only likable NPCs able to tell interesting stories are those that defy its setting - Hermes and Erichtonios.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

And yet we don't see any proof of this contigency/defense plan of her, not even in her walk scene.




If this is true, then she did a very bad job of trying to convince her people.

But this is interesting, as you said, the game posits that the Ancient couldn't defeat meteion because of dynamis. So why did she even bother trying to change everyone's mind about 3rd sacrifice? Shouldn't she just sunder them regardless?

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She let Elidibus, Lahabrea and Emet-Selch escaped the Sundering so they could bring the rejoining 7x which will result in US, the warrior of light who visited her in Elpis, to be born and have the proper aether/dynamis balance to be able to beat Meteion.

Second question, if her people were willing to deal with their suffering, then she would not have to sunder the world because there's no danger of them becoming suicidal and deactivating Zodiark to let Meteion's attack through. Eventually they would find a way to confront Meteion via whatever method.

We don't hear about Venat's group's contingency/defense plans (aside from the moon escape plan) because they literally do not matter. We weren't there, they were either tried but didn't work or weren't tried because they clearly wouldn't work, they moved on; they have absolutely no relevance whatsoever to the stories actually being told. The only thing we need to know was communicated by Venat in the last conversation with her before we left Elpis, where she says she's gonna do all she can (she actually specifically mentions having faith in Hermes), and the Anamnesis Anyder scene, where it's clear that her group have been trying to convince people and getting nowhere, possibly but not confirmably because of tempering.

You could ask the exact same question about the Ascians' ideas for how to fix the planet after the Sundering, but we don't, because we all know that the only ones that mattered were the ones that had measurable results, albeit negative ones (the Thirteenth, and Calamities); it's not important and doesn't matter if the Ascians tried 'nicer' contingency plans, it matters that they did the thing that actually had effects. But for some reason, people trying to bring up This Same Damn Argument are never as critical of the Ascians.


Which is a shame, because--to bring back on topic--I think Themis would've had an interesting view on this if the story had ever tried to ask him.

It is an interesting little anecdote though, isn't it. But Cleretic's right in that they don't show any of these commonly inferred hypotheticals so a lot of people are arguing from the basis of rather shaky hypotheticals. For better or worse, we can only formulate theories and points of view from what information the game actually provides us with.

Also remember that the sundering cutscene is not real time. It's a snippet/summary of major events that happened during the Final Days. Maybe Venat did try harder to convince the people not to sacrifice more lives to Zodiark.

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Originally Posted by Yuella

Also remember that the sundering cutscene is not real time. It's a snippet/summary of major events that happened during the Final Days. Maybe Venat did try harder to convince the people not to sacrifice more lives to Zodiark.

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We also don't even know how long she tried to convince them. She could have been trying for years, decades, or centuries before the 2nd sacrifices to repair the planet, and then kept trying until before the 3rd, when she realized there was no point. We have no clue when she finally "broke" and realized she couldn't reason with them. Nor do we know just how much the Convocation were willing to listen at all during that time...or even how Z-Elidibus (Zodiark's Heart) reacted if/when Venat tried to speak with him to come up with another method.

It's tempting to get back into the weeds of the scenario like in so many preceding arguments now that it's risen up again for maybe the last significant time (well, depending on the last Myths of the Realm and the next round of Tales from the Dawn...) and to talk about Venat's actions and the necessity of the Sundering diagetically, or to criticize the awkwardness of the scenario itself, where the writers clearly fudged a haphazard mix of worldbuilding and thematic justifications , often with ambiguous details that the reader can fill in the blanks on - as people are doing in this thread! - to create a problem for the Sundering's solution.

But you know what?

It's all dumb. That stuff isn't, and probably has never been, even worth discussing.

The Sundering-as-written is (unlike the Rejoinings, which the narrative (correctly, for any unabashed Ascian fans) frames as abominable) a rotten plot beat because it expects the player to accept what is basically a genocide as ultimately necessary and reasonable, and employs every tool in its storytelling arsenal to do so. Everything else is just fluff.

It's gross, and I felt gross playing it. The writers should have just made it an accident.

That's my final word on it.

It's a little frustrating, I admit, to be interested in talking about the writing parallels between Athena and Venat, only to see the topic immediately get derailed by the same old arguments ignoring the core question entirely and acting like it's a given that well it's okay because Venat was doing it for the greater good, and she did feel bad about it, and we don't know everything she did, and, and!

...when, as I said, Pandaemonium's ultimate condemnation of Athena had nothing to do with that entire framework and was instead about the unacceptable cost to the people currently living around her. If Athena's own plan (as opposed to Venat's) of rising to godhood and subsequently erasing, then reshaping, the Ancients, souls, bodies, and all, into something better - and it just so happened to turn out that whatever Athena's version was also capable of dealing with the Endsinger (keeping in mind that Hydaelyn also had no guarantee and no way of knowing if we were up to the task or not)--

Is the argument that Athena would have been right, as the story argues Venat was?