Zodiark's Codex entry what do we think about it?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Why were the Amaurotines, a highly scientific people who viewed their Creations as a tools, suddenly describing Zodiark as their 'God' rather than just another Creation?

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Because zodiark isn't a mere "creation". Not just because zodiark is born from "imbuing the star by its own will", but also because its heart use a living person, aka Elidibus.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Why were more sacrifices necessary - was it to fuel the aether required, or because Zodiark was hungry and demanded it in exchange for cooperation?

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Weakest bait I've ever seen. Next

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Originally Posted by Lyth

What are the limitations of Zodiark's powers - could He infinitely generate new life in exchange for sacrifices, or did equivalent exchange/conservation of mass/energy/souls apply? If it was the latter, what was the point in more sacrifices in the first place?

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Yeah you totally right, they sacrifice more just because it's fun. Not because zodiark needs more aether. Yup.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Were the Convocation acting this way because this was their plan from the outset, or did the summoning aetherically corrupt them in a way that rendered them His devout servants?

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The trio unsundered has confirmed that they will not abandon their people no matter what, so take that as you will.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Who was intended to be the next set of sacrifices - was it vegetables, as was frequently posited by part of this subforum, or were these the other human races that occupied the World Unsundered outside of Amaurot?

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There's no single evidence of this "other human race", but okay.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

What does it actually mean to Sunder someone or something? Is it murder or mitosis?

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Please go back to high school if you think mitosis works this way.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Because zodiark isn't a mere "creation". Not just because zodiark is born from "imbuing the star by its own will", but also because its heart use a living person, aka Elidibus.



Weakest bait I've ever seen. Next



Yeah you totally right, they sacrifice more just because it's fun. Not because zodiark needs more aether. Yup.



The trio unsundered has confirmed that they will not abandon their people no matter what, so take that as you will.




There's no single evidence of this "other human race", but okay.




Please go back to high school if you think mitosis works this way.

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The only differences between zodiark and other primals(not even all of them) is the amount of aether used and a person to serve as a vessel for the summoning. I'd imagine the people of the world were deeply traumatized by the final days and Zodiark, put an end to them. He was created with thoughts of salvation, of course they worship him, not unlike a god.

It's a valid question. The people that gave themselves did so willingly, sacrificing themselves so that others and the star itself might live. Did they do this under the assumption that they'd be brought back? Nothing in the game suggests that. Souls inside zodiark said "We are the will of the star, now and forevermore. That doesn't sound like people who are itching to return. So why the third sacrifice? The final days had been stopped, the planet made habitable again. There was no real reason for it. Maybe Zodiark did need more food.

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Originally Posted by Roselin

It seems I was still not successful in conveying myself, I'll try again. I do actually have quite familiar knowledge with genocide, having both studied it (and yes I did read Raphael Lemkin's books on the subject) and also having lived it.
I also understand settler-colonialism quite well, again having both studied it extensively and also having lived it my entire life.

I am not here to try to defend pixels or attack other pixels for being the bad pixels. My entire point was about the rhetoric often used in these discussions, by the players, not by the pixels in the pixel world.
To explain a bit better, imagine if the game had a SA scene, and after that the playerbase discussion around it would involve a lot of rhetoric like "she deserved it", "she was asking for it, look what she was wearing", would then a real life SA victim be wrong and "not understanding the real world implications of SA" for trying to say that this specific rhetoric is a bit uncomfortable to them?

I hope that made my point a bit more clear. (I am not here to attack anyone so please don't read hostile intent in this)

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I wasn't talking about you, to clarify. You didn't bring that up, first of all, and I can tell you've got some level of cultural knowledge of it, and probably the same distaste for this treatment of the term as I do.

Every time it comes up on this particular subject, it's never brought up in good faith; it's used to basically force the discussion from 'there was no right answer, people made the best decisions they could and then had to live with that' into 'good versus evil and I can tell who's evil because one of them did The Worst Crime'. It hurts both the discussion being had about the story we were actually given, and discussions we could be having in the future, both on the subject of this game (again, I'd love to talk Sil'dih, but I don't feel we can) and in the real world.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

God damnit, and now we've introduced The G Word into this. This is exactly what I was referring to. I hate when people try to drag this in (and yes, I do regret using it myself for this in the past), because it does exactly what I was talking about, it breaks and warps the discussion into something that the subject matter was never intended to even remotely resemble.

Genocide is a very real crime and concept. It is, perhaps, the greatest of real crimes, not just in terms of scale, but in terms of the scars that current, living populations still bear. As a result, it holds not just a dictionary and 'criminal court' definition, but a very real cultural one, bearing very deep meaning and representing real, still-extant wounds. Hell, the term itself is part of that legacy; it was coined because there wasn't even a word to describe what happened to the Armenian people or in the Holocaust, no crime existing to charge them of.

Applying it to fake, insane fantasy nonsense like the Sundering or the Calamities does nothing but cheapen and damage both the term and every single person and concept involved in the discussion, including the word itself.

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For a while on these forums, I avoided the use of the term "genocide" for these exact reasons, and would say "mass-murder" or "exterminate" instead. Because I agree with you - using it about something that happened in a video game is dumb and honestly pretty tasteless. I'd even go further and say that it's probably inappropriate to use even when talking about more grounded events in the setting, because even when it's playing with more serious themes, this is - again - a game for teenagers. It's a cartoon and doesn't ever merit truly serious language, and you can't really pick and choose based on what vibes right to you. (Like I've said in the past, I don't see the distinction you make between what happens to the Ancients feeling like allegorical mythology versus something like Sil'Dih; if anything, the stuff with the Ancients feels less like mythology since we actually went to Elpis and got to know them - but that's just to illustrate that this is often a matter of opinion.)

But it's another horse has bolted situation. After a while, I noticed the word had become so normalized in talking about the Rejoinings and about Garlemald that it just felt awkward not to use it. Like, if we've already escalated to that degree, all not saying it accomplishes is to make it seem like you're trying to asymmetrically soften how something which happened in the game's plot came across to you. At that point, your choice is to either disengage, or to escalate yourself.

I think a lot of this discourse becomes self-perpetuating. Group A feels grossed out by message the game seems to trying to send with the Ancients, and expresses that how they were exterminated felt wrong. Group B responds defensively by saying it was for the best and insinuating they're supporting something even worse in-universe. Group A gets defensive itself and is drawn into the diagetic argument, where the two made-up factions are compared in increasingly hostile terms. Emet is like a real-world fascist. Venat was doing eugenics. Once the argument has become "exactly how bad were the crimes of these fictional groups", rather than looking at Endwalker and Shadowbringers as pieces of writing, it's inevitable that we'll start talking about the story more and more like it's real life, until the conversation is distorted into something really stupid and completely divorced from what anyone actually cares about.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

The only differences between zodiark and other primals(not even all of them) is the amount of aether used and a person to serve as a vessel for the summoning. I'd imagine the people of the world were deeply traumatized by the final days and Zodiark, put an end to them. He was created with thoughts of salvation, of course they worship him, not unlike a god.

It's a valid question. The people that gave themselves did so willingly, sacrificing themselves so that others and the star itself might live. Did they do this under the assumption that they'd be brought back? Nothing in the game suggests that. Souls inside zodiark said "We are the will of the star, now and forevermore. That doesn't sound like people who are itching to return. So why the third sacrifice? The final days had been stopped, the planet made habitable again. There was no real reason for it. Maybe Zodiark did need more food.

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Because the survivors wanted there loved ones back and could see a way to do it, and the tone of the EW stuff was that would be done with the ather now rekindled and and flowing through the world again so they'd just be taking that (which is exactly what Venat does once she start parasiting the atheral sea).

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Originally Posted by Lurina

For a while on these forums, I avoided the use of the term "genocide" for these exact reasons, and would say "mass-murder" or "exterminate" instead. Because I agree with you - using it about something that happened in a video game is really dumb and honestly pretty tasteless.

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Personally, I try to use deliberately really ridiculous descriptions, to set the tone appropriately. Describing the Ascians as 'bashing planets together' and the like; it's hard to drag things to inappropriately real places when we're starting there. My one shortfall there is that I don't have one for the sundering, because I literally can't think of a succinct description that's more ridiculous than the actual event.

I do think fiction, even stuff 'aimed at teenagers', is a perfectly fine place to bring in heavier issues and take them seriously; I'm a big fan of Gundam, which is really good at approaching these sorts of subjects even with the 'Wow Cool Robot' element. I don't think they've broached the subject of genocide, but if they were going to I'd expect they'd do it well. But you absolutely have to handle that sort of thing delicately and sensitively, which these arguments... well, absolutely do not. I think the game's approach to this when it actually has done so has been generally quite good, although not perfect, and always really far in the sidelines to the point where it's hard to really point to and discuss.

And...

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

(which is exactly what Venat does once she start parasiting the atheral sea).

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I'm sorry, but what? I'm used to seeing bad faith takes and misinterpretations, but I have absolutely no idea what you could've possibly misread to think this was happening at all.

Did you mistype and mean Athena, or have you misunderstood something so critically that I can't even recognize it? Because Venat never touched the aetherial sea, and deliberately abstained from taking in any aether of any form, even to the detriment of her own health.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

The only differences between zodiark and other primals(not even all of them) is the amount of aether used and a person to serve as a vessel for the summoning. I'd imagine the people of the world were deeply traumatized by the final days and Zodiark, put an end to them. He was created with thoughts of salvation, of course they worship him, not unlike a god.

It's a valid question. The people that gave themselves did so willingly, sacrificing themselves so that others and the star itself might live. Did they do this under the assumption that they'd be brought back? Nothing in the game suggests that. Souls inside zodiark said "We are the will of the star, now and forevermore. That doesn't sound like people who are itching to return. So why the third sacrifice? The final days had been stopped, the planet made habitable again. There was no real reason for it. Maybe Zodiark did need more food.

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No they did not expect to return, it’s clear in EW and was implied in shb. Third sacrifice is nothing more than the survivors of a broken world mourning their loved ones and then seeing a not-impossible way to bring them back.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

But it's another horse has bolted situation. After a while, I noticed the word had become so normalized in talking about the Rejoinings and about Garlemald that it just felt awkward not to use it. Like, if we've already escalated to that degree, all not saying it accomplishes is to make it seem like you're trying to asymmetrically soften how something which happened in the game's plot came across to you. At that point, your choice is to either disengage, or to escalate yourself.

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Yeah, agreed with this. I’ve always wished terms and specific references to genocide and IRL racism never entered the fandom lexicon in these discussions about fantasy ghost wizards versus a giant rock woman who literally chopped up their people to make a new species, but, unfortunately, the boat had sailed so far already by the point of 5.0 discourse alone that it was on the other side of the galaxy, and carrying piles of dead horses upon it to boot.

I don’t think this game for teenagers is particularly subtle when it actually is trying to allude to things like relatable racism and imperialism. Garlemald is pretty clear cut, whatever your opinions on the quality of how that was done. The Ascians are obviously framed differently in general terms of “mass murder” (relatable mass murder, at that, that the protagonists largely say they would probably also do in their position, because all things stripped down the Ascian conflict once developed was meant to simply be an all-around tragic, limited resources, Kill or Be Killed situation.)

Since the boat is somewhere in deep space, I sort of resignedly just try to at least go for consistency. If the Rejoinings are genocide, so is the Sundering, and vice versa. That all being said, of course it’s worth considering when in the heat of dumb fandom arguments people trip and fall into using historically really, really troubled and loaded rhetoric, even if unintentionally. As Cleretic said, at that point it’s probably worth taking a long step back and centering yourself.

EDIT: Also, as Roselin just pointed out, at least one edition of the game is now on the record for using “genocide” to describe Ancient-related nonsense (regarding a character obviously meant to draw comparisons to Venat, whether you think that’s by contrast, similarity, or both), so the boat has officially crossed galaxies by now and is in the great beyond for real.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I'm sorry, but what? I'm used to seeing bad faith takes and misinterpretations, but I have absolutely no idea what you could've possibly misread to think this was happening at all.

Did you mistype and mean Athena, or have you misunderstood something so critically that I can't even recognize it? Because Venat never touched the aetherial sea, and deliberately abstained from taking in any aether of any form, even to the detriment of her own health.

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No I meant Venat with her massive crystal of aether she's leached from the life stream after she sets up there after making herself a primal and entrenching herself in the aetherial sea

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Originally Posted by Teah_Kaye

I'm personally not going to use kid gloves and awkwardly dance around using ugly terms and concepts when talking about story beats. I'm sorry if you don't like that, but it's just going to be a difference of opinion.

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I fully agree with that stance. Not using accurate terms for what is being depicted in a story means the story isn't being analysed with honesty.

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

No I meant Venat with her massive crystal of aether she's leached from the life stream after she sets up there after making herself a primal and entrenching herself in the aetherial sea

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She lives in the Aetherial Sea, but I don't remember dialogue about harvesting from it. I was under the impression that she IS the Mothercrystal and that it contained and was powered by the souls that were sacrificed for her summoning, with the souls being completely used up specifically because she didn't sip the aether of the world.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

She lives in the Aetherial Sea, but I don't remember dialogue about harvesting from it. I was under the impression that she IS the Mothercrystal and that it contained and was powered by the souls that were sacrificed for her summoning, with the souls being completely used up specifically because she didn't sip the aether of the world.

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Nah, mothercrytal is aether from the aetherial sea she harnessed and crystalized over the years after she "became the will of the star". She probably did it little by little as to not damage the Star (that much). She hide behinds it every time she called people there, so people assume that hydaelyn = mothercrystal.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Nah, mothercrytal is aether from the aetherial sea she harnessed and crystalized over the years after she "became the will of the star". She probably did it little by little as to not damage the Star (that much). She hide behinds it every time she called people there, so people assume that hydaelyn = mothercrystal.

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I looked up the scene and she says that after she became the Will of the Star, the aether drawn there began crystalizing to create the Mothercrystal and it became the Will of the Star in her place as a "faceless, omnipotent force of nature", which is probably the truest sense of "Will of the Star" over herself and Zodiark. She doesn't say anything about doing it herself or parasiting aether.

You would think it would be the easiest thing in the world to state clearly and definitively, "Genocide is never justified."

So, yeah, it does get frustrating when the conversation twists itself into, "It's okay to do a genocide if you really, really didn't want to" or "My favorite character can have just a little genocide, as a treat!"

As pointed out, the problem is with the writing itself, sheepishly trying to cover up the stench of dog shit by covering it with a pretty rug.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

You would think it would be the easiest thing in the world to state clearly and definitively, "Genocide is never justified."

So, yeah, it does get frustrating when the conversation twists itself into, "It's okay to do a genocide if you really, really didn't want to" or "My favorite character can have just a little genocide, as a treat!"

As pointed out, the problem is with the writing itself, sheepishly trying to cover up the stench of dog shit by covering it with a pretty rug.

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The revelation of discovering the argument that not only can there be necessary genocides, there can be selfless, loving genocides.

Grim.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

The revelation of discovering the argument that not only can there be necessary genocides, there can be selfless, loving genocides.

Grim.

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Thinking on it, I can KIND of understand the logic behind Venat's decision, if we assume our going to the past didn't originally happen. She may have been looking at it through the lens of their civilization, that they were shepherds of the planet, and the planet's needs came first. It gave the new life souls, so it wanted that life to live. The Convocation was willing to throw that life away, ignoring their sworn duty, and depending on how long she had tried to reason with them before, she may have come to the conclusion that they threw away the very goal their civilization had. So she performed the last deed that followed that mindset...she Sundered all life and Zodiark to seal him away and safeguard the planet. No more would any dictate the planet's will, the planet itself would decide what it wanted, and life would flourish as needed.

She may have tried to lessen the mental load of it with the thoughts that it was essentially going to be fission, dividing the one into many that will ultimately resemble the original.

There is no real dilemme here btw, since new life is born into the world free of sin.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Thinking on it, I can KIND of understand the logic behind Venat's decision, if we assume our going to the past didn't originally happen. She may have been looking at it through the lens of their civilization, that they were shepherds of the planet, and the planet's needs came first. It gave the new life souls, so it wanted that life to live. The Convocation was willing to throw that life away, ignoring their sworn duty, and depending on how long she had tried to reason with them before, she may have come to the conclusion that they threw away the very goal their civilization had. So she performed the last deed that followed that mindset...she Sundered all life and Zodiark to seal him away and safeguard the planet. No more would any dictate the planet's will, the planet itself would decide what it wanted, and life would flourish as needed.

She may have tried to lessen the mental load of it with the thoughts that it was essentially going to be fission, dividing the one into many that will ultimately resemble the original.

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Sure. Maybe that's what was going through Venat's head when she decided on her path.

But, to quote Alphinaud, "It doesn't matter."

It doesn't matter if she was gleefully rubbing her hands together at the thought of a brand new world, or sobbed for a million days and nights at the thought of ripping a single created butterfly in 14 pieces.

There is no "manslaughter" designation for genocide. We don't have to take into consideration her mental state, because the point is that the impact on the hypothetical individuals overrides that consideration. People seem to be able to grasp this just fine when it comes to (correctly!) pointing out the sins of the Ascians. It's only when the player character is the beneficiary of the same violence do people hem and haw and look for excuses.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

No they did not expect to return, it’s clear in EW and was implied in shb. Third sacrifice is nothing more than the survivors of a broken world mourning their loved ones and then seeing a not-impossible way to bring them back.

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A method that would cost souls. Because animals and trees weren't getting sacrificed. It would have been beings being created that were capable of getting souls. This caused a massive disagreement that came to blows and the zodiark faction lost said fight. Something I doubt those who gave their lives to save the planet would want.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

A method that would cost souls. Because animals and trees weren't getting sacrificed. It would have been beings being created that were capable of getting souls. This caused a massive disagreement that came to blows and the zodiark faction lost said fight. Something I doubt those who gave their lives to save the planet would want.

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But who's getting sacrificed here, there were no other groups to sacrifice and the world was functionally dead and needed to be rebuilt when Venat struck so I do see who they're meant to be killing

Edit: Besides if Venat cared about about the sacrifices she would have said something about rather than passing judgement on them for believing in her idology as we see in the scene where she murders everyone we see no evidence that Venat in anyway cared about this before forsaking and damning her own world to remake it along her ideology

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

But who's getting sacrificed here, there were no other groups to sacrifice and the world was functionally dead and needed to be rebuilt when Venat struck so I do see who they're meant to be killing

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From the Ere Our Curtain Falls short story from the Tales from the Shadow series.

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This was soon after Zodiark became the will of the star, and our Final Days were averted. The people were divided, unable to decide what to do with the future that now stretched out before them. Many wished to trade the new life which had sprung forth to reclaim those lost in sacrifice to Zodiark. No small number, however, insisted that the fate of our world should be entrusted to those selfsame freshly minted souls. All were at our wits' end.

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Out of curiosity, when you say that the world was 'functionally dead', what is the evidence to suggest that Sundering something kills it? All the explanations that we've seen so far suggest that it duplicates an individual into two (or more) reflections, each of which have reduced aetheric density, as Emet himself demonstrates with Ryne in the Ocular during Shadowbringers. This holds true for inanimate objects as well. He specifically uses the word 'enervate' in his explanation and not 'kill'. If all life on Etheirys was extinguished by the Sundering, then why are we still here? Why was Zodiark still in existence after the blow, despite being at its epicenter?

The suffix '-cide' is a Latin root meaning 'to slay'. What exactly is being 'slain' here?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Out of curiosity, when you say that the world was 'functionally dead', what is the evidence to suggest that Sundering something kills it? All the explanations that we've seen so far suggest that it duplicates an individual into two (or more) reflections, each of which have reduced aetheric density, as Emet himself demonstrates with Ryne in the Ocular during Shadowbringers. This holds true for inanimate objects as well. He specifically uses the word 'enervate' in his explanation and not 'kill'. If all life on Etheirys was extinguished by the Sundering, then why are we still here? Why was Zodiark still in existence after the blow, despite being at its epicenter?

The suffix '-cide' is a Latin root meaning 'to slay'. What exactly is being 'slain' here?

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Gee, maybe you could go back and look at the answers every other time this has come up in the past couple of years instead of trying to derail the thread with bad faith nonsense again.

Nothing is being "slain"; they're video game characters. We're talking about them as narrative devices. Try to keep up.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

From the Ere Our Curtain Falls short story from the Tales from the Shadow series.

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Which they rather retconned when all the primary races are made from the souls for the ancients so not sure what races that they mean with to if they even endured after Venat remade the world

Right. So in short, nothing is killed in the process of Sundering. Thank you for your answer.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Right. So in short, nothing is killed in the process of Sundering. Thank you for your answer.

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Me when I win an argument against the person I made up while I was in the shower.

Surely there are better ways to criticize each other's takes than with "ur dumb"-style zingers, y'all. If you think you've met a dead end, just stop responding lol.

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

Which they rather retconned when all the primary races are made from the souls for the ancients so not sure what races that they mean with to if they even endured after Venat remade the world

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Except they didn't? As shown with the WoL's body compared with Ardbert's, the form does not need to match how it looked previously to hold it, meaning the souls are basically being recycled into new bodies all the time as they're reincarnated. The Pixies on the First are the souls of deceased children, who we're pretty sure did not look like Pixies when they were alive.

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

You would think it would be the easiest thing in the world to state clearly and definitively, "Genocide is never justified."

So, yeah, it does get frustrating when the conversation twists itself into, "It's okay to do a genocide if you really, really didn't want to" or "My favorite character can have just a little genocide, as a treat!"

As pointed out, the problem is with the writing itself, sheepishly trying to cover up the stench of dog shit by covering it with a pretty rug.

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And that's why I don't like using the G-word. Because it flattens everything about that part of the story in an attempt to get an easy villain out of it.

Both sides' plans--the Zodiark Crew wanting to constantly dump more people into the Zodiark Furnace, and the Hydaelyn Crew's Julienne-ing of the Star, were both heavy decisions in a state with no objectively morally right answer. Both were extreme, yes, but the situation had reached such an extreme that non-ridiculous answers were no longer on the table. But while neither side was objectively morally right, and their decisions weighed heavy on both of them, they were also both morally justifiable; both sides believed they were doing the right thing even after all was said and done, and as said by characters that were generally meant to be speaking for us, it's hard to say what we would've done; it's a very mythological or fairytale approach to a moral challenge. Like, I can say I'd jump into the Hydaelyn Hole, but I can't be confident that I'd be making that choice without regrets.

Slapping the label of an objectively unjustifiable crime (that for multiple reasons doesn't really apply) rips out everything about that part of the story and conversation around it that's interesting in favor of the blunt bludgeon of 'which side is more objectively evil'--an argument that I feel only serves for attacking and insulting those who disagree, rather than examining both your own moral priorities and how those compare to others.

I'm sure you reached an answer to the problem that you're morally okay with, but I'd argue that doing so by stripping out every complexity, nuance and argument of the problem in favor of 'those ones did The Worst Crime' is completely missing the point of the discussion in the first place. And if you did that because you aren't interested in having that discussion, far be it for me to tell you you're wrong for that, but... well, I wonder why you're still here pretending to have it.

Once again, Cleretic, we're talking about the writing choices, not which character or faction you side with more because something something fantasy reasons. It doesn't ultimately matter, nor is anyone actually arguing, about who was ultimately "more wrong" in this entirely made up conflict. You're shadowboxing again. We're talking about the writing being fundamentally wrong, if you want to put it that way, for putting forth a situation and a framework in which we're expected to nod along with one genocide or the other, and consider the act of "deliberate annihilation of a race of people," if you like, a necessary evil committed by a character we're ultimately meant to see as tragically heroic. Take your pick as to which one, or all, if you really want.

It's the writing hemming and hawing and kicking up dust, seeing the gross rationalizing of a mass atrocity that's otherwise universally condemned in its own narrative, as acceptable in their feel-good quest to make Everyone Likable, as opposed to, you know, "genocide is always wrong."

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Originally Posted by Turnintino

Surely there are better ways to criticize each other's takes than with "ur dumb"-style zingers, y'all. If you think you've met a dead end, just stop responding lol.

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When someone *creates* a dead end with done-to-death bait of that low quality, zingers like that are really all they deserve.

As for the talk of Genocide. Is it reductive? Sure, there's more nuance to it than simply that, but I really don't think there's any point in decrying its use in describing events in the plot. The end-game of both the Ascians and Hydaelyn are the intentional wiping out of a specific classification of people to fit an ideal or purpose. The writing is what has gotten us to this point--the point where acts of that scale are what necessitate the survival of one side or the other. Of course, its a fictional fantasy story where circumstances like these would never apply to reality, but it doesn't erase the tangible things these characters have to do to get to that point. Speaking for myself, I certainly don't use it to disregard the numerous layers of moral ambiguity that go behind it, I'm just not going to handwave the scale of what is being done to entire civilizations by using euphemisms. Adults can have adult conversations about things, even in dumb JRPG's.

I also want to add: if you (general you, to be clear) just flat out don't care about the weird writing choices or the moral dissonance, because it's not a topic that interests you or is important to you, or you just plain out don't like the race/faction that was on the bad end of it, or you dislike a prominent character in that faction, that's fine. This is a video game. For example, I absolutely hate the Sylphs and would probably mostly just chuckle a little if they all tragically dropped dead in-universe.

But it also just means there's not really much need for you to chime in, and possibly unintentionally derail, a discussion of people who are interested in those weird writing choices and how it disrupts the narrative for them. For the Sylphs, in the event of their theoretical massacre I can personally think "thank god they're gone and I don't have to put up with them anymore" while also being capable of going "yeah this is kinda weird" if the game's protagonist faction treated it as necessary and even a grimly heroic choice to wipe them out. Or: I'm not personally too worked up over the really hilarious white-washing Solus absolutely gets in Endwalker, but I can acknowledge it was absolutely there, it was pretty cowardly and transparent in light of the character's popularity, and intellectually agree with the points that a better-written version of the story wouldn't have done it. Which means I'm not going to try to invalidate anyone who is, completely rightfully, more bothered by it than I am.

It is, in fact, not that hard to perhaps shrug and indifferently say, "yeah, obviously genocide is always wrong and the writing was inconsistent in a weird way about it," even if you don't spend any more time dwelling on it and think the Ancients are dumb ugly smelly jerks.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Once again, Cleretic, we're talking about the writing choices, not which character or faction you side with more because something something fantasy reasons. It doesn't ultimately matter, nor is anyone actually arguing, about who was ultimately "more wrong" in this entirely made up conflict. You're shadowboxing again. We're talking about the writing being fundamentally wrong, if you want to put it that way, for putting forth a situation and a framework in which we're expected to nod along with one genocide or the other, and consider the act of "deliberate annihilation of a race of people," if you like, a necessary evil committed by a character we're ultimately meant to see as tragically heroic. Take your pick as to which one, or all, if you really want.

It's the writing hemming and hawing and kicking up dust, seeing the gross rationalizing of a mass atrocity that's otherwise universally condemned in its own narrative, as acceptable in their feel-good quest to make Everyone Likable, as opposed to, you know, "genocide is always wrong."

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I'm realizing that I might be more okay with this because I've had experience with the Shin Megami Tensei series, and realizing that this is essentially their attempt to do similar in a different framework.

Like in mainline Shin Megami Tensei games, I think the intention is to use that mythological context to essentially blow out the scale of a personal quandry to the absolute maximum. And I think that works really well when SMT does it for two reasons:

1. When the scale is so far beyond what a human would be capable of, human scales of justice and morality no longer apply. I like bringing up the flood in the story of Noah for this; it's hard to call him guilty of any human crime for that, so the questions then change and become more conceptual.

And 2. Going that big questions the extremes of a human level of morality. You might generally believe in law and order as far as an average human being can affect that, but how far does that go before you draw the line and stop being comfortable? (Genuinely, Strange Journey's Law path was a bit of a revelation for me there, although I wouldn't exactly call it a masterpiece.)

I definitely feel like that's what they're trying to go for with the Zodiark-Hydaelyn conflict, although the nature of the game and story means they can't center it as much--both in terms of 'it came up several expansions into a story so it can't be the main crux of things', and 'the nature of the game itself means we can't let the player make this decision'. Still, I think it's a laudable effort and mostly gets across the goal and intention, even if it's not perfect. And even then, 'improving' it as a reader would be very difficult, because you have to both keep an even hand and also not 'soften' either side too much; this sort of story doesn't work if the choice is easy. (Which incidentally is why most SMT Neutral endings suck.)

Funnily enough, it's not that I 'don't care about the weird writing choices': it's that I liked them. Although it's probably a bit ironic that I really liked that part but hated Fake Amaurot and Elpis as story sections.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I definitely feel like that's what they're trying to go for with the Zodiark-Hydaelyn conflict, although the nature of the game and story means they can't center it as much--both in terms of 'it came up several expansions into a story so it can't be the main crux of things', and 'the nature of the game itself means we can't let the player make this decision'. Still, I think it's a laudable effort and mostly gets across the goal and intention, even if it's not perfect. And even then, 'improving' it as a reader would be very difficult, because you have to both keep an even hand and also not 'soften' either side too much; this sort of story doesn't work if the choice is easy. (Which incidentally is why most SMT Neutral endings suck.)

Funnily enough, it's not that I 'don't care about the weird writing choices': it's that I liked them. Although it's probably a bit ironic that I really liked that part but hated Fake Amaurot and Elpis as story sections.

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See, and I completely disagree with you there. I think it's very clear - and the devs (well, Ishikawa, basically) have said as much - that their goal in Shadowbringers and on were to "humanize" the Ascians, and the writing from that expansion onwards bears that out. All explicit framework in Endwalker's script, even, goes out of its way to underscore the Ancients as often mundane in how they go about their business, as like us, as just people. I wrote another post earlier about this:

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This story is not presented as a myth, and Venat is not presented as a God. What happened is something we largely see play out in real-time before us with people we have tea with, help with mundane tasks, all while enjoying their charms and quirks and personality nuances. Much of the pathos of Venat's story is from meeting her as a person, and coming to understand that rather than a God, she was simply a single human person who made decisions on behalf of her vision of what humanity should be and her vision of the greater good for all of life and existence.

The attempted re-painting of our encounters of the Ancients, and the actions they committed, both for good and ill, as 'simple myths' or 'ancient history' always feel weird to me, because this is a video game where there is no meaningful distinction between the NPCs we talk to and accept quests in the 'present' and the NPCs we talk to and accept quests from in the 'past' (which we can access simply by clicking the teleporation button.) Either way, in our immediate moment, we talk to them, get annoyed, laugh at them, engage with them equally as pretend-living people in front of us. Even beyond one of Shadowbringers's prime writing goals being stated explicitly as "humanizing the Ascians," Endwalker itself is as firm as it can be in the final word on the Ancients through things like the DoH quests, or G'raha's remark in Ultima Thule: they were simply people.

"God" gets away with causing the great flood because he is a legitimate god, fundamentally inaccessible and incomprehensible. (And even then, opinions vary - I'm not religious myself, and the suggested nature of most 'gods' in theism is one factor as to why.) Venat is (and the rest of the Ancients, and the Ascians) explicitly a relatable human person, so suggesting we should downplay the decisions she, or the rest of them, made as relatable human people by acting otherwise is very strange and does the story a disservice in and of itself.

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I think all the power of this story is that it has premises you'd expect to be generalized and mythological - the typical mysterious, mythical precursor race that fell you see in so many fantasy stories, a dime a dozen trope - and did an exceptional job at making them human. Hence, I absolutely loved Fake Amaurot and Elpis in terms of emphasizing those human qualities, because that's what makes this entire narrative special and exceptional to me. The fact that they were capable of world-destroying apocalyptic fantasy nonsense isn't exceptional in this setting. The goblins made a primal capable of destroying the world in the Alexander raids. It's practically mundane in and of itself. Nor are Venat's, or Emet's, capability of deciding their vision for the world and for their people are worth horrific levels of sacrifice exceptional or particularly mythological. Ilberd and Thordan are waving from the Aetherial Sea!

To be clear, I don't think you're wrong for liking that style of story, and there are times when that kind of thing can appeal to me too. Being swept away by sheer incomprehensible scale and atmosphere can be an incredible experience. But I could not disagree more in terms of trying to project that mindset and framework onto this specific story, and think all evidence is that that's not how we're even meant to process it. Thus, the dissonance.

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Originally Posted by SpectrePhantasia

As for the talk of Genocide. Is it reductive? Sure, there's more nuance to it than simply that, but I really don't think there's any point in decrying its use in describing events in the plot. The end-game of both the Ascians and Hydaelyn are the intentional wiping out of a specific classification of people to fit an ideal or purpose. The writing is what has gotten us to this point--the point where acts of that scale are what necessitate the survival of one side or the other. Of course, its a fictional fantasy story where circumstances like these would never apply to reality, but it doesn't erase the tangible things these characters have to do to get to that point. Speaking for myself, I certainly don't use it to disregard the numerous layers of moral ambiguity that go behind it, I'm just not going to handwave the scale of what is being done to entire civilizations by using euphemisms. Adults can have adult conversations about things, even in dumb JRPG's.

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There's nothing wrong with having a critical discussion on the topic of genocide if you apply the word appropriately. As an example, when Elidibus releases chemical weaponry in the midst of the clash between his own Garlean forces and the Eorzeans during the Eighth Umbral Calamity, an act which wipes out most of the human population of the continent, it's unambiguously correct to describe this act as genocide. The use of chemical weaponry, even on its own, is explicitly classified as a war crime in human society. Likewise, when Emet and his Convocation launch into their crusade to eradicate the entire human population of seven different worlds on the basis of the fact that they were 'inferior' and thus less deserving of life, the coding of this act in the text is pretty much unambiguous.

The crux of the issue with the Sundering is that we don't actually have any frame of reference for what it actually entails. It doesn't kill, and we have no real world analogy for losing our magical powers. So now we come to why someone would bring up the topic of genocide in the context of the Sundering, based on the limited information that we do have about it. Are we talking about killing off a group of people? No. We've already established that the Sundering doesn't kill its target, from Emet's demonstration in the Ocular.

So now we come to genocide in the context of 'cultural erasure'. Hostile intent is actually a fairly critical part of the definition, and with very good reason. Cultures are not static and change over time (especially when you're talking about a time period of twelve thousand years). Even the simple act of people emigrating to a new area can give rise to new cultures are very different from the original. Changing a country's governance can have a profound impact on its culture as well. These are not 'acts of cultural erasure'.

Even if we look within Amaurot's history, the decision to summon Zodiark vastly altered the local culture. The Amaurotine people went from being a very secular people to one that worshipped Zodiark as a God and offered Him human sacrifices. Do we then make the claim that the Convocation committed genocide against the Amaurotine people by altering their culture? Yet intuitively we know this doesn't make sense, because the Convocation members themselves are Amaurotine, and aren't acting with hostile intent towards themselves. The same is true with Venat, as an Amaurotine herself. An internal political clash over the ideological values of your own people doesn't constitute genocide. Rebellion to remove the societal control of an oppressive government doesn't constitute cultural erasure. The people of Eorzea are the descendants of the Amaurotine people, twelve thousand years later.

So why does the word genocide get misused in this context? The answer is simple. Equivocation. As was stated earlier, the etymological root of the suffix '-cide' means 'to kill'. You end up twisting the narrative into one in which Venat 'kills' the world (despite the story itself pointing to the contrary), bringing her group down to the level of the Convocation. It allows you to paint both groups under the same brush in a thinly veiled 'gotcha'.

Something that popped into my head...it was mentioned before (by Yoshi-P?) that we still don't know how Hydaelyn erased people's memories of the WoL before ARR's start. This makes me question just how the memory erasure during the Sundering actually worked. Was it indeed an effect of the Sundering itself, or was something else in play at the same time to guarantee people's memories were completely wiped of the past? Hopefully something that gets answered when the final alliance raid hits in 6.5. Not that a full "people's memories were erased after the fact" would make things much better, it's just something I'm genuinely curious about.

Genocide actually can come from within a nation too. And we actually do have a description of the Sundering (written by Ishikawa) which is this one: https://i.imgur.com/CWFRPdy.png
Factually speaking, the Sundering resulted in the total destruction of the Amaurotine culture.

Why you want to call those other things "genocide" yet refuse to apply the term to an equally horrific and destructive event is beyond me. And we do have real world analogies for an event which forces a people to forget their culture and language: the thing I was subjected to, being taken away by force from my family as a child and subjected to forced cultural assimilation and religious conversion, my cultural identity was completely and irreversibly fractured by that event.

And also genocide does not require murder to be a genocide
"It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group." - Raphael Lemkin, "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe"

The Sundering undeniably destroyed them as a national group, and Venat knew this would be the result and intended it because, as said by Yoshida in an interview, she thought her people's culture was leading them down a path of stagnation, to the same fate as the Nibirun. The intent was clearly to purge the culture in question from existence since it was the culture she had a problem with.

Their culture was a lost cause after they started planning the third sacrifice anyway.

And the "unironic use of historical colonialist-genocide apologism rhetoric deployed for the sacred purpose of defending the writing in a video game" rears its ugly head again, only after the thread has already pointed it out and discussed it, so we can now, unfortunately, take "ignorance" off the table of the plausible deniability for those who use it.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Except they didn't? As shown with the WoL's body compared with Ardbert's, the form does not need to match how it looked previously to hold it, meaning the souls are basically being recycled into new bodies all the time as they're reincarnated. The Pixies on the First are the souls of deceased children, who we're pretty sure did not look like Pixies when they were alive.

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The outright stated the reason we have so many races of humans was because after the ancients souls were torn apart there bodies physically adapted to address the damage done, so all the human races are post sundering