Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

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Originally Posted by Alenore

For instance, in French :

"Our methods wouldn't have brought a human here". I seem to recall the english version is not so far from that quote though.

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That's pretty close to the English quote.

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Still you must be commended. Our methods would not have brought mankind this far.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Where is that 100% coming from, exactly? If anything, Endwalker means to communicate that the risk of extinction is 100%, since every species died in a way or another.

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In the long term the risk of extinction is 100%, but my point is that one can overcome Meteion and learn from the mistakes of the Dead Ends. A society that follows the Plenty does neither.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Hermes also makes the wish to find a way to manipulate Dynamis, as it would open incredible things. He does mention that he does not have such high ambitions.
The reason he created Meteion using Dynamis was so that she'd have a power source where there's no aether. It wasn't a way to experiment with another power, but a simple mean to an end: have the Meteion probes in the sky.

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Maybe they could find a way. But nothing we know right now indicates that's a possibility. As Hermes says:

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Whats more, dynamis is far weaker than aether. Under normal circumstances, its effects are drowned out by the latter. On account of which, beings comprised of and reliant upon aether, like you or I, are unable to make practical use of dynamis.

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Which leads to the idea that reduction in aetheric density can open the door to being an entelechy.

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A deficit of aether alone does not an entelechy make. It would, however, make it easier for you to interact with dynamis.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Now no, they can't maipulate Dynamis directly, but they can create beings able to manipulate it. We can't manipulate electricity directly, or nuclear fission, it hasn't stopped us from building machines doing the job for us.

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It's not really manipulating electricity if I have to explain to my washing machine why it shouldn't self terminate every time I want to use it. Of the beings used to manipulate dynamis, none resemble machines. Meteion had a will of her own, as did the souls that ultimately ended up in Ultima Thule, and of course humanity. The only entelechy we know of that lacks that capacity are the Elpis flowers, which are known to react to changes in dynamis, but not enact change themselves. That's where a will comes in.

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Hermes: Dynamis is an energy put in motion by feelings. Feelings for which there must first exist a source.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

So the solution to other people being exterminated or wiped out by cataclysm, is making your race weaker. Quick reminder that a few cataclysm already almost destroyed Etheirys.

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Right, its undoubtably true that when one lives on an aether rich star a reduction in aetheric density does make one more vulnerable. But this also comes with a positive, namely dynamis manipulation, a quality that allowed us to overcome Omega, the Unsundered, a host of different foes, and ultimately Meteion.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Life does find a way each time, true, but isn't it the same for Dragons and Omicrons? Midgardsormr chose to flee and rebuilt his race on another planet. Omega doesn't seem like it's going to die either. Even the recreations of the Omicrons managed to find a new meaning.

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The only reason the dragons survive today is due to the decision by Midgard to abandon his star, otherwise we would've encountered him for the first time in Ultima. And the Omicrons only gained new meaning after our intervention, without which they would have continued to remain in despair. So its not so much that life finds a way, but that what was happening on Etheirys was the last hope to defeat Meteion. Those who made it here survived, those who didn't not so much.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

What's to say people of the plenty didn't have an Hermes who valued life too much to actually want Ra'la to kill them?

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Nothing, but it clearly wasn't enough to avert their doom. The Ea had their disagreements as well, yet that proved insufficient.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Just like she decided not to sunder the three Ancients because we told her they weren't.
She seems to imply she's going to stick to the plan when we go back to the present.

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Important to note that it can reasonably be interpreted either way. The phrase left out from your quote

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You may find your world to be very different. Or perhaps the erasure of our friends' memories has sown the seeds of a conjunction between. We cannot know until the moment is at hand, so shall I strive to do my best, taking naught for granted as I walk my path.

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Translations of the other languages seems to suggest she took our stories' particulars with a grain of salt.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

If she even wishes us to be with her until the end, the plan of Sundering everything is already almost decided in her mind.

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Maybe, but of all the questions discussed about Endwalker this is the one that I think the developers left to be decided by the players.

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Originally Posted by Alenore

Frankly I think both are equally awful situations and one isn't better than the other. It's a choice between summoning more assailants against losing people who might be helpful in reolving the crisis.

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I agree both are terrible, which is why I was pushing back on the idea that one is a better state of affairs than the other.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

My comment was in reference to a debate about that line back in January, I believe.

DE: "But I have to admit, reuniting us here was skillfully done. No wonder that we could not best her with our unrefined plans."

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He says that in German. But he is also a lot less bitter about the situation too. (Compared to the english version)
Before your sentence he says: Wie auch immer, diese Kehrtwende macht mein Leben um einiges leichter. Ich sollte ihr dankbar sein."
"This change of direction makes my life a lot easier. I should be thankful to her."

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

In the long term the risk of extinction is 100%, but my point is that one can overcome Meteion and learn from the mistakes of the Dead Ends. A society that follows the Plenty does neither.

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I'm still calling BS on this one, Eara. I disagree and 1000% reject the notion that The Plenty was a guaranteed extinction route. The Plenty all died out because the story wanted them to. Their society didn't collapse. They didn't die out to resource shortages or unsustainability or any form of external crisis. They chose to kill themselves because the story wanted the Buddhist argument of "life without death and suffering is meaningless" to be correct. I reject the argument that this philosophy, whether it comes from Buddhism or not, is the sole inevitable response to a world of complete betterment.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

It's not really manipulating electricity if I have to explain to my washing machine why it shouldn't self terminate every time I want to use it. Of the beings used to manipulate dynamis, none resemble machines. Meteion had a will of her own, as did the souls that ultimately ended up in Ultima Thule, and of course humanity.

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"None resemble machines?" Meteion was literally programmed with a scheduled status report that completely eliminated the free will and self.

Likewise, convincing a device not to kill itself to run whatever program you want it to run is basically what almost every modern machine with any form of complexity needs to do. Why do large computers and machines based on intricate circuitry have a cooling device? So that it won't kill itself doing what you told it to do. Why do machines have error messages and redundant systems? So that telling a machine to Divide by Zero, or perform some other logically-impossible task, doesn't shut down the entire machine. If an entelechy needs some sort of "dynamis regulation system" to avoid being overcome by oversights in its programming or method of power circulation, then that doesn't suddenly make them unfeasible. It makes them basically like most machines we use today.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

Nothing, but it clearly wasn't enough to avert their doom. The Ea had their disagreements as well, yet that proved insufficient.

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Again, these societies only failed because the story WROTE them to fail. They are supposedly "intelligent" societies that were written to act like they had 8th grade educations.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

How DARE you even suggest that.

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it really IS weird so many of you want to die on that hill, though...touched a nerve, perhaps...

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You'll excuse me if I find your insistence lacking sincerity.

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Where most people draw the line of distinction is that Emet could actually talk with us, see that we were intelligent and sentient beings striving for a better future, and decided that wasn't good enough anyway, vs Venat talking to the Ancients, trying to convince them to turn from their path of destruction, and them insisting to make a WORSE future instead.

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Ignoring the fact that there is evidence that the sundered were not always so intelligent and sapient as they are now, these situations are no different from each other whatsoever. Emet could talk to the sundered and observed them over millennia, and didn't like their proclivities as a species, their weakness, foolishness, and selfishness leading them to damn themselves and others, and so he made a value judgement and decided that their future wasn't valid and that they weren't worthy of living over the Ancients. Venat did the exact same thing in reverse. She decided that the Ancient's own weakness, foolishness, and selfishness meant that they had failed her test, that they weren't worthy of living, and that they should be sacrificed to bring about the advent of a new race which could live up to her ideals. If you want to erroneously claim that the Ancients were "racial supremacists", I don't see any way to not extend that same logic to Venat and have any semblance of consistency.

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I'm not sure this is really accurate. The scene where Venat sunders the world showed she clearly didn't want to do it and was trying to find another way. We don't really see that with Emet in ShB at any point OUTRIGHT.

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The plot of Shadowbringers is literally Emet-Selch desperately searching for an alternative to the rejoining plan through WoL. He DID want to find another way, and all of his actions leading up to the climax were pushing WoL towards that end in search of hope for a future without so much bloodshed. The fact that we have past-Emet in Elpis outright saying "WHY WOULD I EVER JUST INVITE YOU TO KILL ME AND DESTROY ALL MY PLANS, THAT MAKES NO SENSE", and people still don't understand this, is absolutely baffling to me.

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I try to avoid the historian's fallacy of judging people from different eras by our modern standards, and in fictional stories, I try to do the same - based on THEIR viewpoint,

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And yet you do judge them by modern standards enough to ignore whatever their concept of life might be and label them with the same terms and ideology as a pseudo-modern political organization?

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Originally Posted by Alleo

He says that in German. But he is also a lot less bitter about the situation too. (Compared to the english version)
Before your sentence he says: Wie auch immer, diese Kehrtwende macht mein Leben um einiges leichter. Ich sollte ihr dankbar sein."
"This change of direction makes my life a lot easier. I should be thankful to her."

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I was merely pointing out the context of that one specific line, which makes more sense to mean the Ascians rather than the Ancients as a whole (as some people were reading it in EN), especially because Venat is an Ancient too.

Emet's 'reception' to her is a different topic as his dialog fluctuates even within the same language to the extent that it sounds like two different people wrote it. It's possible Ishikawa was trying to retain as much of Emet's personality as possible while being told by someone else what they wanted him to say (and we do know Yoshi-P is responsible for the 'bucket list'), but that's just my theory. He waffles between bitterness and praising her, so it's very odd and inconsistent.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

He waffles between bitterness and praising her, so it's very odd and inconsistent.

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That....actually makes perfect sense for Emet-Selch, whose picture would probably appear in the dictionary if you looked up "Tsundere".

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

That....actually makes perfect sense for Emet-Selch, whose picture would probably appear in the dictionary if you looked up "Tsundere".

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Not in regards to Venat, not after 12k years of "hated and heartbreak". Frankly, I found it so grossly out of character I couldn't take it seriously. It'd be like if the Watcher condemned Venat. Would I be tickled about that? Sure would. Could I argue in good faith it was consistent with his character development? Nope. Unfortunately, this is what we got. Emet as the whipped cream atop a sundae of characters who were broken to uplift a single person. (I'm still waiting to see if Pandemonium decides to retcon Azem's neutrality because that will be the cherry on top if they do.) Elidibus was more bitter and he couldn't even remember everything.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Not in regards to Venat, not after 12k years of "hated and heartbreak". Frankly, I found it so grossly out of character I couldn't take it seriously. It'd be like if the Watcher condemned Venat. Would I be tickled about that? Sure would. Could I argue in good faith it was consistent with his character development? Nope. Unfortunately, this is what we got. Emet as the whipped cream atop a sundae of characters who were broken to uplift a single person. (I'm still waiting to see if Pandemonium decides to retcon Azem's neutrality because that will be the cherry on top if they do.) Elidibus was more bitter and he couldn't even remember everything.

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Emet-Selch commending Venat's actions is a can of worms that I didn't intend to get into. I was just saying (mostly in jest) that being passive-aggressive and contradictory about it is a very Emet thing to do.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

Emet-Selch commending Venat's actions is a can of worms that I didn't intend to get into. I was just saying (mostly in jest) that being passive-aggressive and contradictory about it is a very Emet thing to do.

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Ah, sorry for misunderstanding then! His scenes in UT are basically another Elpis situation for me, simultaneously both great and terrible. I will say that in DE Hythlodaeus manages to be even more precious, which I didn't think was possible.

All good. Similarly for me, I liked the scene but by that point was almost completely checked out of the plot. (Then, the Plenty happened, and I became fully checked out.)