[Spoilers] I’m irrevocably Unimpressed

[Clover_Blake]

Someone please help me understand why the bad guys are never allowed to win?

Something seemed awfully wrong about the way Emet-Selch was taken out. By all accounts, he should have won.

I mean, are Ascians even evil?

I, too, thought he deserved to win ;_;

There's also my wish that we could finally take an enemy seriously. I never can, knowing that no matter how powerful the story wants you to believe they are, we'll easily destroy them with no consequences whatsoever.

[Granyala]

he Ascians are interesting precisely because of how human this all feels. Most people would deny it but if pushed into a similar situation they absolutely would at the very least entertain taking the same route. Let alone come to see it as just after eons of misery.

You do not need to go to these extremes.
How many lifeforms do we kill each year in order to maintain our decadent western lifestyle? How many habitats do we destroy? How much suffering do we cause to members of our OWN species?

If you look past the pretty curtain of consumerism you will see the cruel truth and it makes it difficult to enjoy the life.

All good questions. From the current notes it kind of seems implicated that there is something amiss with Zodiark. The first 2 of the 3 sacrifices seem... logical, perhaps even noble. But then the planned 3rd to resore the population seems strangely out of character compared to the previous ones (unless all 3 was pre-planned?).

I don't think its been mentioned what sort of life they would cultivate for the 3rd sacrifice. If its anything sentient, its back to the good ol' black and white story though (they didn't have the shard excuse back then). Which I would prefer they didn't...

Considerin that the Ascians in the Rhetoric-room argued in depth about whether they have the RIGHT to help another population in need or whether it would be playing god, yeah toasting a world of unwilling life seems VERY out of character, which is why I posed the question of whether they would still be the great Amaurothian society Emet remembers or whether they would start to do Zodiarks bidding w/o realizing it.

[Seraphor]

If your "existence" is the equivalent of a dusty old painting, then yes, genocide IS ok.

And if I walked up to you in the street and told you that your life wasnt real and you don't actually have consciousness... how would you take it?

[Edax]

You do not need to go to these extremes.
How many lifeforms do we kill each year in order to maintain our decadent western lifestyle? How many habitats do we destroy? How much suffering do we cause to members of our OWN species?

If you look past the pretty curtain of consumerism you will see the cruel truth and it makes it difficult to enjoy the life.

At least our Decadent Western Lifestyle doesn't include necromancy and human sacrifice. We have to root for the small victories in life.

[Granyala]

And if I walked up to you in the street and told you that your life wasnt real and you don't actually have consciousness... how would you take it?

*(gentle) slap in da face*
Does it feel real to you or do I need to consciously decide to repeat the action you just witnessed?

At least our Decadent Western Lifestyle doesn't include necromancy and human sacrifice. We have to root for the small victories in life.

Look again. Plenty of people die due to horrible working conditions in 3rd world countries that produce our goods b/c no one gives a rats ass about these people.
Aluminium production alone has horrible effects on the residents.

Though .. uuh no Necromancy. .. YET. :>

[Lersayil]

I, too, thought he deserved to win ;_;

There's also my wish that we could finally take an enemy seriously. I never can, knowing that no matter how powerful the story wants you to believe they are, we'll easily destroy them with no consequences whatsoever.

While I dont agree with the "they should be winning" part, we... did kinda shonen pull this victory out of nowhere, didn't we? Emet was handing us our backside the whole time, WoL and Scions included. The Exarch pulling in the different WoLs was also really deus-ex-ey, given what we know about the difficulty and energy required for such a summoning. We even had a super-saiyan moment!

[Seraphor]

Don't forget Emet-Selch is looking through rose-tinted glasses, focused over thousands of years.

Why did their world get destroyed in the first place? How do we know his entire enchanted city wasn't sugar coated?

Why was their first solution to a calamity to summon an all-powerful thought-dictating soul vampire?

Yeah, I said to my peers when we defeated him: why the hell were we even able to make a dent here? This is a sorcerer of eld, we should not have stood a chance whatsoever against THAT kind of knowledge and power.

Though the way I see it, we only managed to win due to the accumulated light of the wardens. That gave us the energy required.

Definitely deus-ex machina. But what else is a DEV to do if losing would mean there was no game anymore?

On the other hand, we've already defeated Lahabrea, and he shouldn't be any more powerful than him...

[Granyala]

While I dont agree with the "they should be winning" part, we... did kinda shonen pull this victory out of nowhere, didn't we? Emet was handing us our backside the whole time, WoL and Scions included. The Exarch pulling in the different WoLs was also really deus-ex-ey, given what we know about the difficulty and energy required for such a summoning. We even had a super-saiyan moment!

Yeah, I said to my peers when we defeated him: why the hell were we even able to make a dent here? This is a sorcerer of eld, we should not have stood a chance whatsoever against THAT kind of knowledge and power.

Though the way I see it, we only managed to win due to the accumulated light of the wardens. That gave us the energy required.

Definitely deus-ex machina. But what else is a DEV to do if losing would mean there was no game anymore?

[Edax]

Look again. Plenty of people die due to horrible working conditions in 3rd world countries that produce our goods b/c no one gives a rats ass about these people.
Aluminium production alone has horrible effects on the residents.

"Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans, usually as an offering to a deity, as part of a ritual."

Yep, no human sacrifice going on in those factories. We have to root for these small victories.

[Lersayil]

Why was their first solution to a calamity to summon an all-powerful thought-dictating soul vampire?

I've heard this in a few places, but cant recall anything that would directly imply this. Can you provide a source please?

From the Amaurot quests it was implied that they were researching the calamity, but made very little headway into the actual cause. Via the last dungeon, we know that Amaurot did burn, and that it was one of, if not the last bastion of civilization, so deffinetly not a first (or easily made solution).

The thought dictating part can be theorized from the word use of Emet (tempered), and possibly from that he fixed creation magic (?), but never stated outright.

The soul-vampire part is pretty much BS at this point, as from the information provided, Zodiark works pretty much in accordance with what we know about Creation magic. Everything has a price in aether. A single, questionably weak primal-like being (Quezacotl) required the life-force of a single Amaurothian (which based on what we know is already a vast amount of aether).