Emet-Selch Is Not That Tragic

[Alleo]

Emet-Selch, imo, is indeed a tragic villain. While perhaps the Ascians lead to their own destruction with their unchecked hubris, they equally were trying to spur on progress for their people with creating new beings and things (granted it also sounds like it was a d*** measuring contest for them too).

Regardless, Emet-Selch is in a quite dubious situation. He is a hero for his people and is devoted to bringing them back after the climatic events and sacrifices that took place. All of those sacrifices of family and friends to summon Zodiark, to only lead to their inevitable downfall anyway with Hydaelyn coming in and stopping Zodiark anyway. His actions are still evil and terrible but they are fueled with passion and countless amounts of time to see this through. To bring back and save his people.

It's ironic that some people here consider Ardbert a hero but not Emet-Selch when in the 3.0+ arc, he and the then WoD were doing the exact same thing and they didn't care what they destroyed if it meant they could save their home.

These new beings were mostly stuff without souls anyway and I mean normal people create items too mostly just not on that scale and with less power.

And I am not sure if he is a hero now for his people. Maybe back then the Ascians were seen as heros that stopped the calamity, but would people be really happy with what they have become? Lets not forget that the sacrifice they wanted will include complete souls at the end too, souls which might have belonged to ancient beings, heck might have even belonged to Amaurotines (as our does at least). These people that sacrificed themselves also had loved ones and friends. What if they find out that to undo their willing sacrifice, Emet and the other have destroyed former friends and family of them? What if they are on the side of those Ancients that summoned Hydealyn because they dont want further sacrifices? He might be a hero to some but I doubt his race would stand behind them like that. Especially if those are not tempered.

Ardbert and his friends did morally grey actions and were stopped. They redeemed themselves by eiher giving Minfilia the aether of themselves as fuel or in case of Ardbert, by sacrificing his own being after suffering for 100 years. And even when they were still trying to cause a calamity (which in their eyes would have at least saved the souls of the people on the first) they did not like it. Emet and the others dont care for us. They dont even see us as being alive. Lahabrea stood there and laughed when Bahamut was unleashed. They unlike the WoDs are not doing this but hating every second of it, they outright dont care or find it even amusing..thats the big difference. And the WoDs did then try to help which is also another difference between them and the Ascians.

Emet even says that we should turn and then punish the sinners that wronged them. And I was like: What? The sundered races had no hand in the demise of the ancient ones. They are just living in a world that they are born into. They did not go to an outright war and they just fighting against bad enemies to save their life. And the WoLs also only exist to stop the Ascians and their rejoinings.

Another example:

Beware Attack on titan recent manga spoilers!! (Chapter 123)

The island ,who is seen as the devils by outsiders but who are only people living with the danger of becoming titans and who did nothing wrong because all was centuries ago, is planned to be destroyed by the outside world. The outside world fears these devils and are quite racist towards everyone that has blood of this other race in them, even if they lived beside the other people for years. At the same time we have the main characters from that island that wanted to be free and that wanted to defeat the titans only to see that there are humans alive outside their land. They wanted to make peace with them but noticed that it wont be possible.

Well the main character now let a horrible weapon loose with the intention of killing of everyone outside the island to protect his friends. Its either them being killed of (which is also at least 1 million innocent people) or the rest of the world. There is no good side in this conflict anymore. Both side are trying to use genoicide. This is the morally grey that you can then use to stick to any side. Or which you then can use to argue for any of them. Heck there are people saying that they can understand the main character and that it is the only solution left after peace was not an option, but that it makes him still a bad person. He will still kill millions of innocent people. This is a great case of showing that sometimes there is no true good and bad. Here you can argue about "being the hero in their own perspective", especially in messed up world like they have. And here you can even in a way root for the main character and his plan because his motivations are shown, his want to stop it and to make peace, and the horrible way a lot of the higher ups in the rest of the world behave. But you can clearly also argue against him and be right with that too. This is imo a beautiful and realistic way.

FF14 is not like that imo. We are the hero. And even if the Ascians have motivations for their doings, they are still shown in the bad light. Their people are death, their age is done. Yet they dont give up on that and use genocide to get to their goal which they might not even reach..(since its not even save that those souls will be back) You can still like them of course and I also like Emet as a character. But this is no tragic hero. Because in the rules and morality of this planet they are doing something wrong. Its not the people that killed their friends and people and are not trying to kill the rest of it like its in AoT..no their people are gone and a part of their people even disagreed with it. Their time is over and they could have accepted it and lived peacefully along side the new life, helping them with watching over the planet. There is a peaceful solution (theoretically..not sure if its possible thanks to tempering) and the people are not pointing weapons at them and want them gone just because they are Ancient ones. Heck if they had accepted the sacrifice way back before the sundering, then Hydealyn would not have been summoned, their race could have grown back since there were a few that survived and the new races could have lived along side them. But they did not.

[Lersayil]

snip

Hmm. Some good points there, and hard to argue with most of it, since I'm not exactly the target audience.

I see this as them finally figuring out how to write a good villain. Our villains were kinda 2 dimensional so far, and even when they had good intentions, we quickly undermined them, since we've had kind of the same goals... just working towards them better in every way.

Personally, I don't see them romanticizing what Emet did or showing him in a better light than he is. People took a liking to his charisma and intellect, sure. But hammering home his deeds any more than they already did would be almost as heavy handed as when they tried to redemption arc Fordola.

Actually, I have the sneaking suspicion they are working in these EX lines and such as extra explanation, because the writers think people didn't read far enough behind the lines in the last chapter with him.

Not sure I agree with you on Vauthry though. The card doesn't specify the type of corruption, and Titania became a raving lunatic from the effects of being a Lightwarden. Vauthry is... more or less functioning as a human, just with a horrible personality (and eating) disorder and a partly sineater physiology. And we know for a fact that he's been fed stories and visions of grandeur since childhood, so I still cant shake the feeling that its not entirely the lights fault.

It's also harder to emphasize with him, since he's basically a giant selfish manchild. Sure you can pity him for becoming such, but his actions are mostly backed by feelings, not logical thought.

[Theodric]

I'd argue that Vauthry was very much a victim, since he was corrupted before he was even born. It did bother me a bit that the Warrior of Light didn't seek to correct the record in the same way that he did where the Warriors of Light were concerned but it isn't at all surprising that he didn't seek to do that. After all, the protagonists are very prone to bias and flaws of their own, sometimes not looking at the greater picture in an objective manner. They also often don't think twice about seeking vengeance on behalf of a slain ally only to criticise and prevent others from doing the exact same thing at a different point in time. That is most evident with the potential option to threaten to cut out Zephirin's heart after he slays Haurchefant (even though he did as much to prevent one of his own companions from being harmed).

It just so happens that such plot elements aren't really acknowledged or explored to any significant degree. In no small part, I suspect, due to the inability to account for every potential player reaction to each event. Thankfully a lot of things are open to personal interpretation. Which means that more players should simply agree to disagree when it comes to subjective elements of the game's lore and the age old issue that is which character is 'better'.

I'd consider Vauthry to be along the same lines as Ysayle. Both of them had a special power bestowed upon them and they both screwed up in regards to how they chose to use that power. Ysayle just managed to redeem herself whereas Vauthry did not.

[Lauront]

He is an unreliable narrator at best, but Emet-Selch's dialogue implied they knew they would become thralls of Zodiark to some degree, didn't it? In either case, they certainly still had free will when they chose to become so. He's no Zenos, his base motivation was sympathetic, but his subsequent actions are objectively monstrous.

Square should've revisited General Leo for inspiration if they wanted to do a tragic adversary that would let them toss the word "hero" around.

For the time being we're stuck with "unreliable narrators". As I said, we don't even know how tempering functions on higher beings. I don't think they necessarily did know of it - their experience was in summoning Primals that consumed the entire life force of an ancient, but which nonetheless would pale in comparison to the power of either Zodiark or Hydaelyn. Emet put it as "naturally" but that is with the benefit of hindsight. So far, all we have is player head canon that they brought their fate onto themselves... on the basis of nothing but speculation... and that tempering functions in the same way as it does on mortals... which we don't really know, either. All we really do know is that they saw it necessary to summon a gigantic Primal to spare their world after something emerged which knew how to hijack their creation powers to spawn monstrosities (and a short story suggesting the Lifestream had begun to behave in odd ways, for reasons that are entirely unclear.)

Absent any major revelations to come about their motives, I'm fine with viewing him as both heroic and tragic - and their rationale for not viewing lives following the Sundering as equivalent to theirs makes sense, whether those on the other side of the coin accept it or not. They're not obliged to, but it does render it a contest of wills rather than some done to death Manichean good/evil struggle. If they do reduce it to nothing but tempering, I'd find it pretty cheap, but whatevs. I'd rather they found a way to keep Zodiark around, even if his faithful end up extinct.

[Puksi]

Not sure I agree with you on Vauthry though. The card doesn't specify the type of corruption, and Titania became a raving lunatic from the effects of being a Lightwarden. Vauthry is... more or less functioning as a human, just with a horrible personality (and eating) disorder and a partly sineater physiology. And we know for a fact that he's been fed stories and visions of grandeur since childhood, so I still cant shake the feeling that its not entirely the lights fault.

It's also harder to emphasize with him, since he's basically a giant selfish manchild. Sure you can pity him for becoming such, but his actions are mostly backed by feelings, not logical thought.

His situation is exactly what befell Titania, a living being overwhelmed by a Lightwarden--except he was corrupted before he was even born, and it was done to him deliberately. Apparently in the Japanese dialogue, he even shared a speech pattern with Titania's to show he is similarly "off"? Y'shtola also noted the Lightwarden had "taken control" of him.

I am always confused when people say Vauthry should somehow have been able to have free will in his behavior, as you are saying now. Literally no other character in the game corrupted by even a lesser Sin Eater does. Not Titania, not Tesleen, not the Afflicted, and in the end, almost not the Warrior Of Light. So why would Vauthry be the sole exception to the rule?

Because "giant selfish manchild"? Because "eating disorder"? That is a shallow gauge of why he should be worthy of sympathy for a plight he never chose for himself, like the other end of the spectrum of people in this thread trying to excuse Emet-Selch because he is charismatic. Based on other corrupted characters, what you are seeing of Vauthry in the MSQ is likely not even his own nature, but rather a warped parody through the lens of a Lightwarden. If Titania is any indication, without corruption Vauthry would have been a positive peach.

But the writers didn't seem to care enough to give any nuance to the Eulmore arc, and instead really seemed to push for that frankly distasteful and lazy reaction. For no legitimate reason, we are asked to believe that Vauthry should be condemned for corruption he never consented to, that the truth of his stolen life isn't worth speaking, that he should bear the blame of Emet-Selch's atrocities, because he is "ugly"--while Emet-Selch should be recalled fondly, as heroic even, because "charisma". I don't know about you, but I left that line of thinking back in grade school.

[Savagelf]

the line of good and evil has become blind to us. let take are own world for example there are 7.7 billion people on are earth now let suppose we had 13 of are earths and some race came along and decide to wipe all 13 of them out to save they own which they themselves had destroyed by they own hubist. 93 billion live lost to they desire for save they own world. in same sense this what Emet-Selch and those like him want to do first it is selfish it put they own desire over the live they want wipe out. there example people in are own history doing simalir thing that emet-selch did the great leap forward 56 million by china. to me it easy to realize Emet Selch as villian because what he spot and I understand the difference between good and evil but that line may be get confused to others.

[Lersayil]

snip

You misunderstand. I don't dismiss Vauthry because he's ugly. I dismiss him, because I see no saving grace in him. He is warped and beyond repair, and his actions are controlled by base emotions. I PITY him for what made him this way. I do not in any way sympathize with him. I am not arguing that he had a choice, or free will in the matter. I am however suggesting, that his personality was warped by more than just the light. Titania went berserk instantly after she became a Lightwarden. For Vauthry to completely lose it, it took quite a few years, and before Mt Gulg he was able to function reasonably in a human society. Other humans devolve instantly into base monsters on contact with a greater sineater. Clearly there are special circumstances at play in his case?

Emet on the other hand doesn't get a pass because he is smooth or charismatic. He gets a "pass" because he has a greater goal and a grand plan to achieve it. He has a moral compass. He acts out of necessity and a desire to save his people, not due to malice. He can argue the finer points of his philosophy, and does what he does due to a chain of thoughts and logical decisions based on his situation. He can be argued with to a point, and understands your side of the story without completely dismissing it. That earns a certain amount of respect, and makes him a good villain.

As for the thinking I left in grade school? People are defined by more than the worst thing they did while alive. Intent, motivation and reasons matter. One does not balance out the other, but both should be remembered, lest we learn little from history. Should he be remembered as a hero? To his people, maybe.

[Puksi]

snip

Emet-Selch did completely dismiss our side of things, though? The player character's loved ones, and the billions of lives he already snuffed out were not worth those he lost, he said as much just before the Amaurot dungeon unlocked. We are insects, and he uses us to further his ends however he sees fit, right up to deceiving who knows how many partners to sire children with, children he then also uses for his own purposes. Ascians have never been above cruelty. That moral compass aside, the writers could have used a lot of other ways and words to paint the tragedy of the Amaurotine than calling him a hero. We the player are not his people, the Minstreling Wanderer technically is supposed to be of the First, there is zero reason why he could or even should be seen as such from our point of view. Pity him? Sure. Sympathize with him because we also would totally murder billions of people under the right circumstances, and he words his plan to murder billions more so well? Not so much.

There is one special circumstance with Vauthry: Emet-Selch. He corrupted Vauthry to be a stopgap against the Light overtaking the First too quickly, and hidden in a Hume, it's safe to assume it would be much easier to convince the people of the First to "cease fighting and abandon their ambitions". (Though why Emet-Selch simply didn't just give the power to the Mayor is beyond me.) How he managed to "bring hither a Lightwarden" in the first place to do this isn't explained, and I'd be surprised if it ever was, but since the Ascians needed the flow of Light slowed, it's reasonable to assume they could make certain it would not reach full power until they needed it to.

There is really no doubt that the Warden was corrupting him both physically and mentally long before Crown Of The Immaculate, though, unless there are other fifteen/twenty-foot-tall Humes chilling somewhere we haven't seen yet--Humes that have necks that can twist 360 degrees like the Exorcist (and are disproportionately long when not scrunched), Humes that can digest silverware. That he could function in society is questionable. His speech pattern being meant to indicate he was "off" aside, those Philia-grade tantrums were not a sign of a healthy mind. He was isolated in the Emergent, he never left it, and the citizens of Eulmore seemed happy to accept anything he did, so long as it benefited them in the end. The trial's music is even titled "Insanity".

No matter who is more logical, better spoken, or has the biggest plan, it still doesn't change the fact the writers chose to condemn one of Emet-Selch's victims far harder than they did Emet-Selch himself. I mean, it's great if this is a sign they are learning to write more nuanced villains. But they're going to have to spread that around to everyone to be more convincing, and not make it seem like it's just a case of the fandom darlings having a license to kill be heroic.

[Havenchild]

Idk maybe I'm the only one but I don't think Vauthry would have been soooo different from what he is. The driving line of that point being his father, seemingly having an already distasteful personality in both prejudice and hubris. Would a child raised under that setting of Eulmore be so different? I somehow doubt that. I'm sure the Lightwardens affect is a contributing point more so to the domination aspect of Vauthry but probably wouldn't change the elements he would likely inherit from his parents.

[Puksi]

Idk maybe I'm the only one but I don't think Vauthry would have been soooo different from what he is. The driving line of that point being his father, seemingly having an already distasteful personality in both prejudice and hubris. Would a child raised under that setting of Eulmore be so different? I somehow doubt that. I'm sure the Lightwardens affect is a contributing point more so to the domination aspect of Vauthry but probably wouldn't change the elements he would likely inherit from his parents.

You would think that may be so, child of privilege and all, but then the game gives us folks like Nanamo ul Namo, Aymeric de Borel, Lue-Reeq, Cid nan Garlond, etc. so I am liking the odds of that not being the case lmao. And I'd be more inclined to call his father the negative influence, though the spin in the latest patch is Dad was actually the "good old days" of Eulmore. The writers gave his mother no say whatsoever in the situation so ‾\_(ツ)_/‾