Sharlayan origins and the Endwalker Trailer

[Veloran]

I feel like this one is forcing the evidence to fit the idea; and G'raha / Exarch never joined the "Dark" side anyway. Regardless, this is an argument made in hindsight, and hindsight is 20/20.

In terms of the staff, yes. But the parallelism is basically spelled out in the story itself.

Hydaelyn was in no way responsible for the Flood of Light or using it to her advantage.

Maybe. Back in Heavensward she said that she would go to the First to absorb the Light and save the world, but in Shadowbringers we learn that she merely sent Minfilia and forestalled the Flood. And the fact that she seems to demonstrate some amount of futuresight in regards to Ardbert renders the entire situation somewhat questionable. But, that's just an aside. It's true that people presumed a turn against Hydaelyn on the basis of "Light = Hydaelyn", but ultimately Shadowbringers was about combating the Light and WoL was saved by Darkness in the end. Note that nowhere in the section I'm responding to there was Hydaelyn mentioned, it was merely talking about the relation to Darkness.

particularly Elidibus, who in his final moments finally understands the schism in Amaurotine society he summoned himself to mend couldn't be fixed. "We had disagreements in the past before, always fleeting. But not this time. Not this time."

What? Do you mean to say that you took that quote to suggest he's talking about still fixing that conflict now, in the modern day? It seemed to me very clearly to be his reminiscence of how he felt all the way back then, which he is recalling because his memories were finally restored. And the "But you are not here to see it" struck me as referencing his fellow Convocation members who had been lost, as he was clutching their crystals, not the opposing Hydaelyn faction.

Hypothesis: Even if Endwalker revealed that Venat made mistakes and tough decisions but ultimately meant well, most of the people you're talking about here will still take a "See, I told you she was an irredeemable monster." victory lap.

Its weird to me that many of the same people who will argue in defense of the Ascians also seem to want Venat to have flaws so they can make her out as an irredeemable monster. Seems contradictory to me.

The reason this comes off as a silly point is that Venat is nothing but the flipside of the Ancient coin. Someone who committed genocide and manipulates history, except where the Ascians "meant well" for themselves, she "meant well" for (supposedly) "us". So when the developers literally go as far as to explicitly state that there is no good or evil between the two sides yet there is still the insistence that she is more morally righteous, obviously there will be a reaction in the opposite direction.

I mean, to say that people "want [Venat] to have flaws" implies from the outset that there is a belief that she lacks flaws and opinions to the contrary are merely villainization.

Good call. I was conflating Venat as Hydaelyn, and also Minfilia talking to the Warriors Of Darkness as Hydaelyn, and I shouldn't have. I do believe Venat is Hydaelyn enough that they can be considered the same being, but I should not have assumed the same for Word Of The Mother Minfilia.

And double-checking the dialogue, it's also not explicitly contrition and humility, so I must have inserted that reading into my memories. It's certainly more humble than anything the Ascians have ever said, so I do think my reading is accurate, but I've made lore arguments using exact quotes before, so it would be unfair for me to rely on personal interpretation here.

Frankly, I would not say that any incarnation of Hydaelyn has expressed humbleness all that much. Regret maybe. But whether Hydaelyn herself, Venat, or Minfilia as the Word, every time it's a full belief in the cause, no matter the consequences, and her servants must serve and her enemies must die. Of course you can say "well, she had good reasons", but I can hardly say it's ever in the realm of humility.

[YianKutku]

Frankly, I would not say that any incarnation of Hydaelyn has expressed humbleness all that much. Regret maybe. But whether Hydaelyn herself, Venat, or Minfilia as the Word, every time it's a full belief in the cause, no matter the consequences, and her servants must serve and her enemies must die. Of course you can say "well, she had good reasons", but I can hardly say it's ever in the realm of humility.

Where did Hydaelyn, in any incarnation, ever say her servants must serve?

The most I can remember is Hydaelyn going "this set of events must happen, and at this point in time you are the best suited for achieving it". And most of the time, Hydaelyn's servants do her bidding, not because they're forced to, but because they happen to be in situations (quite often Ascian-orchestrated) where their options are either to follow Hydaelyn's bidding, or literally die.

There are two exceptions I can think of, neither of which are addressed to us. The first is Minfilia's sacrifice, which I accept because it's what Minfilia herself decided to do. It would be quite hypocritical to go "oh but her beliefs were misguided and that makes it not okay", and then turn around and go "yes, the Ascians believe in this flawed thing, but that's still okay". Minfilia decided to sacrifice herself for the sake of Hydaelyn, whom she believed in. Papalymo decided to sacrifice himself for the sake of Louisoix's dream, which he believed in. It may or may not have been a mistake to do so, but those were decisions they made, and we all live with the consequences of that.

The second is Hydaelyn directly intervening with Midgardsormr, when Midgardsormr was about to blast us into little aetherical particles. We don't actually see the conversation, but based on context, I think it's safe to say that it went along the lines of Hydaelyn going "no, Midgardsormr, this mortal is my Champion, and I forbid you from killing them". And Midgardsormr went "okay, fine, you're the boss". That's the one time I can think of where Hydaelyn actually orders us to do something.

And Hydaelyn's enemies dying often has very little to do with her intervention. I can think of one instance where this happens, and that's based on the enemy in question speculating that it is Hydaelyn's blessing protecting us. Which I would say is probably one of the more subtle interventions, since Hydaelyn's Blessing was protecting us from certain death, which allowed us to live long enough to kill that enemy at the end of 5.0.

The other time Hydaelyn's Blessing intervenes, it's specifically to not kill the enemy. Hydaelyn's Blessing allows us to survive Ultima and to disable the Ultima Weapon, and also to exorcise Lahabrea from Thancred, without killing Thancred. Which Lahabrea was taunting us to do, so if anyone wants us to kill our enemies, it's the Ascians.

[Cilia]

In terms of the staff, yes. But the parallelism is basically spelled out in the story itself.

The original issue raised was people chopping off the top half of Exarch's staff and recoloring it so it vaguely resembled Zodiark's XII incarnation; this was taken as evidence he was aligned with or would align with the Dark, but that never happened. Bringing up Emet-Selch's status as a parallel (though I think the literary term foil would be more appropriate, as they have many similarities that only serve to highlight their differences) is a non-sequitur.

Maybe. Back in Heavensward she said that she would go to the First to absorb the Light and save the world, but in Shadowbringers we learn that she merely sent Minfilia and forestalled the Flood. And the fact that she seems to demonstrate some amount of futuresight in regards to Ardbert renders the entire situation somewhat questionable. But, that's just an aside. It's true that people presumed a turn against Hydaelyn on the basis of "Light = Hydaelyn", but ultimately Shadowbringers was about combating the Light and WoL was saved by Darkness in the end. Note that nowhere in the section I'm responding to there was Hydaelyn mentioned, it was merely talking about the relation to Darkness.

The original issue presented, at the time of Shadowbringers' pre-release, was that the First was suffering from an imbalance toward Light brought on by the Flood; back then people conflated Light with Hydaelyn, thus believing we would turn our backs on her and join with the Ascians / Zodiark to restore the balance (or otherwise go around kicking puppies and taking candy from babies), thus revealing Hydaelyn was actually the evil one (or at least in the wrong). That never happened; the "Warrior of Darkness" was just a nom de guerre we picked up, we never turned our backs on Hydaelyn, and we never joined with the forces of Darkness (e.g. the Ascians) as so many believed we would (to the point there were many complaints about the "Warrior of Darkness" nom de guerre being false advertising). The PC remained the morally upright Warrior of Light, just by another name.

It is also very doubtful the events of Shadowbringers were plotted by Hydaelyn as well; remember Exarch G'raha literally broke the timeline by traveling back from the future where Emet-Selch successfully completed the Eighth Rejoining. The best one could argue is that she left Ardbert's soul around as a contingency.

What? Do you mean to say that you took that quote to suggest he's talking about still fixing that conflict now, in the modern day? It seemed to me very clearly to be his reminiscence of how he felt all the way back then, which he is recalling because his memories were finally restored. And the "But you are not here to see it" struck me as referencing his fellow Convocation members who had been lost, as he was clutching their crystals, not the opposing Hydaelyn faction.

Not necessarily, but looking at the whole speech and the context in which he gives it is key. Elidibus originally summoned himself from within Zodiark not to trigger Rejoinings and restore the world to the pre-Sundering / Final Days state, but to mend the rift in Amaurotine society created by Zodiark's advent. That's what he's reminiscing on there, as well as acknowledging that it was an impossible task.

His final lines ("The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it.") is, like the other languages, mourning how he is the last one left - and perhaps admittance that, despite the new world(s) being imperfect, they are still beautiful.

So when the developers literally go as far as to explicitly state that there is no good or evil between the two sides yet there is still the insistence that she is more morally righteous, obviously there will be a reaction in the opposite direction.

People have their own views on right and wrong. Everyone does. The devs saying "there is no right and wrong in the situation" doesn't mean people aren't going to apply their personal morality to it. I'm sure you do as well, so the line comes across as very sanctimonious.

I've found much the same. A lot of them, when you're resistant to the 'but the Ascians are/were good people' line, will eventually try to go for the 'if you were in that position you'd do the same thing' well. Which apparently works very well for a lot of them, but is personally a total miss for me; if I put myself into the view of someone who actually is living and seeing those final decisions that were eventually cut short by the Sundering*, I don't see it as a conundrum: I'm jumping into the Hydaelyn Hole, no question. I see the Hydaelyn position as the unquestionable right one compared to unsustainable angle of constant sacrifices to Zodiark.

This is apparently the worst possible answer to these people, because they've so obviously already decided that Hydaelyn is an irredeemable objective evil that siding with her is actually worse than siding with the guys who would go on to cause fourteen planet-wide genocides.

*And as an unrelated point, it's statistically extremely unlikely that the people posing this hypothetical would have been alive to make it to that point in the Ancient world; at that point half the population had been sacrificed to Zodiark twice, so reasonably speaking only 25% of the population is living to make that call between the two. ...even less, actually, given we can reason the End of Days themselves probably had a bodycount.

For me the issue isn't the sacrifices - well, the willing ones, anyway. My problem is that deciding the rest of the world's life exists as livestock to cull for fueling Zodiark's power(s) sets an absolutely horrible precedent that, well, the rest of the world's life exists as livestock to cull for fueling Zodiark's powers, turns the Ancients from the world's stewards into its virtual gods, and will ultimately lead the world down a path of stagnation. Nothing would ever really change, because the Ancients could (and probably would?) just feed Zodiark to maintain their supremacy over the world.

I... can't agree with that vision of the world. And while Hydaelyn breaking the world, and in so doing all but annihilating Amaurotine civilization and rendering people far more mortal than before, was a pretty awful thing to do, I have to argue people being able to choose their own futures rather than being livestock for an artificial god is worth the price that was paid.

... and again, that's without getting into Hydaelyn / Venat's side of the story, and after Shadowbringers took pains to make omnicidal sorcerers from the distant past sympathetic, one would hope that cross-section would withhold judgment until hearing hers instead of branding her as the one in the wrong (despite also crowing that there is no intended right or wrong). Let alone the sundering being an accident is very plausible.

[Cleretic]

For me the issue isn't the sacrifices - well, the willing ones, anyway. My problem is that deciding the rest of the world's life exists as livestock to cull for fueling Zodiark's power(s) sets an absolutely horrible precedent that, well, the rest of the world's life exists as livestock to cull for fueling Zodiark's powers, turns the Ancients from the world's stewards into its virtual gods, and will ultimately lead the world down a path of stagnation. Nothing would ever really change, because the Ancients could (and probably would?) just feed Zodiark to maintain their supremacy over the world.

I... can't agree with that vision of the world. And while Hydaelyn breaking the world, and in so doing all but annihilating Amaurotine civilization and rendering people far more mortal than before, was a pretty awful thing to do, I have to argue people being able to choose their own futures rather than being livestock for an artificial god is worth the price that was paid.

... and again, that's without getting into Hydaelyn / Venat's side of the story, and after Shadowbringers took pains to make omnicidal sorcerers from the distant past sympathetic, one would hope that cross-section would withhold judgment until hearing hers instead of branding her as the one in the wrong (despite also crowing that there is no intended right or wrong). Let alone the sundering being an accident is very plausible.

Yeah, I'm very much of the same perspective; I don't think it's right to throw all life that isn't like me into a meat grinder for my own benefit. But there's two angles against it that Venat's crew seem to simultaneously hold; that it's not ethical (according to Hythlodaeus), and that it's not sustainable (according to the Anamnesis meeting). These are of course by no means mutually exclusive--Venat's crew are basically present-day environmentalists, who you'll also hear believe and speak to the same things--but they're generally arguments you don't make simultaneously, since they appeal to different people with different mindsets.

...honestly, the entire 'Zodiark vs. Hydaelyn' conflict has some very clear parallels to modern arguments about climate change. Which is probably why I feel the way I do about it all: why I find that moral question so easy (because I've already made it), why if anything I was even more anti-Ascian after Shadowbringers, and why ultimately I'm more concerned than anything about where that story might be going in Endwalker. Conceptually I respect the angle of 'nobody is pure good or pure evil' that they've said is driving them lately, but I worry that angle might be leading us down to a story basically saying 'what if Captain Planet was the real bad guy', and I can't think of a single story the world needs less right now than that.