Dear SquareEnix/Natsuko Ishikawa - About Zenos in Endwalker *MAJOR MSQ SPOILERS*!

[HyoMinPark]

100% this! I can relate to Zenos because my narcissistic parents neglected me, I grew up as a lonely only child with no love. I know what it's like to feel nothing. I know what it's like to be obsessed with that ONE thing that makes me happy (gaming). People don't understand why I love Zenos, it's because I see myself in him. People find Zenos boring and they find me boring too. Whenever I finally open up and mention my childhood, people don't know what to say. They find it awkward, they turn away. It's because empathy is too much effort, it's easier to hate and ignore. Understanding a damaged soul like Zenos is hard, it's easier to say he sucks.

Your circumstances and Zenos’s are vastly different if you look at the both of you as a whole. Zenos was willing to usher in mass genocide, death, and the end of our world JUST to fight us so that he could feel something and ultimately get what he wanted from us. And you think people should find that sympathetic? You would be someone I’d be far more willing to feel empathetic towards—sympathetic towards, even—but not Zenos. The circumstances of his childhood are not an excuse for the actions of his future self. This is way too apologist.

That said, I am sorry for your circumstances—but if you were to do what Zenos did, that would not excuse your actions. People may just not know what to say because the circumstances you have described are not that easy to hold conversations about. Your life story seems extremely heavy, and sometimes people can’t handle that. Or they simply don’t know how to respond to it—especially if they have no experience with it in the first place. Could be they don’t want to say “the wrong thing”, and so they simply say nothing at all. You mention how empathy is too much effort—where is the empathy on your part with regards to the people that “have turned away” from you? But this is all beside the point of the thread. Regardless, I am sorry for the pain you’ve felt. Choose to believe it or not.