Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
If someone wiped out my family, friends, neighbours and homeland I'd consider such an individual to be abusive.

I'm not sure why such a stance would be considered to be unreasonable, in all honesty.

Let's not forget that Hydaelyn herself described the Sundering as an act that was cruel and without justice, so...
I'm convinced that people don't actually read stories anymore, they just react to the moments in front of them entirely unmoored from their context.

The narrative function of utopias in stories is that they aren't possible. They're unsustainable. You can't live in paradise, because that's just not how life works. FFXIV constantly, constantly, constantly hammers and hammers this point at the player. The Ea had a "perfect" society. Didn't help. The people who summoned Ra La had a "perfect" society. It didn't work. The narrative purpose of Amaurot's flailing at armageddon was that they were trying to return to perfection at any cost, which again is impossible. Now, quibble with how muddled that portrayal gets in the story, sure. But pretending like Amaurot was a perfect society that was just murdering one subversive away from staying perfect, and you're the person for whom the point of utopian narratives goes whistling straight over your head. There's always juuuuuust one more adjustment to be made. Just one naysayer to murder. Just one policy to update. These stories have been with human society for thousands of years because they're telling you that thinking Utopia is just around the corner is nonsense. Stories are just as much theme as they are sequence of events, and modern fiction criticism fixates unhealthily on the What over the Why. It's not that the sequence of events is unimportant, it's that the story is trying to tell you something.