Quote Originally Posted by Lersayil View Post
Failed might be the wrong way of looking at it. I think its very intentionally portayed as a questionable decision, but one that we as the sundered clearly benefited from. They might've pushed the sympathy for both sides a bit too hard in EW though. I prefered Shb levels, where the villain was sympathetic but still clearly a villain (for us anyways).
Yeah, this is absolutely the angle. Tactically, Venat's plan was ironclad (or at least, as ironclad as it could get). Ethically, it was questionable.

To a point on an 'ironclad plan' though, you have to be willing to take the authors' word on it. Actually showing to exact lengths that a plan will be successful--and more successful than any alternatives--would just get tedious and boring, as well as lessening the impact of the actual characters enacting said plan, not to mention being basically catnip to people who value being smarter than the story over enjoying it. You kinda have to accept whatever groundwork the story goes through to confirm 'this is a good plan'.

Emet-Selch specifically saying that Venat's plan worked when his wouldn't have is part of that. Emet-Selch is a trustworthy adjudicator of Plan Goodness here, both as someone who initially opposed it and someone with a uniquely wide amount of knowledge of the situation, so if he says that it's the only one that would've worked then we can safely assume that is indeed true.

Quote Originally Posted by Lyth View Post
You don't need to know all the answers to solve a problem. You just need to know where to look to find them.

Part of Emet's reasoning for selecting Hermes is based on this:
'That personal annoyance aside, Hermes' knowledge is undeniably impressive. Given that there are none among the Fourteen who specialize in the celestial, he would be a welcome addition.' (MSQ: Lives Apart)

It doesn't matter if there are people out there who happen to be experts in Celestial currents or Dynamis. None of them are on the Convocation and in charge of policy. This is the whole point of having an advisory council or cabinet.
And similarly, yeah, this is the sort of evidence you need to accept. You don't need to know the exact conditions of the plan nearly as much as you need to know that the characters within it can devise those conditions.

...actually, the only time you need to know the exact conditions of a plan in a story is when the plan goes wrong. At that point you need to know the details so you can recognize them yourself. It's why heist movies go over the plan, so you can recognize when the plan goes bad. Which is actually why we ultimately know more details of the Zodiark plan; that's the one that failed, so we needed more detail as to how.