When are we supposed to stop fighting?

[EaraGrace]

"This vision condenses the events of the Final Days and thus carries with it a lot of symbolic meaning over direct minute details" =/ "this entire cutscene is non-canon and can never be quoted." If the information shown was not meant to give us a view into what was happening then why bother making the cutscene? That needs to be explained before any of the handwaving becomes justified.

The only difference between them and us is they had the power to do what every single traumatized human being on the planet would do if they had the power of creation on their side to be able to do so. For Venat to stand in judgment because they acted like human beings do to trauma is simply morally reprehensible to me. Again, any of us would try to bring back the world we had lived in before if we held the power in our hands to do so. There isn't a person on this forum that could claim they wouldn't if they could.

I can safely say I wouldn't sacrifice innocent lives to bring back those I lost, and I certainly wouldn't endeavor to forget everything that happened. I know, because I'm sure like many people I have had traumas and experiences that were painful. I didn't grow from forgetting, no one does.

And if the Ancients that survived were unreproachable due to the horror of their experiences, what right does anyone have to argue against those souls singing the song of oblivion? They after all suffered even worse fates than the Ancients, had civilizations far older and far more developed. If we follow this logic what right would you have to deny them what they view as right, given that fact?

I’m talking about post sundering. Everyone lost their memories and she kept everything that happened a secret, even blatantly lying when we speak to her in HW. We had to rely on an ascian of all people to actually tell us some semblance of truth and give us a glimpse into the past. She herself kept it all a secret from the children she so supposedly loved. This is cemented again with Elidibus’ dialogue that i cited.

None of this has any bearing on what was said. The screenshot I posted and you quoted was a direct piece of of dialogue from an Ancient soul to us, to show that they wished to forget.

Ultimately, the core of Amon and Hermes' characters' are the same, that underlaying belief in the meaninglessness of life.

Which does not make them the same person. They came to that conclusion for different reasons and based on different lives. That the answer was the same means nothing.

I think this point often goes unremembered. That the Final Days was so brutal that the trauma of it was literally burned into their souls permanently. By all accounts this was outright the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone.

A fact that does not bode well for fighting against the collective trauma of innumerable civilizations.

Yet because they decided to have Venat be privy to information that she refused to share with anybody else, the situation becomes especially awkward. Had she simply explained what she knew, then I don't doubt that the likes of Elidibus and Emet-Selch would take her words to heart and seek to do everything possible in order to save Etheirys.

I highly doubt a man whose closest companion is sitting in Zodiarks bosom, and the heart of Zodiark would agree to imprisoning him.

As it stands, we know that Zodiark and Hydaelyn clashed at some point - and all signs point to Venat being the one who initiated that particular conflict. Likely sprung completely out of the blue. Since Elidibus wasn't present at the time, that again makes Venat look particularly spiteful and unreasonable.

I suspect the writers backed off on that front, too, since they probably realised that if they showed Elidibus looking on as Zodiark was cruelly assaulted out of the blue then Venat wouldn't come away looking particularly good there, either.

I would argue the opposite, that they doubled down on Hydaelyn being the one to strike first. We know that Zodiark possessed might far beyond what Venat and her group were able to muster, and we know that Elidibus was not Zodiarks heart at the time of clash. That fact alone explains why Hydaelyn was summoned so soon after the Final Days, it was the only time when they'd be strong enough to match Him as he lacked His heart. If you view the Sundering as being needed, this doesn't change anything. If you think the writers were unwilling to commit to Hydaelyn taking drastic and morally complicated actions, then this seems to contradict that.

[redheadturk]

I can safely say I wouldn't sacrifice innocent lives to bring back those I lost, and I certainly wouldn't endeavor to forget everything that happened. I know, because I'm sure like many people I have had traumas and experiences that were painful. I didn't grow from forgetting, no one does.

And if the Ancients that survived were unreproachable due to the horror of their experiences, what right does anyone have to argue against those souls singing the song of oblivion? They after all suffered even worse fates than the Ancients, had civilizations far older and far more developed. If we follow this logic what right would you have to deny them what they view as right, given that fact?

Their right to want oblivion does not supersede the Ancient's wish to live. Their wish to live should come above Venat's wish for the sundering, because she has no right to decide for another person how they live their life, much less for an entire planet. Those other worlds want to die? Have at. But no one, not Meteion, not Venat, not those other worlds, have a right to tell the people of Amaurot that they don't have a right to live. That is their right to decide for themselves. Hermes was wrong too.

[Rulakir]

I mean, I guess that's another sort of 'release' for the tension I mentioned. I would've - and I expect most people would've - been fine with the Ancients being tragically unsaveable if the story wasn't shrouded in the strange moral dissonance it is where their destruction feels awkwardly justified and and thematically messy on top of being deliberately upsetting. I want some form of textual resolution to the whole situation, whether it's an alternate timeline, further elaboration on the situation to make it more factually (and by extension, hopefully morally) cohesive, or just the ability to tell an NPC that, actually, I thought Venat was kind of a jerk.

I would've accepted a glimpse of the past, it was having the WoL be a participant in and not witness to history combined with Venat retaining her memories that was the problem. Regardless of what Elidibus said, EW followed an expansion where an alternate timeline was created to save the WoL. Both Venat and Hythlodaeus comment that they may yet change their fate. There was ample reason to believe that the Ancients could've been spared with the knowledge we possessed. Instead, we get a bootstrap paradox that wasn't satisfying and felt emotionally exploitative. Not to mention the obvious that the sundering being intentional and with knowledge of the future was going to be virtually impossible to justify.

I got the impression the writers fell in love with the idea of everything coming full circle and through that lens you can see how contrived much of the story following Elpis was to make that happen. It only works if you liked Venat and believed her methodology was the only possible means of success.

[Cleretic]

How can they learn from the mistake if they aren't told what it is? The lesson should have been, "Don't make Dynamis powered homunculi that are prone to depression." But Venat would not tell them how this all happened. So in their minds they made no mistake. An outside power attacked them. They had no idea it was the result of their own creations going crazy at the edge of the universe.

Not actually relevant to the lessons they need to learn. The Dynamis situation was actually solved without anyone needing to know anything thanks to Zodiark, the lesson they needed to learn was 'sometimes tragedies happen and we have to live with that'. And that is the lesson they refused to learn.

Yes, as redheadturk likes to continue to say as if we haven't acknowledged it, they were in a bad mental state and made an understandably wrong choice, but that still makes it a wrong choice. It is an understandable, tragic misstep, but the fact they had a reason to step wrong doesn't suddenly make it the right step.

[EaraGrace]

Their right to want oblivion does not supersede the Ancient's wish to live. Their wish to live should come above Venat's wish for the sundering, because she has no right to decide for another person how they live their life, much less for an entire planet. Those other worlds want to die? Have at. But no one, not Meteion, not Venat, not those other worlds, have a right to tell the people of Amaurot that they don't have a right to live. That is their right to decide for themselves. Hermes was wrong too.

I'm glad we agree, so the Ancients weren't justified as well then yes? When they tried to sacrifice living beings? Or are we gonna argue those were chickens again?

[Veloran]

Which does not make them the same person. They came to that conclusion for different reasons and based on different lives. That the answer was the same means nothing.

As Venat notes, Hermes' issue was that no answer would have been good enough for him. His specific circumstances weren't that important, the fact is it's his underlaying character to believe that life is meaningless. Amon is the same.

A fact that does not bode well for fighting against the collective trauma of innumerable civilizations.

Or better, if you believe Venat's logic.

I got the impression the writers fell in love with the idea of everything coming full circle and through that lens you can see how contrived much of the story following Elpis was to make that happen. It only works if you liked Venat and believed her methodology was the only possible means of success.

Attendant to this, showing Venat's flaws was incongruent with the theme and idea they wanted to express, since she was core to the whole concept.

This entire thing has actually happened before in Heavensward. At that time, the theme was about Ishgard accepting the lies of their forefathers and the sins of the past. To that end, Nidhogg was portrayed as effectively a blameless victim of their actions prior to taking his eternal revenge. If he was at fault for how things began, the notion of the Ishgardian's original sin and generational guilt doesn't pass, and the parallels between Nidhogg and Estinien doesn't pan out - Estinien didn't bring the murder of his family upon himself in any regard. However, later when the emotional and thematic resonance isn't so relevant anymore, we learn that indeed Nidhogg did help instigate things, fanning the flames of Thordan's fears through his belief that dragonkind should inherit the star from lesser creatures. Knowing this casts the narrative in Heavensward in a much less black-and-white light, but at the time that wasn't the point they were going for.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Not actually relevant to the lessons they need to learn. The Dynamis situation was actually solved without anyone needing to know anything thanks to Zodiark, the lesson they needed to learn was 'sometimes tragedies happen and we have to live with that'. And that is the lesson they refused to learn.

Yes, as redheadturk likes to continue to say as if we haven't acknowledged it, they were in a bad mental state and made an understandably wrong choice, but that still makes it a wrong choice. It is an understandable, tragic misstep, but the fact they had a reason to step wrong doesn't suddenly make it the right step.

So again i have to ask, why is it okay then, for Ironworks to mess with time, potentially killing millions of lives in the process to reverse their tragedy? It’s really not any different to the ancients plight. Who states they needed to learn this lesson in the first place? The psychopathic mother figure who fractured the entire world because people didn’t agree to her beliefs? If the ancients made a “wrong choice” with wanting to bring back their loved ones, then jesus, Venat made the worst possible choice known to man in keeping secrets from them and then sundering them all without consent, and this doesn’t even stem to just the ancients, she sundered other civilizations as well who had nothing to do with any of it.

[Necrotica]

Looking back on how it played out, they should have had the Sundering resulting in multiple worlds be an accident. It should have been Venat trying to ONLY stop the Ancients from sacrificing more life to Zodiark by destroying Zodiark, but he was so tied to the 'laws of reality' at that point it caused all of creation to sunder as well.

Would have kept her morally justified. Also could play up her desire to mother and protect all life because she realized she screwed up. It would also keep her moral values consistent. Yes she accidentally wiped out the her own society, but even that screw up would not justify killing all the new life to bring it back.

Heck, since the cutscene is rather...questionable in its accuracy, this could still be the case. "I will sunder us from this choice ((by just removing Zodiark from the picture))" Oh noooo. It all went wrong!

[redheadturk]

I'm glad we agree, so the Ancients weren't justified as well then yes? When they tried to sacrifice living beings? Or are we gonna argue those were chickens again?

I am going to argue we do not know, and until we do we have no argument about the third sacrifice to be had. I assume it is non sentient life, you assume it is sentient. We don't know, and until we do all we have is assumptions, and until we have definitive proof they wished to sacrifice sentient life [and even then if it is their own creations I would argue yes, they had the right, as that life's creators] then yes, they were justified in order to do so. Once we have evidence they were sentient [we don't at present] the calculation changes. But until then, yep, justified.

[Cleretic]

So again i have to ask, why is it okay then, for Ironworks to mess with time, potentially killing millions of lives in the process to reverse their tragedy? It’s really not any different to the ancients plight. Who states they needed to learn this lesson in the first place? The psychopathic mother figure who fractured the entire world because people didn’t agree to her beliefs? If the ancients made a “wrong choice” with wanting to bring back their loved ones, then jesus, Venat made the worst possible choice known to man in keeping secrets from them and then sundering them all without consent, and this doesn’t even stem to just the ancients, she sundered other civilizations as well who had nothing to do with any of it.

If you want to go send Time Cops after the Deviant Future Ironworks, sure, go ahead; you're assuming I'll jump to their defense for some reason, but to be honest I just don't care about them.

Venat's choice was, and I've been saying this for months, morally questionable but strategically correct. Whether she was right to do what she did is essentially an academic ethical question, with a lot of fiddly little sub-questions because to really grapple with the problem you have to answer things like 'was the sundering death', and then also enter in what the other side was doing (which involved much clearer instances of death). It is a complicated question that you cannot devolve into a basic 'Venat was right/wrong' binary,

But then we have one question you genuinely ask here, 'who said they needed to learn that' (ironically, clearly a rhetorical question), because it's important to remember that Venat is, because Venat is not a complete nobody outsider. Venat held the seat of Azem; her literal job description was going out and helping people, a job she was apparently quite well-regarded for, and who we can confirm from tales of the next Azem took her around the world. So we know as a fact she's seen more of the world than most anyone, meaning that when she comes back with what we as humans recognize as a basic life lesson like 'suffering sucks, but we have to get up and move forward', we can reason it probably applies to her people as well.

And two other things:
1. Don't call her a psychopath, that either proves you don't understand that word or the character you're applying it to. A psychopath is someone who has no empathy, and if there's anything Venat has in spades, it's that. She feels the pain she's caused deeply, and she wishes she didn't have to bring that world on, it's just that at the end of the day she felt she had to.
2. There are no 'other civilizations' to the Ancients. It's unclear if Amaurot was the only civilization, but we do know that the Ancients were the only people. And from the fact that Zodiark involved sacrificing half the planet's population (twice), we can assume the world was making decisions in concert, even if we don't know if there was a one-world government at play. You can't just say 'and also she sacrificed other civilizations than the Ancients', because there's no evidence to their existence.