What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Rulakir]

Speaking for myself and my friend group, who are quite critical of Venat: no, absolutely not.

Interesting! Thanks for sharing. I'm curious, if you don't mind elaborating, does it have to do with her violating people's rights?

The Ancients as a society were highly collectivist, (magical, post scarcity utopian communism basically) where everything was regulated by committee and generally had no self expression. Venat, and Azem were rebels to this world view and far more individualistic by nature of that.

I'm not familiar with those terms, however, looking up the definitions I got:

Collectivism is a value that is characterized by emphasis on cohesiveness among individuals and prioritization of the group over the self.

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual.

Venat may have been individualistic, but she had no respect for anyone else's individualism (including Azem). I also wasn't trying to classify her politically as much as I thought players' political leanings might have influenced how they viewed her and her actions. Personally, I don't feel I fit the definition of a collectivist, but I still sympathized with the Ancients and felt Venat was wrong.

[Brinne]

Interesting! Thanks for sharing. I'm curious, if you don't mind elaborating, does it have to do with her violating people's rights?

I mean, I can’t actually speak for my friends, of course, but it’s fair to say we’re all fiercely progressive – many identifying as some variety of socialist - and almost all of us had varying levels of contempt for Venat (the person I would say was most “friendly” to her was so in a “cheerfully-acknowledging-she’s-a-comically-terrible-person” sort of way) – a few of them were legitimately, deeply, infuriated by the walking montage scene. Myself, I was so uneasy with the dissonance of Venat’s narrative presentation and her actions that the segment of the game between her montage and Zenos showing up at the very end (praise Zenos) was probably the most actively unpleasant experience thus far playing FFXIV for me – which I have been for almost ten years now - and my discomfort seemed to pale next to theirs.

I think it’s a mixture of things. As far as in-universe reasoning goes, Venat’s philosophy of embracing “strength” and more or less choosing to cull those who couldn’t live up to her ideals of “strength” rubbed us the wrong way. I suppose you could say that she expected the Ancients – and the Sundered, in many ways – to survive and thrive in conditions of hardship, to just toughen up, with their social support systems cut off and destroyed. She was full of praise for the ones able to make it, and the ones who couldn’t were, alas, an unfortunate loss at best, succumbing to weakness. Their fates are their individual responsibilities. One of my friends joked that “wow, she really told the Ancients to just bootstrap.” Venat has a focus on internal grit and the strong surviving, so to speak, and it has some overlap (to my/our perception) with something we have an inherent and fairly deep distaste for in the bigger picture, and find often translates into callousness and excuses to turn away from the needs and humanity of others less privileged. tldr; Venat is basically a Social Darwinist, do not want, lol.

The other part is a bit meta-textual. Many of us were fairly enamored with Shadowbringers because of its case for nonjudgmental empathy, for reaching out and understanding others – both individually and culturally – and respecting them, even if they were different from us. We had a fair few discussions about how Amaurot was remarkable for taking a long-worn fantasy trope – the extinct ancient civilization, often used to prop up the “modern” version of humanity – and filling it was such a degree of humanity and empathy. Rather than falling on any number of traditional Othering tropes in this context, they balanced a genuine urge to see them as people, with as much a right to live as we did, along with having a legitimately distinct and interesting culture. (I loved learning about Amaurot’s culture and sucked up every tidbit we could get like a high-speed vacuum cleaner. I’m actually not much of a world lore person, generally – my focus is usually on characterization and such – but FFXIV’s Amaurot might be one of the first/only times my brain actually got hooked on Lore in that sense.)

But we really valued that. We fundamentally rejected the idea of seeing the Ancients as the “Other,” a group alien and Not Like Us that it could justify or soften the idea of seeing them subjected to violence (or subjecting them to violence ourselves). FFXIV, at the time, seemed to reject them as empty fodder to teach a Valuable Lesson or Warning for the protagonists. The most precious thing about them in terms of narrative construction is the way Shadowbringers truly and sincerely urged us to see ourselves in them, and vice-versa, and thus mourn the meaningless cruelty they were subjected to.

Venat’s narrative upends this. Suddenly the focus, from her perspective, is on the flaws of the Ancients, how, alas, they were indeed fated to doom themselves on a Thematic Lesson Basis. What was done to them was used to augment Venat’s “determination” and her “hard decisions.” The fury of one friend in particular over the montage sequence was based around how it was contorting itself to uplift the struggles of Venat as a tragic individual, asking us to focus on her perspective and how much the Sundering was hurting her, and used everyone she had killed and subjected to suffering as narrative accessories for her noble torment.

Second tldr; we tend to find protagonist-centric morality at the expense of the masses really distasteful; Great Man Theory gtfo, never, ever look away from the humanity and consequences to other people at large and in the margins, challenge and dismantle exceptionalist thought, etc, etc.

[PawPaw]

snip

I loved reading this, thank you so much for sharing. As someone who would also identify as quite progressive, I absolutely loathed Venat's actions, so not sure if any blanket tendencies of political or ideological leanings can be applied to this. It just seems to be down to the individual.

[Lauront]

I mean, I can’t actually speak for my friends, of course, but it’s fair to say we’re all fiercely progressive – many identifying as some variety of socialist - and almost all of us had varying levels of contempt for Venat (the person I would say was most “friendly” to her was so in a “cheerfully-acknowledging-she’s-a-comically-terrible-person” sort of way) – a few of them were legitimately, deeply, infuriated by the walking montage scene. Myself, I was so uneasy with the dissonance of Venat’s narrative presentation and her actions that the segment of the game between her montage and Zenos showing up at the very end (praise Zenos) was probably the most actively unpleasant experience thus far playing FFXIV – which I have been for almost ten years now - for me, and my discomfort seemed to pale next to theirs.

I think it’s a mixture of things. As far as in-universe reasoning goes, Venat’s philosophy of embracing “strength” and more or less choosing to cull those who couldn’t live up to her ideals of “strength” rubbed us the wrong way. I suppose you could say that she expected the Ancients – and the Sundered, in many ways – to survive and thrive in conditions of hardship, to just toughen up, with their social support cut off. She was full of praise for the ones able to make it, and the ones who couldn’t were, alas, an unfortunate loss at best, succumbing to weakness. Their fates are their individual responsibilities. One of my friends joked that “wow, she really told the Ancients to just bootstrap.” Venat has a focus on internal grit and the strong surviving, so to speak, and it has some overlap (to my/our perception) with something we have an inherent and fairly deep distaste for in the bigger picture, and find often translates into callousness and excuses to turn away from the needs and humanity of others less privileged. tldr; Venat is basically a Social Darwinist, do not want, lol.

My biggest issue with it all is that, while I consider the bolded to be fine ideals in the right circumstances, the test Hermes was administering was 1) manifestly unfair and 2) merely sadistic pettiness on his part. He was taking their approach to integrating creations into the star and using it to lash out at them and all creation. As for Venat using this test as the platform for affirming her own views, it's why I like your analysis of her character as succumbing to a romanticisation of "suffering" in the sundered world and thus hinging all her hopes on a singular character, or at least small group thereof, because the sundered as a whole would fail both Hermes's test, as well as her own - the latter in the event that they did not receive plenty of extrinsic aid. Like her finally spilling the beans on what the cause of the Final Days was, a truth she withheld from her people, such that they never got to consider this issue and think about better/other ways to address it.

The other part is a bit meta-textual. Many of us were fairly enamored with Shadowbringers because of its case for nonjudgmental empathy, for reaching out and understanding others – both individually and culturally – and respecting them, even if they were different from us. We had a fair few discussions about how Amaurot was remarkable for taking a long-worn fantasy trope – the extinct ancient civilization, often used to prop up the “modern” version of humanity – and filling it was such a degree of humanity and empathy. Rather than falling on any number of traditional Othering tropes in this context, they balanced a genuine urge to see them as people along with having a legitimately distinct and interesting culture. (I loved learning about Amaurot’s culture and sucked up every tidbit we could get like a high-speed vacuum cleaner. I’m actually not much of a world lore person, generally – my focus is usually on characterization and such – but FFXIV’s Amaurot might be one of the first/only times my brain actually got hooked on Lore in that sense.)

Exactly, and they further fleshed them out in Elpis sidequests, so much so that some of the EW MSQ stuff seems like caricatures by comparison, ending up in service of propping up the sundered (but only if you squint enough.)

Even though I'm not in the least bit on the progressive spectrum, I can agree with many if not most of the points you articulated. There is something deeply wrong to me in destroying one's own society entirely just because said person dislikes certain aspects of it or deems it "necessary".

The societies which would, on an on-going basis, meet her "test", if we were to take it literally, are not particularly appealing ones to me, either.