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

[CrownySuccubus]

If a murderer killed someone I cared about and there was a third party who knew about the intent to murder but did nothing to stop it because he or she wanted me to 'learn to suffer' then I'd quite readily have more contempt for that person than the actual murderer.

Now extend that from murder to the genocide of one's own species...and yeah, Venat's far worse than either Hermes or Meteion as far as I'm concerned.

Nope. Even in this analogy, I wouldn't agree with you. My anger is still on the murderer primarily. Yes, I'd also hate the bystander too. But hating them more than the murderer? No.

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In this case, to equivocate your analogy, we'd have to argue that:

1) The bystander attempted to stop the murderer immediately after learning their plans and lost.

2) The murderer eliminated all evidence that there was ever a crime being planned.

3) The murderer made the means of the murder impossible for any one person to stop.

4) After the murder began, several authorities were mortally wounded before they finally manage to temporarily intervene.

5) The methods of the murder have not been stopped, only postponed for an unknown amount of time.

6) The authorities decided to kill unrelated innocents and harvest their organs/bodies/whatever to not only save the victim, but the gravely-wounded authorities.

In this scenario, the bystander is definitely in the wrong for not revealing the truth in steps 2 and 6. However, to give them greater blame than the murderer who specifically created the situation is nonsensical.

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Like, I'm sorry. I don't like Venat/Hydaelyn's logic, either, but you guys are starting to go too far with the torches-and-pitchfork mob now.

[Brinne]

I think the emotional response to Hermes vs Venat, in terms of anger and culpability, gets a bit more complex when Hermes's contribution to the "murder" essentially revolved around an impulse moment of psychotic breakdown. He did not consciously intend to end up in that position, and his response to Meteion's report, and Emet's reaction to it, seemed to be something of a snap decision. (Once again, Amon is a bit of a different story, of course.) There's room to speculate on how things may have turned out if he hadn't (in very cowardly fashion) wiped his own memory and had time to cool his head, along with, ideally, mental and emotionally support.

Venat could be seen as far more deliberate and premeditative.

[CrownySuccubus]

I think the emotional response to Hermes vs Venat, in terms of anger and culpability, gets a bit more complex when Hermes's contribution to the "murder" essentially revolved around an impulse moment of psychotic breakdown. He did not consciously intend to end up in that position, and his response to Meteion's report.

(snip)

Venat could be seen as far more deliberate and premeditative.

Gonna have to give another hard disagree on this. Hermes made too many selfish/stupid decisions back-to-back-to-back for me to go with Yoshi P's "Hermes made a terrible mistake" argument. To quote myself from earlier in this thread:

Yeah, that's definitely not the interpretation I got. It felt like Hermes' "care" for Meteion was merely a means to an end. As I've seen other people mention, despite his disdain for seeing living concepts as tools, Hermes did just that. Despite Meteion's clear suffering and fear of delivering it, Hermes decided he just had to hear it, no matter what. His own existential need was more important than her fear.

On a personal level, I personally just found Hermes to make too many bad/foolish decisions subsequently for me to have any sympathy for him. If he had JUST created Meteion and her abilities in secret, that would have been fine. If had JUST given her sisters their missions and sent them into space in secret, that would have been fine. If he had JUST ignored Venat, Hyth and Emet to hear Meteion's report, that would have been fine. If he had JUST erased everyone's memories, that would have been fine. If he had JUST issued his "challenge" to humanity as an impulsive decision, that would have been fine.

But Hermes doing ALL of these things, one after another, slowly made me lose any sympathy with his character. Whatever sympathetic character he may have once had before Elpis, by the end of Elpis, all I saw was an insane villain.

Hermes knew exactly what he was doing. He knew the future that this would cause, and he did it anyway. That scene when he "challenged" humanity against Meteion wasn't some rash, impulsive decision. He meticulously and rationally decided the terms by which his fellow Ancients would be murdered. Yeah, he didn't tell Venat to sunder everyone, but even then, the deaths of everyone in post-Sundered Etheirys, including the thousands of deaths in Vanaspati, the countless other deaths on the other planets Meteion triggered the Final Days, are all his fault, and he literally fought everyone to make sure it happened.

[Brinne]

He made stupid decisions, yes, but it was established that he had no conscious intentions of hurting anyone or destroying the world throughout all of Elpis until the end. He was self-centered, he was contemptuous of others, he was naive. In that moment, hearing Meteion's conclusion and Emet's words striking a bad nerve in him, yes, it was horrifying and despicable, but he did not intend to do it until that moment. There was no intent until after he fought the party, listened to the full report, and decided he really wanted to spite Emet-Selch by turning his own words (and the ideals of the society he loved) against him.

I am hard on board the reading that Amon = Hermes in all the ways that are important, and his protests otherwise are mostly self-delusion, but even Amon says - and I think we're supposed to take him at his word - that the Hermes of the past would hate what Amon actually became.

[CrownySuccubus]

He made stupid decisions, yes, but it was established that he had no conscious intentions of hurting anyone or destroying the world throughout all of Elpis to destroy the world. He was self-centered, he was contemptuous of others, he was naive. In that moment, hearing Meteion's conclusion and Emet's words striking a bad nerve in him, yes, it was horrifying and despicable, but he did not intend to do it until that moment. There was no intent until after he fought the party, listened to the full report, and decided he really wanted to spite Emet-Selch by turning his own words (and the ideals of the society he loved) against him.

I am hard on board the reading that Amon = Hermes in all the ways that are important, and his protests otherwise are mostly self-delusion, but even Amon says - and I think we're supposed to take him at his word - that the Hermes of the past would hate what Amon actually became.

If someone continuously makes stupid decisions that they are warned will result in the deaths and suffering of countless people, they don't get a free pass just because each individual decision wasn't malicious.

If someone removes the breaks from their car on a dare, breaks the headlights of their car playing around carelessly with power tools, gets their license revoked by the state and continues driving anyway, and then gets drunk one night, knocks out his friends that try to stop him from getting in his car, and drives the car they should not be legally driving while it has no headlights and no breaks, and then plows into a crowd of people, killing hundreds...they don't get to cry "I'm sorry. I made mistakes, but I never did them with the intent of hurting anyone."

He removed all safety nets that would have prevented the tragedy before it occurred, he ignored his peers who tried to warn him that it would lead to tragedy, and he then literally fought them as they tried to tell him how much harm he was doing would cause. Hermes did not make naive "mistakes". He was a manchild who ignored the well-being of literally everyone else (and I mean literally EVERYONE else) just to get his emotional catharsis.

To paraphrase "Gray's Law": "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

[Brinne]

If someone continuously makes stupid decisions that they are warned will result in the deaths and suffering of countless people, they don't get a free pass just because each individual decision wasn't malicious.

I completely agree Hermes is an idiot and should be held accountable for his stupid decisions, many of which were made from arrogance, but he didn't have the warning about it resulting in the deaths and suffering of countless people until very, very shortly prior to Meteion breaking. Most of those decisions were subconsciously based in some amount of contempt and the hopes of showing the Ancients they were stupid and wrong, yes, but he genuinely had absolutely no idea they would result in an outcome that involved people actually being harmed. I don't think you can compare that to the knowing action of removing brakes or headlights, when everyone understands the potential consequences of doing so.

There was no foreknowledge from Hermes that "sending the Meteia out into space will result in the deaths of everyone on the planet" or even that that was a meaningful risk. He had no idea.

[CrownySuccubus]

I completely agree Hermes is an idiot and should be held accountable for his stupid decisions, many of which were made from arrogance, but he didn't have the warning about it resulting in the deaths and suffering of countless people until very, very shortly prior to Meteion breaking. Most of those decisions were subconsciously based in some amount of contempt and the hopes of showing the Ancients they were stupid and wrong, yes, but he genuinely had absolutely no idea they would result in an outcome that involved people actually being harmed. I don't think you can compare that to the knowing action of removing brakes or headlights, when everyone understands the potential consequences of doing so.

There was no foreknowledge from Hermes that "sending the Meteia out into space will result in the deaths of everyone on the planet" or even that that was a meaningful risk. He had no idea.

Hermes was the director of a center that literally existed to beta-test concepts before sending them out to the wild, to prevent the very thing that he caused by ignoring the process. That's what I'm calling the equivalent of cutting the brakes of your own car. What you describe is pretty much the same as someone deciding to cut their brakes out of contempt because "brakes are stupid". The entire point of Elpis is to prevent letting out concepts that could prove harmful to ecosystems and you literally cannot get more harmful to ecosystems than destroying entire stars. Hermes also knew exactly how much power he was dealing with when he described how much more abundant dynamis is than aether, so he knew how powerful the Meteia could conceivably be with their abilities to manipulate it. He specifically built them to be self-sufficient space explorers. Even if he didn't realize how powerful they could get, that just proves he was even MORE incompetent.

Then, when he is informed of what transpires and the countless deaths that can come about from his actions, he ignores Emet-Selch and Venat and decides he must "consider the Meteia's answers" alone, and come to his own selfish decision about the worth of life even though he had minutes ago just gotten schooled by Emet-Selch pointing out why he was too incompetent to actually do so.

So yes, Hermes removed all safety precautions from his vehicle, ignored the people who told him he had no business driving it, fought them and "knocked them out" when they tried to stop him, and then got drunk and intentionally drove full speed into a crowd of people just to prove that they were "wrong".

[AziraSyuren]

Like, I'm sorry. I don't like Venat/Hydaelyn's logic, either, but you guys are starting to go too far with the torches-and-pitchfork mob now.

It's a case of disappointment stinging worse than low expectations.

I think the emotional response to Hermes vs Venat, in terms of anger and culpability, gets a bit more complex when Hermes's contribution to the "murder" essentially revolved around an impulse moment of psychotic breakdown. He did not consciously intend to end up in that position, and his response to Meteion's report, and Emet's reaction to it, seemed to be something of a snap decision. (Once again, Amon is a bit of a different story, of course.) There's room to speculate on how things may have turned out if he hadn't (in very cowardly fashion) wiped his own memory and had time to cool his head, along with, ideally, mental and emotionally support.

Venat could be seen as far more deliberate and premeditative.

I think there's a lot of cause to believe that Venat snapped in much the same way. It doesn't excuse her actions, but That Cutscene and the dialogue after the fight with Hyedalyn made it look like it was a spur of the moment decision, or at least one born of desperation.

[Brinne]

I think there's a lot of cause to believe that Venat snapped in much the same way. It doesn't excuse her actions, but That Cutscene and the dialogue after the fight with Hyedalyn made it look like it was a spur of the moment decision, or at least one born of desperation.

I think you could have that reading regarding the Sundering itself; it's a little more difficult with her decision to essentially allow Hermes's test to play out.

EDIT:

It's a case of disappointment stinging worse than low expectations.

Yeah. Lurina made a post way back when about how it's fundamentally the dissonance that makes people completely lose their minds. (Like me!)