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

[Theodric]

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.

[Brinne]

I wish you (general you) could have seen how absolutely PSYCHED I was in 5.2 when Venat first was revealed and namedropped. I was so, so excited for her - oh my gosh, Venat! They chose the name Venat for Hydaelyn's human form! And, and, and, a charismatic woman with the steel willpower and the ruthlessness to do whatever she saw was necessary, even if it meant tons of innocents as collateral damage? And then manipulated the information the world had so she wouldn't be culpable for it? My brain was essentially on fire. I actively didn't want her to be mustache-twirling evil either - I found the Hydaelyn vs Zodiark conflict as described in 5.0 to be compelling and tragic as it was - but I wanted the narrative to embrace the fact that she was willing to take methods, even for a goal that we may have agreed with, that were disturbing and questionable. And ideally, for the protagonists, unacceptable.

My friend played ahead of me in Elpis, and mentioned meeting Venat, and the first thing out of my mouth was "Is she cool!? Please tell me she's cool!"

Which makes it all the more bitter that, in a lot of ways, I got exactly what I was hoping for, except the narrative 100% took her side and reassured us she was the kindest, most loving person who truly and unironically had no choice but to destroy the world and be responsible for the deaths of unimaginable numbers of people - and we should all be very grateful to her and adore her for it.

Something I've said about other pieces of media is that I can like just about any kind of character who does anything - as I've said, the majority of my favorites in other stories are those who are quite terrible people, and I've done my fair share about gushing about my appreciation of Hermes in this thread with the read of him just being incredibly selfish, hypocritical, and awful. But the one thing that turns me off, hard? Narrative dissonance in trying to forcefully reassure me that a terrible person isn't terrible. Sympathy is fine. Apologism is not. That is the one thing guaranteed to turn me on that character.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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!)