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

[Lauront]

That montage is why I'm sometimes willing to go as far as to use "propaganda" in regards to the apologism. A deliberately emotionally stirring, abstracted, "symbolic" version of events meant to justify a violent act where none of the events depicted actually happened as shown.

With that in mind, even putting aside "lol apologism propaganda" hot takes, I've always thought that presentation was at least "cowardly" on a narrative level by relying on faceless strawmen as Venat's opposition and what "forced" her to do the Sundering, making irrational arguments that none of the actual named Ancient characters we know would make. Can't believe these guys, representative of Ancients in general, were so far gone they just forced poor Venat's hand, etc, etc. Try to mentally replace Emet-Selch or Themis in that scene, debating Venat, and boy does it fall apart fast.

For me it also fails to account for something we came to know, i.e. that the souls inside Zodiark were in a kind of limbo. The Anamnesis scenes, which as you say are referred back to in the Q&A and therefore cannot be discounted, had her acknowledge the good intentions of the Convocation. That montage basically seems to focus on the most grief-struck of the ancients during the world still being on fire, so it's no surprise how they react to her, assuming it's accurate to what happened, but it's certainly not all of what happened. Had they shown something like Elidibus emerging and conveying the state of the souls inside Zodiark to the divided ancients (a division which she thought was important to avoid), quelling opposition to that final plan, with her followers only in very vague terms stating that their doom would repeat but not explaining why... yes, I think it'd undermine the effectiveness of that scene quite a bit in trying to justify her, which even so, I think it does not succeed in doing.

I don't think having different opinions is a bad thing, either. But I'm trying to explain why I personally cannot agree with the "Venat is worse than Hermes" argument. Hermes made selfish and stupid decisions that put entire ecosystems at best at risk, only to find out that OOPS, his incompetence actually puts the entire UNIVERSE at risk. Then, when confronted by how stupid his actions were and how dire the consequences might become, he decides to double down on this and ignore the very people telling him why what he's doing is stupid and apocalyptic. Then, when beaten, he decides to not only violate the minds and bodies of all those present that could stop him....not only to enable his own creation to murder countless people throughout a dozen millennia....but ALSO to erase his own memory so that he can just blend back in and live his life as if nothing happened.

I think even in terms of the scope of it, he can't really be let off the hook, because the WoL had explained to them the events which would unfold, which by that point they'd realised would originate from outside Etheirys and which they concluded was dynamis-related. When Meteion reveals her "manifesto", it should be obvious that at a minimum that'd be the result. No matter how emotional his frame of mind, he still had agency at that point, although I think we're all agreed on that.

On whether Venat or Hermes is worse, I'd say it comes down to whether causing a problem or knowing about it but keeping it to yourself and unilaterally making a decision affecting all of mankind's ability to respond to that problem so that it adopts the "right" attitude to suffering is the worse of the two. They threw in the time loop to muddy the waters a bit with Venat, but it wasn't the reason she gave for constraining her actions the way she did, and if you read her actions through the lens Brinne pointed out (some romanticisation of the suffering she perceived in the sundered world), you can take issue with her for throwing the towel in for what were potentially ideological reasons. I'd still say he is the worse of the two for playing a causal role in it, but where I find her worse is less to do with her own actions and more to do with how the story essentially presents a character that is a fusion of Yunalesca from X and Venat from XII, but would have you think she's a Yuna, Aerith or Ashe. Even if the writers acknowledge that she's comparable to an Emet-Selch warped by a 12k year gruesome toil, the in-story representation of that is lacking, to say the least.

[VictorTheed]

To be fair, I find God's methodology there to be stupid, also, but I digress.

You and God have more in common then u might think, I'm sure after he read your comment he had the same thought about your methodology as well.
.

Back on topic, I enjoyed EW but I wished the Garlemald section had alot more badassery fight scenes to it instead of it being a peace core mission, I mean it's Garlemald, not the salvation army.

But that guy blowing his brains out was pretty bad ass, he was a cool Legatus or whatever his title was, I would have liked to seen more of him, but overall I'm happy we got to finally go to Garlemald.

[CrownySuccubus]

Back on topic, I enjoyed EW but I wished the Garlemald section had alot more badassery fight scenes to it instead of it being a peace core mission, I mean it's Garlemald, not the salvation army.

But that guy blowing his brains out was pretty bad ass, he was a cool Legatus or whatever his title was, I would have liked to seen more of him, but overall I'm happy we got to finally go to Garlemald.

As I've mentioned before, I don't believe in things like higher powers.

Besides that, even if God did exist, I think he'd be about as skeptical about how much the Bible misrepresents him as I am.

[Skyborne]

We'd better be able to do something for poor Themis or I may actually evolve into a ravenous three-headed monster whose only purpose is chaos and destruction.

100% this, also, I'm way ahead of you. Careful not to stand in the cone of my Phyrric Breath. And don't call me ugly, Venat!

Back on topic, I enjoyed EW but I wished the Garlemald section had alot more badassery fight scenes to it instead of it being a peace core mission, I mean it's Garlemald, not the salvation army.

But that guy blowing his brains out was pretty bad ass, he was a cool Legatus or whatever his title was, I would have liked to seen more of him, but overall I'm happy we got to finally go to Garlemald.

Quintus, yes. What a beautiful dream we all shared...

Also still baffling was Alphinaud's behavior in that Garlemald section, and what I saw was a backslide of his character development back into the super-naive 'peace and wuv!!!!! all together now!!!!' Alphinaud with only slightly less arrogance. Did he really think he and all of Eorzea could just waltz right in and have every half-starved Garlean in the frozen wastes just throw themselves at them for help and salvation? A big welcome party? Wasn't he around the area of Garlemald all throughout Shadowbringers and had some interaction? Wouldn't he have known their frosty, savage-untrusting outlook at least from Sharlayan textbooks?

[Caurcas]

As I've mentioned before, I don't believe in things like higher powers.

Besides that, even if God did exist, I think he'd be about as skeptical about how much the Bible misrepresents him as I am.

Please stay on topic, we don't need this to become reddit.

[KizuyaKatogami]

We'd better be able to do something for poor Themis or I may actually evolve into a ravenous three-headed monster whose only purpose is chaos and destruction.

At this point i've lost all hope for it. The final sign was the fact we learn that both him and Zodiark are the only reason the planet and us are around to this day and are still alive, yet not once do we ever thank either of them, and instead all of that praise is instead given to Venat. It makes it pretty clear where the devs bias stands, and i dont see how anyone could argue otherwise. Elidibus got the short end of the stick through and through and outside of garlemald i think he was the one of the biggest ones impacted by the change from 2-3 more expansions to only 1.

[CrownySuccubus]

Also still baffling was Alphinaud's behavior in that Garlemald section, and what I saw was a backslide of his character development back into the super-naive 'peace and wuv!!!!! all together now!!!!' Alphinaud with only slightly less arrogance. Did he really think he and all of Eorzea could just waltz right in and have every half-starved Garlean in the frozen wastes just throw themselves at them for help and salvation? A big welcome party? Wasn't he around the area of Garlemald all throughout Shadowbringers and had some interaction? Wouldn't he have known their frosty, savage-untrusting outlook at least from Sharlayan textbooks?

Overall, the Garlemald subplot was handled about as realistically as could be expected, considering. Nobody went into Garlemald expecting to be welcomed and hailed as saviors, and it's stated that the contingent was only the 10% of Alliance members who agreed to help Garlemald at all after what they'd done in the past.

I personally thought it was the most well-done plot thread in the expansion. One of the things I really liked about Final Fantasy VI was the fact that the first time you actually get to Vector (the Empire's capital), it's after the Espers have destroyed most of it. And then, after the apocalypse, the Empire is basically a distant memory. I liked the thought of how petty things like war seems in the face of true despair. And, since the Garlean Empire is almost a copy-past of the Gestahl Empire, I liked that call-back.

I can agree that the twins were annoyingly angsty about every little failure, though. Although I feel that the situation was handled realistically, their reactions were not. I really hate how the story loves to milk the emotional pathos out of every single minor tragedy / triumph, but at this point that's par for the course. Everybody has to explain all the feels they feel before we can move on to the next plot point.

[PawPaw]

Last few pages have been a good read, I had a lot to catch up on.

We'd better be able to do something for poor Themis or I may actually evolve into a ravenous three-headed monster whose only purpose is chaos and destruction.

I wish I could say that I have hope that there is a chance, but if EW has taught me anything it's that all Ancients deserve sad endings. Unless they confirm a split timeline/AU where things worked out differently, this whole thing with Themis/Eric/Laha will just end up being an attempt to humanize them more; which will then make you feel more terrible that you had a hand in their downfall. Rinse and repeat.

I'm kinda looking forward to reading the posts of a ravenous, three-headed, chaos monster though

[Lauront]

Last few pages have been a good read, I had a lot to catch up on.



I wish I could say that I have hope that there is a chance, but if EW has taught me anything it's that all Ancients deserve sad endings. Unless they confirm a split timeline/AU where things worked out differently, this whole thing with Themis/Eric/Laha will just end up being an attempt to humanize them more; which will then make you feel more terrible that you had a hand in their downfall. Rinse and repeat.

I'm kinda looking forward to reading the posts of a ravenous, three-headed, chaos monster though

At this point, I'll take humanizing them. If it ends up just being another shoddy attempt to vilify Laha, or that they were "doomed" in some other way, though... meh.

[PawPaw]

What will thoughts be if it turns out that Themis and Venat are related, as I have seen much speculation about?

People are basing it purely on their hair/eye coloring but by that reasoning we could also assume that Hesperos is related to Hades, so it probably amounts to nothing. But still...