The Ancients still deserved better, after everything

[hagare]

Can you people please stop bringing up Emet talking about "our methods wouldn't have worked" or whatever? Of COURSE the writers are going to have the fan favorite say something like that in order to validate the party they're trying to push as objectively right. There's no other reason they would've made him say that if not to scream at us how right she was. That doesn't mean any of us have to accept it. And I'm ESPECIALLY not accepting it after YoshiP admitted that his whole laundry list of places to visit was him acting as the devs' mouthpiece there; his whole purpose in the final zone was being the devs' mouthpiece.

mate, slow it down with your head canon

[anhaato]

mate, slow it down with your head canon

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/29/2...source=twitter

“With how cleanly Endwalker reaches its conclusion, there may be people out there who feel uncertain about future adventures,” he said. “That’s precisely why I had Emet-Selch take on the role of chiding like, ‘What’s with that lonely look, as though you know and have adventured through everything there is to see in the world? That’s nonsense, there are so many views you’ve yet to see. I’ve seen them; now you go see them, too.’”

I dare you.

[Jojoya]

This isn't random violence. This is someone we know is going to be opposed to Zodiark if he's created and who we know would've been unable to defeat him without the sundering. "Hydaelyn was created with the power to enervate Her foe", which the WoL is responsible for telling her to do. Specificity is important here..

Except the WoL doesn't have the power or influence to tell any Ancient what they must do. Sharing information about a timeline's history isn't telling someone what to do, especially when it's already acknowledged that multiple timelines exist.

Up until the end of Ktisis, none of them really believed the WoL's story. Hythlodaeus was humoring the WoL (one of Azem's crazy pranks, utilizing a familiar). Venat was treating the WoL like some sort of puzzle to solve. Emet was trying to ignore the WoL and still did not believe the story even as Kairos was finishing its countdown.

Venat was setting out to find her own answers when she parted with the WoL. She tells the WoL that their timelines may not converge depending on what choices she ends up making. That she ended up choosing the path she did was none of the WoL's doing. It was her doing.

Most important, you need to remember that you are not the WoL. The WoL is a fictitious character written for the purpose of telling a story. We may be experiencing the story through the eyes of that character but we are not them. We do not control the choices that the character makes nor are we responsible for them. That's on the storywriter.

Stop trying to make yourselves out as victims of some dastardly scheme to turn you into a bad guy. It's just a story.

[Theodric]

Stop trying to make yourselves out as victims of some dastardly scheme to turn you into a bad guy. It's just a story.

Nobody is suggesting that is anything more than a story, though...?

As it happens, it's a story that people have invested in for up to a decade and the finale left a decent amount of people left wanting.

I think it's telling that World of Warcraft gave Horde players the choice to either side with or oppose a character as controversial as Sylvanas when she decided to engage in an act of genocide. That FFXIV did not show the player the same respect and simply assumed that we'd be perfectly fine going along with Venat's plan to genocide the Ancients is, quite honestly, pretty bizarre.

I just want consistency, personally. Genocide was established as a red line in the sand that absolutely could not be crossed and was to be opposed. Except, of course, that one time it was a 'good' genocide because it directly benefitted the protagonists.

[Gemina]

Chiming in late, and only read the OP.

I've tried to relate to the ancients multiple times. It's like trying to plug in your laptop at a hotel in another country without an adapter. There are some reasons for this:

- Collectively, they decided to sacrifice half of their entire population
- twice
- were going to do it a third time
- Venat said, "Nay. All y'all."
- Unsundered caused 7 mass extinction events. Killing billions.
- Just one created a collective conscious aka Psychotron 9000, and sent them into space where they proceeded to end several civilizations.

These guys have a serious genocide complex, and I can see why we (Azem) turned against essentially all of them. Even Venat.

[Rulakir]

Except the WoL doesn't have the power or influence to tell any Ancient what they must do. Sharing information about a timeline's history isn't telling someone what to do, especially when it's already acknowledged that multiple timelines exist.

This doesn't matter in the context of a time loop. It created a paradox wherein the WoL telling Venat about the sundering leads to it happening. Most of us would've loved for Elpis to have ended in a positive outcome AU and probably wouldn't be here complaining had that happened.

Up until the end of Ktisis, none of them really believed the WoL's story. Hythlodaeus was humoring the WoL (one of Azem's crazy pranks, utilizing a familiar). Venat was treating the WoL like some sort of puzzle to solve. Emet was trying to ignore the WoL and still did not believe the story even as Kairos was finishing its countdown.

Well, I can't argue this cause it's your subjective interpretation at best and headcanon at worst.

Venat was setting out to find her own answers when she parted with the WoL. She tells the WoL that their timelines may not converge depending on what choices she ends up making. That she ended up choosing the path she did was none of the WoL's doing. It was her doing.

This argument only works until she commits herself to becoming Hydaelyn and enacting the sundering. Even then it's questionable because her dialog at the end of Ktsis would suggest she has already decided not to do anything differently.

Most important, you need to remember that you are not the WoL. The WoL is a fictitious character written for the purpose of telling a story. We may be experiencing the story through the eyes of that character but we are not them. We do not control the choices that the character makes nor are we responsible for them. That's on the storywriter.

Stop trying to make yourselves out as victims of some dastardly scheme to turn you into a bad guy. It's just a story.

Well, for "just a story" you certainly seem invested in telling people how they should have thought and felt throughout it. Are you one of the writers?

[KizuyaKatogami]

Chiming in late, and only read the OP.

I've tried to relate to the ancients multiple times. It's like trying to plug in your laptop at a hotel in another country without an adapter. There are some reasons for this:

- Collectively, they decided to sacrifice half of their entire population
- twice
- were going to do it a third time
- Venat said, "Nay. All y'all."
- Unsundered caused 7 mass extinction events. Killing billions.
- Just one created a collective conscious aka Psychotron 9000, and sent them into space where they proceeded to end several civilizations.

These guys have a serious genocide complex, and I can see why we (Azem) turned against essentially all of them. Even Venat.

Except we didnt even turn against Venat, we call her a hero lmao, and go along with her entire plan.

[Jojoya]

Nobody is suggesting that is anything more than a story, though...?

Except the OP absolutely was and it was my response to what the OP said that started the discussion about how "we" are responsible for what Venat did.

Tldr; the Ancients are my true people, not the Sundered and Endwalker was one big nightmare for me that forced me to commit virtual genocide, be okay with it, offend my moral values, wank the other person responsible the whole ride, and generally commit numerous crimes on my person at the hands of Square Enix.

That is not someone treating it just like a story.

This doesn't matter in the context of a time loop. It created a paradox wherein the WoL telling Venat about the sundering leads to it happening. Most of us would've loved for Elpis to have ended in a positive outcome AU and probably wouldn't be here complaining had that happened.

Yet there is still an initial event triggering the time loop when we know choices can lead to alternate timelines (which SE established as canon for the FFXIV universe with the 8th Umbral Calamity timeline story). What happened first?

The WoL wouldn't have told Venat that she caused the Sundering if that hadn't happened in the WoL's timeline. Venat, on the other hand, still could have made the choice to cause the Sundering even if the WoL hadn't appeared.

Venat is responsible for her actions. Not the WoL.

You might want Elpis to have a positive outcome. Ishikawa didn't and this is the story that she wanted to tell. You're always free to right your own story about a positive outcome.

Well, for "just a story" you certainly seem invested in telling people how they should have thought and felt throughout it. Are you one of the writers?

No, I'm not one of the writers.

It's fine to approve or disapprove of choices the writer made throughout a story. "I wish the writer had given this story a different outcome" is fine.

But from an emotional health perspective it's dangerous to allow yourself to get so drawn into a story that you start confusing yourself as being the character and feeling that you're responsible for what a character does. What the OP said is someone who has tipped dangerously over the edge over taking the events happening in the story far too personally.

[Lihtleita]

catch me fortnite dancing in amourot because the ancients are finally dead

[KageTokage]

Chiming in late, and only read the OP.

I've tried to relate to the ancients multiple times. It's like trying to plug in your laptop at a hotel in another country without an adapter. There are some reasons for this:

- Collectively, they decided to sacrifice half of their entire population
- twice
- were going to do it a third time
- Venat said, "Nay. All y'all."
- Unsundered caused 7 mass extinction events. Killing billions.
- Just one created a collective conscious aka Psychotron 9000, and sent them into space where they proceeded to end several civilizations.

These guys have a serious genocide complex, and I can see why we (Azem) turned against essentially all of them. Even Venat.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I also only recently remembered that according to Hythlodeus in Mare Lamentorum, the potential revival of the Ancients who gave themselves to Zodiark was always a consideration from the very beginning, which likely played into their willingness to go through with it.

The first sacrifice was very definitely needed as the world and mankind were both on the brink of total annihilation.

The second might not have been needed, but it's implied that the environment had been damaged so badly that more lives would've been lost by the time things corrected themselves naturally and/or with the aid of the Ancients doing in a more mundane (By their standards, at least) fashion.

The third was definitely not needed, but would've been the last according to the Convocation's plans. There surely would've been some Ancients who still wouldn't have been satisfied, perhaps those who lost loved ones to "natural" causes and were claimed by the Lifestream, but sparing those souls from being trapped in Zodiark would've been a certain kindness at a cost we were really not given enough context behind.

Just the fact that troubled people like Hermes and Erichtonios still existed stood as proof that their world really was only perfect in a relative sense, and I don't think they were at much risk of a "death by paradise" with how calculated every decision the Convocation made was.