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

[jameseoakes]

The flaw with this argument should be obvious: where is the magical line where progress should be halted? Should human beings go back to sleeping on rocks and hunting for our meals? Should we surrender all medical progress and go back to letting diabetics who need insulin to live die without it?

Yeah that's been a lot of my problem with Venat, the suffering she inflicts is very uneven and petty and doesn't really seem to be about character building most of it is just people leading intentionally short painful lives and the people that care about them being broken by the grief. the game kept pushing that love angle but Venat is so abusive with it, and she doesn't seem to actually care for anyone....she's just horrible

The usual cop-out answer to this is "Of course not. But we should strengthen our society to be ready for the inevitable moment that we DO lose these comforts." And sure, that COULD and probably WILL happen at some point in humanity's future, but....so what? How exactly do I prepare for a world in which my relative, who has survived on insulin for 40 years, dies because the apocalypse made finding that medicine impossible? By not giving it to them?

I also find it odd that the culture that most seem to meet this ideology is the Garleans and the game has spent most of it time demonising there culture and the brutality there suffering caused them to turn to.

[Xirean]

Yeah that's been a lot of my problem with Venat, the suffering she inflicts is very uneven and petty and doesn't really seem to be about character building most of it is just people leading intentionally short painful lives and the people that care about them being broken by the grief. the game kept pushing that love angle but Venat is so abusive with it, and she doesn't seem to actually care for anyone....she's just horrible

Venat's "love" for mankind feels a lot like an abusive parent who "accepts" their child while doing nothing to actually show that love.

[jameseoakes]

Venat's "love" for mankind feels a lot like an abusive parent who "accepts" their child while doing nothing to actually show that love.

Yeah my opinion exactly, though I'd say she only accepts them if they deal with things the correct way if not they're dead to her (If they can't deal with suffering right they don't deserve her love and deserve there fate)

[CrownySuccubus]

I also find it odd that the culture that most seem to meet this ideology is the Garleans and the game has spent most of it time demonising there culture and the brutality there suffering caused them to turn to.

Probably because it's easy to find parallels to the Garleans and Imperial Japan (and other fascist regimes, to be frank). A people that were destroyed by outside forces, rose from said destruction stronger by being better at playing by the rules everyone else forced them into, only to then see themselves as the "one true" ethnic group destined to "unify" all the rest under their banner.

Also, remember that the entire point of EW is that ALL ideologies will eventually fail. Every. Single. One. No exceptions. The second section of the Dead Ends was specifically crafted to show what would have happened to Eitherys if the Garleans had won.

I think a lot of people mistaken believe that EW claims "All ideologies will fail, except Venat's which is the correct one".

More accurately, it says:

"We already see how those other ideologies failed, so let's not repeat them. Instead, we need to go somewhere different."

"But won't that different way also eventually fail?"

"Yeah. But it'll be on our own, unique terms."

[jameseoakes]

Also, remember that the entire point of EW is that ALL ideologies will eventually fail. Every. Single. One. No exceptions. The second section of the Dead Ends was specifically crafted to show what would have happened to Eitherys if the Garleans had won.
"

I think that all Venat really did was put Eitherys on that parth, the people she made are petty and cruel and she's pushed that trait as that's what suffering breeds. I don't see how they've done anything to not make that the eventual fate when at some point things get out of hand (Xande almost did that)

Not Thordan? Replaying HW I noticed quite a few similarities.

It's really odd that the villains suit Venats ideology far better than any of the protagonists....

[CrownySuccubus]

It's really odd that the villains suit Venats ideology far better than any of the protagonists....

As I said, the problem with the ideology always comes down to: "At what magical point do you draw the line?"

That's why, in fiction which adheres to this philosophy, the difference between hero and villain is "The line that least inconveniences the main characters/audience/players."

[Brinne]

It's really odd that the villains suit Venats ideology far better than any of the protagonists....

I've joked before that Venat is essentially an amalgamation of every major FFXIV antagonist in either worldview or action, save perhaps Nidhogg. Gaius van "conflict breeds the strong, and only the strong survive" Baelsar from ARR, Ilberd "my people are unacceptably weak and thus I must sacrifice them to shape a greater world/nation" Feare, Thordan "erasing history and truth is actually good if it preserves the world order that benefits my cause" VII, Zenos "we alone determine our own purpose in this empty, meaningless universe, and my purpose is stalking the Spark that is the WoL" yae Galvus, and, of course, Emet "I judge the current state of humanity to be insufficient to rise to the task of protecting the world, therefore I will wipe them out in favor of a better one" Selch and Hermes "we must test humanity to ensure they're worthy of existence by subjecting them to mass death and suffering" Fandaniel.

Well, okay. She probably doesn't overlap much with Nidhogg or Themis, actually. Because Themis is a good boy who did nothing wrong.

[jameseoakes]

I've joked before that Venat is essentially an amalgamation of every major FFXIV antagonist in either worldview or action, save perhaps Nidhogg. Gaius van "conflict breeds the strong, and only the strong survive" Baelsar from FFXIV, Ilberd "my people are unacceptably weak and thus I must sacrifice them to shape a greater world/nation" Feare, Thordan "erasing history and truth is actually good if it preserves the world order that benefits my cause" VII, Zenos "we alone determine our own purpose in this empty, meaningless universe, and my purpose is stalking the Spark that is the WoL" yae Galvus, and, of course, Emet "I judge the current state of humanity to be insufficient to rise to the task of protecting the world, therefore I will wipe them out in favor of a better one" Selch and Hermes "we must test humanity to ensure they're worthy of existence by subjecting them to mass death and suffering" Fandaniel.

Well, okay. She probably doesn't overlap much with Nidhogg or Themis, actually. Because Themis is a good boy who did nothing wrong.

I mean your take is really spot on

[Lauront]

"Yeah. But it'll be on our own, unique terms."

By Forging Ahead.

Yeah, everything about that philosophical trapping has a very "fatalist" outlook to it

I am eagerly awaiting for them to turn fate into the final (?) big bad. They already have the asset models in 7R, after all.

Venat's "love" for mankind feels a lot like an abusive parent who "accepts" their child while doing nothing to actually show that love.

I was looking up a line in Japanese and stumbled across this. Whereas I felt creeped out by this "personal" connection, after my character's hand was more or less narratively forced into helping her with her scheme apparently some people enjoyed it and would've liked more of it.

The insistence on the "love" angle was another part of what made Venat's writing so insecure, and the sense that deep down, it knew that what it was trying was shaky and didn't work. And the hard overcompensation on it - especially because the technique of "NPC loves the WoL = popular NPC" has usually been very effective up until this point - led to a lot of us making connections towards the absolute cliches of abuse rhetoric and victim-blaming. Which I'm sure never occurred to the writers, but here we are.



The single member of present day humanity who embodies Venat's ideology and methods most is unironically Ilberd Feare.

I'm just impressed that they were able to dial it up even further in the Codex entry on her. And I agree, it's why this "Venat is an ancient" explanation Yoshi comes up just fails to convince me. We already had sundered antagonists think and act in very similar ways. The only difference is their narrative treatment and the scale of it. With that said, it appears to have convinced some players who, in spite of everything else we know of them, believe a genocide a day was just in their DNA.

[CrownySuccubus]

I am eagerly awaiting for them to turn fate into the final (?) big bad. They already have the asset models in 7R, after all.

I mean, that'll just be a physical embodiment of the time travel plots of 5.0 and 6.0.

"We'll totally fight Fate when it's something inconvenient to us, but completely embrace it when it's a Fate we find agreeable."