Pandæmonium story

[jameseoakes]

I didn't get the impression it was contempt or spite driving her. I actually agree with Rulakir here - I think she gave in to despair. I think she gave up on her people being able to save themselves.

So I will say I think there are some things the writers could've done to make her intentions clearer. There's a gap in knowledge on what happened between us showing up in Elpis and her sundering the world. What did she try? Who did she tell, if anyone? We don't actually know, we only have implications - some heavier and clearer than others.

If I'm following her logic right, it came across as more of her... Convincing herself that her people would always choose the past, always choose to strive for a perfect paradise that they lost instead of facing an imperfect future, always reject suffering, and the only way to avoid falling into despair in the face of suffering is if they're so used to facing suffering that forging ahead anyway is a fundamental part of who they are.

So basically she saw flaws in her society, didn't agree with their take on paradise and what can/should be sacrificed to maintain it, and didn't trust they'd make the "right" choices in the face of disaster. So she entrusted the future to people she could ensure would intimately understand and accept pain and suffering as a part of their reality. Whether that was a good call or not... Well. The survivors get to decide I guess.

I see your point, I just don't see how anyone could do something so monstrous without malice, Venat Fetishes suffering to a horrific degree and it's sicking to see.

[Rulakir]

Venat would have made for a better Yunalesca type of character or truer to her namesake Venat in FFXII. Her portrayal and actions resulted in a dissonance that was difficult to reconcile. The game forces that reconciliation upon you, but that's a problem in itself.

I agree the fetishization of suffering throughout EW was disturbing. I've been apprehensive about the story going forward, but it looks like there's some moderate course correction in 6.15. Sadly, I still don't have high hopes for Pandemonium. Mostly, I hope at the end of it we find out Elidibus' soul made it to the aetherial sea instead of being completely used up as time travel fuel. He had probably the worst fate of any of the Ancients, I'd like to see him given a break.

[Teraq]

(snip)

Good post IMO. One of the things that bothered me the most with this story is how Venat bases her entire reasoning and justification on what she believes her people would eventually become and how they would act – because of her personal convictions, her paranoia on how people apparently wouldn't believe her (what about the Echo? or her being a very respected person anyway?) or would panic (yet before Ktisis she said most people wouldn't care too much about Meteion's report on distant civilisations), the fact that she found this random time traveler she just met just really cool to hang out with for a day or two – but the game never offers any credible or substantiated opposition to her beliefs. She gave up on them all and never bothered to give them a fighting chance, apparently to maintain the "objectivity" of a "test" she knew would result in the literal apocalypse.

Even Emet-Selch, who spent the subsequent twelve thousand years slowly suffering and trying to repair what she did without having the necessary context, just rolls over and gives her praise, while giving us the bare minimum lip service with his line about his ideals being invincible. Lahabrea has been dead since before the Ancient backstory so we will never get his PoV as a literal genocide survivor unless Pandaemonium does things with its plot. And poor Elidibus, longest-standing antagonist, also known as Literally Zodiark, was barely remembered just enough by the writers to feature in the MSQ as a time travel device – but at least he came across as low-key bitter and unrepentant in the French text, which I loved. Also... @Rulakir yes, please, save this hero's soul at least.

I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with Endwalker had Venat not been presented as right by plot contrivances.

[Kozh]

so I deserve to be insulted?

Based on how your behaviour, yes ;p

For Venat, the situation is different. All of existence is at stake, including those she would in end up Sundering. Thus the question is who can be saved. A classic trolley problem, with the slight distinction that if depending on who you choose all life would die. I think that changes things. Other disagree.

The one who create the trolley problem in the first place is her. And frankly, I would take killing someone to save a family member than killing someone because they don't live according to my principle/believe.

[ZeraSkiratea]

I for one prefer branching timelines, screw stable time loops.

and i for example, prefeer a mix of booth.
Steins;gate for example, while the Series overall is a series of branching timelines, a lot of it are, specificaly, stable(or semi stable) time loops (the atractor fields)



If we for example look at the FFXIV story from the view of Steins;gate and how it does timetravel(not that its 100% unique in it), we have the Stable timeloop, that, no matter our actions, will lead to the final days, as Elidibus said.
The action of going back to Elpis, alone, wasnt a strong enough "action" to break free of the "final day" atractor field if we use Steins;gate terminology here, just like telling someone in the past to buy a lottery ticket may not be a strong enough factor to cause the person recieving the message to actuall buy the right ticket.


Meanwhile, the displacement of the Crystsal tower trough time and space was a strong enough action to break free of the attractor field that leads to the 8th umbral.


Because, lets be real, whats a stronger "action" a gigantic crystal tower appearing out of nowhere and a person in it helping to rebuild a sense of normalcy during a time of catastrophy.
Or a random person appearing in a reasearch facility. even if everyone believed what we said imidiatly, i still think that it wouldnt be a strong enough "action" to change fate entirely.


emet and venat could have maybe acted differently because of us, but the overall end result would remain the same

[ZeraSkiratea]

The irony is it's only the Ancients who end up passing Hermes' test. Apparently no other world did. The sundered barely manage to defeat Meteion despite the WoL having been groomed for the role by someone with a cheat sheet and given every tool past and present to ensure success to the extent that the WoL could not have done it without substantial assistance from unsundered Ancients. So, in a way, the Ancients passed the test not once, but twice.

Stalling the final days isnt "passing the test" its like saying "i have a sick notice from my doctor so i passed the exam" so you dont have to write an exam on Day X, you still have to write the exam on Day Y.. all you did was buy time.




The only tools Venat/hydealin gave to the WoL are A) the Loporits knowledge of summoning, B) the Tracker, C) the gigantic Mothercrystal and D) potentialy the spaceship via the sharlyan forum and loporits



Any other intervention was from her to stop the ascians from ruining everything be rejoining more and more worlds, therefore thickening the ether in the people making them less able to use dynamis.


And no, being given the tools by someone dosnt mean that the person giving you the tools where the one who "passed the test" the person who uses the tools is the one who passes

[KizuyaKatogami]

Stalling the final days isnt "passing the test" its like saying "i have a sick notice from my doctor so i passed the exam" so you dont have to write an exam on Day X, you still have to write the exam on Day Y.. all you did was buy time.




The only tools Venat/hydealin gave to the WoL are A) the Loporits knowledge of summoning, B) the Tracker, C) the gigantic Mothercrystal and D) potentialy the spaceship via the sharlyan forum and loporits



Any other intervention was from her to stop the ascians from ruining everything be rejoining more and more worlds, therefore thickening the ether in the people making them less able to use dynamis.


And no, being given the tools by someone dosnt mean that the person giving you the tools where the one who "passed the test" the person who uses the tools is the one who passes

Yet….the ancients were given no such tools. She had knowledge on the final days and chose not to say anything. So again, how is it fair? The sundered were given knowledge on the final days. If they didn’t have that knowledge they would be just as screwed. The only reason they prevail is because of constant higher up help. The only reason they’re even alive right now is because of Zodiark.

[Rulakir]

And no, being given the tools by someone dosnt mean that the person giving you the tools where the one who "passed the test" the person who uses the tools is the one who passes

As far as the Ancients knew, they had. Remember, they had no idea about Meteion or the Song of Oblivion because Venat didn't share that information.

You realize all the tools you listed are basically everything that was required to get to UT and face Meteion, right? That without the unsundered (and Fandaniel), the WoL never would have made it off Etheirys?

[jameseoakes]

Stalling the final days isnt "passing the test" its like saying "i have a sick notice from my doctor so i passed the exam" so you dont have to write an exam on Day X, you still have to write the exam on Day Y.. all you did was buy time.




The only tools Venat/hydealin gave to the WoL are A) the Loporits knowledge of summoning, B) the Tracker, C) the gigantic Mothercrystal and D) potentialy the spaceship via the sharlyan forum and loporits



Any other intervention was from her to stop the ascians from ruining everything be rejoining more and more worlds, therefore thickening the ether in the people making them less able to use dynamis.


And no, being given the tools by someone dosnt mean that the person giving you the tools where the one who "passed the test" the person who uses the tools is the one who passes

The Ancients passed the test as best they were able and Venat murdered them before they had any chance to look into the truth behind it. Using the better parts of the nature (wisdom and self sacrifice) the Anicents prevented there doom, given that they had been explicitly told that was causing the Final Days has ceased to exist it was unfair to expect them to do much more in the time frame they were given. If anything the idea of this being a test is drivel, there's no test to be passed it's a death sentence from Hermes and one Venat Highjacks

[KuroMaboroshi]

The Ancients passed the test as best they were able and Venat murdered them before they had any chance to look into the truth behind it.[...]

The ancients "passed the test"? Did they? Maybe in so far that they did not go extinct, yes, but they sacrificed a decent chunk of their population to do so, and then proceeded to plan the genocide of whatever life would be born after the Final Days in order to bring back the souls that had been lost. They do exactly as the Ascians do millenia later when they kill off entire shards, and on top of that potentially millions of lifes on the Source each time they conduct a rejoining. Just like with Emet, their actions are understandable, but to someone of the opinion that life has intrinsic value, they are straying onto a path of evil because they refuse to accept their suffering and that a life lost is a life lost.
At that point, someone opposing them is justified if their reason to do so is protecting those lifes that the Ancients would willingly sacrifice.

Now, Venat makes the decision of sundering, thereby ending the life of the Ancients as they existed. She does the same to the Ancient civilisation that they planned to do to the new life after the Final Days, and it is okay to call her out on that. But if Venat is wrong in doing so, then so were the Ancients that would have fed more and more innocent lifes to Zodiark. At that point, Venat is not wrong and the Ancients are right, but both are wrong.

And just like the Ancient were wrong, but it is understandable what drove them to that, Venat's decision is also very understandable (again, understandable, not necessarily justified): She believes that the Ancients are headed for one of two ends - either they become the monsters that the Ascians eventually *do* end up becoming, causing more and more suffering to others because they can not accept their own suffering. They can not let go of lifes lost, someone no one would ever blame them for, and in turn inflict that pain on others. They are acting like spoiled children who have never emotionally matured enough to process their grief and move on.

The other option Venat must have considered at that point is that the Ancients are doomed to begin with, for unless they learn their lesson and emotionally mature, their civilisation is bound to end the same way all the self-ended civilisations that Meteion found were. We see this weakness explored at least two other time, first with Hermes who can not accept that live is not always fair, or beautiful, or with intrinstic purpose, and later on Ostrakon Deka-hepta, where we see another civilisation end due to a similar but instead apathy-based emotional immaturity.
So to Venat, the sundering was the lesser of three evil, though it perfectly fair to say that it was still an evil. But given those three outcomes, she chose the only one that she thought presented a way forward where eventually, happiness could be found.

I have no problem with someone calling Venat's actions evil, cause they are (though personally I believe given her options she made the right call - though absolute knowledge acquired in part through time travelling makes morale debates always tricky, cause that is not a luxury one has in reality outside of stories).
But I find this argument that somehow Venat is the source of all the bad and the Ancients might have fixed their situation ridiculous. The Ancients were already on a really dark path by the time the Final Days were over. They had already failed the test, not passed it.