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

[Rulakir]

I'm more disturbed by Ishikawa herself asking whether he was the first step for mankind or not, and I am free to reject that, just like their shallow Plenty parallel. (Ra-la take me, though.)

Same. This is why I had a kneejerk negative reaction to the end of the Omega chain. Coming off that statement from the Famitsu interview I thought she was further trying to justify Hermes' "test" rather than seeing it as casting shade on Venat.

The Plenty is disappointing, especially given there are signs in Amaurot that stagnation was becoming an issue for the Ancients so it seems this direction was always the intent. It's so unsatisfying.

He insists he sees Hermes as nothing more than a memory/soul graft, and he makes at least a couple of comments on how much the man he used to be would hate what he's doing, and all I can think is... would he really?

Honestly, I thought Amon was the true persona of Hermes. It was difficult for me to buy into the many compliments lavished upon his Ancient self. Once again, I have to wonder if Ishikawa played through Elpis and saw the character we were presented with, which doesn't seem to match the one inside her head. What's particularly troubling is he can theoretically reincarnate again and the world will have to deal with another iteration of him.

(That my reading of Hermes in this way might not match up to Author Intention doesn't necessarily bother me, but I completely understand it being a hard line for others. This is not the first time I've more or less gone through the "hey, author, you wrote a super compelling character here and totally didn't realize it, lmao" rodeo.)

Your read is a lot better than what we got. :P

Venat, I think, is magnitudes harder to understand why she might have felt "she had no other options." She provides mostly logistical "explanations" (because we don't want to introduce the idea of Venat's personal responsibility in these decisions) that aren't compelling, and therefore, you're (general you) inclined to scrutinize those on a logistical level, rather than Emet's psychological one - and they don't hold up. The more you scrutinize, the more ridiculous it all seems.

Copying and pasting this everywhere. >_> It seems the people who were able to accept and enjoy the story as is fully bought into the conclusions the writer(s) demanded you arrive at. Honestly, if Venat was intended to be an antagonist, then I'd have to re-evaluate Ishikawa's writing as some kind of genius to manage to portray her as the heroine of the saga and have as many people believe it as they do.

Venat is a bad person and the narrative is exasperating for trying to sell us on the opposite, but equally important: she's also not compelling. All of the emotion surrounding her is an attempt to get you to feel for her, pure uncritical reaction, without thinking about any actual depth or conflict to be had in her character in any meaningful way.

This probably explains why I see so many streamers seduced by the post-Elpis cutscene. What I can't figure out is how someone can like both Emet and Venat. The two seem mutually exclusive to me. I don't know how you ignore the fact that Venat is directly responsible for every bad thing that ever happened to Emet.