Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[Lurina]

I think if a show has a number of characters with different perspectives, archetypes and beliefs agree something is a problem, talk about as if it is a universal one, work to find a solution and then resolve it, then we can confidently conclude the narrative is telling us its a universal issue.

Okay, I was going to reply to the other parts of your post individually, but this really sums it up so well I might as well go for it directly.

Again, this goes back to what I was saying about you being kinda absolutist in your thinking. It feels as though you cannot or do not distinguish between a work asserting something aggressively in its thesis and pre-supposing it in its premises. A story can believe that something is "a universal issue" very strongly and still be making an honest argument so as it confines that declaration of universality to the thesis.

The way all people are depicted having responded to the pre-door Good Place is a pre-supposed universality, though a milder one than with the Plenty. This is a problem with the work's argument.

But the way that the characters interpret this reality and act based on it, however confidently they might do so, is just firmly asserting a thesis. It's the author putting forward that X=Y. (Again, the surrealism of/lack of absolute reality in comedy specifically can blur the lines a bit here, but this is generally true for fiction.) Likewise, showing the outcomes of their actions as positive is also part of the thesis so long as they don't assume anything universally true - "a lot of people felt much better now that the door was there" vs. "everyone felt better now that the door was there".

Or to bring it back to Endwalker, there's nothing wrong with the declarations the scions make in Ultima Thule, or even strictly speaking Venat's speech about the Sundering, even if what they assert is obviously what the writers believe and are trying to impart. The problem is only the pre-supposition, which has its roots in the absolutism.

I feel like if you can't understand this distinction, you're never going to be able to understand why people are so weird about Endwalker, or why a lot of works are controversial in general.

And again, when you draw this line, I feel like very few works - at least, very few interested in saying something substantial - break this rule. Like, (disregarding Lord of the Rings because it is an overtly religious story and doesn't really try to make arguments itself at all, and Crime and Punishment because I haven't seen it) you bring up Breaking Bad. Show me some ways you feel this breaks the fact>inference rule too, and I'll respond. Maybe that will give you a better idea of what I mean.

[AwesomeJr44]

Nobody on these forums has EVER actually said Emet-Selch and the Ascians Three were morally in the right for performing the Rejoinings

I said what I said, and I have no regrets.

#teamunsundered

[Cilia]

More than one person has said a complete Rejoining would be morally correct, on the grounds that by achieving this state the amount of death due to disease and old age would virtually disappear. I disagree and would point out that ignores the step where everyone still alive on the Source is used as a blood sacrifice.

The idea that without novel experiences all people would succumb to ennui can be neither proven nor disproven, since people are not immortal and every day offers new experiences. That said a significant amount of media proposes that people will succumb to ennui, even such things as SpongeBob Squarepants. Secondarily, the problem with that sort of existence isn't the endless pleasure itself, but that the lack of hardship leaves nothing to strive for, meaning existence in such a world is ultimately hollow - this idea is explored in Persona 5: Royal and in a kind of inverted way in the 1998 film Pleasantville.

The ideas presented in Endwalker are nothing new. I just figured the story expected us to understand them already.

[Rulakir]

The issue is the story expects the audience to believe that genocide is an acceptable, if not heroic, response to avoiding ennui, as if it's quite literally the worst of all possible fates above war, plague, etc.

The themes of EW were already a hard sell without that.

[Lurina]

More than one person has said a complete Rejoining would be morally correct, on the grounds that by achieving this state the amount of death due to disease and old age would virtually disappear. I disagree and would point out that ignores the step where everyone still alive on the Source is used as a blood sacrifice.

The idea that without novel experiences all people would succumb to ennui can be neither proven nor disproven, since people are not immortal and every day offers new experiences. That said a significant amount of media proposes that people will succumb to ennui, even such things as SpongeBob Squarepants. Secondarily, the problem with that sort of existence isn't the endless pleasure itself, but that the lack of hardship leaves nothing to strive for, meaning existence in such a world is ultimately hollow - this idea is explored in Persona 5: Royal and in a kind of inverted way in the 1998 film Pleasantville.

The ideas presented in Endwalker are nothing new. I just figured the story expected us to understand them already.

I haven't seen Pleasantville, but Persona 5: The Royal (specifically The Royal, assuming that's what you mean) is a very different to Endwalker. The narrative doesn't pre-suppose anything absolutely universal about human nature or even really assert that the villain is inherently making people's lives more unpleasant, but rather argues for anti-escapism for its own sake. It's very similar to Nozick's thought experiment, which Eara and I were talking about a few pages ago, and which I said I found insightful.

And I don't think the ideas in Endwalker are novel or even have a problem with it espousing them. As I've said repeatedly, the issue is not what it asserts relative to other works of fiction, but how it argues those things comparatively.

I don't mean to be rude, but it kind of feels like you skimmed a couple posts and then made a drive-by dismissal of what it seemed like my argument was at a glance. If what you mean by "figured the story expected us to understand" is "figured the story expected us to accept as true" then, well, that's exactly what I'm complaining about.

[EaraGrace]

And again, when you draw this line, I feel like very few works - at least, very few interested in saying something substantial - break this rule. Like, (disregarding Lord of the Rings because it is an overtly religious story and doesn't really try to make arguments itself at all, and Crime and Punishment because I haven't seen it) you bring up Breaking Bad. Show me some ways you feel this breaks the fact>inference rule too, and I'll respond. Maybe that will give you a better idea of what I mean.

Breaking bad is a very character driven show, yet at its core it holds there to be a universal constant. To quote Vince Gilligan:

If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished. I hate the idea of Idi Amin living in Saudi Arabia for the last 25 years of his life. That galls me to no end. I feel some sort of need for Biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that's become my philosophy as well. 'I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.'

This idea of cosmic karma is reflected in pretty much all the characters and their arc, including even the recent developments in Better Call Saul. Knowing how the characters end up, one sees this view of the world pretty much throughout the show, yet the show does nothing to justify this and simply holds that it is true and the viewers would agree. Bad people get bad ends, because they are bad. We don’t see this in the real world truthfully, horrific and cruel people pass away peacefully having lived happy lives while good people rot. Yet the story’s direction, it’s morals, it’s themes, and ultimately it’s conclusion, all rest on the understanding that the characters will get their comeuppance. They after all all do.

Now I’m going to be honest, I think you are completely utterly wrong in stating that only a few works breaks the rule. Nier pre-supposes that a life is without inherent meaning, and that without meaning or purpose life is inherently negative or painful. At no point does it justify this, it simply shows the reaction to it and the attempt to grapple with it. Persona 5 presupposes that people granted their every desire would wish for increasingly selfish things, and as a collective desire wish to be ruled. Novels like Crime and Punishment presuppose much about the nature of the world, what constitutes good, what traits humanity as a whole embodies, etc. Without these the premises for these stories would fall apart. That is where I believe your mistake is. The kinds of inferences Endwalker is criticized for are accepted in other media, baked into the very fabric of the stories themselves and yet no one questions them, until they feel so strongly about those assumptions that they can’t accept the premise.

I haven't seen Pleasantville, but Persona 5: The Royal is a very different to Endwalker. The narrative doesn't pre-suppose anything absolutely universal about human nature or even really assert that the villain is inherently making people's lives worse in an objective sense, but rather argues for anti-escapism for its own sake.

I very much don’t agree. The whole idea of the grail presupposes that people have a natural desire to be ruled, one that must be fought against. Hell even in that there’s the baked in assumption that being ruled truly is a bad thing. Compare the SMT series and it’s multiple endings in comparison to Persona 5, and it’s clear Persona 5 was made to assert the freedom ending is true. But is that really the case?

[Lurina]

I very much don’t agree. The whole idea of the grail presupposes that people have a natural desire to be ruled, one that must be fought against. Hell even in that there’s the baked in assumption that being ruled truly is a bad thing. Compare the SMT series and it’s multiple endings in comparison to Persona 5, and it’s clear Persona 5 was made to assert the freedom ending is true. But is that really the case?

I have too much dumb work to do today and can't reply to your post properly right away, but just to hedge this off, I was talking about the events of The Royal specifically, since Cilia went out of their way to use the subtitle. I'd still argue that the main plot of Persona 5 doesn't break the rule (making a generality isn't the same as declaring a universality, and it's not wrong to invoke human nature as a premise in that sense, especially if it's something pretty well-documented - obviously it would be silly if you couldn't use something like "humans generally get hungry", for example) but my train of logic would be different.

[EaraGrace]

I have too much dumb work to do today and can't reply to your post properly right away, but just to hedge this off, I was talking about the events of The Royal specifically, since Cilia went out of their way to use the subtitle. I'd still argue that the main plot of Persona 5 doesn't break the rule (making a generality isn't the same as declaring a universality, and it's not wrong to invoke human nature as a premise in that sense, especially if it's something pretty well-documented - obviously it would be silly if you couldn't use something like "humans generally get hungry", for example) but my train of logic would be different.

I’d actually say Royal is even worse with its “bad” vs true ending, but that can be argued another time. Hope your work isn’t too bad today!

[Lurina]

I’d actually say Royal is even worse with its “bad” vs true ending, but that can be argued another time. Hope your work isn’t too bad today!

Thank you!

[Lyth]

I don't really follow what your collective expectations for the writers are and what you believe that they are and aren't allowed to write about.

The circumstances around why the civilization of the Plenty ended are open to interpretation. Was it the ennui of the lives that they created for themselves? Was it the fact that eliminating interpersonal conflict comes at the cost of individuality and diversity? That the first external entity (Meteion) that their civilization encountered raised an existential crisis that their singular hivemind couldn't handle? Either way, the exact mechanism is left to you, the player, to interpret.

'Though worlds apart, these peoples shared a belief. The belief that they had tried their best. That they had tried to achieve their potential, with every step and success. In the course of which they learned the truth. That they would never be free of anger and sorrow, of fear and despair - as long as they yet lived.'

The only point that's really being made through these examples is that all things come to an end, no matter how 'well designed' they are. Which is not a controversial point at all. It just seems strange to me to try to argue that the Amaurotines are somehow the exception to this rule, where all these other more advanced civilizations have failed. It's not an indictment. And if our emotions - things like anger, fear, sorrow, and despair - are a part of us, then perhaps the solution is not to redesign the environment such that we never have to experience them. Perhaps the solution is to change ourselves, and learn to live with and adapt to them. It's almost like some defense mechanisms are just better choices than others. Again, not a radically controversial idea.

I don't think any of these objections that we're seeing are actually 'thematic', though. There'd be an equally loud outcry to anything suggesting that the Amaurotine society wasn't as 'perfect' as they pretended that it was.