Tales from the Dawn

[SentioftheHoukai]

Lahabread was a simp
Watcher was a simp
Hythlodaeus was a simp
Meteion is right, Simporzea/Simpeirys is doomed.


Jokes aside, it's a good enough chapter 1 story.
Side stories never had big reveals, it's made just to spicy our curiosity and provide some background that we may see at least mentioned during the MSQ.
I'm still curious about her crew but to be honest...right now i really want to know what they want to do with Pandaemonium. The end of Abyssos is crazy!

Perhaps her phrase about the timelimes being "mixed/interlaced" (in the end of Elpis) has more meaning than we thought.

It's not the act of simping in and of itself that is condemnable, it's who you simp FOR. Simp responsibly, folks.

Better yet, simp for Athena. Or don't, I'm fine having her to myself. ;3

[sidurgu-12]

Forgive me Lyth if I get this wrong but I think what they’re saying is it’s possible to be a kind person and still do harm. That the worlds that ended in Dead Ends could be motivated and lead by good people who tried their best and still led others to their doom. The Convocation were motivated by a good impulse, reduce the suffering of their people, but in so doing created a situation that further damns them in the future. Of course it’s not as simple as that given the nature of the third sacrifice, but still as Venat put it



Yet Meteions report showed that that path, if they could not be swayed from it, would lead to destruction. Thus the importance of learning from past mistakes and being willing to embrace the struggle that comes from change, because it would be hard. The post MSQ Ultima Thule quests revolve around this idea.

its like the saying goes "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

[SentioftheHoukai]

Listen, Lurina, if my personal belief in a hypothetical about human behavior that hasn't come to pass yet, but I think probably will, isn't enough to warrant the unilateral eradication of an entire race of people, then what is, huh?

The proper, moral answer would be NOTHING of course. Nothing truly justifies the act of killing, this is merely a facade we humans have crafted to give ourselves a convenient lie from which to hide behind when we want someone or something gone.

With all due respect, I’m going to say we should drop this direction for the topic right now. It is unhelpful and given the current real life connections it does nothing but raise the conversations temperature. Lets not do this.

I'm going to take a wild guess that I'm sure is probably correct but I think what Eara objects to being discussed is that of abortion. Which is a VERY touchy subject and should probably not be talked about here. A forum about a game let alone this section or this thread.

While I do concur with y'all that Veloran should perhaps have not brought that topic in particular up, and personally wish he did not, I yet still feel the following needs to be said. That subject matter is a hot potato for America in particular right now, however this forum has posters from the UK and other places in which it's not so tenuous an issue at the moment due to recent events. This isn't to diminish it's value, however despite its status as a hegemony the US nor the people who live in it's opinions aren't particularly more valued than those who live outside of it.

Why? Cleretic wanted us to "chew the fat" on the type of moral arguments implied here. This is one such associated argument. Why is it off limits? You and others here routinely go directly to very controversial lines of argumentation, and yet when it touches a little too closely to your personal beliefs, it's off limits? His line of inquiry is valid and fitting.

After all, as Lauront asserted here it hasn't stopped the forums before so why should it now? I believe one of the recent prevailing themes defending Venat's actions and views was to compare them to real-life women and their societal expectations, despite she herself nor the narrative suggesting no such thing was occurring either openly or behind the scenes. I believe in particular thoughts of "being a profound thinker who was ignored by those seeking to discredit her and misunderstood by society a la Hermes" and "being asked when she plans to retire and have and/or raise a few children, despite having no such expectations of herself" were but a few of the idealogues raised not more than two weeks ago in her defense. I find these assertations inaccurate and not so easily applied, however I possess no intention of attempting through either force or coercion to have others see such the way I myself see such.

Regardless, I feel Veloran's main motive in bringing it up is to assist in addressing the inherent hypocrisy in the stance Cleretic has chosen to take in regards to Venat and the actions she took. As well as the meaning behind them, and what they entail for those most affected by them.

Something I might be reading too much into is that between this story and the dialogue in-game of Endwalker and Pandemonium, there is the impression that the Ancients don't appear to have a lot of experience with strong emotions. They're almost like Star Trek Vulcans: they try to maintain and present a rational, logical front that focuses on careful reasoning and calm discussion, but when they start feeling emotions too strong to be reasoned away, they go all the way to the point of obsession and excess. Elpis-era Lahabrea even tried to rip out that emotional part of himself to maintain his rational side, which seems like overkill for a situation that would probably be solvable through talking it out and perhaps therapy (whether professional or just confiding in others). The archivist here feels fierce loyalty and common mindset to Venat, and appears to be unfamiliar with this feeling.

A lot of you give off the feeling of having never gone to therapy, and not possessing an inkling of what those kindly men and women are truly like and it shows. There is quite literally no simple and easy catch-all solution for trauma, and Lahabrea was in for all signs a rather traumatic and abusive relationship indeed. Not all people cope the same, some compartmentalize. Do you people make wild gesticulations on how a given person's interpersonal relations should be handled often, perchance?

Yes, we know you have chosen not to be convinced by anything, as you have stated yourself.

Except, when Lauront tries to agree to disagree he gets accused of lying or being disingenuous or trying to stir the pot and provoke yet more drama. What do YOU suggest he do, simply not air his views and opinions at all? There's only so far you can push a person afore they snap and stop caring about being consistently polite. People seem to have this awful habit of creating tumours, then complaining about them.

[SentioftheHoukai]

I'm not turbo-staunchly pro-Hydaelyn, but I do broadly think she made the right choices even if it wasn't an easy or unarguable one. I think some people want the game to come out and say that one of the sides involved was objectively right, just so it stops being complicated, and those people are always going to be disappointed in any further content about it, because the game just isn't going to do that. The closest we'll get is that we're in a world made by Hydaelyn's choice, and whether or not that choice was good or bad at the time, everyone around us generally benefitted from it.

Your previous and known deeds, and the things you've stated here on this forum quite clearly contradict this claim. How can you claim this, when all you've ever done is defend Hydaelyn's actions as just and never once rejected them or offered any further elaboration of any hang-ups you may or may not possess regarding them. Meanwhile, you are all too happy to rebuke and denigrate nearly anything Emet-Selch has ever said or done (something I actually respect about you, I enjoy people who do not bow and freely speak their minds), even before he became the sympathetic monster he was when we ended him on the First. You react with nothing but scorn regarding any Ascian who's name is not Fandaniel, and make no efforts at all to at least attempt to understand why they did what they did no matter how wrong it was. You refuse to be consistent.

I'm comparing her to a religious god because no other scale is particularly functional as a comparison.

I cannot claim to see the same relation myself, speaking from a personal point of view. For the sake of this debate, why can you not see Venat's actions for the atrocities they are (even if I'll admit her motives were agreeable, but will never agree her methods were the ONLY possible way forward.) if you can manage to denigrate Emet-Selch's actions and motives as naught more than the nefarious ambitions of a man who saw others as less and devolved into the leader of a dictatorial neo-fascist state? For once, I'm genuinely curious here. At the end of it all, despite the devolution of his mental state (which, if you'll recall was due entirely to Venat's non-interference policy regarding knowledge of the Final Days and a multi-millennia of repeated tragedic lifetimes, as he saw them) her goals and his, as well as each's actions taken can both be seen as equivalent from a certain point of view. What with all that has been revealed about the Ancients, the Final Days, the Sundering, and the Rejoinings.

The thing about saying 'her methods resulted in a lower average quality of life' isn't broadly true, though, because the main people who were put out of place by it were the Ancients. You might go and say 'but those are people so all people were hurt', but we have a funny piece of evidence there: not every spoken person in the sundered world would have been an Ancient, because that's what the Echo is a mark of.

Also, I do believe you as well are operating under the same narrative misinformation as some other here are. Nowhere are we given sufficient evidence to suggest those who live in the capital city of Amaurot are somehow of a separate species as the rest of Star. The Star in it's entirety was populated by these people, even if their ideals and morals and desires may well differ. As people tend to.

Also, this line of argument in particular hurts your claims of all people being equal. You are, in a way, arguing that the Ancients lives mattered less than the Sundered and are using the fact that they are inherently inequal life-forms to defend what Sundered you do not believe would benefit from the Rejoinings in the end. How exactly do you rationalize the idea of the Sundering somehow being beneficial for all involved in it, but reject the same logic on the Rejoinings when the basis of it remains roughly the same? Other than hiding behind, "Venat was like a Goddess, therefore I cannot comprehend her deeds" which if I'm gonna be honest? Sounds like a rather lazy way to defend that stance. Would you use a religion-facsimile based defense in any other manner, based on any other circumstances or is this a unique occurence?

It turns out she has the same personality flaw as Zenos. An all encompassing superiority complex. Although, it is expressed in a different way, they are the same.

Monsters by another name.

Somewhere down the line, in the time between afore Endwalker's existence and the time after it surfaced the qualities of "well-meaning, sympathetic person that nevertheless committed themselves to a heinous course of actions that we simply cannot abide and permit to pass due to moral constraints" ceased to be a rightly villainous quality. Morals can oft be flexible, but divest society of them entirely and we all devolve once more into mindless, selfish barbarism. It's perplexing to me how the "well-intentioned extremist" trope became warped and skewed in the time stated above. For while such a character can be made into a protagonist via point-of-view it doesn't really change the fact that they are a villainous one based morally upon the methods in question they chose to employ. I'm honestly confused as to when this became so debatable. Emet-Selch, for as much as we were made to sympathize with him and his people's plight was rightfully a villain and the narrative treated him as such. Now, in Pandaemonium we have Athena; another example of a villain who owns what they're doing, as does the plot. On what basis does Venat get this extraneous exclusion from the rule? Where does she go, thinking herself a good person? Where do WE? Is it conceit, arrogance? Our fondness for her, blinding us to a possibility we refuse to see? I don't understand it myself, and will continue to call it out as much as it proves necessary.

The central conceit of the Ancients is that they were special. They were not.

I don't think I can quite agree with this assertation. Certainly, some select examples may have thought themselves exceptional deities above the norm. They ARE human, after all or at least were presented as reasonable and familiar enough facsimile of such. However, we are presented no evidence to suggest they all think in such a manner and such an arrogant dismissal of their culture based on a select sample sized carefully cultivated speaks poorly of one's intent. These are the practices of tyrannical regimes with the intent of stamping out subcultures they perceived to be inferior, we shouldn't practice such lines of thought ourselves.

The story is from the point of view of a guy who clearly had a MASSIVE crush on her, of course it's going to fawn. I agree with TheSuperior, this doesn't even come close to balancing the scales for how fondly the game treats Emet-Selch.

See, I'm rather inclined to disagree on that front. As ever. Despite what some here may see as "simping" or being sympathetic to Emet-Selch in Shadowbringers, none of the Ascians were ever treated in any way resembling friendliness neither before nor after their tragic backstories were laid out on the table afore us. Not in the same vein as Hydaelyn/Venat has from the very beginning, despite what she turned out to be and what was revealed of her deeds and motives. Shadowbringers spent an entire expansion on "forced to party up and listen to the lamentations of a guy we really HATE but refuses to go away" and contains many poignant quotes that have been since discredited and emotional moments that have since been tarnished by the failings of the expansion that followed. Endwalker by contrast spent an entire expansion extolling the many virtues of a Goddess who failed to live up the lofty expectations she set for herself, revealed her to be openly representative of many moral and ideological stances we the player character and our Scion companions have opposed in the past. Some as recent as Shadowbringers itself, which is why I brought it up. If the characterizations of the Scions were consistent, then by their own words and quotes in Shadowbringers Thancred, Alphinaud, and Y'shtola in particular ought to have some pretty MAJOR beef with Hydaelyn for various but oft similar reasons, BUT THEY DO NOT. This is a major narrative failure, consistency is one of the most important literary virtues authors ought to adhere to. One may daresay, the MOST important.

No, this does not make Venat an objectively morally correct superbeing who we are not meant to disagree with; she was never depicted as such, and the game never treated her as such. But she is the one in the right if you're someone who believes in the right of all lives to live.

You're welcome to disagree, of course. That has ever been your right as a person. However, coming away from Endwalker after frequently reading betwixt the more obvious lines and peeking beneath the surface layer there did I find a shocking amount of rot.
And the sheer amount of shilling, however subtle for a woman who proved unworthy of it through her actions even if her motives were arguably pure is egregious.

Of course, this forum's never been great at grasping this part of the story.

And this is just unnecessary.

[SannaR]

Humans have more than once been proven to be contradictory throughout history. Also logic can have errors. People are never just fully emotional thinking nor fully logical thinking. I mean just look at people who are NIMBY about things they agree would be helpful to their area yet would 100% vote against said thing due to it being the place the helpful thing is being built or started in in their town or right outside it. The person could even admit to said thing being helpful to them or to someone they know. Just as long as it's not in their backyard/neighborhood.

I'm sure to a few here I'm a contradiction as I love both Emet-Selch and Venat but have more than once said I've disagreed with the Rejoinings and Venat going along with Herme's test. Which is the big issue for me. As how do you tell anyone people feel should have been informed whilst keeping Hermes out of the loop. Yes we tend to never cross the magical line of three examples of X and thus it's the start of a pattern (how those who came up with how three is the start is beyond me) but the few times we've been shown two examples of something being a certain way with the ancients they tend to be fairly similar. Course with now knowing that you can hide things from other convocation members you could try to keep it a secret. Yet secrets have a bad habit of coming out in the open and the more people who know said secret the higher of a chance that it gets out. Unless you use the spell the Forum used to not talk about their plan to abandon the planet.

[SannaR]

And I might have posted my most recent post in the wrong thread, but I feel it still works in this one.

[YianKutku]

A lot of you give off the feeling of having never gone to therapy, and not possessing an inkling of what those kindly men and women are truly like and it shows. There is quite literally no simple and easy catch-all solution for trauma, and Lahabrea was in for all signs a rather traumatic and abusive relationship indeed. Not all people cope the same, some compartmentalize. Do you people make wild gesticulations on how a given person's interpersonal relations should be handled often, perchance?

I have been to therapy, yes. I know that everyone handles everything differently, but that's part of what good therapy is supposed to discover. Lahabrea did not even try, and I was speculating that this is because there is no cultural or societal acceptance of the concept of getting help for one's mental problems (by which I mean "I am having a problem, and I wish to solve it", rather than "mental problems" as a chronic condition). This is also common in RL, and is just as commonly recognized as a bad thing that should be solved.

I also know how difficult it is for a person to actively choose to take therapy, which is why I added the part about having friends, or at least concerned people around that person, who care enough to either make the suggestion, or keep an eye out. Again, the Ancients appear to not have this behaviour.

And yes, we all talk about how a given person's interpersonal relationships should be handled, quite often. We do that all the time, especially to characters in media. I hardly consider any of this "wild gesticulations", so I am assuming you are exaggerating, and thus will dismiss that phrase as irrelevant.

[EaraGrace]

A lot of you give off the feeling of having never gone to therapy, and not possessing an inkling of what those kindly men and women are truly like and it shows.

I can’t even imagine a therapist that would honestly say ripping your soul in half in order to separate yourself from your emotions is a healthy coping mechanism. They may not offer judgement for doing so, but they sure as hell aren’t going to go “yeah that seems good.”

Calling it “compartmentalizing” is ludicrous. It’s avoidance through and through. Or was the metaphor of locking it deep within the earth along with your son (and nearly leading to his death ) not clear?

[Iscah]

I can’t even imagine a therapist that would honestly say ripping your soul in half in order to separate yourself from your emotions is a healthy coping mechanism. They may not offer judgement for doing so, but they sure as hell aren’t going to go “yeah that seems good.”

Lahabrea's situation is a bit too far up the "only could happen in fiction" side to be making any guesses what a psychologist could make of such an act.

And we still don't understand quite what idea Athena "poisoned" him with that required such a drastic response, but maybe it really was necessary. Maybe it's so dire that simply to seek help about how to deal with it afterwards would require explaining what happened and giving someone else the same terrible thoughts.

It's very speculative at this point but we just don't know enough.

[Lyth]

...

Partially. Your actions and achievements influence how others perceive you, but they doesn't define who you are. There's a lot that we don't know about the Plenty. It's unlikely that they started out as the society that Meteion encountered. They likely had their own journey, its ups and downs, and eventually it all ended, as things are wont to do. You can't say that they're the lesser for it, but you should still try to learn from their experiences and missteps. The same is true for Amaurot. You can appreciate something and yet find reasons why you wouldn't want to follow in those exact same footsteps. It's nothing to do with being 'intrinsically' good or bad. I wouldn't have thought it would require so much reiteration, personally. But thank you for taking the time to explain it to them, I was getting bored of all the repetition.