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

[Brinne]

For what it's worth, Emet's 'ideals' line made perfect sense to me in his last scene and I was extremely happy it was there after deeply mixed feelings regarding the rest of the sequence, which was otherwise felt like a full concession to Venat and the Sundered that left a pretty horrible taste in my mouth. No, Emet doesn't have any regrets about doing everything in his power to save the Ancients, and he shouldn't, because they deserved to be saved, deserved to be loved and remembered, and deserved have someone fighting to save them. If he had to choose between our world and the Ancient world, he would still choose the Ancient world, would always choose the Ancient world, and that is a completely valid choice. IIRC, my impression of the JP line felt less like he was implying that our victory was the 'correct' outcome and more simply the 'outcome' that happened, the way the coin wound up dropping - and he simply didn't intend to attempt to overturn it after you and he had settled it, was all. We've always known that Emet found what he's "had" to do to save the Ancients regrettable in many ways, and if he thought a less cruel option was viable would have been happy to take it - but that doesn't mean he regrets the principle of going above and beyond everything he could do for their sake, if that makes any sense.

So I personally really didn't feel any dissonance there, or connected it to the specific atrocities he committed in service to those ideals and goals - rather more like a "oh thank god, they didn't COMPLETELY forget why Shadowbringers's conflict was compelling and heartbreaking. Well, maybe they're trying to, but at least they threw in that piece of lip service to it, I guess."

(I will also point out that in Elpis, while, yes, Emet called his future self a megalomaniacal madman, what truly horrified and disgusted him was the notion that he gave up at the end. His tantrum wasn't actually about horror at the methods he resorted to - it was about him putting together the pieces of how ShB Emet in some ways lost, or at least created the possibility of his loss, because he'd simply gotten too tired and worn down from it all - and no! he would never give up trying to save his people, no matter what, no matter how much it hurt him, never!)

I've said it before, but I think in terms of his personality in a vacuum, just who he is and what kind of person he is in and of himself, Emet's characterization in EW was actually fantastic and endearing - it's easy for me to see the links between how he acts there and how he acts in ShB, after millennia of heartbreak and disillusionment. I even found it validating in that it was clear to me that Emet in ShB was written as a fundamentally deeply kind-hearted, but emotionally uncomfortable and insecure person in expression - he's practically flailing when he's attempting to connect with the Scions, and once you realize it was in many ways an actually earnest but deeply awkward attempt, yep, there's the cutesy EW Emet, easily, just in a far more dire context with far more dire stakes. I think not having the understanding that Emet is very much a fundamentally kind person who hates seeing others in pain robs you of a lot of appreciation for his Shadowbringers arc and everything that was happening with him there, so in some ways I liked how they hammered in that aspect of who he is. But I will also say I definitely noticed the hilarious sidestepping of Solus in the Garlemald section or where its history was concerned, and objectively, the choice to focus on Varis as the Big Nationalist Emperor Symbol is very funny and transparent considering that in-universe Varis led the Empire for all of, what, a year, as opposed to the Founding Father?

And, yes, Emet being used as a mouthpiece to boost up Venat and the EW narrative and themes. Everyone was a victim of that, of course, but with Emet it feels even more egregious because he was such an incredibly written character (and the Fan Favorite) otherwise.

[Lunaxia]

For what it's worth...

My overall impression is I think you're being very charitable towards Emet here.

"He shouldn't" have any regrets in particular is quite a powerful phrase to use, considering "everything in his power" included global genocide and mass destruction, and though I often see people casually handwave his litany of misdeeds and shelving them under something as romantic as "doing his duty" or "love for his people", I not only think it's a bit idealistic, but also a disservice to his character. Emet may have struggled with the weight of the responsibility he was carrying, and would have rather not had to do any of it, but he was not some hapless thrall at the mercy of his master's bidding either. The truth is Emet willfully did some terrible, awful things, caused immense amounts of suffering in those that deep down he did come to see as living beings in some approximation, and more than that, he frequently did not care.

I think not having the understanding that Emet is very much a fundamentally kind person who hates seeing others in pain

He would feel pangs of empathy or good will for those who became meaningful to him, for sure, but he was so full of arrogance, rage and despair that he discarded them the moment they disappointed him and used it as fuel and justification to commit more atrocities. His reactions to Garlemald nearly collapsing in on itself, to Black Rose, to our turning into a Sin Eater and potentially slaughtering innocent civilians are not those of a man tormented by remorse and sympathy. He knew Black Rose especially had the potential to kill thousands, and applauds Varis for it. That's not really what I'd call a "kind person who hates seeing others in pain", and both past and present Emet seem to agree, calling him "twisted" and a megalomaniac both.

I do get where you're coming from, but I'm countering that you can't separate what those "ideals" ultimately resulted in from the possibly noble origin whence they came, and for the same reasons you found it refreshing to refer back to, I found it a very strange declaration to make at that point in the story, after an interlude intent on showing Emet as a sort of hero. What is it you're trying to make me think about him here? Do you think what he did is so minor that the grand scope of his story somehow covers or excuses it? That's more or less what I was trying to make sense of in my discussion with Midare (hence the focus on the "madman" comment, which was more trying to read the writers' own intended perception of him than anything else.) I can't pin what they were going for, and subsequently I just found his overall portrayal a little disappointing after ShB, as nice as it was to see him. I really loved bitter, tormented, agonised Emet, hardened-but-not-really but so consumed by resentment he refused to allow himself to see it - he was such a brilliant character, I didn't find the hard fallback on what a terrific guy he once was to be as delightful as everyone else did, and if that was their attempt to sort of... acknowledge what had gone on, it was too little too late at that point, and felt a bit awkward.

For those acquainted with it, the "Through His Eyes" sidestory was the Emet I'd always hoped to see. Cantankerous, serious, a little distant and self-involved, even self-deprecating - facets of his true self that appeared through the cracks in the facade as ShB progressed - but with that begrudging undercurrent of duty and compassion that makes his character so endearing. He was fun in EW, but it felt very on the nose and more of a caricature of what he once was - they tried too hard to make him out as a good guy at times, and combined with their own apparent confusion on where we stand with him and what he did, that lost a lot of what made him appealing, at least in my mind.

[Brinne]

snip

No, you can't separate Emet's ideals from what he did, but if we're referring back to his character as it existed in the context of Shadowbringers positively - Shadowbringers also didn't portrayal Emet as exceptional in that regard, but rather, roughly morally equivalent to everyone else put in a position of having to make that "x person versus y person" decision. The three major non-Scion figures who carried the themes, featured in Shadowbringers, were Ardbert, Emet, and the Exarch, and they were all parallels who all made roughly the same choice in resorting to destruction and death or erasure for others to save the people they "chose" in a position where they saw no alternative to having to make that "choice," right or wrong.

The discussion about the Exarch's decisions in regards to the future timeline tend to get a bit contentious regarding even the premises, but Ardbert at minimum is a person who made the same choice Emet did - knowing the stakes, killing and destroying others for a chance to save the world and the people he felt responsible for and loved, and the story also notably has Ardbert's arc revolve around, and come to terms with, that he should NOT feel self-loathing for or regret the feeling behind those actions. He sees that, indeed, the people on the First he was willing to kill and torment others to help, did desperately wish to live - he wasn't wrong. Ardbert's "mistake," like Emet, is not framed around his "atrocities," but his conviction that he had to carry his weight alone, the suffering that came from an obsession with one's responsibility to save those depending on him, which drove him into place where he was willing to do terrible things - even almost sadistically, at points.

What Shadowbringers has to say about what "twisted" people like Ardbert and Emet does not revolve around commentary around the atrocities or the moral obligation or necessity to condemn their (terrible) actions, but rather examining the emotional context from which otherwise remarkably "good" people like them end up being driven to that twisted state. And what the writing points to as the context that caused this is the solitude, the loneliness, the burden. Ardbert explicitly remarks upon this in the Ladder scene, going as far as to say that what he himself has been through - which was enough to push him to being willing to end another world - paled in comparison to Emet's circumstances.

I don't think you could argue the story is suggesting that Ardbert's actions in HW are a reflection of something just morally wrong about him from the get-go, that the takeaway about Ardbert is that he didn't care about the harm he was doing, that Ardbert as someone who also engaged on a campaign of atrocities and mass murder is not someone who deserved our comradery and compassion once we were on the same page and shared the same goal of saving as many people as we still could. It never pressed Ardbert to fully renounce his HW decisions or his reasons for doing so - it actually supported him in that regard, putting the actions they resulted in aside. And Ardbert never stopped, was never convinced to stop, would have never stopped - until a viable alternative appeared in the form of Minfilia that would help him achieve his goals and "ideals" of saving the First. We still do not condemn him, even though we did try to stop him - the narrative instead recognizes his arc and resolves it by highlighting him as a person who desperately needed help to find a non-destructive means to achieve his true goal of saving people. In that way, Ardbert's presence and arc reinforces what Shadowbringers is broadly also trying to do with Emet-Selch - Ardbert is literally "the same as you." Just as Alisaie remarks once she understands Emet that, in his position, she would likely do the same thing he did, even fully knowing it's probably futile. As Urianger and Alphinaud both try to appeal to Emet on the grounds of "we are the same as you, we want the same thing, we are driven by the same motives." The same way Shadowbringers does indeed, long before Endwalker, textually refers to Emet, in the aftermath, more than once, as a hero.

The difference, I think, is if your understanding of Emet's Shadowbringers positioning in terms of the theme frames him as "a tragic villain," someone who had sympathetic origins but has nonetheless "fallen" and "gone too far" who must subsequently be put down, so to speak, or if it was that - whether you agree or not - it frames him as "the same as you" and "a fellow hero." Or to put it another way, whether you see the burden of Shadowbringers's themes as being moreso growth on Emet's part ("he has to realize he's wrong!") versus our part ("we have to realize our opposition are also people, not so different from us!") With the former in both cases, it's probably natural to be confused when Endwalker echoes that positioning at the end after EW otherwise makes hay about how necessary and "for the greater good" it was that Emet's people be killed; with the latter, yes, it is, again, a "thank god Shadowbringers isn't ENTIRELY forgotten" callback.

So I see Emet's "I have no regrets about loving the Ancients, choosing them, and trying to save them over your world" as not really being any different from Ardbert finally snapping out of his funk in Shadowbringers by declaring "our people want to live, I don't regret wanting to save them." I don't really conflate Ardbert's triumph in that regard with him seeing nothing to regret about being, say, fundamentally largely responsible for the death of Ga-Bu's family or tormenting him into tempered madness.

For what it's worth, when I emphasize Emet's kindness, it's not to put forth him as a soft figure that we should all feel sorry for, or anything like that, per se. It's more that it's basically necessary to understand his emotional logic and what's primarily driving his actions throughout Shadowbringers, and what actually makes him capable of spewing such bile as people quote and taking such horrific action. Emet is someone constantly at war with himself and self-sabotaging throughout Shadowbringers, arguing one position in one scene, and then arguing something contrary in the next. It's incredibly well-written, and fascinating, but I think understanding it necessitates seeing how much of his attempts to connect with the WoL and Scions was in earnest, and then immediately beating himself up and lashing out from self-reproach for daring to think or hope an alternative way, a better way, than the Ascians' cruel methods were possible. It's not, as I read it, a matter of his "being willing to discard people once they disappointed him/out of his arrogance" from the perspective of understanding what was driving him. (the result, of course, is the same for his victims, who have every right to hate him regardless.) It's a matter of him being unable to discard, to his own frustration, that fundamental instinct of kindness towards those he sees, even after millennia of having every reason to shut off that instinct, and with the pressure of every Ancient's life on the line.

Emet's Shadowbringers arc only happened because his instinctive kindness and empathy as an individual person was in a cagematch to his devotion and duty to his people, and we saw the depth of the devotion and duty - so the kindness has to be a match for it to cause the destructive spiral he crashed down. As Ishikawa said, his downfall was ultimately caused by his kindness. When Emet lashes out and calls us not really people, not alive, no big deal to kill, that is NOT his "ideals" as we and the narrative are talking about them - those are his coping mechanisms because he's too kind to keep pressing on with what he "has" to do without lying to himself.

Essentially, Emet in Shadowbringers - consistent with his deep kindness but also awkwardness and difficulty dealing with it in EW - is going through a constant cycle of: too kind and empathetic to not see the pain and suffering others are experiencing and feel for them, but then too kind and empathetic to be able to bear being the one responsible for it, so he lies to himself and tries to emotionally partition himself into the role of sadistic villain instead. But then once again too kind and empathetic to not see past those lies and how others around him are suffering and in pain, but then too kind and empathetic to bear--etc, etc, etc, until he explodes. And the EW personality is consistent with that - except, of course, in EW the stakes are much lighter, and unlike ShB (and consistent with where ShB points as the true issue here), he wasn't "alone" - he had Hythlodaeus and Azem there to balance him out and help him navigate that turmoil and difficulty with coming to terms with himself, down to similar mannerisms. Compare Emet's unease with Hermes's suffering at the beginning of their interview, leading to him giving in and breaking policy to allow the WoL to attend in order to comfort him - with Emet's unease at seeing the party's distress over Y'shtola, leading to him giving in and helping them save her.

[Lunaxia]

No, you can't separate Emet's ideals from what he did, but if we're referring back to his character as it existed in the context of Shadowbringers positively - Shadowbringers also didn't portrayal Emet as exceptional in that regard, but rather, roughly morally equivalent to everyone else put in a position of having to make that "x person versus y person" decision. The three major non-Scion figures who carried the themes, featured in Shadowbringers, were Ardbert, Emet, and the Exarch, and they were all parallels who all made roughly the same choice in resorting to destruction and death or erasure for others to save the people they "chose" in a position where they saw no alternative to having to make that "choice," right or wrong.

Yet that's what I disagree with. I understand the parallels they were trying to create between the characters, but the message I took away from that was "everyone is a hero in their own story", even when it's flagrantly clear they've more than lost sight of who they are or what once drove them - not that Emet was merely the most unfortunate of the lot and that we would have acted the same way were we in that position. I can get behind the notion that we would likewise do what we could for those we loved, but I don't readily believe that the WoL, the Scions and what have you would all be faced with an inevitable slow decline into ruthless destruction and tyranny when confronted with the same scenario. Now, I will admit it has been some time since I familiarised myself with Ardbert's story prior to the First, so correct me if I'm wrong, but was he not something of a cornered animal at that point in terms of what he had to do? I don't recall him being "sadistic" but desperate and flailing, and I don't know if you can comfortably compare antagonising beastmen to usher in a calamity under the manipulation of a third party to save a world from complete erasure to the systematic, flat out mass genocide the Ascians employed to rejoin a world long since gone with no real guarantee of the end result. The element of a "yours or mine" choice is similar to be sure, but circumstances and semantics matter here. If we do follow the train of thought the writers intended to equate these figures under the banner of "fighting to save those they love", it's a bit of a whitewash. Understanding that Emet's suffering led him to those actions is one thing, but excusing genuinely sadistic terrorism towards the Source and its shards with his turmoil and "well, we'd probably do the same thing" is... odd, and it isn't what I would I call a hero. Somewhere, the wheels fell off quite spectacularly, and though I don't mind the game referring to him as such from the point of view of the Ancients and the Ascians, I think a little more attention needs to be called to what it brought about, or at least examined more - which they did pay some lipservice to with the Omega quest, to be fair, with it pointing out that Omega saw the impact of what Emet wrought and questions whether or not this affects what you believe. But I can't help but think they're too afraid to, so we stick to rhetoric that any poor, lonely hero would follow such a road under the circumstances. Truthfully, I struggle to believe the Ancients themselves as they were portrayed would be comfortable with what they did regardless of if it meant their survival - a conflict I had hoped we might come up against in some form, but alas.

The difference, I think, is if your understanding of Emet's Shadowbringers positioning...

For me, it comes down to that I simply reject removing too much of Emet's agency in the choices he makes and what that means for his character by saying it was inevitable because of what he had been through, or citing that he had once been a good person. In fact, the shows of kindness, as you call it, should only make him more accountable - he still has the capacity for empathy and benevolence, but actively chooses to pursue denial and inflict suffering to achieve his vision. Were he apathetic, disdainful and disconnected from the get-go, I might accept this interpretation a little more readily, but in my eyes it makes his behaviour less excusable.

For what it's worth, when I emphasize Emet's kindness... fundamental instinct of kindness towards those he sees, even after millennia of having every reason to shut off that instinct, and with the pressure of every Ancient's life on the line.

(The fundamental kindness of slaughtering a chunk of the population with a lethal bioweapon?) By arrogance, I mean his racial arrogance that the Ancients are inherently superior and more deserving of life. I think that drove his behaviour far more than many people like to think. He is cordial to those that may potentially be of importance to his goals, but once his original view is reaffirmed it's quickly thrown out the window. "Kindness" in general is just not the word I would use in such a scenario (remarking on Ishikawa's use of the term, as well) and implies something I don't think it should - retaining some capacity for humanity/ empathy would be better, perhaps? You can psychoanalyse his behaviour endlessly to make him all the more tragic (and I'm not saying it's baseless), but a deal of his anger comes from daring to believe these sub-humans were worthy of consideration, and whether or not he beats himself up for it, the "trial" and subsequent "punishment" he sets upon them - declaring them unworthy of life for failing to meet his standards - is messed up regardless. Was Hermes not lambasted for doing something similar?

Emet's Shadowbringers arc only happened because his instinctive kindness and empathy as an individual person was in a cagematch to his devotion and duty to his people, and we saw the depth of the devotion and duty - so the kindness has to be a match for it to cause the destructive spiral he crashed down. As Ishikawa said, his downfall was ultimately caused by his kindness. When Emet lashes out and calls us not really people, not alive, no big deal to kill, that is NOT his "ideals" as we and the narrative are talking about them - those are his coping mechanisms because he's too kind to keep pressing on with what he "has" to do without lying to himself.

I'm going to disagree here and say we threw a spanner in his works through the luck of our being Azem - an Ancient, someone he loved, someone who mattered amidst the rabble. I think we invoked some small semblance of the person he once was, and we saw a more vulnerable and human side of Emet than has likely been revealed for a while, but when we did not measure up, we became expendable just like all the rest. He was capable of kindness, but the habit of attributing this to him as a defining personality trait after the flashbacks we see of him prior to ShB - and what we see once we disappoint him - seems too optimistic. Emet, deep down, knew the futility of what he was trying to do, he had lost the will go on, the years of isolation and disappointment wearing on him, and he wanted out, and it was more this that I think drove his inner turmoil - the desire to relinquish his duty but being so tired, in every sense of the word - more than reasons to do with empathy towards mortals or his better nature.

Essentially, Emet in Shadowbringers - consistent with his deep kindness ... leading to him giving in and helping them save her.

I don't want to sound like a stuck record, but gestures vaguely to Garlemald and the entirety of Stormblood. It's very tempting to push Emet into the realm of this self-destructive, tormented soul, but his kindness did not stop him waging war and staging conquests, rebellions, instigating war crimes, permitting Dalamud's fall, manipulating a ravaged and beaten down nation into doing his bidding and making himself not only leader but an unquestioned, deity-like figure the Garleans were expected to exclusively pay reverence to as you would a divinity - and that's what we know he did. He extends his hand to us to better achieve his desired ends, he deigns to save Y'shtola to better cement our trust in him, he places some hope in us because we were once Azem and show some promise of release from what he's been stuck with, and while his feelings and ability to sympathise certainly coloured his decisions - I won't deny his condolences were genuine in that part of the story - by that point there was little in the way of kindness about it and the majority of it was self-serving in some way or another, and he didn't trouble himself to withdraw it the moment he became disillusioned.

So, yeah. To summarise the best I can, while I can understand the premise that the writers were trying to make Emet out as a tragic hero and a cautionary tale should such misfortune happen to us, I'm also not letting go of the fact that we spent an entire zone in the remnants of an empire famed for hideous racism, imperial conquest and human experimentation that he created and nominated himself the supreme ruler of, and that they could scarcely bring themselves to remind us of that fact while, as you pointed out, simultaneously making Varis its figurehead despite his short-lived tenure as Emperor in his stead. There is a reason for that, and I believe it has to do with the fact it makes that original message pretty tenuous when the blatant reality of what it actually means is put right in front of you.

[Brinne]

snip

Mm, yeah, I think it might be worth refreshing on HW Ardbert and Crew’s antics, up to and including his sinister smirks and jeers as he plots murder and destruction, and his friends laughing and gloating over nearly murdering Alisaie in her brother’s face.

It also seems weird to me to be a little dismissive of the deliberate suffering they were causing, and that he was more of a “cornered animal” in his situation compared to the surviving Ancients upon seeing the destruction and mutilation (as they understood it) of the remains of their world. “Antagonizing beastmen” is a strange turn of phrase to lighten his actions compared to the rhetoric used for the Ascians – frankly, Ardbert and Crew’s actions actually mirror Emet and the Ascians’ disturbingly well – simply on a smaller scale and on a smaller timeframe, for now, due to happenstance. To put it bluntly, Ardbert was deliberately targeting, killing, and manipulating oppressed, vulnerable populations with the aim of driving them into such despair and desperation that they would fall into extremism and self-destruction that it would lead to a Calamity (“genocide,” in non-sanitized terms) and widespread, untold death across the Source. They did this “systemically,” too, going from tribe to tribe. If Ardbert and crew were “under the manipulation of a third party,” then so too were the Ascians, as we now know they were unwittingly operating under Venat’s roadmap of the timeline leading to the WoL the entire time.

A point is also made that Ardbert and crew actually do know the full stakes of what they’re doing. They’re not being “misled” by the Ascians in terms of what they’re fighting for – Alisaie and Urianger have a whole exchange about how they’re fully aware that causing the Rejoining will still result in the death of their world, just that some form of its existence will continue in the Rejoined Source, rather than the complete oblivion by the Flood of Light, so it’s easy to argue in a lot of ways his goal was less justifiable than Emet’s. Emet, though the hope was faint, was fighting with the hope to concretely save people and allow them to live the lives that were stolen from them. Ardbert was way beyond that point, fighting for something even more vague and ill-defined on behalf of his beloved people. And once again, you never actually convince him to stop, or that he was wrong. The culmination of his arc is him coming to the conclusion that he wasn’t wrong, at least in his driving feeling of fighting to save the people of the First. In the scope of Heavensward, he only relents when figures from our side concede and go "you're right, your world needs to be saved, and we're going to help you do it so that you don't need to destroy ours."

I'm going to disagree here and say we threw a spanner in his works through the luck of our being Azem - an Ancient, someone he loved, someone who mattered amidst the rabble. I think we invoked some small semblance of the person he once was, and we saw a more vulnerable and human side of Emet than has likely been revealed for a while, but when we did not measure up, we became expendable just like all the rest. He was capable of kindness, but the habit of attributing this to him as a defining personality trait after the flashbacks we see of him prior to ShB - and what we see once we disappoint him - seems too optimistic. Emet, deep down, knew the futility of what he was trying to do, he had lost the will go on, the years of isolation and disappointment wearing on him, and he wanted out, and it was more this that I think drove his inner turmoil - the desire to relinquish his duty but being so tired, in every sense of the word - more than reasons to do with empathy towards mortals or his better nature.

This, at least, isn’t really accurate – the narrative suggests, and Yoshida explicates in interviews, that Emet has tried again and again, with “pure/earnest intent,” to believe in Sundered humanity and see them as worthy – but he was betrayed by them as a result so many times that he eventually simply gave up. We are not his first attempt to extend a chance to the Sundered. Us being Azem is, rather, cited as the what moved him to try one last time after he’d already been thoroughly burnt out, against his better instincts.

One thing I’d like to clarify is that when I refer to “kindness” in Emet’s case in particular, I don’t intend it as an evaluation of his character as such – more like an internal impulse that spurs reaction on his part due to feeling. The fact that he feels these instincts of kindness are what spurs his manic behavior that probably in many ways results in more cruelty than there would have otherwise, because it creates that element of overcompensation, of trying to prove something to himself, to resolve his internal dissonance. I’m not trying to argue that he’s a good person because he’s kind, rather, pointing that that specific aspect of his personality was always a key factor in what led him to do what he did in the way that he did it, for better and for worse, for himself and for others.

In that way, Endwalker highlighting “kindness” as his key trait as a person, divorced from his circumstances and duties and trauma, felt perfectly consistent to me and was already something I as a reader had picked up on from Shadowbringers alone. I was happy to see it reinforced, as the core factor behind much of his strange behavior, as opposed to something more straightforwardly connected to malice such as “arrogance.” Even back in Shadowbringers, this reading was far more compelling and interesting to me. “Kindness” in and of itself does not necessarily lead to a more benevolent outcome; when “kindness” is an irrepressible impulse in someone put in a position where they see no alternative to killing and tormenting others, it actually can and often does lead to incredibly ugly places. This is why a support network is so important, and Emet going so badly off the rails is attributed to being his isolation from his loved ones more than anything else.

I think there’s sort of a fundamental difference here in the disbelief of “there’s simply no way you could describe anyone who took the actions Emet did as ‘kind’” – whereas my reading has always been more “yes, I can see how an excess of kindness can actually be a destructive trait when certain types of extreme pressure are applied, and it’s really interesting character work.” I also think it’s totally fair to not really buy into Shadowbringers’s thesis – it’s just that I would point out that then, however, you can’t really indicate that as a gap between Shadowbringers as a good narrative and Endwalker as a failure of that narrative, at least in this particular case. (I think Endwalker was a failure of Shadowbringers’s narrative in a million other ways, of course.)

It’s just that Shadowbringers’s thesis has never been “regardless of how sympathetic his position, Emet-Selch is Wrong” and has always explicitly been “if you wind up in Emet-Selch’s position, you WILL end up like him, so don’t end up in his position (of being alone.)” I’m not sure there’s a lot to debate with a basic disagreement of “no, I don’t buy that premise,” although I think the added context of how long Emet-Selch has been doing this, how often it’s been implied/stated he’s earnestly tried to reach out to the Sundered and been betrayed, and therefore how hard his soul has been ground down for so long helps as a factor in understanding it. Ardbert may not have reached the sheer levels of depravity or numbers of victims Emet-Selch did, but Ardbert also had less time grinding away at his personal mission of saving the First – after millennia at it in isolation, well, who knows what Ardbert might have become, had we (or rather, Urianger) not gone out of our way to give him another way out?

[Lunaxia]

It also seems weird to me to ...

Some of the First still survived in some measure, but they were against the clock and rapidly running out of time before it fell completely, is what I meant by that - they were trying to wildly course-correct a mistake they had made before they lost everything, which I think bears remembering. In terms of the beastmen, as I said, I don't think I've properly played through their arc in HW since it was released and vaguely recalled the Gnath and battling Ravana vis a vis something to do with hastening summonings (I did look up their scenes, but the vast majority of clips I could find focused on the confrontation prior to their being sent back to the First by Minfilia.) If they were going through the tribes and slaughtering the beastmen as you say, and I have little reason to doubt you, then I'm not especially inclined to defend them for it, and if they were "smirking and jeering" over the said killing of innocents, then that's just as bizarre a character divergence to me as it is proclaiming the supportive progenitor of a would-be bio-terrorist is actually a kind but tormented man, deep, deep (deep) down. But your primary defence of the Emet and the Ascians here is resting a great deal on whataboutism concerning Ardbert and co., when I've never really thought much of the characters or their writing, nor been especially sympathetic towards Ardbert himself, and I don't find the comparisons carry. Equating Venat especially "permitting", if you like, the Ascians to go about their schemes because it works for her with Elidibus telling Ardbert the sole way to save some semblance of his home is to wreak havoc on the Source for instance just doesn't work in my eyes - ShB even shows Emet paying heed to the idea there may be other ways to bring about what they desire, but ultimately he doesn't find them worth exploring because we disappoint him. You're trying to impress upon me the seriousness of what Ardbert did and call his reasoning "vague and ill-defined", while in the same breath telling me that Emet, who has done far, far more, on a much more calculated, terrible scale, arguably had more of a right to do that on the very shaky premise that everything would have gone back to normal, the Rejoining would have been wholly succesful, the Ancients would have even been resurrected, and that they were not a lost cause at that point or that their resurrection was even viable - we merely take Emet's word alone on this, who is so hell-bent on miring himself in denial and self-deception he is an incredibly unreliable narrator.

This, at least, isn’t really accurate – the narrative suggests, and Yoshida explicates in interviews, that Emet has tried again and again, with “pure/earnest intent,” to believe in Sundered humanity...

I think Emet approached the Sundered with the intention to be open to the possibility of their proving him wrong, but again, you're over-romanticising him and his story when it conflicts with what we've actually seen. Emet, at heart, from the very beginning, has looked down upon the Sundered, and views them as weak, feeble and foolish, and though he claims we are free to prove otherwise, because of his views, the Sundered were effectively doomed to fail from day one. His standards are impossible to meet, for they cannot overcome such perceived weaknesses as the limits of their mortality (which we see with his son) nor the constitution of their bodies or souls (the WoL.) It isn't a case of Emet just wanting to believe, but the Sundered cruelly betrayed him over and over; Emet is so filled with grief and contempt that he cannot and will not accept the Sundered regardless of their merits or flaws, as they will always be a pale reflection of the "perfection" that once was. He has burned himself out, because he cannot accept the way things are. It will never be good enough for him, and he ultimately come to terms with this and admits it himself.

The fact that he feels these instincts of kindness are what spurs his manic behavior that probably in many ways results in more cruelty [...]

That's more or less what I was explaining earlier, wherein Emet channels his frustration over his disappointment into justifying and perpetuating more misdeeds, but I take a decidedly less favourable slant on it, haha.

In that way, Endwalker highlighting “kindness” as his key trait as a person, divorced from his circumstances and duties and trauma, felt perfectly consistent to me and was already something I as a reader had picked up on from Shadowbringers alone.

I've never taken issue with the idea of pointing out Emet's compassionate streak in Endwalker, what bothered me was the way they batter you to death with it, particularly in the blatantly expositional chat with Hythlodaeus, while conveniently skating over all the things he did that may make some people stop and go, "hey, wait a minute -". The writing lost a lot of nuance there in their rush to assure us what a good, self-effacing guy he was, to the point it became near enough comedic fodder. I did enjoy his exchanges with Hermes though, and his attempts to connect with him despite struggling to understand where he was coming from. I think they illustrated his better side quite well without the need for Metetion to tumble in in her genki girl way and guilt-trip him into it.

I think there’s sort of a fundamental difference here in the disbelief of “there’s simply no way you could describe anyone who took the actions Emet did as ‘kind’” – whereas my reading has always been more “yes, I can see how an excess of kindness can actually be a destructive trait when certain types of extreme pressure are applied, and it’s really interesting character work.” I also think it’s totally fair to not really buy into Shadowbringers’s thesis – it’s just that I would point out that then, however, you can’t really indicate that as a gap between Shadowbringers as a good narrative and Endwalker as a failure of that narrative, at least in this particular case. (I think Endwalker was a failure of Shadowbringers’s narrative in a million other ways, of course.)

I can agree with that, but I still resolutely take issue with the word "kindness" and applying it to him in the way that it has been - but if we're more or less talking about the same thing in terms of "Emet's ability to feel slowly destroyed him" then we're on the same page. His inability to assume that type of disconnect that Elidibus and Lahabrea appeared to take took its toll, at times made him act more maliciously (which I don't excuse), and also made him suffer (which I can sympathise with.)

The way I see it is, ShB landed with its writing, an interesting cast, its goal in creating a sympathetic, complex antagonist, and the overarching message of dispelling concepts of black and white morality and what is "good" vs "evil" , and I can applaud what it did well while not agreeing with the antagonist's actions or the subtle implication that his turmoil made them excusable. EW, on the other hand, failed in just about every metric including writing, characterisation, tying together the plot coherently and what it was trying to convey. I'm not saying it was a black void of enjoyment - it certainly had good moments - but as ShB had niggles during an altogether enjoyable experience, EW had some highlights during what was overall a disappointment.

After millennia at it in isolation, well, who knows what Ardbert might have become, had we (or rather, Urianger) not gone out of our way to give him another way out?

There's an element of that that's true, and I said as such a few pages back. We can never really know - but in that same vein, I don't appreciate the story supposing that we do.

[Brinne]

What I'm getting at with the Ardbert comparisons is not a personal attempt on my part to defend either Ardbert or Emet, to clarify - it's my attempt to demonstrate that FFXIV's writing (and Ishikawa's especially, as she's responsible for both the Warriors of Darkness arc in Heavensward and, obviously, all of Shadowbringers) has been consistent in regards to the capacity for twisted villainy and cruelty from the origins of what it portrays as not just kind, good people - but exceptionally kind, good people, with, again, the thesis that this IS the inevitable road a "hero" will wind up on under certain conditions (solitude, the agony and desperation of feeling solely responsible for protecting those around them.) In terms of Ishikawa's writing, this is also very consistent with how she approached the tenor of the Dark Knight quests. That the Warrior of Light themselves, out of their life of goodwill and having to inflict violence on some in defense of others, inevitably nurtures a subconscious darker half full of bile, hate, and resentment, and that can only be partially-mollified or at least kept in check by having a strong support network around them.

It's an Ishikawa thing not remotely specific to Endwalker, but it's been almost shockingly consistent in terms of how she approached the topic. For my part, I would say I fall on the side of appreciating it more than disliking it, and it overlaps with some of my own pet thematic fixations (which mostly has to do with rejecting Othering and protagonist-isms - I personally prioritize the sentiment of "the Ancients as a people deserved to be loved, validated and saved, and acknowledged as being so rather than discarded as necessary fodder for the 'greater good', even if their survival was sadly not the outcome as things turned out" over "Emet needs to be condemned for his methods" for that reason), but "the burden of solo heroism without sufficient emotional support from others will inevitably drive a person into a pile of twisted, self-loathing destruction" also isn't specifically something I feel strongly for, either. But it's pretty clear what the text has been getting at, and not very subtly, on a variety of fronts on the subject.

I think Emet approached the Sundered with the intention to be open to the possibility of their proving him wrong, but again, you're over-romanticising him and his story when it conflicts with what we've actually seen. Emet, at heart, from the very beginning, has looked down upon the Sundered, and views them as weak, feeble and foolish, and though he claims we are free to prove otherwise, because of his views, the Sundered were effectively doomed to fail from day one. His standards are impossible to meet, for they cannot overcome such perceived weaknesses as the limits of their mortality (which we see with his son) nor the constitution of their bodies or souls (the WoL.) It isn't a case of Emet just wanting to believe, but the Sundered cruelly betrayed him over and over; Emet is so filled with grief and contempt that he cannot and will not accept the Sundered regardless of their merits or flaws, as they will always be a pale reflection of the "perfection" that once was. He has burned himself out, because he cannot accept the way things are. It will never be good enough for him, and he ultimately come to terms with this and admits it himself.

I think your reading of this is a totally valid interpretation based on the text itself, but it's also explicit it's not the writer intent or interpretation at this point. I think it's very fair to point out the ways Emet trying to position himself (to himself, even) as more reasonable than he was really prepared to be due to a variety of his own shortcomings (and he's such a complex and nuanced character that it's GOOD that there are so many layers and cracks you can reach into to show the myriad of ways and levels he continued to betray himself), but since you mentioned in your posts not being sure where the writers were coming from in regards to his character and its treatment in Endwalker, their thought has always been, yeah, his attempts were in good faith and in earnest, even in regards to the unseen non-Azem figures he's reached out to throughout history. This isn't an Endwalker-exclusive pivot. Yoshida was giving the quotes about Emet's "pure-hearted" intentions all along back during the Shadowbringers era. As mentioned, at least going from translated interviews, "his kindness was his downfall" is Ishikawa's terms and framing.

That being said, I completely sympathize with and root for your right to go "okay, if that is the writer's intent, then I think that's stupid and wrong and undermined by the nuances of what they actually wrote." While I'm not wholly there in regards to this aspect of Emet-Selch (though he is complicated, self-sabotaging on pretty much every level, and his resentment and bitterness is also a huge driving force that can't be dismissed - not to mention it's a hell of an ask for others to reasonably understand him even when/if he is trying to be earnest because he's so outright nonsensically stupid and backwards about expressing it, in both the past and the present - but you're not wrong that I overall skew pretty sympathetic to him; part of that is that I think it's "easier" and thus more emotionally tempting for "our group" to write off his attempts to reach out as empty from the beginning, rather than daring to engage), that's basically how I feel about Venat and the Sundering myself. I see your intent there and it's bad in both thought and execution, writers.

The way I see it is, ShB landed with its writing, an interesting cast, its goal in creating a sympathetic, complex antagonist, and the overarching message of dispelling concepts of black and white morality and what is "good" vs "evil" , and I can applaud what it did well while not agreeing with the antagonist's actions or the subtle implication that his turmoil made them excusable. EW, on the other hand, failed in just about every metric including writing, characterisation, tying together the plot coherently and what it was trying to convey. I'm not saying it was a black void of enjoyment - it certainly had good moments - but as ShB had niggles during an altogether enjoyable experience, EW had some highlights during what was overall a disappointment.

All of this, for sure, I can nod along with and happily shake hands on, haha!

(And yes, Emet and Hermes's interactions were insanely good. One of my favorite parts of Elpis and of both characters.)