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

[Atelier-Bagur]

I think they fucked over Emet Selch and Hydaelyn in the writing department. The OG Hydaelyn and ShB Emet Selch were amazing. The plot took a nosedive in Endwalker.

The OG Hydaelyn? What on earth are you talking about?

[KageTokage]

I think "OG" as in before we really knew any deeper details about her and the situation was made out to be a very black and white sort of conflict.

I'd rather they have just doubled down on that approach rather then inject some moral greyness into the matter in ShB, then skirt around it as much as possible in EW.

[MagiusNecros]

I think "OG" as in before we really knew any deeper details about her and the situation was made out to be a very black and white sort of conflict.

I'd rather they have just doubled down on that approach rather then inject some moral greyness into the matter in ShB, then skirt around it as much as possible in EW.

Correct. Venat and Hydaelyn feel like 2 different characters. The grey morality really kills all they built up and threw all their eggs in one basket with the Ancients.

They took this Paragon of "purity" and turned it into a character that in their own idealism destroyed their own world to delay it's complete destruction and imparted perpetual suffering as the denizens just reward.

More curious is if Hydaelyn was the heart or core of Eorzea what pray tell was the heart of Etheirys?

Shadowbringers was building up to some pretty big stuff in a intricate way but a lot of it just became a lot of throwaway material for a quick and lazy resolution.

You see this all over the place in Endwalker with it's myriad of pacing issues.

But given how they threw away Garlemald so quickly this isn't that much of a surprise to me.

[KageTokage]

More curious is if Hydaelyn was the heart or core of Eorzea what pray tell was the heart of Etheirys?

There's a bunch of dialogue in various places like a Sharlayan scholar desiring "the truth that lies at the heart of our star" and that weird prophecy from Studium that's making me hopeful there's still some big secrets about the nature of the world itself that will come to light but...it's hard to say if that's going to be a thing until 6.5 and the 7.x preview starts painting a more clear picture of the future.

[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.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I think "OG" as in before we really knew any deeper details about her and the situation was made out to be a very black and white sort of conflict.

I'd rather they have just doubled down on that approach rather then inject some moral greyness into the matter in ShB, then skirt around it as much as possible in EW.

I still dont see where the problem is here. Considering the aeons of time they had that helped developed her character, its literally how they handle pre-sundered Emet Selch and current Emet Selch or pre sundered Lahabrea over current Lahabrea or pre sunderer Themis over current Elidibus. Are we just neglecting the amount of time they spent living their lives after the sunder? Do you not think any person would had time to develop themselves into the people we known in the current timeline?

Why is every other Ancient getting a free pass with this nonsense critique yet Venat somehow is singled out by the community?

[KageTokage]

Some people expected to like her more post-development, but ended up liking her less.

That's all there is to it. It has nothing do with the other Ancients getting a "free pass" because the additional context we got behind them in the past changed nothing about what we know of them in the present and mostly just served to make us feel worse about the fate they were eventually thrust into.

In Venat's case, it changed everything and was very much a "your mileage may vary" sort of situation...as the past several hundred pages can attest to.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Some people expected to like her more post-development, but ended up liking her less.

That's all there is to it. It has nothing do with the other Ancients getting a "free pass" because the additional context we got behind them in the past changed nothing about what we know of them in the present and mostly just served to make us feel worse about the fate they were eventually thrust into.

In Venat's case, it changed everything and was very much a "your mileage may vary" sort of situation...as the past several hundred pages can attest to.

I still fail to see how "different" her character was between Venat and Hydaelyn. Unlike literally every other Ancient, she was probably the most level-headed and consistent Ancient between her time in the Unsundered World and current timeline. Everybody else turned into, as Emet-Selch puts it "megalomaniacal madmen" heck you could even start to see give into that during the one scene with the Convocation in their desperation.

[jameseoakes]

I still fail to see how "different" her character was between Venat and Hydaelyn. Unlike literally every other Ancient, she was probably the most level-headed and consistent Ancient between her time in the Unsundered World and current timeline. Everybody else turned into, as Emet-Selch puts it "megalomaniacal madmen" heck you could even start to see give into that during the one scene with the Convocation in their desperation.

I think that's the problem, the sundering/the aftermarth seems to have driven the unsundered ascians insane, where as Venat was able to betray and unmake her own civilisation and apparently isn't affect at all