Quote Originally Posted by Brinne View Post
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.