(ShB/EW SPOILERS) Why do people like Emet-Selch?

[KageTokage]

Back in Elpis, he kept being pushy about the seat of Fandaniel to Hermes, who through the journey around the zone showed that he really had no business being on the Convocation or in a position of power. Even more than other Ancients, Emet-Selch seemed to really lack the ability to empathize with others, notice how others are feeling, or know how to de-escalate a situation. After Hermes has the worst couple of days of his life having to dwell on the death of his mentor, taking up a seat he doesn't feel like he wants or deserves, dealing with the death of some monsters, and then finally his secret pet project gets a report with bad news about the universe right after he's told he helps destroy the world and Emet-Selch just yells at him and tells him that he's taking him and what is essentially his daughter into custody. That didn't seem to do much good for Hermes' mental state and wasn't good for everyone else either considering he happened to be standing next to his memory obliterating machine.

I had empathy for Hermes initially, but stopped making excuses for him after his short story drove home that he was always a huge hypocrite who cared more about getting his answers then anyone/anything else and had already convinced himself that everyone around him was wrong.

Emet-Selch is abrasive and not the best at expressing empathy (He was trying by attempting to convince Hermes he didn't belong in Elpis), but blaming him for the guy flying off the handle when he was the one acted unreasonably at first by fleeing and pre-emptively resisting arrest doesn't seem very fair to me.

[Brinne]

Yeah, that moment when he re-brought up the Convocation seat to Hermes wasn't a demonstration of Emet lacking empathy - it was the opposite. Emet felt so badly for Hermes and his obvious pain, even though he didn't fully understand it, that he was trying to get him out of the place that was causing him pain to the point of possibly irresponsibly offering him a position of power he also definitely didn't belong in. It was just expressed awkwardly.

It's very similar to when Emet obviously felt badly for the party in spite of himself with Y'shtola and acted to help, or when he couldn't stop himself from being irritated by and commenting on the emotional tension with Thancred and Ryne. Emet actually has so much empathy that it makes him stupid, and often take stupid actions to his own detriment, and this is consistent through both expansions he features heavily in.

[Zebraoracle]

No, they clearly directly told to your face and fear you for apparently slaughtering their country men, completely forgetting or denying that their own were the ones invading and subjugating other people's lands for their own gain. Yes we know the radio indoctrinated them to feel very stubbornly patriotic and oblivious but still was a huge insult. They act as if after all they've committed that somehow the rest of the world owed them still. The Garlean chapter really tested my patience with these kind of people as they also exist in real life but whatever, it was still interesting to see how the mighty have fallen.

Exactly. The entire Garlean part of the game was a whole bunch of eye rolling for me. I got what the writers were going for, but it kinda... falls flat when the ones you're trying to help have a massive victim complex who don't think they did anything wrong even though they're LITERALLY the cause of the majority of the problems in the world at that point in time. But no, everyone else bad! Waaah! I found it very hard to have any sympathy for the idiot girl who took her sister out into FREEZING TEMPERATURES and got them both killed, felt bad for the sister though, not her fault.

Yeah you're right. Rightfully may not be the right word. They think that way because of years of propaganda and indoctrination like you said.
Their anger is right in the sense that the WoL is the one who did kill these people, even if it was in self defense or for good reasons.

Of course, the focus of their anger should be their own government, since they are actually responsible for the reasons leading to these death.
But it's easier to blame the savages since that's kind of the modus operandi of the garleans.

Yeah it was just an all around unfortunate situation caused by the government and Ascians, hence why I have no attachment for post-Elpis Emet-Selch, they're all monsters at that point, IMO. Emet might be the best written Ascian, doesn't suddenly make him likeable. More like, a villain you like *as a villain* because they're more than a piece of paper with a couple of notes written on it, but still hate and don't actually LIKE because, hey, he's an evil monster.

I had empathy for Hermes initially, but stopped making excuses for him after his short story drove home that he was always a huge hypocrite who cared more about getting his answers then anyone/anything else and had already convinced himself that everyone around him was wrong.

Emet-Selch is abrasive and not the best at expressing empathy (He was trying by attempting to convince Hermes he didn't belong in Elpis), but blaming him for the guy flying off the handle when he was the one acted unreasonably at first by fleeing and pre-emptively resisting arrest doesn't seem very fair to me.

I HATED Hermes, and I despise that he's included in that Endwalker wallpaper with the ancients and the scions. Guy was horrible, unstable, and completely irrational. IIRC, he broke the rules to begin with with the awful sad bird plot device, and from there it just spiraled out of control. I freaking *hate* him and feel absolutely no sympathy for him whatsoever. At least Emet was TRYING.

Honestly the whole Elpis arc, while nice from a "this is how the ancient world was" viewpoint, fell really flat for me. :/

[MikkoAkure]

Hard disagree on this one. Emet-Selch can rightfully be held to account for his lack of social graces and communication skills (which continues to damn him as he fumbles his way through Shadowbringers), but in terms of pure feeling, he's strongly characterized as one of the most empathetic, feeling-for-others characters in the cast, which is a large part of why he basically wound up destroying himself. Rather than being struck by his insensitivity towards Hermes, I was struck that he was going out of his way to try to be considerate to Hermes - breaking Convocation protocol to allow us at their meeting for his comfort, for example - and entertain his point of view without shooting him down even as he was being shouted at, and that Hermes's emotional outbursts seemed to trouble and linger with him more than any other character on Elpis - he simply was an utter failure at communicating any of that in a way Hermes could understand or accept, which, yes, can be partially attributed to Emet's dumb pride. But denying that he's deeply intuitively tuned into the feelings of others and can't turn it off to his own detriment kind of ignores the entire thrust of his Shadowbringers arc - "his kindness was his downfall" per Ishikawa and all that.

Examining the psychological snapback that happens, often in a deeply cruel and exaggerated way due to the overcompensation and self-hatred, when an intrinsically kind person feels "forced" to do hateful, cruel things is a lot more interesting to me personally than just mostly ascribing him as a jerk who continued to be a jerk.

If Emet had recognized what Hermes was going through, he wouldn't keep on relenting when the man repeatedly said no. Empathy and proper communication aren't completely separate things and while he wanted to help in his own way, he did not seem to think about how to help in a way that would work for Hermes. He has a desire to help, but his pride stands in the way and disconnects him from the ability to reflect and put himself in someone else's shoes which is what empathy is all about.

[Brinne]

If Emet had recognized what Hermes was going through, he wouldn't keep on relenting when the man repeatedly said no. Empathy and proper communication aren't completely separate things and while he wanted to help in his own way, he did not seem to think about how to help in a way that would work for Hermes. He has a desire to help, but his pride stands in the way and disconnects him from the ability to reflect and put himself in someone else's shoes which is what empathy is all about.

I don't remember Hermes ever saying no. I remember him expressing he "needed more time" after both conversations about it and Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch immediately agreeing to give him more time.

It reaches a point where placing all the blame on Emet-Selch reads like blaming him for not being able to mind-read Hermes and accommodate him perfectly - and suggesting not being able to instantly to do so, even though he is trying and genuinely feels for his pain and wants to help stop it, is a moral failing - which I just cannot agree with, and I'm someone who, again, is happy to nod along with acknowledging how his abrasive personality and inability to communicate absolutely fed into the overall Elpis tire-fire. No, Emet doesn't fully recognize what Hermes is going through, but he recognized he was suffering, and his response before Hermes flew off the handle, consistently, expressed across multiple scenes, was wanting to help and accommodate him.

[PredatoryCatgirl]

Liking a character is not the same thing as saying you would like them as a person if you met them, or that you agree with them.

Emet has a very relatable goal: he wants to go home. Everything he knew was destroyed because of something he tried his best to stop, and has no memory of even doing that, and he just wants it back. The reason we're opposing him is not because we don't want him to have it, but because letting him would kill us and everyone we care about.

"My race is the best" its one part stating objective facts and two parts copium. The average Ancient was capable of things that only the most powerful mages on Hydaelyn can do. Imagine you got thrown into a world where everyone grew into an adult after three months, had at most the mental capacity of a six year old, died after a year, and could be killed by sneezing too hard or tripping and falling over. You can only try to interact with so many of these people before losing them becomes so painful that you just stop allowing yourself to care about them at all. His last ditch effort was when he had a son as Solus, who died to a simple illness. He then decided that our lives were too fragile to really be called lives, because it just hurt too much watching that happen. Its a coping mechanism.

Emet is a well written tragedy, and if there was some way to let him have his world back without dooming ours, I'd be all for it.

[Heroman3003]

Emet is a very entertaining and one of the most if not the most well written characters in FF14. People love characters who are entertaining because you gotta learn to separate fiction from reality and enjoy fiction for what it is - entertainment. And villains often can be a lot more fun than heroes because they don't have to be bound to moral codes which can, in turn, be awfully restricting to writing a fun character without it becoming obnoxious.

[Erinellza]

No idea, I hate him. Emet ruined the whole Galvus family because of his selfish goals. Read the 'Through His Eyes' short story, you can see how cold he was with Varis. Because of this, he also became cold with his own son, Zenos, who grew up alone, neglected and ended up as a person who was desperately chasing a moment of happiness because he never got it from his family.

Varis and Zenos never had the chance to experience a caring, loving environment because of Emet, the Galvus family is messed up because they were just tools for him. Kinda funny when people call Zenos a psychopath when Emet is clearly the psychopathic abuser in the story.

[MikkoAkure]

I don't remember Hermes ever saying no. I remember him expressing he "needed more time" after both conversations about it and Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch immediately agreeing to give him more time.

It reaches a point where placing all the blame on Emet-Selch reads like blaming him for not being able to mind-read Hermes and accommodate him perfectly - and suggesting not being able to instantly to do so, even though he is trying and genuinely feels for his pain and wants to help stop it, is a moral failing - which I just cannot agree with, and I'm someone who, again, is happy to nod along with acknowledging how his abrasive personality and inability to communicate absolutely fed into the overall Elpis tire-fire. No, Emet doesn't fully recognize what Hermes is going through, but he recognized he was suffering, and his response before Hermes flew off the handle, consistently, expressed across multiple scenes, was wanting to help and accommodate him.

Emet-Selch didn't do it on purpose so he's not exactly being "blamed", the whole thing was caused by multiple factors bumping into each other and Emet-Selch's personality was part of that.

You can be kind without being empathetic, and that to me sums up a large chunk of Emet-Selch's personality. You can recognize that someone is suffering and want to help, but empathy is understanding why they're suffering and that is something that Emet-Selch lacked. Where I felt that this was apparent was when Meteion first gave her report. He may have wanted to stop her and bring her in because it was making Hermes upset, but he didn't exactly deliver his request to have her taken in with compassion and to anyone else with eyes and ears, Hermes was not mentally stable. He doesn't have the same feelings to creations that Hermes does and didn't think about how it would affect him, especially after everything else that had gone on and right after being told that he tries to destroy the world in 12,000 years. Like many important points in stories, a lot could have been avoided if they had all just calmed down to think and talk things through.


As far as Hermes goes, he did not say "no" outright, but he kept going on about how he doesn't want it, the reasons why, and also about why he shouldn't have the job either. While it moved fast because the plot demanded it, I don't understand why beings on the time scale that the Ancients exist on would be expecting an answer the next day from someone waffling over whether or not to take one of the most important jobs in the world while grieving for the person he seemed to have cared the most about in the world.

[Brinne]

Nobody in Elpis, WoL or Venat included, did any of those things you outlined Emet should have done (under the premise of that his first priority should have been Hermes's feelings rather than focusing on the world-ending threat - the actual reason he felt deep urgency in taking Meteion in), and nobody in Elpis, WoL or Venat included, objected to or seemed bothered by how Emet went about doing those things. Venat even says after most of what you cited is said and done when you're wrapping up in Ktisis that they should go ahead and continue to leave everything up to Emet-Selch.

The conversation started with the post putting forth that Emet should be seen as worse, implicitly morally, than WoL or Hydaelyn because of these personality flaws, lack of empathy, and being a "jerk,":

I don't think you can compare him to WoL or even Venat when it comes to killing and genocide because unlike the other two his personality needed a lot of work back when he was just an Ancient and definitely so when he was an Ascian. I think that's something that a lot of people seem to gloss over. It could be argued that the whole plot wouldn't exist if Emet-Selch wasn't a jerk since his self-importance, abrasive personality, desire for justification, and lack of patience or empathy often dooms whatever side he's supposed to be on

And I don't think there's any reasonable way you can substantiate that. The arguments about what composes an acceptable amount of a very strict definition of "empathy" in this kind of situation will always be at least partially subjective (it still seems weird to me, personally, to accept that Emet-Selch was an unusually kind and compassionate man - use whatever words in place of empathy you like - but his inability to immediately assimilate Hermes's world-view and specific grievances still meant he was lacking something that makes him 'worse' than others who took similar actions, apparently?) I still fundamentally disagree with your expectations about how Emet-Selch should have been expected to react and what he should have been expected to magically intuit in terms of accommodating Hermes, or that levels of personal charisma, likability, or being able to sell your ideas makes one genocide less damnable than another, but saying that WoL and Hydaelyn were better than him in those regards, or that Emet was particularly bad compared to anyone else, starts conflicting directly with the text. It's just a very weird assertion.

Again, I would agree with saying assertion that Emet-Selch has a serious problem communicating and presenting himself in a non-abrasive way. But "his social skills were worse, so his genocide was worse compared to other genocides" is just kinda, huh, to me.

EDIT:

As far as Hermes goes, he did not say "no" outright, but he kept going on about how he doesn't want it, the reasons why, and also about why he shouldn't have the job either. While it moved fast because the plot demanded it, I don't understand why beings on the time scale that the Ancients exist on would be expecting an answer the next day from someone waffling over whether or not to take one of the most important jobs in the world while grieving for the person he seemed to have cared the most about in the world.

I don't think we know the timeframe at all re: Hermes accepting the Fandaniel position after the disaster at Ktisis or how it was handled after the WoL stopped observing the aftermath, and, well, this is an Emet topic so we probably shouldn't stray too far from him, but this framing of how Hermes feels about Meteion rings really hollow to me in a lot of ways, particularly after his short story explicitly demonstrating he was perfectly willing to put her through agonizing, painful death over and over for his own purposes - and then made her pain all about himself to the point that his "beloved daughter" had to get up after that horrific experience of death and comfort him about her trauma.

We can acknowledge Emet had a part in Elpis getting messed up, but that Hermes also played his own role by being a self-centered hypocrite stewing in his own resentment who didn't want to be helped. He wanted to be proven right, not be helped. That's part of why he reacted in such a hostile way to Emet's attempts to outreach. And I'm saying this as someone who really likes Hermes as a character.