Quote Originally Posted by Raven2014 View Post
Basically, the "gap" between the Ancient and the current world is almost as big as between human and pigs, if not bigger. If someone say "let's kill off the human so the pig can live in peace" ... most of us won't even turn that into the question of empathy, but madness.
The problem I have with this comparison is that it's reducing a much more complex situation into a very oversimplified analogy.

Plus, Sundured people and the Ancients are just as sentient as one another and are able to communicate and relate to each other on equal terms. It's just that one group is much more powerful both physically and magically and comes from a mostly unified culture. Other than their aetheric levels and millennia of continuous civilization as a background, the Ancients themselves at the individual level aren't intrinsically any better or worse than the sundered. Emet-Selch was so close to seeing this but pulled away. If the Ancients were so much higher than the Sundered, than we as players whose own world is closer to the Sundered than the Ancients would not be able to sympathize with both of them.

The Allagans got very close to that and had 300 years of peace and an advanced magical civilization until Amon + likely Ascian involvement revived the first emperor as a madman and the war engine kicked up again to bring it all crashing down. Who knows how far the Sundered world could have gone if the Ascians worked with them like with Allag but didn't hit the reset button every 1.5-2k years? The issue is that if it went that way and there was no conflict, there would be no story and no game.

If the Ancient society itself was as harmonious as you thought it was, Venat and her followers wouldn't have separated from it to fight Zodiark and again, we'd have no story and no game.


Quote Originally Posted by Brinne View Post
Emet's twists of excessive cruelty aren't attributed, when all is said and done with his characterization to an intrinsic "cruelty" or "callousness" that was always there. It's something he violently, excessively, self-destructively throws himself into because the deep kindness that is the "true" part of who he always was (reflected in how he treats Hermes) viscerally can't stand what he's doing, and he's trying to shut it up and make it disappear. He's oscillating wildly between burnt-out depression, despairing resentment at others, self-loathing, and loathing in general all as parts of his shrieking copium that, yes, does immeasurable and unjustifiable harm to others. And he recognizes that on some level, and then the cycle continues.
I think the point where we diverge on Emet-Selch's character is that I don't feel the need to justify his actions in order to like him and accepted that he's a flawed person before I went into Endwalker. Elpis gave us an Emet-Selch that is much closer to the modern Emet-Selch than Hermes is (initially) to Fandaniel. His pride, hard-headedness, and sense of duty are Emet-Selch's biggest motivators. And like I said, he has a deep sense of kindness, but it comes without the empathy required to actually understand and connect with others, seeing things in their shoes. While kindness most definitely often comes with empathy, they're not necessarily always together. You can do things that are kind because "it's the right thing to do" without actually feeling for the person you're being kind to. Throughout Eplis, Emet-Selch does kind things, but often when prodded by Hytholdeus in a way that satisfies his pride and/or relents in a way that says "oh fine, I'm the only one who can since I'm so powerful anyway".