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

[Kazhar]

She actually did though. Its how they came up with the group of people who supported Venat (which included Azem) against the Convocation because they believed in what was happening.

The very first Venat cutscene in 5.2 is about how Azem declined her invitation?

[KageTokage]

I always found it very...troubling that Venat spun a narrative to her friends and believers that convinced them it was worth permanently killing themselves for the sake of her ideals when they didn't even have the full picture of what she intended to do, just that Zodiark needed to be stopped for what they felt was for the good of mankind.

It can't be said that they'd have been okay with how everything played out with their limited knowledge, with only the Watcher remaining to offer testimony.

[Graeham]

There was no immediate threat to the Ancients or the world when Venat committed to the Sundering.

This true. Venar wanted to kill all the people for the fun and laugh and replacing with the evil Loprabbit. In the Spanish translate story is true. God King Solus want to kill all the people but with the kind no self think only to remake mustard race. King Solus is good king and Venar is bad king. Writer say opposite to force the left of the wing politic in game dictionary but forum chara they see lie and oppress of the writer. Is why we are demanding the traditional masculine dark fantasy FF14 remake in which using the time ghost and the Sephiroth to kill the Loprabbit and replace old weak human with new No Shadow God mustard race.

I always found it very...troubling that Venat spun a narrative to her friends and believers that convinced them it was worth permanently killing themselves

No this is not the trouble. If Venar killing the follower he will lose war because not any troop. Is help the Solus King because he is the smarter than the Venar.

[Brinne]

I always found it very...troubling that Venat spun a narrative to her friends and believers that convinced them it was worth permanently killing themselves for the sake of her ideals when they didn't even have the full picture of what she intended to do, just that Zodiark needed to be stopped for what they felt was for the good of mankind.

There's a whole conversation to be had (and has been had!) about the really confusing continued choices of the writers in how they portray Venat and her decisions in the post-6.0 material, if we're seriously meant to think of her as good and having absolutely no other choice but to commit (reluctantly, with great sorrow) the Sundering. I mean, this is a big project with lots of writers. Maybe they're not all on the same page on how to approach the character and her actions, either. They've acknowledged they didn't have the Ancients or Amaurot conceived when first coming up with Hydaelyn vs Zodiark, and that they didn't have dynamis or Meteion conceived when they first came up with the Ancients and the Final Days. It just all feels very, very messy. A lot of the ominous buildup regarding Hydaelyn in the 5.x patches was just completely, unceremoniously dropped without further comment, too.

[Necrotica]

The Codex states flat out that Azem refused to join Venat, too, for what it's worth - if you take its recounting of concrete events, at least, as canon. Venat's short story in Tales from the Dawn has also relatively recently confirmed she didn't even tell her followers anything - in fact, she actively and deliberately chose not to - which is a very baffling decision to me as far as the writing of the character goes.

She was so quick to say how we could openly tell her about the future the consequences be damned. But then would not extend that same mindset to others. Her arrogance is astounding.

[jameseoakes]

There's a whole conversation to be had (and has been had!) about the really confusing continued choices of the writers in how they portray Venat and her decisions in the post-6.0 material, if we're seriously meant to think of her as good and having absolutely no other choice but to commit (reluctantly, with great sorrow) the Sundering. I mean, this is a big project with lots of writers. Maybe they're not all on the same page on how to approach the character and her actions, either. They've acknowledged they didn't have the Ancients or Amaurot conceived when first coming up with Hydaelyn vs Zodiark, and that they didn't have dynamis or Meteion conceived when they first came up with the Ancients and the Final Days. It just all feels very, very messy. A lot of the ominous buildup regarding Hydaelyn in the 5.x patches was just completely, unceremoniously dropped without further comment, too.

I get the feeling there was a top down demand for Venat to be a loving motherly figure and the story had to be forced to maintain that but they didn't actually give her actions a good foundation or think about what happens if the messaging the game forces doesn't resonate. I get the feeling there are very different view points as a lot of content round the main story seems to have a different tone to the main story

[Brinne]

She was so quick to say how we could openly tell her about the future the consequences be damned. But then would not extend that same mindset to others. Her arrogance is astounding.

In some ways, I think it's hard to be meaningfully angry at Venat as an actual character. The writing behind her is such a mess. As a person in front of us, it has her say the inspirational things about how "nothing is impossible," "the future you described need not necessarily be what comes to pass" and expressing how she'll of course do her best to fix things - because that's what a good, heroic person would obviously say and do. But then the plotting behind Hydaelyn has her doing things like purposefully sparing the Ascians that makes absolutely no sense without assuming she's committed to fatalistically following the timeline. Subsequently, Venat herself is basically a weird, empty mishmash of string-pulling "oh god please like her, look, we're connecting her to you/Azem in every single way we can think of, look, she's just like you, she was walking alongside you the whole time, please please please like her" and "oh god we need to cram all these plot pieces we didn't think ahead on together and make them fit uhhhh Hydaelyn foresaw everything! Letting the Rejoinings happen was all a part of her great keikaku! She meant for us to suffer... which means suffering is good, somehow! Phew, nailed it."

She's whatever she needs to be at the moment, wildly oscillating between Whatever Makes You Like Her and Making The Plot Work Somehow. For all I harp about it, I don't think the "suffering good" aspect of Endwalker was at the forefront in terms of intention. I think it came as a consequence of the number one priority of making Hydaelyn "not a bad guy", whatever it took, whatever her established actions were be damned - if she did it, it must have been Good, Somehow, no matter what. Weird and unfortunate writer tunnel vision.

[jameseoakes]

In some ways, I think it's hard to be meaningfully angry at Venat as an actual character. The writing behind her is such a mess. As a person in front of us, it has her say the inspirational things about how "nothing is impossible," "the future you described need not necessarily be what comes to pass" and expressing how she'll of course do her best to fix things - because that's what a good, heroic person would obviously say and do. But then the plotting behind Hydaelyn has her doing things like purposefully sparing the Ascians that makes absolutely no sense without assuming she's committed to fatalistically following the timeline. Subsequently, Venat herself is basically a weird, empty mishmash of string-pulling "oh god please like her, look, we're connecting her to you/Azem in every single way we can think of, look, she's just like you, she was walking alongside you the whole time, please please please like her" and "oh god we need to cram all these plot pieces we didn't think ahead on together and make them fit uhhhh Hydaelyn foresaw everything! Letting the Rejoinings happen was all a part of her great keikaku! She meant for us to suffer... which means suffering is good, somehow! Phew, nailed it."

She's whatever she needs to be at the moment, wildly oscillating between Whatever Makes You Like Her and Making The Plot Work Somehow. For all I harp about it, I don't think the "suffering good" aspect of Endwalker was at the forefront in terms of intention. I think it came as a consequence of the number one priority of making Hydaelyn "not a bad guy", whatever it took, whatever her established actions were be damned - if she did it, it must have been Good, Somehow, no matter what. Weird and unfortunate writer tunnel vision.

Honestly I think you are right with a lot of that. I think one of the things with Venat as a character is how much of her themes suit a righteous villain so well, if she'd have been an amazing villain aiming to enforce her will on the world honestly I think it could have made for an amazing story

[Yencat]

I think it came as a consequence of the number one priority of making Hydaelyn "not a bad guy", whatever it took, whatever her established actions were be damned - if she did it, it must have been Good, Somehow, no matter what.

Honestly to me it felt like they tried to not make anyone a bad guy, and Hydaelyn (unintentionally?) came out looking worse because of it.

The whole thing about how some of the remaining Ancients were planning to sacrifice the new life on the star to Zodiark in exchange for the return of their own while another faction was strongly opposed to that idea made sense, and it wasn't hard to imagine why that would cause a rift between people that eventually escalated into the sundering. While it was never outright stated I think many people imagined the 'new life on the star' being proto-versions of the playable races which made it feel 'personal' because if they had gone through with it we wouldn't exist, so she and her faction were on 'our' side. And while involuntarily sacrificing innocent lives would definitely be a cruel thing for them to do, you could also sort of still see it from the other side as well; sacrifice (to them) "lesser" lifeforms for the return of their own.

Once they seemingly dropped that whole thread of the involuntary sacrifices, and afterwards stated none of the playable races even existed at that point, it made the whole thing pretty nonsensical and her motivations to resort to the sundering a lot muddier.

[Striker44]

As far as the mass sacrifice of lives to Zodiark goes, the game has been crystal-clear and unwavering on that it was an utterly heroic action that saved the world, and that Emet-Selch's point about it reflecting the benevolence and general goodness of the Ancients as a whole stands true.

Trying to undermine that has always struck me as pretty off-base and wildly cynical - if you're going to try to prop up the Sundered and frame the Ancients as less worthy, I don't know that I'd resort to pointing at their heroic self-sacrifice that enabled to Sundered to live at all, and continue living for thousands and thousands of years, not gonna lie.

ShB makes this quite the opposite. People seem to completely ignore "Steps 2 and 3" of the Convocation's plan when discussing things here, which Emet-Selch clearly explains in ShB. Step 1 was the "sacrifice" of about half the population to summon Zodiark. Step 2 was going to be the "sacrifice" of another half of the remaining population to bring about the creation of a myriad of new life. Step 3 was going to be the mass murder of that new life in order to restore the parts of the population that had previously "sacrificed" themselves.

There's two huge things there. One of them is factual - the new life that was going to be killed was not going to be any sort of "voluntary" act by that life. It was going to be mass murder by the Ancients of soul-filled life. THAT is presented in ShB at least as a key part of the reason why Venat chooses the path she does. EW adds the second motive of making the new life more susceptible to dynamis and thus potentially able to stop Meteion. But from the start another key motive was to prevent the Ancients themselves from creating life just to murder it.

The second huge thing is purely opinion, but I'll state mine. I have a lot of trouble calling something a "heroic self-sacrifice" when the plan all along was for those very people who "sacrificed" themselves to ultimately be brought back to life. I don't see it as some amazing, heroic action to "sacrifice" oneself if you do so fully expecting to just be brought back as if nothing happened later. (Side note - one of the things detractors of the EW story love to claim is that the Scions' "sacrifices" in Ultima Thule are "meaningless" for exactly that very reason: the existence of a plan/plot device to bring them back, anyway.)