On Venat's Role in the Story

[Lurina]

In most cases of speculation, we are wondering what the authors' intent is for future story beats. In this case, we know their intent is to bring the story full circle and have the ancients' collective actions lead to the Sundering, because narratively they were locked into this years ago, and the only thing to debate is the details of how it happened.

Also, the Lore forum is a repository of current lore, not just speculation.

It's just really tiring to see people still trying to make these hard storytelling-mechanics justifications for why it was a matter of inevitable necessity for the an entire culture/race of people to be indiscriminately wiped out.

Like, yeah, the Sundering had to happen from a perspective of story structure. But the writers chose to not only make it intentional, but to then go on to make all these awkward excuses for why it was this unavoidable action we should be sympathetic to. And now every time someone talks about how that made them uncomfortable (setting aside all the weirdos who come at this from a perspective of projecting on the Ancients, or with hangups about the tone of the story or female characters like Venat or whatever) and points out ways it seems like it wasn't unavoidable, a load of people chime in to speculate beyond what the writers even put in a story to try and plug every last hole.

It makes me uneasy, and reminds me - even if I wouldn't equivocate it - how easily people's moral compasses can be manipulated to forgo basic tenants in reality when the framing is right. How people are willing to set aside absolute rules like "genocide is wrong, no matter what" when you paint the affected group with a broad brush as selfish, or cruel, or doomed anyway.

And so much of this fandom does that without a second thought. Again, this isn't to act like this damns the entire story; I can see at this point how the writers arrived where they did without really meaning to. And we don't have to talk about it ad infinitum. But at the same time, it would be great if people could just acknowledge "yeah that was a bit weird" without trying with all their power to hold up the framing the game presents uncritically.