On Venat's Role in the Story

[Cassar]

I always found this topic to be interesting because I always thought the writing for Venat was great, and it wasn't until I joined this forum that I saw so many people seeing it differently (which is fine).
I also see that this seems to be a sensitive topic in the community so I'm going to be as clear as possible when I say that this simply is, and has always been, my interpretation from the story. I had never even considered anything else until seeing different opinions.

I never thought of Venat's decision to sunder mankind as a way to defeat Meteion, that was never her main focus. I think that regardless of Meteion, Venat has always held strong to the ideal that mankind has the potential to move forward and overcome difficulties, and for that she needed to create a world where there was pain, suffering and death. Because only in doing so could humanity truly thrive - by overcoming difficulties. Meteion can be seen as the spark she needed, or perhaps a more "moral reason" that she took advantage of.
But, and this is my main point here, she would've sundered mankind regardless when she saw that most people were still hanging on to "bringing back paradise" rather than "using this as a lesson and move forward with it." She knew that the former would only bring further sacrifice and humanity would never be able to learn and grow.

As to her role in the story, I always saw her as a character who's not afraid to take action if she truly believes it's for the best and her love for mankind is her main motivator. She truly is like a mother, who's harsh when needs be, but it's always for the best - and that's why she proceeds to do what she did.

[Cleretic]

I never thought of Venat's decision to sunder mankind as a way to defeat Meteion, that was never her main focus. I think that regardless of Meteion, Venat has always held strong to the ideal that mankind has the potential to move forward and overcome difficulties, and for that she needed to create a world where there was pain, suffering and death. Because only in doing so could humanity truly thrive - by overcoming difficulties. Meteion can be seen as the spark she needed, or perhaps a more "moral reason" that she took advantage of.
But, and this is my main point here, she would've sundered mankind regardless when she saw that most people were still hanging on to "bringing back paradise" rather than "using this as a lesson and move forward with it." She knew that the former would only bring further sacrifice and humanity would never be able to learn and grow.

Venat's reason for going for the Sundering is multifaceted, and I think it's both very important to recognize that and very personal which part you considered most important. Like, I think that the reasons the writers and evelopers, when they did a lore Q&A, focused on 'she had to stop Meteion' part in their answers was because they're the writers and developers, the most important thing to them is the structural narrative element, the thing that keeps the plot moving. That doesn't mean the other reasons don't exist, and in fact that reason was quite downplayed in the actual script. In the Anamnesis meeting they're rather directly focused on stopping the sacrifices; in the post-Elpis flashback we see Venat dovetail from that into talking about how humanity can't just hide from its problems and has to overcome things through hardships. And another piece of evidence is the Twelve's epigraph; while admittedly a step removed from Venat/Hydaelyn, it shows that her and her crew genuinely wanted to see mankind and their world succeed and wanted to help them along in their own subtle ways; only the Unnamed Thirteenth had a focus that didn't mention mankind at all.


I'm not especially interested in arguing with Rosenstrauch, because we're coming from greatly different approaches to the game's story that care about different things. They write fanfiction; they're focused on the what ifs, the might have beens and things that could have been happening off in the background, because that's where they weave their own stories and find their own fulfillment. But personally, I'm interested in the lore as it relates to the story we've got and the world we're given; I'm interested in the concrete facts, the direct evidence and how it relates to the rest of the story as it is, because that's where I find my fulfillment.

Neither of those is necessarily wrong, but they do lead to a fundamental difference in how we approach what the game tells us. I hear 'we can't tell Hermes or he'll start working against us' and go 'yeah that makes sense, we saw him say and do literally that before he got memory wiped'. Rosenstrauch hears it and goes 'but what if instead that didn't happen, what would happen then?'

[Brinne]

In the Anamnesis meeting they're rather directly focused on stopping the sacrifices;

Venat’s faction actually doesn’t discuss the sacrifices in the Anamnesis meeting at all. In fact, the only time they’re brought up as a primary motivation for Hydaelyn is from Shade Hythlodaeus’s (aka, Emet-Selch’s) POV, back when Yoshida directly stated after release that “we still didn’t know Hydaelyn’s side of the story.” Cohering the various aspects as they stand now, it seems Shade Hythlo’s explanation was basically Emet’s misunderstanding, more or less.

As Kage said, Venat actually turned out to be basically driven by pure ideology and a belief mankind as it was wasn’t good enough to pass muster for the test of existence for lack of suffering. YMMV on how you feel about that, regardless of what the game signals about it. Obviously, I personally am not a fan.

[Cleretic]

Venat’s faction actually doesn’t discuss the sacrifices in the Anamnesis meeting at all. In fact, the only time they’re brought up as a primary motivation for Hydaelyn is from Shade Hythlodaeus’s (aka, Emet-Selch’s) POV, back when Yoshida directly stated after release that “we still didn’t know Hydaelyn’s side of the story.” Cohering the various aspects as they stand now, it seems Shade Hythlo’s explanation was basically Emet’s misunderstanding, more or less.

As Kage said, Venat actually turned out to be basically driven by pure ideology and a belief mankind as it was wasn’t good enough to pass muster for the test of existence for lack of suffering. YMMV on how you feel about that, regardless of what the game signals about it. Obviously, I personally am not a fan.

They're focused on stopping the unsustainable continued reliance on Zodiark. The sacrifices aren't stated explicitly, but are EXTREMELY strongly implied. I'd like to hear what you think they're objecting to and pleading to the Convocation about if not further sacrifices.

And... yeah. She's driven by ideology. That's not a sin. Thinking about all of Endwalker I think the only person who's not motivated primarily by ideology is, like... Nidhana, and maybe some Omicrons; ideology is a huge driving point of characters in this game. You could debatably make a case that the main complicating incident around Meteion is when she developed an ideology to be driven by, informed solely by negative input. And you can disagree with her ideology, just like how I vehemently disagree with Emet's, Amon's, Quintus', Meteion's (once she got one), and think Hythlodaeus should consider himself lucky he wasn't around for when his would've been tested.

You're allowed to disagree with her ideology. But I would also ask you to acknowledge her ENTIRE ideology, and not cherry-picked parts of it. Venat and her crew believed that mankind should not put themselves ahead of the planet they live on, and that problems should be akcnowledged, dealt with and learned from rather than ignored and acting like they never happened. And of course, they were willing to put everything on the line, including themselves, to stand by what that means--and weren't 'consequences and morality be damned' about it, Venat was rather clearly haunted by what she did, as was the Watcher as far as we can see. But that's true both in the negative (they did do the Sundering, that cannot be denied) and the positive (they did their utmost to both protect and aid the world that resulted, in keeping with their ideals). You can think one of those outweighs the other, but I would hope you consider the entirety of both when deciding where you stand, and know that whatever stance you land on is yours and not some universal truth.

[Brinne]

They're focused on stopping the unsustainable continued reliance on Zodiark. The sacrifices aren't stated explicitly, but are EXTREMELY strongly implied.

No, they're the opposite of implied, to the point that it stood out as puzzling to me even at the time. In the Anamnesis meeting, the only concern brought up is "if we stay on our current course, it will still lead to our doom." In other words, the concern is with the fate of mankind. Explicitly non-sacrifice. Which is exactly what they name about what they were arguing about with the Convocation -that continued reliance on Zodiark would still lead to a bad end for the Ancients. This is actually consistent with the information we get with Venat's POV in Endwalker and beyond, where the sacrifices still are only named as an aside. Again, at the point in time when "sacrifices" was suggested as a primary motivation, we were told we were still ignorant of Hydaelyn's side of the story. Ergo, that was not meaningfully it.

And... yeah. She's driven by ideology. That's not a sin.

FFXIV's stance is that it, in fact, is when it's your primary motivation in controlling or eradicating people, when it makes you think you can decide on peoples' lives in the balance, as opposed to actually saving or protecting something materially living. "I have a moral code where People Probably Shouldn't Be Needlessly Murdered" isn't the same as an "I have a belief system regarding guidelines about how People Should Live and Exist"-type ideology. Killing someone because you're protecting yourself or someone else is not the same thing as killing them because they aren't Behaving Right. Again, as Kage has pointed out, that is something that FFXIV has actually condemned up until Endwalker. And I would argue that up until this point that actually, the Scions made the efforts to make themselves anti-motivated by ideology, hence the constant point and struggle in ARR about staying neutral outside of pure harm reduction in regards to the Primals. Hell, the Scions act against their personal ideologies for the sake of saving living and breathing people - such as when Y'shtola thought Merlwyb was in the wrong regarding the Kobold conflict, but still cooperated to kill Titan because it would flat out save lives.

Venat and her crew believed that mankind should not put themselves ahead of the planet they live on, and that problems should be akcnowledged, dealt with and learned from rather than ignored and acting like they never happened. And of course, they were willing to put everything on the line, including themselves, to stand by what that means--and weren't 'consequences and morality be damned' about it, Venat was rather clearly haunted by what she did, as was the Watcher as far as we can see. But that's true both in the negative (they did do the Sundering, that cannot be denied) and the positive (they did their utmost to both protect and aid the world that resulted, in keeping with their ideals). You can think one of those outweighs the other, but I would hope you consider the entirety of both when deciding where you stand, and know that whatever stance you land on is yours and not some universal truth.

"Mankind should not put themselves ahead of the planet they live on" is, I think, you projecting - you've talked about how you're an environmentalist and that informs how you see the importance of the sacrifices in this plotline. However, looking at Venat's actions and what she says about those actions, once again, she speaks to the opposite. Her chief concern even in the moment of Sundering is always mankind. If we acknowledge the Sundering at minimum as an action of violence and wrecking the core integrity of, then actually, Venat was willing to do irreparable harm to "the planet they live on" in order to shape it as an environment to help mankind live up to her vision of its potential. This is consistent with the fact that she was willing to abandon the planet altogether if it meant salvaging some small amount of mankind. If her priorities were what you say they were, rather than your own, she would have been telling Sharlayan to take every measure to defend Etheirys to the last, not abandon it.

(they did their utmost to both protect and aid the world that resulted, in keeping with their ideals).

"They did their utmost to both protect and aid the timeline that resulted, in keeping with their ideals" would probably be more accurate, considering the intentional sparing of the Ascians.

but I would hope you consider the entirety of both when deciding where you stand, and know that whatever stance you land on is yours and not some universal truth.

Of course it's my stance. I explicitly say "YMMV, I personally" in regards to my response to it. Likewise, pointing out what exactly that ideology is as opposed to idealistic projecting and wishful thinking is not pushing my take on it as a universal truth. Of course people exist who believe things similarly to Venat. It simply is what it is, when we actually examine the text for what it is.

This is scary.

Yeah, I wasn't quite sure how to gracefully say "wait, loving mother to, and 'always for the best' for whom? The chosen survivors, I guess, who managed to make it out of the Suffering Grind and 'thrive' - as opposed to those who couldn't 'overcome difficulties' and just died or were broken?" and "my ability to continue engaging with this game is pretty much contingent upon the hope/belief that the writers didn't actually intend to say this in the way they did."

It's rough.

[KageTokage]

I always found this topic to be interesting because I always thought the writing for Venat was great, and it wasn't until I joined this forum that I saw so many people seeing it differently (which is fine).
I also see that this seems to be a sensitive topic in the community so I'm going to be as clear as possible when I say that this simply is, and has always been, my interpretation from the story. I had never even considered anything else until seeing different opinions.

I never thought of Venat's decision to sunder mankind as a way to defeat Meteion, that was never her main focus. I think that regardless of Meteion, Venat has always held strong to the ideal that mankind has the potential to move forward and overcome difficulties, and for that she needed to create a world where there was pain, suffering and death. Because only in doing so could humanity truly thrive - by overcoming difficulties. Meteion can be seen as the spark she needed, or perhaps a more "moral reason" that she took advantage of.
But, and this is my main point here, she would've sundered mankind regardless when she saw that most people were still hanging on to "bringing back paradise" rather than "using this as a lesson and move forward with it." She knew that the former would only bring further sacrifice and humanity would never be able to learn and grow.

As to her role in the story, I always saw her as a character who's not afraid to take action if she truly believes it's for the best and her love for mankind is her main motivator. She truly is like a mother, who's harsh when needs be, but it's always for the best - and that's why she proceeds to do what she did.

There are certainly shades of her feeling like mankind was somehow lacking judging from her remark about feeling like she couldn't return to the star until she felt they didn't "need" her anymore.

Though this gives the unfortunate implications of her feeling like the Final Days were a necessary hurdle for them to overcome after we told her it was a near extinction level event.

Her whole character is driven by ideology, consequences or morality be damned, which quite frankly is something I cannot resonate with after such viewpoints were strictly opposed throughout XIV's story.