On Venat's Role in the Story

[Talonk]

No hard pivots just moved with the conversation.

[Lurina]

There's no better way to keep a topic alive online than to yell at people about it and start a fight.

Everyone knows this, but they do it anyway. People can't escape their guts telling them that the only way to resolve the situation is to defeat their posting enemies by proving them decisively to be wrongheaded and misinformed.

But this is like trying to cure eczema by scratching it. Angry and frustrated people post more. Genuinely humiliated-feeling people post even more than that. It's a fundamentally self-defeating premise, doubly-so in an environment with moderation that his been super neutral and hands-off for like a decade.

Sometimes you just need to set some boundaries, and if you're too polite people simply walk all over you.

Like, what does this even mean?

The concept of a 'boundary' is predicated on private and controlled spaces, and this forum doesn't have any. So long as they're on-topic, not overtly hostile, and not posting illegal content, there's no way to stop people from espousing even overtly wrong and insane opinions forever. That's not even a take-down, just a statement of practical reality.

Has FireMage managed to get Talonk to stop posting? Obviously not - it's just dragged discussion of one of his unverifiable opinions out for pages without anyone being convinced of anything. So do you actually want a lore forum that isn't preoccupied with the same topics forever, or just fun take-downs?

[Lyth]

I'm honored that you sought me out, of all people, after several pages of discussion. This conversation really must be drying up for you.

Boundary setting is simple. It's the standard of conduct that we choose to hold both ourselves and others to, and not putting up with people who consistently and deliberately test those boundaries. You're free to do whatever you like, but you also have no control over how the rest of us respond. If you want to find another poster to chant 'Venat is bad' with, over and over again, none of us can or will stop you. But there's no guarantees that you'll still have an audience at the end of it.

Anyways, back to Qiqirns for me. Do let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.

[Lurina]

I'm honored that you sought me out, of all people, after several pages of discussion. This conversation really must be drying up for you

I missed it in this case because I'd disengaged from the thread for reasons I mentioned earlier, but I often single out your posts because they are a particular combination of patronizing and bizarre. In this case, because you're expressing admiration for an obviously unproductively antagonistic person in a way that contradicts your own stated aim of having the topic die. Other than Talonk, the only times people Venat discoursed since this thread got risen from the grave was in response to people already arguing about it and making specific points. Exactly one person - Nayukhuut, now that I go back and look at - posted something along the lines of "yeah buddy, agreed". No one took this as a chance to unilaterally re-issue their manifesto; even the people who feel strongly about it are mostly sick of talking about it, or else have gone off to the General Discussion thread.

But it's not just about you. Half the people in this thread are still complaining that it's active while simultaneously devoting energy to yelling about minutia at a guy who is clearly not receptive. It's weird!

[Talonk]

I missed it in this case because I'd disengaged from the thread for reasons I mentioned earlier, but I often single out your posts because they are a particular combination of patronizing and bizarre. In this case, because you're expressing admiration for an obviously unproductively antagonistic person in a way that contradicts your own stated aim of having the topic die. Other than Talonk, the only times people Venat discoursed since this thread got risen from the grave was in response to people already arguing about it and making specific points. Exactly one person - Nayukhuut, now that I go back and look at - posted something along the lines of "yeah buddy, agreed". No one took this as a chance to unilaterally re-issue their manifesto; even the people who feel strongly about it are mostly sick of talking about it, or else have gone off to the General Discussion thread.

But it's not just about you. Half the people in this thread are still complaining that it's active while simultaneously devoting energy to yelling about minutia at a guy who is clearly not receptive. It's weird!

Some people have had some really good discussions with me in here and answered alot of my questions too on why I was confused with the intentional sundering while I strongly believed that I was right that there was info on it. I may not have been the best at expressing it and probably should have ignored firemage in the process I apologize if I upset anyone. With that said I still havent been persuaded in liking venats character due to it being intentional and us being 9/14 our self. That leads into other questions I have about her ability itself but I will let this thread die down now again I apologize for even posting on this thread.

[Lurina]

Some people have had some really good discussions with me in here and answered alot of my questions too on why I was confused with the intentional sundering while I strongly believed that I was right that there was info on it. I may not have been the best at expressing it and probably should have ignored firemage in the process I apologize if I upset anyone. With that said I still havent been persuaded in liking venats character due to it being intentional and us being 9/14 our self. That leads into other questions I have about her ability itself but I will let this thread die down now again I apologize for even posting on this thread.

I'm not saying you need to apologize, Talonk. I can see from your post history that this was genuinely your first word on the topic, and (while it might not have been the best idea to bump an older thread specifically) I don't think it's wrong to come in and vent if you've just finished the expansion for the first time and that's genuinely what you felt; this is the forum for the story of the game, and it's unfortunate that online communities tend to get so caught up in their collective experience of a strand of discourse that they treat everyone with a similar reaction to the story as a hive mind and channel their feelings accordingly, meaning that anyone who comes in late can't really have a normal conversation about it. I also don't think it was fair for people to leap down your throat just for getting a little confused about a detail in Shadowbringers, though it's probably better to just walk away from that kind of thing rather than getting worked up and yelling about reporting people.

I'm just saying that if people don't want to have these arguments, they don't have to have them just because someone new has wandered in with the same feelings. There's obviously not that much energy left for this stuff from the regulars because it's died down for months.

Suffice it to say, I think you're broadly right to find the plot a little strange, but there's not much more to say at this point. Again, if you really want to talk about it, there's also the EW complaint thread in General Discussion where people who are are still intense about it congregate. Though that's even more of a nightmare than this place.