Endwalker story doubt: spoiler alert

[Cleretic]

My bad, then. I was vaguely recollecting posts I've seen from you before where you seemed quite a vocal supporter of hers.

I would overall say that in those situations I wasn't defending Venat so much as I was defending 'the story as it was given to us'; my view on a lot of critique and analysis is essentially that while I don't have any issue with how you feel about a story, we should discuss it on the story's terms, and not misrepresent it. And without wanting to revive, relitigate or psychoanalyze that argument, I feel like there was a lot of people who were grossly misrepresenting the argument solely to make Venat look bad, because they either disagreed with her or disliked Endwalker, and wanted to declare their stance to be objectively right instead of merely opinion. I know the feeling and I've fallen into it myself, but discussion doesn't get anywhere by letting that sort of misrepresentation stand.

My view on Venat is that she and the Convocation were faced with a difficult situation with no right answers with the End of Days, and both took the side and actions that they personally believed in; while I think Venat made the choice I morally agree with, I understand and sympathize with the Convocation making their own decision, even if I would not do the same. And that, of course, the entire conversation has an odd shadow of 'it happened in the distant past' over it; in the time after that point, the Convocation became the Ascians and became very much morally reprehensible, while Venat ultimately proved to have been factually right in what had to be done to both create, and defend, the world within the game that I'm actually attached to.

...but that despite all of that, I don't really like Venat because I don't find her very interesting as a character. The events set into motion by and occurring around her are very interesting, but when she's actually the focus of scenes I just don't find her particularly compelling. That's partly because all those scenes take place in the Ancient world I also don't find that interesting, but... I mean hey, Hermes, Lahabrea and so far Athena all found ways to make me interested in them despite their surroundings.


And yeah, while it's largley unrelated, I don't like Real Hythlodaeus. He's sort of a personification of everything I don't like about how Endwalker depicted the Ancient world: Amaurot in Shadowbringers laid a groundwork of weird, unknowable but still in some way friendly and personable godlike beings living in a world that was at the same time very welcoming but too foreign to truly feel at home in, and while I had a lot of issues with how Shadowbringers handled it that meant I didn't really enjoy it then, that's a conceptual seed that I could've been into if fleshed out. But then Endwalker came along and just went 'oh no the Ancients are all pretty humans living in a world with no stakes', and suddenly I was so off-board with them that I could never get back on board. And Fake Hyth vs. Real Hyth was the same; Fake Hyth was definitely friendly but completely inscrutible, it was impossible to get an idea of his actual tone or feelings, nor to get an idea of what sort of person he was, and how much of that is influenced by him being a figment of Emet's memory. ...But then Real Hyth turns up and oh no, he's just a completely bland, no-sharp-edges Hot Guy with no opinions who only exists to make you go 'he seems nice, Elpis is nice'. He's so noncommittally bland as a character that I actually kinda get mad about him; like, they could've made this character interesting, and deliberately chose not to.