On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Kozh]

The one thing we have learned, as observers to the story, is that there is no averting that fate. They have been through it, and the fact that we are here in the modern day of the story proves that they have already been through it.

It's even touched on here as a "well, it happened, we're here and now we need to pick up the pieces and save this world now" – and on our final visit to the past, are under direct instructions from Lahabrea to not tell his past self anything.

From the WoL's perspective, if they chose to interfere, they would not prevent that suffering from happening, but would create a second world that is going to have its own new array of suffering, while at the same time cutting themselves off from (and for all they know, potentially destroying) their original world and all their friends. And they still would have not actually saved the Ascians from what they went through.

It was – barely – acceptable to do that to the 8UE timeline when they genuinely thought the world was going to be destroyed and everyone would be wiped out either way. But doing that to a living world wouldn't be heroic at all.

Plus, we're simply locked into the game as well as a narrative. We can't abandon this game setting for a new timeline.

Unfortunately for you, what the Ironworks of 8UC did is seen as heroic and the right thing to do. Both by the game and the players. So if that's not hypocrisy, I don't know what else.

And frankly, I don't really buy they thinking "oh no mankind is finished", when we don't know if Black Rose reach lands outside of Eorzea. But regardless, it's still a living world where people born, live, and die. The Ironworks should've forge ahead instead of seeking salvation on a different timeline they created.

[Lord_Umbra]

Unfortunately for you, what the Ironworks of 8UC did is seen as heroic and the right thing to do. Both by the game and the players. So if that's not hypocrisy, I don't know what else.

And frankly, I don't really buy they thinking "oh no mankind is finished", when we don't know if Black Rose reach lands outside of Eorzea. But regardless, it's still a living world where people born, live, and die. The Ironworks should've forge ahead instead of seeking salvation on a different timeline they created.

I mean they still have to forge ahead the short story they put out reveals that world didn't vanish so that timeline still exist, nothing we did saved that timeline nor erased it which possibly means we weren't the WoL from that time line & Graha ended up travelling to the wrong timeline since our timeline has Zenos who stops Black Rose which means Zenos probably stayed dead in Black Rose time line.

[Kozh]

I mean they still have to forge ahead the short story they put out reveals that world didn't vanish so that timeline still exist, nothing we did saved that timeline nor erased it which possibly means we weren't the WoL from that time line & Graha ended up travelling to the wrong timeline since our timeline has Zenos who stops Black Rose which means Zenos probably stayed dead in Black Rose time line.

Well they're forced to forge ahead when all is said and done and turns out they weren't erased. My point is, if they decided to forge ahead since the start, they won't be looking at means to time travel and "let history be unwritten".

[MikkoAkure]

Unfortunately for you, what the Ironworks of 8UC did is seen as heroic and the right thing to do. Both by the game and the players. So if that's not hypocrisy, I don't know what else.

And frankly, I don't really buy they thinking "oh no mankind is finished", when we don't know if Black Rose reach lands outside of Eorzea. But regardless, it's still a living world where people born, live, and die. The Ironworks should've forge ahead instead of seeking salvation on a different timeline they created.

We do know that Black Rose reached outside Eorzea because the cutscene where the 8UC is brought up by Urianger, he mentions that Black Rose spread throughout the Empire too and then it killed the soil itself. He also says the subsequent violence spread to "every corner of the world" and nations ceased to exist in "an age of endless war" so it was truly a worldwide calamity.

The people of the Ironworks decided that their world was doomed, and it very well could be in the long run since the Ascians are free to run amok and Hydaelyn has less power in that timeline. It's in that backdrop that they decided to throw a light to the past to make a new timeline. In the original timeline, the Ascians will probably eventually complete the Rejoining and Emet-Selch, Hythlodeus, and Elidibus would be reunited and free to hold hands and skip into the sunset if that's what you're looking for.

[Denishia]

I almost agree with both sides of this - my anger with the Exarch never stronger than the disapproval of condemning the 8UE and the sop wasn’t for my WoL being saved but that his time-travel plan also reversed the Ascians’ obliteration of the First. Fantasy Absurd Utilitarian Math where two planets saved is better than one (and fourteen planets full of diversity better than one.) I count the Shards as equally valuable as the Source, so yes, Hydaelyn’s backup Moon Escape plan was as much a non-starter as me pretending Rejoinings were remotely something to desire.

The mind-boggling hypocrisy of that combat line in the Hades fight “our tragedy shall not be repeated” when the Ascians had erased all existence and memory of not just one world but done so at least seven times and counting meant that as upset at the seeming sacrifice of the 8UE made me feel paled to what the Convocation did and was planning to do. Why to this day Emet’s plea to ‘Remember Us’ makes me snort because that was a quid pro quo courtesy he was actively denying others and to us. That while it was not the intended reason that he saved Cylva and Unukalhai, I give gratitude that Elidibus plucking two people from the 13th inadvertently allowed, through our actions in the Warring Triad and Ardbert’s mercy, some memories of the 13th survived. (Then 6.2 happens…) Like how the Crystal Tower kept Future Ironworks alive in their recordings. And that if it wasn’t for the Ascian-caused Calamities, the Source would have the records of the UnSundered predecessors same as The First.

But for the UnSundered World - yes frankly as my WoL in-universe as well as myself this tiny sliver was and would never be more important than the rest of the game, its universe, and characters. And that Unsundered World, at least the little bit we interacted with? It was like Eulmore under Vauthry or Ishgard during the Dragonsong War without a large cast of interesting conflicting NPCs- a place that I immediately wanted to reform or at least not leave it functioning as it was when I entered. So sharing what info the WoL had to give them a chance or at least to plant the seeds to save their future generations without stranding ourselves in the past was what I wanted and expected. Because if I was to stay in a branching preSundered Timeline? I’d demand and work towards some cataclysmic alteration to that society and their powers which ultimately the Sundering fulfilled if to a slightly more extreme extent. I have no interest in a ‘Tales from’ outlining a branching timeline where Venat was able to carry out a plan to forestall the Final Days without the summoning of Zodiark and thus Hydaelyn, but if so, for that new setting to ring true and have appeal, for me it would have to be a world where Amaurotine society is no longer pretending that they can have a paradise where death is always a beautiful choice and that their overriding purpose is whims of creation magic under the label of ‘will of the star’.

[RyuDragnier]

All of this is also true of Elidibus... but despite this, the game never turns that same critical eye to Themis. Even in Anabeisos, when we don't have the argument of 'he hasn't done those things yet', because it is confirmably exactly Elidibus, who already did those things. We basically just skip over the many times when he tried to destroy our world (and sometimes us specifically), with the casual wave-away of 'oh he wasn't all there', and... no, that doesn't fly with me, especially because he's the reason he was in that state in the first place. If the game wants me to look at a villain as a sympathetic person, it needs to not ignore the villainous things they did, and while they did well with that with Lahabrea, 'ignore the villainous things' was exactly what they did with Elidibus.

I'm pretty sure they never look at Themis that way due to the various circumstances behind it. Originally he became the heart of Zodiark to save the world. Then he basically was recreated out of Zodiark to act as a mediator and set the world on its rightful path, as he always did as Emissary. He wasn't even openly villainous to us until the end of Stormblood, as before he took over Zenos it felt like he was just a passive force moving pieces on the chessboard. When we see him again in Shadowbringers, we find out about what he is, and Y'shtola even points out that his will may likely not even be his own, but instead the will of the souls that were sacrificed to create Zodiark. All of this gives him a bit more leeway, because it's very possible that he wasn't even in full control of himself.

Basically Lahabrea proved that it was all him when he fused both his halves together. Everything we have seen of Themis paints him in a kinder light, and makes him feel less like a villain.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

The best kinds of tragedies in fiction are the ones you can't stop. They hit emotionally harder, and they make you develop feelings for the characters in a strong manner. Personally I think it's the best way to end his and Lahabrea's characters off. You understand them completely, know how they were as people, and helps you come to terms with why things had to end the way they did.

Perhaps you are correct in this assertion. If I might offer a counterpoint, however.... The best outcomes are when you prevent the tragedies of the past from repeating, or even outright preventing said tragedies in the first place. Visions of a time never to be, I suppose.

[Iscah]

The primary flaw with the writing of the 8UE situation is that the writers didn't go hard enough. The timeline-overwriting plan needed to hinge around the idea that there simply was no stopping or undoing the impact of Black Rose – it needed to not be a destructive historical event but an ongoing process that would freeze the whole world and spread to the shards as well, so they rushed to give the people of the past a second chance before all was irreversibly lost.

Unfortunately, they didn't do that. They held back and then tried to undo it altogether with An Unpromised Future. They confused their own storywriting and undermined their own point.

They tried to be less brutal and actually made it worse.

---

Meanwhile, I go into our visits to the past with the prospect of the time loop first and foremost. Yes, it would be nice to have the freedom to tell the whole truth and save the ancients from their fate, but that is inherently impossible. There is no mere "planting the seed to save their future generations" and then retreating to your own timeline – if you've changed it, you've changed it, and still not actually undone the suffering that has already happened.

In fact, given that we cannot undo the suffering experienced so far by the ancients in this timeline, then I would argue that the best thing we can do for them is to make sure we stick around in this timeline to bring about a happy ending to what they were trying to achieve. If we vanish off into a second timeline and abandon this one, all that they went through up to now was for nothing.

[Kozh]

Meanwhile, I go into our visits to the past with the prospect of the time loop first and foremost. Yes, it would be nice to have the freedom to tell the whole truth and save the ancients from their fate, but that is inherently impossible. There is no mere "planting the seed to save their future generations" and then retreating to your own timeline – if you've changed it, you've changed it, and still not actually undone the suffering that has already happened.

In fact, given that we cannot undo the suffering experienced so far by the ancients in this timeline, then I would argue that the best thing we can do for them is to make sure we stick around in this timeline to bring about a happy ending to what they were trying to achieve. If we vanish off into a second timeline and abandon this one, all that they went through up to now was for nothing.

Why would this timeline be doomed when meteion has been defeated? The ultimate boss has been defeated, the world has been saved and the sundered got their happy ending. What prevents us to give the alternate timeline the chance to prevent all those tragedies? Also what happy ending exactly we can achieve for them? Etheirys being saved is like a consolation prize, the Ancients are no more. The real elidibus died crying. Real Laha died knowing he failed his son. Only emet has a bit of catharsis but only because the game butcher his character into more WoL wank.

[Cleretic]

I'm pretty sure they never look at Themis that way due to the various circumstances behind it. Originally he became the heart of Zodiark to save the world. Then he basically was recreated out of Zodiark to act as a mediator and set the world on its rightful path, as he always did as Emissary. He wasn't even openly villainous to us until the end of Stormblood, as before he took over Zenos it felt like he was just a passive force moving pieces on the chessboard. When we see him again in Shadowbringers, we find out about what he is, and Y'shtola even points out that his will may likely not even be his own, but instead the will of the souls that were sacrificed to create Zodiark. All of this gives him a bit more leeway, because it's very possible that he wasn't even in full control of himself.

Basically Lahabrea proved that it was all him when he fused both his halves together. Everything we have seen of Themis paints him in a kinder light, and makes him feel less like a villain.

Oh, I fully understand why the writers take the direction they do with Themis. It just doesn't work for me, and a big part of that is the lack of criticism of him.

I'm still figuring out and putting words to exactly what my feelings on this are, but I think there's certain characters that really need some form of in-universe opposition, criticism or contrast to work. Basically every Ancient is in that category, I think because both their overall setting, and their often VERY high-minded ideals and goals, make them seem so overwhelmingly perfect that I want to reject them unless there's some opposition to it; it's too flat otherwise.

Azem's actually a perfect example. Hearing about them from Fake Hythlodaeus, then from Emet's short story, then from Real Hythlodaeus, then from Emet directly and then from Venat, the image being painted was frustratingly flawless, it felt like the writers were trying too hard to make me like them. I only stopped constantly rejecting Azem when Lahabrea came around, and very clearly hated them and objected to their nonsense; that made Azem far more real and likeable to me, because there's a character pointing out flaws.

Several Ancients provide that opposition to themselves; Lahabrea's whole thing in Anabeisos was him doing that, basically going 'I hate what I've learned I'm gonna do, but I also know that I will absolutely do it and not feel bad about it'. Hermes lays bare a lot of his own flaws in a less direct way, and Venat manages to be her own biggest critic even in a game where Emet-Selch got a whole expansion to attack her. Other times, it's someone else in the story who throws the mud, occasionally indirectly; again there's Lahabrea with Azem, and I would argue that's a big thing Amon-Fandaniel did for Emet-Selch (although I would also separately argue there wasn't enough of).

I don't feel Themis/Elidibus gets that crucial, contrasting opposition; he's just presented as nice, good and heroic, but who had something tragic and pitiable happen to him. This actually makes me dislike him for much the same reason I dislike G'raha Tia and Real Hythlodaeus: because he becomes this particularly overbearing blandness that you get from a character who's had all the objectionable edges filed off. And ironically, it's that sort of depiction that makes me object to and reject a character harder than anything.

I had a much more positive response to 5.3 Elidibus than I had towards Pandaemonium Themis because of that. 5.3 Elidibus basically destroyed himself for what he thought was right, and sees himself as a hero for it even as he tries to destroy a planet for the good of, at that point, no living soul but himself. Throwing that away completely as 'he wasn't actually in control'... well, no. You've taken away everything I found interesting about him.