On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Iscah]

Why would this timeline be doomed when meteion has been defeated?

In this very immediate example, Claudien would have woken up Athena and we wouldn't be here to stop her.

How many more threats loom?

This world exists now and we are here to protect it.

Or we could go off and create a second world and leave this one to its fate after all that so many people have done to protect it? No thanks.

The world is never permanently "saved", it is only ever saved from a specific threat while many more lurk ahead.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

(Also, I think it's a little funny that even the Absolute Worst and Most Evil Ancient wouldn't have become a serious threat on a wide scale if not for the intervention of an Alien Space Rock, but you know, the society and its people are just fundamentally rotten and had to be put down, everything was for the best, etc, etc. Endwalker!)

See, that's what they should have done isn't it? Made it so that Athena covertly seized control of the Convocation and infected the Ancient governance with her mad ideals. I full believe she could do it, too. And it would have worked wonders as to give us a legitimate, believable reason as to how and why we should condemn an entire people for the potential sins of the few. Not that such a thing would have fooled all parties, mind.

It's kind of weird, isn't it, how they go out of their way to justify Venat's actions with these laboured, long-winded metaphors on perfection-induced existential apathy and societal stagnation when a much more solid basis for her argument was right there.

I've come to see the writing of Pandaemonium as very, ah, disjointed? I suppose the terminology I would use would be that. I don't see much evidence that they'd given too much thought as to how the parallels between Athena and Venat truly made the Mothercrystal look. But it is what it is, I suppose.

[Kozh]

In this very immediate example, Claudien would have woken up Athena and we wouldn't be here to stop her.

How many more threats loom?

This world exists now and we are here to protect it.

Or we could go off and create a second world and leave this one to its fate after all that so many people have done to protect it? No thanks.

The world is never permanently "saved", it is only ever saved from a specific threat while many more lurk ahead.

1) Okay, let's just say "wait until Athena has been dealt with". Would that be satisfactory for you?

2) Why do we have to think about the possibility of future threats when we don't even know what the future holds?

3) WoL isn't immortal, the people should learn to defend themselves. Aren't they the superior race with Dynamis deus ex machina who got approved by hydaelyn?

[Lunaxia]

Oh, I fully understand why the writers take the direction they do with Themis.

Come on now, you cannot in good stead claim on the one hand to reject certain Ancients because the story treats them and/ or their actions too generously, and then go on to cite Venat as a good example of a character receiving adequate in-universe criticism because of some purported vague moments of self-reflection on the other. Even in good faith, that's just flat out denial, lol.

I've come to see the writing of Pandaemonium as very, ah, disjointed? I suppose the terminology I would use would be that. I don't see much evidence that they'd given too much thought as to how the parallels between Athena and Venat truly made the Mothercrystal look. But it is what it is, I suppose.

The previous patches were fine, but the final tier caught the Endwalker disease and tried too hard to make a Very Deep and Meaningful Message in lieu of constructing a coherent story with substance behind it that holds up to analysis. Fanservice 1, narrative 0.

[Brinne]

It seems kind of grim to think that our world is so fundamentally helpless and fragile without this one single person that it would surely be doomed if not for our presence and constant vigilance. RIP Etheirys in about fifty years when my WoL dies of old age, I suppose.

I still think it's sort of funny to act as though, especially considering recent developments in the MSQ, that if the writers didn't feel like it, they couldn't just whip up some silly aether jargon plot device within a patch and a half (if that) that would allow us to travel back and forth between both potential timelines, if there was a will to do it. Enter Y'shtola and Urianger through our inn door, as they have god knows how many times now. "We've been doing some research with the moon rabbits, and examined the Crystal Tower and it seems there may indeed be a way..." So on and so forth.

I mean, forget the recent patches, the game has been doing this constantly for years and years. We solved Tempering with magical fairie pigs, an FFVIII reference, and a handwave. Regardless, the WoL not being assed to consider even trying to help these people, who have done so much to help and support them - even if the attempt doesn't ultimately succeed - and instead just contentedly pocket their love and friendship given under artificial pretenses, sure is a thing, and leaves me feeling a way, and that way is, ultimately, vaguely contemptuous indifference.

I've come to see the writing of Pandaemonium as very, ah, disjointed? I suppose the terminology I would use would be that. I don't see much evidence that they'd given too much thought as to how the parallels between Athena and Venat truly made the Mothercrystal look. But it is what it is, I suppose.

Some of it seemed so ridiculously overt I honestly couldn't believe it, but who knows with this writing team.

[Lurina]

In this very immediate example, Claudien would have woken up Athena and we wouldn't be here to stop her.

How many more threats loom?

This world exists now and we are here to protect it.

Or we could go off and create a second world and leave this one to its fate after all that so many people have done to protect it? No thanks.

The world is never permanently "saved", it is only ever saved from a specific threat while many more lurk ahead.

You've touched here on the fundamental weakness of FFXIV's writing, going beyond the plot of Endwalker altogether - the fact that the themes and complex issues it chooses to explore ultimately exist in subservience to its nature as a power fantasy centered around a created avatar.

No story choices can ever even scratch the player's ego. The WoL can never meaningfully lose or be unable to solve a problem. The WoL can never be on the wrong side, even by accident. The WoL can never be put into a difficult position where they're asked to make a lasting personal sacrifice for the good of others.

It is taken as a given that you are the most important person in the universe, perfect and indispensable to an absurd degree that dwarfs even the writers favorites, and the narrative's underlying assumptions and moral compass bend and twist around that like spacetime around a black hole.

[Lunaxia]

More fool me for even attempting to engage with a sentient mass of walking complexes. I thought that mentality died out with rage comics and copypastas, but there you go.

It seems kind of grim to think that our world is so fundamentally helpless and fragile without this one single person that it would surely be doomed if not for our presence and constant vigilance. RIP Etheirys in about fifty years when my WoL dies of old age, I suppose.

I've gone from treating the WoL feeling conflicted or torn up over the Ancients as basic, unspoken canon to questioning if I'm the strange one for expecting them to even care, given the writers themselves disregard them so readily and certain sections of the fanbase either view them with apathy or outright assert they got what was coming to them. G'raha et al. doing all of that [insert vague gesturing] just to save us and prevent chaos in a future timeline was suitably heroic and proportionate to the crisis at hand, but saving or preserving - even in part - an entire race wasn't even in the realms of consideration?

And lol, the tempering threat was concluded with such a whimper given how much of a plot point it was up until then that I'm still a little mad about it. It was actually a really interesting obstacle to contend with and made the dangers and story surrounding the primals, including the likes of Zodiark and Hydaelyn, that much more potent, only to take a trip to Matoya's Magic Shop and fix it with a cartoon pig.

[Iscah]

I've gone from treating the WoL feeling conflicted or torn up over the Ancients as basic, unspoken canon to questioning if I'm the strange one for expecting them to even care, given the writers themselves disregard them so readily and certain sections of the fanbase either view them with apathy or outright assert they got what was coming to them. G'raha et al. doing all of that [insert vague gesturing] just to save us and prevent chaos in a future timeline was suitably heroic and proportionate to the crisis at hand, but saving or preserving - even in part - an entire race wasn't even in the realms of consideration?

For me at least, it's "well, we're here now and I'm not going to voluntarily break the space-time continuum again".

G'raha probably shouldn't have jumped ship from a world that wasn't in so bad a shape after all, and they could have made good use of the tower for their own technology. But he's here now and we can't send him back so we might as well make the most of it.

And on the flipside, the ancients WILL go through that fate whether or not we make a feel-good alternative that might blow up in our (and their) faces anyway, so I'm going to stay loyal to this reality rather than try to create a second.

[Brinne]

"But it's for us, they did it for us, they love us!" is also something the writers have figured out is the quickest way to get a character to appeal to the audience, no matter what the actions or behaviors were otherwise. If it was done for us, it must have been loving and heroic in some capacity. You mentioned G'raha, but there are obviously, um, several others. And I can easily include even some of the characters I really like as deploying this trick - Themis and Erich, just recently! - and not just the one who, ah, definitely can't be compared to Athena.

So the answer to your question:

G'raha et al. doing all of that [insert vague gesturing] just to save us and prevent chaos in a future timeline was suitably heroic and proportionate to the crisis at hand, but saving or preserving - even in part - an entire race wasn't even in the realms of consideration?

Yeah, basically. Screw you, got mine.

[Iscah]

Furthermore, ultimately... this is fiction, and as much as I love a good emotional investment, there's only so much effort I want to put in to getting indignant on behalf of a fictional race that the writers don't want to defend because they've written themselves into a corner.