Zodiark's Codex entry what do we think about it?

[Kozh]

Why were the Amaurotines, a highly scientific people who viewed their Creations as a tools, suddenly describing Zodiark as their 'God' rather than just another Creation?

Because zodiark isn't a mere "creation". Not just because zodiark is born from "imbuing the star by its own will", but also because its heart use a living person, aka Elidibus.

Why were more sacrifices necessary - was it to fuel the aether required, or because Zodiark was hungry and demanded it in exchange for cooperation?

Weakest bait I've ever seen. Next

What are the limitations of Zodiark's powers - could He infinitely generate new life in exchange for sacrifices, or did equivalent exchange/conservation of mass/energy/souls apply? If it was the latter, what was the point in more sacrifices in the first place?

Yeah you totally right, they sacrifice more just because it's fun. Not because zodiark needs more aether. Yup.

Were the Convocation acting this way because this was their plan from the outset, or did the summoning aetherically corrupt them in a way that rendered them His devout servants?

The trio unsundered has confirmed that they will not abandon their people no matter what, so take that as you will.

Who was intended to be the next set of sacrifices - was it vegetables, as was frequently posited by part of this subforum, or were these the other human races that occupied the World Unsundered outside of Amaurot?

There's no single evidence of this "other human race", but okay.

What does it actually mean to Sunder someone or something? Is it murder or mitosis?

Please go back to high school if you think mitosis works this way.

[thegreatonemal]

Because zodiark isn't a mere "creation". Not just because zodiark is born from "imbuing the star by its own will", but also because its heart use a living person, aka Elidibus.



Weakest bait I've ever seen. Next



Yeah you totally right, they sacrifice more just because it's fun. Not because zodiark needs more aether. Yup.



The trio unsundered has confirmed that they will not abandon their people no matter what, so take that as you will.




There's no single evidence of this "other human race", but okay.




Please go back to high school if you think mitosis works this way.

The only differences between zodiark and other primals(not even all of them) is the amount of aether used and a person to serve as a vessel for the summoning. I'd imagine the people of the world were deeply traumatized by the final days and Zodiark, put an end to them. He was created with thoughts of salvation, of course they worship him, not unlike a god.

It's a valid question. The people that gave themselves did so willingly, sacrificing themselves so that others and the star itself might live. Did they do this under the assumption that they'd be brought back? Nothing in the game suggests that. Souls inside zodiark said "We are the will of the star, now and forevermore. That doesn't sound like people who are itching to return. So why the third sacrifice? The final days had been stopped, the planet made habitable again. There was no real reason for it. Maybe Zodiark did need more food.

[Cleretic]

It seems I was still not successful in conveying myself, I'll try again. I do actually have quite familiar knowledge with genocide, having both studied it (and yes I did read Raphael Lemkin's books on the subject) and also having lived it.
I also understand settler-colonialism quite well, again having both studied it extensively and also having lived it my entire life.

I am not here to try to defend pixels or attack other pixels for being the bad pixels. My entire point was about the rhetoric often used in these discussions, by the players, not by the pixels in the pixel world.
To explain a bit better, imagine if the game had a SA scene, and after that the playerbase discussion around it would involve a lot of rhetoric like "she deserved it", "she was asking for it, look what she was wearing", would then a real life SA victim be wrong and "not understanding the real world implications of SA" for trying to say that this specific rhetoric is a bit uncomfortable to them?

I hope that made my point a bit more clear. (I am not here to attack anyone so please don't read hostile intent in this)

I wasn't talking about you, to clarify. You didn't bring that up, first of all, and I can tell you've got some level of cultural knowledge of it, and probably the same distaste for this treatment of the term as I do.

Every time it comes up on this particular subject, it's never brought up in good faith; it's used to basically force the discussion from 'there was no right answer, people made the best decisions they could and then had to live with that' into 'good versus evil and I can tell who's evil because one of them did The Worst Crime'. It hurts both the discussion being had about the story we were actually given, and discussions we could be having in the future, both on the subject of this game (again, I'd love to talk Sil'dih, but I don't feel we can) and in the real world.

[Lurina]

God damnit, and now we've introduced The G Word into this. This is exactly what I was referring to. I hate when people try to drag this in (and yes, I do regret using it myself for this in the past), because it does exactly what I was talking about, it breaks and warps the discussion into something that the subject matter was never intended to even remotely resemble.

Genocide is a very real crime and concept. It is, perhaps, the greatest of real crimes, not just in terms of scale, but in terms of the scars that current, living populations still bear. As a result, it holds not just a dictionary and 'criminal court' definition, but a very real cultural one, bearing very deep meaning and representing real, still-extant wounds. Hell, the term itself is part of that legacy; it was coined because there wasn't even a word to describe what happened to the Armenian people or in the Holocaust, no crime existing to charge them of.

Applying it to fake, insane fantasy nonsense like the Sundering or the Calamities does nothing but cheapen and damage both the term and every single person and concept involved in the discussion, including the word itself.

For a while on these forums, I avoided the use of the term "genocide" for these exact reasons, and would say "mass-murder" or "exterminate" instead. Because I agree with you - using it about something that happened in a video game is dumb and honestly pretty tasteless. I'd even go further and say that it's probably inappropriate to use even when talking about more grounded events in the setting, because even when it's playing with more serious themes, this is - again - a game for teenagers. It's a cartoon and doesn't ever merit truly serious language, and you can't really pick and choose based on what vibes right to you. (Like I've said in the past, I don't see the distinction you make between what happens to the Ancients feeling like allegorical mythology versus something like Sil'Dih; if anything, the stuff with the Ancients feels less like mythology since we actually went to Elpis and got to know them - but that's just to illustrate that this is often a matter of opinion.)

But it's another horse has bolted situation. After a while, I noticed the word had become so normalized in talking about the Rejoinings and about Garlemald that it just felt awkward not to use it. Like, if we've already escalated to that degree, all not saying it accomplishes is to make it seem like you're trying to asymmetrically soften how something which happened in the game's plot came across to you. At that point, your choice is to either disengage, or to escalate yourself.

I think a lot of this discourse becomes self-perpetuating. Group A feels grossed out by message the game seems to trying to send with the Ancients, and expresses that how they were exterminated felt wrong. Group B responds defensively by saying it was for the best and insinuating they're supporting something even worse in-universe. Group A gets defensive itself and is drawn into the diagetic argument, where the two made-up factions are compared in increasingly hostile terms. Emet is like a real-world fascist. Venat was doing eugenics. Once the argument has become "exactly how bad were the crimes of these fictional groups", rather than looking at Endwalker and Shadowbringers as pieces of writing, it's inevitable that we'll start talking about the story more and more like it's real life, until the conversation is distorted into something really stupid and completely divorced from what anyone actually cares about.

[jameseoakes]

The only differences between zodiark and other primals(not even all of them) is the amount of aether used and a person to serve as a vessel for the summoning. I'd imagine the people of the world were deeply traumatized by the final days and Zodiark, put an end to them. He was created with thoughts of salvation, of course they worship him, not unlike a god.

It's a valid question. The people that gave themselves did so willingly, sacrificing themselves so that others and the star itself might live. Did they do this under the assumption that they'd be brought back? Nothing in the game suggests that. Souls inside zodiark said "We are the will of the star, now and forevermore. That doesn't sound like people who are itching to return. So why the third sacrifice? The final days had been stopped, the planet made habitable again. There was no real reason for it. Maybe Zodiark did need more food.

Because the survivors wanted there loved ones back and could see a way to do it, and the tone of the EW stuff was that would be done with the ather now rekindled and and flowing through the world again so they'd just be taking that (which is exactly what Venat does once she start parasiting the atheral sea).

[Cleretic]

For a while on these forums, I avoided the use of the term "genocide" for these exact reasons, and would say "mass-murder" or "exterminate" instead. Because I agree with you - using it about something that happened in a video game is really dumb and honestly pretty tasteless.

Personally, I try to use deliberately really ridiculous descriptions, to set the tone appropriately. Describing the Ascians as 'bashing planets together' and the like; it's hard to drag things to inappropriately real places when we're starting there. My one shortfall there is that I don't have one for the sundering, because I literally can't think of a succinct description that's more ridiculous than the actual event.

I do think fiction, even stuff 'aimed at teenagers', is a perfectly fine place to bring in heavier issues and take them seriously; I'm a big fan of Gundam, which is really good at approaching these sorts of subjects even with the 'Wow Cool Robot' element. I don't think they've broached the subject of genocide, but if they were going to I'd expect they'd do it well. But you absolutely have to handle that sort of thing delicately and sensitively, which these arguments... well, absolutely do not. I think the game's approach to this when it actually has done so has been generally quite good, although not perfect, and always really far in the sidelines to the point where it's hard to really point to and discuss.

And...

(which is exactly what Venat does once she start parasiting the atheral sea).

I'm sorry, but what? I'm used to seeing bad faith takes and misinterpretations, but I have absolutely no idea what you could've possibly misread to think this was happening at all.

Did you mistype and mean Athena, or have you misunderstood something so critically that I can't even recognize it? Because Venat never touched the aetherial sea, and deliberately abstained from taking in any aether of any form, even to the detriment of her own health.

[Kozh]

The only differences between zodiark and other primals(not even all of them) is the amount of aether used and a person to serve as a vessel for the summoning. I'd imagine the people of the world were deeply traumatized by the final days and Zodiark, put an end to them. He was created with thoughts of salvation, of course they worship him, not unlike a god.

It's a valid question. The people that gave themselves did so willingly, sacrificing themselves so that others and the star itself might live. Did they do this under the assumption that they'd be brought back? Nothing in the game suggests that. Souls inside zodiark said "We are the will of the star, now and forevermore. That doesn't sound like people who are itching to return. So why the third sacrifice? The final days had been stopped, the planet made habitable again. There was no real reason for it. Maybe Zodiark did need more food.

No they did not expect to return, it’s clear in EW and was implied in shb. Third sacrifice is nothing more than the survivors of a broken world mourning their loved ones and then seeing a not-impossible way to bring them back.

[Brinne]

But it's another horse has bolted situation. After a while, I noticed the word had become so normalized in talking about the Rejoinings and about Garlemald that it just felt awkward not to use it. Like, if we've already escalated to that degree, all not saying it accomplishes is to make it seem like you're trying to asymmetrically soften how something which happened in the game's plot came across to you. At that point, your choice is to either disengage, or to escalate yourself.

Yeah, agreed with this. I’ve always wished terms and specific references to genocide and IRL racism never entered the fandom lexicon in these discussions about fantasy ghost wizards versus a giant rock woman who literally chopped up their people to make a new species, but, unfortunately, the boat had sailed so far already by the point of 5.0 discourse alone that it was on the other side of the galaxy, and carrying piles of dead horses upon it to boot.

I don’t think this game for teenagers is particularly subtle when it actually is trying to allude to things like relatable racism and imperialism. Garlemald is pretty clear cut, whatever your opinions on the quality of how that was done. The Ascians are obviously framed differently in general terms of “mass murder” (relatable mass murder, at that, that the protagonists largely say they would probably also do in their position, because all things stripped down the Ascian conflict once developed was meant to simply be an all-around tragic, limited resources, Kill or Be Killed situation.)

Since the boat is somewhere in deep space, I sort of resignedly just try to at least go for consistency. If the Rejoinings are genocide, so is the Sundering, and vice versa. That all being said, of course it’s worth considering when in the heat of dumb fandom arguments people trip and fall into using historically really, really troubled and loaded rhetoric, even if unintentionally. As Cleretic said, at that point it’s probably worth taking a long step back and centering yourself.

EDIT: Also, as Roselin just pointed out, at least one edition of the game is now on the record for using “genocide” to describe Ancient-related nonsense (regarding a character obviously meant to draw comparisons to Venat, whether you think that’s by contrast, similarity, or both), so the boat has officially crossed galaxies by now and is in the great beyond for real.

[jameseoakes]

I'm sorry, but what? I'm used to seeing bad faith takes and misinterpretations, but I have absolutely no idea what you could've possibly misread to think this was happening at all.

Did you mistype and mean Athena, or have you misunderstood something so critically that I can't even recognize it? Because Venat never touched the aetherial sea, and deliberately abstained from taking in any aether of any form, even to the detriment of her own health.

No I meant Venat with her massive crystal of aether she's leached from the life stream after she sets up there after making herself a primal and entrenching herself in the aetherial sea

[Fiel_Tana]

I'm personally not going to use kid gloves and awkwardly dance around using ugly terms and concepts when talking about story beats. I'm sorry if you don't like that, but it's just going to be a difference of opinion.

I fully agree with that stance. Not using accurate terms for what is being depicted in a story means the story isn't being analysed with honesty.