On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Brinne]

I went good they didn't go that route and then went oh damn I like her wings.

Her wings are marvelous, aren't they? I'm actually a huge fan of Athena's design in general - I love how mundane it is, how she was built out of generic character creator assets, asides from the eyes. Even her body language is "plain" and to the point, memey-head-tilt aside. When we were playing Abyssos, my friend described her as a "mousy librarian"-looking type when she was first revealed. It's perfect.

She is perfect.

And Brinne, you have far more patience than I could ever hope to have.

I've kind of gotten accustomed to the idea that the way I process stories and characters can be a little weird to some people in fandom, so if someone seems likely to be genuinely unused to that mode of thinking as opposed to operating out of bad faith, I... I try, at least! (I probably do not always succeed.) Well. I... try to try?

Good thoughts, by the way, even if I don't have much of anything to add at this point!

Perhaps SE thought if they went that direction it would make Venat too innocent when they wanted the conflict to be grey.

Given the in-universe writing around Venat - the presentation of her flashback montage, accompanied by Answers, and her 'journey' post-Sundering paralleled directly with the Warrior of Light themselves, the way other characters talk about her, the dialogue options provided, things like her minion description, and even things like, in Q&A, Yoshi-P mentioning that one of the goals was to "show she wasn't a bad guy," my impression is honestly the opposite.

They were trying to make Venat as "white" as possible, but one of the main strategies they were relying on, by way of having her keep her and only her keep her memories, was to give her this close relationship to "you" that spanned eons, and establish that she was largely doing this all out of love for you in hopes that would win her over to players and establish her benevolent intent.

This is a strategy that is generally wildly successful with most NPCs - people loved Haurchefant, G'raha, and even to a degree, Emet-Selch himself because they all adored you and that moved people and made them want to respond to that affection. I would say that by and large it succeeded with Venat, too. However, the simultaneous backlash that accompanied Venat because they genuinely did not think through the other implications of her keeping her memories, yet nothing changing, was something they probably didn't see coming. (Similarly, I really doubt they thought through the full implications when they wrote in Emet alluding to Venat deliberately allowing the Unsundered to escape in order to conjoin the timelines.)

And then when it did, in response they threw together the Omega side-quest as quickly as possible in time for 6.15, lmao. Which hey, I did appreciate for what it was.