On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Brinne]

Hah, inured as I am to depictions of women in media, it never crossed my mind to think it was anything other than a commonality shared by virtue of simply being female and adhering to the unspoken rule that all female boss encounters must emphasise that fact.

Preferences? ...perhaps I'm better off not knowing. (...or perhaps I already somewhat know, but would like to enjoy the ignorance that comes with uncertainty.)

By the way, I am curious, being that you're very much a fan and enjoyed Pandaemonium from that perspective: did you find the resolution to Athena's arc satisfying in terms of how it connected to what had been set up over the course of the previous two tiers? Did you find the disease/ parasite symbolism to be well-utilised?

Yes, I did! As I've mentioned, I went into Anabaseios petrified they might "ruin" what I liked about her in Abyssos, and while I understand reservations about the influence of the Heart of Sabik, I truly did think her presentation was overall a wonderful surprise, and the almost emotional anti-climax by the firm assertion that no, there is nothing there - it almost felt like there was a certain awareness of the expectation of how a typical abusive mother trope might play out in media - was a delight. And I do want to say I adore her not just from the perspective of being a loveless mother and unrepentantly evil woman - she also kept that almost businesslike demeanor that I thought I picked up in Abyssos that seemed really interesting, and the sort of raw, earnest passion for science. Athena perceives herself, and believes she conducts herself, as a true professional, and that also has a certain delightful appeal.

(I sort of want to mention another part of what I think made me feel Athena's integrity as a character stayed intact even with the Heart of Sabik thing - the question of Sabik's influence is introduced only partially through the raid, and alongside it is Erich wondering and questioning his father if it was possible things could have been different if not for the space rock. It's explicitly a question raised, to be answered later, because he doesn't get one at the time. That ambiguity still gnawing at him is exactly why he goes out of his way to question Athena in that last sequence, fishing to see if there is anything to hold on to, any reason to think things could have turned out differently, at least for their fundamental relationship as mother and son, if not for Rocks. And he gets his answer, and the matter is settled. And the answer is no. That's a subjective reading, but it's genuinely the one I got, I think.)

As for the symbolism - I think the imagery specifically in that regard was mostly resolved in Abyssos itself with the Hephaistos/Lahabrea arc, and the way she "poisoned" him to the point he had to break himself in half to keep her influence at bay. (And also that brief stint of invading Erich's thoughts to brainwash him via Hephaistos, arguably, since the brainwashing revolved around love for his mother.) I was actually very impressed even at the time with the relatively understated use of the symbolism, because it wasn't in your face - nobody stared into the camera and said "alas, my love for Athena was unto like a poison upon my soul" - and was therefore presented in a way there was that special joy when what was going on with the background visuals clicked into place for me, the recognition of a cohesive theming. But it was also consistent and prominent enough that it felt like, once you noticed it, there was also no mistaking it. Wonderfully executed.

But literal story aside, the symbolism is most interesting because it reflects, moreso than anything silly like "Athena magically brainpoisoned her husband and child!" - the dynamic of a toxic family, the struggle of the feeling of "poison" or "parasite" that clings even as you struggle with lingering feelings of affection, even as you know you "shouldn't" feel such things - as Erichtonios('s memory shade, yes, it is contrived, but for the purposes of the narrative and emotionally, still obviously meant to simply be a Cheat-Don't-Talk-About-It-But-Otherwise-Authentic version of Erichtonios) continue to do even in Anabaseios. Or, even more poignantly, even though we come to understand that Lahabrea truly loved Erich, Athena's "poison" was so horrific and all-consuming to their family that it warped their relationship that as a consequence of her abuse, Lahabrea ended up in a place where he also felt he had to, in a way, become an extension of his son's continued mistreatment in order to protect him from her.

Rot is a specific word used by Hegemone in her encounter (and part of the imagery invoked by Agdistis, too!) and it's really apt, because Athena's shadow rots away love that should have been something to treasure, should have been one of the forces that most supports a person, on multiple levels. And it doesn't destroy it, is the thing - it twists it. The love Lahabrea had for her, the love Erich had for her, and even the love between Lahabrea and Erich. It all rots and curdles under the weight of her toxicity.

Anabaseios left behind the poison symbolism a bit as a whole in favor of the heaven/hell and Venat symbolism, but Athena's Theos form is still insect-based, so it also wasn't entirely abandoned. And the final exchange between Athena and Erich could probably best be described as, ah, "venomous." But Erich's counter to Athena still reflected that consistent note of her seeping influence that corrupts and ruins, even in ways she didn't actually want. But while Erich "overcame" her to reclaim his own agency, and even declare he had found his own family, that lingering element of him manifesting again to stare at her as she died with that last bitter exchange...

I'm not sure how to put it. It was a good, complex balance. He overcame her and it was truly triumphant, so I'm not trying to and absolutely don't want to undermine that, but it's also not like he also chose to "walk away" in totality either, if that makes sense. Erich has a right to be venomous to his mother, to linger and steep a bit, and I'm glad he was allowed it. (He can have a little poison, as a treat.)

It was all really great. My wife.

[SilversLyu]

Well one thing is clear for certain, Venat as a character is not clear at all. You really cant tell what the intention was with her at the end of the day, is she supposed to be morally grey, the lesser of two evils? The implications behind her actions are so controversial the writers probably dug themselves into a hole, some stuff they didn't noticed until it was too late and the famous Venat threads were made all around right after Endwalker. Either that or the writers left her character ambigious on purpose and for interpretation, who knows. Doesn't help that the way of the ancients is bashed all the time, it's a bit onesided for my taste. While going through the story, Hydaelyn seemed more and more shady.. and in Endwalker she is praised as the savior literally, while there are quite some questions to ask. I dont even mind the believe in her, what I find offputting is the fact that nobody questions Venat ingame, no one. If it would be brought up in some feasible form that would be a different story, but yeah it is what it is. But as I said in another thread, they might adress this in the game down the line, we shall see.

[Lunaxia]

Thank you for sharing! It was very insightful, as ever, and certainly gave me some things to think about. Truthfully, my issues surrounding Themis et al. aside, I felt misled by the story in the thematic direction it ended up taking and the inclusion of what wound up feeling like a few red herrings, perhaps owing in part to my interpreting things a little more literally than you did. It's helpful to hear other perspectives in such cases, as you can become a little mired in your disappointment of unmet expectations and miss something noteworthy that others with a more open view of the story might have picked up on. I still sort of feel like there was a plot thread somewhere that was discarded in terms of Athena's influence manifesting in a parasitic presence in those she or Hepha exerted control over... but there's something to be said for the metaphorical aspect of the implementation of that theme, particularly with how well it ties in with the aspect of the story I did enjoy (namely, the family drama.)

And I do want to say I adore her not just from the perspective of being a loveless mother and unrepentantly evil woman

I did lol at how hilariously terrible that sounds out of context - but no, I understand completely, and I think you accurately summed up what it was that made her so oddly charming as a villain, particularly in Abyssos; how in their aversion of the "motherly love trope", the writers also managed to prevent themselves from falling into equally tired "ruthlessly evil for the sake of it" territory on the opposite end of the spectrum and instead sourced her motivations from the foundation of her single-mindedness as a scientist, first and foremost. It really was refreshing.

[Cleretic]

After reading all the endless discussions on it I can see why people were uncomfortable with it. I think a lot of the ideas brought up like making Venat get memory wiped and the sundering be unintentional would make it less awkward. Perhaps SE thought if they went that direction it would make Venat too innocent when they wanted the conflict to be grey.

I'd argue that if Venat also got memory-wiped, Elpis would feel totally pointless; you'd just be wondering why you bothered going through the entire thing when you leave it with something that could've been solved with a single loredump from a convenient book. Sure, there'd be a bit of a later playoff where Amon and Meteion kind of remember you (in different respects; Amon's memory is there but hazy, with Meteion it's hard to tell how much she remembers us, if at all), but that would feel like basically nothing compared to immediately leaving Elpis and going 'well what was the point of all that'.

Nobody remembering us at all would turn Elpis into 'Company of Heroes Banquet Questline 3: How Do We Keep Getting Roped Into These Pointless Diversions'. (Company of Heroes Banquet Questline 2 is, of course, in the Ivalice raids)

[Lyth]

Some thoughts with regards to the earlier discussion.

As someone who first experienced the story independently of here, I didn’t originally get the sense that the Convocation and Venat's group were 'factions' to be 'supported' or 'rejected'. The questions around Zodiark’s summoning and the Sundering were by and large a point of historical curiosity that I was willing to wait to get the answers to. I still am – it’s impossible to deliver judgement in the absence of all the facts, especially when there are so many different possibilities around what happened. We still don't know what Zodiark's summoning or the Sundering actually entailed on a mechanistic level.

I’m also, setting aside my own critique of Amaurot’s institutional structures, very much a fan of its characters. Emet remains one of my favorite characters (I have a personal shrine made for him, complete with his staff, Azem's grapes, and a Stratocaster, naturally). While I found Emet mildly entertaining in early Shadowbringers as a sort of Ardyn homage, he became progressively more fascinating across the expansion, culminating with his begrudging reversal and redemption starting with the 5.3 trial cutscene. What really set him apart was the Tales from the Shadows series, and his interaction with Hyth, Elidibus, and Azem. I was thrilled that they managed to capture that same dynamic through Elpis, with Venat as the resident Azem stand-in. In watching the final scenes of the Endwalker MSQ, you really get this sense of family from them, regardless of their disagreements and conflict over centuries, ending in that magical final shot of the old guard intersecting with the new.

And that's by and large what I've come to expect from Final Fantasy games over the years ('You need love and friendship for this mission! And the courage to believe it! It's all about love, friendship, and courage!'). Final Fantasy games are invariably cheesy in a way that perhaps detracts from their ‘seriousness’, but it provides warm and fuzzy feelings nonetheless. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I've also never been left with the sense that Amaurot was ever presented as 'superior' or 'inferior' to us. For starters, who even talks that way about another human being? But on a deeper level, we are Amaurot. If you track Emet's character growth across Shadowbringers and Endwalker, you can see how his perspective changes as the 'you' becomes 'we', and he acknowledges us in his baton pass.

'You cannot be entrusted with our legacy.'
'Do not squander it. The legacy I leave you.'

I can’t help but wonder if this gradual development of trust historically occurred between generations of Convocation members, as apprentices matured into masters.

If even the de facto leader of the Ascians sets aside his differences with his longstanding opponents and can come to stand alongside us in the ‘we’ of the people of Etheirys, where is this perceived grudge coming from? It just doesn't feel like it ever belonged in the text to begin with.

I know that everyone engages with a text differently, but it's possible to inject so much of yourself into a textual reading that it becomes foreign to everyone else. Your intertextual retextualization becomes detextualization. It stops being about the author's ideas and their characters and starts being about you. That tension between author and reader over 'ownership' always exists (fanfiction is the sublimation of this), but I think a degree of give and take is required for a such a reading to not feel forced and inauthentic.

Returning to the text is essential. It’s the same reason why a painter looks at the subject and not the easel. What are the ideas that we take for granted? What have we assumed and imagined? The more understanding we gain through directly returning with the text, the more doubts and unanswered questions we find around our own pre-conceptions. The more you are left with a sense that ‘we need to wait and see’. Absolute ‘certainty’ occurs in the absence of knowledge and imagination.

But too often challenges to forum dogma are perceived as slights and met with derision, or worse. When has that ever won hearts? You most definitely cannot shame someone into your point of view. Even if I started out sympathetic and wanting to reach common ground, I feel compelled to reject the ideas on principle. And the structure of the narrative makes it effortless to swing the rhetorical device downhill right back at its owner, trite as the exchange is.

These are still just classical stories about heroes and reformed villains, from their very roots in ARR and Heavensward. The more forcibly you try to go against the grain with carefully manufactured outrage aimed at the writers, the localizers, and anyone else who steps in firing range, the more the response becomes to silently draw clearer lines in the sand in future stories. The result is a shift towards more one-dimensional villains of the likes of Athena, whose backstory and motivation essentially summed up in a singular reductionistic glance of madness. The ‘mirage’ of her ‘mystery’ is evaporated in but a single moment. And I think the story ends up being the lesser for it.

My end feeling is, that as much as I would have enjoyed seeing more stories about Amaurot (Igeyorhm’s backstory when?), the playerbase as a whole is probably better off with unsympathetic, forgettable villains, if only to stave off this sort of factionalism. Which is unfortunate.

[Alleluia]

I hated Athena, but I like that I hated her. She was repugnant. She was the FF14 version of Hojo, which I'm sure was intentional. Right down to having a kid for the sole purposes of experimenting on him and using him. And a strange obsession with beneficial gifts of a malicious alien. "I did it for the science," she justifies as she assumes I'm mentally deficient when I don't begin praising her motives. And when she just doubles down on belittling Eric? My Urge To Stab grew three sizes that day.

She was a very good villain.

Themis, I made sure to hug btwn quest objectives, cus you never knew when he'd go away. lol In all seriousness, though, I loved his emphasis on how he can move on without regret now. He's telling us he's ok, we're ok, and forgiving us. Not that I regret fighting him on the tower and winning, per say. I don't. But I do regret it came to that. And I can see how our opposition to him, in his eyes, might require forgiveness. So getting that was very nice.

I hope all three of our ancient friends still in the lifestream reincarnate into happy lives. (... And maybe Lahabrea, too.)

Re Elpis, personally I was very sad when the memory wipe started up b/c that confirmed for me we were in a loop, not a branching timeline. I wanted to save those people and was hoping we'd be able to manage a deviation like G'raha did. Even if we never saw the result. I wanted there to be a world where Hades, Venat, and Elidibus didn't go through the hell they did, and not accomplishing that felt like a bit of a failure on my WoL's part.

End of EW and Pandemonium is allowing us closure with them, at least, so there's that.

Also, I think Venat was great and did the best she could. I don't feel like writing or reading paragraphs of the same argument repeatedly, so I'll just stick to that sentence. lol

[Anonymoose]

I understand what the writers wanted to achieve with it, <…> I don't believe that makes it a good choice

This about summarizes my personal opinion of the entire trip to Elpis. I suspect that the desire to provide the player experience of going to Elpis and meeting those characters outweighed the cost in terms of asking the players to accept some convoluted plot and awkward beats so it could set up the teamwork ending. Otherwise, as I often joke, "This could have been an Echo."

But I’m also, as you and others have pointed out, the kind of person who tries to come to terms with things once I can understand them. I understand why they made these choices, I understand that a lot of better choices were precluded by 10 years of earlier content, some of which had no exit strategy. The decisions weren’t linear A to B, but massive system of moving parts to attempt to balance, and some sacrifices were made, and people will have opinions. Because I can understand it, I choose to make the best of it. I choose to build interpretations that increase my resonance with the story and ability to see it as a coherent whole. (And when I have questions or concerns, I hammer on them - constructively - and try to make it fun for everyone to do so, because playing the game with a good community is what I enjoy most.)

Otherwise I’d just leave. I’d quit. I don’t want to spend two straight years being negative about something I claim to like. I’ll just play something I like more. At the end of the day, FFXIV is product, and one that I don’t own or produce or control. What I control is what I buy and invest my time and energy in. If I’m not getting the experience I want from a product, I’ll buy another product. I choose to stick with this product, so I’m going to get the most I can out of it.

It's like as not just nitpicking over semantics than any genuine disagreement, though I'm a little unclear about "his willingness to acknowledge"; what exactly are you referring to there?

I think the easiest way to explain this would be to just add an extra word or three. I think what changed pre/post-fight is the willingness to acknowledge it out loud. The way I build my own interpretation of the scene, I think the part of him that sets himself up for failure to think or act against his duty fades in defeat. I think people can see what they want to there, perhaps that the influence of the tempering was fading, perhaps that he decided more deliberately that death means he did his best and lost and can move on, leaving room for his previous doubts and desires to step forward. I don’t get that specific with it. I like it see it as a little of each factor.

not least because it diverges significantly from what we've been told prior by just about everyone outside of Venat

I think what we learn in Endwalker diverges pretty significantly from what even Hydaelyn told us, too. I like to see that as a feature rather than a bug: they were all unreliable narrators after 12,000 years of primalization and conflict and grief (and SE not having a plan yet) ... (disclaimer: snark) especially when interacting with the sundered, whose lives who typically flicker in and out of existence faster than makes it worthwhile explaining the whole story to them, anyway.

and it inevitably becomes a sticking point in these arguments as your personal interpretation of it is what the justification for the Sundering effectively hinges (or fails to hinge) on.

Yes.

As far as I'm concerned, we already knew the world had recovered to some degree; we knew there was an ongoing debate on both sides as to how to proceed.

Framed in this way, agreed. However, the way I make sense of the story for myself, I can’t separate “the race itself had technically bought itself a little more time” from other knowledge and questions and concerns that come bundled with it.

We know that the summoning of Hydaelyn, compared to Zodiark, had very little support (hologram cutscene, short story). We know the Convocation was uncharacteristically unwilling to hear debate (hologram cutscene). And, this is a very abstract thing, but I would be negligent to not include it because it does inform my perspective: the game has gone on at length, since 2.0, about the necessity of balance between Light and Darkness. We know that Zodiark is a MASSIVE concentration of Darkness, and have many hints that this is probably not good, long term.

(A brief aside: Notice that following this logic would lead one to conclude that if Zodiark was defeated, Hydaelyn would also have to go. She did. So I feel confident making the observation, at least.)

Here are some questions I grappled with a lot before Endwalker: If the Convocation accidentally tempered themselves, would they ever actually let Zodiark go? Would they take this massive Dark imbalance off the table? Would they ever stop looking to the one true god to solve their problems? Could they ever have been an effective leading council again? Is seeing the effects of Zodiark part of what made the general populace so against the summoning of Hydaelyn? Or were they loyal to Zodiark, too? Why? Because the Convocation said so? Because Elidibus came back and decided so? Was anyone else tempered along the way?

I factor all of these into my assessment of Venat’s options, and I think those questions, assumptions, interpretations, etc. help me build a bigger bridge.

Some players argue symbolism or simplification

I argue visual metaphor. Do you remember when amnesic Cid asked, “When did I put on these goggles?” and the Warrior of Light flips on the Echo and restores his memorie, but what we see is this bizarre scene of the floating ghost of the Warrior of Light handing him his goggles? I think this is a similar situation. I think they condensed the arrival of the Final Days, the summoning of Zodiark, the sacrifices, the attempt to persuade them to a new course, the summoning of Hydaelyn, the return of Elidibus, the civil war, and the sundering down to Venat strolling down memory lane reflecting on her own failure to change their course from her own personal perspective. (Which you can easily decide is biased, but she thought what she thought, and she did what she did.)

For one thing, if the scene was literal and accurate, I think she'd be in Hydaelyn form, not Venat form, by that point, right? Idk. Anyroad...

It’s up to us to decide which plot points and quotes have the most weight, and that’s a very subjective thing. I think some people choose to put less weight on the game highlighting Venat’s flaws and mistakes and horrible choices, perhaps because in the end the writers predictably made her (the person the story depicted as unwaveringly having the player character’s back) the architect of the final boss of that game’s defeat. Perhaps Endwalker prioritized too high doing whatever it could to bring everyone and everything together against despair, but I think that was a deliberate choice made people writing a Final Fantasy game during a global pandemic. Endwalker is, if nothing else, for better or for worse, every bit the celebration of the best and worst habits of Final Fantasy as a whole. But once that weight is taken off the scale, for whatever reason, every time the true Hades or Themis or Hephaistos (as opposed to their 12,000-year-old-wraith selves, who as far as I’m concerned are philosophically dead and would still think they were right) says, “I, too, made mistakes and as a result did horrible things but am glad the Endsinger is defeated,” perhaps it feels like too much weight is being put on that. No story is perfectly balanced, and every story has fans trying to redress the balance in their own ways, and that’s ok. They will throw quotes and support at each other and claim they have more or less weight. And that’s ok. Eventually they’ll sand off the rough edges of their perspective, or they’ll agree to disagree. And that’s ok.

(Or they'll be destructive jerks who make trying to enjoy the game miserable for the rest of its community, which is not ok.)

That's a very generous interpretation of the events of the game, Moose.

<excited smiling and nodding> Yes!

I could counter that those killed by the Rejoinings were simply thrown into the recycle of rebirth ahead of their time for a greater purpose

<intense smiling and nodding> YES!

but we both know that's not a fair or accurate judgement

NOOO! <bursts out laughing>

I was deliberately being generous there, to all the game’s parties, for a specific reason. The game introduces multiple perspectives of every event. To say the rejoining is throwing life back into the stream to be reborn because it’s better than oblivion is exactly the perspective Ardbert had, and, in my opinion, the game hails him as a hero for that intent – he loved his people so much he’d be their villain so that their legacy, life, could triumph over oblivion. The tragedy, what makes him a villain to the player character, is just that he was wrong. He allowed himself to be tricked by Elidibus into a false binary.

And that’s exactly what I want to invoke here: I think some people (SOME) are upset because when given the gaps and lacking explanations (which you concisely and eloquently highlighted lead to unavoidable impressions and assumptions), they reach for things they think can support that Venat, too, bought into a false binary, because that fits best with their perspective, but that sets them up for inevitable frustration with what has to feel like SE constantly denying them that opportunity.

As Shadowbringers took pains to tell us, a life lost is still a life lost, a life that deserved to live, and a culture lost is just that also, and that goes for both sides of the coin in regards to Venat and the Ascians.

OK, back to “YEEES!” because I think this goes for more than just Venat and the Ascians, I think this also applies to the ancients who wanted to continue the sacrifice and trade newly born life for life already given.

Here’s my perspective (and I’m still not claiming it’s anything more than my perspective):

What indications do we have that the sacrificed expected to be restored? That they would have been happy to know that life newly born was unwittingly sacrificed for that? Would Hythlodaeus have consented to this? Let’s assume that my earlier questions and concerns have no merit. Let’s give me no benefit of the doubt on those. Let’s assume that the Convocation would have let Zodiark go, that tempering was not a long-term issue, that nobody would look to the one true god to solve every problem, that Darkness could be effectively counterbalanced, and Meteion could be defeated. The ancients that remained could have embraced the sorrow of their loss. Zodiark could eventually have been unmade. Those souls could have been returned to the sea. And maybe, just maybe, the ancients could have had their happy ending. But those ancients wanted to sacrifice more and more to go backwards and deny sorrow. You are exactly right. Every life lost is a life lost. Every life is precious. Every life is worth fighting for. And some of the ancients fought for the survival of that new life – life with its own existence and experience and precious right to live – over sacrificing (depending on the circumstances the word "murdering" might be more accurate) them to bring back those who already willingly died and cementing their society on the path to Meteion.

But they lost.

Addendum for Connection to Thread:

And, from that personal perspective, it's not all that weird to me for true Themis to acknowledge this - he was, after all, qualified to be the Elidibus.

If you think about it, the sundered think the worlds are broken, but functionally, stably, beautifully so. The Ascians? No. They weren't focused on the Endsinger. To the Ascians, the broken worlds were a post-loss condition that heralded their own oblivion if not undone ("Remember us."). Could primal Elidibus ever accept that he could trust the worlds to remain broken, and in the hands of the sundered, and it would not lead to oblivion? Seven Hells no. But as the sundered stand in for us, I think the game is party about us proving primal Elidibus wrong, there, and for true Themis to acknowledge that would be rather in line with the qualities of the Elidibus. (From my personal perspective.)

Perhaps that could be seen as rhyming with the writers choosing true Hades to be the one who tells us, the player, the legacy of the Traveler, that the broken worlds are indeed beautiful and full of wonders to explore.
(By buying more product.)

[Cleretic]

I think what we learn in Endwalker diverges pretty significantly from what even Hydaelyn told us, too. I like to see that as a feature rather than a bug: they were all unreliable narrators after 12,000 years of primalization and conflict and grief (and SE not having a plan yet) ... (disclaimer: snark) especially when interacting with the sundered, whose lives who typically flicker in and out of existence faster than makes it worthwhile explaining the whole story to them, anyway.

I'm mostly just quietly approving of Anonymoose's posts because that's all pretty much on the money by my eyes, but this part I do want to add to.

On top of being unwittingly unreliable narrators (both in and out of universe) for all those reasons, I'd also underline that they're intentionally unreliable narrators (both in and out of universe); I've mentioned before because I think it's really worth remembering, post-sundering Emet and Hydaelyn both communicate heavily in lies of omission, telling enough of the truth that they hope you neglect to question the parts they left out. They do this differently, perhaps partly because for Hydaelyn that part had to be back-filled thanks to them not having the whole plan yet, but we do know that by the time Emet was talking to us, at least the broad strokes of the plan was on the drawing board, so they knew he wasn't reliable.

This isn't even subtext, it's outright stated; remember that the Anamnesis trip happens because the Scions want to investigate Emet's claims without his input, and basically the same thing leads to the Elpis trip. But even before then, it was certainly being implied very loudly in 5.0; in that scene with the cave paintings after the Qitana Ravel, it's pretty clear especially in retrospect that Emet's game in that scene was to blindside us with the 'Hydaelyn and Zodiark are primals' bombshell, and then use that shock to slide right past any details, most notably the fact he doesn't actually explain why 'the naysayers' objected.

And to drag back the original subject of the thread, it's even more flagrantly true of Elidibus, who I feel might've been lying in a good 90% of his lines after Stormblood. We just never really examine his behavior on that front very much, probably because he doesn't fill the same role of being a source of important information that's also definitely not doing so completely honestly. In fact, the only other major character who's like that is Urianger.

...hold on, I need to figure out what that means about Urianger, I feel like I'm onto something.

[Lunaxia]

This about summarizes my personal opinion of the entire trip to Elpis.

I just want to quickly apologise and say not only may I not have time to address your post today, but that there is a solid chance my forum access will run out before I'm able to, so in the event that happens I wanted to thank you for taking the time to exchange thoughts with me and doing so in a very fair, open and reasoned way despite the sizeable distance between our individual points of view. It really was quite fun! Though to address one thing:

NOOO! <bursts out laughing>

I'll profess to a misunderstanding there. When you prefaced that portion with "from my perspective" and separately acknowledged the Ascian viewpoint as their own but forwent any such clarification in your reference to Venat's actions, to my mind, it sounded as if you might have been speaking a little more personally and that perhaps some unconscious bias was creeping in, to which I became wary. Considering previous posts, though, that may have been a little unfair in hindsight and I should have given you the benefit of the doubt.

[Anonymoose]

I just want to quickly apologise and say not only may I not have time to address your post today, but that there is a solid chance my forum access will run out before I'm able to, so in the event that happens I wanted to thank you for taking the time to exchange thoughts with me and doing so in a very fair, open and reasoned way despite the sizeable distance between our individual points of view. It really was quite fun!

If you don't get around to it, no worries, maybe I'll catch you on the flip side of the subscription one day.

Apologies again for the rocky start. I never want to put anyone down and I sincerely believe that everyone is entitled to interpret the game however makes them happy, but I'm aware that sometimes when I'm being flippant AND/OR addressing a single factor shared by several diverse perspectives, it can come off as painting unintended parties with the same brush ... and instead of it being the intended [in my opinion, if you choose to interpret it that way, the resulting discrepancy is more a result of your choice rather than anything SE did] aimed at a certain group I intended, it lands more as being intentionally condescending to people whose interpretation (despite it not panning out) was arguably the fault of SE and gaps in the writing (especially on the curve for individual experiences). I'll keep trying to do better there, lol.

But thank you for the engaging discussion, as well!

it's even more flagrantly true of Elidibus, who I feel might've been lying in a good 90% of his lines after Stormblood.

My experience of Elidibus was difficult for this reason. I decided in 2.1 he was an untrustworthy snake (deliberate label so I'd have a fun <finger guns> moment if he was closest to Zodiark / represented Ophiuchus) and that everything he said was a technically-true piece of deceptive double-speak and probably omitted a lot more than he said. I decided that Elidibus never lied, but always deceived you into making the choices he wanted despite them not being in your best interest at all. I thought that was his role in the story. And then he started going a lot farther, and I felt like I'd lost something I enjoyed.

In retrospect I just tell myself he had to do his own job AND Lahabrea's job and if he was lying he was just in Substitute-Lahabrea mode at the time, lmao.