Can 7.0 focus on a storyline without the philosophizing

[VelKallor]

...and you conveniently refused to even look at / ignored the rest of the post. Didnt meet your narrative.

[BRVV]

...and you conveniently refused to even look at / ignored the rest of the post. Didnt meet your narrative.

I think they were tired of refuting your same, tired old points.

Btw: why does the sacred timeline with a genocide and the death of countless beings due to the Endsinger need to be protected??? The timeline with WoL dead had to be changed... guess because the WoL pays the sub

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

There's the age old "you just skipped cutscenes or didn't understand the DEEP themes!!!" excuse again. Gotta love that one. Regardless, if there's no real good or evil in EW, why does the story bend over backwards to paint someone who committed genocide as a 'herois'?

I swear people that pull out this excuse are very close to how the Rick and Morty intellectual crowd sound.

[Kazhar]

...

Oh yes, my post was intentionally provocative. I don't think the WoL literally told her about rape specifically and she was all giddy about it, but there are still horrific implications in her insistence of realizing the terribly flawed timeline of an individual she met (for a few hours at best). Implications that the story made sure to ignore. She chose that blurry vision instead of the world and the inhabitants she knew. Could the story please address that? No?
And for those who're going to tell me that she didn't intentionally preserve the timeline, that argument was out the second the devs confirmed she spared Emet-Selch for that reason. (With the other unfortunate implication that she intended for the 7 Calamities to happen all along.)

The timeloop was a huge mistake which killed the story completely and the main reason it's incredibly hard to see Venat (and the WoL, who's just as complicit) as a sympathetic character.

[Theodric]

...and you conveniently refused to even look at / ignored the rest of the post. Didnt meet your narrative.

No, that isn't the case. It's odd that you're responding here rather than in the other thread where the points you raised were debunked with actual sources.

I'll be blunt - the grasp of the story from some here is very bare bones. At best they've gone through the MSQ's and echo what other posters say based of 'feels' rather than facts. By their own admission, many of those fawning over 'cRyStAl MoMmY' have not completed all of the side content or soaked up every side quest to see how the overall package fits together. It's certainly a lot of to ask of anybody and that's fine.

Yet as I recall, Lauront and I took the time to refute your points in the following posts:

They clearly had enough to muster enough sacrifices for Zodiark to be summoned in the first place, to save their star, and then again to restore the star. Resilience is also an acquired trait, not just an inherent one. The ancients were shown, in virtually all of their depictions, as a very ascetic, pragmatic people who valued efficiency and the well-being of the star above all else. Though they possessed great inherent power, it came with its own risks (e.g. shown in Venat's side story), and they learnt to manage these. You can imagine many other a species, possessed of such power, ending itself in a crescendo of bloodshed. The notion that, if confronted with the truth of what hit them, they would not adjust as necessary to ensure the survival of their star to me is a rather laughable one. Among the destroyed stars we're shown, they alone turned it around (the dragons had to enact an exodus to survive) - it was the lack of faith of one of their own, thanks to what she was told, that undid them.

But we're not shown Venat providing this information to them. We're shown some scene with some straw ancients prattling on about "perfect paradises" etc., which is not congruent with what we saw detailed about the 3rd sacrifice, i.e. that it was to be undertaken for their brethren, who we now know to be in a limbo of sorts in Zodiark, in order to release them. Meanwhile Venat responds with the equivalent of Hallmark greeting card platitudes about despair that I would not blame anyone in that situation for shrugging off. The arguments shown in Venat's stylised cutscene (and it is indeed stylised as it fits none of the details we know about the 3rd sacrifice), without the context informing them, are not convincing ones and border on tone-deaf. Even in Anamnesis Anyder, Venat (probably because she knows her former colleagues have good reason to doubt what is being said due to the information she's not providing them) refuses to speak ill of the Convocation, noting that they too do what they think is best for the star.

Meanwhile, for all their supposed 'resilience', the sundered are no less susceptible to succumbing to despair, as shown in Thavnair. The Omega sidequest elaborates on this in articulating that there is no single one character trait or attitude that makes one resilient to despair - sometimes even strength of character can result in this, and tentatively attributes this variance to the sundered, dragons and ancients possessing, unlike his species, variety in individual perspectives. In the 8UC we see the Ironworks convinced they had to go back in time to save the WoL (at the potential risk of their own timeline fading) and 'right' the timeline, because they deemed the path of their timeline doomed.

There is an irony in the words as well given that the WoL is in fact one of the most rejoined sundered, being 9/14ths as opposed to the usual 8/14th of the Source and is reliant on a variety of ancient props, such as Azem's crystal, and Emet's fondness and Elidibus's sense of duty, without whom their efforts would've resulted in an absolute failure. Really, barring thinness of aether (which indirect methods could've maybe accomplished, like the Resonance allows Garleans to use magic), the ancients generally and the Convocation specifically exhibited all of the bolded in that quote, and to it I'd add a measure of selflessness.



? This is pants on the head wrong. Never ever was it mentioned that his tempering would be the source of any "mandate" for repeated sacrifices to sustain him. It's not even shown that either Zodiark or Hydaelyn require constant aether like this. In fact, the Q&A contradicts this:



The reason the Convocation and the parts of the populace who agreed with them wanted to undertake this sacrifice is known from Hythlodaeus's shade - it is to restore their brethren within Zodiark. Tempering is not alluded to as a factor, and at the end of the day, the tempering only affected the Convocation and is from a primal with no real will of its own when not controlled by Themis, who in turn, as shown by Fandaniel controlling Zodiark, could suppress the souls within him when controlling the primal if needed. So the above is Reddit headcanons on steroids and doesn't line up with what either Hydaelyn herself, her group or Yoshi say about their motives.



How does it not? She eliminated them as a species for the very purpose of them becoming abler to directly wield dynamis (the logic of which is itself questionable, and also renders the sundered more susceptible to it.) Before you say it didn't kill anyone - it did. It cut the ancients' lifespans to a fraction of what they once were. This is no different to killing by poison. They also devolved to such a degree that they had to evolve into the sundered races to cope with their much weaker forms, as per Yoshi in the Q&A. Consider that from what we're shown of ancient facilities, they require creation magicks to be operated. They're not going to be very usable to the sundered (who are also much smaller), are they? Nor will they be available to deal with the predators roaming the star. Venat went even further than this in desiring that memory of her people was forgotten. This is a genocide in every single facet. There isn't a credible definition by which this is not a genocide. Yoshi even refers to Emet as being spared from being killed in discussing him, and Hermes's short stories likewise refer to him as being killed by the Sundering (not the EN one, of course.) And in order for her plan to work, which as Yoshi said, can be read as trying to preserve the timeline, it requires yet more genocide. Why? Because that in turn requires the Rejoinings to reach the present day state of affairs. She spared Emet to help enact her plan.

The NieR short story (authored by Ishikawa) gave a taste of what the situation was like after the Sundering, since the game itself neglected to show it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC0U_aTv0EI



Don't lump Azem into this. She made a hard, horrible, terrible choice, but the necessity of it is eminently debatable.



Sorry but changing a word here isn't going to make it not a genocide. The claim that they were 'doomed' anyway is similar logic to what Emet-Selch uses regarding the sundered. And it could be true - how many of the dead ends are the sundered subject to, both including ones where supposed 'perfection' is the cause of the end* and affairs such as war or the plague? We've already seen them fall prey to such ends on a micro-scale. How easy would it be for some future antagonist or villain to say "I've glimpsed your future, all paths end in doom, it's time to end it." I have a hunch that if that happens, even if the proposed solution is the totally-not-a-genocide called Sundering, it won't go unopposed and people won't excuse it on the basis of "maybes" in the future - sort of how like with the Rejoinings there was never this humming and hawing about whether they're genocides. They can even have Clive come over from XVI and remind this future not-Venat that "Where there's a chance, there's still a choice" (paraphrasing.)

*Remember, the Nibirun became that way from a state similar to the sundered... funnily enough the tribe quests then go on to show there's hope even for this race of strawmen, who incidentally remind me much more of certain quarters of the 14 fandom than of the ascetic ancients.



No, not really:




It's only with EW that a third and by all accounts final sacrifice, detailing "a portion of it", of this ambiguous life, somehow becomes interminable sacrifices... and all of this based on a stylised cutscene from Venat's perspective. It's EW canon based off what is little better than headcanon. It doesn't even make sense for the sacrifices to be interminable on another basis: their restored brethren would likewise possess creation magicks. So the notion that they'd run to Zodiark for every little thing, whether informed by Venat about the truth regarding Endsinger or not, is implausible.

Without the first two sacrifices, there is no star. They had tried other methods but none worked (known from JP dialogue from Emet in the Amaurot dungeon) due to the Final Days messing with their creation magicks. A certain someone didn't give them enough information to try another effective solution earlier, so they had to resort to large-scale sacrifice to preserve and revive their star and, later, to retrieve their brethren from the limbo that was being inside Zodiark.

Have to agree on one thing though, this topic has worn thin for me as well.



And at the end of the day, they did try listen to him, but he wasn't described in his short story as being particularly receptive. Judging their society by him alone (where really, it's just a case that his despondent mentality was difficult for the others to grasp viscerally) would be like me judging sundered society on the basis of Ilberd, Amon, Yotsuyu, Zenos etc. and saying "wow these sundered are kind of psychotic/scary and don't grasp mental health concepts, time for them to all die!" GCBTW "empath" logic on the ancients, though.



Yeah but don't also try ignore the fact that Nidhogg himself had delivered a less than favourable view of the sundered, claiming that they were ill fit as stewards of the star. This is understandable, to an extent, because he was tasked with protecting his kind and we know from EW that other attempts of theirs to settle on other stars were met with very harsh conflict, and it certainly doesn't justify Thordan's killing of Ratatoskr, which still seems to have come down to powerlust, but it's not like Nidhogg conveyed an intent to just co-exist and sing kumbaya. It can readily be interpreted as a threat of future violence. Of course this is where diplomacy should've come in.

If you can't acknowledge that the complete eradication and deliberate destruction of an entire race counts as an act of genocide then there's not really much room to see eye to eye, is there?

The Sundering was very much an act of deliberate genocide and no amount of screeching or preaching from the protagonists or those that imprinted upon the pretty mother goddess figure is going to change that.

It's a statement of fact, not opinion. If you completely wipe out an entire group of people and then work to obscure any knowledge of their existence and replace them with completely different beings altogether...then that is very much genocide at play.

Much in the same way as how the Rejoinings would inevitably involve genocide as well.

(Those curious can, of course, follow the post links to see what exactly was being responded to - the short version is the usual bizarre narrative that the Ancients weren't subject to genocide through the Sundering and that they couldn't appreciate life or each other...which is readily refuted by the bonds shown between them in Elpis, Amaurot and Pandaemonium.)

By all means, feel free to favour and root for Venat. That isn't the problem here. It's the bizarre insistence that she had 'no choice' when she quite clearly had other options available to her. Not everybody self inserts in this game and instead look at the broader narrative, rather than what happens to benefit their 'Warrior of Light' and the Scions.

To say nothing of the fact that many of us aren't going to accept paper thin reasoning for genocide, even if it's fictional, when that reasoning is poorly written and doesn't hold up under even the slightest bit of scrutiny.

[TheDecay]

Not sure why every story thread turns into a debate about Venat. Regardless, the fact that there is such controversy surrounding Venat at the very least implies bad writing.

I believe Yoshi P mentioned that the story is up for interpretation. In that case, why does the writing portray the situation under such a black-and-white lens? I would concur that when I played through Endwalker, I have not felt that the writers intended Venat to be a morally grey character. In fact, in one of the 6.x patches, you were given a choice to say that Venat's actions were unforgivable, but one of the Scions would quickly dismiss you and change the topic as if they wanted to move on and the cutscene had an "Awkard..." mood as if you just blurted out a racist slur.

[Lauront]

They tied so much of the outgoing story arc to her and had her play such a central role in EW regarding one of its foundational events, that it's difficult to discuss issues with the story without her coming up at some point, and it's not without its tensions with the Scions and their own actions as Eorzean_username brought up. Even the codex itself does this when it discusses Zodiark and immediately pivots back to her. Entries referencing her can only be described as hagiographic in nature... though not to the extent her short story was. Though you're right about what Yoshi has said, and not just once. The only piece of writing which to me showcased it (and then, to an extent) was the Omega sidequest...

The way they approached all this is largely why I dread them doing any further writing of this sort.

[Hurlstone]

Not sure why every story thread turns into a debate about Venat. Regardless, the fact that there is such controversy surrounding Venat at the very least implies bad writing.

I believe Yoshi P mentioned that the story is up for interpretation. In that case, why does the writing portray the situation under such a black-and-white lens? I would concur that when I played through Endwalker, I have not felt that the writers intended Venat to be a morally grey character. In fact, in one of the 6.x patches, you were given a choice to say that Venat's actions were unforgivable, but one of the Scions would quickly dismiss you and change the topic as if they wanted to move on and the cutscene had an "Awkard..." mood as if you just blurted out a racist slur.

Was that when the Watcher offers the choice in the Omega side quest? I am a staunch Venat supporter, though I do understand why people wanted a bit more ambiguity and introspection regarding her actions and the reactions form the Scions. That would have been cool, especially to have Thancred or someone call Venat out, but if I could only like and support writing that I felt was flawless, then I would never like anything I feel haha. Thats the thing with writing and storytelling, its very subjective. The very fact her arc can be seen as, at best, divisive rather the outright hated points more to that then bad writing.

I do wish we could move on from just debating about Vanet, but at leats it has been a while since I have seen the Geneva Conventions being posted here... thats somthing!

[Kazhar]

It's hard to avoid Venat when talking about Endwalker since she's so integral to its story. (Hermes too, and the writing around him is arguably even worse but saying he was unlikeable is much less of a controversial take.)
But it's true that she takes a bit too much of the spotlight, which makes people believe often that she's the ONLY issue we have with 6.0 and 6.x. and feeds the misguided idea that only raging misogynists dislike the expac, unfortunately.

[Eorzean_username]

Not sure why every story thread turns into a debate about Venat.

It's probably a few things.

a) EW "revelations" and M. Night Shyamalan time-travel "plot twist" turned Venat into the Kevin Bacon of FFXIV. Now, no matter what you're talking about, you can somehow end up connecting it back to Venat's conscious and intentional decisions.

For example, you want to complain about the really excessively sledgehammered philosophising / preachiness in XIV plot — great, Venat is here in our Contacts, ready to provide multiple scenes in which she gives us excellent examples of the problem, and can be traced as causing several more of them.

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b) Venat is one of the few controversial characters who receives no real consequences nor accountability, and never will.

Everyone else around you handles her with downy-soft mittens in the storyline; still praises her constantly; fawns about her almost at random; and then she gets to "feel a little bad" for ~5 seconds, before being reassured that she's actually a great absentee parent, and allowed to dissipate into sparkles with a smile, while knowing that her ridiculous plan will still be carried out just as she wanted it.

She just... completely wins. From a plotting perspective, she suffers no serious downsides and has to fight for nothing. She does whatever she wants, then gets rewarded with everything she wants, then just "goes home".

As a result, I think there's one of those "unresolved issues" tripwires here, because anyone unsatisfied can't even hope that the plot will get better resolution some day. So people resort to screaming into the void about it at every even-vaguely-related opportunity out of sheer impotent frustration.

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c) People who don't think about it too much, and/or have moral compasses very unlike mine I guess, tend to feel the way that the plot "wants" you to feel about Venat, and become polarised and confused when they see actual hostility towards her as a character.

So she's much more likely to set off a fireworks display at a single mention, even a tangential mention, than less confusing characters (such as... just about everyone else in the entire game, save maybe Hades during ShB).

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d) Stemming from all three above, at this point you could basically create a variant of Godwin's Law for Venat/Hydaelyn with regard to FFXIV Story discussions.

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I believe Yoshi P mentioned that the story is up for interpretation.

Honestly, this sounds like the kind of thing that someone says when they just don't want to talk about it any more, because they have no intention of ever returning to it.

"It means what you want it to mean!" is a great way to deflect responsibility off the creators. It's like distracting a pack of dogs in a cartoon by throwing a single steak that they'll all go fight over.

Now "everyone" is correct, so "no one" can be disappointed (or bother you about it any more). Hooray!

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I'm not saying that stories can't be deliberately-written to be ambiguous and open to viewer interpretation...

...I just think calling EW that kind of story is kind of pushing it in terms of plausibility, since it seems to bend over backwards at every turn to indicate exactly what it wants to mean and exactly how it wants you to feel about it.