[6.0 - 6.4 Spoilers] An interesting video detailing Venat's polarizing reception

[KizuyaKatogami]

Asks for in game evidence. Presents video proof with broken up videos and very specific time stamps. Refuses to look at said proof but continues spouting lies. Just your typical lore talk i guess.

[Cleretic]

It's really rather strange to me that you're seriously attempting to pretend as if Venat's actions were not at all controversial. There's been numerous debates over the years relating to the subject and many posters have come forward expressing their concerns regarding the character independently of one another, largely coming together under one 'banner' precisely because of the absolutely unhinged behaviour and accusations launched at anyone critical of Venat.

I do think you should actually watch the video before commenting, though. If not now then at some point in the future when your schedule allows for it. Perhaps it might dispel some of the - frankly bizarre - framing you have of certain posters and their motives here.

I was specifically looking for sources outside of here, because I know the situation here; I didn't know the situation on, say, Twitter or Reddit, so I wanted to see if there's a large population there that I've just never looked at. I was also specifically looking for people basically saying 'I dislike this thing Venat did and am steadfastly anti-Venat because of that', which is an at-times subtle but usually distinct difference from 'Venat made choices that weren't necessarily good and I may not personally agree with but are on some level understandable and part of what makes her a compelling character', which is... broadly the most widely-held opinion among people who've written about their thoughts long enough to make it clear. Basically: I care less about the evidence the video thinks it has for why people don't like her, and more about who doesn't like her.

I've found a handful of them across the past year. Outside of here maybe a single-digit amount; mostly on Reddit, making threads where they were very clearly the minority opinion. Like what I often see from Reddit lore-talking, it was all pretty surface-level; very 'I just finished Endwalker and have some thoughts', that they're not really held tightly to or even stating all that strongly; very milquetoast. Twitter is harder, and I opted for the angle of searching for 'Venat' and reading both top posts and the last month of posts; this was a bad time for that exercise thanks to Fanfest cosplays and both her and XII Venat being brought up in relation to XVI, but I still went through and only found one person being anti-Venat. (That one guy proved that it wasn't 'people are quiet because they're afraid of getting brigaded', nobody responded to them.)

I also checked the character polls. There hasn't been a lot since Endwalker, and I'd have liked a more recent one than this time last year to see if there's been a change from people falling off over patches and if Zero blips on them, but Venat lands really well into top three. The only person who consistently beats her is Emet, who... incidentally, I do generally see get the same response as Venat of 'did stuff I definitely don't like, but part of a complex character I do like'. Both are fairly unambiguously popular, for pretty much the same reasons. Turns out, people really like this kind of complexity!

I wanted to do a search to see you as more than 'a half-dozen very opinionated people in a corner'. I want to see the side that's large enough to make 'Venat is controversial/polarizing' any sort of authoritative statement. Unfortunately, I just haven't; there's more evidence to say Harchefaunt is polarizing than Venat.

EDIT:

I think this forum's debates on the ethics of altruistic suicide were before your time, but they're definitely coloring my impression. It seems like people get their wires crossed about thematic consistency and ideological consistency WRT Venat, under the fallacious belief that a creative work needs to represent a specific, singular ideology, but I think it's ideologically inconsistent while being thematically very consistent. In the larger narrative, the 8UC timeline is a counterpoint. We as players reading the lore dumps every Rising know that that timeline ultimately continued to exist despite believing it wouldn't, but nobody active in the story does.

Flipping the issue around, had Venat been able to intervene in a way that saves the Ancients, leaving us Exarch-stranded and our timeline in an unknowable and likely doomed state, she would have been making the decision that our lives didn't matter beyond serving as one big extra failure on the path to the success of Amaurot society. It's the meaty philosophical concept that Chrono Cross entirely failed to capitalize on: what does it mean to live in a "bad end" timeline? Still probably controversial, ultimately. Not sure there was ever a "moral" way out for Venat, but I think the intent is that she accepts that.

There's definitely something of this going on; the game deliberately doesn't make a moral judgement on the entire decision, and basically leaves it to you to decide where you stand on the entire conflict around the Ancients' End of Days (to the point of a patch quest literally asking you), while also making it quite clear that this decision isn't for you to actually act on; these events are twelve thousand years ago, and outside of one emotionally confused robot, nobody in the game's present day is either interested in litigating the point, nor impartial enough to do so. We're simply asked to answer that question for ourselves, with no objective right answer to be found.

And while I think a vast majority of players accepted that quite readily (or at least didn't talk openly about it), there's some amount of people that are unhappy with there being no right answer; that there's no way to say with full assuredness that your choice is the correct one. And I think some amount of those people then respond to that by trying to make their answer the right one, often by declaring the opposition to somehow be objectively wrong. Because if the opposing side is 'the villain's side', then suddenly we've moved from a situation of moral greys to a clear good and evil.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

It’s moreso an issue of obvious bias. Venat being called a hero isn’t morally grey. Her being called a primal of peace isn’t morally grey or correct in any relativity. Zodiark’s codex entry being nothing but negative while hers is nothing but positive etc. There is constant obvious bias that a lot of people ignore that is the root of this whole issue.

[Absimiliard]

Frankly, I can't wrap my head around how people look at the complete destruction of an entire species as not controversial. Just the mere concept of taking all those people and effectively killing them. Yeah, their biological matter and souls weren't entirely eradicated, but their identities were stripped away by the Sundering process and all the building blocks that comprised them instead went on to become wholly distinct organisms. That is in many ways worse than just being outright dead. Then there's the matter of how things went in the time period immediate following the Sundering, which we're lead to believe was positively horrific for all involved.

Whether or not it was justified is an entirely separate matter.

[Alleluia]

This just in: Genocide is perfectly fine and if you commit it so long as you look pretty and say you're sorry it doesnt count! Totally did nothing wrong.

Yeah, sure. That's exactly what I said. Thank you for quoting me so directly. :P

Some people have selective morality yet they don't realize it, sadly.

And some people don't know how to tell when the horse is dead.

[Gaddes]

Frankly, I can't wrap my head around how people look at the complete destruction of an entire species as not controversial. Just the mere concept of taking all those people and effectively killing them. Yeah, their biological matter and souls weren't entirely eradicated, but their identities were stripped away by the Sundering process and all the building blocks that compromised them instead went on to become wholly distinct organisms. That is in many ways worse than just being outright dead. Then there's the matter of how things went in the time period immediate following the Sundering, which we're lead to believe was positively horrific for all involved.

Whether or not it was justified is an entirely separate matter.

Y'know, you bring up an interesting point that I never really thought about before. Venat sundered the world into shards to keep ancients from just sacrificing themselves over and over again summoning Zodiark, but... to what end?
The end result from the sundering is that, yes, life survives... but as sundered beings, those new lives are new entities from the ancients they came from. So basically, if we consider those original lives "lost" to split into new ones with new personalities and new bodies, then the whole thing was a failure because everyone died anyway to make that new life.
The surviving few Ascians think they could regain their friends' past lives by Rejoining, but it doesn't seem like it was part of Venat's original sundering plan to account for a few ancients escaping into a rift to avoid being sundered. So if she didn't account for any survivors who would reinstate those lost lives/personalities, what was she really saving by sundering anyway? She basically killed all the ancients with the Sundering process.

If I was an ancient, I could certainly be convinced that that was an evil, or at the very least morally grey, action...

[Absimiliard]

it doesn't seem like it was part of Venat's original sundering plan to account for a few ancients escaping into a rift to avoid being sundered. So if she didn't account for any survivors who would reinstate those lost lives/personalities, what was she really saving by sundering anyway? She basically killed all the ancients with the Sundering process.

It was planned for. Well, to be specific, Emet-Selch was planned for. She meant to leave him intact, although she wasn't 100% sure she could pull it off in the moment the sundering began. She essentially left a little flaw in it, one which she hoped he would recognize and exploit as a means of saving himself. Elidibus and Lahabrea just so happened to be in his company at that time, and so he was able to save them as well. Venat did this to preserve the timeline that gave rise to the WoL she met in Elpis. The horrors those three would unleash, the lives sacrificed in pursuit of the Rejoinings -- she knew about it all.

[MikkoAkure]

So if she didn't account for any survivors who would reinstate those lost lives/personalities, what was she really saving by sundering anyway? She basically killed all the ancients with the Sundering process.

I think it was more about saving or protecting "life" in general than anything specific.

I think a problem we have with trying to reconcile Zodiark, Hydaelyn, and the Sundering is that a lot of their thought processes and their culture is alien to us. To me, the Ancients seemed to be of the mind that they were ultimately "custodians of the star" and that everything they did was for a greater whole rather than masters of it that bent the world to their own will for their own needs.

It was already established that Ancients will die and return their aether to the star to reenter the cycle of death and rebirth once they have "finished their job". Venat was already somewhat of a heretic (a trait shared with her Occurian namesake) in that she didn't do that. Seemingly related to the standard Ancient death custom is that it seemed to be a great honor to sacrifice your aether to Zodiark. To harvest life that had finally returned to the planet in order to revive people who sacrificed themselves seems pervert that notion. That they titled Zodiark "Will of the Star", called him a god, and called themselves His "servants" doesn't seem to paint a good picture either.

[Absimiliard]

It was already established that Ancients will die and return their aether to the star to reenter the cycle of death and rebirth once they have "finished their job". Venat was already somewhat of a heretic (a trait shared with her Occurian namesake) in that she didn't do that. Seemingly related to the standard Ancient death custom is that it seemed to be a great honor to sacrifice your aether to Zodiark. To harvest life that had finally returned to the planet in order to revive people who sacrificed themselves seems pervert that notion. That they titled Zodiark "Will of the Star", called him a god, and called themselves His "servants" doesn't seem to paint a good picture either.

Sacrificing your life and aether to Zodiark was regarded as honorable specifically because you were giving yourself up to save your world and fellow man. The initial sacrifices, to save the planet and heal it, respectively, were purely for the sake of preserving the world and its remaining inhabitants. We aren't given any reason to doubt the nature of these particular sacrifices. As for subsequent intended sacrifices; there was a great deal of debate over them. Some were for it, some against it. I strongly suspect this opposition was in fact a direct result of the ancients' duty to the star and strongly held belief they should return the aether of their very souls to it when their purpose was served.

[KizuyaKatogami]

That they titled Zodiark "Will of the Star", called him a god, and called themselves His "servants" doesn't seem to paint a good picture either.

Meanwhile Yshtola calls her an all powerful being. The Hydaelyn codex entry(presumably written by us) calls her the will of the star, and she herself refers to herself as a supreme deity. Yeah uh, she doesn’t seem to paint a good picture herself either lol.