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

[KizuyaKatogami]

However, while she is not morally right, she is tactically correct. The steps she took led to victory over what she set as her opponent. Again, this doesn't vindicate her morals, but the largest and simplest fact of the entire conflict is that she won, in both the short and long term. Could others have succeeded in the same thing? Emet-Selch doesn't think so, and I have no reason to doubt him on this. Trying to tear down her tactical achievements in efforts to declare her morally wrong just seems beside the point to me, but so many times people seem to angle towards that, taking the easy option of picking apart a fictional story's logic rather than the more difficult subject of an imperfect moral conundrum.

What’s funny to me is that it wasn’t that many years ago that you were calling out 90% of what Emet-Selch said as flawed and lies, yet he says an out of character statement that you agree with and all of a sudden he’s right 100% clear cut. Disregarding that though, the fact of the matter is the story doesn’t treat her with such grey morality. She is quite literally referred to as a primal of peace in the codex and a hero in her minion description. You very well know if we got an Emet-Selch minion in ShB depicting him as a hero, you would be seething.

As for Alenor’s post? I think you’re the last person that should be trying to downplay someones argument when again, you literally asked for evidence on our claims, we gave you proof and you decided you didn’t want to spend the time to look at it and then claimed it was in bad faith based on a poster who has a history of badmouthing and disrespecting posters here on other sites, but you probably know about that all too well.

[Absimiliard]

taking the easy option of picking apart a fictional story's logic rather than the more difficult subject of an imperfect moral conundrum.

Suspension of disbelief only goes so far for some people, particularly when what you're being told you should think is at odds with what makes sense based on the information you've been provided. There are a number of holes in the story that are rather difficult to simply dismiss with "it's just quirky writing" or "oh, it's only fiction." Even works of fiction need internal logic, after all. I wouldn't say bringing these holes up is taking the easy option. If anything, it's a far more involved process than addressing a moral quandary most people are already in agreement on.

As it stands, I think (barring a few people that are being ridiculously obstinate) a majority of the outspoken portion of the playerbase is firmly entrenched in the camp of "everybody did a bunch of really heinous crap for various reasons, and all of them have oceans of blood on their hands."

[Magikazam]

Actually, Kairos is the main reason this entire situation is salvageable in the first place. Let's run through the same events we saw play out, except Kairos isn't there. I think that's a bit of an oversimplification since I think a lot of Hermes' actions are predicated on Kairos' existence.

If the mind erasure doesn't take place, The trio don't forget our story and the fact we already determined Dynamis is the key to the whole issue here. Meiteon doesn't get to escape and they properly study her. Considering Venat could guess we come from the future simply by the fact we had her spell on her despite never meeting her, I think it fair to assume the Ancient, with all key to the problem in hand in this situation, would figure it out. It just create a situation where the Ancient has the same tool and information the Scion had. The only thing the mind erasure clock does is help the whole scenario deal with the usual time travel issue. It just turns it so the WoL going back to the past only affects the present by creating a time loop.

[Cleretic]

What’s funny to me is that it wasn’t that many years ago that you were calling out 90% of what Emet-Selch said as flawed and lies, yet he says an out of character statement that you agree with and all of a sudden he’s right 100% clear cut. Disregarding that though, the fact of the matter is the story doesn’t treat her with such grey morality. She is quite literally referred to as a primal of peace in the codex and a hero in her minion description. You very well know if we got an Emet-Selch minion in ShB depicting him as a hero, you would be seething.

Yeah, I grew as a person between then and now, realized that I was digesting the story in a way that both wasn't intended and wasn't very healthy for me or anyone. There's a lot of things I regret saying in a lot of times in my life, and I apologize if any of it hurt you, but I think the best I can do with all of those is just to do better in the present. And so, I am. Yeah, I probably wouldn't have liked getting that hypothetical minion at the point when I completed Shadowbringers, but today is not the day I completed Shadowbringers.

(Also, you might not know because by your own admission you weren't subscribed at the time, but we do have an Emet-Selch minion depicting him as a hero; my reservations on this are mostly in-universe.)

If the mind erasure doesn't take place, The trio don't forget our story and the fact we already determined Dynamis is the key to the whole issue here. Meiteon doesn't get to escape and they properly study her. Considering Venat could guess we come from the future simply by the fact we had her spell on her despite never meeting her, I think it fair to assume the Ancient, with all key to the problem in hand in this situation, would figure it out. It just create a situation where the Ancient has the same tool and information the Scion had. The only thing the mind erasure clock does is help the whole scenario deal with the usual time travel issue. It just turns it so the WoL going back to the past only affects the present by creating a time loop.

Why would Meteion not escape, given the only changed factor in this hypothetical is the lack of Kairos? Hermes can still lock down Emet and Hyth, and Meteion can still outrun Argos; I think her escape is a foregone conclusion in this hypothetical unless we want to add in more factors, and I personally don't.

I think our main disagreement here is on the notion that, if you let Hermes take himself out of the picture, whether or not there's dynamis expertise. Everyone else in that group know of dynamis far more than they know dynamis. The three of them trying to figure out making Zodiark by themselves would be akin to the two of us trying to make a spaceship: regardless of how much we think we know, unless one of us is an expert on aerodynamics, it's just not gonna fly. So then, it comes to the question of 'are there any other dynamis experts they could ask without Hermes there', and no evidence suggests to me that there is.

[Lyth]

There are a few ways of looking at the discussion in this thread.

If you were simply upset about the decline and fall of the Amaurotine civilization and wanted to let those feelings out, by all means, although there are other forms of media that lend itself better to such a format than a discussion forum.

If your central thesis was simply that Venat is a 'polarizing' character, then that depends on context. Any topic can be 'polarizing' given the correct audience. It's a bit of a passive word, though, that passes responsibility to the subject matter instead of the person reacting to it. You can always choose to not get into arguments on the internet. I would say that Venat, Emet, Elidibus, and even Hermes are all polarizing figures, simply because we have only partial explanations about what happened, and those lorebuilding gaps still remain unfilled. That's neither a good or bad thing.

If you want to discuss the 'morality' around the Amaurotines' actions, you also have to be upfront about what perspective you are actually evaluating them against. Emet Selch was a mass-murderer who destroyed seven populated worlds and destroyed human civilizations on the source multiple times over. He thought that his fellow humans on the planet were inferior to him and not truly alive. He abandoned an ally in a locked-in state for 100 years because they were expendable. Elidibus tried to use chemical weaponry to slaughter an entire continent of both his own footsoldiers and enemies alike, and was rebuked by Zenos of all people for it. Lahabrea murdered his wife in private, concealed it from the Convocation, and buried the evidence around her experimentation even well after the destruction of his society. Mitron forcibly merged his soul with Gaia's against her will to try to force her to love him, and tried to destroy the First to create a utopia where only the two of them would co-exist. And then there's Fandaniel and his desire to just destroy everything. This is just the leadership of Amaurot. I'm not at all surprised that Azem just packed up and left.

That being said, the Amaurotines were alive under different circumstances, and just had different perspectives than we would have as a result. The entire star revolved around Amaurot. At the time of Elpis, the Convocation ruled over Etheirys as a whole, being neither elected nor having any form of oversight. These were the most powerful individuals on the planet, at a time when society was capable of making and unmaking entire species at a whim. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. They were a group of Godlings playing games over the fate of the planet across the past twelve thousand years, and most of them just lacked the insight into the suffering that they casually wrought upon millions. How could they know? Why would they reflect? It's also the reason why Emet's finale ends up being a hearty 'well played, no hard feelings'. These elaborate games over the fates of multiple worlds are another day in the life of the Convocation. This is what they do. The only thing that was missing was a cutscene of him and Venat playing chess in the Rift with glass pieces.

Either way, I don't think that there's any universal moral high ground to be had here, simply short of a conscious decision to not repeat the mistakes of our predecessors, as we cross over to that next horizon.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Yeah, I grew as a person between then and now, realized that I was digesting the story in a way that both wasn't intended and wasn't very healthy for me or anyone. There's a lot of things I regret saying in a lot of times in my life, and I apologize if any of it hurt you, but I think the best I can do with all of those is just to do better in the present. And so, I am. Yeah, I probably wouldn't have liked getting that hypothetical minion at the point when I completed Shadowbringers, but today is not the day I completed Shadowbringers.

(Also, you might not know because by your own admission you weren't subscribed at the time, but we do have an Emet-Selch minion depicting him as a hero; my reservations on this are mostly in-universe.)

Unless i missed something, where does it depict him as a hero here? Venat’s plain out word for word says hero. I don’t see anything of the sort here.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Either way, I don't think that there's any universal moral high ground to be had here, simply short of a conscious decision to not repeat the mistakes of our predecessors, as we cross over to that next horizon.

The issue you seem to miss here time and time again however though is the sundered are no different and they do indeed repeat the mistakes of the past. The 8UC with being willing to sacrifice an entire timeline and erase billions of lives just to bring back the WoL because they couldn’t move on yet they’re revered to as heroes. War of the Magi. Uldah with its slavery. Uldah with hosting a colosseum slaughtering animals for mere entertainment and laughs. Thordan,Yotsuyu’s past and the issue of rape being a prevalent thing. The list goes on. The sundered in every aspect here are worse than the ancients where yes, they had one off issues like Athena or Hermes, but in comparison to the Sundered? It’s night and day and the examples i gave outside of the 8UC have very little to do with the ascians causing those events.

[Kazhar]

If you want to discuss the 'morality' around the Amaurotines' actions, you also have to be upfront about what perspective you are actually evaluating them against. Emet Selch was a mass-murderer who destroyed seven populated worlds and destroyed human civilizations on the source multiple times over. He thought that his fellow humans on the planet were inferior to him and not truly alive. He abandoned an ally in a locked-in state for 100 years because they were expendable. Elidibus tried to use chemical weaponry to slaughter an entire continent of both his own footsoldiers and enemies alike, and was rebuked by Zenos of all people for it. Lahabrea murdered his wife in private, concealed it from the Convocation, and buried the evidence around her experimentation even well after the destruction of his society. Mitron forcibly merged his soul with Gaia's against her will to try to force her to love him, and tried to destroy the First to create a utopia where only the two of them would co-exist. And then there's Fandaniel and his desire to just destroy everything. This is just the leadership of Amaurot. I'm not at all surprised that Azem just packed up and left.

Why are you mixing up Ascian and Ancient?
This entire paragraph only works if you assume that people are the same during the entirety of their lives and can't change. The Ascians actions were inexcusable but it all happened after their world was destroyed and they were thrown into madness-inducing despair.

The Convocation in the times of Amaurot were very different, happier people, and the story insist on that point multiple times. Young Themis is treated by the story as a different character than Elidibus. Hades has trouble reconciling his future actions to his current persona (even though he's generally bad at understanding himself, so I'll give you that). Even Lahabrea, while he does understand why he would go to such lengths given the context, does not condone his future actions.

It's true for the Unsundered, but also the Sundered Ascians with Gaia and Amon being explicit exemples given to convey that they're quite literally not the same people, despite sharing a soul and memories.

(Also are we really blaming Lahabrea for getting rid of Athena? She was experimenting on their son.)

[Cleretic]

Unless i missed something, where does it depict him as a hero here? Venat’s plain out word for word says hero. I don’t see anything of the sort here.

It's very much unquestioned imperialist rhetoric, put forward as the thing the Empire venerates, respects and idolizes with no counter-voice at all. The kicker is that it was given out during The Rising, which in-universe is an event celebrating the fact Eorzea survived Dalamud; I mostly don't care because minions are probably the least important part of the game to me that isn't Frontlines, but I was raising in a mostly good-natured way 'hey this seems in poor taste'. It'd be like the Wind-up Nidhogg being an Ishgardian Restoration prize.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It's very much unquestioned imperialist rhetoric, put forward as the thing the Empire venerates, respects and idolizes with no counter-voice at all. The kicker is that it was given out during The Rising, which in-universe is an event celebrating the fact Eorzea survived Dalamud; I mostly don't care because minions are probably the least important part of the game to me that isn't Frontlines, but I was raising in a mostly good-natured way 'hey this seems in poor taste'. It'd be like the Wind-up Nidhogg being an Ishgardian Restoration prize.

I see what you mean but to me at least if i take it in game it’s meant to be read from a garlean pov. The issue with Venat’s is that i’m supposed to be led to believe she’s morally grey but she’s again, which no one seems to remark upon btw, referred to as a PRIMAL OF PEACE for some reason and also a hero. It just makes no sense and the bias is quite clear there.