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

[Theodric]

I'd have simply liked more consistency. For years certain posters here as well as the game itself took the stance that no matter how sympathetic the circumstances involved, acts of genocide were never to be justified. Then, suddenly, when it turned out that Venat was responsible for deliberate acts of genocide - as well as knowingly allowing the Ascians to roam free - suddenly excuses were conjured as to why it 'had to' happen.

So, no, contrary to what some seem to believe it was never about painting Venat as 'evil' but merely a matter of holding her to the same standards laid down upon every other character thus far.

I imagine quite a lot of people who take issue with her in the current iteration would have been more inclined to root for her if the game had taken such an approach. Little would change, since she could have easily have been painted as a Yunalesca style figure without the - quite frankly, bizarre - attempts to throw large swathes of the setting aside in order to desperately prop her up in a way that doesn't really hold up under even a bit of light scrutiny.

[Magikazam]

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.

Meteion barely escaped when the group was focused on creating an exit path for the WOL. The only thing stopping them is an already battle-fatigued Hermes, Remember he basically limps around after the dungeon fight and he has to be carried out by Emet after the whole Kairos thing happens. We can also assume the group got tools to catch her like spells. Also while Hermes got knowledge on dynamis, he not the only one that know this much about it. He even tell you the reason they lack knowledge about it is that since they are being with lots of Aether, it hard to create practical things out of dynamis and it why the Ancient don't study it that much since they can't make use of it easily. It not that it a hard to understand and study it, they just don't bother because they can't use it in daily QOL stuff.

[AwesomeJr44]

Whoo boy, I haven't been here in a good while. Usually I stay away from this subforum but a friend of mine who had also seen the Venat video series had mentioned that they had seen a thread on it here while skimming various subforums, so I decided to pop in and see what was going on. While I could participate in the various arguments going on here, I think I will opt not to as I know better than to engage with the regulars of the lore subforum. With that said, I shall simply leave my general thoughts here.

I personally think that the video series is a very well thought out critique of the MSQ's failings in 6.0, and successfully points out why many people (myself included) have problems with the morals the writers decided to push. I'd definitely recommend giving it a watch if you can spare the time and you're even mildly interested in that sort of thing. Even if you don't end up agreeing with the viewpoints outlined in the videos, I think that viewing them would at least grant you a deeper understanding of why the 6.0 story didn't land quite right for some people. I'd recommend not letting the fighting here dissuade you from giving it a chance, many of the people here arguing against it have always been firmly entrenched in opposing viewpoints and were never willing to give it a fair shot to begin with.

[Magikazam]

I'll try to make this my last post to this thread. Meteion's escape already is a thing though even without the mind wipe. Hermes told her to flee and had kicked in a faster speed. Unless you mean that the only reason Venat didn't follow her into actual space is due to the ticking clock of Kiros. Which we don't have enough evidence for. We don't know if Argos has a higher speed than what was already shown. That and Endsinger was already a thing as all the other off planet Meteia had already gone bad and were out there. We were just trying to stop the on planet one from trying to join the others.

They were trying to stop Meteion from escaping so they could study her. Emet clearly state this at the start of the cinematic. My point here is that if they catch her (and that easier if 3/4 member of the party ain't focused on creating an escape path for the WOL) they can study the effect of dynamis in a easier way since she got a low ammount of Aether

[KizuyaKatogami]

Sad to see the post calling out the bad faith posters in this thread got taken down but it is what it is, hopefully a lot of people saw it and know now to avoid engaging with them.

[T-rexpectation]

I’d say it’s pretty polarizing when you have defenders of the character going all over on other social media sites insulting bashing and harassing others simply for their views on the story. If it wasn’t so polarizing why would they feel the need to defend it so harshly?

First time posting on the forums, I just wanted to voice my opinions as a newcomer who beat endwalker last year.

I was randomly reccomended the video for no apparent reason(only really listen to ff14 music sometimes), and i decided to voice my disagreement in the comments. I was rebutted by both the channel's account and some other person who responded to every dessenting voice without fail. I had never expierienced this amount of engagement in a comment section before so I was really fascinated. Turns out I'm 2 years behind on this war the forums have had about Venat. Making 2 videos on other characters and then just making a bunch of Venat videos was bizarre until i realized it was supposed to be a safe space for what was essentially discourse refugees. Some of my favourite stories are incoherent messes, so I didn't really care if someone thought that about endwalker. That said, the really specific focus on Venat from her critics to the point of actively fearing backlash in social media is genuinely concerning to me. Are you guys okay?

[Absimiliard]

First time posting on the forums, I just wanted to voice my opinions as a newcomer who beat endwalker last year.

I was randomly reccomended the video for no apparent reason(only really listen to ff14 music sometimes), and i decided to voice my disagreement in the comments. I was rebutted by both the channel's account and some other person who responded to every dessenting voice without fail. I had never expierienced this amount of engagement in a comment section before so I was really fascinated. Turns out I'm 2 years behind on this war the forums have had about Venat. Making 2 videos on other characters and then just making a bunch of Venat videos was bizarre until i realized it was supposed to be a safe space for what was essentially discourse refugees. Some of my favourite stories are incoherent messes, so I didn't really care if someone thought that about endwalker. That said, the really specific focus on Venat from her critics to the point of actively fearing backlash in social media is genuinely concerning to me. Are you guys okay?

Mass reporting and threats, my dude. Some people take this game a little too seriously. Some vocal detractors of Endwalker and its characters, but in particular Venat, have met with types of backlash that come with actual consequences. Words on a screen screen can really only rustle somebody's jimmies if they allow it, but getting your accounts mass reported into oblivion because you had an opinion is something I think any reasonable person would agree is a problem, yeah? I'm not going to claim to know who was doing what when or whatever, but I can tell you from first hand experience some people were willing to get downright nasty over it.

As for the focus on Venat, I believe I can explain that reasonably well:
It's the double standard. It's pretty common for people to have an aversion to such things, and seeing it in action can (whether they realize it or not) leave them with a negative impression. In this particular instance, the issue I've seen people bring forward most often was simply how the narrative approached Venat's actions as compared how it approached the Ascians and their numerous misdeeds. At the end of the day, they all have more blood on their hands than any of us on these forums can possibly begin to comprehend. There's also the fact she played a key role in the story. You could swap Venat's role to just about any other character, and the discourse wouldn't change all that much other than a different name being thrown around.

For my two cents; my personal position on the matter has less to do with the double standard or Venat in particular and more to do with the writers seemingly walking back the morally grey angle they were setting up in Shadowbringers. Nuance in storytelling is something I'm rather fond of, and they did a pretty good job of setting it up. .... Then it largely went out the window.

[KizuyaKatogami]

First time posting on the forums, I just wanted to voice my opinions as a newcomer who beat endwalker last year.

I was randomly reccomended the video for no apparent reason(only really listen to ff14 music sometimes), and i decided to voice my disagreement in the comments. I was rebutted by both the channel's account and some other person who responded to every dessenting voice without fail. I had never expierienced this amount of engagement in a comment section before so I was really fascinated. Turns out I'm 2 years behind on this war the forums have had about Venat. Making 2 videos on other characters and then just making a bunch of Venat videos was bizarre until i realized it was supposed to be a safe space for what was essentially discourse refugees. Some of my favourite stories are incoherent messes, so I didn't really care if someone thought that about endwalker. That said, the really specific focus on Venat from her critics to the point of actively fearing backlash in social media is genuinely concerning to me. Are you guys okay?

I don’t speak for anyone else but i do want to say it’s nice to see someone like you who may not have entirely agreed with our stance be civil and open to debate That’s all we want really. I will say though the amount of discourse and just flat out harassment people not just myself but many others have received over questioning a pretty polarizing character is crazy, especially with how much this games community touts itself as being such a loving and open community. It isn’t just us being dramatic as i know a lot of people may think. But originally there’s been people in threads on here who have thanked us for speaking out about it and being open to them as well so it’s thanks to the creator that they created an actual safe space to speak about it where hopefully they can’t be as harassed as on here or other forms of social media.

I think in the end a lot of this comes down to this being the end of a 10 year long arc where countless players have invested in this games story for years upon years and for the writers to just seem to want to rush through it and not explain many things or even just cover up incoherent plot threads is incredibly agonizing.

[Theodric]

There's only one Venat video. It's just broken down into different, bite sized segments for the sake of convenience. There's also a Hermes and Zenos video as well to be found on the channel - though as it happens, Venat is the more divisive of the trio.

[T-rexpectation]

Mass reporting and threats, my dude. Some people take this game a little too seriously. Some vocal detractors of Endwalker and its characters, but in particular Venat, have met with types of backlash that come with actual consequences. Words on a screen screen can really only rustle somebody's jimmies if they allow it, but getting your accounts mass reported into oblivion because you had an opinion is something I think any reasonable person would agree is a problem, yeah? I'm not going to claim to know who was doing what when or whatever, but I can tell you from first hand experience some people were willing to get downright nasty over it

That kind of behaviour is obviously inexcusable, and I'm sorry you expierienced such a thing because of a videogame opinion. I think what induces this amount of vitriol on the forums specifically, is that one, you're associated with your ingame avatar here to an extent that doesn't happen on other sites and two, the writers played fast and loose with the lore of the world that avatar lives in to complete their emotional storytelling. It seems to me that endwalker was written partly backwards like a Nier game with the player's emotions in mind. When it's like that, analysing sets of dialogue is just an exercise in frustration, because framing and music and other aesthetic elements aren't just important, but might have more weight than what characters say and do. Ultima Thule is this writing style made manifest, and it worked for most people I interact with online, (mostly reddit and youtube comment sections).

Venat gets not one but two songs dedicated to her. "with hearts alligned" is from the player's pespective and is basically a gratitude bomb for helping us get this far. The other is "flow" which paints Venat as a gentle observer watching the souls of mortal cycling through the Eitherial sea for the sake of a "tomorrow", which I intrepret to be the day we finally meet Meteion. All this including Yoshi-p crying again and again when watching the Hydaelyn confrontation seems to suggest to me that the game uses all of the tools at it's disposal to make liking and accepting Venat and her actions, "right", from an emotional and thematic standpoint. I understand how that might not work for poster on a lore forum, but I think the emotiononal "go with the flow" angle is the only real way to "get" endwalker the way millions of others have, but that's not everyone's cup of tea.