What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Turtledeluxe]

Do you not understand the difference between understanding how the story actually works and suggesting ideas for how it should work?

Yes. Do you care to elaborate? What are you looking for me to say here? To agree that your only issue with my post was that I claimed "we could not exist in Elpis because we are sundered"? I've explained multiple times that what I meant was, there is some original timeline where we did not visit Elpis where we could not have been there because we were the unsundered Azem at that time. It was just a theory.

I can't really decide your position. So people should not have theories or they should? It seems you the other needlessly hostile people ITT can't decide when headcanon is a joke or when it isn't. I guess headcanon is only ok when its applied in a way you deem acceptable and serves your version of the story. Pretending there's an authoritative version of this story, a rigid undeniable interpretation, is top tier nonsense. Stop pedaling it. As far as theories that contradict something established-- well that's part of learning.

Reply bc post limit (omg)

I'm not fighting, I am explaining why, for me, Yoshi P has given enough information for me to confirm that their full intention was to have an Elpis visit that stupidly retcons everything so the WoL played a role in shaping the present and that makes trying to "fix EW" complicated. The WoL cannot really deviate (the MSQ does not have branching paths or scenarios on that scale, this is the MMO constriction) and Venat can't really deviate because the dev team didn't account for the possibility at all and it opens up a whole can of worms. I don't think there's any saving it based on what we know in a way that would be satisfying for the average player. Furthermore people all want to fix it for their own reasons and it's a hassle keeping track. As you or someone else noted, this is something we now very much agree upon but perhaps for different reasons. Some people think I'm absolving Venat when it's not that at all, it's a dumb take that could perhaps make me seem more argumentative than I am. Someone else will be hostile, saying I want the story to be dumb because players are dumb or something and that's not what I'm saying at all. It's just an eternal circle of me reacting to people assuming my motivations and then getting shit on for it when I feel like I have shown an interest in getting an idea of what their intention with Elpis was. I never actually thought a ton about it and originally had a better opinion of it before seeing that statement.

Although it's worth noting I already explained my views on the Ascian conflict in the above post and it's just not that deep for me. The anti Venat camp also imo operates on tons of assumptions and conjecture that (regarding timetables, what she did or didn't do, what options she or others had), to your point, are stated as fact which makes me push back against it even harder. It seems fruitless-- what options did Emet have? What options did Hermes have? We could do this all day with anyone and it honestly seems like a hangup on Venat, hence why I joked about sexism. You can say "well the Ancients summoned Zodiark because Venat didn't tell them" -- I'm not sure what didn't tell them or did tell them, I have no idea if they would have listened, etc. Also it's interesting to me people are so resistant to the idea time is deterministic in this case because the summoning of Zodiark in itself has *nothing* to do with Venat, so you have to explain how it ended up happening again. Was it the only solution that group could come up with or something? Or is just that it was fated to happen? Again what were their options....? The story is pretty dumb so I prefer to think the unified past and present operate in a deterministic sort of way where perhaps they could've acted differently, but the result would have been the same.

Also Elidibus: "Yet even should you be able to interact with others, you will be unable to affect meaningful change. For the reality you wish to save, the reality to which you must return, exists as a result of the Final Days." i.e. the past and present are unified, To me this indicates writer intent to make it all predetermined, but that's just my opinion.