What lore do you ignore?

[Cleretic]

If she was making a genuine effort to save the Ancients then she would never have withheld key information relating to the true cause behind the Final Days and she certainly would not have resorted to actively sabotaging their efforts to come up with solutions on their own.

No.

She explains this, directly, after Ktisis.

Forename, listen to me. Our duty now is not to denounce Hermes for his misguided determination, or to convince Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus that they have been deceived.

No, we must instead ensure that the experiences Hermes sought to expunge are preserved.

What remains in our memories alone will be our weapon against the Final Days.

You must fight this battle in your age, and I in mine...
Come, let us walk together once more. I will see you to the doors of Propylaion.

[...]

With Meteion free to pursue her designs, 'tis only a matter of time until the Final Days are upon us.

We must be ready. From fortifying our defenses to securing our escape, there is much to be done.

In spite of this, we cannot allow the report that set this calamity in motion to become common knowledge. Were the masses to learn the fates of the other stars, I fear the situation would spiral out of our control.

I must carefully consider who can be trusted, and bring them into the fold.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't hesitate to call upon the Fourteen. However, it was the desire for a fair determination that drove Hermes to attempt to erase our memories; were he made aware of his actions, there is no telling whether he would remain a friend or become a foe.

Alternately, we might try to alienate him from the Convocation. Yet in doing so, we would deprive ourselves of a brilliant mind who would be invaluable in the crises to come.

Quite the dilemma... Which is why I must work independently of the Convocation.

Regardless of how we proceed, if we are to permanently avert the Final Days, we must be equal to Hermes's challenge. We must prove that mankind is worthy to exist.

And this hinges, I think, on how we confront the all-consuming despair that accompanies a senseless and seemingly inevitable end.

Bewildered and divided, we would perish like the peoples of those celestial ruins.

We could not hope to survive the Final Days, much less take the battle to Meteion at her nest.

We must find a way to defeat despair. To unite and prepare as many as possible for the struggle ahead.

Heavy will weigh the burden of guiding this legion of souls...

Yet I have faith in mankind's potential. As long as he believes in himself, there is naught he cannot achieve. So I will not give up on him. On us.

You may find your world to be very different. Or perhaps the erasure of our friends' memories has sown the seeds of a conjunction between us.

We cannot know until the moment is at hand. So shall I strive to do my best, taking naught for granted as I walk my path.

Far from 'sabotaging' any effort to deal with the Final Days, she specifically went out of her way to get out of their way.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

No.

She explains this, directly, after Ktisis.



Far from 'sabotaging' any effort to deal with the Final Days, she specifically went out of her way to get out of their way.

She says this as she's shuffling off the one person with knowledge of the future and thus the ability to alter events back to their own time. Then she proceeds to not make a single verifiable attempt to change the future and several known acts to ensure things went down the way you told her.

Her words at face value make you think she's preparing to fight Meteion, but when you look at her actions you realize her words were just to placate the WoL and get them out of the way so she could go do her genocide without her pesky little champion warning anyone else. This is the 40th half-truth she's thrown our way. Just like all the other half-truths she's told us on our journey.

We even offer to stay and help. Wonder why she didn't accept...

*snip*

By time loop, I mean she enacts what is required to ensure she becomes a god and the reigning beings on the planet and their environment are shaped by her hand. You know, what Athena wanted to do, but somehow good for some reason when Venat does it. You can assure me til the cows come home that parallel timelines exist when it's time to save the WoL but we're locked in a loop, helpless to save the Ancients all you want, but I'm gonna need an explanation as to why that would be true. And let's say it is, no matter what we do or try Venat exterminates her people. Then why aren't we screaming from the rafters mommy goddess is about to kill the lot of them since nothing we do can change the past anyway? It's because we could change the past, but we are actively choosing to keep our mouth shut cause we need Azem dead for parts.

And given we've already observed G'raha change the future without ending his existence, the fact we're not even trying is unforgivable. G'raha knew there was a chance he'd wipe himself from existence, but he tried anyway, because it was the right thing to do. But in Endwalker I guess the right thing to do is to hang out with a child that idolizes you and do literally nothing to attempt to stop him from a fate worse than death.

ETA: It just hit me that had we kept our mouths shut in the first place we wouldn't have given mommy goddess the necessary steps to eradicate her people. So we open our mouths to cause genocide, but we're suddenly able to keep our mouths shut when it comes to preventing it? How convenient...

[Cleretic]

She says this as she's shuffling off the one person with knowledge of the future and thus the ability to alter events back to their own time. Then she proceeds to not make a single verifiable attempt to change the future and several known acts to ensure things went down the way you told her.

Her words at face value make you think she's preparing to fight Meteion, but when you look at her actions you realize her words were just to placate the WoL and get them out of the way so she could go do her genocide without her pesky little champion warning anyone else. This is the 40th half-truth she's thrown our way. Just like all the other half-truths she's told us on our journey.

We even offer to stay and help. Wonder why she didn't accept...

I pointed out in my prior post that it was a combination of inaction and sabotage, not solely the latter alone. Giving the Ancients space to build up false hope and come to their own solutions is irrelevant when her reaction to the Convocation coming up with creative solutions is to wipe out everyone who survived the Final Days. None of the writing surrounding Venat is particularly consistent, granted, though one thing that is consistent is her decision to refuse to reveal the true cause behind the Final Days or express her concerns in full without deflection and deception.

I'm sorry, but this is the lore subforum. We kinda need to take an evidence-based approach, where things the game produces has to be refuted only by things the game also produces. While Venat-as-Hydaelyn (much like the Ascians) is someone who lies by omission rather often (at least, as far as her relatively meager screentime permitted), you're going to need to prove a bit more substantially that she was doing anything like this, or that the Convocation had any 'creative solutions' that she was thoughtlessly stopping. Otherwise, this is like going into the PvP subforum and telling them that Frontlines is fair and balanced because the Mathromancer job you've imagined is a perfect counter to the DRK/AST/DRG meta.

I'm sure you feel very strongly, but until you can cite something, I'm not very convinced. If we just keep doing uncited stuff we end up way too deep in the weeds of presumed truths. If you're stuck, hit up Gamer Escape, they've basically got the whole game script recorded.

EDIT: Or, you can focus on the subject of the actual thread we're arguing in, and instead you can just say that you're ignoring what the game is saying to create an alternative narrative. Which I can't stop you from doing, but I'd like to know for sure.

[Theodric]

I see certain posters are getting a bit better at masquerading as high school mean girls! Well done on that front I suppose. I'm not sure what the point of pretending that sources aren't being provided is when they clearly are and have been a great many times across numerous threads.

As an aside, I only bothered to weigh in because despite apparently being 'tired' of discussing the Ancients, the moment some random poster comes to the conclusion that Venat's actions were pretty messed up and posts as much there's a clear swarm from some of the usual suspects who attempt to deflect away from that and deflect the narrative and discussion elsewhere.

Though based on past interactions alone, I'm not inclined to take the claims of certain posters being here in good faith when they have a long and storied history of stalking, harassment, impersonation, homophobic commentary, sexist commentary and bizarre and deranged insinuations about 'secret Midlander fascists'. Then there's that time a certain someone came into Lore Lines - a Discord server set up with the intention of mostly discussing the game's antagonists in a place away from the official forum. Yet even there that individual tried to demand that any talk of Venat was rid of any mention of genocide or vilification.

Such actions have made it pretty clear to many of us that those responsible are not acting in good faith.

Since such evidence is spicy, I won't post it here for obvious reasons though I encourage those interested to message me in-game sometime and we can exchange Discord names (on a throwaway account if one prefers) and I can happily provide the rather numerous examples of exactly what certain posters claiming to be here for 'discussion' have been caught saying and doing in their spare time.

All that aside, though, it's rather disingenuous to pretend as if numerous posters have not provided sources that expose Venat as making a token, deceptive effort to save her people. I have done so myself, many times including in the prior post in this very thread. It's a bit too late to try and pretend as if the people criticising Hydaelyn are just stupid and do not get it.

The offer to agree to disagree still stands, of course. I'm not sure why some here are so invested in the idea of everybody insisting that Venat was correct. With the amount of blood staining her hands and the cost of her actions coming at the expense of a whole, it isn't really that unreasonable for someone to consider it to be too lofty a cost. Just as someone can choose to come to the same conclusion regarding the Rejoinings. Not everyone subscribes to protagonist centered morality, I'm afraid - and they certainly don't take their cues on such things from a video game of all things in the first place.

Though I'm increasingly convinced that some here secretly like the Ancients very much or have at least realised that the decision to tie them to pretty much everything has made it near impossible to talk around them when it comes to many aspects of the story.

It's still a while until Dawntrail, too, so I imagine the 'discussions' will continue right up until the expansion's launch and well beyond it.

Perhaps that is an unfortunate consequence of the game itself being little more than a Second Life clone for heavily modded characters awkwardly standing around in drama infested venues doing the bee's knees emote. As unfortunately witnessed in great numbers whenever anyone gets the thought to check Twitter for nice art of the game's characters only to find the FFXIV tag bloated with such things instead.

[Iscah]

Her words at face value make you think she's preparing to fight Meteion, but when you look at her actions you realize her words were just to placate the WoL and get them out of the way so she could go do her genocide without her pesky little champion warning anyone else. This is the 40th half-truth she's thrown our way. Just like all the other half-truths she's told us on our journey.


And let's say it is, no matter what we do or try Venat exterminates her people. Then why aren't we screaming from the rafters mommy goddess is about to kill the lot of them since nothing we do can change the past anyway? It's because we could change the past, but we are actively choosing to keep our mouth shut cause we need Azem dead for parts.

So much of your argument seems to come from throwing away what we know of characters' thoughts and motivations, only looking at their actions and ascribing new motivations invented out of nowhere, and preferring the most cynical and hateful versions of why they might do what they do.

Your argument seems to be "Venat committed genocide against her people so she must be an evil person who was always scheming and looking for a way to carry this out just because she's evil and wants to do it" when the game provides you with a far more nuanced insight into her intentions and what she perceived herself to be doing. You don't have to agree with what she did (and I don't like it either) to see her goal is explicitly the opposite of genocide. By her own view, she is not destroying the entire race and is not trying to do so; rather, she believes that she is ensuring their survival. Whether she is correct in that belief is a separate question. Saying "she's just trying to get us out of the way so she can go do evil things" only makes sense after you have misrepresented her motives.

Additionally, the Sundering was her preparation for humanity to fight Meteion.

And we did try to warn people about the Sundering. It failed and the universe continues on.

Everything else you're claiming about "why we kept our mouth shut" is again inventing fiction that was never implied in any form in the story itself. We certainly are not directly scheming to have Azem dead for parts, besides the natural fact that we already have their soul and this cannot be changed, but this is one tiny dot in the wider picture of the present-day existence that we know and are trying to save.

And given we've already observed G'raha change the future without ending his existence, the fact we're not even trying is unforgivable. G'raha knew there was a chance he'd wipe himself from existence, but he tried anyway, because it was the right thing to do.

It needs to be emphasised that the situation with G'raha is not the same situation we are in, and in both cases it is more than a case of one person offering up their life. (In any case, we need our one life to go defeat Meteion and save the world we do have a chance of saving.)

G'raha was coming from a future that - supposedly - was utterly doomed with no recovery, and so the decision to travel back in time and change events was the only way that humanity as a whole could survive, because they weren't going to at all on the current course. G'raha was willing to give up his life in the effort to bring about that change, but that was because if he didn't do so, the unchanged timeline would lead to the death of everyone anyway.

(As an aside, I think the writers have done a consistently terrible job of driving in just how hopeless the situation needed to be to justify this kind of intervention over simply persevering with trying to improve the post-calamity world - but as the story relies on the claim that things really were dire enough to justify it, the plot makes more sense if you just go with it.)

By contrast, we are coming from a future that is not doomed yet, but it will be if we do not return to it with knowledge of the origin of the Final Days. Because there is still hope, abandoning it cannot be justified, and we need to do everything we can to save it.

When G'raha committed to splitting his timeline, he wasn't just putting his own life on the line, but locking in the destruction of everything that existed in the world he was leaving behind - again, on the understanding that it was already on the verge of destruction with no way to halt it. When we travel to Elpis, we do not have the same mindset, but are seeking to ensure that our world continues. Therefore there is no reason for us to want to risk being locked out of it altogether and sacrificing everything and everyone for the small chance of creating an alternate path for an already doomed civilisation, whose suffering has already been committed to history or we would not exist to go back and witness it.

In short, G'raha's world and timeline had reached a dead end and the only way out was backwards in time. Ours has not.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

If someone says they love you as they murder you, they do not love you. If they believe they love you as they torture you, they do not love you. Her actions are so abhorrent that I don't care if she has moonbeams popping out of her chest, which she practically does, her actions are still the second worst genocide I've ever heard of behind the Thanos snap. Thordan believed he was doing what was right. Athena believed she was doing what was right. Why are they villains while Venat is a hero? If Athena or Thordan had declared more love for us, would their actions be good?

And keep in mind, part of my extreme reaction is due to them selling the audience on genocide. I'm passionate about this because I'm trying to convince real people in the real world there is no good reason or "necessary evil" reason to exterminate an entire race. And I can't believe this is where I am, and yet, that is the discourse. It is the "positive spin" they managed to put on this that keeps me up at night. That is why I don't go with the flow and bask in the light of millions dead just so my WoL can exist.

There is no good way to commit genocide. I will not be moved on this point. That is where the disagreement comes in. That you don't get why I won't accept the "good genocide." Did I not see the pretty lady? The soft smile? Hear the music or her sweet words? Nah, I saw all that, even fell for all that...then I thought about it and remembered there is no such thing as a good or tragic, but necessary, genocide.

Given the short story there is no reason to assume the timeline G'raha left is a "dead end." And also, we told the Ea that even if everything is fated to end, that is no reason to give up. So no, G'raha coming back isn't moral because the people of that timeline are "disposable" while the people of our timeline are not. It is that exact thinking that has me here doing everything in my power attempting to convince you that no matter what Endwalker said, there is no such thing as disposable people.

Yet even in 6.5 we're reminded again it's wrong to doom another world to save your own. So dooming the Ancients to save our world is wrong even by the morals of the game's storyline I finished up last week.

Also, for the people pointing out that Venat murdered all those people two years ago and I need to get over it already, as was already pointed out when someone went through my history to discuss me, I only finished Endwalker this July, so my journey from "the useless eaters had to go, couldn't be helped" to "OMG! What did these writers sell me on?" was rather recent.

ETA: How do you not see the conflict between the ideas of "hope everlasting" and "these people have no shot at survival, so it's okay to use them for parts"? Even the dead ends did not end up being dead ends in the end. They are back in the flow to be born as new life and the dynamis versions of them are building a new society. There are no dead ends. There are no people "not worth it." That is why I'm going back and forth because I can tell you're a good person with a good heart and to accept Venat's actions requires the acceptance of some really bad ideas. That the lives of some are just "worth more" than the lives of others for the 30 conflicting reasons they threw at the wall hoping one would stick with each player. Mine was the survival one, "Oh, well if the Ancients aren't built to make it...." Make it to what? The heat death of the universe? All things end, just because something will end doesn't mean we should forsake it. That's a lesson we went to the edge of the universe to each Meteion, yet somehow didn't manage to learn ourselves.

[Iscah]

Given the short story there is no reason to assume the timeline G'raha left is a "dead end."

That is what I was referring to in my bracketed paragraph. The writers did a poor job at committing to the necessary scale of devastation that had to be inflicted upon the alternate timeline to justify the "it's so doomed we had to rewind and try again" outlook that the story relies on. It should have been as simple as Black Rose killing everyone in its path, ever-spreading and unable to be halted, and the few remaining survivors send G'raha back in time before they too succumb to inevitable death.

Instead, the writers hesitated first in how impactful Black Rose was, added in the contradictory secondary premise that humanity was not only mostly wiped out but also retained enough manpower to wage endless large-scale war in the aftermath, and ultimately is all set to move forwards after they've just wasted years of effort to throw away the Crystal Tower instead of regarding it as a very valuable resource and spending their time on better world-fixing innovations.

But as I said, that's poor writing and I am inclined to separate it from the clear intention to portray the world as doomed and unsavable, because the plot relies on that premise even if it was sold badly.

Every time G'raha has talked about the people he left behind in that world, it is very clear that he believes they were doomed and he is sad about what he understands to be their fate.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

That is what I was referring to in my bracketed paragraph. The writers did a poor job at committing to the necessary scale of devastation that had to be inflicted upon the alternate timeline to justify the "it's so doomed we had to rewind and try again" outlook that the story relies on. It should have been as simple as Black Rose killing everyone in its path, ever-spreading and unable to be halted, and the few remaining survivors send G'raha back in time before they too succumb to inevitable death.

Instead, the writers hesitated first in how impactful Black Rose was, added in the contradictory secondary premise that humanity was not only mostly wiped out but also retained enough manpower to wage endless large-scale war in the aftermath, and ultimately is all set to move forwards after they've just wasted years of effort to throw away the Crystal Tower instead of regarding it as a very valuable resource and spending their time on better world-fixing innovations.

But as I said, that's poor writing and I am inclined to separate it from the clear intention to portray the world as doomed and unsavable, because the plot relies on that premise even if it was sold badly.

Every time G'raha has talked about the people he left behind in that world, it is very clear that he believes they were doomed and he is sad about what he understands to be their fate.

They spent 200 years figuring out time travel to change the past. That's 200 years they've already survived. People with next to nothing gave what little they have to help them in their work. If you've read the story, you'll know it ends with Midgardsormr waking up, being inspired and helping them rebuild. It's a story of hope, not one of a doomed disposable world. The source has survived 7 rejoinings, I believe that timeline will survive the 8th, because my hope actually is everlasting even in the darkest of times. The First that we saved was impacted way worse by Light and they will rebuild. There is no reason to believe the Source in that timeline won't also rebuild the same way it did the seven times before. They risked their timeline being destroyed, but it wasn't, and last we hear of them, they are building towards a better future.

Perhaps the mistake in writing wasn't in not killing them off completely, but in perpetuating the idea there are people unworthy of life because they will die, ignoring everyone will die. Even the races who died off entirely, their souls remained to create new life and thanks to dynamis, even their languages, cultures and histories survived in Ultima Thule. If longevity is the metric by which someone's worthiness to live is measured, then the Ascians were right. "The ephemeral lives you exalt are pale imitations, utterly devoid of meaning." This is the viewpoint you're holding, but with civilizations rather than individuals, but it's wrong by both metrics.

Personally I think the writers were banking on Venat being another Emet-Selch but due to the circumstances it didn't really land. It doesn't help that Endwalker arrived amidst a rather dire part of recent human history where people in the real world where genuinely calling for the deaths and imprisonment of anyone who disagreed with them over the pandemic and lockdowns. Not to mention those of us who lost loves one during that period aren't really thrilled by child-like stories that proclaim that some people are more deserving than others of living whereas others are just fodder to cast aside to prop up the heroes because they're extra special. Words truly cannot describe how tone deaf and infantile it all is, really.

My theory on how this happened was they were setting Venat up to be evil knowing we'd be killing both Zodiak and Hydaelyn, but that idea got vetoed by a higher up, so they switched up her tone without changing her actions. Cause I can't imagine from the onset they were aiming for her to be good and started with "then she sunders everyone with the full knowledge of the hell she'll be putting them through."

It's really just one big, giant tangled web of a mess that I do not believe the writers can truly untangle at this point...and the game isn't exactly fresh these days either. Time will tell how popular 'lol graha ate taco XD' proves to be especially with some healthy competition finally emerging on the market.

Well, as long as we don't do a colonialism. *begs* Please, please, please don't have us go there and colonize these people. I don't want to spend the next three years trying to explain why being a colonizer is a bad thing.

[Iscah]

It's a story of hope, not one of a doomed disposable world.

And my issue is that they're trying to write a story of hope for a world which, for plot purposes, does actually need to be irrevocably doomed or you can't justify the decision to abandon it. Nobody within the story deemed it as disposable until there was (allegedly) no other path possible.

On the other hand, your proposal that we should go back to Elpis and change the timeline would be deeming the present-day world as disposable just to take a shot at saving a newly created alternate version of the ancient world, while not actually saving anyone who already exists.

[Iscah]

How do you not see the conflict between the ideas of "hope everlasting" and "these people have no shot at survival, so it's okay to use them for parts"?

In short, because I don't think the writers saw that conflict (and their outlook is framed as Venat's), so everything in the story has to be viewed through the lens of that not being a conflict.

But also, your wording is a misrepresentation of the outlook, because the game never portrayed Venat's actions as "recycling a doomed race for parts" but as creating a continuation of the same race in a new form that was necessary for their survival. And in the context of the rest of the game's plot, it succeeded.

To be clear, I do not like how Endwalker handled Hydaelyn's actions. But we're stuck with what the writers have written, and it makes far more sense to me to just accept their premise that events needed to happen this way while thinking that they didn't do a particularly good job of writing the specifics.

If I somehow erase the events we were shown from, say, the confrontation at Kairos to the end of our vision in the rift, and just mark it as "blank space, fill with what you think happened based on what you see in the rest of the story" then what we are left with before that blank space is wise and compassionate Venat, and what we have after it is Hydaelyn who has done her best to safeguard the world for 12,000 years and is now quite ready to let it go once she has been able to pass on the knowledge you will need to save it. What goes in the middle? What adds up with the rest of what we know?

I view it in a similar way to the writing of the doomed timeline situation - the writers made poor decisions in this bit, so I will have to rely on what they say in the rest of the story to get the best picture of what they were trying to do here.