What lore do you ignore?

[Iscah]

My read is that she actually didn't do either of these. She doesn't accept her place in The Time Loop; the scene right after Ktisis basically has her saying that she'll look for other options if at all possible. It just seems like those options weren't really viable. ANd yet, we know she was pursuing them even before the Sundering, because of the Anamnesis Anyder discussion.

But even when we have completed the time loop, we know she's not sticking to it: remember that when we meet her in the Aetherial Sea, we learn that her plan is several layers more complicated, reliant on both events that happened afterwards that couldn't have been part of what we told her (specifically, tagging Meteion) and multiple factors we didn't even know were on the table after we left her alone (for example, the Ragnarok).

Yes, she says she'll be looking for other options, but to me that just sounds like the precursor to the two possibilities I listed. Either she discovers some alternative path that plays out in a split timeline we'll never see, or the single timeline remains as it is and always was: she searches for alternatives, finds nothing and concludes that she cannot deny that the Sundering is the only viable route that might still save her people - and it needs to be emphasised that whatever reading the fans ascribe to it, it appears to be the intent of the story writers that from Venat's own viewpoint, the ancients and modern humanity are the same continuous people so she believes she is ensuring the survival of her race and not destroying it.

As for your "additional factors", yes, she has clearly put a lot of work and thinking into setting up additional elements outside of what we were able to tell her - essentially solving the puzzle of "why would I tell them to flee?" with "maybe it's all a ruse to get them to build a starship capable of reaching Meteion" - but she is still locked into complying with the bigger parts of what we told her, and is not fully free to act. Imagine how she must have to think about the calamities occurring on the earlier shards - if this is fated, should she try to intervene? Would it be futile? Can she bring herself to sit idle while it happens because it is a necessary event on the road to reaching the WoL's present?

And to come back to the argument that started this tangent, the point here is that she is not in control of people's fates. She can do her best, lay what plans she can to help bring about her goal, but knowing she can plan on other people acting a particular way in a particular circumstance is not the same thing as having control over their fate.

[Anonymoose]

Yes, she says she'll be looking for other options, but to me that just sounds like the precursor to the two possibilities I listed.

I think there might have been like, "two-point-five" broad possibilities, to her, at the time: either she can sufficiently change the course (in which case multiple different possibilities exist) or she cannot change it, regardless of what would happen if she did. Some references to it read as, "Your trip to Elips and what I do from here may change your future." vs. "Your trip to Elips and what I do from here may change my future, making it separate from yours." vs. "Your trip to Elips and what I do from here may create a Bill & Ted Dad's Keys kind of situation." In the end, the true boundaries of which ingredients from which are included in "The Conjunction" are left kind of agnostic from the WoL-centric perspective of the story, imho. I tend to interpret it as kind of a mix of Dad's Keys + It Was "Always" Dad's Keys (from the perspective inside the Source's cosmic spacetime bubble).

She remains optimistic that between her precautions and the Plot-Convenient Amnesia, perhaps things will work out, but that she's actually not going to take our story or our future for granted, she's going to try her damnedest. (Which people often just disregard as "she didn't tho" or "she obviously lied".) Especially in uh... <digs through knapsack>

CITATION:

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.

Malgré tout, j'ai foi en l'être humain. J'ai toujours préféré voir son potentiel plutôt que ses limites, et c'est pourquoi je ne baisserai pas les bras. Une nouvelle histoire va s'écrire, séparée, je suppose, de celle que tu as connue. Encore qu'elles pourraient se rejoindre à un moment ou à un autre, compte tenu de l'amnésie de certains de ses acteurs... Qui vivra verra, comme on dit. Dans tous les cas, je tâcherai d'agir au mieux, en me gardant de prendre ton récit pour argent comptant.

Doch ich hab stets an unser Potenzial geglaubt. Es wiegt schwerer als all unsere Fehler. Und deshalb werde ich nicht aufgeben. Die Welt, in die du zurückkehrst, ist womöglich eine andere. Vielleicht ändert sich wegen des Gedächtnisverlustes unserer Freunde aber auch nichts. Wie es wirklich sein wird, wissen wir erst, wenn die Zeit gekommen ist. Ich werde jedenfalls nichts als selbstverständlich ansehen und immer mein Bestes geben.

けれど私は、人の可能性を愛した。不可能よりもずっと。…進む理由は、それで十分。この先に待つのは、あなたが知るのとは別の歴史かもしれない。あるいはエメトセルクたちが記憶を失ったことで、繋がる見込みも生じたのかもしれませんが…。どちらにせよそれは、繋がる瞬間まで知り得ぬこと。私はあなたから聞いたことをすべてと思わず、最善を尽くし続けましょう。

[Theodric]

On the contrary, her motives and declarations have been examined and countered a great many times - particularly in a joint community project where a number of lore enthusiasts came together to source their discussion points in one great, big analysis in the form of a video essay focused on Venat herself.

After spending a significant time posting the same sources across a number of different threads and seeing them dismissed or conveniently forgotten about a few pages later.

The video in question can be found here, with perhaps the most relevant section being the one aptly titled 'excuses':

https://youtu.be/fsk412wCrJY?t=1101

It's admittedly a long video so it might be worth watching it in chapters but everything is sourced from the game itself, various lore related interviews and short stories. I don't know where this idea that the people countering Venat's motivations aren't equipped with sources is coming from since it only takes a look through the post history of someone like Rulakir or Lauront to see that, yes, they do source a lot of their talking points and explain their reasoning and conclusions clearly.

Anyone is of course free to like and support 'cRyStAl MoMmY' but her motives are so paper thin and contradictory that they do not hold up under the slightest bit of scrutiny and they certainly wouldn't be accepted as something to cheer on if they were aimed at the Scions and their loved ones and civilisations as opposed to being inflicted upon the Ancients. Nor would most accept it being inflicted upon any of us in the real world, for that matter.

It doesn't help that - as myself and a handful of others have pointed out many times - it was common here for certain posters to embrace the stance prior to Endwalker that no matter how sympathetic the reasoning or desperate the circumstances there is supposedly never a justification for acts of genocide. Which mysteriously fell to the wayside as of Endwalker's revelations and this is all just really a last ditch attempt to try to cling to the idea that, yes, it was all very sad but it 'had to' happen and/or Venat 'tried' and 'had no choice'.

It's not controversial at all to point out that if she was deliberately withholding information from her people, allowing a disaster to strike and kill large swathes of individuals and also working to turn others against them then that was not making a genuine effort to save them. That is serving the role of an antagonist and saboteur.

Preserving mankind by wiping out the Ancients through an act of deliberate genocide and then replacing them with complete different species in a twisted form of eugenics doesn't really count as preserving mankind, I'm afraid. Which in itself is the main point of contention.

...but even putting all of that aside, the game chose to lean on some of the most lamest and controversial plot devices including mind wipes and time travel. It is being criticised for such as well, since such plot devices rarely lead to a consistent narrative. Then there's the numerous retcons that conveniently change established rules but only in favour of the protagonists which is also being called out.