What lore do you ignore?

[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.

[Iscah]

It wasn't a mistake. It was on purpose. She used them to exterminate her sweet children for which she sacrificed so much. Sure what she sacrificed wasn't hers to give, but hey. And she most certainly didn't spare him because she hoped he wouldn't rejoin the worlds. She spared him because she needed him to rejoin the worlds or she doesn't become a goddess.

...okay, nope, we're right into fanfiction at this point. I thought we were discussing the actual game. My mistake.

[Theodric]

...okay, nope, we're right into fanfiction at this point. I thought we were discussing the actual game. My mistake.

It isn't 'fan fiction' to acknowledge the core trajectory and full consequences/implications of her actions. I know many here like to hand wave the fact that Venat was very willing to make use of the 'spare' versions of Etheirys as part of her plan just as much as she was willing to needlessly send Minfilia to an early death and of course destroy her entire species.

You're free to assume the best intentions for Venat as a character though I'm afraid when a story makes something as controversial as deliberate genocide a part of such carefully laid plans then it's going to be difficult for everyone else to just go along with it.

Let's also not forget that her plan with the Lopporits if the Warrior of Light failed to pass her test (full of holes and half-hearted as it was) also involved abandoning large swathes of the inhabitants of Etheirys to be swallowed up by the Final Days.

At every turn Venat's plans involve large sacrifices. Everything was just a piece on the playing board to move about to advance her goals in the end, not unlike the Ascians. Which is very much why she is held to the same standards.

There's nothing controversial about that.

[Iscah]

It seems like a self-defeating argument to claim that Venat's mistake was in not getting rid of Emet, Lahabrea, and Elidibus before they had the chance to destroy multiple worlds and end countless lives in the future. In a way, it assumes that the Convocation members had no agency or choice of their own because they were somehow 'destined' to turn to evil no matter what happened.

Back (if fleetingly) on the thread's actual premise, I'm inclined to put "Venat deliberately spared Emet, Lahabrea and Elidibus" as at least tentatively "ignorable" in that it seemed like a hastily invented answer to something the writers hadn't properly considered when they settled on the final version of the plot.

The main opportunity to clear up their explanation would have been EE3 but that part of the plot summary (on page 13) simply states that they escaped the Sundering "by means unknown" and does not attempt to attribute it to being a deliberate part of Hydaelyn's plan.

In any case that comes back to what I was saying in an earlier post, because being given knowledge of the future puts Venat/Hydaelyn in an unpleasant situation so far as making decisions that would be cruel to individuals (on the assumption that the game is not lying when it portrays her as a wise and compassionate person).

Does she really wilfully leave the will-be Ascians unsundered and tormented, or does she reason that she will simply aim to sunder all of existence and that if the future-history is true, there must be some unknowable occurrence when she does so that results in those few people slipping through the cracks?

[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.

[Theodric]

G'raha is - much like Venat - conveniently written to be utterly obsessed with the player character, to an often unsettling degree at times. Ultimately, though, it's another case of protagonist centered morality. It benefits him to callously sacrifice a world he quickly writes off as 'doomed' but we know from his own words that there were those opposed to his decision. You know, people with loved ones who had survived considerable trauma but still had the drive to fight and continue to live each new day.

Which is where the dehumanisation comes into play again. 'Those people needed to die. They were doomed. They were a necessary, unfortunate sacrifice.' Your quotes, not mine.

It'd be easier to buy if the same people touting such were willing to apply that to the game's protagonists though as we know from previous 'discussions' a number of the regulars here are fiercely opposed to any of the protagonists being held accountable for anything of note, criticised for their shadier actions or let alone killed off even in a 'necessary' sacrifice.

With the way in which the protagonists are written they come across as malicious sociopaths possessed of numerous dark triad personality traits who are only in it for themselves and their favoured as well as anyone who will call them a 'hero'. It's probably not entirely intentional but the damage is done the moment a story begins framing the deliberate destruction of entire species, worlds and innocents as 'necessary.'

Which once again brings us right back to the whole 'some of you spent years arguing that there was never, ever an excuse for such things until the point where it was the protagonists having a hand in such acts!

...and so the circle continues to spin.

[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.

[Theodric]

...and at some point, if a particular situation is written badly enough then there's no obligation to just blindly go along with it. There's a big difference between the writers expecting someone to accept that, say, that there's a fictional type of berry in Final Fantasy XIV called a rolanberry and a story attempting to convince the player that sometimes genocide is the correct solution to a problem.

Maybe, just maybe, they should not have written such things in the first place. Though they did as much, nobody is denying that. There's still no obligation for anyone to like or dislike specific characters or agree with what is being written though. I'm fond of cats, if the game told me to hate cats I wouldn't agree because I like cats and no matter the reasoning I'm not going to change my mind on that.

Incidentally, I don't support genocide and I'm deeply troubled by many of the horrific events going on in the real world involving such. Though no matter how much FFXIV tries to pretend as if such horrific things are acceptable so long as a pretty mother goddess or an enthusiastic cat boy cheer them on...I'm not going to change my mind on that, either.

Though that's scale things back a bit, since one of the biggest problems here isn't so much that the writers are actually demanding that everybody accepts Venat as she is written as a good thing. They've actually made many interview statements - repeatedly posted by myself and others over the years - specifically encouraging players to come to their own conclusions about specific characters.

No, this is very much more about what certain posters here want - and that is for Venat to be considered 'right' and 'good' and that everything she did is a 'grim necessity'. Which is why the moment a new poster came here to discuss the story and express a dislike for the character in question, she was immediately swarmed by some of the regulars. Something which quite a lot of posters have experienced to the point where this forgotten little corner of the forum has become a rather notorious echo chamber in recent years.

I don't expect perfection from a setting when it comes to world-building. Yet if a game sets out to be exceedingly preachy with its supposed morals then it isn't unreasonable to expect them to be consistently applied across the board. Especially given that this is an MMORPG, one that appeals to a great many players from many different backgrounds, countries, cultures and belief systems. That's another reason why 'just blindly go along with what the story presents' does not really hold up under scrutiny.

Incidentally, I was under the impression that these situations were exactly what the ethics department was created for but that's another matter entirely, I suppose.

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.

...but more than anything, the funny thing is morality wouldn't even factor into it all that much if this forum wasn't plagued by regular posters turning every little thing the antagonists did into a huge moral drama that absolutely had to be punished and criticised at length by the game's protagonists.

I actually had rather considerable respect for those of you who I thought genuinely believed such things only to see that many then immediately turned around and declared that so long as the 'protagonists' are doing the same thing, only then is it necessary and good.

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.

[Cleretic]

Oh, okay, so there's no interest whatsoever in finding textual foundation. Is it fanfiction if you're clearly in no way a fan of what the writers wrote? ...and also not actually writing anything. What's the 'minimum viable product' for fanfiction as a term, anyway?

Since there's no substance or evidence to any of this, I choose to ignore most of it, and instead try to 're-reail'.

Back (if fleetingly) on the thread's actual premise, I'm inclined to put "Venat deliberately spared Emet, Lahabrea and Elidibus" as at least tentatively "ignorable" in that it seemed like a hastily invented answer to something the writers hadn't properly considered when they settled on the final version of the plot.

The main opportunity to clear up their explanation would have been EE3 but that part of the plot summary (on page 13) simply states that they escaped the Sundering "by means unknown" and does not attempt to attribute it to being a deliberate part of Hydaelyn's plan.

It is sort of a curious absence, especially now that you recall that we had 'afterlife-epilogues' from all three of those characters in Endwalker and its patches (even if Lahabrea's was somewhat nonlinear). It's a surprising gap that we never got either a story about that moment, or someone talking about it. The writers usually love circling back to Emet-Selch!

Perhaps it's sort of a functional element: by nature there must be a loophole for survival, but it doesn't really matter what that was. It's not the only one in the game, in retrospect; we don't know how the eventual founders of Gelmorra weathered the Great Flood, after all, even if we know the effective escape plans for every other successor civilization. Perhaps it also hits a problem of implicit magnitude: a means of escaping the Sundering feels too potentially huge to be a passing element, like it has to be important if it's established at all. That's either a technique with enormous potential (on either side), or a location left unharmed by a planetwide shattering, and either one sounds like it should be important. And since it's not actually important, therefore, it must never be definitively established.

To a degree, it's almost the most developer-sanctioned answer to this thread subject: a handwave specifically designed so that you may ignore it. And it's not perfect, but it might be better the way it is: it would sort of destroy the integrity that Emet's entire story is based on if he hid while all his people faced the nebulous-but-conceptually-horrifying events of the sundering, so he must therefore at least partially not be at fault. Meanwhile, Venat's story already has the splash of darkness of doing the Sundering in the first place and blaming herself for the ensuing suffering (as we saw in The Answers Walk), doing something horrible for noble reasons; a bit of 'and she might've deliberately spared people who'd go on to be real ratbags' isn't a big change to her overall colors.