What lore do you ignore?

[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.

[Theodric]

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'.

You must have missed this, then:

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.

See, that's the thing - all of the points raised by myself and various other posters have been backed up with sources at length. We posted them for years and you either insulted us or ignored us...or scurried away pretending as if your points had not been countered. So we made a video to keep all the points and sources in one - admittedly large (but split into chapters) video for the sake of efficiency especially when this exact same song and dance has been going on for many years now, largely at the behest of those thoroughly allergic to the idea of simply agreeing to disagree on the basis that no, actually, nobody is obligated to like, dislike, or side with specific characters in a fictional setting let alone praise even their most horrific actions.

You're welcome not to watch it though please do not insinuate that these talking points are coming out of nowhere or are not based on anything outlined in the game.

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."

I think that's fairly likely. If not evil - which I never wanted her to be, for that matter - but definitely a tragic antagonist along the lines of Yunalesca who meant well but needed to be put down nonetheless. The fact that there was a major delay and a confirmed rewrite for the expansion is rather suspicious in itself, though it remains to be seen if any solid details ever come out on that front one way or another.

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.

It's hard to say at this point, though my bet is that they'll attempt to be so very safe in the execution that it ends up coming off as incredibly condescending. It doesn't help that we're stuck with the Scions who have repeatedly proven to be rather...insistent on imprinting their cultural values and beliefs upon everybody else.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

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.

But we already know from G'raha's continued existence that divergent timelines exist and are possible. There is no justifiable and moral reason to know Venat is going to kill all these people and say nothing to them. And no, she didn't simply transform them, she exterminated them, else Vauthry only transformed the people he turned into sineaters and Athena only transformed the people she turned into...whatever she was doing.

While you can question if the alternate Ironworks had he right to do what they did given they didn't know if they'd be wiping themselves and everyone else in that timeline out of existence or not. Insisting that they must be without hope to justify putting their resources towards helping others goes against the themes of Shadowbringers. We are told planting seeds we'll never see grow is in our nature. That paying it forward is the good in us. I think that's a much better moral than entire disposable civilizations giving everything up to their betters.

ETA: Also, we opened out fat mouths to cause the genocide. Why can't we keep yapping to stop it? You're arguing we can't say anything because it risks our timeline. But saying something is what puts Venat on the path of murdering her people. So we've already talked. Why not talk to some more people so she can be removed from said path we put her on?

[Cleretic]

See, that's the thing - all of the points raised by myself and various other posters have been backed up with sources at length. We posted them for years and you either insulted us or ignored us...or scurried away pretending as if your points had not been countered. So we made a video to keep all the points and sources in one - admittedly large (but split into chapters) video for the sake of efficiency especially when this exact same song and dance has been going on for many years now, largely at the behest of those thoroughly allergic to the idea of simply agreeing to disagree on the basis that no, actually, nobody is obligated to like, dislike, or side with specific characters in a fictional setting let alone praise even their most horrific actions.

You're welcome not to watch it though please do not insinuate that these talking points are coming out of nowhere or are not based on anything outlined in the game.

I'm not going to watch your video, because I have other things to do with my hours. I'm sorry, but this subject is just less interesting than Deep Space Nine.

But those citations existing must make it much easier for you to produce quotes and citations for any claims you are making, right? I do my homework for my claims, you should do yous for yours. Give your argument the background color it deserves, in the space you're making it.

[Iscah]

But we already know from G'raha's continued existence that divergent timelines exist and are possible.

We, the players with an external view of the whole situation, know that multiple timelines are possible. G'raha does not know, even after bringing about the change in events, whether or not the other timeline still exists.

But again, as far as he knows, the two possible states of the other timeline are (A) it no longer exists, or (B) it exists but everyone is going to die soon and there's nothing that can be done to stop it.

Knowing that it is possible to create a split timeline is not the same thing as knowing that the split timeline will turn out the way you hope it will. But the point of the post-calamity timeline was that it was (allegedly) so bad that any other outcome would be better than the 100% chance of doom they were facing.

Also, we opened out fat mouths to cause the genocide. Why can't we keep yapping to stop it? You're arguing we can't say anything because it risks our timeline. But saying something is what puts Venat on the path of murdering her people. So we've already talked. Why not talk to some more people so she can be removed from said path we put her on?

You keep presenting it as our character deliberately causing a genocide. I have already covered the fact that the writers (and by extension anyone they regard as good characters) apparently do not share the viewpoint that it is a genocide, so the characters cannot be expected to act as if it were.

Our character simply explained the future that they knew would happen; they did not encourage it to happen. Venat would be on that path whether we said anything or not. We arguably tried to stop it during our time in Elpis, up until the point where it went wrong and also we had the answer we were seeking, so we needed to get back to our present and Venat assured us that she would do what she could to avert tragedy.

It should also be noted that while for gameplay purposes we have easy access to aetherytes and infinite ability to return to Elpis at will, the story makes it quite clear that if this were a more linear game, we would have been there on limited time - probably until Elidibus's power ran out and could no longer keep the portal open. Note that for our subsequent trip to Elpis that leads us to Pandaemonium, we can't just travel there freely but have to reactivate the portal in the Ocular by using the mysterious crystal.

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."

This may be the closest we will come to agreeing, because the Sundering as it happened certainly seems to belong to a Venat who is written as more ambiguous and less "loving mother goddess but in human form" and it feels like they rewrote the rest and forgot to consider that one scene, or else the writers (or different writers/devs) were trying to have it both ways and maintain both "perfect Hydaelyn" and "everyone has their own viewpoint and nobody is entirely right" without recognising their own inconsistency.

Personally I resolve this by just regarding the whole plot as a bit of a mess, ignoring the weirder parts of their philosophy, and crossing fingers that they won't keep being weird when they're no longer trying to write themselves out of a tangled corner of the plot.

Beyond that, I'll talk about the plot as it is written - it's irrelevant whether I personally agree with the proposition that sundering would not count as death, because the characters are acting based on what the writers think is the answer to that question.

Additionally, the writers were never trying to cover all possible angles of the story. By their own previous writing they were locked into crafting a story where the Sundering does happen, Hydaelyn is somehow responsible, and there is no option of it simply not happening. Nor is there an option for the main character to abandon the ongoing world of the story and skip off into the sunset into a different world forever cut off from the setting so far. It's something you can maybe get away with (plot circumstances depending) in a movie or a one-and-done game storyline, but not for an ongoing MMO.

Though in any case, if the whole Sundering scene is a relic from a vetoed "Hydaelyn turns out to be evil" plot, then that just makes me even more inclined to ignore it, assume something else happened instead that lines up with the "yes Hydaelyn really is every bit as good and lovely as she seemed" plot that we did get in every other scene of the story (I'm inclined to assume that Hydaelyn aimed to sunder just Zodiark and the rest was an unforeseen side effect), and move on to discussing the parts of the plot that have no direct relevance to the details of how the Sundering happened.

[Theodric]

I'm not going to watch your video, because I have other things to do with my hours. I'm sorry, but this subject is just less interesting than Deep Space Nine.

But those citations existing must make it much easier for you to produce quotes and citations for any claims you are making, right? I do my homework for my claims, you should do yous for yours. Give your argument the background color it deserves, in the space you're making it.

Did you even read my previous post? Perhaps I need to be a bit more direct, then.

As a gay guy who has been targeted by certain posters persistently outside of this forum with some pretty unsettling personal attacks I find those very same posters to be deeply disturbing and reprehensible individuals due to their past and - sometimes present - actions and harassment towards not only myself but various other individuals who have expressed criticism of Venat's actions...

I have very little interest in providing those individuals with sources other than linking them a video that contains the sources in question in a neat little package complete with handy chapters to find the relevant sections more readily. If those individuals do not wish to watch the video, then they are not obligated to. Though at the same time, I can only question why they would repeatedly attempt to lie about sources not being offered. Especially when it has been done in text form many times already. It may go without saying but everyone here is capable of looking through the older threads relating to the Sundering to see this all in play there, too, almost word for word. So...

To put it more bluntly, I am not interested in entertaining the whims of posters who:

• Have been deeply homophobic.
• Have insinuated outright that if someone likes the Ascians or the Garleans then they are secretly 'fascists'.
• Have declared that Midlander men are also fascist (I'd actually like an explanation for that one since it's so utterly bizarre.)
• Have whined about women who like Emet-Selch picking the 'bad guys' over 'nice guys'.
• Have made very hurtful sexist comments towards the aforementioned women.
• Have proclaimed that if someone dislikes Venat, then it's because they are 'sexist' and 'misogynistic'.
• Have joined various lore discussion Discords to demand that Venat and genocide are never used in the same sentence.
• Have repeatedly attempted to pretend as if those critical of Venat are all alts. A tactic that quickly fell out of favour when a greater number of posters became emboldened to speak out about not liking Endwalker's direction.
• Have created an entire alt account to push an offensive gimmick making fun of anyone who speaks English as a second language.

I could list many more things and those interested are encouraged to message me in-game and exchange Discord names on a throwaway account if need be because I have many interesting receipts to show exactly what sort of things certain posters have been saying and doing in recent years.

The only reason I weighed in on recent threads is precisely because I happened to see that the usual suspects were once again swarming someone who came to the conclusion that the mother goddess character so adored around these parts really isn't all that well written or consistent in her motives or morals.

Now, not all of the above is attributed to the same person but perhaps it will give some insight into why posting a video with sources is far more desirable then wasting time picking out specific, isolated sources for individuals who have a very long track record of some or all of the above behaviour. I would also note that in addition to the above there have been death and sexual assault threats hurled around as well. Nasty business, but again the evidence is there and can be passed along to those who, for whatever reason, may wish to see it with their own eyes.

In case it wasn't clear, I want nothing to do with certain regulars here. They're free to respond to my posts - I certainly can't stop them - but I felt obligated to explain myself a little more deeply. There's a number of posters here who are, quite frankly, extremely unsettling and I do not want to interact with them anymore than necessary. Which is why I so rarely post around these parts anymore - combined with the game as a whole being pretty dry on content in general these days and increasingly catered to the venue goer crowd over anyone who wants more 'world' and 'game' in their MMO.

Hopefully that provides some clarification. My intention with coming here has always been to discuss the game's story and the characters within it, not wage some strange war over whether someone's waifu is 'pure' and 'righteous' or not. The whole 'but you MUST agree that she was RIGHT' stuff is just weird and freaky to me. Not my scene.

Incidentally since I'm feeling nostalgic here's my post prior to the 'big reveal' as to what I was hoping for with the Hydaelyn and Zodiark story arc conclusion:

At this point, I'm very much expecting a third party entity to ultimately be to blame for the entire predicament. Potentially the very same entity that caused the Sound. The writers have, thankfully, been pretty clear at establishing the nuance of the situation. Neither Zodiark or Hydaelyn are necessarily 'good' or 'evil'. It's all very much a matter of perspective. So, too, does that apply to the Ancients and the Ascians, the Sundered and the Unsundered. They all have their own goals, dreams, desires and a will to live.

I also suspect that the Warrior of Light will go the way of Azem and seek to find a 'third way' when it comes to solving the plight that is the Sound. Especially if the Final Days are indeed returning for a second time in the same form as before. Or, alternatively, perhaps the story will involve Hydaelyn and Zodiark being brought together in a state of balance - given that the Sundering has been described as an 'unstable state' by the writers themselves in the past.

Whether Venat is an antagonist or not, I suppose, depends entirely on a few key factors such as whether the Sundering was accidental or intentional.

My own personal hope is for the story to set aside differences, acknowledge each side as having understandable motivations and then have everyone come together to beat the Sound which may or may not be a Lavos or Jenova type entity in typical JRPG fashion.

Obviously that isn't the trajectory that the story took but hopefully it helps dispel the ridiculous 'noooo u just wanted her to be evil' narrative that some like to peddle. I'm not willing to consider acts of genocide to suddenly be acceptable just because the story decides to do a complete one eighty in regards to its established morality and declare that they're bad and wrong when anyone other than the protagonists partake of such things but necessary when it benefits the self proclaimed heroes of the story.

More fool me for taking Yoshi-P at his word and believing that his love of the Ivalice games would translate into antagonists and protagonists alike being handled with more tact and dignity, I suppose. FFXVI didn't fare much better on that front.

We'll see what Dawntrail teases with the upcoming Fan Fest though so far I am inclined to believe that the game is firmly in the 'winding down' phase, at least temporarily. It's also becoming increasingly clear that the game is seeking to cater primarily to venue goers as opposed to authentic role-players or even anyone who wants the game to be more of an MMO and less of a slice of life adventure with low stakes for one of the most plot armour clad main casts in an MMO to date.

In the end, though, any MMO is by its very nature going to attract many different players from all over the world from very varied backgrounds, countries, cultures and belief systems. It strikes me as rather strange for anyone to act as if anything in a story 'has to' be liked, disliked or read into a certain way as if a bunch of writers prone to excessive use of protagonist centered morality, outright retcons and convenient plot devices such as memory wipes and time travel are owed full agreement.

Even the writers have never said as much themselves. They've always made it clear that they expect players to come to their own conclusions and embrace their personal tastes. Another thing repeatedly I linked in the past, I might add, particularly during the Shadowbringers era!

[Cleretic]

To put it more bluntly, I am not interesting in entertaining the selfish whims of posters who:

• Have been deeply homophobic.
• Have insinuated outright that if someone likes the Ascians or the Garleans then they are secretly 'fascists'.
• Have declared that Midlander men are also fascist (I'd actually like an explanation for that one since it's so utterly bizarre.)
• Have whined about women who like Emet-Selch picking the 'bad guys' over 'nice guys'.
• Have made very hurtful sexist comments towards the aforementioned women.
• Have proclaimed that if someone dislikes Venat, then it's because they are 'sexist' and 'misogynistic'.
• Have joined various lore discussion Discords to demand that Venat and genocide are never used in the same sentence.
• Have repeatedly attempted to pretend as if those critical of Venat are all alts. A tactic that quickly fell out of favour when a greater number of posters became emboldened to speak out about not liking Endwalker's direction.
• Have created an entire alt account to push an offensive gimmick making fun of anyone who speaks English as a second language.

See, now I'm starting to be a bit wary. Because there's only one person asking you to cite some sources here, and that's me. So it feels like this whole spiel is trying to blame me for things that have happened to you. And I sure hope it's not... especially because if you are, someone's slinging some serious slander, and it might not be anyone in this thread. I don't do any of that--and while I don't think minorities are incapable of attacking other minorities, I will say that as a trans woman who's not-infrequently attacked for both her gender identity and her opinions about fictional characters (occasionally from the same people), I'm far from a fan of that treatment for anyone. So if someone's claiming I'm doing it, I'm pretty mad about it.

I recognize and respect that this is what you consider reason to be more conservative about your arguments; you've seen that I think similar, although I hold back different things. But I am going to say--not as someone who wants Internet Arguments, but as someone who's been targeted like this--that I don't think this actually works like you want it to. If you're being attacked for your long opinion-posts about fictional characters, the existence of citations and quotes isn't actually a factor; it's the fact that you're making them in the first place. You're not making yourself a smaller target. So if you want my advice, despite never asking for it: go all or nothing. Because they do too.

[ZavosEsperian]

This is why I regret that a good deal of this was glossed over in a condensed, non-literal "walk down memory lane" scene instead of a concrete, explicit example or two to prevent people from disregarding it and running with whatever impressions / theories they most wanted to preserve, anyway.

Herein lies the real issue when it comes to how Venat is interpreted, at least in terms of the events between the end of Elpis up to the point she elects to choose the path of sundering Etheirys. There is a distinct lack of “showing” regarding the events between those two points in time which, in turn, requires the person going through the content in question to have to make a logical leap in how those events played out. Logical leaps, by nature, requires a level of thinking by the reader to piece together the missing elements, which in turn is the origin of various headcanons. Words on a page in fiction make use of literal, figurative, and, in cases where deception is involved, misleading language where the reader must determine the meaning of the words both in the moment but also in retrospect.

Further compounding this would be the climax of these events, which is defined by Venat, now Hydaelyn, sundering Etheirys along with all the life on it. From the perspective of the Ancients, such an act would be regarded by us as an act of genocide where, per the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Venat would be guilty as per the definition of genocide and what crimes constitute it. For sake of brevity, I will provide the relevant sections below regarding Venat and, to a lesser extent, her followers:

Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
[sections d and e not relevant]

Article 3 defines the crimes that can be punished under the convention:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
[c is not relevant]
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.

— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Articles 2-3

Genocide is the absolute steepest charge that can be levied against someone via the ICC and is universally condemned. As such, acts in fiction which parallel what is defined as genocide can cause people to view whichever character is committing to act as evil, regardless of the outcome, as the use of genocide as a means to an end is universally condemned.

On the flip side, we are role playing as the Warrior of Light, who requires the sundering to occur in the first place to even exist. All beloved characters who side with the Warrior of Light, barring Venat, also require the sundering to exist.

It should then be with no great shock to us there is such a division in how the sundering, let alone Venat’s character by proxy due to being the one who perpetrated the act, can be interpreted. This fault lies squarely on the writers themselves due to not recognizing what they are potentially portraying, and would constitute them not having a good sense of media literacy for failing to address these concerns in a way where the audience cannot misinterpret the message, for better or for worse.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

Not only that, the person who is pointing out that I'm coming at this in the opposite direction is right. I'm staring at the billion person high stack of corpses and deciding no good person does that. So this must be a bad person. They are coming at it from everything I am seeing and hearing is telling me this is a good and loving person, therefore this massive stack of corpses must be at worse a 'necessary evil.'

And for that, the writers did a very, very bad thing as there is no necessary reason to eradicate an entire people.

That is my main issue, people reading from front to back are lead to believe if a good person did something evil, then the thing she did must not be evil. I was also led to believe that. But then at the end I sat with that massive stack of corpses for awhile and everything started to stink.

So they are right, I am coming at this from the end because the longer I sat with those corpses, the more her every word and deed becomes tainted...by all the murders she committed.

She is a good person as long as I ignore everything she did, her reasons for doing it and just pay attention to the color scheme, the lip service and the power ballads. But both actions and inactions alike fall under top tier villainy.