What lore do you ignore?

[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.

[Iscah]

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.'

That's not what I have said at any point.

I am saying that according to the story there is no "stack of corpses", even figuratively, for Venat to be accused of. It is clear that the writers do not intend sundering to be equal to death, no matter what the player may think of it, and therefore it is necessary to use that interpretation when considering what characters have canonically done according to the story.

That does not mean I am condoning Venat's actions by that interpretation, or even that the interpretation is objectively wrong, only that when you are viewing the story that the devs intended to write, the villainy is not there and nobody was murdered by Venat's decision.

In a different context, if you ask me my personal opinion on the story presented in Endwalker, then yes it is absolutely a messed-up thing to have done – but I regard the fault to be laid at the writer's level rather than the character's. It was a writer's decision that sundering does what it does, a writer's decision that this is nevertheless not equatable to death, and a writer's decision that Venat could decide on this course of action and still be presented as a good character.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

That's not what I have said at any point.

I am saying that according to the story there is no "stack of corpses", even figuratively, for Venat to be accused of. It is clear that the writers do not intend sundering to be equal to death, no matter what the player may think of it, and therefore it is necessary to use that interpretation when considering what characters have canonically done according to the story.

That does not mean I am condoning Venat's actions by that interpretation, or even that the interpretation is objectively wrong, only that when you are viewing the story that the devs intended to write, the villainy is not there and nobody was murdered by Venat's decision.

In a different context, if you ask me my personal opinion on the story presented in Endwalker, then yes it is absolutely a messed-up thing to have done – but I regard the fault to be laid at the writer's level rather than the character's. It was a writer's decision that sundering does what it does, a writer's decision that this is nevertheless not equatable to death, and a writer's decision that Venat could decide on this course of action and still be presented as a good character.

Even if you can somehow convince yourself that the sundering is not mass murder, purposely sparing Emet-Selch and the other Ascians so that they can do the rejoinings most certainly is. If both of these aren't murder then there is no such thing as murder in FF14. She left alive three people to murder en masse "her children" to make her super special star child. My character carries the weight of so much death having both been the inspiration for it and the benefactor. How this made it out the writing room is beyond me.

ETA: So if someone erases your memory, reduces your intelligence to half that of an ape, mutilates your body so bad you start to turn into an animal and five minutes later you die of natural causes because they've reduced your lifespan from 70 years to five minutes, they didn't kill you? Really?

Given that Venat has to get this right on a single playthrough, it really comes entirely down to her judgement of the personalities involved. Based off of what she heard in Poieten Oikos, it probably would have made sense not to let Emet escape. But for whatever reason, she counted on him to do the right thing in the end, and it actually proved to be the winning gambit in Ultima Thule that ensured everyone's survival.

This ignores that both her rise to godhood and the creation of her champion is dependant on the rejoinings. So why assume she let him go with hope in her heart he wouldn't do exactly what she needed him to do to maintain the timeline when her every other action and inaction suggests she's attempting to maintain the timeline and any comments they've made about it tell us she's purposely maintaining the timeline? At that point you're just ignoring even what the people who wrote it said she's doing to read her as good.

[Iscah]

Even if you can somehow convince yourself that the sundering is not mass murder, purposely sparing Emet-Selch and the other Ascians so that they can do the rejoinings most certainly is.

I have no intention to "convince myself" because I am not trying to give a personal opinion, I am trying to discuss a story written by someone else though the lens of what they appear to have believed.

And I already addressed the matter of accounting for the unsundered being another failure of the writers. If I had to give a theory to explain it within canon, I would go with my earlier speculation: Venat may not have deliberately spared them at all, but tried to sunder everything and found that they somehow slipped through unaffected, just as the time traveller prophesied. But canon has avoided addressing this, so people are going to ascribe well-intentioned or malevolent purpose to it as they see fit.

This ignores that both her rise to godhood and the creation of her champion is dependant on the rejoinings.

You'll have to explain how the rejoinings are in any way necessary for her "rise to godhood", given that they only happen after she has become the heart of Hydaelyn and taken over Zodiark's place as the will of the star.

Also please explain why someone whose final aspiration is godhood for the sake of it would be so ready to sacrifice herself at the end of it all, instead of seeking to prolong her reign infinitely.

[MikkoAkure]

This ignores that both her rise to godhood and the creation of her champion is dependant on the rejoinings. So why assume she let him go with hope in her heart he wouldn't do exactly what she needed him to do to maintain the timeline when her every other action and inaction suggests she's attempting to maintain the timeline and any comments they've made about it tell us she's purposely maintaining the timeline? At that point you're just ignoring even what the people who wrote it said she's doing to read her as good.

What "rise to godhood"?

She became an elder primal/deity concept before the Sundering and she didn't act as the world's goddess afterwards, demanding prayer and reverence. No one apart from some scholars and the Forum in Sharlayan, the Scions, Echo-bearers, and the leaders of Eorzea even knew she existed. EE1 even treats Hydaelyn as a "living will of the star" as a theory.

The way you word it, it feels like your take on this whole thing is that Venat maliciously orchestrated the death of the Ancients for personal gain. She and her Twelve weren't the only people who were anti-Zodiark and the sentiment seemed to exist without her having to shepherd her flock to her desired position. Enough people believed that humanity couldn't survive another coming of the Final Days as they were with the failure of their creation magicks, and considering how multiple civilizations were destroyed and very nearly their own as well because one guy innocently released an unapproved concept into the cosmos and then decided to put the universe's life on trial, they at least have valid concerns.



Could Venat have just told the Convocation about Meteion and Kairos? Perhaps, but the end of all life was at stake and she only knew of one sure fix and even then she didn't put all her eggs in one basket if her plan B is anything to go by. She also had enough suspicion that Hermes would spoil any attempt to rectify the situation had he known the truth but his knowledge of celestial aether was necessary for the success of Zodiark so she made the executive decision that going off-piste and alerting the Convocation wasn't worth the life of the universe.


I don't believe she was just allowing Rejoinings to happen in order to bring Azem-WoL around though. Otherwise there would have been no point in resisting by making WoLs and Echo-bearers ahead of every little disaster or Rejoining attempt until the end of the Sixth Astral Era but we know of the existence of past historical examples. Unless the WoL is an all-knowing sage, they can't have known every little skirmish between the WoLs and the Ascians over the past 12,000 years and told Venat all of it so that she can pick and choose which battles to win or lose in order to preserve the timeline. That sounds like a bit much.

If we're going to count Venat letting Emet-Selch go as her being responsible for the deaths of those killed in the Rejoinings, then what about when Emet-Selch himself doomed Elidibus and the whole plan he and Emet had worked 12,000 years on by letting us free when Elidibus had us dead to rights and was on the cusp of knocking down the last barrier to bringing back Zodiark? By that measure it was Emet-Selch who killed off the Ancients, not Venat. If Emet-Selch wanted the Ancients to come back, all he had to do was to do nothing but his involvement was the final nail in the coffin that killed the last Unsundered and relegated the Ancients forever to history.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

Venat even describes herself as a "supreme deity."

She did not want to become a god for praise or worship. She wanted to become a god so that humanity would be shaped by her hand. The same motivation Athena had. They both believed humanity was imperfect and needed to be fixed. The only difference between them is Venat succeeded in reshaping humanity to what she deemed superior. She won. The world as we know it has been shaped entirely by her hand. There was no point in her staying alive and watching us suffer. She achieved her goals. Her legacy was secure. Why you're assuming she wanted to be a god for praise or worship and not to have complete, unilateral control over the fate of the star, which she did, is beyond me. She did what she set out to do. We're her strong little sparks. And now she can peace out never having to live in the world she created.

As for Emet-Selch destroying the Ancients by not letting Elidibus kill us. What? At that point he has recovered the memories of the future Venat never told him about. He knows it's already a lost battle and that his people will be returned to the lifestream to be reborn into the world of Venat's design. All he's doing by snapping us out of the void is sparing Elidibus any more fruitless suffering, because unlike Venat he actually does care about the suffering of people. He doesn't want to. He wishes he could be as ruthless as she is, but he just isn't. Allowing Elidibus to kill us doesn't mean that the world is restored to how it was. It means that Elidibus must continue to labor alone for thousands of years attempting to restore his world and he doesn't have all the information needed. What you're witnessing in that moment isn't a betrayal of the Ancients or their extermination, but a surrender. Venat won. His people will be reborn into the torture chamber of her design and not the paradise of his youth.

In the case of Emet-Selch, Lahabrea, and Elidibus, they were intentionally spared by Venat/Hydaelyn based on the answer Yoshi-P gave regarding this question. What you make of this is up to you.

That's what I've been saying. She spared them on purpose to ensure the rejoinings. They were controlled opposition the whole time. If you try to convince me a mother loves her children, but she takes out huge insurance policies on them and leaves them with known serial killers, I'm gonna have my doubts about that love. Like yes, the serial killers are responsible for being serial killers, but that doesn't negate the responsibility of the mother for purposely leaving her kids with serial killers, and definitely don't try to tell me she's loving and wise and simply hoped for the best. She knew what would happen.

What you're linking supports everything I'm saying. That her acts were on purpose and intentional. I even referenced you have to ignore what the producers said about their own story to come up with some of the excuses people are using to try to still read her as a good person given everything she does runs contrary to our morals.

[Cleretic]

Venat even describes herself as a "supreme deity."

Citation needed. (EDIT: Citation provided by Mikko)

[MikkoAkure]

Why you're assuming she wanted to be a god for praise or worship and not to have complete, unilateral control over the fate of the star, which she did, is beyond me. She did what she set out to do. We're her strong little sparks. And now she can peace out never having to live in the world she created.

What I mean to say is that the way you've been going on, is as if Venat did this to fulfill her own personal goals or that she's some schemer who plotted the destruction of her own race for nefarious means when there's nothing in the game itself that proves that. It's really difficult to discuss what's going on in the story when you seem to be going off of your own personal analysis of what you believe is going on in characters' heads or how you feel about the characters rather than anything presented in the game so we're on two completely different pages.

The facts are that the world had ended. Zodiark was summoned to save the survivors and to fortify the celestial aether, kill the beasts, and then later to reseed life with second sacrifice.

Then an undetermined amount of time later an amount of people "too numerous too ignore" opposed the Convocation's vision of bringing back the sacrifices and believed that humanity as it was can't survive another Final Days and that there had to be a paradigm shift in order for life to continue.

Again, the facts as presented don't say that she alone opposed the Convocation or that she lied to her supporters and they didn't know what was coming. The third encyclopedia says they knew that she planned to sunder the star. She could very well throw out the script and try something else to prevent the Final Days but the only path she knew that had a chance going forward was the one that involved the Sundering. Since the person who told her all of this came from the timeline where she chose to sunder, the other options to save all life in the universe were unknowns and to take one of them would be a gamble.

As for Emet-Selch destroying the Ancients by not letting Elidibus kill us. What? At that point he has recovered the memories of the future Venat never told him about. He knows it's already a lost battle and that his people will be returned to the lifestream to be reborn into the world of Venat's design. All he's doing by snapping us out of the void is sparing Elidibus any more fruitless suffering, because unlike Venat he actually does care about the suffering of people. He doesn't want to. He wishes he could be as ruthless as she is, but he just isn't. Allowing Elidibus to kill us doesn't mean that the world is restored to how it was. It means that Elidibus must continue to labor alone for thousands of years attempting to restore his world and he doesn't have all the information needed. What you're witnessing in that moment isn't a betrayal of the Ancients or their extermination, but a surrender. Venat won. His people will be reborn into the torture chamber of her design and not the paradise of his youth.

This is... certainly something and I'm not sure where to start with this one, but where in the story is it said that Emet-Selch is attempting to spare Elidbus suffering and that he "wishes he could be as ruthless as she is"? Where are you getting that Emet-Selch's act was a surrender to Hydaelyn and anything other than saving the WoL? Is this written somewhere in the script or is this your conjecture that you're presenting as fact?

[Iscah]

If we're going to count Venat letting Emet-Selch go as her being responsible for the deaths of those killed in the Rejoinings, then what about when Emet-Selch himself doomed Elidibus and the whole plan he and Emet had worked 12,000 years on by letting us free when Elidibus had us dead to rights and was on the cusp of knocking down the last barrier to bringing back Zodiark? By that measure it was Emet-Selch who killed off the Ancients, not Venat. If Emet-Selch wanted the Ancients to come back, all he had to do was to do nothing but his involvement was the final nail in the coffin that killed the last Unsundered and relegated the Ancients forever to history.

This is another point where it's important that they acknowledge modern humanity is a continuation of the ancients.

Emet's story arc is that he progresses from rejecting this prospect, to accepting it at the end of 5.0, to actually choosing to side with "new humanity" rather than "old humanity" at the critical moment because if he has accepted it as a basic premise then the next step is to ensure that the winner of this conflict is the one best equipped to carry some form of humanity forward.

Far from being on the cusp of defeating the "last obstacle" to Zodiark's revival, with multiple rejoinings and resolution of the Thirteenth still to go, what Elidibus is on the cusp of is his mind unravelling completely. If he had defeated us at the Seat of Sacrifice, he might have lost the last threads of his memory soon after, and would be in no state to continue the work to revive Zodiark himself while also having wiped out the other viable option for ensuring the ancients' legacy continues.