Gerun Oracles

[Anonymoose]

trying to prove him wrong would be trying to argue against the already well-established duality of the universe.

The duality of the universe is actually something that confuses me the most. I feel like I have no grasp on it compared to most of the other aspects of the game. At the very same time, the game has from day one talked about the importance of the balance between Astral and Umbral, and yet everything from Hydaelyn Herself to the poem we just got implies that Darkness hates this world and wants to destroy it. That would be easy to understand if the game's NPCs didn't constantly equate umbral with darkness despite the original definition of umbral as the lower three elements (Ice, Water, Earth) and the shadow that their presence casts on all things.

I can't put it all together in a satisfying way. What even is Void Blizzard if people believe that "umbrally charged aether" comes from the Void? And where do dark crystals and shadow sprites fit into that duality? As far as I can tell, Astral and Umbral are both corporeal and Darkness is not. The dance of Light and Darkness is inevitable and everlasting, but does not necessarily imply that Darkness should be given one godsforsaken ilm of the world it wants to destroy. In order to accept the balance Elidibus speaks of, I need to understand how the equality of Astral and Umbral equates to a necessary equality of Light and Darkness.

I'm not going to buy it if "Eldibus is actually evil and just playing mind-games" becomes the crux of our argument.

My current impression of him (which isn't really set in stone, more of just "a feeling") is that he believes that he's doing the best thing for him and his and is trying to do everything in his power to slow down the people who have successes against his vision. Minfilia, Urianger, and the Warriors of Light need to be converted or otherwise filled with doubt - to come about to his way of thinking. It's not "JK LOL" from his point of view, it just might as well be for all the good it does us.

Elidibus has stated unequivocally that Zodiark is the one true god, that Hydaelyn will and must be lost, and that once everything has returned to its original form, the Crystal, the land, and all mortals will revert. How is it acceptable that the end of the game is that we lose everything we've ever known and fought for? Am I failing to account for a key factor that makes the idea preferable to him just not being right about that part? The first time we heard "this planet will regain its true form", Lahabrea said it, mid-Calamity, while laughing maniacally. It didn't strike me as a good thing, at the time.

In Wings of the Goddess, when it was revealed that our Vana'diel was - technically - a creation of the Goddess that deviated from the disastrous state Her world would have ended up in without intervention, when Lilith fought to fill us with doubt as to whether it should even exist, we didn't just concede that she was probably right and stop fighting for it. (Okay, half of our friends and our own alter ego did. But we kicked their Spitewarden asses for it.)

On occasion, truth may issue from the mouths of fiends and foes. <...>
So let us fight on, as ever we have, in the hopes that the dawn's light will shine again and forevermore.

And, of course, this isn't to defend my current impressions as correct; I just want to highlight what I'd be missing that could make me so wrong.
My predict-the-future success ratio crumbles on the finer details, after all, lol.