Emet-Selch Is Not That Tragic

[Savagelf]

let suppose for second hydaelyn and zodarck were created for by the desire of they creators. Hydaelyn was created to protect life, so her desire is to protect life for those who seek to take it by her nature she doing everything to prevent the ascians to destroy life of Erozath. while Zodark was first creative out hubist believe that they can and should create they god as such after they created it he feed by live aether not once but twice. in return the world was able proceed life once more yet much of race was lost in process of it if they were their summon the summoner desire player roles Hydaelyn and Zodarck creation. if they gods they creators desire play role in they come into beings. as for G'raha action we two separate time line by his choice he creator them. the first time line is his own which may very well stop to exists at some point. yet by his action the source was spare the 8th umber ages all the people who attack ironwork and all the life that lost in 8th umber didn't lose they lives on the source. G'raha by his action created two separate time line one were he left to stop the first for rejoin and one were he remain being stop ever by a suppose attack on Ironwork. his choice created two separate time lines.

Emet-Selch called Zodarck and Hydaelyn summon I think the term Gods are better apply to them. one was creator out desire to protect lifes, the other out of hubist for ability to write the laws of unverise and give Zodarck the free will.

to be honest I enjoy this discussion with you. I know it isn't easy to understand me I have writing disability so I sometime skip words when write a sentence I will write what I going say in my head but when come to paper or typing it won't be there but in my head it there. I am for American mind so English is my first language

[Gemina]

So ive always felt the plan they had for reviving all of their civilization was not really thought out. We ARE the souls of the Amaurotines, fragments of them as theyve very plainly told us. If you feed our aether to Zodiark what exactly are you bringing back? You think hes just going to give up all the power he gains from souls and release them back? The sacrificed life forces originally are what allowed him to even take form and Emet wants ALL of them back. Now Emet admits that all the ascians were tempered if you talk to him in the Solar after one of the cutscenes so im not sure if this has some bearing on his ability to think of these angles because Zodiark would want resurrection and wouldnt want that kind of questioning.

That was one of the things that bothered me about Emet's whole plan. I wanted to ask him so badly what guarantee does he have that Zodiark will give back all the souls that were sacrificed. I later realized the futility of that question though because Emet is so set in his ways that he is clearly willing to take that risk, and that it also doesn't matter if he's tempered or not because he represents the will of Zodiark either way.

Even if he acknowledges that our souls are scattered fragments of the civilization he once knew, he'll always live in the past and believe the ends justify the means. I believe he is full aware that the sacrifices of those on the source and remaining shards is costly. He's just willing to pay it.

One of the things I did find tragic about him brought me back to when we massacre the Heavensward guard. It was a resolve on par with our own. It creates a conflict where life and death determines who wins, and who loses. Later on during some questing we talk to people who were close to some of the members of the HW guard, and see that the influence the brought into their lives isn't a whole lot different than how some people talk about the WoL. They were heroes to them, much like how the WoL is to many others.

As was pointed out earlier, it is a clash of wills where the victor is the one who determines who's right.

[Avidria]

Please explain how that's any different to Zodiark/Hydaelyn/the Convocation/the Ascians actions? All of them chose a path to follow that saved one thing at the cost of another

I may be missing something or misremembering something but my understanding was that that alternate future was doomed anyway - all of those people were going to die no matter what G'raha did or didn't do.

And in the long run, that alternate future's existence meant the Ascians won - the first was destroyed, the calamity wiped out the WoL and company, which leaves very few people that I can think of who'd be remotely powerful enough to stop the Ascians from doing the same thing again and again until their final plan succeeded, and the final rejoining occurred. As far as I can tell, their options were to change the past or live out a doomed future.

What I like about this is that this isn't a black and white good vs evil situation - the difference is subtle, and lies in intent. G'raha didn't know if his actions would delete or branch off from that bleak future, but he had a chance to stop things from even getting that bad in the first place and he took it. Heck, I'm sure if the Convocation had known how, they may well have done the same thing instead of summoning Zodiark and rewriting reality. Both extreme solutions to catastrophic, world ending events. Both carried out with good intentions.

The Ascians don't know or care what the new world, our world, could be like if left alone. They've been set on deliberately destroying everything that's been built to bring back the past - they know for a fact their success means the death of every single living creature in all of the shards, and their motive is to save the lives they deem as worthy enough to exist. Whereas G'raha and co. want to save the worlds they saw spiraling directly to a grim and grisly end. I'd compare his actions more to the Convocation's when their world was ending than to the Ascians/Emet today really, and whether it was the right choice or not at least partly comes down to perspective - and may be impossible to know for sure.

[SDaemon]

let suppose for second hydaelyn and zodarck were created for by the desire of they creators. Hydaelyn was created to protect life, so her desire is to protect life for those who seek to take it by her nature she doing everything to prevent the ascians to destroy life of Erozath. while Zodark was first creative out hubist believe that they can and should create they god as such after they created it he feed by live aether not once but twice. in return the world was able proceed life once more yet much of race was lost in process of it if they were their summon the summoner desire player roles Hydaelyn and Zodarck creation. if they gods they creators desire play role in they come into beings. as for G'raha action we two separate time line by his choice he creator them. the first time line is his own which may very well stop to exists at some point. yet by his action the source was spare the 8th umber ages all the people who attack ironwork and all the life that lost in 8th umber didn't lose they lives on the source. G'raha by his action created two separate time line one were he left to stop the first for rejoin and one were he remain being stop ever by a suppose attack on Ironwork. his choice created two separate time lines.

Emet-Selch called Zodarck and Hydaelyn summon I think the term Gods are better apply to them. one was creator out desire to protect lifes, the other out of hubist for ability to write the laws of unverise and give Zodarck the free will.

to be honest I enjoy this discussion with you. I know it isn't easy to understand me I have writing disability so I sometime skip words when write a sentence I will write what I going say in my head but when come to paper or typing it won't be there but in my head it there. I am for American mind so English is my first language

Zodiark was summoned to save The Star from oblivion. It was explained that some unknown force caused the creation magics used by the ancient people of Amaurot to run amok and threaten to tear the Star apart. To avert this they used their creation magic to manifest the will of The Star. That will became Zodiark who then used his powers to avert disaster. I'm not sure where you are getting they did it out of hubris or that they simply wanted to see if they could create a god.

[Puksi]

I'm interested to see where I have excused anyone from anything, please could you quote those sections back to me?

You called my speaking against his atroci--his actions--"taking the moral high ground", and "moral absolutism", strongly implying that somehow anything I listed could be not monstrous in a certain context, presumably for that "redemptive possibility". That seems to be the problem anyone has with my posts, that I call what he did wrong ? And now it's "attacking the writers"--really? As for countering other posters who counter me, I was unaware the only acceptable form is to offer unquestioning admiration of this character in a thread whose premise is "he's actually not all that tragic guys".

In lore context alone, then, as I said, I am morbidly curious. In what context would any of the actions I listed be right by the standards set down by the writers' narrative? (or any narrative, really, I can't think of any myself.) If you want to leave out the whole murder of billions bit under the phrase "moral relativism" somehow, then where does that leave us with the willful, remorseless manipulation and deception of people--"insects"--he feigned to care about? Using unwitting partners for breeding fodder? Scorning the children he sired through that deception because they too are "insects" who failed to live up to his lofty standards, standards he himself fails to uphold? Using an unwilling mother and her unborn child to incubate a monster meant to destroy what little of their world he didn't already destroy?

You left off pressing on the subject of Ardbert and company since the narrative did not claim they were right, so that's a start I guess? Regardless of the "gotcha" you are trying to make with Cid and G'raha Tia, it seems disingenous to compare a doomed world, with a a fraction of doomed survivors, placed in an impossible and hopeless situation because of the Garleans, who are even a thing because of Emet-Selch--to the Ascians' willful destruction of billions of lives who were NOT in a doomsday setting, and how many worlds are we up to again?

The Ascians made certain that Black Rose timeline, with however many people on it--the story is unclear and even a bit convoluted how many, and how much time had passed--was going to die. Nature as the Ascians twisted it was going to take its course. And the narrative took the weight of Cid and G'raha Tia's decision into account. They moved to save billions at--very arguably--the cost of a doomed few.

Emet-Selch acted in the reverse, destroying the lives of billions who were NOT doomed to die for the sake of the few he deemed worthy of existence.

Health check: Still fine, but goodness, I am confused.

[Theodric]

Emet-Selch isn't obligated to account for the lives of those not of his society. His primary concern was to restore his people to the way things were. Whether he would have succeeded is another matter entirely, though it is completely understandable as to why he would try.

Humanity rarely accounts for the countless species which it has driven to extinction. In many cases, there wasn't even a noble goal involved - just plain greed and a desire to be rid of inconveniences. If there's other intelligent life out there I wouldn't be at all surprised if they looked down on humanity in the same way as we look upon ants. Which is very much how Emet-Selch and the other Ascians view the Sundered beings.

He was very much a hero to his people - some of them, at least - and that is ultimately what matters in the context of the story. The obsession with trying to force fictional characters and organisations to adhere to real world modern day morality in every story beat is leading to many fantasy games feeling very dry.

Any story worthy of investment explores different and conflicting points of view, which FFXIV does with frequency thankfully. Sure, there's some stories that are exceptionally black and white in the morality that they explore but FFXIV is not one of them.

[Gemina]

I may be missing something or misremembering something but my understanding was that that alternate future was doomed anyway - all of those people were going to die no matter what G'raha did or didn't do.

And in the long run, that alternate future's existence meant the Ascians won - the first was destroyed, the calamity wiped out the WoL and company, which leaves very few people that I can think of who'd be remotely powerful enough to stop the Ascians from doing the same thing again and again until their final plan succeeded, and the final rejoining occurred. As far as I can tell, their options were to change the past or live out a doomed future.

If I am recalling correctly, G'raha isn't even from the first. He is from an alternate timeline that took place on the source, where the 8th umbral calamity was responsible for killing the WoL and co. He is the one who was still powerful enough - or obtained the power anyway by junctioning his lifeforce to the crystal tower to still thwart the ascian's plans after they had won.

He also informs us of the stories people would speak about the WoL after his/her death, which leads us to believe that even after the ascian's succeeded in bringing the 8th, they still failed to expunge the light and hope, and apparently are still working towards a full rejoining. I think this is why the WoL was sooo pissed off at Urianger and the Exarch after becoming the ultimate light warden, and Emet was going to come out of this thing victorious: Prayers, hopes, and sacrifice used to summon the WoL from god's knows where so they can put an end to a threat. What does that sound like?

What I am confused about is how our actions on the first prevents the 8th on the source. Crystal kitty didn't go into a whole lot of detail about that that I can recall.

[Puksi]

What I am confused about is how our actions on the first prevents the 8th on the source. Crystal kitty didn't go into a whole lot of detail about that that I can recall.

If I understand correctly, for the Rejoining of a shard to be successful, there has to be an equally catastrophic shift on the Source. The First was tilted to Light too fast for the Ascians to balance out the destruction on the Source, so Vauthry was corrupted to be a stopgap until the conditions were ready. The Rejoining would have then brought about the Eighth Umbral Calamity.

[Avidria]

[snip]

Yeah G'raha was from an alternate future on the Source. He was powerful enough to bring everyone back in time, but as far as I can tell that wash pretty much the only option available to him - and everyone else trying to stop the end of the world. I haven't read the short story I think got mentioned earlier? But like... Idk what else anybody could have done to stop the next series of calamities, or even if anybody actually knew how heavy the Ascians' hand was in what happened to them. Hope was alive but things sure looked grim. I definitely can't blame people for wanting to stop G'raha and hoping they could recover their own world, but I also don't think they stood much of a chance. Pessimistic as that sounds.

As for stopping the calamity, they did kinda explain the gist of it. I'd have to go back and check some things for details but my understanding was that the first being consumed by light and rejoining would flood the source with light aspected aether, which has the effect of stalling the flow of aether in living things. Black Rose has the same effect by stopping the flow of aether in the body, so an imbalance in favor of light aspected due to the rejoining would catastrophically enhance the effects of Black Rose and turn relatively small scale disaster into worldwide calamity.

Saving the first prevents the source from being flooded with light aether, which means the black Rose is horrible but not catastrophic. All this seems to have also indirectly changed how things went back home on the source too - I'm really not sure how things would've gone down with Zenos and co if we weren't away on the first with all of the scions, but I'm pretty sure Estinien and Gaius wouldn't have teamed up and (this is wild speculation here) there's every chance it would've been us on that mission, and us who faced Zenos - and maybe won, so the poison wouldn't be destroyed? Or something? Who knows how things actually went down in the alternate future, but whatever the case things are definitely different now thanks to G'raha and company.

[Elladie]

let suppose for second hydaelyn and zodarck were created for by the desire of they creators. Hydaelyn was created to protect life, so her desire is to protect life for those who seek to take it by her nature she doing everything to prevent the ascians to destroy life of Erozath. while Zodark was first creative out hubist believe that they can and should create they god as such after they created it he feed by live aether not once but twice.

I can agree with you that Hydaelyn was probably created out of an urge to protect life; whether that turned out the way her creators expected, we don't know. Speculation that Hydaelyn's act of shattering the star into fourteen actually destroyed all the life on it (in the sense that 14 bits of me are not ME - imagine what you would feel like divided into 14, all your skills and abilities 14 times less - and that's even presuming you can remember who you were. I'm not sure what's worse to be honest, remembering would be torture, but if you don't remember then the original, undivided you has ceased to exist). But I have no idea why you have decided Zodiark was created out of hubris. Zodiark was created out of the will and sacrifice of all the people of Amaurot bar one (the Fouteenth member of the Convocation) and he was created to save the star.

as for G'raha action we two separate time line by his choice he creator them. the first time line is his own which may very well stop to exists at some point. yet by his action the source was spare the 8th umber ages all the people who attack ironwork and all the life that lost in 8th umber didn't lose they lives on the source. G'raha by his action created two separate time line one were he left to stop the first for rejoin and one were he remain being stop ever by a suppose attack on Ironwork. his choice created two separate time lines.

If G'raha's timeline stops - which is what he imagines will happen if he is successful - then everyone in it CEASES TO EXIST at the point it stops. All those thousands, maybe millions of people, just go POOF. The grandchildren and great grandchildren - because generations had passed since the 8th Calamity - of Aymeric and Nanamo and Khloe and Jessie et al - all just disappear as if they were never born. Because they were never born. G'raha knows this will happen - it is precisely what he expects to happen - but he still does it. How is that any more morally acceptable than rejoining the shards and putting the shattered individuals back together to make a 'whole' individual again?

I am NOT saying Emet Selch is innocent or a nice guy or anything - despite what some people like to infer. I loathed him in SB, but I thought the writer did a fantastic job with his character in ShB; my WoL was saddened by having to kill him. I do find it VERY FRUSTRATING that people seem to want to attack players who were able to empathise with him, and the double standard being applied here is really quite terrifying.

I haven't read every single post in the thread but I haven't seen any that have expressed admiration or support of genocide or disagreed that the Ascians as a whole have made a whole raft of morally suspect decisions. I have seen people expressing their praise for the writer's skill in creating an antagonist who was both believable and sympathetic despite being bent upon our 'destruction' ( bearing in mind he didn't see it as destruction, he saw it as putting back together the bits of his friends and family)

Suppose G'raha had decided to go back in time to before Hydaelyn was summoned and try to persuade us (the 14th) not to summon her? None of the people we know - including ourselves - would survive that. We'd all go poof. But it would save millions of deaths. Do you think Merlwyb and Kan E and Raubahn and Aymeric and Hien and co would support that?

I really don't think so ....