[Spoilers] Venat's motive

[EaraGrace]

With that in mind, if we're operating on the assumption that Hydaelyn wasn't trying to close the time loop intentionally, then the idea that she would have this foreknowledge and no compunctions against putting it to her her advantage, only to end up creating the exact same circumstances she heard about to begin with, is inherently very silly to me. She knew about everything the Convocation would ultimately do with Zodiark, and how the sacrifices would happen. She knew about how Emet would respond to her actions, about the Rejoinings. She knew that she herself would goof in the First and contribute to causing the Flood of Light in her guidance of Ardbert. The idea that she would not be able to exercise any agency in changing these events whatsoever from the course described to her despite this is, if it was what the writers meant to do, an incredibly janky contrivance.

I do believe the writers, subtly, confirm that She did try to change those events. When we speak after the fight in the Sea, She mentions how, despite her “failures”, She remembered the stories we shared and it kept Her going. Perhaps this is wrong, but my read was that She was referring to the rejoinings in that statement. Given by this point all present know about what happened in Elpis, to describe these events as “failures,” despite knowing they would have to occur for a Conjunction to form, says to me that She did try to change the future, but was unable to. Her efforts to convince the Ancients to change course also proves that. If the She was simply ensuring the events She was told of occurred, why try to change arguably the most important event? Why not just Sunder the planet as soon as Zodiark finished repairing the star? It only makes sense if She was trying to create a new future.

[Cleretic]

Without knowledge of the future she has no reason to hide the truth from anyone else in Elpis. Assuming WoL never shows up and Venat never even gets involved, then Hermes should have just heard Meteion's report and turned traitor the whole way. If Venat knows nothing she has no reason to even design a concept capable of sundering souls to begin with, nor does she have reason to oppose anyone else because she wouldn't know the true cause of the Final Days, thus Meteion wouldn't be tracked by her, and so she has no reason to create the Mothercrystal to provide energy for a flight to the edge of the universe nor would she have a reason to conserve energy for a theoretical battle to test anyone going to confront Meteion.

None of Venat's actions even begin to make sense in a world where WoL doesn't go back and give her spoilers.

Okay, I have to refute this on a point-by-point basis, because pretty much all of them are wrong in different but interconnected ways and I kinda have to take it slow to really dissect this.

"Without knowledge of the future she has no reason to hide the truth from anyone else in Elpis." She gives exactly the reason she has to keep things secret, and it's because the truth is so crushingly depressing that she has to make sure she only tells people who can take it (and we see soon after, the general Ancient population can't take it). She also has to make sure Hermes remains oblivious, which means being selective about who might tell him.
"Assuming WoL never shows up and Venat never even gets involved, then Hermes should have just heard Meteion's report and turned traitor the whole way." Actually, Venat probably sticks around Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch, who she crosses paths with as part of their official duties; she's nosy, and doesn't seem to have anything better to do. It's also actually neither Venat nor our fault that things go so sour about Meteion's report; it's Emet-Selch's, and so that won't actually change.
"If Venat knows nothing she has no reason to even design a concept capable of sundering souls to begin with[...]" Venat's actions in Ktisis are not influenced by us, she's off tagging Meteion while we're down with Emet and Hythlodaeus. Her nosiness was always going to put her there.

Really, Emet is the more active ingredient here; without him being around she wouldn't have had reason to follow (indeed, we wouldn't be following either), and Hermes wouldn't have been set so far off that he went to Ktisis.

[Vyrerus]

Please, just push the idea of the predestination paradox out of your mind for a while. Ask the question of 'what would Venat have done if she didn't have the guide'

Well, I can't really, because it's central to the plot we were given.

But to humor you, this is what I think would occur without our trip to Elpis.

Emet-selch and Hythlodaeus would not have been delayed entering into Elpis, and would have met with Hermes and Meteion sooner. With no one to keep Meteion company, Hermes would have had to take her outside on his own to calm her down, and find another researcher to hold her hand while he talked with Hyth and Emet. Things would proceed the same, but with Emet-selch shouldering more work in regards to the concepts that had to be put down (the red Fenrirs). Hermes would overall be sadder.

Emet-selch and Hythlodaeus would stick around closer to him, to continue the interview process, while Venat would maybe bump into them, maybe not. Without our Traveler's Ward to draw her, I don't see her taking a vested interest in Emet's or Hermes's business. At some point during the interview process, since we weren't there to draw them away from Hermes and their business, Meteion would start receiving her report. Then the Dynamis discussion would follow, in order for Hermes to explain how Meteion is hiding.

After that I am uncertain about how they find her. Perhaps have every researcher present in Elpis start emitting aetherial fields around their bodies potent enough to shock her out of hiding, and then search over the entire facility. This would include Venat, whose interest would then be piqued. Events would proceed as before, minus the WoL.

But given the nature of the secrecy Hermes desires, I think it'd be more likely that he reluctantly retrieves a tool he's made to interact with Dynamis, which he can force her out of hiding with. Or merely waits until Meteion can no longer resist the hivemind and has to deliver the report. Once that happens, her report starts to be delivered, and events transpire similarly to before, minus Venat. I think it'd make a lot of sense for Emet-selch to draft other Ktsis Hyperboreia researchers into helping him and Hyth, given they shouldn't be enfeebled by the facility (and even if they are, still familiar with creatures kept there, so of use).

Everything proceeds without Venat, and it's essentially a doomed timeline where the Sundering can still happen, but Venat is hoarding aether to try to prevent final Rejoinings/Zoidark's release entirely, rather than combat Meteion at all.

Take #2 with the WoL still visiting Elpis, but maybe not triggering a paradox(or at least triggering a different one) is pretty simple.

Venat falls off the dog before making it out, or channels all of the energy into one Argos to get the WoL out and has her memory erased. She still has the link to Meteion, but doesn't know exactly what to make of it. She does everything the same, for different/actual personal belief reasons. Chooses us as WoL due to seeing her protege's soul. Maybe even hoards more energy/crystal because she doesn't know the full gravity about what her tracker spell is giving to her. This has the benefit of making her more tragic, by placing the full weight of killing her own people firmly on her shoulders without a proper justification UNTIL we kill Venat in the trial and she remembers then. It also makes opting for plan B at all make sense.

[Lurina]

I do believe the writers, subtly, confirm that She did try to change those events. When we speak after the fight in the Sea, She mentions how, despite her “failures”, She remembered the stories we shared and it kept Her going. Perhaps this is wrong, but my read was that She was referring to the rejoinings in that statement. Given by this point all present know about what happened in Elpis, to describe these events as “failures,” despite knowing they would have to occur for a Conjunction to form, says to me that She did try to change the future, but was unable to. Her efforts to convince the Ancients to change course also proves that. If the She was simply ensuring the events She was told of occurred, why try to change arguably the most important event? Why not just Sunder the planet as soon as Zodiark finished repairing the star? It only makes sense if She was trying to create a new future.

The word "failures" could really mean anything there, but even assuming that was what they meant, it doesn't make it any less silly. The Flood of Light in particular is a tragedy she could have very easily prevented by giving slightly different guidance. And if she was trying to change the future, why not behave in ways contrary to what we'd already told her? She knows that she's going to found an organization opposed to Zodiark to summon Hydaelyn after the Convocation refuses to back down from the sacrifice plan, and how this all ends in tragedy, but plays into it directly, point by point. That's not how someone trying to change the future would act.

Like, I'm not saying you can't be charitable towards the script, and use incidental dialogue like you're doing to interpret it in a way where her actions as a character loosely make sense one way or another. But it's obviously a little ambiguous - the people defending the clarity of her motive in this thread don't even seem to have the same interpretation among themselves, with some arguing she was trying to change the future and some not. I think the writers were probably "subtle" about this stuff because they realized that the scenario they'd crafted for her in Endwalker (which we know was a bit of a troubled project compared to earlier expansions because of covid and so on) didn't quite fit with the stuff they'd already established. So they kept a lot of points vague in the hopes that people wouldn't worry about it and just go along with the general themes.

So instead of a clearly written and objective Venat, we end up with a sorta build-your-own-Venat kit, where everyone can focus on different suggestive moments and lines to create their own motivation for her. The result is that most people like her, but barely anyone has the same interpretation of what was actually going through her head when she did the stuff she did.

[Veloran]

"Without knowledge of the future she has no reason to hide the truth from anyone else in Elpis." She gives exactly the reason she has to keep things secret, and it's because the truth is so crushingly depressing that she has to make sure she only tells people who can take it (and we see soon after, the general Ancient population can't take it). She also has to make sure Hermes remains oblivious, which means being selective about who might tell him.

Neither of these things are necessary. Of the group that originally learn the truth 75% of them can take it, and in fact Emet and Hythlodaeus are two people that Venat chooses not to tell despite them proving that they would deal with it. The general Ancient population? They can panic or not panic as much as they damn well please, because in the final version of events 99.999% of them end up dying anyway. And Hermes? He is not needed. Venat already knew what to do to safeguard the planet, they could have chucked Hermes to the bottom of Pandemonium for all that he brought to the table.

"Assuming WoL never shows up and Venat never even gets involved, then Hermes should have just heard Meteion's report and turned traitor the whole way." Actually, Venat probably sticks around Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch, who she crosses paths with as part of their official duties; she's nosy, and doesn't seem to have anything better to do. It's also actually neither Venat nor our fault that things go so sour about Meteion's report; it's Emet-Selch's, and so that won't actually change.

Do I really even need to begin to tell you all the ways in which this idea is flawed? Countless events on Elpis, from big to very very small only transpire because WoL is there. WoL holds Emet and Hythlodaeus up at multiple points, leading to them crossing paths with Venat, and WoL's presence is the reason Venat takes an interest in the party and joins them because a rogue time traveler is kind of a big deal. They only investigate Meteion in the first place because of WoL and are only there as Meteion is delivering her report because they've gone to track down Hermes for that purpose. They then only find Meteion after she disappears because of WoL, as none of the others can detect her. From there WoL battles into Ktisis with the others, and aids in the ruse that even allows Venat to escape. And Emet-Selch made things go sour? In what regard?

"If Venat knows nothing she has no reason to even design a concept capable of sundering souls to begin with[...]" Venat's actions in Ktisis are not influenced by us, she's off tagging Meteion while we're down with Emet and Hythlodaeus. Her nosiness was always going to put her there.

As I just said, the notion that she's just so nosy that somehow everything would occur exactly as it did with WoL there is an absurdism. For goodness sakes' Dynamis only even comes up because WoL is there asking about it.

Really, Emet is the active ingredient here; without him being around she wouldn't have had reason to follow (indeed, we wouldn't be following either), and Hermes wouldn't have been set so far off that he went to Ktisis.

What reason does Venat even have to follow Emet? And in what way did he "set off" Hermes? All he said to Hermes was to take Meteion with them back to Amaurot so they could recall her sisters - A scene that only even happens because of WoL - And which is hardly something intrinsically antagonistic.

[Cleretic]

I do believe the writers, subtly, confirm that She did try to change those events. When we speak after the fight in the Sea, She mentions how, despite her “failures”, She remembered the stories we shared and it kept Her going. Perhaps this is wrong, but my read was that She was referring to the rejoinings in that statement. Given by this point all present know about what happened in Elpis, to describe these events as “failures,” despite knowing they would have to occur for a Conjunction to form, says to me that She did try to change the future, but was unable to. Her efforts to convince the Ancients to change course also proves that. If the She was simply ensuring the events She was told of occurred, why try to change arguably the most important event? Why not just Sunder the planet as soon as Zodiark finished repairing the star? It only makes sense if She was trying to create a new future.

I should say, the way I read the 'failures' line isn't necessarily that she was driven by a desire to Change The Timeline, but that she tried many times to right the ship both pre- and post-Sundering and just never could. Not exactly informed by predestination so much as just general human foresight; she could see where things were going about the whole Zodiark thing (indeed, you don't really need to know the rest of the book to see things were going sour), but just never managed to force things elsewhere.

And of course, post-Sundering she was hamstrung in a different way; being essentially starved of aether and conscious of not becoming a second Zodiark, she had to be very choosey about what she expended her energy on. Which inevitably meant both a lot of effective forfeits, and a lot of times where she just wasn't quite strong enough.

[Cleretic]

Neither of these things are necessary. Of the group that originally learn the truth 75% of them can take it, and in fact Emet and Hythlodaeus are two people that Venat chooses not to tell despite them proving that they would deal with it. The general Ancient population? They can panic or not panic as much as they damn well please, because in the final version of events 99.999% of them end up dying anyway. And Hermes? He is not needed. Venat already knew what to do to safeguard the planet, they could have chucked Hermes to the bottom of Pandemonium for all that he brought to the table.

Hermes is 100% absolutely needed, because remember that this allegedly all-knowing report of the future came from us, and we didn't know what the hell Zodiark was actually doing. We know the result, but not the reasoning. You need the dynamis expert to deal with the dynamis problem. Because as I've compared it before, Zodiark is a little like a nuclear reactor; even if we generally know the science around what it's doing, you really want an actual nuclear physicist drawing up the plans. Venat knowing 'so he turned up and the Final Days stopped' doesn't really tell her how Zodiark did it.

And Emet-Selch made things go sour?

Emet-Selch made things go sour because when Meteion had the mother of all freakouts, he's the one that sticks to the unpopular call of 'we need to take her into Amaurot literally right now, no you cannot listen to her report'. That pisses Hermes right the hell off, puts him in a really bad headspace for what's going to be the worst news ever, and sends him off to Ktisis--and ergo both the dampening field and Kairos. Just because we helped catch her in the sequence we saw, doesn't mean all that wasn't gonna happen anyway.

As I just said, the notion that she's just so nosy that somehow everything would occur exactly as it did with WoL there is an absurdism. For goodness sakes' Dynamis only even comes up because WoL is there asking about it.

I mean, what else is she gonna do? Even outside of us, she does seem genuinely interested in what's going on, and I don't think she has anything better to do than to tag along and make her own assessment of Hermes. She never mentions having to reschedule anything. I genuinely think she'd hang around for it all; hell, I can imagine Hythlodaeus extending that invitation to her. And as for Dynamis... sure, the subject comes up because of us in what we saw, but an explanation was coming sooner or later given Meteion's freakout. And Hermes is, for all his many faults, not the type to hide that kinda thing; he's rather proud of that side of things.

[EaraGrace]

The word "failures" could really mean anything there, but even assuming that was what they meant, it doesn't make it any less silly…

You’re right that it would be odd that She didn’t give different advice if She knew exactly how the events played out. Allow me to try to give an explanation, some is speculation I admit, but I think there’s good reason to think this way. First, it’s not clear exactly how much detail we went into about the Flood and the events that led us there. We obviously discussed Emet and the fact that we killed him, but beyond that? Uncertain. Second, if we assume She knew a a Flood of Light would happen at some point, fmy understanding of the time dilation between the source and the first, the Flood and it’s events happened after Hydaelyn had intervened in our fight against Ultima, and thus had lost Her ability to communicate. After all, the period between when Minfilia left and we arrived was over a century on the First. With that in mind, it seems logical to conclude She couldn’t communicate at that moment. Those are my explanations as we don’t have a canon reason of course.

Like, I'm not saying you can't be charitable towards the script, and use incidental dialogue like you're doing to interpret it in a way where her actions as a character loosely make sense one way or another…

While Endwalker obviously was hampered by Covid, I don’t think we have evidence the writing or the characters were impacted. And yeah I think people are gonna have different interpretations, of course. I’d say the same would be true for any character we could discuss. Also the vague piece, I don’t think they’re vague at all. I think the information and lore points are clear, their implications and interpretations however, have impacts that go beyond the word for word reading. I don’t think that’s the writers intentions or fault.

So instead of a clearly written and objective Venat, we end up with a sorta build-your-own-Venat kit, where everyone can focus on different suggestive moments and lines to create their own motivation for her. The result is that most people like her, but barely anyone has the same interpretation of what was actually going through her head when she did the stuff she did.

Actually, I think the question of what was motivating her and driving her is perhaps the thing most clearly shown. The story makes it clear why she did what she did, what’s up for debate is the how of it. The actions, steps taken and the overarching plan have spots where we just don’t know what was going on. The same is true for other characters, like Emet. People still discuss how exactly the 13th was to be recovered, whether Zodiark could’ve been freed before then, or whether Emet wanted to die when we faced him in Amaurot. That’s just the consequence of having a lot of story to cover.

[KariTheFox]

Sure. I talked about this in the OP, though. If that were the case, why did the other reasons even come up? If her motive was always to make the one choice to close the loop, then nothing else is applicable. Her moral judgement of the ancients, emphasized considerably by the narrative, becomes weird and hollow because there was never an alternative.

I'm not seeing a contradiction personally. Venat chose to close the time loop because she judged the actions of the ancients and their attempts to revert to their past through blood sacrifice to be unacceptable AND because she wanted to give our future a chance to survive. The time loop closing is simply a means to her ends.

[Lurina]

Actually, I think the question of what was motivating her and driving her is perhaps the thing most clearly shown. The story makes it clear why she did what she did, what’s up for debate is the how of it. The actions, steps taken and the overarching plan have spot where we just don’t know what was going on. The same is true for other characters, like Emet. People still discuss how exactly the 13th was to be recovered, whether Zodiark could’ve been freed before then, or whether Emet wanted to die when we faced him in Amaurot. That’s just the consequence of having a lot of story to cover.

I mean, I don't agree with this at all. This thread is about how the narrative offers differing and semi-contradictory explanations of her actions, and if you read any conversation about her here or elsewhere, people both positive and negative on the character have wildly different understandings of what fundamentally motivated her. Even putting the time loop stuff aside, I can't even count how many times I've seen people insisting how the Sundering was singularly about protecting the sacrifices and not about how suffering is actually good, while other people in the same thread are arguing the exact opposite. It makes it kind of exhausting to even try and talk about the character.

I'm not seeing a contradiction personally. Venat chose to close the time loop because she judged the actions of the ancients and their attempts to revert to their past through blood sacrifice to be unacceptable AND because she wanted to give our future a chance to survive. The time loop closing is simply a means to her ends.

It's the distinction between "Venat Sunders based on a belief that it will save mankind on some moral or intrinsic sense" and "Venat Sunders out of a pragmatic desire to recreate this future she already knows exists". One is a ideological choice, and the other is a strictly utilitarian one.

Maybe that distinction doesn't make sense to you or doesn't feel important, but the ambiguity and mixed messaging makes her character feel very indecipherable to me.