What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[KageTokage]

At this point, I think I'm mostly afraid that as long as we have a convenient portal to the past, future plots may continue to keep sending us back to the pre-sundering world whenever we need answers to a problem/question that cannot be found in the present. Myths of the Realm already looks highly likely to not be set in the present day.

With a proposed idea like "a battles of values", however, sounds like more preaching and telling me how to feel and think incoming.

The most obvious direction they could go in for a conflict of values would be a clash between the progressive pro-Populares faction of Garleans that wants live in harmony and conformists who want to maintain their grip on Ilsabard at any cost, which I would welcome personally though as someone previously pointed out, might be a little tone-deaf given the current political climate in the real world.

As with Shadowbringers, there wouldn't be much of an argument about which side is right in that regard, but simply seeing how they attempt to work through several decades of hatred and prejudice on both sides to attain a semblance of lasting peace could be interesting.

[kpxmanifesto]

You come off insincere.

This seems incredibly hypocritical, especially when you say right before that criticism "ruining" the official forums is merely voicing disagreement.

[Theodric]

I've touched on the subject of 'insults' before:

At the end of the day, it's just a video game. One many of us are varying degrees of passionate about, certainly, though I personally don't care for rivalries to form over something that is entirely fictional. As such, my stance has ever been to agree to disagree where common ground cannot be found. I don't care for endless arguments over morality and I'd like to think I've made it perfectly clear that if anyone has a problem with me, then they're very welcome to come and talk it out in a civil manner.

I like working out and discussing the 'how' and 'why' things happen in the way that they do in any given story or historical event, though my personal preferences drift towards characters and factions that have lofty stakes over those that have everything work out to their benefit most of the time.

One thing I noticed, however, was that some pretty spiteful and nasty accusations were aimed at anyone who ever dared to speak up in favour of the antagonists. This included death threats, homophobic comments and other unpleasant elements. Given that the offending posts were deleted, however, then such will have to be taken with a pinch of salt - though I'd like to think those who are being genuine and who have been around for a while will be aware of what I'm speaking of. Especially since some of the offending comments leaked into Reddit, Twitter and certain Discord servers.

The most fascinating thing I observed was that certain posters would repeatedly launch thinly veiled attacks and sometimes direct personal attacks at fans of the antagonists, implying all manner of horrible things about their person and real world morality. When finally those being assaulted had enough, even a minor quip in response would be treated as some deeply horrific crime and personal attack.

I will say that things have improved somewhat since then. Right around the same time that the game itself revealed that, yes, actually there was more to the Ascians and Garleans all along.

Ultimately any given individual is going to have their personal preferences and interests. I've never suggested that anyone has to like specific characters or factions. I only ask that the same courtesy is extended to others in turn.

In closing, I'd also note that the game attracts players from many different countries, cultures, backgrounds and belief systems. We all have different life experiences, so that is going to influence what we like and we don't like.

[PawPaw]

Having a discussion about the writing of the story is online harassment to you?? What in the world? If you honestly believe its brigading on reddit then you need to report it. Reddit has five rules. "No brigading" is rule #2.

Indeed. Let us know if Reddit considers the 5-10 random people that were on that thread defending their stances to be an organized movement.

[Theodric]

At no point have I ever suggested that everyone who defends Venat does so because of the 'mommy goddess' aspect of her character. However it's hardly uncommon and I suspect I'm not the only one to notice patterns of behaviour emerging where certain posters are concerned.

Just the other day a poster cracked an innocent joke in the form of a meme and was attacked and painted as one of the 'worst posters on the lore forum'. I think that it's incredibly disingenuous behaviour - especially in a lore community actively known for sending people death threats for liking or disliking the antagonists.

Honestly, though? It's the hypocrisy more than anything that keeps me coming back to this thread. For years it was insisted by some that there was never an excuse for genocide, that no matter how sympathetic a character's reasons or circumstances happened to be then it was too high a cost and could never be justified.

As of Endwalker? The goalposts moved for many of those self-same individuals. Suddenly genocide was perfectly acceptable...but only within the context of Venat's actions and reasoning.

Of course, to many of us even a surface level examination reveals where her methods and reasoning is flawed. Not everyone will agree and that's fine - but at some point I do wonder why the genuine offer of agreeing to disagree isn't being taken up or why someone linking a Reddit post is being falsely painted as a form of 'brigading'.

Pretty much every social media site of note has a form of cross-posting capability implemented into its setup - and that's very much what linking the thread here happened to be. It wasn't an attempt to tell people to go and harass others and I'd most certainly be curious to learn who, exactly, is being accused of 'brigading'.

[Caurcas]

Are souls within the universe of 14 finite?

[KageTokage]

It's kind of funny that they retroactively made Emet-Selch even more sympathetic with the suggestion (Which is easily missed if you don't talk to Y'shtola before the Dead Ends) that the shades of Amaurot viewing us as children rather then familiars was a subconscious expression that he never truly bought into his whole "Sundered aren't really alive" narrative...though in further hindsight, that was already suggested by his feelings towards his son/Varis' father in one of the side stories.

Then on flipside, even people who felt completely pro-Hydaelyn/Venat originally ended up thinking badly of her despite apparently being totally contrary to what the writers seemed to be intending.

Are souls within the universe of 14 finite?

If you choose believe the Scions' claims that the people who turned truly had their souls completely erased, then yes, though the game has entertained the notion that there's some deeper immutable part of the soul that simply isn't discernable by people without the Echo.

As things currently stand, it's kind of a "maybe, maybe not" situation that will probably get elaborated on if they decide to take a deeper dive into the blasphemy issue instead of brushing it off despite that they'd realistically still be a lingering presence all over the whole of Etheriys.

[KageTokage]

I think the lore forum is "dead" because we've largely exhausted avenues for discussion/speculation until 6.1, especially since we didn't get any teasers/cliffhangers at the end of the MSQ this go around.

It'll likely liven up once the 6.1 trailer drops, though.

[Jin-]

The Endsinger did nothing wrong

[Lauront]

If anything, it is the forum which is the more susceptible of the two to such activity.

For me it's a matter of time commitment and effort. I purposely prevent myself from activities that threaten to become a non-value-add time sink to me, and reddit discussions very much fall into that category, by and large.