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

[Nekokaori]

Vanet is kind of girl who says lets be friends and work togeather, then stabs you in the back and say this person is a monster all while she manipuletes and bullys others

[Brinne]

Vanet is kind of girl who says lets be friends and work togeather, then stabs you in the back and say this person is a monster all while she manipuletes and bullys others

Hey, I think that trait can be fun and very interesting in a character. Venat is a masterclass, like many people are in reality, in carefully phrasing things in pleasantly vague ways so you will read general warmth and benevolent intent behind her words, and thus happily return to your own timeline without diving further into "wait, when you say you 'love mankind' and 'believe in mankind's potential', you mean what? And you use this as self-justification to do what?"

I mean, even her big speech on the bridge about her epiphany about the miracle of creation and seeing the world in a new way - when you look back at it, she's saying essentially nothing concrete at the time, and when you can contextualize from her future actions, it quickly becomes, uh, kind of disturbing.

In a lot of ways, I love Venat! The story did her character an utter disservice. Give me my incredibly ruthless, intelligent, unapologetic ideologue without these insecure apologisms, SE, you cheats.

Doesn't beat the psychopathic tendencies of Hermes and his borderline nihilistic dolly subjecting the entire universe to their doom and gloom antics.

I can't say I can get myself quite on board with either "I shall project my psychological issues onto everyone around me and all reality to BTFO Emet-Selch and the other Ancients I seethingly hate" and "only the strong survive in this cruel universe! if you don't accept your loved ones being locked in a painful purgatory forever, this is a sign of weakness, and you must be culled and replaced with a species more receptive to my ideas!" Can I, um, take a third option? Please? Surely there are other options besides this?

[Kaurhz]

.

Hermes and Venat would've been best buddies if you think about it.

[Lauront]

Hey, I think that trait can be fun and very interesting in a character. Venat is a masterclass, like many people are in reality, in carefully phrasing things in pleasantly vague ways so you will read general warmth and benevolent intent behind her words, and thus happily return to your own timeline without diving further into "wait, when you say you 'love mankind' and 'believe in mankind's potential', you mean what? And you use this as self-justification to do what?"

I mean, even her big speech on the bridge about her epiphany about the miracle of creation and seeing the world in a new way - when you look back at it, she's saying essentially nothing concrete at the time, and when you can contextualize from her future actions, it quickly becomes, uh, kind of disturbing.

In a lot of ways, I love Venat! The story did her character an utter disservice. Give me my incredibly ruthless, intelligent, unapologetic ideolog

Missed this somehow - her mentality is actually one I can relate to in the sense that I'm someone who enjoys 4x/strategy/sim games (and some RPGs, which allow for such plots), especially ones like Age of Wonders 2, where you can more or less shape a civilisation through a vision of what you want it to be, so in that sense she (and the Ascians through their "great work") is more of a "mirror" to my gaming style than say Zenos. Of course that's separate to my views on the morality of doing that to your own people, but from the perspective of games that put you in the position more or less of a "god", it clicks. Had they fully embraced her role as a type of Yunalesca, I'd have been more enthusiastic, as she is one of my favourite antagonists in the series.