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

[Katoar]

snip

This is not a matter of multiple timelines but that of an impossible situation that cannot exist.

Past the point where we return back to the past, anything regarding the second Final Days is not connected to the time loop.

The Source was fragmented in order to bind Zodiark as he is tied to it.

The Final Days are an apocalyptic event caused by the negative emotions of people themselves. Venat's initial plan was to give the Star a second chance at preventing the Final Days, to put them in miserable conditions by sundering the Ancients. By doing so people may learn to overcome the feelings of hopelessness that brought the end of the fake utopia they lived in. The plan for the moon was a safety precaution in case humanity fails once again and succumbs to despair. Most of the people from The Source wouldn't have made it either.

For a character to be a villain their actions need to be motivated by evil intentions which Venat lacks.

[Jagick]

This is not a matter of multiple timelines but that of an impossible situation that cannot exist.

Past the point where we return back to the past, anything regarding the second Final Days is not connected to the time loop.

The Source was fragmented in order to bind Zodiark as he is tied to it.

The Final Days are an apocalyptic event caused by the negative emotions of people themselves. Venat's initial plan was to give the Star a second chance at preventing the Final Days, to put them in miserable conditions by sundering the Ancients. By doing so people may learn to overcome the feelings of hopelessness that brought the end of the fake utopia they lived in. The plan for the moon was a safety precaution in case humanity fails once again and succumbs to despair. Most of the people from The Source wouldn't have made it either.

For a character to be a villain their actions need to be motivated by evil intentions which Venat lacks.

The bolded is a joke, right? That's an absolutely childish way of viewing the difference between good and evil, or are you seriously implying that Ozymandius from Watchmen (for example) is not a villain after he murdered several heroes, vaporized Moscow and Manhattan (killing millions in the process,) and then framed Dr. Manhattan because he thought it was the best way to avert nuclear war? Some of the worst real human beings in history thought they were doing the objectively right thing, morally, politically, and however else.

You can ABSOLUTELY be a heinous villain and have good intentions. It's not so black and white.

[Lauront]

This is not a matter of multiple timelines but that of an impossible situation that cannot exist.

When the writers can be bothered to provide a proper explanation of this, I'll take this more seriously. Until then, we know AUs can spawn in the setting based on what happened in the 8UC timeline, and they refuse to really be drawn out and say whether Venat's actions are constrained by the time loop (she herself claims she'll take nothing for granted and Yoshi advanced the point that she could be taken as actively striving to maintain it, supported by her decision to 'spare' Emet-Selch, knowing what he'd go on to do.) Yoshi's attempt at a defence of her is to compare her to SHB Emet, then claim she's not a bad guy (despite using the term villain when discussing Emet in interviews at the time), and throw in "lmao she's an ancient I guess." Not so much "if she didn't do all this, the current timeline would vanish and all existence would be doomed". People can invent whatever explanations they like for how this time loop works but the stark truth of it is, only the writers know this (one would hope, anyway) and they've yet to properly outline it.

[Tama-Kanzashi]

For a character to be a villain their actions need to be motivated by evil intentions which Venat lacks.

Of course she is evil. You can't look at a character killing a whole race of people and then say "oh that wasn't evil because she meant well". No matter how much media likes to push the approach of "the end justifies the means", no, it doesn't. It absolutely doesn't.

Otherwise that guy pushing the button in The Dead Ends to kill everyone on his planet also isn't evil because he meant well and ended the war. Sure he meant well, but it's still evil. And unlike Hydaelyn he still has his "I...killed everyone..." moment. How mysterious.

And even if you think murder isn't evil enough, she is pretty darn evil on a personal scale too. Sure, the WoL has devolved into a pretty mindless muppet at this point, but it's important to point out that we only got to that point because she manipulated, lied and tampered with them from the very start. But if that still isn't evil enough, how about deleting every trace of her own people's culture from the face of the planet? Every memory of them? Making a flesh puppet (forum alt, hydaelyn taught me to use one) to talk through by killing a girl and then discarding her once she is done? How about not being interested in all the shards and what happens to them unless provoked into action?
How about her own servants on the moon? The Watcher doesn't have memories of his past life as she intentionally didn't give him any, basically being a glorified familiar. And the loporrits, even if they are annoying as heck, never got any communication from her for 12k years while she was apparently able to talk to Sharlayan. Didn't even send them a message. I guess it was funnier to watch their rabbit hearts explode when they realized they built everything wrong.

But I guess that's all benevolent gentleness. After all she speaks with a soft and calm voice.

[Kazemon15]

Of course she is evil. You can't look at a character killing a whole race of people and then say "oh that wasn't evil because she meant well". No matter how much media likes to push the approach of "the end justifies the means", no, it doesn't. It absolutely doesn't.

Otherwise that guy pushing the button in The Dead Ends to kill everyone on his planet also isn't evil because he meant well and ended the war. Sure he meant well, but it's still evil. And unlike Hydaelyn he still has his "I...killed everyone..." moment. How mysterious.

And even if you think murder isn't evil enough, she is pretty darn evil on a personal scale too. Sure, the WoL has devolved into a pretty mindless muppet at this point, but it's important to point out that we only got to that point because she manipulated, lied and tampered with them from the very start. But if that still isn't evil enough, how about deleting every trace of her own people's culture from the face of the planet? Making a flesh puppet (forum alt) to talk through by killing a girl and then discarding her once she is done? How about not being interested in all the shards and what happens to them unless provoked into action?
How about her own servants on the moon? The Watcher doesn't have memories of his past life as she intentionally didn't give him any, basically being a glorified familiar. And the loporrits, even if the are annoying as heck, never got any communication from her for 12k years while she was apparently able to talk to Sharlayan. Didn't even send them a message. I guess it was funnier to watch their rabbit hearts explode when they realized they built everything wrong.

But I guess that's all benevolent gentleness. After all she speaks with a soft and calm voice.

I was under the impression according to Shadowbringers and Emet-Selch's explanation is that people weren't killed when the sundering happened, just their souls were split. All the current shards that happened right after had all the remaining people were identical in appearance/intelligence/ect (when he demonstrated on Ryne) but had forgotten about being long lived beings or about their past and whatnot and then they just died due to the normal things like happenings of war, sickness or old age. I don't see how that is "killing everyone."

What Venat did was the same exact thing as what God did when he cast Adam and Eve out of paradise for not learning and heeding His lessons. She tried reasoning with them and making them learn, they refused, so they were cast out of paradise (Unsundered world). Minfilia is akin to what happened to Jesus. God also flooded the entire world in what He deemed to be a greater good for the world. Yet I don't see people ranting about how God is evil for doing that.

[Tama-Kanzashi]

I was under the impression according to Shadowbringers and Emet-Selch's explanation is that people weren't killed when the sundering happened, just their souls were split. All the current shards that happened right after had all the remaining people were identical in appearance/intelligence/ect (when he demonstrated on Ryne) but had forgotten about being long lived beings or about their past and whatnot and then they just died due to the normal things like happenings of war, sickness or old age. I don't see how that is "killing everyone."

What Venat did was the same exact thing as what God did when he cast Adam and Eve out of paradise for not learning and heeding His lessons. She tried reasoning with them and making them learn, they refused, so they were cast out of paradise (Unsundered world). Minfilia is akin to what happened to Jesus. God also flooded the entire world in what He deemed to be a greater good for the world. Yet I don't see people ranting about how God is evil for doing that.

Hydaelyn is not a goddess, she is just a woman with a particularly large ego who is convinced that she knows better than anyone ever.

[Kazemon15]

Hydaelyn is not a goddess, she is just a woman with a particularly large ego who is convinced that she knows better than anyone ever.

Again, what is the difference? It's okay for God to do it because He's a God? How do we know the Unsundered people aren't considered Gods in this story and she just happens to be one of them? They were creating life with just their wills and magic, just like a divine being would. That sounds pretty Godly to me. We don't know much about the ancients to deem whether or not they were Godly beings or not.

I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of blaming Venat. If you wanna blame her, anyone who is religious needs to look to their own religious figures and well and question that.

[Tama-Kanzashi]

Again, what is the difference? It's okay for God to do it because He's a God? How do we know the Unsundered people aren't considered Gods in this story and she just happens to be one of them? They were creating life with just their wills and magic, just like a divine being would. That sounds pretty Godly to me. We don't know much about the ancients to deem whether or not they were Godly beings or not.

I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of blaming Venat. If you wanna blame her, anyone who is religious needs to look to their own religious figures and well and question that.

Bless your soul, I don't know how to break this to you ... but when everyone is what we consider a "god" nobody is.
But when you just murderize everyone to reduce them to a lesser state of being and are effectively the last one of your people who could do all those miraculous things, and then elevate yourself into godhood when nobody asked for it...that is what is called a big dang ego.

[Jagick]

I was under the impression according to Shadowbringers and Emet-Selch's explanation is that people weren't killed when the sundering happened, just their souls were split. All the current shards that happened right after had all the remaining people were identical in appearance/intelligence/ect (when he demonstrated on Ryne) but had forgotten about being long lived beings or about their past and whatnot and then they just died due to the normal things like happenings of war, sickness or old age. I don't see how that is "killing everyone."

What Venat did was the same exact thing as what God did when he cast Adam and Eve out of paradise for not learning and heeding His lessons. She tried reasoning with them and making them learn, they refused, so they were cast out of paradise (Unsundered world). Minfilia is akin to what happened to Jesus. God also flooded the entire world in what He deemed to be a greater good for the world. Yet I don't see people ranting about how God is evil for doing that.

If you vaporize my dog to create like 13-14 completely different clones of her that exist on completely different worlds with different personalities and I neither remember her nor does she remember me, not even considering different timelines for all these worlds apparently, yeah. Yeah I'd just about say you killed my actual original dog. I don't care if all those others have a fragment of her soul or whatever nonsense. It's not actually her.

I'm not going to get into the can of worms that is IRL religion.

[aveyond-dreams]

I was under the impression according to Shadowbringers and Emet-Selch's explanation is that people weren't killed when the sundering happened, just their souls were split. All the current shards that happened right after had all the remaining people were identical in appearance/intelligence/ect (when he demonstrated on Ryne) but had forgotten about being long lived beings or about their past and whatnot and then they just died due to the normal things like happenings of war, sickness or old age. I don't see how that is "killing everyone."

We know this to not be the case, as pictured here:



This depiction is canon, and so we know that the Sundering unravelled the Ancients to the point where they had to re-evolve into the spoken races of the world. This transformation is so drastic and erased all but the faintest memories of the unsundered world, so I don't know what else you could call it.

What Venat did was the same exact thing as what God did when he cast Adam and Eve out of paradise for not learning and heeding His lessons. She tried reasoning with them and making them learn, they refused, so they were cast out of paradise (Unsundered world). Minfilia is akin to what happened to Jesus. God also flooded the entire world in what He deemed to be a greater good for the world. Yet I don't see people ranting about how God is evil for doing that.

The comparison of Hydaelyn to the Christian God is not an accurate one. Hydaelyn has demonstrated the qualities of pride and vanity in the face of the tragedy of the Final Days. By comparison, the Ancients around her were operating on logic while she attempted to preach to them about her ideals in the face of the most painful moment of their lives.

Needless to say it did not go down well. Who is she to preach to them? At that moment she certainly wasn't a being above them like the Christian God was to Adam and Eve.

Pair these qualities with her rebellion against the actual God that halted the final days, Zodiark, then what is she if not a fallen angel? Her actions and that of her biblical analogue condemned humanity to a spiral of suffering. We fought her on a literal lake of ice. Cold and beautiful, very accurate for this sort of villainous entity.