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

[jameseoakes]

In some ways, I think it's hard to be meaningfully angry at Venat as an actual character. The writing behind her is such a mess. As a person in front of us, it has her say the inspirational things about how "nothing is impossible," "the future you described need not necessarily be what comes to pass" and expressing how she'll of course do her best to fix things - because that's what a good, heroic person would obviously say and do. But then the plotting behind Hydaelyn has her doing things like purposefully sparing the Ascians that makes absolutely no sense without assuming she's committed to fatalistically following the timeline. Subsequently, Venat herself is basically a weird, empty mishmash of string-pulling "oh god please like her, look, we're connecting her to you/Azem in every single way we can think of, look, she's just like you, she was walking alongside you the whole time, please please please like her" and "oh god we need to cram all these plot pieces we didn't think ahead on together and make them fit uhhhh Hydaelyn foresaw everything! Letting the Rejoinings happen was all a part of her great keikaku! She meant for us to suffer... which means suffering is good, somehow! Phew, nailed it."

She's whatever she needs to be at the moment, wildly oscillating between Whatever Makes You Like Her and Making The Plot Work Somehow. For all I harp about it, I don't think the "suffering good" aspect of Endwalker was at the forefront in terms of intention. I think it came as a consequence of the number one priority of making Hydaelyn "not a bad guy", whatever it took, whatever her established actions were be damned - if she did it, it must have been Good, Somehow, no matter what. Weird and unfortunate writer tunnel vision.

Honestly I think you are right with a lot of that. I think one of the things with Venat as a character is how much of her themes suit a righteous villain so well, if she'd have been an amazing villain aiming to enforce her will on the world honestly I think it could have made for an amazing story