In regards to something involving the main cast

[MikkoAkure]

Snip.

I dismissed the premise of your thread because in my view, the scene you’re referencing with the cloak wasn’t framed as “scary, bad, or evil” to begin with and it felt like a weak excuse to complain about the Scions again and insinuate that the writers hate the Ancients. The current writers are the ones who created the Ancients and most of the Garleans so I don’t think they have any sort of agenda against their own characters. They might suck at explaining stuff a lot of the time and often connect the dots in clumsy ways, but I don’t think there’s a nefarious double-standard going on and I don’t feel like they were trying to demonize the Ancients while making Y’shtola get away with murder.

As I said in my reply, the context of the Elpis scene to me was to establish the Ancients as pragmatic since they viewed the butterflies as a simple source of aether they can use for an example of creation magic. This is meant to contrast with Hermes’ behavior later on so we have a reference for his actions. There’s nothing inherently “bad” about it, it’s just that they have a different point of view of things than we do. If the writers really wanted you to think the Ancients are bad for turning butterflies into clothing then we would have sided with Hermes and he wouldn’t have become the source of everything bad that ever happens in the game.

As for your other points, literally everyone in Elpis treats your WoL as a “familiar with a soul” as a novelty, so it can be assumed that familiars generally don’t possess souls. The creations at Elpis are not made to be familiars, they were created to be genuine life that becomes part of the Star’s cycle and that is part of why they are being tested so throughly at Elpis since those who succeed are expected to breed naturally, live life, and possess souls.

[Cleretic]

From my perspective, it's less about what you did and more the approach to how you did it.

Hythlodaeus making the robes out of butterflies is a great example, because Leatherworker's story actually makes it pretty clear that they teach a deep respect for the animals you're getting the leather from; this is both in the actual teaching from the guildmaster, and later becomes a huge tentpole of the Stormblood storyline where you're doing taxidermy. Meanwhile, Hythlodaeus' response when you ask about that is, as others said, purely pragmatic; he doesn't really pay any mind to the life he asked you to snuff out for clothes, he thinks that there's no issues whatsoever with it. And this is Hythlodaeus we're talking about, perhaps the nicest and most considerate person in the Ancient world. If even he doesn't give a damn about the lives of animals, what does that say about the overall population's outlook on the same?

For the other example the OP gave with Y'shtola's familiars, I think the importance is more in how she reacts afterwards than how she acts at the time; she clearly actually does care about the nixies and feels terrible about the one she had to put in harm's way, even if she does put up her usual unflappable facade. It's completely different to the Ancients just watching their creations die and going 'welp, that didn't work, lesson learned'. Also I think the familiars might actually be extensions of her aether in the same way carbuncles are, going by how she dismissed them, so it might be less of a 'test these with animals' and more akin to 'I'm gonna stick my hand in there'.

I think boiling down deeds into purely 'heroic character did X, villainous character did X too, these are equal' is completely dismissing context, that the heroic characters both treat those around them better and typically have a benevolent (or at least neutral) end goal in mind. I've seen the same thing from people trying to argue that the WoL is an indiscriminate murderer because they killed members of beast tribes, in which they usually completely ignore the context of ongoing conflicts, imposing primal threats, or the at-the-time impossibility of curing tempering. 'A lost life is always a lost life' is a perfectly noble blanket thing to claim, but saying that the WoL killing a violent, tempered sahagin is cold-blooded murder on the level of the Ascians sacrificing planets' worth of people is disingenuous.

[Nilroreo]

Snip

So there's this game I played sometime back called Death Stranding, some of you might've heard of it I'm sure. So, something cute this game likes to do is discouraging murder of hostile npcs, as dead bodies essentially function as atom bombs if left on their own for too long, and so the game instead encourages other methods like guns with non-lethal rounds. Now, every time I entered an enemy camp with one of these things, I effortlessly mow them down, they fall flat, and I win... but somethings wrong. Sure I stopped everyone and I'm not in danger of being blown to bits, but this sensation doesn't really feel too different from killing anyone in any other game. For all intents and purposes, I've just murdered these men, and no amount of sugarcoating is going to remove that sensation.

This scenario with Y'shtola reminds me a lot of this. You can soften the blow for yourself by suggesting it's more like 'sticking your hand in there' all you want, but what I witnessed was functionally no different than watching a live animal violently writhing in pain as a result of her actions. How would it even know how to do that if it truly couldn't feel anything?

From my perspective, it's less about what you did and more the approach to how you did it.

I think the importance is more in how she reacts afterwards than how she acts at the time.

that the heroic characters both treat those around them better and typically have a benevolent (or at least neutral) end goal in mind.

So, to translate, Their words hold more weight than their actions. Consider this hypothetical. Assume Y'shtola had cheered upon the experiment turning out to be a success, then turned around to leave only to be reminded by the others that the nixie is still writhing on the ground, Y'shtola responds with "Ugh, fine," snaps her fingers and dismisses it. How would you feel in that scenario? After all, nothing about this situation is functionally any different. They've successfully determined the warding scales need some modifying in order to allow safe passage through the 13th, and they're now one step closer to discovering how to reliably jump between worlds. Her "Benevolent end goal" hasn't changed, so why would her demeanor suddenly be enough to alter the way you personally choose to perceive her actions?

[Cleretic]

So, to translate, Their words hold more weight than their actions. Consider this hypothetical. Assume Y'shtola had cheered upon the experiment turning out to be a success, then turned around to leave only to be reminded by the others that the nixie is still writhing on the ground, Y'shtola responds with "Ugh, fine," snaps her fingers and dismisses it. How would you feel in that scenario? After all, nothing about this situation is functionally any different. They've successfully determined the warding scales need some modifying in order to allow safe passage through the 13th, and they're now one step closer to discovering how to reliably jump between worlds. Her "Benevolent end goal" hasn't changed, so why would her demeanor suddenly be enough to alter the way you personally choose to perceive her actions?

Like I said. Context is important, and by changing the context you change our outlook on the action, which is exactly what I said. So, thank you for an example that proves my point, but I get the feeling that you weren't trying to.

In your example Y'shtola is being callous and not caring one bit for the living consciousness that she just risked and hurt. First of all that's completely inconsistent with Y'shtola as a character, who is a caring and considerate person even if she puts up walls sometimes. So you've essentially required us to invent a parallel, completely different version of Y'shtola--one that I'd say probably cares less about Runar, so I feel like she wouldn't be in this position of trying to find a way to visit him again, but we'll handwave that for the moment.

Parallel Y'shtola sounds like a jerk. Now that you've taken away her moment of sympathy and humanity, I don't feel that this Y'shtola has the empathy for living beings that I'd associate with a generally good and kind person, and so... well, she no longer seems like a good and kind person, and her goal no longer seems benevolent; overall beneficial, maybe, but I now get the feeling that her desires for it are more selfish, and I don't really see her necessarily as a heroic person.

And for clarification, the reason that I think the distinction of the nixies as an extension of her self isn't because the feelings of the nixies don't matter--they rather clearly do, at least to Y'shtola if not to greater reality. Rather, it's because in the long-term, Y'shtola didn't risk the life of an independent creation that could have lived a life of its own, she risked an extension of herself. This actually speaks more about Y'shtola's inherent kindness than if it were an independent being--not only did she specifically avoid risking something independent, she still gave care, sympathy and thanks to the nixie anyway.

[Denishia]

Maybe because it's all fantasy - but the constant micro-aggression style dehumanizing and patronizing about familiars from every single Elpis quest-giver stopped being silly world-building and got infuriating after the third or fourth quest, and while I could brush of any annoyance from similar hostile or belittling quest-givers in the Coerthas, Garlemald, or Ala Mhigan zones, with the Ancients it became the nail in the coffin for finding all of them insufferable. Never had I hated interacting with a zones' NPCs and found it a chore. Well, they worked as the natural culmination of the unfriendly Sharlayans, brainwashed Garleans, and clueless Loporrits, but I'm relieved that so far only Pandaemonium raids is returning to deal with any of them.

[Theodric]

I'm so glad that, even with my dislike for Gyr Abania's aesthetics, I somehow managed to make it through the four questing zones located there back in Stormblood without having a meltdown each time an Ala Mhigan NPC asked my character to do something for them.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

The ancients held funeral rites for their unmade and killed creations though. So they clearly did care enough for that, and some of the elpis npc’s even express concern over our well-being. As for how the WoL treats animals, we have that whole diadem text blurb stating that due to certain adventurer hunting in diadem(WoL), an animal species has almost been rendered extinct. That doesn’t seem very good, or heroic-like. Also don’t forget in ShB the whole thing with Bismarck and the bubble, which ended up causing a lot of that one ondo tribe to die and suffer from food shortages.And again, the sundered literally host colosseums where they watch animals be ripped apart and slaughtered for enjoyment and satisfaction. A colosseum might i add, that we partake in and help kill said animals and creatures. I don’t see how that’s any worse than killing some butterflies to make clothing.

[Jandor]

The ancients held funeral rites for their unmade and killed creations though. So they clearly did care enough for that, and some of the elpis npc’s even express concern over our well-being.

No they didn't, they moved the bodies out of the way and sped up time so they decomposed faster. They're not happy about it by any means, in large part because the creations involved never got chance to fulfil whatever purpose they were designed for, but it didn't remotely resemble a funeral until they asked for our input.

[Rulakir]

Yeah, this was super offensive. The NPC before that called me adorable and the one before that commented on how intelligent I was. How dare they! Where's Asahi to tell me my face vexes him? :P

[PawPaw]

Yeah, this was super offensive. The NPC before that called me adorable and the one before that commented on how intelligent I was. How dare they! Where's Asahi to tell me my face vexes him? :P

Just for you.