In regards to something involving the main cast

[MikkoAkure]

Familiars can gain souls too though no? Look at Alpha for example. Also all those animals in the colosseum, they could have gained souls as well, since the lifestream seems to pick at random what gains a soul,i don’t know if you knew that but not every creation gained a soul.And even if a creation gained a soul, would it really be any different than that of a wild animal? Again, i bring up the colosseum where we engage in slaughtering animals for other peoples entertainment. Or Eden where we summon primals only to slay them immediately, or the diadem text where we essentially almost rendered an entire animal species extinct. The ancients were doing what they were doing for the betterment of the star. A lot of what we did was for…far less than that.

Really if we’re supposed to get upset every time a familiar, an animal, or a magitek mecha dies it’s going to be really exhausting playing a JRPG that is about fighting things. Especially one that for 10 years had just a bunch of stereotypical adventurer shenanigans go down before any sort of deeper morality was introduced.

The nixies are not on the same level as a lot of regular creations or animals considering they were brought into existence from the combination of inanimate objects for the sake of a single task yet even Y’shtola solemnly disperses their aether after but that’s still not enough for you?

And as I said before, the fact that the writers bothered to mention that a familiar with a soul is remarkable means that it just in general does not happen. The nixies are made out of water, they are not real living beings just like how the porxies are made of clay. The creations of the Ancients at Elpis, though also woven from aether, are flesh and blood living creatures and that probably plays a part in how some end up with souls since as you say, not all do, and I’m willing to bet that an inorganic and incomplete creation has far less of a chance. IIRC, Alpha took the whole of the Omega questline and some gained life experience in order to obtain a soul. I don’t think two water sprites who existed for all of 5 minutes are in the same category.

It just feels like a really poor excuse to try to say you don’t like the Scions and don’t like how the writers treat them when there’s a million better examples to use in the game especially since the some of the ones you used in your OP are flat out incorrect and colored by your bias. There is no “shocked and appalled” reaction with the butterflies, and again, not only does Y’shtola give care to the familiars, they’re not killed and are simply returned from whence they came just like Eden’s summons and beastman primals, who no one cared at all about until this thread, just because it makes us look bad.

[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.

[SannaR]

Before the funeral rights we attend and help make laying of flowers as part of it they would go to the waters of Lethe and unbound any creation deemed unsuitable for release. You know after the rigorous testing that may or may not include memory wipes via Kiros. Or being sent to Pandaemonium. If we were made to use the double headed snake monsters most people would probably not have bat an eye. It also as others have said wouldn't show a contrast to how most Ancients see and treat creations versus how Hermes treats them. Even some of those who seem to really like their creations and come off as caring about them tend to shrug and give a "well such is life." type of attitude if/when they're faced with needing to go back to square one. Or scrap their idea all together.

[MikkoAkure]

Before the funeral rights we attend and help make laying of flowers as part of it they would go to the waters of Lethe and unbound any creation deemed unsuitable for release. You know after the rigorous testing that may or may not include memory wipes via Kiros. Or being sent to Pandaemonium. If we were made to use the double headed snake monsters most people would probably not have bat an eye. It also as others have said wouldn't show a contrast to how most Ancients see and treat creations versus how Hermes treats them. Even some of those who seem to really like their creations and come off as caring about them tend to shrug and give a "well such is life." type of attitude if/when they're faced with needing to go back to square one. Or scrap their idea all together.

There's also the whole line of FATEs where an Elpis researcher summons up creations to have you kill them on purpose for science but what Y'shtola does with her familiars is somehow worse and/or presents a double-standard.

[EaraGrace]

I feel as if we’re missing a fundamental fact in the difference between familiars/summoned beings and most living beings as we encounter them. Namely the moral difference between those beings capable of “life” and are granted souls by the star, and those who aren’t. The distinction is brought up during our conversation with Hermes and while I can’t say I completely agree with his take on it, it’s still important to keep in mind.

Notably however, the Ancients don’t seem to pay this distinction much mind at all, killing and unmaking ensouled and arcane entities on a whim. The Sundered meanwhile, don’t really have chance to consider that and remain among the living.

[KizuyaKatogami]

There's also the whole line of FATEs where an Elpis researcher summons up creations to have you kill them on purpose for science but what Y'shtola does with her familiars is somehow worse and/or presents a double-standard.

The same as how we kill the eden primals then… also i had mentioned the eden primals many times before that thread. So much so someone actually tried to argue with me that the eden primals actually consented to being slaughtered when there is clear cut evidence that is not the case lol. I have other examples and there’s many other examples in game, it’s not a matter of liking the scions or not. I can spin what you said and say, people are just giving poor excuses to try and say they don’t like the ancients. They’re damned if they do damned did they don’t with you all. Create funeral rites for their creations? THATS NOT ENOUGH. Unable to dictate whether or not a creation got a soul? BIGOTRY! I doubt the sundered cared whether an animal gained a soul or not, and again we slaughter countless animals for entertainment and almost render an entire species extinct. All i’m saying is in this aspect, the ancients are nowhere near as bad as people make them out to be in regards to the sundered. I point out the double standard because familiar or not, people still bash the ancients. People bash the ancients for them treating us like a kid, meanwhile yshtola is in her little baby voice treating the nixies like children, many players treat their carbuncles like babies. In the end, if the problem is souls, again, i ask if an animal gaining a soul makes it any more of an animal,and if so, i highly highly doubt the sundered care 90% of the time when they’re slaughtering them for entertainment.

[MikkoAkure]

People bash the ancients for them treating us like a kid, meanwhile yshtola is in her little baby voice treating the nixies like children, many players treat their carbuncles like babies.

People bashed the Ancients for treating us like children because the fact remains that we aren't a child and we aren't a familiar. Familiars to both the Ancients and Sharlayans are nothing more than magical tools and the Ancients are shocked that we want to learn things. Before the revelation of our origin, Hythlodeus knows better to a small extent since he can at least see our soul, has interactions with us, and so has nothing but respect for us, but the other researchers in Elpis don't know any better. Personally, I didn't mind how the Ancients treated me at all since they didn't know better and it doesn't mean anything to me. I can see how that would make some people upset but I just treated it like a weird quirky thing that comes with going to the realm of the Ancients as a Sundered being and 99.9% of the Ancients having no concept of a Sundered being at all for obvious reasons. That way the writers could also introduce a lot of information via exposition in a more natural way since our character is "just some dumb familiar that doesn't know anything".

The nixies meanwhile are literally birthed into creation by Y'shtola and have child-like manner of speech and she also first made them when she was a child so I don't see why she wouldn't baby them. It's funny you bring up carbuncles because they are also familiars like the nixies. Carbuncles are aether in gemstones given form, the form being a cute little pet thing. How is Y'shtola creating nixies, sending them into the Void, and then dismissing them any different than when every arcanist in the game summons a carbuncle, sends them into combat, and then dismisses them? The text of the game specifically describes the carbuncles as familiars.


A lot of the people of the Source are terrible people and don't know about souls in animals/monsters or just don't care. No one said they were OK to do that. But there's no big to do about it either because the whole thing about Halitali happened back in ARR when this game was just a bunch of JRPG nonsense and wasn't any deeper than that.


The Eden Primals also are primals, beings made up of aether who crave power. It doesn't matter if they consented to be destroyed or not, but they were still created on purpose to be destroyed and have their aether dispersed out into the land to heal it. The developers obviously wanted an excuse to have redone primal fights, and this is a game about fighting things and it's not Undertale where we have any sort of option to befriend our enemies and neither was it made as a morality tale. The lore exists as a setting for the story and a backdrop for us doing scripted fights ad nauseam. So the story was probably written there as an excuse for the fights they had designed and they didn't think about the morality of it because it didn't matter at the time and they didn't think people would come back two years later and call it problematic.

There is also that researcher in Elpis who summons creations to have us kill them so he can study how they fight. Is that any better? Is that any worse? The game doesn't tell us. We're presented the facts but the only character in the whole game who treats any of this as being bad is Hermes, who also happens to be the worst character in the game.

Some people probably think the Ancients were 100% horrible terrible people and Y'shtola is 100% a pure princess and while I think they're wrong and there's more nuance to that (except maybe for Y'shtola, who as a character doesn't have the same presence as most of the rest of the cast), that's their own weird opinion and I won't say anything about it unless they come to the forums presenting their bias as objective truth. Just like how I think the idea that people's opinions of the Ancients are somehow the writers' problems is goofy. You already failed to prove that the WoL themself is shocked at butterflies and that no one cared for the nixies in the game and now you're trying to move the goalposts. It feels like you and a bunch of other people have this really weird thing about the Ancients and that everyone else who doesn't believe they are the best thing in the game are bad people.

To me, this doesn't matter because the game itself doesn't present the Ancients outright as bad people and even if they were, the game has put familiars including carbuncles, nixies, and porxies in a wholly separate category than the intent for the creations at Elpis. Anyone who made the connection between what the Ancients were doing at Elpis to Y'shtola sending familiars to the Void and then from there thinks there was a double-standard in how they were presented is either specifically trying to make themselves upset at the game or is just looking for a fight.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

Okay, fine. Let me “move back the goalpost.” When you bring the butterflies to Hythlo he makes your robes and your character acts surprised and you’re given dialogue options, with one of them being “you turn living beings into clothing? Just like that?!”

Meanwhile reaper uses the aether from living beings….leather working and weaver exists etc.

There is also the other option of “Won’t someone get angry at you for doing that?” Which is a strange thing to ask as well, considering no one ever asks that of the sundered lol.

[Denishia]

As a player who subjectively dislikes Ancients -and doesn’t pretend that my revulsion for them isn’t a personal reaction- it was not Elpis that created my distaste for them, only re-enforced. To go on this tangent.

Some of the dislike is aesthetics: I think all versions of their robe-and-mask look is both extremely ugly and lame, no fondness for their architecture, and am already bored of the overwhelming use of Greek names. Amaurot made me groan, in part because it embodied a lot of story-telling tropes that I find overdone, i.e. the Fall of Atlantis.
But I also think that their characterization as powerful immortal beings who are supposed to be more rational and enlightened …doesn’t hold up. For me their society comes across as much a dystopia as utopia, and as a game setting it is vastly inferior to everything in Post-Sundered Etheirys. This is not a game setting I was to spend hours in. They don’t feel real like how even the dragons do. Some of that is the shallowness of how their immortality and creation magics work and limitations on them. The feeling I got from Elpis are game dev avatars adding assets into a game world, who only exist to add a few new mobs before ‘retiring’. Meta-wise, cute, but only enough story meat for a few quests. Self-proclaimed Stewards of the Star, societal pressure that one should focus on fulfilling a Purpose of creating something then die - internally I’m screeching even if I can’t clearly define for myself what it is that is turning me off this society and NPCs, unlike the clearly fascist imperialism of the Garlean Empire. I sympathized with Hermes in that he sensed that the foundational societal premise was wrong even when I disagreed with him. Though I think callousness - to themselves most of all- was part of it. Fans of the Ancients aren't reading them with the same callousness and do think Amaurotine society could unironically be labeled a paradise. I can't. The side quests with the disdained outliers doing animal husbandry, the obsession with universal answers and perfection, suppression of emotions, the dress code and Convocation - all spoke to me of Control. They wanted the world to match their whims. Suffering - and acceptance that life would have suffering in it- would be accepting that one couldn’t control everything. Therefore, I pity the Ancients - and prefer the Sundered.

Because and not despite ‘Azem’s familiar’ was purely fantasy, following after similar attitudes from the Sharlayans, Galreans, and Loporrits, coming from these NPCs that I had less emotional attachment to them or their world, my reaction was that, yes, I don’t like anyone here. This zone isn’t as fun as all the other ones in the game, and having more adventures in the UnSundered World has zero appeal to me if forced to do so with Hades and Hytholdaeus. Pandaemonium I find somewhat interesting, partly because it doesn't present Ancients as admirable.

[Rulakir]

Y'all can post essays about it all you like, it doesn't change the fact that for months when it was the Ancients doing it it was wrong, now that it's Y'shtola it's because we're somehow missing context (read: subjective interpretation) or skipped scenes. Conveniently coming from the same handful of self-admitted Ancient haters. I don't hate Y'shtola and I don't particularly care about her familiars other than the sheer hypocrisy of it, which was the point of the thread.

Committing to things like playing god and creating life is wrong or genocide is wrong but, oh, not if they do it because they had reasons. Just no. There's no conversation to be had about that because now it's just pure bias. You can agree or disagree with something, but at least own that it's based on your personal preferences and isn't objective observation.