The Ancients still deserved better, after everything

[SentioftheHoukai]

I honestly hate that as a FFXIV player it feels like I'm not allowed to like the Ancients as a people. What I saw in Elpis was not arrogant assholes who consider themselves above the lifeforms they created, but compassionate souls with various flaws who dote on and adore their creations.

So many people bring up how Hermes felt his fellows just create, use, abuse and throw away their creations as a simultaneous defense of the Sundered and demonization and condemnation of the Ancients, but frankly that's not something I ever saw.

However, I did see something else. I saw a rather mentally unstable young man fail to realize a creation was not suitable for the wider ecosystem and accomplished but death and destruction.

When he was confronted with the truth that he must put this creature down, he turned his internalized hate mistakenly upon his own people and seriously just letting them loose to cause carnage.

He encouraged its violent instincts and told the dying creature in its twilight hours to return and hunt his kind, for he believed what he perceived as their apathy justified such actions.

He criticized their admirable decision to return to the star as mindless, meaningless death and people also use this as condemnation of these beautiful people. But I have a different interpretation of their traditions.

Based on what I saw, they don't just decide to return to the star on a whim. They seemed to me to possess a societally influenced duty to fill the world they live in with productive and beautiful creations and concepts before feeling fulfilled and passing the torch a younger, brighter fellow with new and innovative ideas.

We have no evidence to suggest that the Ancients aged the way we understand the concept so do people expect them to have slaved for the good of all forever? Is it fair of us to condemn them for dying after having accomplished a great many things?

With Venat, people need to understand about EW is more important what they didn't show. We all here are of the opinion that she didn't tell them about Meteion, the cause of the Final Days or literally anything about what she learned and what she planned to do about it.

But even if she did, they didn't show that and if that's the case surely something would've changed or could've been devised against Meteion.

If Venat told them nothing, then well people condemnation about everything relating to Zodiark rings rather hollow doesn't it? The Zodiark plan was a desperate gambit devised by a people who feared losing everything and knew nothing about the sudden calamity they found themselves in.

I don't believe a scholarly population like Amaurot would resort to summoning a God of all things unless they were very, very desperate and out of options, and with Venat seemingly telling them nothing out of options is indeed what they were. For it seems they had no option and no choice to begin with, for as with so many things it was taken by her.

[SentioftheHoukai]

This is Part 2 to my post, couldn't fit it all.

I do believe that the Ancients could have come up with a counter to Meteion so long as they were made aware of all that Venat knew. At the time, Meteion had just left the planet she couldn't possibly have been the seemingly nigh-unstoppable monster we fought tens of thousands of years later.

I suppose the bottom line is that Endwalker just felt empty and devoid of meaning as a whole. It attempts to instill us with what it thinks is meaningful but like with all media its value it subjective and I feel for a lot it just didn't jive well with them.

For me in particular, I felt affronted by the patterns of thought and justice personas it attempted to force me to follow. The Ancients were demonized on multiple occasions in the plot and by the fandom and I despise dehumanization. I suppose I had faith that this is thinking common decency but I guess I underestimated how many people would willing to ignore or justify it when its not aimed at their favored demographic.

In regards to Venat, I suppose I never quite realized when the world warped the perspective around the "ends justify the means" philosophy because to my understanding that's always been a budding villain's motive and I can't really fathom how many people see Venat as a hero despite that.

For me, I rather distrusted her from the beginning. All the evidence we receive in ShB and before, then we learn of her "love" and yet her motives are that. I can't honestly reconcile the two.

Then there's the time travel plot point, which feels like a betrayal in and of itself. For all time travels faults, I personally felt that the whole point of time travel was to try and save people, but then they made it a closed loop unlike G'raha's old timeline and the entire time in Elpis's purpose seems to be serve no purpose but to build up Venat's positive character even more.

So I went in thinking maybe Elidibus was wrong and I could save the Ancients but all I accomplished in the World Unsundered was taking active part in their assured annihilation? Not enough was it that they are gone, but now Square says that it always meant to happen and of course I have to be a direct part of it now.

That's a step way too far, it goes beyond forced characterization at that point. Now my character is being forced to destroy her own people and of course she totally agrees with it? No, she wouldn't.

So, yeah.

Tldr; the Ancients are my true people, not the Sundered and Endwalker was one big nightmare for me that forced me to commit virtual genocide, be okay with it, offend my moral values, wank the other person responsible the whole ride, and generally commit numerous crimes on my person at the hands of Square Enix.

[DamianFatale]

I honestly hate that as a FFXIV player it feels like I'm not allowed to like the Ancients as a people. What I saw in Elpis was not arrogant assholes who consider themselves above the lifeforms they created, but compassionate souls with various flaws who dote on and adore their creations.

So many people bring up how Hermes felt his fellows just create, use, abuse and throw away their creations as a simultaneous defense of the Sundered and demonization and condemnation of the Ancients, but frankly that's not something I ever saw.

However, I did see something else. I saw a rather mentally unstable young man fail to realize a creation was not suitable for the wider ecosystem and accomplished but death and destruction.

When he was confronted with the truth that he must put this creature down, he turned his internalized hate mistakenly upon his own people and seriously just letting them loose to cause carnage.

He encouraged its violent instincts and told the dying creature in its twilight hours to return and hunt his kind, for he believed what he perceived as their apathy justified such actions.

He criticized their admirable decision to return to the star as mindless, meaningless death and people also use this as condemnation of these beautiful people. But I have a different interpretation of their traditions.

Based on what I saw, they don't just decide to return to the star on a whim. They seemed to me to possess a societally influenced duty to fill the world they live in with productive and beautiful creations and concepts before feeling fulfilled and passing the torch a younger, brighter fellow with new and innovative ideas.

We have no evidence to suggest that the Ancients aged the way we understand the concept so do people expect them to have slaved for the good of all forever? Is it fair of us to condemn them for dying after having accomplished a great many things?

With Venat, people need to understand about EW is more important what they didn't show. We all here are of the opinion that she didn't tell them about Meteion, the cause of the Final Days or literally anything about what she learned and what she planned to do about it.

But even if she did, they didn't show that and if that's the case surely something would've changed or could've been devised against Meteion.

If Venat told them nothing, then well people condemnation about everything relating to Zodiark rings rather hollow doesn't it? The Zodiark plan was a desperate gambit devised by a people who feared losing everything and knew nothing about the sudden calamity they found themselves in.

I don't believe a scholarly population like Amaurot would resort to summoning a God of all things unless they were very, very desperate and out of options, and with Venat seemingly telling them nothing out of options is indeed what they were. For it seems they had no option and no choice to begin with, for as with so many things it was taken by her.

Elpis was refreshing on these aspects, but you have to remember that Shadowbringers point wasn't really light, it was despair, and isolation. We were never going to meet the people of the original unsundered world, we were meeting Ascians that were so twisted and tortured over their mistakes.

The whole reason we could meet Ascians that were so bright and human for what they convey, is because we were allowed to go back in time, and teleport to it any point we wish. The aether connected. We did not have the luxury of that connection, and would never have got it if we didn't defeat the end bosses of Shadowbringers. Though we'd also be dead, or reborn as Ascians I guess.

[SentioftheHoukai]

Elpis was refreshing on these aspects, but you have to remember that Shadowbringers point wasn't really light, it was despair, and isolation. We were never going to meet the people of the original unsundered world, we were meeting Ascians that were so twisted and tortured over their mistakes.

The whole reason we could meet Ascians that were so bright and human for what they convey, is because we were allowed to go back in time, and teleport to it any point we wish. The aether connected. We did not have the luxury of that connection, and would never have got it if we didn't defeat the end bosses of Shadowbringers. Though we'd also be dead, or reborn as Ascians I guess.

I suppose that's fair, though it doesn't exactly change that I'd rather not destroy them. Based on what information we've been given, Venat's way resulted in the best possible outcome. Yet, I wonder about the information we're not given. Forever untold as the story I wish for may remain, I'd still yearn for it regardless.

p.s: It does feel like the fanbase, especially here on the Official Forum takes an unhealthy amount of glee in being able to take part in the near-total destruction of such a beautiful people. I'm not sure how many more "They deserved it", "They had it coming", or "They couldn't have possibly saved themselves and/or didn't want to" I can take at this point. It's disturbing how many are assured that only their end was the possible resolution to the conflict.

[DamianFatale]

I suppose that's fair, though it doesn't exactly change that I'd rather not destroy them. Based on what information we've been given, Venat's way resulted in the best possible outcome. Yet, I wonder about the information we're not given. Forever untold as the story I wish for may remain, I'd still yearn for it regardless.

Are they really destroyed though? As long as the endsinger didn't take your soul, you were reborn. It's heavily implied that the people in the source and the shards are just reincarnated into less aetherially dense forms. Technically the Ascians still live, they are just sundered. They might not remember it, but they possibly will after each return to the life stream. It seems to be when people regain memories based on hints in Endwalker.

[KageTokage]

You basically summed up part of why a sizable amount of people weren't very happy with how Endwalker played out (Which has been discussed at length in topics both in the lore forum and the the general discussion).

After both Amaurot and Mare Lamentorum try to get you to empathize with the Ancients, for them to suddenly paint their civilization as being deserving of destruction through calculated means as opposed to an accident or something more easily forgivable felt...awkward.

Are they really destroyed though? As long as the endsinger didn't take your soul, you were reborn. It's heavily implied that the people in the source and the shards are just reincarnated into less aetherially dense forms. Technically the Ascians still live, they are just sundered. They might not remember it, but they possibly will after each return to the life stream. It seems to be when people regain memories based on hints in Endwalker.

People oft refer to their fate as genocide because it can also describe the death of a culture. Even though they technically persist in the form of the sundered races, everything they once were ceased to exist the moment the Sundering happened.

The whole deal with regaining memories only applies to those who've had them blocked out through means magical or otherwise because the Lifestream specifically tries to cleanse souls and render them a blank slate. It's only the "scars" left from traumatic memories of the Final Days or whatever manner of extremely powerful memory alteration Kairos utilized that persist through multiple lives.

[SentioftheHoukai]

Are they really destroyed though? As long as the endsinger didn't take your soul, you were reborn. It's heavily implied that the people in the source and the shards are just reincarnated into less aetherially dense forms. Technically the Ascians still live, they are just sundered. They might not remember it, but they possibly will after each return to the life stream. It seems to be when people regain memories based on hints in Endwalker.

I'd personally say so. Death of the mind, death of the identity is to me the cessation of that particular person's existence. If reincarnation does exist, if I was a super evil and terrible person whence I last lived I'm not that person anymore or guilty of their sins. Your theory doesn't hold up to me, nor do I agree with the moral implications of it. That's just my own opinion though, and I don't intend to try and have people see it my way. This thread's purpose is just to get my own feelings out there, Endwalker left me rather traumatized and I've been bottling it in.

[redheadturk]

Are they really destroyed though? As long as the endsinger didn't take your soul, you were reborn. It's heavily implied that the people in the source and the shards are just reincarnated into less aetherially dense forms. Technically the Ascians still live, they are just sundered. They might not remember it, but they possibly will after each return to the life stream. It seems to be when people regain memories based on hints in Endwalker.

Identity death is worse than bodily death in XIV's canon. At least as an unsundered the identity isn't lost upon death of the body. That was preferable in my eyes to the sundered where upon death it is all washed clean.

[Avidria]

I dunno if I'm like.... Out here playing a different game or what, but I definitely didn't see any takeaway that the Ancients deserved to be destroyed, and we as the wol certainly weren't responsible for their ultimate destruction. Venat's blanket painting as a hero is rather odd considering she plainly admits to having her own hand in causing untold amounts of death and suffering for the sake of some kind of nebulous better future (the implications as I understood them being that the only way to actually defeat Meteion's hopelessness was to understand and accept suffering in a way the Ancients as a whole never could have, at least in Venat's mind), but. I mean the entire story of the end of their people is a tragedy start to finish and I don't remember anyone in universe being like "man those guys totally got what was coming to them." Unless I missed something pretty big somewhere.

[gotaname1]

You sum up a lot of how I feel about the story. I'll share my issues with the story.

During Shadowbringers, I kept hoping for some way to restore the unsundered without having a rejoining. People give Emet flak for not seeing the people of the 12 as living as Yshtola points out, but imo, forget the following if the ancients were human: emmet has pointed out he tried to reconcile with having everyone he cared for split up into 12 pieces. Not only that, >with the ability to see souls<, see those 12 pieces end up fighting and killing eachother endlessly because they don't recall being part of a whole. If you were practically unable to die and forced to endure that because you were powerless to prevent it from happening outside of a Rejoining, how would you not go insane? I'm still amazed that emmet is so calm and collected after millenia of enduring this, and taking a slow approach to the rejoining.

Hermes seems unusually emotionally immature. While I do think some part of his heart was in the right place by wanting to honor the dead by wanting to hear them out through his twitterfeed, his friends absolutely sucked in trying to get their point across that he just cannot handle the weight of what that would entail, and actually pushing Hermes over the edge with everything that happens as a result.