The Ancients still deserved better, after everything

[Rulakir]

Sure. Not. The first through third page links mention a voice actress, not a writer, if they mention Ishikawa at all. Then again, I don't use Google for searches, since the first two pages are typically ads.

You could have provided a single link, but no ... it appears that was too hard for you.

Would you like to further demonstrate how this task proved to be too difficult for you that you required the assistance of others and then try to make them seem like the inept ones?





Thanks for confirming I should block you.

[Lauront]

The ancients acted solely for their own benefit(and as much as that extended to the "star" in their arrogance of being "the shephards of the star")completly intending to reap a reward from their work.

To be clear - are you claiming that the ancients who were sacrificed did so under the understanding that they'd later be returned? Because if you're claiming that, specifically, I am going to need a source for it.

The ancients acted solely for their own benefit(and as much as that extended to the "star" in their arrogance of being "the shephards of the star")completly intending to reap a reward from their work.

What's the "arrogance" here? Keep seeing this term just being thrown around, but you're going to have to explain to me how seeing themselves as responsible for the star's well-being is "arrogant", and relative to what it is "arrogant". I don't take this term particularly seriously, if I am honest. It's just one of those buzzwords this community likes thoughtlessly throwing around, but maybe you can persuade me otherwise.

Whether or not the Ironworks did so with their own benefit in mind, or that of another future timeline, they still arrogated to themselves the power to make a decision that could impact an entire timeline's existence. We can spin these things all day long, if you like.

[ZeraSkiratea]

The new life could be plants and animals for all we know. Youre going to say the ancients were wrong for sacrificing them for actual people? Because in that case i guess the WoL is wrong for summoning primals in eden just to kill them and restore the empty. Or Yshtola is wrong for summoning nixies just to send them into the void and let them be killed etc.

the problem with the "animal and plant" idea is that there where people within the Ancient society who disagreed with sacrifcing the "new life", so it had to at least have some degree of "status" i doubt even the most hardcore people in the ancient society would consider plants to be worthy to "hand over the star"(or whatever similiar phrase was used) to, it had to be either sentient, or potential sentient in the future fo rthe idea of people disagreeing with the sacrifice on that scale ot make sense

[ZeraSkiratea]

SNIP

Arrogance in that they themself assumed that they alone have the authority to deem what "life" was worthy of existing on the Planet(venat is no exception here)
to the point that instead of trying to fix and imrpove beings that show problems, they rather just unmake it, write it down as a failure, and start over.(this Arrogance is something even we in our society irl have to some degree imo)
There is a BIG difference in seeing themself responsible for the well being, and functioning, of the Star, and Deciding they have the right to deem what is worthy to live, and that something is only worthy to live if its a "net positive" for the star. (I could draw paralels to humans and how that would look if we apply the whole "only worthy to live if its a net positive for society" to that, but that WOULD be disingenous as i personaly do not believe such a comparision could really work to a satisfying degree without abstraction upon abstraction.)
I admit tho, arogance is the wrong word, i just cant think of a better one as a non native speaker
Dont get me wrong, Venta is also Arogant in that regard, her actions certainly are questionable, even if they ultimatly lead to the best outcome we are currently aware of was possible(emet selch admiting the ancients would not have gotten that far as evidence here)



Also, i should have been clearer, i "seperate" in booth ironworks case, and the Ancients case, the "first generation" and "second generation and later" people
the People who lived trough the 8UC and started the time machine, are very similiar to the Ancients second gen who wanted more sacrifices to be made to return to status que.
There are some differences in intent, in scale, and in other things, but thats that.
In the end booth acted in a fashion they expected, hoped, or wanted to benefit them in some capacity, even if its just an alternate universe self



first gen Ancients(aka the "sacrificed people") are more akin to the Second gen Ironworks, aka They did what they did without the intent of a reward themself, for a brighter morrow even if they can not themself ever see it.
NOW we dont know enough about the whole ordeal, the Sacrificed people could potentialy have known about the possibility of a return(i doubt it but possibility exists) but that be ignored here.


If we want to abstract it IMMENSLY and break it down into paralels
one is the story of a Selfess sacrifice where no reward would ever reach them, turned into the want of personal benefit by those after.
And the other is a story of want of personal benefit, turned into selfless sacrifice where no reward could ever reach them by those after


i PERSONALLY and this is PERSONAL AS IT GOES, am of the opinion that the endresult, in booth cases far outweights their original intention by sheer scale.

More people(far more) worked on the Machine without the intend or possibility to profit from it, then that did intend or could profit from it
While a sizable chunk of ancients(roughly half) didnt want or expect(as far as we know) any profit from it personally, while a good other half EXPECTED some benefit from it and thats why they worked on it

[Lauront]

My question then would be, who else has this authority? There's no god above them. The star is happily sticking souls in creations that comply with its peculiar requirements. They're not simply using their power - which is innate and natural to them - for personal gain so much as what they see as the communal goal of improving their star by enriching the life that populates it. This is why I fail to understand where arrogance comes into this - if anything, it tilts in the opposite direction. I can't even say this is misguided, because they see both themselves and their creations as sharing a beneficial co-existence with the star, each serving their purpose in enriching it - they even saw their own return to it as part of its lifeblood. I see it as a rather beautiful and harmonious relationship. Moreover, we see from the Elpis sidequests that as a people they had a rich tapestry of personalities and viewpoints, and many of them would readily consider new viewpoints, and were not some hivemind.

I must admit, I genuinely struggle to see the issue with what they were doing. We, too, as a species shape other (lesser) species to service our ends, which can include very whimsical, trivial ones, and will even resort to genetic engineering for this. Now you can perhaps label this "arrogant" in the sense that we're not omniscient and that it comes with risks, but the specific argument of "what gives us that authority?" is meaningless to me. Absent a higher power or some natural moral order woven into the fabric of the universe, to which such decisions are properly reserved, at least. They could simply unmake the beings and revise the concept, or they could try other methods before doing so. They're still going to judge if it's a good fit for their star's ecosystem, or otherwise natural selection will very brutally make that decision on their behalf, which was their concern with the lykaones. And I am not even going to compare to the sundered or us as RL humans as you concede the same criticisms could be levelled - and I would say even harsher ones if we were to pick apart the sundered and put them under a microscope; not that I propose to do so.

As for those sacrificed to Zodiark (amounting to 75% of their remaining population), they did not know. It's clear from this source (JP version here... sources for other stuff here), because the Convocation amended its original plan to restore them. I am going to make a point here: the ancients caught in Zodiark were in a limbo, where they could not enjoy return to the star, which they cherished culturally. The ancients, as per sources in SHB (namely, Elidibus's short story), were also divided over this final stage, including the Convocation (FR SOS text confirms this), so much so that Elidibus emerged to mediate the debate. We don't know what the cause of the division was in broader ancient society (Venat's group is more concerned with the Plenty as an outcome but she did not share this with her people), but a very plausible reason here is how those sacrificed originally would feel about being returned - something Elidibus, as core of the primal, could speak to. To me it looks less like this act was purely selfish, and more that they had a complex situation of whether to leave their sacrificed brethren in this limbo. Even if I were to grant that some were being 'selfish' and simply wanted the return of their people, the existing division on this matter could have allowed for them to change course if they had been given the full truth of the risks Venat believed this carried.

Dont get me wrong, Venta is also Arogant in that regard, her actions certainly are questionable, even if they ultimatly lead to the best outcome we are currently aware of was possible(emet selch admiting the ancients would not have gotten that far as evidence here)

This really isn't going to cut it for me. He simply says "our methods" - as ancients or Ascians? Venat is an ancient at the end of the day. She's using ancient methods. So the "our" in this case vague, as is what he's specifically referring to. In the FR version, it is clearer he is referring to her gift as a matchmaker as the overall context behind those lines. Either way, I'm afraid I don't consider what he's saying there to equate to the claim that the ancients, given the full knowledge of what happened, had no possible way of resolving this on their own terms. It's too vague and he goes on to say his principles are invincible, so it's a weird meaning to extract from it, IMO, plus even if I granted it, he's not omniscient.

[TaleraRistain]

They're still going to judge if it's a good fit for their star's ecosystem, or otherwise natural selection will very brutally make that decision on their behalf, which was their concern with the lykaones.

That's the question, though. What makes them think they have the right to decide that? The star isn't their creation. It's their home. And it's not a dishonorable thing to want to improve it. But it is a problem to decide that something doesn't have worth to the star just because of their own views. Like you said, natural selection may have made that decision but there also could be benefit in that it would lead to prey creatures that are sharper and more aware so they don't fall victim to those predators. You don't ever see them considering that viewpoint. But it's like the difference between a carefully cultivated garden of flowers and a field of wildflowers. The field of wildflowers isn't any less beautiful just because it developed naturally. Hermes was not perfect, but he was one person at least who was willing to let something natural be natural and see how it would evolve. Maybe others happily cut that growth off at the knees. And all because they had established themselves as the beings who were there to make that decision.

The Occuria in XII were the same way. They had decided they were the arbiters of peace on their planet. They felt it was their place to pull the strings of mankind because they were preventing war. They refused to allow mankind to develop as they would, to maybe fight but also maybe learn and grow and find a way to their own peace.

[Lauront]

That's the question, though. What makes them think they have the right to decide that? The star isn't their creation. It's their home. And it's not a dishonorable thing to want to improve it. But it is a problem to decide that something doesn't have worth to the star just because of their own views. Like you said, natural selection may have made that decision but there also could be benefit in that it would lead to prey creatures that are sharper and more aware so they don't fall victim to those predators. You don't ever see them considering that viewpoint. But it's like the difference between a carefully cultivated garden of flowers and a field of wildflowers. The field of wildflowers isn't any less beautiful just because it developed naturally. Hermes was not perfect, but he was one person at least who was willing to let something natural be natural and see how it would evolve. Maybe others happily cut that growth off at the knees. And all because they had established themselves as the beings who were there to make that decision.

What makes us humans think we have the right to build houses and not live in caves? To eat meat out of a supermarket packet and not obtain it through hunting? To obtain light through electricity and not through fire, or indeed, whenever the sun deigns to show itself? I don't really understand the basis of the question. Concepts of right and wrong at the end of the day are societal constructs that we base our moral systems off for the purposes of peaceful co-existence and prosperity, and there tends to be debate within these confines (although there's some other frameworks one can refer to, but they still refer to mutually agreed upon social ends.) They're not free-floating concepts in the aether to which actions must align in order to be right or wrong. That's how I see it, particularly when there's no divinely ordained order in the setting. So it's not clear to me who, if not they, would simply arrive at this decision or grant them such a right. It's a decision they came to, over time, to exercise their powers in a particular way that they saw as harmonious for the entire star. Does it need more of a justification than that at the end of the day?

They do explicitly consider methods besides creation magicks when it comes to planting stuff, touched upon in the sidequests. The problem with the lykaones was, even using a variety of methods as requested by Hermes to modify behaviour, these beings were still so dangerous that they would decimate any eco-systems they were released into, and it's shown further by how they're able to handily lay waste to another species in Elpis, remarked upon as being formidable prey. Natural selection will take its course with what they release regardless - they just didn't want to put anything that dangerous out there, and Elpis is there to provide a preliminary testing ground for this. That is its entire purpose. To me this is less a case of arrogance, more one of taking an abundance of caution with what they released - and that is another reason I fail to see how "arrogant" as a descriptor makes much sense. Their entire society is orchestrated to ensure responsible use of their powers and it is ultimately a violation of one of these tenets that resulted in an untested Meteion in the first place.

[KizuyaKatogami]

That's the question, though. What makes them think they have the right to decide that? The star isn't their creation. It's their home. And it's not a dishonorable thing to want to improve it. But it is a problem to decide that something doesn't have worth to the star just because of their own views. Like you said, natural selection may have made that decision but there also could be benefit in that it would lead to prey creatures that are sharper and more aware so they don't fall victim to those predators. You don't ever see them considering that viewpoint. But it's like the difference between a carefully cultivated garden of flowers and a field of wildflowers. The field of wildflowers isn't any less beautiful just because it developed naturally. Hermes was not perfect, but he was one person at least who was willing to let something natural be natural and see how it would evolve. Maybe others happily cut that growth off at the knees. And all because they had established themselves as the beings who were there to make that decision.

The Occuria in XII were the same way. They had decided they were the arbiters of peace on their planet. They felt it was their place to pull the strings of mankind because they were preventing war. They refused to allow mankind to develop as they would, to maybe fight but also maybe learn and grow and find a way to their own peace.

The Occuria only truly interfered when mankind were on the way to extinction. Venat made that a sure thing though by erasing magic from the world...

[anhaato]

Can you people please stop bringing up Emet talking about "our methods wouldn't have worked" or whatever? Of COURSE the writers are going to have the fan favorite say something like that in order to validate the party they're trying to push as objectively right. There's no other reason they would've made him say that if not to scream at us how right she was. That doesn't mean any of us have to accept it. And I'm ESPECIALLY not accepting it after YoshiP admitted that his whole laundry list of places to visit was him acting as the devs' mouthpiece there; his whole purpose in the final zone was being the devs' mouthpiece.

[OhNooo]

What makes us humans think we have the right to build houses and not live in caves? To eat meat out of a supermarket packet and not obtain it through hunting? To obtain light through electricity and not through fire, or indeed, whenever the sun deigns to show itself? I don't really understand the basis of the question. Concepts of right and wrong at the end of the day are societal constructs that we base our moral systems off for the purposes of peaceful co-existence and prosperity, and there tends to be debate within these confines (although there's some other frameworks one can refer to, but they still refer to mutually agreed upon social ends.)

I agree. Whenever I see anyone asking this question "What makes them think they have the right to decide (something)...?" I just think that's rich coming from humans in general, considering all the self-proclaimed roles we give ourselves. And within the story too, the sundered have no moral high ground considering how they treat what they consider "lesser" life forms as well.

For example: in regards to the issue of factory farming and culling invasive species - for some, they may think it's wrong but may consider it a necessary evil, others may not care about it at all and think it's just normal, but if a situation occurred where we were visited by aliens or something and suddenly we became the prey, there would be an issue. "What right do these beings have to dictate to us what we can and can't do?" Meanwhile, it wasn't a major issue when we were the only apex predators.