This frequency of English localization issues is unacceptable

[ArslanMalqir]

The idea that Venat—characterized fundamentally by her unending love for the world and all its creatures—was not motivated by her desire to save the new life that had been created by the second sacrifice, and more generally all life in the universe, is absolutely nonsensical. She was literally the woman who created the faction who argued against the sacrifices and continued to argue against continued reliance upon Zodiark to reproduce what had been lost instead of moving forward and accepting the suffering they had gone through. You say that her whole thing was a purely utilitarian plan to ensure that life could manipulate dynamis, but that's not a motivation, that's an goal.

Why would Venat want life after the Sundering to be capable of manipulating dynamis? Why would she ensure that she could always find Meteion no matter where she hid? Why would she set up events so that the people of the sundered world had a chance at defeating the being that wanted to end all life in the universe forever?

The answer is, very obviously, that she cares about life in general and wants it to continue existing. Based on the information she had and the concerns she had about what could be shared and who she could share it with, she made her choices to attempt to stop the Final Days, and was not successful. Then she attempted to convince the remnants of her people to avoid sacrificing the new life they had created to repopulate the star, and she was similarly unsuccessful. Finally, she went through with the Sundering, and in doing so created people who were able to manipulate dynamis and would have a chance at defeating Meteion—because Meteion wants to kill everything, and Venat doesn't want everything to die.

I understand that people's opinions aren't going to change, and that getting anyone who came out of Endwalker loathing Venat and her writing to think differently is a pointless exercise, but the absolute least that should be done in an argument is to be accurate about what is being argued. Yes, Venat confirms that part of the rationale behind the Sundering taking the form it did was to create beings that could manipulate dynamis, but unless you think Venat just did that for fun the obvious second part of that sentence is "So those beings would be able to defeat Meteion and stop her from ending all life in the universe", something Venat would only care about if...she cared about life in general.

[Ransu]

I want to clarify something. There is huge a difference between Old English and ye olde stuff.

FFXIV dialogue relies heavily on archaisms and obsolete features; but even characters like Urianger are speaking Modern English (albeit with uncommon syntax, some Early Modern words, and "thee, thou" sprinkled in for effect). I think there is a very fair comparison to be made with Shakespeare, but nothing before his time.

Shakespeare's first poem was published in 1593, in Early Modern English (~1500-1750).
It's tempting to consider his works Middle English because it was long ago, but they were not.

Old English (~450-1150) would be like Beowulf and The Exeter Book, or poets like Cædmon, Cynewulf, etc.
It looks so different, it isn't mutually intelligible with the English that we read. The vocabulary/roots were purely Germanic until the Norman Conquest of 1066, which begins the influence from Romance languages. The upper class of England started speaking Anglo-Norman French and OE began developing into Middle English over the next few centuries. OE grammatical features were greatly simplified during this time period.

Compare Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 to The Seafarer, a poem written in OE between 450-940. (or this)

TLDR: If the dialogue was in any form of Old English, we wouldn't understand the story

You're taking things a little too literal here. Obviously actual old english is not the same.

[Lauront]

*snip*

You're correct that my views are not going to change, especially when you are trying to premise this on something that is not there, i.e. an inherent concern for these sacrifices, as opposed to a concern about the goal that they'd achieve, i.e. restoring their civilisation back to what it was and that, in turn, leading it to the fate of the Plenty. This is putting aside what would happen if her people had even agreed to her requests (reminder based on SHB lore: they were divided over these)? They still could not directly manipulate dynamis, so what was her plan if they agreed? Was she not going to sunder them? Or was she just going to ask them to queue up in an orderly fashion for it?

I am not denying that she cares about an abstraction of "mankind", what I am explicitly not going along with here is that she performed the sundering purely because of a moral disagreement over these sacrifices because of an intrinsic desire to protect them, when absolutely nothing from her faction's own mouths, or the writers', supports this. Once more - the one reference she does make directly to it in the strawman ancient scene is to the outcome of these sacrifices if they went along with them. I am sure she loved the idea of a mankind, one steeled (in her mind) by the acceptance of the "necessity" of suffering. But it makes little difference to how I view what she did to her people.

[ArslanMalqir]

snip

I mean, no, obviously she wasn't going to Sunder them if they decided not to go through with the sacrifices and moved after the tragedy. From what we are told by Hythlodaeus, the explicit motivation of the faction she publicly and loudly headed was to stop the sacrifices and allow the new life on the star to take charge of the star. It doesn't matter whether you read the localization or the directly translated Japanese—the motivation of Venat's faction is explicitly, textually, the fact that they were unwilling to allow the new life that they felt should inherit the star be sacrificed for the sake of restoring the lives of the Ancients that had sacrificed themselves.

If the Ancients had decided to listen to her, not gone ahead with their sacrifices, and gave the world to the new life they'd created, then the Sundering would not have happened. Venat would have had proof that her people could change and could endure sorrow and grow stronger from it, and she would have had no reason at all to doubt that they would be capable of further change to defeat Meteion. In the level 87 cutscene the literal last thing you see Venat doing before the Sundering is her pleading with her people to accept the sorrow and to change rather than cling to a false paradise. That cutscene was obviously metaphorical, but in that specific case the idea it's trying to get across is that Venat did, in fact, wait 'til the literal last moment after trying to convince the Ancients to move on since at least the second sacrifice to Zodiark before she made the choice to Sunder them.

The idea that Venat doesn't care about mankind except in the abstract is ridiculous. She cared about her people and tried to save them from the doom that was coming, while aware that telling the truth was a risk that could potentially doom things even worse than they'd gone in the WoL's timeline. She cared about her people and the new life on the planet, and tried to argue that they should step back and hand the world to this new life rather than sacrifice it, so that the remnants of the Ancients could grow from their sorrow and the new life they'd created had a chance to be alive and to safeguard the star. She cared about the Sundered lives and tried to help them whenever she could, giving of herself time and time again to restore the Source after Calamities and expending so much strength she was barely able to talk to anyone anymore by the time Endwalker came around, and she cared about the lives of the entire universe and set up events so that her champion would be able to defeat Meteion and save all life in the universe from being erased.

Venat is not some monster who cares about people solely in the abstract. Regardless of what your opinion on her actions is, saying that she doesn't care about people beyond the idea of "a mankind" is wrong.

[Lauront]

We're just going in circles at this point. As mentioned, the Hythlodaeus shade is Emet's re-creation, after she had resolved not to tell the Convocation or her people outside of her own circle (not even 100% clear what she told them) about the truth of the matter to avoid panic or alienating Hermes. So "explicitly, textually", the only account of this motive as central is from someone intentionally kept in the dark over the matter - any discussion of it in private is referencing the outcome of them not changing their path, and this is also how the devs frame it in the Q&A. What is never addressed is what her people - once more, already divided over this matter - would've done with the full picture, had they been given it. What was her alternate plan to deal with dynamis had they listened? How does this comport with the interpretation Yoshi gives of her potentially acting so as to keep the timelines the same (underscored by her efforts to spare Emet in spite of knowing what he'd go on to do)? None of this is definitively answered, so I am afraid your "obviously" is not one to me and does not follow "explicitly, textually".

And I'm sorry but for her to be able to genocide her own people in that way, reduce and alter them to something even she recognises is not the same as them ("last of my kind", "my children"), so as to fit her view of what man "should" be like - a mankind that she only ever observes rather than lives amongst - does speak to her having a rather abstract notion of mankind; one she is quite willing to see subjected to all manner of suffering because of her surrender to this notion that it's "necessary". You are of course free to read into her motives what you want, but I am not really compelled to run with your narrative spin on this, and won't be - if the writers want to come clear up this mess they created in more definitive terms, then I will re-visit my views on the matter. Should they wish to double down on trying to justify what she did to her people, it'll be a good cue for me to take my leave.

[Rulakir]

I mean, no, obviously she wasn't going to Sunder them if they decided not to go through with the sacrifices and moved after the tragedy.

The two reasons given for the sundering were she didn't believe the Ancients capable of changing their ways (an issue of hers which predates Zodiark) or of being able to interact with dynamis. Those reasons are mutually exclusive, so there was no situation we're presented with in which she wasn't going to sunder all of mankind. It's why the narrative surrounding her is problematic because her "trying" to get the Ancients to change doesn't mean anything if she still didn't think they could defeat Meteion.

The idea that Venat doesn't care about mankind except in the abstract is ridiculous.

(Quoting Brinne because she said it better than I could.)

Venat, fundamentally, is an ideologue. Her sense of love and wonder is sincere and true, but she is a big-picture person in the extreme, who thinks in the abstract. When she says she loves, it’s not of any specific person or thing. It’s love of “humanity’s potential.” It’s love of “a flawed world,” of “mankind’s ability to find a way forward,” - a particular way of seeing the world that she believes only she, at this point, has, that she waxes poetic about in her big speech leading up to her question of her journey. Our Azem is quoted as describing her as "both close and incredibly distant," "akin to a force of nature," and that seems very apt. She also admits that she, like Hermes, is dissatisfied with the world order as it exists now – she wants others to see the world as she does. To welcome struggle and strife and flaws and therefore, in her eyes, truly treasure the “miracle of creation.”

Largely because of her interactions with us, the portrait she receives of someone from “a flawed world full of suffering,” Venat further romanticizes the idea of beauty and strength in the face of struggle and suffering. She sees that version of the world as more exciting, more appealing than the one she lives in now, which she sees as misguided and indolent – she already had, hence her being extremely receptive to hearing Meteion’s two-sentence description of the Plenty, and deciding the Ancients were on the same path based on that.

[aveyond-dreams]

I remain impressed with the lengths that people are willing to go to in defence of the 2nd most destructive character in the game apart from Meteion. Venat, who couldn't be more clearly coded as a fallen angel, all while maligning those who understand and see the perspective of the Ancients and more specifically the faction supporting Zodiark.

I have no reason to believe that the woman who did this is on the side of good.

[hagare]

emet defenders are a different kind of breed alright xD

[Kaurhz]

Moral relativism. A long and forgotten term, evidently.

[KageTokage]

emet defenders are a different kind of breed alright xD

There's a weird misconception that disliking Venat's actions means automatically supporting Emet's.

There was a "none of them were right" option in the Omega quest for a reason. In the end, it was just a big chain of questionable choices that started with Hermes creating Meteion.

But...we already have a topic for this subject so I'd rather not see this one derailed into a repeat of the other one.