What lore do you ignore?

[Lyth]

In the interests of quickly wrapping up a few loose ends (the new lore stuff is much more interesting):

What Emet-Selch saw was malformed creatures incapable of speech when he comes from a species that can understand any language due to knowing the intent of your soul.

When you first arrive in Propylaion, both Emet and Hythlodaeus are incapable of understanding what you are saying, despite the fact that you are able to follow their entire conversation. From their perspective, you're 'literally too intangible to form words'. It's only after Emet spares a snifter of his bounteous aether to bring you to their size that they gain the ability to understand what you're telling them (Lv. 86, Hope Upon a Flower).

...

Rebuttal can't happen without refutation. You seem to be misreading my points, which results in the 'counterpoints' not offering any clash for me to engage with.

You can take it as given that the timelines did not diverge in a meaningful way. If they had, the past would have changed when we left Elpis to return to the present. Why this is the case is left open to interpretation. In particular, it is not explicitly stated whether this is a stable time loop, or one that simply converged back on the same sequence of events to keep the future unchanged. It's also unclear about whether this was by design (i.e. Venat attempting to preserve the timeline) or incidental. I'm more inclined to think the latter:

'Until a moment finally arrives, we cannot know for certain what will come to pass - regardless of our supposed foreknowledge. So you needn't worry for us.' (Venat, Lv.87, Travellers at the Crossroads)

I'm not offering a specific interpretation on what happened between our departure from Elpis and the time of the Sundering. I'm just pointing out that there are pre-existing facts from the adjacent story that place limitations on what could have happened in that time period. So when you say it's 'open to interpretation', it's more accurately 'open to interpretation, but within the bounds of the facts of the story'. There are some solutions that are not viable. There are likely more non-viable solutions than we can predict, because we can't test every possibility. Your strategy would likely be more conservative on a single playthrough than one in which you can reset or undo your decisions to test what works.

I'm not sure why you think that enlisting Hermes' aid to create additional entelechies is a viable solution to fighting Meteion. I think the problem with this should be self-evident.

When I say that additional constraints are at the discretion of the writing team, I'm gently reminding you that trying to prove that the writing team are wrong with their own story is a futile task, as anything they offer in response is fact.

[ManaEthielday]

Not my own lore that I ignore, but one that my husband does.

He refuses to think that the gunblade came before the gun.

[Lyth]

Emet did overturn the prophesied outcome that we recounted in Poieten Oikos. It is true that he became a tyrannical despot. But it is also true that he proved to be more than just that, in the end, by coming to our aid in Ultima Thule. Had Venat judged him only based off of what we told her, rather than what she knew about him, then we would have lost.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Emet did overturn the prophesied outcome that we recounted in Poieten Oikos. It is true that he became a tyrannical despot. But it is also true that he proved to be more than just that, in the end, by coming to our aid in Ultima Thule. Had Venat judged him only based off of what we told her, rather than what she knew about him, then we would have lost.

He didn't do anything differently. By the time you reach Ultima Thule either he helps Venat's super soldier made from pieces of his best friend or the universe ends. Given Emet-Selch's goal was always, always to reduce the suffering inflicted by the Sundering by putting people back together again, helping the universe not end is completely consistent with his character. He didn't change. He just got tired. Lost and gave up attempting to undo a genocide given he'd be at it for 12k years and by this point we'd re-evolved to something close enough to what he understood as a person, he'd just have to deal with it.

And yes, Emet-Selch is required not to be bitter about being used, tortured and his people massacred--or we lose. He had to produce a child with beings he believed less than human--or we lose. That child's descendant had to grow up to be a psychopath that's willing to stalk us to the edge of the universe--or we lose.

It's almost like a single person shouldn't take it upon themselves to decide the fate of the universe given it was barely saved. It's almost like Venat should have played through the 6.x content and learned the importance of teamwork...

[Lyth]

...

I'm not saying that Emet did anything 'differently'.

If Venat had acted entirely based off of the story that we told her in Poieten Oikos (i.e. the information about Emet's misdeeds that we knew from Shadowbringers), then Emet-Selch would have lived out his days as an ordinary human being and died thousands of years ago, his memories and knowledge along with it. The story that we told her was only half of the picture, because even we didn't yet know that he had a redemption arc at that point. It just goes to show you how precarious it can be to try to metagame a predicted future event when you don't fully understand how the timeline is constructed.

You can act like Emet didn't have a choice in any of this, but either everyone has free will or nobody does at all. He chose to become a villain, but he also chose to try to redeem himself.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

You can act like Emet didn't have a choice in any of this, but either everyone has free will or nobody does at all. He chose to become a villain, but he also chose to try to redeem himself.

You are correct. Because of this stupid time loop, no one has free will besides the WoL and Venat because without awareness of the time loop, what you did the first time and the results, you do not have the ability to choose another path. The only two people with agency in this world are Venat and the WoL and they both chose genocide. And I am supposed to feel good and right about that based on the framing.

I do not.

As for Emet-Selch, he did not redeem himself. His motivations and actions remain consistent. He labored to save the world, as he always have, because that's who he is. Defining things that benefit the main character personally as good, and things that are a detriment to the main character as bad is the exact kind of dumbing down of morality that makes Endwalkers morals pure hypocrisy. Genocide is bad when it's against us, but genocide is good when it's for us. WHAT?!

Also, since all the people supporting this have completely contradictory readings of what happened, if you're one of the ones that believes Emet-Selch is tempered then you're contradicting yourself again. If that's the case, he didn't have free will at any point and there was nothing to redeem himself for as he was mentally enslaved. Also, I've caught yet another contradiction in what you've stated you believe. If you think Venat spared Emet-Selch *hoping* he'd do the right thing and not put his butchered people back together, then if she was right and he didn't, then the WoL would never be created. So even if he somehow did something he doesn't have the power to do because he doesn't know he's in a time loop, that would simply mean the end of the universe.

She can't both not want the rejoinings because wanting millions of people murdered is bad, but also want the rejoinings to build her super soldier who will ensure her godhood and save the universe. It's one or the other. She's Schrodinger's God.

[Anonymoose]

Also, since all the people supporting this have completely contradictory readings of what happened, if you're one of the ones that believes Emet-Selch is tempered then you're contradicting yourself again. If that's the case, he didn't have free will at any point and there was nothing to redeem himself for as he was mentally enslaved.

When the story itself is a flawed product with inconsistencies over its 13-year lifespan, someone might be able resolve those inconsistencies with their imagination, but how much it can be backed up and/or refuted by the actual content and developers I feel like is the difference between a perspective and a preferred headcanon, though both are influenced by opinions about what is a problem and what would be a solution.

Many interpretations in support of Venat as a villain require leaning on past citations about tempering having degrees to function, suggesting Emet-Selch can have plenty of wiggle room for being himself and making his own decisions while at the same time being subtly limited and guided by a part of him that wholeheartedly accepts only a specific definition of salvation and one specific vehicle of its delivery. Some find it hard to reconcile interpreting Emet-Selch as not-tempered when he went out of his way to tell you he was. Conversely, some find it hard to reconcile that he made the Azem stone if he was tempered. Everyone sees different things as problems and solutions, and ascribes different weights to them.

But I mostly just get comments about the Ancients unworthiness to live

Imho, the ancients' worth has nothing to do with the reality of the situation unless you fall for some kind of "just world hypothesis" fallacy. Though I do have a long history of saying that I didn't "see many hints that various story roles would suddenly invert", even if the writers did try to encourage the occasional bout of doubt for dramatic purposes.

e.g. one can simultaneously believe that not everyone in Garlemald is an abhorrent monster and that rooting for them probably wouldn't work out unless there was a role inversion for half of each faction as in Heavensward. One can simultaneously believe that the ancients were decent people with inherent value and that the Ascians' role - tortured immortal wraiths hells-bent on destroying everything we know and love and humanity as we know it no longer existing - whatever their motivation - was unlikely to change. Elidibus stated his intentions the first time we met him, he was just skilled at distraction, deception, and sowing doubt.

Assuming the translations on reddit are correct, to this day you still have the development team talking about how the Ascians role was "be in the background doing bad stuff" and Zodiark's role was "the evil god" (mentioned when showing off old concept art yesterday - again, assuming the translations were correct). The probability that would change at some point had to have been fairly low.

But I think a lot of the narrative instability is rooted in SE not really having a meaning or exit strategy for many of their plot devices until the end of the Stormblood era; just the roles they were meant to play alongside/opposite the Warrior of Light. That didn't work for the last season of Game of Thrones, so it's a good thing they reevaluated their priorities, but that doesn't magically make everything that came before jibe perfectly well with everything that comes after it, sadly.

I'm still trapped in the middle on the "inevitability", for example. They rather poorly defined the precise, concrete point at which the constraints of the Ancients situation were beyond deviating from Meteion's path. At the same time, it feels to me like we're intended to see the contrast between who the ancients were before the Final Days, who they were right before the sundering, and who the Ascians became, and trust* that the time at which Venat sundered everything (which had already happened and still had to happen for the game world we fight for to exist, at least in our timeline) was beyond that threshold. They could have done more timeline shenanigans, but they didn't. They could have had any of the Originals re-introduce the idea that she was still misguided, called her out on the missed alternatives, insist she's still a monster, but post-Ascian-hood none actually do.

That's one place the threshold between "supported interpretation" and "preferred headcanon one must cherry-pick to sustain" seems perpetually debated.

*Personally, I simultaneously believe that they could have done more to crystallize support for blindly trusting that claim, and that official sources offer very little support for assuming that it is false.

I was actually shocked that - after the Shadowbringers trailer appeared to explicitly show the embracing of Darkness for mortal ends against out-of-control Light - they stuck to Hydaelyn's gift being the solution to the Light Warderns and changed very little about the story role epistemology. Not because I thought it would suddenly be a safe bet to route for Team Ascian, though. Emet-Selch as expected made a great case for sympathy and terrible case for his victory (from the player perspective, anyway). I was more surprised that everything changed so little despite the introduction of so many plot devices for wedging in new opportunities for direction and doubt. (I'm eternally grateful we didn't get a Hydaelyn/Zodiark two-baddie fusion dance, though.)

In retrospect of Shadowbringers/Endwalker, I don't even think the Ascians were "unworthy", just tragically misguided, and Elidibus (5.3), Emet-Selch (6.0), and Lahabrea (6.4) all seem to agree. I can think of dozens of stories where the protagonist does exactly what Emet-Selch did - "set the timeline right" in a way that disregards everyone who was thriving there - and they're called a hero for it. (I just don't think that was likely to pan out here.) Preventing uncomfortable parallels between Emet-Selch and the Exarch might explain some weird story beats in the time travel, as well. (Baseless speculation.) And Ardbert is an especially potent foil for everyone from Elidibus to Venat.

Him admitting that her torture machine did in fact work is not the same as saying I'm fine with you eliminating my species.

I agree, those two sentiments appear to not be mutually-exclusive, in either direction. He includes "Our plan would have failed." He includes, "Her plan did not fail." He does not include, "I still think there were other, better plans." and he does not include, "I'm fine with the ancients being extinct."

That said, he did include "Remember us." which a patch later was recognized as highlighted as being as much a message to Elidibus as it was to the Warrior of Light (I can grab that citation if needed). And he did include "praise" and "eulogy" and "compliment" and all that, which, imho, are weird sentiments to express if we're supposed to assume that he still believes believe she made a mistake, is a terrible person, there were better plans, and he doesn't, however devastating and horrible, accept the reality of the outcome. There's still plenty of room for different interpretations, though.

Personally, I think the fact Hermes, Hades, Hythlodaeus, and Venat all walk away together a few minutes later in the credits could be a hint about the intended tone, there.

I believe they would have figured something out. <...> Also, even if that was the one and only way to save the universe, I still wouldn't have condoned it

I wouldn't argue with anyone who sees the situation that way; that's an interpretation/opinion. Everyone gets one; they're free - people can just have 'em. It's just that, imho, entitlement to opinions and interpretations does not extend to entitlement to treat the game and its developers like they didn't say what they said, or said things they didn't, which is a frequent problem regardless of faction.

e.g. one can simultaneously see, "I think the ancients would have figured something out, so I see Venat as a monster." as an opinion/interpretation like any other while also seeing "The ancients would have figured something out so Venat is a monster and you're wrong if you don't see it." as claim without much concrete support from official sources at present.

I'm not immune to it myself; I love when people cite game content and developer interviews when they believe I've extended and interpretation / opinion / assumption too far. I'll probably take some sandpaper to my mental constructs. Granted, I'm also unlikely to go rewriting my interpretation over a passionate but unpersuasive argument presented with no evidence, either. Testing and improving one's perceptions through discourse is supposed to be one of the joys of engaging this fictional video game, but in fandom it so frequently ends up with bad faith, worse vibes, and terrible company.

That's a big part of why it just feels like a disservice to myself to not try to reconcile in-world citations/resources with story outcomes. I don't want to spend my FFXIV life sustaining disappointing, frustrating, disempowering interpretations that warp the majority of my time engaging the product and discussing it with the community.

ANYROAD tl;dr

From my perspective, it looks like SE has spent the last two years repeating what their intentions were, perhaps because they understand that not all of their intentions landed, while at the same time leaving the door open for saying, within reason, "Hey, personally, in my interpretation, these things over here don't weigh as much as those things over there."

Take this line from Themis, for example:


CITATION:

And even if that act is but one link in the chain of events which ends in Etheirys's salvation... Then this all has meaning. Our time together─every moment─is worthwhile... ...and I am unburdened by regret. That said, it is possible my motivations become something else entirely.

Wenn deine Reise nach Elpis also zur Rettung von Ætheris führt...
So if your journey to Elpis leads to the rescue of Etheirys...

... dann hat sich alles gelohnt. Unsere Opfer waren nicht umsonst.
... then everything was worth it. Our sacrifices were not in vain.

Du bereust es doch auch nicht, oder?
You don't regret it either, do you?

Ich kann allerdings nicht garantieren, dass mein zukünftiges Ich immer dieselben Ziele wie du verfolgen wird.
However, I cannot guarantee that my future self will always pursue the same goals as you.

Si ce voyage dans le temps t'a permis, au bout du compte, de sauver Ætherys...
If this time travel allowed you, in the end, to save Etheirys...

Alors mon initiative n'aura pas été vaine. Notre combat, ou plutôt nos combats, en valaient largement la peine.
Then my initiative will not have been in vain. Our fight, or rather our fights, were well worth it.

Par conséquent, je n'ai aucune raison de garder la moindre rancœur, si?
Therefore, I have no reason to hold any grudges, do I?

Évidemment, il se peut que mon moi passé porte en son âme de tout autres sentiments...
Obviously, it is possible that my past self carries completely different feelings in his soul...

そうして君をエルピスに送ったことが、アーテリスを救うことに繋がったというのなら……
If sending you to Elpis led to the savlation of Etheirys...

無駄じゃなかったよ。君とテミス（わたし）が共に戦ったことは……何ひとつとして。
It was not in vain. What you fought for, and I what I fought for... none of it was in vain.

なら、恨むも何もないだろう？
Then there is no need to hold a grudge, right?

まあ、当の「私」の魂は、違う考えかもしれないけれどね。
Well, perhaps "my" soul may have a different idea.

[JepMZ]

I still don't think Sundering is murder. It's never been made a fact in-game or outside the game and would just make Venat's action seem like bad writing. She sundered to save new life, if Sundering was murder, then it doesn't make sense for her to kill everybody including the new children to save the new children. I think you're better off focusing other points because your argument is focused on something that's not even set in the baseline lore

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

6.1 and beyond was bad writing. I am perfectly fine with bad writing. As I said before, this was very irresponsible writing as it frames a genocide as a necessary evil at worse! Some people think we're just superior to the Ancients, so we should get everything that was theirs with no qualms about it.

Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts fall into five categories:

Killing members of the group

If someone does something to you that reduces your natural lifespan from decades to five minutes, they have killed you.

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

She ripped them into 14 pieces causing gaps in the genes that got filled with animal parts and reduced their knowledge, intellect, memory, etc. She completely devolved them.

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

Yep. Did that. Our world starts with a prehistoric society even though it's built on top of the bones of the Ancient one because what she did to them turned them back into apes who could no longer maintain their cities.

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

She introduced disease and calamities to the world.

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

She didn't do this because she murdered them all, then built her children, made to worship the gods of her creation instead.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Not only was it a genocide, it was the second worse genocide I've ever come across in fiction. And she did it on purpose, with not only full knowledge of the suffering she caused, but for that suffering to be the intended goal. Her stated intention was to clip man's wings so they could no longer bear him to heaven. When you remove the romantic language what she's saying is she's going to cripple her people to the point that they no longer have the power to reduce their own suffering. Because the pretty light lady says that she needed to reduce Zodiark's power for a time, people assume Zodiark was doing something bad with that power, but there is no evidence of that. Given her goals and her explicitly stated reasons for her actions, the power she was trying to keep in check was Zodiark's power to alleviate the suffering of the Ancients. If they had the power to alleviate their suffering (the wings to bear them to heaven) then they'd fail the test as they wouldn't have learned to endure despair. Her goal was to toughen people up through torture. That has to be the most monstrous goal of any character in the FF14 universe. Anyone who wasn't a sociopath would have worked to avoid the test because the belief that a group of people must "prove themself" to justify their existence is fascistic. Venat's ideology is a cross between Zenos' and Athena's but framed as good for some reason. She loves humanity the way she loved that guy she walked past as he was being eaten, as some abstract concept. As long as she got her skies and her laughter, she didn't care what happened to individual people. By allowing the Ascians to go free, she sacrificed seven worlds full of people to ensure the creation of one person. People are only okay with that because that one person was them. I wished she loved consent and post-scarcity societies as much as she loved skies one could drown in.

Trying to convince me Venat didn't commit genocide is like trying to convince me that someone who magically turned a child into a mouse whose cat then ate the mouse, who they brought into the room specifically to eat the mouse, did not just kill a kid. I saw what I saw.

ETA: She didn't sunder the world to save the "new life" because that was sundered too. She didn't want the third sacrifice because that would have alleviated the Ancients suffering and if they could just fix everything and not be in pain due to what happened to them, then they won't pass the test. She's not protecting anything or anyone. She's morphing her species into beings that have no choice but to get good at suffering because she's about to inflict heaps of it on them and make sure they are too weak to prevent it.