What lore do you ignore?

[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.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I'm tired of going in circles. I've stated many, many times that I don't think they did this on purpose.

That my issue is if you have your "good" "loving" character commit a horrible act of genocide for fascistic reasons people who support the character and act must adjust their morals for the worse.

They have to believe some people are just worth more than others. They have to believe that if you need to exterminate the weak for the survival of the strong, so be it. They have to believe that sometimes murdering babies in their cribs is a tragic but necessary evil. They have to believe the mentally ill pose a danger to society and should be put down. And so on, and so forth.

And I'm saying these writers did the literary version of what Hermes did. Well meaning, but WTF?! Whether they intended to or not, the mess is still there. I'm not saying these writers sat down at a table and decided to get the FF14 playerbase onboard with genocide. I'm saying that I've gone through pages and pages of excuses that shows whether they intended to or not, they did. And I worry about what happens when these values are applied to real people in the real world as they so often are.

My point is Endwalker was reckless and they should have walked it back beyond a couple lines in the Omega quest and parading out every victim of our genocide we got to know to tell us it's okay and not to feel bad we're currently profiting off their deaths...which I then get to experience the joy of having you quote back at me, like it wasn't infuriating the first time I saw it a couple weeks ago when I finished Pandamonium.

I'm not saying it was intentional. I'm saying it was irresponsible and interacting with the playerbase on these forums has only convinced me it was very irresponsible, because even if I accepted every point made by her supporters ignoring how they conflict with each other and the text itself, her actions would still be reprehensible.

[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.

[Vyrerus]

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

The entire point of The Sundering was to remove the Ancients as a people along with all of their abilities and culture from the face of Etheirys. Literally to change mankind from what it was, to what would possibly pass Hermes's inherently flawed test. That is undeniable. It is very much set in the baseline lore. That's why there's a stink around the act. That's why it's a tragedy that begat even more tragedy. I mean, hell, there's even dead bodies in the metaphor scene where Venat walks down a path of darkness covered in blood.

It is akin to a cloning process that kills the donor. Sure, you get 14 clones out of the process, but you still killed the original. And the clones are all distorted and disfigured as their whole world around them has been. And even then, the first god that was made had to be maintained, and 12 new gods had to be built to shepherd the new people.

So yes, you've encountered bad writing, by your standard.

[Iscah]

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.

It's true that it was never established and indeed does not seem intended to be akin to murder, but the problem is that it is bad writing because the writers either failed to consider it might present as such or they have done a poor job of showing why it shouldn't be viewed that way.

[Anonymoose]

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

The summoning of Zodiark (however inadvertently) tempered the entire governing body of the planet (aside from the one person who quit)... (EDIT: Not that I'm saying this directly affected anything, per se...)

We summoned Him, as your kind might summon a primal─albeit an infinitely more powerful one.
And like one of your primals, He tempered us. It was only natural. There is no resisting such power.

...who were now overseeing the One True God being used to - despite already having done the thing it was summoned to do at the cost of 75% of the population - keep exchanging sacrifices (which had to be defended by other ancients) to walk back anything and everything that wasn't their previously perfect paradise, including the resurrection of the willing sacrifices (who to my knowledge - feel free to throw citations at me - offered no indications they expected to be resurrected or would even want to be resurrected at the cost of sacrificing others in exchange).

We can't accept it! We won't accept it! It will be ours again─a world free of sorrow!
O mighty Zodiark, god born of our boundless faith! We bid you hear our prayer!
Accept this offering of lives, and deliver unto us the lives we once had. Deliver unto us the days of old...

I'm all for exploring different perspectives and interpretations and interrogating how the big picture of the story looks in the light of the way the story was told but to casually toss around words like "genocide" and "fascistic" and say anyone who disagrees is inconsistent and morally compromised while completely minimizing and disregarding that as "there's no evidence of a problem" and "Venat just wanted to prevent them from alleviating their suffering" is ... whew. I don't know where the conversation would even go from there.

But, from another angle...

Encyclopaedia Eorzea, Vol. 3 (Page 011)

The Schism
The newly summoned Zodiark answered the Convocation's prayers with potent efficiency, scouring the world of abominations and stabilizing the chaotic surge of creation energies. The Final Days ebbed and faded as the will of the star wove laws to bind and restore.

Yet although oblivion was averted, much still lay in ruin. The survivors turned their efforts to repairing the ravaged lands—through the rendering of additional sacrifices. Once the star was duly returned to vitality, they would offer a portion of its living energy to Zodiar in turn, thus allowing them to resurrect their sacrificed brethren whose souls slumbered within the deity.

This undertaking, however, was not without its opponents. There were those who contended that the volatile failure of creation magicks was a clear sign that mankind could not continue as it always had. Whether the calamity had eroded faith in the Convocation, or the grim glimpse of despair had simply woken people up to a new perspective, the fact remained that anti-Zodiark sentiment was growing, and had found a champion in a woman by the name of Venat. Her followers were too numerous to ignore, but the Fourteen would not be dissuaded from their plans. A schism formed in the ancients' society, and conflict between the two factions erupted in earnest.

...this reads like the ancients who did want to stop the sacrifices, come to terms with what had happened, and solve the problem of creation magicks (A) were dismissed by the Convocation and (B) joined Veant, complicating the situation even further.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

It's true that it was never established and indeed does not seem intended to be akin to murder, but the problem is that it is bad writing because the writers either failed to consider it might present as such or they have done a poor job of showing why it shouldn't be viewed that way.

Shadowbringers put them in an ethical hole, but there were a dozen ways for them to climb out of it. They could have had the Sundering be an accident in her fight with Zodiark. Then the conflict is just one over if the sundered are people or not. And I'd vote yes, we are, so please stop killing us. They could have had her attempting to reduce her people's ability to use creation magic without her realizing what reducing people to 1/14th their intelligence would do to them, the same way I have empathy for Hermes due to him being too innocent to realize letting the universe raise your kids for you is a jaw droppingly dumb idea. But to have her do it on purpose, with full knowledge of the consequences, to build a superior race she deemed more fit for survival. And even if I did buy it wasn't genocide (which I don't) they then pop out and say she let the Ascians go on purpose in order to preserve the timeline, ie, do the rejoinings. At that point, not only does every character in this game lose all agency besides Venat and the WoL, as they are just running on a loop they are unaware of, the same people that say the Sundering wasn't a genocide, do agree the rejoinings are and she's ultimately responsible for those too.

And that puts players in a position where they have to either accept a laundry list of horrific acts as right and good as they are the blood sacrifices required for their character's creation, or be haunted by them.

[Iscah]

Shadowbringers put them in an ethical hole, but there were a dozen ways for them to climb out of it.

As I keep saying – yes, I know.

And yes, we are left having to either accept a sequence of events that come off as worse than the writers apparently intended, or spend forevermore railing at the story for what it accidentally is rather than what it was supposed to be.

Pretend they wrote it in a way that makes more sense to you, turn the page, and enjoy the next chapter – which will almost certainly play out the same regardless of how the Sundering happened so long as it did. I personally will be headcanoning that shattering the worlds was an accident, but once it happened, Hydaelyn preferred to protect the individual lives on the shards than to rejoin them.

But when we come together to discuss, we still need to be talking about the same events, and that means not putting my own spin on things.