What lore do you ignore?

[sidurgu-12]

Huh, would you be able to tell me where is this said? I can't remember it being mentioned.

Iirc shade hythloe explained it before seat of sacrifice. Basically emet made it in secret after azem was stripped of his title.

[Iscah]

Number 1: that bit of text that states au ra are not dragons on the race selection. There's too much evidence in and out of universe saying otherwise.

What "evidence" are you talking about? There's nothing within the game that indicates they have a special link to the dragons, and outside of the game we've just had the devs telling us they're not connected.

[Vyrerus]

That's not what Azem's crystal does. It is explicitly mentioned that it does not have any actual memories of Azem, only that one spell. It doesn't function like the others, because it wasn't designed in the same way or in the same batch.

It actually isn't explicitly stated anywhere with what you say. It is explicitly stated that it has Azem's spell, but it is also stated that it contains the name and role of the office. There's nothing that Hythlodaeus says that says it's different other than it was made in secret.

The issue lies in, it would be Emet-selch's memories of Azem just like how the other Convocation stones are said to be, "As remembered by the Unsundered."

Unless you're going off some additional context from another language. I haven't looked into the scene beyond English.

[Cleretic]

Iirc shade hythloe explained it before seat of sacrifice. Basically emet made it in secret after azem was stripped of his title.

Specifically, the passage in question:

Defectors having been deemed unworthy of commemoration, no crystal exists for the individual in question.
...Or shouldn't exist, at any rate--and wouldn't, had a friend not created one in secret.
A crystal bearing the forgotten name of her office, along with a magick of her own conceiving--a singular incantation embodying her spirit.

That seems very, very specific to me: it only contains the name of their office (which was presumably in the form of that passage in Seat of Sacrifice) and the spell we keep using to justify trials after that point. There is no indication that it contains anything else in it, not even the faintest grabs that all the other crystals have that generally 'reminds' them.

Remember just how reliable this source is: Fake Hythlodaeus is a figment of Emet's imagination separate from all the other shades specifically because Emet reasoned that Hythlodaeus was smart enough to know it all anyway. While this nature doesn't make him a perfect, objective source on subjects like the End of Days, it makes him literally the most reliable source it's possible for there to be on the subject of 'a thing Emet-Selch did in secret', as Hythlodaeus is also not the type to lie or withhold information.

If you approach the question from a more logical 'what would Emet-Selch do' perspective, it also doesn't make sense he would've done it: the purpose of the crystals was to ascend the Convocation that stood at the end of Amaurot's days, all fully on Team Zodiark. Essentially, the Unsundered got together their most agreed-on, staunchest allies (granted, Fandaniel didn't go super well). From that perspective, Azem wasn't just cut from the lineup for organizational reasons, they were cut because also ascending the one guy who disagreed strongly enough to leave would be a really bad idea. Possibly the worst idea, in fact. Emet might be sentimental, but he's not stupid.

EDIT: Unless, of course, you just decide to ignore all that, as is the subject of this thread. Which again, you have pull power to do, but I never like, partially for this reason; if you want to ignore Thing A, what's stopping you from also ignoring Related Thing B? Ahd then there's Tangentially Related Thing C, and eventually it's not even clear how much we even hold in common, which can really suck depending on why we're talking about things.

[Necrotica]

Wording on that is odd. Azem did not join Venat. So who did they defect to? Had Azem just abandoned the Convocation for their own cause they would call them a deserter.

Was there a secret third party in the Zodiark vs Hydaelyn debacle that Azem joined?

[sidurgu-12]

Wording on that is odd. Azem did not join Venat. So who did they defect to? Had Azem just abandoned the Convocation for their own cause they would call them a deserter.

Was there a secret third party in the Zodiark vs Hydaelyn debacle that Azem joined?

I think they kept it vague on purpose. For me azem kept doing what he did best until he got hit by the sundering.

[RyuDragnier]

Wording on that is odd. Azem did not join Venat. So who did they defect to? Had Azem just abandoned the Convocation for their own cause they would call them a deserter.

Was there a secret third party in the Zodiark vs Hydaelyn debacle that Azem joined?

One theory that I like is that there was another threat Azem was dealing with at the time when the Sundering occurred. I personally believe the final boss of Pandaemonium will be that threat, and finishing Pandaemonium is basically waving goodbye to the Ancients and to the last case of "unfinished business" Azem left behind.

[LalafellDown]

I ignore our best friend coming to save us and then we fight him on a ocean. I ignore that our best friends partner, the punchable face guy saved us after we switch bodies because times up.

I ignore that emo twitter was the final boss and the build up we were waiting for.

Also ignore that the talking crystal lady was good.

[sidurgu-12]

I ignore our best friend coming to save us and then we fight him on a ocean. I ignore that our best friends partner, the punchable face guy saved us after we switch bodies because times up.

I ignore that emo twitter was the final boss and the build up we were waiting for.

Also ignore that the talking crystal lady was good.

Zenos did not deserve to go out happy. I wanted to flip him off and let him wallow at the edge of the universe.

[Cleretic]

I want to ask an important question that I think is being missed in a lot of these things people are saying they're ignoring.

Why? Not why as in 'why this thing specifically', but why as in 'why have you chosen to ignore it', why was that what you chose to do? Is it a functional thing, where you're roleplaying or writing fanworks and this element is too much effort to include or works against what you're going for? Is it a mental health/comfort thing where that part is personally triggering or upsetting enough that it's better to put it out of mind? Something else that's just not occurring to me?

I ask because I think a lot of people are just using this thread to air 'lore/story I don't like', and that... doesn't sound right. Sure, a game you like did a thing you don't; are you really ignoring that, or are you just here to passive-aggressively say they shouldn't have? And if you are ignoring it solely because you don't like it, is that how you handle any media doing the same? Are you trying to create some perfect internal FFXIV rather than accepting that it may have flaws or disagree with you?


In writing this, though, I did realize there is part of the game's lore I do 'ignore', but it is more complicated than that: the concerning amount of uses of sexual assault basically solely for 'darkness' and shock value in ARR especially. I don't entirely block it out, but I do my best to just leave that as far away as possible from both my roleplaying and lore discussions, including my videos (although unfortunately, my next one does have to touch on an instance in HW). I find it genuinely uncomfortable just how much it was done and with so little respect, but fortunately the devs both use it less now and treat it with more respect when it comes up; after HW it's basically only Yotsuyu, and that part of her is done quite well. I'll readily call ARR out for it when it comes up, but it's generally just better to put it out of mind for the most part.