What lore do you ignore?

[Dorito_Burrito]

If you could choose between ending up a random person in the modern FF14 world or the Ancient world, which would you choose?

The one that actually survives.

[Cleretic]

If you could choose between ending up a random person in the modern FF14 world or the Ancient world, which would you choose? I'd choose the place where the number one cause of death is the decision to reroll out of boredom.

I've hated the question of 'where in FFXIV's world do you want to live' ever since Shadowbringers, because I feel it always needs the corollary of 'aside from Amaurot or the Crystarium'. They're the obvious answers to the point of being the boring answers that say nothing about you, because they're the ones written without surface-level, 'first paragraph of the wiki entry' (if not first sentence) flaws, so if they're admitted into the conversation then the entire discussion becomes either picking the boring obvious answers, or finding a stone to throw at them so the conversation can be interesting.

And for the Ancient world, yeah, Dorito is right: the main one is the fact that it burns to the ground. It's not the only flaw, I actually think the Ancient world sounds like sort of a horrifying place to live and 'but nobody fears death' is a thin comfort, but that's some secondary evidence.

Personally, my answer even with those two in contention is 'either Sharlayan or Radz-at-Han', because I have a long-term medical condition that I can't picture not existing in XIV's world, so I'm going to pick one of the two places that I'm fairly confident have fairly strong medical care. (The decider is 'which of these two cuisines do I feel the most willing to live with', which honestly does change every so often.) But I feel like, if I were to say this without preemptively shooting down Amaurot, the immediate followup would be 'why not Amaurot' despite Amaurot not having anything at all to say about my primary deciding factor.

[YianKutku]

If you could choose between ending up a random person in the modern FF14 world or the Ancient world, which would you choose? I'd choose the place where the number one cause of death is the decision to reroll out of boredom.

The world where, if I or someone else is feeling depressed, other people will come up and say "hey, let me help you, we'll get through this together", rather than "have you tried not being depressed?"

The Ancient world empirically lacked any institutional knowledge on how to handle trauma. The point of Endwalker was never "trauma makes you stronger", but rather "together we can overcome what each of us might not". This is consistent with what we've heard of Azem's duties and personalities, ever since we learned of them in Shadowbringers 5.3.

If someone is depressed and offed themselves due to not having anyone to share their troubles with, that illustrates the brittleness of Ancient society, not the suffering of modern Eorzean society. The consistent theme throughout the FFXIV story is we should help each other.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Venat's whole "I had to sunder the Ancients to make them more capable of wielding dynamis" bit. It just feels so... tacked on.

I think at some point late in the process they realized they may have made a cultural argument for genocide. So they invented dynamis, to fix the problem, by making a genetic argument for genocide...

[Mostly_Raxus]

my character is all the scions, and a schizo, from everyone else's perspectives our character is just making voices talking to themself all the time, but we are so strong that no one dares call us on it.

[SannaR]

my character is all the scions, and a schizo, from everyone else's perspectives our character is just making voices talking to themself all the time, but we are so strong that no one dares call us on it.

Wouldn't this fit better in the crazy personal headcannon thread?

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...nal-Headcanons

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Anyone arguing that they deserved to die and we deserved to live due to us being better in any way are sitting on unearned laurels. They didn't go extinct due to their inferiority. They were murdered. If someone came along and murdered each and everyone one of us (which is a lot easier to do thanks to Venat) then we'd be in the exact same position as the Ancients. If Venat changed her mind and decided the Ancients were better and decided to rejoin the worlds would our "strength of character" save us? No. We'd be utterly helpless as she wiped us out, same way the Ancients were. The only thing the sundered have over the unsundered is we're the preferred pets of the sociopath in power.

ETA: Endwalker can more easily be read that the mentally ill are a danger to us all and should be put down before they get us killed, than read as "we should help them." Not only does Hermes and Meteion cause the end of several civilizations due to their depression. Fandaniel causes the Final Days to return due to his and people who fall to despair turn into inhuman monsters who must be killed before their sickness spreads...

I'm not really getting the message those people should be helped, I'm getting the message those people should be killed. Those who get help, who are aided are "the strong." Those who can weather hardships without showing signs of injuries. The champions get aid, not the fallen. Endwalker offers about as much help to those suffering from mental illness as the real world does...

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Zodiark and the Convocation are doing everything in their power to alleviate suffering, while she's doing everything in her power to cause more and the playerbase walks away with this smug superiority that they are "survivors" that they are "strong" without noticing the setup of this story causes people to make the most horrific arguments for the eradication of a people that I can only hope don't transfer into their attitudes about real people. Because if the only people who deserve to live are ones where everyone is mentally well, kind to animals, able to endure any level of suffering, are willing to sacrifice themselves to help others, but not too willing, have a diverse dress code, have thin enough aether to interact with dynamis, are willing to obey Venat without question, are capable of preventing terrorists attacks by people with knowledge of the future, are not judged to be a 'Dead End' even though with the heat death of the universe all life is a dead end, if anyone short of that is unworthy of life, then we are all doomed.

[redheadturk]

Elpis is only one tiny part of the Ancient world. Hell, so is Amaurot for that matter. As someone who has spent most of their life poor, a post scarcity society looks pretty damn appealing to me. Not in the least bit scary. Not to mention, there is a lot more to non conformity than how one dresses. Debate and intellectual pursuits were common in Ancient world because people did not have to struggle to survive and actually had the time and energy for them due to that.

[Cleretic]

Elpis is only one tiny part of the Ancient world. Hell, so is Amaurot for that matter.

If your claim is that the Ancient world beyond the parts we've been to doesn't have the exact same restrictions as the places we've been, then I'd like to see the proof.

I'd be an interesting way to look at things, because Elpis actually does seem to be written as if it's free-spirited and expressive as far as the Ancients go: it's full of creatives trying to follow both aesthetic and functional flair, it's got a number of people written as bucking the trends of the society--Hythlodaeus, Venat and even Athena in their own, very different ways--and they even have a rule that visitors have to remove the masks that are otherwise customary.

And yet every single one wears the exact same thing.

The rest of your post isn't you addressing my stance: it's you explaining yours. That's nice, but I'm not you.

Words

You proved my first sentence so perfectly and directly, I'm actually impressed.