What lore do you ignore?

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

I do not believe this to be true and even if I did believe this to be true, 12 people being tempered does not justify eradicating a civilization. At worst it would justify killing the 12 tempered people. If there are Ancients who are against the third sacrifice then that means they aren't all brainwashed lemmings that need to be wiped out like cockroaches. The very point that there is conflict over what to do next proves that the situation wasn't completely hopeless and they were all brainwashed zombies fit for extermination and nothing else.

That would also mean she knew that the Convocation would turn into brainwashed zombies bent on sacrificing everything and everyone and said nothing...Her design is based off Zodiark's, you'd think if the Convocation was so bad at making gods, she wouldn't have modeled herself after him.

If we can't be sure the willing sacrifices would want to be removed from Zodiark and replaced with other life energy from the planet even though we can straight up just ask them because Hythlodaeus is able to communicate with us while in Zodiark. But all these justifications you make to justify why Venat did it has nothing to do with her stated reasons. She wasn't trying to stop the third sacrifice for her deep love of plants and animals. She wanted people to live with their friends and family trapped in Zodiark, removed from the life cycle so that they would get good at being depressed. And given that she did not tell them why she thought they needed to get good at being depressed, it's not surprising they didn't listen to her. She sundered them so they'd no longer have the power to protect the people they loved, so they could learn to live with the pain, like Estinien did. His family being murdered is what gave him the ability to get them past the dragons. So his family being murdered is part of her grand design. You can't understand that and then try to argue she did it all to save some unnamed life energy. When children watching their parents die are the goal of her world, why would she be trying to protect some random life energy that I'm sure you've made sentient in your headcannon to make her actions okay?

That scene is misleading because if they showed the real scene, people arguing in a safe, repaired world over whether to sacrifice cows or not to get their parents out of purgatory and she showed up and devolved them all back to apes in the middle of the debate, we wouldn't be arguing right now. Also even in their fake scene, the people are sacrificing themselves. These innocent people the Ancients wanted to sacrifice who don't seem to exist before or after the Sundering are headcannon.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

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.

We are talking about the same events. We just view them differently and I can't change how I view devolving people, erasing their culture and running them through a cycle of pain to make them strong.

What I'm being asked to do is lean into the framing and ignore the actions as presented, and I am incapable of doing that. If you take Freddy Krueger and cast him as a Disney Princess, I can't just accept that. And I also would likely push back against anyone who did, because I don't believe this is a case of live and let live. I believe what they did here is truly dangerous. And at this point I wish I could just close my browser and stop explaining why wiping out ten worlds worth of people is bad actually, but harm reduction is high on my list of moral values and I believe buying into her actions is harmful both to the people who were sold on them and the world at large.

[Vyrerus]

come to terms with what had happened

Oh no. EE3. I can't believe you've done this.

In attempting to bend over backwards to have the Convocation be the unreasonables due to tempering, it's explicitly laid more sins on Venat's shoulders.

This is an explicit example that she started a rebel faction in society and incited civil war over a false pretense, and then used her faction to attain godhood to actually do what she felt needed to be done, and in that doing, she ruptured and destroyed her faction and followers all the while lying to them.

Let alone them, but also the life they were fighting for...


It's not just the twelve any more. It's some big minority of the body politic.

Whoooo boy...

[Anonymoose]

That would also mean she knew that the Convocation would turn into brainwashed zombies

Not everyone who's tempered is a brainwashed zombie. Several characters have been, to quote world director Oda-san, "not puppets that do nothing but repeat words of worship, but nevertheless ensure that they would obey and never betray" (specific reference here to the Heavens' Ward, not the Convocation, to be clear). I don't recall official materials blaming Convocation tempering on anything but the vague "spreading of His Darkness" and leaving us to decide what's what. It's true that they are, regardless of whether it means anything or nothing, but whether it means anything is up to one's interpretation for now, as far as I recall. (I'm used to being on the receiving end of this citation.)

Likewise,

In attempting to bend over backwards to have the Convocation be the unreasonables due to tempering

EE3 doesn't blame their tempering. Emet-Selch says only that the act of summoning tempered them (which, again, has degrees; no one can speak to the level of influence, unfortunately), Venat's compatriots say only that the Convocation won't hear debate, and - much later - EE3 says only that the Convocation would not be dissuaded. Correlation is not always causation. Do I think there's some influence there, myself? I think it's probably non-zero. But that's an opinion. Moreover, if they effectively tempered themselves to their own plan, their plan existed before the tempering, anyway. Who's to say the continuation of that plan certainly was solely because of tempering? If anything can be attributed to their tempering it would be their inability to re-evaluate the course despite the fact that there's now a civil war. And that's a maybe, even if it's one I accept in my personal interpretations.

Her design is based off Zodiark's, you'd think if the Convocation was so bad at making gods, she wouldn't have modeled herself after him.

It was the only thing capable of challenging him; the summary refers to it as a "disconcertingly familiar solution", and considering her summoners were sacrificed wholly to power it, the tempering angle conveniently failed to come up. (By design? No idea.)

She wasn't trying to stop the third sacrifice for her deep love of plants and animals.

The Convocation decided thus: we would nurture our world until it was bursting with vitality. Then, when the time was right, we would offer some portion of its living energy to Zodiark... In return, He would restore to us those brethren whose souls had fed His strength, and together we would resume our role as stewards. There were, however, those who disagreed with this plan. They argued that enough had been sacrificed to Zodiark─that this new world should belong to the lives newly born. These dissidents surrendered their life energies in the creation of Hydaelyn

Whether this is framed as the primary motivation does wobble from scene to scene, I'll give you that, but personally I wouldn't dismiss it entirely when it was the first explanation we got, from an entity imbued with its knowledge by Emet-Selch, no less.

why would she be trying to protect some random life energy that I'm sure you've made sentient in your headcannon

I never could fully pin that one down, honestly. Most of what I can find says the plan is to sacrifice "new life" and Venat's faction says the future should be determined by the "newly born". The fact that this could be mentioned so many times without explicitly specifying whether they were the same entities is comical, and almost seems deliberate. "A Friendship of Record" does state "His devotees then resolved to sow new life─a bounty of souls to take the place of their sacrificed brethren." But these days everything has souls, so I'm left with this one citation by Alphinaud in French:

La vie nouvelle qui a germé de ce labeur a été à nouveau offerte à Zordiarche, dans le but de ressusciter celles et ceux qui avaient été sacrifiés pour permettre son existence.
The new life that sprouted from this labor was to be yet again offered to Zodiark, with the aim of resurrecting those who had been sacrificed to allow its existence.

Or, Venat et ses fidèles ont estimé que cette vie nouvellement créée était celle qui avait le droit de déterminer l'avenir de la planète. C'est ainsi qu'ils ont décidé de donner naissance à Hydaelyn.
However, Venat and her followers believed that this newly created life was who had the right to determine the future of the planet. This is how they decided to give birth to Hydaelyn.

That's the only one I have that appears to link the "new life" born in the wake of Zodiark's recovery to the "new generation" Venat says deserves a say in the future.

Emet-Selch says that after the rejoinings are complete he's going to sacrifice the entire populace of the planet rather than some "plants and animals"...

Then we shall offer up the Source's remaining inhabitants in sacrifice, that we might resurrect our brethren who died to bring Zodiark into existence.

...but whether this reflects the original plan or an enhancement, I couldn't prove, I don't think.

Lastly, to assume that because I question the minimizing of how sideways things had gone in Amaurot I believe there is an automatic and complete vindication of Venat involved somehow is inaccurate. I'm still all for interrogating how the big-picture of the story looks, every bit as much as my personal interpretations are still rooted in taking the story's intentions for granted and trying to make them work as best I can with the citations I have (And I'm under no delusion that I have them all, or even the most recent in some cases.). There are still plenty of interpretations where it looks pretty dang bad, which isn't a surprise to me because she herself says it was pretty dang bad, and the developers have likewise described it in Q&A panels as pretty dang bad.

The whole framing relies on whether one accepts the writers' request to trust that it was this or eternal oblivion for everyone forever. The Ardbert Defense, cranked up to eleven.

That was, as everyone here has said, a regrettable position in which to leave the fandom, in retrospect.

And, as you said, in your opinion, the difference is meaningless, anyway.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

What I find ironic about your position is if Zodiark (which she let them summon without warning them) caused the kinds of problems that you're claiming and a civil war had broken out cause these people wanted to sacrifice their own children, then that would have been the exact kind of despair ridden world that would have made the Sundering unnecessary. If their civilization is that bad off, then focusing on victory to save the babies would have been a gentler path to her goal. The Sundering only makes sense if they found a way to once again avoid suffering. That's why they needed their wings clipped. A baby murdering civil war doesn't sound like the heaven she was attempting to keep them from...

[Vyrerus]

Convocation won't hear debate

So there's a buncha wiggle room for the Convocation to not be deep fried.

Then we think about the last 25% of the population.

I know they never go into exact detail on who in society gave themselves up, just concerning themselves with how many did. But it leaves us to wonder, right?

Surely they all were highly virtuous folks, since none of them were compelled by force to do it... If they were to compel by force, wouldn't they compel those who already spat on Amaurotine ideals surrounding death like Venat?

Meaning all of the remaining populace were either deemed essential to society (government etc), restricted from doing so due to being young, or just wouldn't do it. Venat being part of the last grouping there.

Now we don't have, and likely never will have, the exact particulars on how that's divvied up on either side of the remaining society, but it means that very few of the first category were likely in either half of the remaining population. Meaning most of Venat's faction were the youth or the people who just wouldn't sacrifice themselves for other Ancients no matter what.

Was there ever any distinguishing as well, was it just the 12 that gave themselves up for Hydaelyn or was it her entire fragment of society? It wasn't a good look before, and it doesn't seem to be getting any prettier the more I think about it. Of course, Civil Wars have never been a pretty thing in any context...

If it was Venat's entire fragment of society that sacrificed themselves to make Hydaelyn, not just the 12, then it still has this contradiction to their motives. They want to stop the pro-Zodiark side from sacrificing new life to bring back the other Ancients. And we have some examples I know where people hint and say doing that would dishonor the sacrifice they made, but then... if Venat's faction is committed to self-annihilation to prevent that through violence as their newly formed god... It still spits in the face of that sacrifice, because they became willing to destroy themselves and the others that were the recipients of getting to live that the initial 75% sacrificed themselves for in the first place!

That was kind of confusing, poor verbiage on my part, but you get what I mean, right? They'd be killing the reason, the people and their society, that the first sacrifices gave their lives for.

And to top it all off, Venat is very senior to everyone in either faction. Perhaps not explicitly every single person, but there's power and prestige in her seniority, her age. And she has to be inspiring fragmented families missing fathers or mothers or both.

This is an extremely ugly affair. I wish they'd sat on it for another expansion. We really really needed that Garlemald expansion so they could cook this story up to well done. But it's come out raw.

[PercibelTheren]

I refuse to accept the whole message of DSR being "if Haurchefant hadn't died, we wouldn't have defeated Thordan on time". We were quite literally going after him already. I was eager to punch the obviously evil pope from the moment I laid my eyes on him.

[GoatOfWar]

Lyse existing.

[Supersnow845]

I’m going to use a piece of lore that doesn’t technically exist yet but it’s going to

Now this is more conflict with headcanon but since I headcanon my WOL as a bearer who escaped valaesthia when they were a child I refuse to accept that Clive won’t recognise the brand on his face when we meet him in the 16 crossover, I’m honestly more interested in making up interactions about Clive trying to figure out how a bearer came to be on etheryis than whatever they actually have planned for the 16 crossover

[Elecrom]

That Helions and Lost are just different fur colors depending on their group having a female Hrothgar in it or not.
It just seems really weird to me and I kinda want some explanation about how it really works, like do Helions go grey from grief when their leader dies or what?
If a Queen is so important to them, why do Lost not join groups that still have a Queen and therefore avoid becoming Lost?
It's easier to just headcanon it as Hrothgar that live in more traditional society (Helions) and Hrothgar that are basically loners by choice (Lost), with that it wouldn't be an external factor that changes them but their own choices.