Thread: On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

Sorry Zenos, but Themis wore it better.

In all seriousness though, Themis is everything I wanted in terms of a complex archenemy-friendship.

Of course I know there are major narrative differences between Zenos and Themis and their role in the plot and their relationship with the WoL are not directly comparable, so don't read too much into this. I just wanted to make a stupid meme. :'D

It's just that if I had to choose between one nemesis that I still somehow call my true friend I'd easily pick Elidibus/Themis over Zenos, all their (narrative and plot-related) differences aside.

Ok, I simply like Themis. That's the tl,dr.

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You can ignore everything from here on. I just need to vomit lots of words on this page to live my best Themis-liking life.

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But moving away from that (non-)comparison and speaking solely about Themis:

He actually feels like a good friend who you tragically lose to terrible circumstances that make him your nemesis.

These conflicted feelings of liking the genuinely nice Themis while knowing what and who he becomes and what actions he takes were so good.
It gives the Seat of Sacrifice boss fight a completely new emotional weight.

The situation also does feel different from Emet-Selch to me.
Pre-"I'm gonna destroy your whole world"-Emet felt more like a person I respect (and of course he was a friend but there is a bit of a ...distance for me? Though that is just my personal feeling about him).

Themis, to me, felt like someone I am actually emotionally close to in terms of friendship and mutual understanding. His disappearance after our final encounter had almost crystal-exarch-level of weight for me (only that he was gone for good), despite him only being part of one mostly unvoiced quest line.

I also saw some people pointing out how he is actually similar to Zenos because he desires to fight us to see who is stronger but ironically I feel like he is the complete anti-thesis to Zenos.

Zenos tries to force his competition (and his obsessive belief that we are friends) onto us (and I respect anyone who shares those sentiments with Zenos - I just personally don't. At all. I don't care about you, mate. Stop calling.). He goes so far to try to destroy everything we love just to get his thrilling battle.

Themis helps us (earnestly) to achieve our goals and never actually brings his desire to fight us up. He isn't obsessive, he doesn't push it and he knows those are not the circumstances to ask for a test of strength.

Maybe he'd have asked for a sparring in a more lighthearted situation. And you know
what? I'd have agreed in an instant. Sorry Zenos, can't fight right now. Testing the limits of my strength in a thrilling battle with the Emissary of the Ancients.

(Just wanting to measure your strength/being curious isn't being the same as Zenos because then almost everyone would be like Zenos and then Zenos would be redundant.
I'm sure there are quite a few characters who seek the thrill of battle and would enjoy testing their strength.
This whole idea that only Zenos ever truly understood our desire for fighting and living for its thrill because they made him so ridiculously OP that only "he could truly give us what we "want" (test our limits of strength like nobody else)" always felt so forced to me.
I really think Estinien for example would absolutely get this part of us, even if he isn't as OP.
I'd rather share these feelings with him even if he can't "test my limits of strength" as much. I don't care about Zenos' strength because there is no true philosophical understanding between me and him. The way I seek the thrill of battle differs from his. The thrill itself doesn't connect us.)

Anyways, what I loved the most is how they tied everything up, how they closed the (literal time) loop.

The gentle implication that perhaps the final stop of his fate was not just to become a terrible source of terror for the non-Ascian world.

That maybe it was a necessary sacrifice (ha) that he had to make in the greater scheme of things. That he played an integral part to ensure that the necessary events are set in motion, so that the WoL can save the universe from the very evil that threatens all of existence, first Ancients and now mortals alike.

It doesn't make his individual actions better of course. But I think it allowed him to make peace with his fate and eventually move on.

It's sad we will (most likely) not see him again, but I also think the way his arch ended was perfectly good.
I hope he'll be reborn into a happier life some day and maybe meet a future iteration of our shard to become our friend again.

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

The best kinds of tragedies in fiction are the ones you can't stop. They hit emotionally harder, and they make you develop feelings for the characters in a strong manner. Personally I think it's the best way to end his and Lahabrea's characters off. You understand them completely, know how they were as people, and helps you come to terms with why things had to end the way they did.

Apologies for not spoilering. I've not posted in a while and forgotten how the heck you do it on this forum, but this whole thread has a warning, so it's probably okay.

I don't think the reason some people hope for an alternative timeline for the Ancients is because they dislike the tragic element - if anything, the need vs. need inevitability of the situation is what made them so compelling in the first place in Shadowbringers. It's a palliative care concept for the reason they were doomed in the first place not feeling considered.

That being said, I liked that this patch moved away from Endwalker's "this was all for the best in the end and couldn't have been any other way" back to Shadowbringer's more grounded-feeling "history is written by the winners", and all of the characterization was great. Themis's final scene had a very different note to Emet's farewell(s) insofar as it almost felt like he was choosing to forgive the WoL on his own terms rather than just accepting his fate. It was a strong moment that defined his character really well.

My overall feelings on Pandaemonium were sort of a muted positive. To be brief, I think it nailed the overall characterization of the Ancient cast (Athena is my wife ten million times over), and genuinely huge credit to Hiroi for that. I love all of them dearly, even - especially - ones I never expected to love. It also returned to the Shadowbringers tone of emphasizing that they were good people trying to do the right thing who absolutely did not deserve what happened to them, which I appreciated.

That being said, it also left me feeling like the Warrior of Light is pretty much a terrible, garbage person who is now actively complicit with allowing the Final Days to play out unchecked and then the Sundering, now actively choosing to not bother even trying to save these wonderful people who have now all bent over backwards to help save the WoL and their people even to no personal benefit, even to their own detriment, and that gross feeling plus the MSQ being terrible right now has left me in an overall state of, finally, basically just not caring about this game overall anymore.

I can't really blame anyone for being furious that everything is still, individual characterization strength or no, being paddled into insisting "we must accept the slaughter of these people and allow it to happen with a nod and a smile" to the point of even forcing the direct victims to smile/nod to it, as opposed to that whole nonsense about "ignoring the plight of those who might be saved is not wisdom..." or whatever it was - whoever said that must have, obviously, been some kind of sucker - but, well, here we are.

Alas.