Thread: On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

Originally Posted by Iscah

In this very immediate example, Claudien would have woken up Athena and we wouldn't be here to stop her.

How many more threats loom?

This world exists now and we are here to protect it.

Or we could go off and create a second world and leave this one to its fate after all that so many people have done to protect it? No thanks.

The world is never permanently "saved", it is only ever saved from a specific threat while many more lurk ahead.

You've touched here on the fundamental weakness of FFXIV's writing, going beyond the plot of Endwalker altogether - the fact that the themes and complex issues it chooses to explore ultimately exist in subservience to its nature as a power fantasy centered around a created avatar.

No story choices can ever even scratch the player's ego. The WoL can never meaningfully lose or be unable to solve a problem. The WoL can never be on the wrong side, even by accident. The WoL can never be put into a difficult position where they're asked to make a lasting personal sacrifice for the good of others.

It is taken as a given that you are the most important person in the universe, perfect and indispensable to an absurd degree that dwarfs even the writers favorites, and the narrative's underlying assumptions and moral compass bend and twist around that like spacetime around a black hole.

Themis (as opposed to Elidibus, who is sort of a different mashup entity) works as a character despite not really having many interesting flaws because he puts the other actors involved in the Sundering into relief, IMO. He is the one Ancient who espouses their ideology of caring for the world and its inhabitants above individuals or personal beliefs with complete sincerity, and is first on the sacrifice chopping board. He's an idealist, which is even physically visible in his boss arena, showing Amaurot on a sunny day in contrast to the usual nighttime depictions.

You need an innocent to put the sins of others into context.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

(I'd argue Elpis itself was probably supposed to have Hythlodaeus in that role)

Between this and your above assessment of him, I think you've misunderstood Hythlodaeus's character. He's pleasant, but if you pay attention to the way he behaves, he's obviously only motivated by his intense love for specific people and is otherwise largely apathetic to what's going on around him. When he's planning to have Emet-Selch train the charybdis, he expresses no compassion for the animal or even for Hermes, only how it will be neat if Emet does it and how it'll make him happy since he always likes playing the hero in the long term. And then during the rest of the Elpis, while Emet is trying to reach out to Hermes in his unconstructive tsundere way, Hythlo still shows virtually no interest in him and just worries about Emet's feelings being hurt. He's even low-key mean a couple times.

He's also pretty clearly depressed. He constantly puts himself down and negatively compares himself to his friends, and one of this revival quotes is even "You shouldn't have. No, really."

I think he's the most interestingly characterized NPC during the Elpis arc, even more so than Hermes, because so much is unspoken.

Originally Posted by Lurina

Between this and your above assessment of him, I think you've misunderstood Hythlodaeus's character. He's pleasant, but if you pay attention to the way he behaves, he's obviously only motivated by his intense love for specific people and is otherwise largely apathetic to what's going on around him. When he's planning to have Emet-Selch train the charybdis, he expresses no compassion for the animal or even for Hermes, only how it will be neat if Emet does it and how it'll make him happy since he always likes playing the hero in the long term. And then during the rest of the Elpis, while Emet is trying to reach out to Hermes in his unconstructive tsundere way, Hythlo still shows virtually no interest in him and just worries about Emet's feelings being hurt. He's even low-key mean a couple times.

He's also pretty clearly depressed. He constantly puts himself down and negatively compares himself to his friends, and one of this revival quotes is even "You shouldn't have. No, really."

I think he's the most interestingly characterized NPC during the Elpis arc, even more so than Hermes, because so much is unspoken.

What I love most about this? It gives some reasoning for how Hyth, Emet, and Azem became friends. Hyth feels like he can't measure up to others and doesn't want people to worry about him, but at the same time wants them to succeed and do well. Emet comes across as somebody who has been hurt before (thus his attitude), but genuinely does care about others. This leaves Azem. While not much can be said about them, due to their inability to sit still and how they explore the world, I think they have a combination of genuine curiosity for the world and a Death Seeker vibe to them. They're not just fighting to help people (though that's likely a big thing for them)...they're looking for someone or something to kill them in battle. The Ancients do seem to come across as having a Martyrdom Culture.

Meaning Emet worries about Hyth and Azem, Hyth genuinely wants Emet and Azem to be well, and Azem...wants everybody to be happy.

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

This leaves Azem. While not much can be said about them, due to their inability to sit still and how they explore the world, I think they have a combination of genuine curiosity for the world and a Death Seeker vibe to them. They're not just fighting to help people (though that's likely a big thing for them)...they're looking for someone or something to kill them in battle. The Ancients do seem to come across as having a Martyrdom Culture.

Meaning Emet worries about Hyth and Azem, Hyth genuinely wants Emet and Azem to be well, and Azem...wants everybody to be happy.

I don't really get how Azem would be a death seeker in any shape or form. They're the disciple of Venat, someone who inherently loves life, living, and the world itself. Calling Azem a death seeker is like calling WoL a death seeker for plunging into life-or-death situations as an adventure junkie when WoL would very clearly rather live than die (if they wanted to die they'd just call Julyan old). I guess you can headcanon anything, but I cannot agree with your interpretation that Azem, and by extension the Warrior of Light as their reincarnation, is somehow looking for someone to kill them when they have so much and so many people to live for and clearly want to live for.

You could ascribe those kinds of feeling to Zenos, but even then it's more about the euphoria of being locked in combat with an equal because he does not know how to express his feelings outside of violence because of his upbringing and the nature of Garlemald. He only kills himself at the end of Stormblood because he couldn't imagine being happier than he was in that moment and wanted to go out with a bang rather than a whimper.

Originally Posted by Lurina

Hythlo

Occasionally, when I see people sort of frame Hythlodaeus as some moral figure who would clearly disapprove or be outraged with Emet-Selch's actions as an Ascian, my reaction is basically "...what?" Because no. There's absolutely no way. Hythlodaeus is not malicious by any means, and all things being equal will generally do the benevolent thing, as he has no interest in hurting anyone excessively or pointlessly, but he makes crystal clear what he truly cares about and what he doesn't, and his pleasant polite quality is just as much as him also having no energy or interest in meaningfully engaging with anyone who isn't Azem or Emet-Selch beyond that "polite" surface level. He's an incredibly interesting character to me, and the dynamic of, once again, Hades perhaps being the figure in the friendship trio with the most pronounced morals and sense of empathy, and this in fact being the very thing that basically drove him to sink as low as he did, makes all of them all the more interesting and tragic.

In a way, I agree with Yoshi-P's assessment that Hythlo is in fact the "scariest" Ancient, though I entirely disagree with his reasoning behind it, but that comes down to finding the reasons Yoshi-P presumed the audience would find the Ancients "scary" as a whole generally laughable.

Originally Posted by Lunaxia

His VA ended up a bit of a hilarious fit for the original Themis, but I'll be damned if that "My duty! No! Not yet!" line in SoS still doesn't pull at the heartstrings.

The English voice casting obviously was done out of not knowing how Elidibus's true character would eventually manifest, but also, I will instantly piledrive anyone who says a word against Matt Stokoe and I can't tell you how immeasurably overjoyed I was that they managed to get him back in this patch. If Themis ever makes another return, if Stokoe doesn't come with him for voiced scenes, rioting from me will ensue.