On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Cleretic]

Can we not just report these people and let it go once and for all?

Edit: You know, it's worth mentioning I have seen many instances of posters calling out their own and acknowledging the mistreatment of other users from the critical side, but rarely if ever have I seen even one poster acknowledge the hostility or attacks inflicted in the name of supposedly defending the story - it always has to circle back to making themselves the victim, somehow.

Stop. You can't make the case of 'both sides should just let it go and move on', and then immediately attack people you see as being on the other side. Which you have now done multiple times here.

Also: we know moderation is woefully inadequate on this subject, especially when it comes to cross-platform harassment where, frankly, nothing Square-Enix moderation can do can stop someone harassing me for it on Twitter. When that's true, our only option is to self-moderate, and strive to provide a better standard of discussion than the one that's causing the problem. And that requires, sometimes, taking the L and being the better person rather than continuing to swing.

[Lunaxia]

Stop. You can't make the case of 'both sides should just let it go and move on', and then immediately attack people you see as being on the other side. Which you have now done multiple times here.

Also: we know moderation is woefully inadequate on this subject, especially when it comes to cross-platform harassment. When that's true, our only option is to self-moderate, and strive to provide a better standard of discussion than the one that's causing the problem. And that requires, sometimes, taking the L and being the better person.

And you're doing it again. I added that edit because it occurred to me after posting how rather than even attempting to concede the bare minimum that both parties are capable of being at fault, once again it became an issue of deflecting any responsibility away from one side to the other without stopping to think how others outside of your own perspective have been affected. Do you know the extent to which those people have been harassed? The absolutely god awful things that have been said, the threats that have been made? No. You're not interested, and you refused to even entertain the notion, because like the others it ultimately doesn't favour the narrative you're trying to create, and I'm more than bored of the attempts to purport a sense of decorum and courtesy when it becomes more apparent that's the only thing that truly matters here. Do as you like, because I'm done.

[Cleretic]

ADo you know the extent to which those people have been harassed? The absolutely god awful things that have been said, the threats that have been made?

No, but I trusted that you were telling the truth, and I'm sorry that those things happened, and stand by none of the people who did it. I'm not tremendously inclined to ask for evidence or specifics, both because I believe you, and because that doesn't sound fun for either of us to search for or expose.

If that's what you needed as a show of good faith to stop this sort of attitude so we can move on and do better, then you have it.

[Remedi]

I think a lot of you needs a better hobby. Because sharing ideas and wiewpoints ain't one for sure. If you are so immature to take offense at different outcomes and/or wiewpoints you shouldn't be discussing with others, because it kinda requires being able to accept that

[TowaIsBestGirl]

I suppose it remains accurate that this will likely continue for some time yet, alas. I don't know anyone who runs social experiments, but I bet they'd get a kick out of this one. I've participated in many fandoms, over the years and this one is perhaps one of the most virulent I've seen. Considering my participation in the likes of Game of Thrones, RWBY, and Attack on Titan discussion, that speaks to much.

How very vexing.

[Lunaxia]

This is monstrously long, and for that I apologise. Don't feel inclined to answer, and if you choose to in any way, take your time, lol.

I think the group of people who feel I'm alluding to them is larger than the group I alluded to, and part of me is just stuck on the "Why?"

Basic forum etiquette, perhaps. When I - and I think it's fair to say, most others who congregate here on a daily basis (?), even if not always in the lore forum itself - join a thread and express my views therein, unless it's explicitly stated as a "give your own opinion" type thread that permits me to go off on my own tangent, I assume it's a given that I'm responding in reference to the OP and what has already been posted, rather just sounding off on my views in general. Reading the OP in this thread and the following discussion, and then seeing your post where you appeared to address those expressing dissatisfaction with the story led me to believe you were referring to the people voicing their own discontent in this thread, or at the very least this forum at large (as it has been lately.) If you were not, and you were speaking broadly in terms of the FFXIV community as a whole (and lore threads have worked like this in the past, I acknowledge), then I can see it's a case of crossed wires - but suggest a small disclaimer in the future if venturing into threads with an established debate ongoing.

I see Emet-Selch (12,000-year-old wraith) as the Ascian I knew from the story, [...] that's not possible under those circumstances.)

(I lol'd at "12,000 year old wraith", I gotta say. It's such a perfect description.) If we could purely have met Hades as he was pre-Sundering independent of the ongoing story in the present day (similar to the first two tiers of Pandaemonium) I might agree with you. But the attempt to tie him into the central story, particularly the time travel aspect, on top of the insistence on bringing him back at the end (for what felt like a bit of a tacky and pointless finale-type spectacle) was where the lines began to blur and it started treading on the toes of his Shadowbringers appearance, at least for me. It's like, you developed these two incredible characters over the course of an expansion and built up to such a moving and impactful ending for them both, why was there any need to undo all of that bring them back to have them agree with our course of action when I thought we'd established we understood their plan and their motives from a logical standpoint (as far as they're concerned) but ultimately couldn't accept or allow their plans to come to pass? Did we need to bring them around to our course of action when they had every reason not to agree, and showing rather than telling their fall from grace with the time spent in Elpis would have been more subtly impactful than narrating the ways in which everything went wrong?

As an interesting aside, I also don't feel like a distinction existed between Emet-Selech prior to his defeat in Amaurot and after, and I kind of (very low level) feel like it's a little unfair to his character to suggest there was, personally speaking, like it shears off some of his innately intriguing complexity by taking that really significant moment and applying it to some other version of him we brought to light by defeating him. I think it's simply one more facet of a fascinating character that always existed. But yeah!

This is getting a bit closer to the framing I'm used to seeing, and a perspective I can't get to, myself

Oh, this is such complex discussion, but I'll do my best not to write a dissertation. Yes, senseless and destructive vs necessary and beneficial is rather simplistic, to be sure - would "justified murder" and "not justified murder" be more acceptable? (Which sounds a little tongue-in-cheek, but I'm not being dry here.)

I have to say, I don't think the number of remaining Ancients is exactly relevant to the discussion, nor a fair parameter to judge whether or not they deserved to live or be wiped from existence and memory by. Even if you were somehow to make a case for it, by all accounts, they had made it through the Final Days and were on their way to recovery, which makes it feel all the more tenuous a ground to build a case on. We also know from Ere Our Curtain Falls that far from being mindless zombie drones seeking to perpetuate the cycle of sacrifice, the Ancients were in relative control of their faculties, and that "no small number" actually opposed offering more to Zodiark to the point it became a sizeable schism within their society, so that's another assumption out the window, and again, we don't know whether there even would have been more sacrifice after that, given there's nothing to suggest Zodiark would have demanded any more now that the truth of the primals' "hearts" has come to light and considering that Hydaelyn managed to exist rather benignly for millenia.

Ultimately, the basic point is that a lot of the fundamentals of the argument for and against Hydaelyn come down to impressions that are unavoidable simply because we don't have a lot to go on, and individual perception inevitably comes along to fill in the gaps. Personally, given what we do know and in the absence of concrete knowledge, I reiterate I do not think the story provides sufficient distinction between why, from a moral standpoint, there is much difference between the actions of Hydaelyn and those of the Ascians, even as I know what the writers want me to believe, and I do not believe the fault or responsibility for that lies with me for not trying to find coherency among the chaos, but for them not creating a story with a solid enough foundation to make their intentions clear and acceptable to me.

I can see how it could read as a "pthy generalisation"...

I appreciate the clarification and apology, and would for the record like to state that is absolutely not the case. I've actually yet to come across anyone harbouring such a view (and kind of hope I don't, to be honest.)

[SannaR]

I can only speak for myself, but I can say that I mostly enjoyed the game very casually until Shadowbringers engaged the "literary analysis" part of my brain and I wanted to apply that way of (to me, extremely enjoyable) appreciating the work of a story that truly impressed me at the time with its nuance. Then Endwalker happened, and it was what it was.

Obviously, people shouting hateful vitriol, making personal attacks, and spitefully derailing altogether sucks, and I've had my fair share of heated clashes with the more toxic groups of Endwalker-dislikers myself. But I mean, is the angle I'm interested in okay to exist alongside yours? Can I critique Endwalker on its writing choices and execution and enjoy discussion on that level with others also interested in that (and no, you have no obligation to have any interest in it yourself), even if this subforum may have been, as you said, mostly filled with worldbuilding types? Can that be seen as a legitimate way of approaching the story without it being suggested I'm probably just mad my favorite dolls lost the Great Toybox Wars?

It's fine to enjoy it that way. Even when your literary analysis and or philosophical deep dive get used as a weapon by others to tell people to shut the heck up. Though I'm not sure how one is to have both happening at the same time. As I feel some of the more recent heated stuff is both groups getting upset with the other as one tries to explain why they enjoyed or didn't enjoy something from their lense and not understanding or maybe not having the right tools to grasp what the other is trying to say or approach from. Like how it is with everyone's "favorite" subject and how most of the worldbuilding people cam easily go yeah that was a crap thing to have happened but it had to happen cause otherwise the world the game takes place in can't exist. Or at least not in the way it currently is.

[SannaR]

Snips

Should both sides first response to either a liking or or a disliking of something not be heavily loaded with dickishness? Yes. Yet I'd hope you'd agree that both sides should also not try to justify said dickishness with how they have been treated in the past or present from outside areas having the same discussions.

As that normally is how threads or forums quickly devolve into entrenched toxic mud flings where even those who try to trudge out into no man's land in hopes to find solid footing in hopes it can become a fresh starting place also get the diskishness. Should both sides also respond to any disagreement as said person doing the disagreement just shot your dog? Heck no. Yet we all know that's happened more times than there than most would care to count. Or that just because a person in either camp might like or dislike something it shouldn't mean that is how they feel about the whole meal.

Let's take Brinne's wife as an example. For me I was just glad that she didn't have to give up her womb when she sought out more power as what tend to happen to women in fiction who seek to gain powerful magic or whatever have to loose the ability to have kids or a family and have to grow ice cold, cruel and heartless. Or that she secretly was the good one but Lahabreha imprisoned or as we found out killed her cause she got in the way of his ambition or was going to whistle blow on the shady stuff he was doing. How she ended up just comes off as meh for me. I didn't see her as a bad or good character from a writing standpoint, I guess. Meanwhile I still don't know how I feel about Lahabreha. Did I learn more about him? Yeah but for me at least he still felt kinda the same as to the one we had already met. Did Themis being part of the in the present part of the 3rd act bother me? A little cause I don't know how Athena pulled off whatever it is she did to pop him into the setting. But that didn't kill my enjoyment of the story or the fights. I think that if he was left out with when they placed most of the setting in for the 3rd act it'd feel strange to do so. And now I'm pretty sure I'm just rambling.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

Let's take Brinne's wife as an example. For me I was just glad that she didn't have to give up her womb when she sought out more power as what tend to happen to women in fiction who seek to gain powerful magic or whatever have to loose the ability to have kids or a family and have to grow ice cold, cruel and heartless.

whistles

This sure went places, fast. Not sure how to feel about this one, all honesty.

[Anonymoose]

This is monstrously long, and for that I apologise.

<butterfly meme pose> "Is this a challenge?" <laughs nervously in "this post is even longer">

When I <snip> join a thread and express my views therein <…> I assume it's a given that I'm responding in reference to the OP and what has already been posted

Lurina had the right of this one; I held off on doing Pandae until Saturday, and then the response was a general commentary on the thread topic (“On Themis 6.4”) with simultaneous regard to (A) the first 200 posts in the thread (B) things said on the same topic in other active threads, and (C) things said on the same topic on Discord/Twitter.

(A half-joking reply to your statement that you hope you don’t meet certain representatives of certain perspectives: Avoid Twitter.)

I was aiming to highlight that “jumping in here”-ness by opening with the “here are some loosely-organized thoughts regarding the big picture of where I see Themis 6.4 existing with regard to various perceptions/factions I’ve seen since that cutscene” thing. Results were admittedly mixed.

That would be the main reason it feels out of step with the current page of discussion. It’s not really aimed at any person or perspective in particular, but aggregates a few different observations from on the way through the first 200 posts, other active threads, and other media. I'm turning into a broken record, here, but if something said doesn’t represent one's personal experience, it probably wasn’t a reply to something that person said, but I will further adjust my approach to reduce the probability of, "That doesn’t line up with my experience at all, he must not be talking about me has completely failed to characterize me".

at least for me. It's like, you developed these two incredible characters over the course of an expansion and built up to such a moving and impactful ending for them both, why was there any need to undo all of that bring them back to have them agree with our course of action

This is one place that I feel that one’s preferred lore factions (and perceptions of whether the story does them justice) do impact the “literary analysis” effort, as well. I’ve also seen, for one (bad) example, individuals from among the radical anti-Ascian camp watch the same scene and conclude that the writers were “giving these irredeemable characters the kid gloves treatment just to appease their angry fans”.

The only thing our three perspectives could ever find common ground on is that the scene had high “campy anime energy” – which I think was probably deliberate, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Given the way I choose to enjoy the game, myself, I saw it quite differently. Where some see the point being that they come back to agree with our actions and/or vindicate Venat, and some see the point being that they rehabilitate irredeemable characters, I ended up seeing these scenes as the writers giving the ancients – the people who lost the most, who suffered the most, who were now very popular with the fanbase – the opportunity to actively contribute, on screen, as their pre-warped selves, to the defeat of the thing that ruined their lives. In some language clients, Hades himself struggles to understand why he’s there, joking that he’s the keystone holding up the conjunction and that he can’t be sure whether Venat is mocking him or offering him an olive branch. I saw it as the narrative saying, “if this is supposed to be about everyone coming together to resist the end, it’s going to be about everyone coming together to resist the end, cheesiness be damned”.

As an interesting aside, I also don't feel like a distinction existed between Emet-Selech prior to his defeat in Amaurot and after, and I kind of (very low level) feel like it's a little unfair to his character to suggest there was

I think my experience of the story forces me to see a (small) distinction (that intersects with a few others story beats), to some degree. First, from the “writing style” angle, there’s the running tendency of the story to give the defeated a moment of clarity in their final moments. This arguably manifests in a unique way for Emet-Selch’s case, as I think some (myself included) would argue that he’s not really having a moment of new perspective, but just dropping the act. I don’t think anyone would argue, at least, that Emet-Selch spent a good deal of his time in Shadowbringers being externally uncompromising regarding things about which he was internally conflicted.

But, second, I like to combine a bunch of different perspectives into a unique personal interpretation (which I am not claiming it’s anything more than a personal interpretation).

I like to bring together Emet-Selch’s self-confessed tempering, his externally rigidity, his internal conflictedness, Yoshida saying how he truly wanted to re-evaluate the sundered and was deeply disappointed in the outcome, and Elidibus’s assessment of his final request into a single personal interpretation that he was so bound by these circumstances that he (whether consciously or not) set impossible-to-meet expectations to ensure his failure to be convinced to act outside of his duty. For that reason, I think there is a distinction between pre- and post-fight: his willingness to acknowledge.

Elidibus seems to understand this as well, as he calls Emet-Selch’s acknowledgement a moment of weakness (which I like to see as an echoing of Emet-Selch describing his moment with his Garlean son with the same term). The Japanese version is interesting, from this perspective. (宿願を達成するまでの長き道のりの中で、誤った見識を持つ者がいれば、それを正すのも調停者の役目。/ It is the role of the Emissary to offer correction to those with misguided insight on the long road toward our cherished desire.) Elidibus seems to know that Emet-Selch had been struggling.

I have to say, I don't think the number of remaining Ancients is exactly relevant to the discussion

(Disclaimer: Joke) I mean, it is sort of interesting that the players on that stage and the people who would become the sundered are the 25% of ancients who would be the last people on the planet to sacrifice themselves.

a fair parameter to judge whether or not they deserved to live or be wiped from existence and memory by <…> by all accounts, they had made it through the Final Days and were on their way to recovery

This is where we diverge quite a bit in terms of interpretation/perception/perspective.

I don’t know that the story stakes a claim on specifically whether the ancients were a people that “deserved to be wiped out” as much as it stakes a claim that under the tightly-constrained realities of the facts on the ground, at the pivotal moment, the attempt to lead them to a course that didn’t end in Meteion was considered a failure and the time had come to make a choice between that or trusting the future potential of those who did find strength in sorrow and joy in darkness.

I can see support for a great variety of perspectives on the debate regarding, “Was Venat wrong that the situation was beyond repair?” but I think that to claim that “by all accounts” they were on the road to a stable, long-term recovery requires a leap from that point. Especially when the last words of their society in the narrative are, “We can't accept it! We won't accept it! It will be ours again─a world free of sorrow! O mighty Zodiark, god born of our boundless faith! We bid you hear our prayer! Accept this offering of lives, and deliver unto us the lives we once had." In my opinion, the path from there to, “They’d have been fine,” is less something that is agreed upon by all accounts and more something that is assumed by some based on an aggregate of other preferred meaning-making of other facets of the story. (You actually phrase this more concisely than I did in a moment.) If one comes into that conversation with a different set of assumptions/interpretations, that individual might argue that that interpretation exists in spite of, not in concert with, some of the other scenes and lines. (Stressing again: Just a personal opinion, no claims to the contrary.)

the basic point is that a lot of the fundamentals of the argument for and against Hydaelyn come down to impressions that are unavoidable simply because we don't have a lot to go on

Yes, this.

I do not think the story provides sufficient distinction between why, from a moral standpoint, there is much difference between the actions of Hydaelyn and those of the Ascians

Agreed – ish.

I think the last three posts add up to this, but might not if you weren’t already holding certain options from the “unavoidable impressions” bin. If one’s impression is that the game stakes a claim on the ancients as “deserving to be wiped from existence” and the sundering as “justified murder”, then I think the need for that distinction becomes a lot more important for that person.

From my perspective, we have the Ascians, who saw the worlds they were destroying as a temporary aberration to be corrected, and we have the ancients, whose souls already entered into a cycle of death and rebirth as different people before Venat split them into 14-shorter-lived copies doing the same thing much more rapidly because she understood it to be the only path towards Meteion’s defeat. Every faction saw these actions and motivations differently in-world. Are any of those perceptions completely, rigidly right or wrong? Are we, the players, really meant to accept one in-world stance wholesale because of how that faction fared in the writing? I think that would be uncharacteristic of the game, and reflect more on the personal perceptions and assumptions and interpretations and impressions that one comes into the conversation with. I have my own perceptions of that, but I think they're influenced by who I ally with more than what is most moral or best defended by the writing.

And the real tragedy there, in my opinion, is how difficult that last conversation is to have at all without someone, at some point, just whipping out the g-word and defining the entire narrative based on an uncompromisingly rigid application of that vocabulary in a way that precludes engaging with the way the writing characterizes various parties’ perspectives of themselves and others in a meaningful manner, derailing that discussion in perpetuity.