Zodiark's Codex entry what do we think about it?

[Cleretic]

I think it's inherently a little tacky to compare the scenario for a fantasy game to anything serious in reality, which is why I didn't say anything even sorta-specific until someone else brought it up and why I qualified my statement so much. FFXIV is a game for teenagers. It's fundamentally not serious. And I do want to clarify that any sort of direct equation of the Ancients to indigenous people is obviously stupid, since their situation is pure fantasy from toe to tip - the start and end of it is the rhetorical devices used by the game (and the players, if only by uncomfortable extension) to justify their deaths post-hoc.

Yeah, something I've generally noticed and become conscious of with the whole Ancient storyline is people piling WAY more meaning and scrutiny onto this singular part of the game's story than it was ever intended to be able to carry. As a result, the entire discussion just... warps and deforms under the weight. Sometimes it's really good to step back and center yourself on what we're actually discussing and the characters and structure in play.

And that is that the Ancient story is ultimately a high-concept mythological origin story, essentially 'this world's fall and rebirth', told in a way that leaves crucial actors in it still on the table for the rest of the story. Around that story it's openly acknowledged that neither side of the conflict was objectively morally right at the time, and open to interpretation as to who did right; however, as characters in that part of the story appeared in other parts of the story later in that story, we do have context that one side of that conflict goes on to do terrible things, while the other largely stays out and lets things come to pass in favor of playing the long game (which you could make a case is 'evil through inaction'). Nobody on either side regrets their part in what happens, although some may lament it.

There is room for complexity and subtlety in this, but it's not in the broad events, which by the end is played pretty big and broad even if we got information out of order; rather, it's in the characters. Emet-Selch is a man who never tells the whole truth--likely even to himself--and whose every word on the subject is constantly shifting in bias and shaped truths, even if he never says anything that's technically 'wrong'. Similarly, Venat-as-Hydaelyn also tells a very shaped and biased version of the truth, although rather than inundating us with information and conveniently leaving out pieces, she instead only puts what's important forward as inscrutable monologues and then hides from any questioning or analysis. But even those aren't exactly very quiet elements; in fact, huge parts of how we read the Ancient story comes from when the characters openly acknowledge that, and investigating for themselves rather than just sticking to what they've been told; that's how we got to Anamnesis, Elpis, and debatably Pandaemonium. (I think there's also something to be said that both Emet and Venat had a bit of a 'leak' in the form of an old spectral friend that doesn't follow their playbook.)

Over all the time of this forum constantly relitigating this argument, and trying to find or entirely invent new evidence or angles to find some other resolution for that initial conflict, can often lead to losing what the game actually put forward. As you said, it's fundamentally not serious, and it saves its complexities for how characters feel rather than what they did.

...it's also, and this should also be something we remind ourselves of, only part of a larger story. The game isn't about how the Ancients faced existential dread that forced their society to make difficult choices; it's about people in the Seventh Astral Era living their lives, trying to make their world better, solving as many problems as they can find, and occasionally fishing off a bridge into sand dunes at very weird hours trying to catch a malicious egg. The game didn't have much time to give to this story, so as a result, there's not exactly volumes to write about it, there's only so much room for nuance, detail and complexity. The Ancient story is hardly unique in this, either; if in some alternate universe this forum was instead spending all this time arguing about the legitimacy of the Hannish government, it would also be facing this problem.

[MikkoAkure]

It didn't feel appropriate to put it in those exact terms myself, but, well. I definitely do think there's sometimes a settler-colonialist undertone in the way that the playerbase talks about the Ancients at times. "They were doomed and already dying out anyway", "their culture was rotten so they had it coming" "They were intrinsically defective and so had to be swept away to bring about a prosperous future" are all rhetorical beats that I've heard a lot (though more "in the wild" in Reddit or on youtube comments than here) and evoke some uncomfortable grandpa conversations.

To be clear, I don't think it's bigoted to express those sort of sentiments in this context; if anything it's the fault of the writers for making those ideas part of the setting in the first place. Players cannot be blamed for correctly understanding a story's intent, even if that intent is, well, a little careless.

But it does make me kinda uneasy.

The problem with the Ancients is that they didn't exist at all when the setting was originally created.

Then the writers tried shoehorning something into a setting's background that wasn't there before, tried to make them empathetic despite the only ones we know being irredeemable bad guys, but at the same time tried to come up with a reason for the game's original world to survive over theirs. The writers couldn't balance all of those things together and bit off more than they could chew.

People could say that the fact we're still talking about it today means that it's "good writing" but the same could be said about clumsy writing where you don't know what the writers are trying to say and there's too many mixed messages and metaphors.

That all said, I went into ShB and EW supporting the pro-Hydaelyn narrative thinking that's the angle I'm 95% sure the writers wanted to take, considering all the focus Venat/Hydaelyn got and obvious cues for the WoL and main characters being on their side. The writers just seemed to fumble making everyone feel that way while trying to juggle everything else I guess. If they made Zodiark's godhood more of a terrifying prospect, or the Stomp and the subsequent shattering of the Source being accidental or at least more of a "last resort" type of deal than an intention, I think that would've had more, but not all on the same page.

[Brinne]

snip

I think this perspective - focusing on the awkward writing decisions and process that led us to a rather uncomfortable place - is also fair, and IIRC, I’ve had some good exchanges with you, Mikko, on the more Doylist perspective of the writers accidentally stepping on a bunch of Ancient and Hydaelyn-related rakes.

I will say, too, that in the Shadowbringers era, while I felt strongly about the overtones at the time that the Final Days were a senseless tragedy the Ancients never deserved, when it came to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark conflict, under the assumption that the Sundering and annihilation of the Ancients must have been an accident, Hydaelyn seemed pretty clearly more sympathetic and in the right (although basically lying and covering up history after the fact was not great, an interesting gray tinge to the narrative would be welcome too.)

Endwalker’s reveals and how we were obviously being asked to feel about them were subsequently, um, baffling. And, not going to lie, pretty depressing.

[Yuella]

Endwalker’s reveals and how we were obviously being asked to feel about them were subsequently, um, baffling. And, not going to lie, pretty depressing.

I think we're supposed to agree that the ancients' culture was so static and stagnant that sundering and remaking the world was the only way forward but they made the mistake of making Emet-Selch TOO sympathetic in Shadowbringers, causing some players to defend the ancients' lifestyle

[Lyth]

There's nothing wrong with exploring a theme that has real world relevance in the context of fiction. But you do have an obligation to do apply the principles consistently.

I can see why people might want to talk about imperialism and colonialism in the context of the story lens. It's rather difficult to do this in the context of the World Unsundered, because most evidence we've seen points in favor of Amaurot being homogenous both in culture and in values.

You could argue that Amaurot's worldview carries an element of imperial detachment towards 'the provinces', as seen in both Debate and Discourse and the Volcano stories. But there's not a whole lot to go on outside of this, because the concept of 'other peoples' within the World Unsundered isn't really explored. The Sundering is definitely a unusual choice to talk about Colonialism, however. This is an act performed by a group of Amaurotines against their own government. It's a coup to take back political control. It's internal politics.

If anything, if colonialism was something that you were interested in engaging with, you'd be more likely to be talking about the actions of the Convocation across the past twelve-thousand years, where they pit nations against nations to divide and conquer, and set up puppet dictatorships like Allag and Garlemald to establish genuine colonial rule, suppress local values, and forcibly eradicate local religious practices using military force, all while maintaining a dehumanizing ideology that the Unsundered are merely 'twisted, malformed creatures' that are 'not truly alive'.

The discussion around genocide is another such example. Unfortunately, prior to Pandaemonium, Elidibus' most memorable moment involved him being chastised (by one of the game's most despicable villains, no less) for attempting to use chemical weaponry to eradicate both his own puppet state and our people in a single blow. It's probably Elidibus' worst moment, having literally just been chased out of Zenos' body by a standard imperial foot soldier in what amounts to the very pinnacle of cowardice.

And that's just the tip of the iceburg. Do we zero in on Venat's decision as 'cultural erasure', when her group attempts to put an end to the Convocation's authoritarian mandate from within her own nation? Her group forcibly erased the practice of involuntary human sacrifices, sure. You could point fingers at that, but it also raises the question whether all successful revolutions constitute 'erasure' of the value system of the old ousted dictatorship. And there's the bigger question of why you would not feel even more deeply uncomfortable around the mass murder of seven different worlds under Emet's leadership. It's all well and good to say that we should 'remember that he once lived', but who will remember the people of the Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth, Twelfth, and Thirteenth reflections? There are so many cultures that the Convocation eradicated that we'll never even get to learn about now, and that's the saddest part.

I don't think that you need to 'feel bad' for liking any of the Amaurotine characters. Part of the point of stories is that it lets us explore ideas. But it seems like a lot of the discussions around these themes come across as a 'gotcha' in retaliation for the playerbase expressing genuine discomfort with the Convocation's actions historically across the past five expansions. And you can't really blame that for happening, because the Ascians were designed as one dimensional villains who were evil for the sake of being evil in ARR and Heavensward. Ishikawa trying to retrospectively salvage their characters doesn't change any of that.

It doesn't really help that none of this is particularly new ground, and it seems more a way of indirectly letting out frustration after every patch over the writers constructing the story the way that they want to. I'm not at all surprised that they want to move away from Amaurot, because it by and large seems to stifle more interesting discussion.

[Roselin]

Oh I am so sorry! I wasn't trying to bait! English is neither my first nor second language, but actually my fourth so I am not always the best at phrasing my intent. Sincere apologies I did not mean for my comment to come across that way.
Please let me try to rephrase. Some of the specific rhetoric used to defend the sundering is rhetoric that is racially loaded due to real life history. I did not mean to say the playerbase was racist, but that rather some of the rhetoric used does have some uncomfortable racial undertones to me.

I do not think people are being intentionally malicious for saying things like this, which is why I made that post, because I thought the playerbase wasn't intentionally racist and thus some people might've wanted to know the history and connotations of some of the rhetoric used here.

People are not racist for liking Venat, for disliking the ancients, for using these arguments, or any such things. I was merely trying to convey that some of this rhetoric has an unfortunate connotation and history.

Again I am so very sorry, I was not intending to call you racist, I just chose words poorly because of my inability to properly phrase myself, that is entirely my mistake and I will try to phrase myself better from now on.

Also it is my first post because I have been scared of posting for a long time due to my poor ability to phrase my intent, I was afraid people would read malice into anything I would try to write so I have just been lurking and thinking about these things to myself for a while. It seems I was correct about my language skills being bad enough to hurt people...

[Brinne]

Also it is my first post because I have been scared of posting for a long time due to my poor ability to phrase my intent, I was afraid people would read malice into anything I would try to write so I have just been lurking and thinking about these things to myself for a while. It seems I was correct about my language skills being bad enough to hurt people...

Don’t worry about it, Roselin. Your post was very clear, and the overall direction of the discussion was trending that way anyway. Some longtime posters - including myself at times (though, do I count as a longtime poster by now? A deeply harrowing thought) can lean towards reflexive cynicism due to prior encounters with bad faith posters. It has nothing to do with you.

Thank you again for putting forth your thoughts. It was really nice to read someone putting (a well-phrased, for the record) voice to a perspective I’ve quietly mulled over for some time now, but never felt was my place to really put forth in these sometimes fraught discussions, either.

[RyuDragnier]

Oh I am so sorry! I wasn't trying to bait! English is neither my first nor second language, but actually my fourth so I am not always the best at phrasing my intent. Sincere apologies I did not mean for my comment to come across that way.
Please let me try to rephrase. Some of the specific rhetoric used to defend the sundering is rhetoric that is racially loaded due to real life history. I did not mean to say the playerbase was racist, but that rather some of the rhetoric used does have some uncomfortable racial undertones to me.

I do not think people are being intentionally malicious for saying things like this, which is why I made that post, because I thought the playerbase wasn't intentionally racist and thus some people might've wanted to know the history and connotations of some of the rhetoric used here.

People are not racist for liking Venat, for disliking the ancients, for using these arguments, or any such things. I was merely trying to convey that some of this rhetoric has an unfortunate connotation and history.

Again I am so very sorry, I was not intending to call you racist, I just chose words poorly because of my inability to properly phrase myself, that is entirely my mistake and I will try to phrase myself better from now on.

Also it is my first post because I have been scared of posting for a long time due to my poor ability to phrase my intent, I was afraid people would read malice into anything I would try to write so I have just been lurking and thinking about these things to myself for a while. It seems I was correct about my language skills being bad enough to hurt people...

Thanks for clarifying. The rhetoric is definitely leaning that way towards being colonialism (again, thanks for pointing that out Lurina), and is definitely phrasing we need to work on. Because I feel like a lot of the issues still fall back to the old arguments of ShB, and how EW just seemed to make those arguments worse. Man those arguments back then were...oof.

[Cleretic]

God damnit, and now we've introduced The G Word into this. This is exactly what I was referring to. I hate when people try to drag this in (and yes, I do regret using it myself for this in the past), because it does exactly what I was talking about, it breaks and warps the discussion into something that the subject matter was never intended to even remotely resemble.

Genocide is a very real crime and concept. It is, perhaps, the greatest of real crimes, not just in terms of scale, but in terms of the scars that current, living populations still bear. As a result, it holds not just a dictionary and 'criminal court' definition, but a very real cultural one, bearing very deep meaning and representing real, still-extant wounds. Hell, the term itself is part of that legacy; it was coined because there wasn't even a word to describe what happened to the Armenian people or in the Holocaust, no crime existing to charge them of.

Applying it to fake, insane fantasy nonsense like the Sundering or the Calamities, things that aren't even intended to be anything heavier than 'Noah's Flood if God felt bad about it', does nothing but cheapen and damage both the term and every single person and concept involved in the discussion, including the word itself.

• For the writers, the intention and ideas of the story is thrown out the window in favor of 'Who Did The Worst War Crime'; we're basically not meaningfully discussing the story as it was written anymore.
• For the characters themselves (Venat and the Ascians most of all), their entire arc has been flattened because what was supposed to be very abstract, indescribable actions that are intentionally impossible to judge on a human scale, and the character arcs of those involved, are now suddenly reduced to 'plain villainy'.
• For the people trying to discuss the subject as it was actually given to us, it's now all but impossible to actually talk about it without the conversation getting stomped all over with blind vilification.
• And for the term itself, suddenly we're associating a word intended to describe awful but realistic human crimes with the single least realistic, least human action I can even think of; something that on a baseline level can't even happen to humans. We've demeaned it to the point we can't use it properly. It's just used as a cudgel against people who disagree about a meaningless debate.

I'm not comfortable with saying any part of these effects are 'the worst part', because to do so would feel insulting; just as forum arguments about a weird fantasy concept in a video game are a poor fit for the term, so too is describing any of that argument's effects as 'worst' when the scale in any way includes the act itself. But I will say that this part of the ongoing argument has stifled my own ability to talk about the game's lore here, because there are parts where it's an appropriate term.

I don't feel like I can talk about the most interesting part of Sil'dih's variant dungeon to me. I loved that dungeon, and a big part was its exploration of what happened to Sil'dih, both in events and in people's response. Sil'dih was subject to a genocide, using recognizably human language, techniques, and tools; it was essentially a heightened version of what we'd know as early biological warfare, including the aftermath, where the culprits just... paved over the people they killed, and only generations later did anyone find the truth enough to reflect on it. I'd very much like to discuss this point and how well they wrote it, with the proper terms and gravitas.

But I can't. Because I know exactly what the discussion will turn into, and how quickly that initial intention will be lost in it.

We should be arguing about that. EW trying to spin a "be yourself and people will love you" narrative around an eternal shadow dictator who just keeps on at it afterwards was the second weirdest part of the plot.

I'd love to have this conversation, but this thread wouldn't be the right place even if we were still on the original topic. (For the record, my view is 'conceptually I disagree with it, and I still have concerns, but he's pulling it off and I'm not one to argue with results'.)