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Lord_Magmar posted:Okay so I’ve had a thought about something from Stormblood based on information from the fifth zone. Does Dynamis explains what is going on with the Four Lords. They build up emotional baggage over their long lives until it overflows. Which makes them super powerful, and turn into big terrifying monsters. Dynames basically explains all the "how are emotions overpowering RAW AETHERIC POWER" stuff.
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Dec 8, 2021 06:42
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Managed to aaaaalmost finish before maintenance hit. Just had the final quest turn-in to go, in the post credits are the level 90 dungeon stories interesting enough I should still stay out of this thread until I play them or are they kind of whatever, like most dungeon stories
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Dec 8, 2021 07:03
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cheetah7071 posted:Managed to aaaaalmost finish before maintenance hit. Just had the final quest turn-in to go, in the post credits One's amusing if not super interesting, the other is whatever.
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Dec 8, 2021 07:07
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I will welcome myself to this thread, then
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Dec 8, 2021 07:08
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cheetah7071 posted:Managed to aaaaalmost finish before maintenance hit. Just had the final quest turn-in to go, in the post credits They don't really have much story significance like the Twinning but they are both good dungeons.
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Dec 8, 2021 07:18
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I guess we're still using spoiler tags in here? Here's a big pile of thoughts The game is drat good, obviously. I don't think it ever quite manages the sheer emotional high of fighting Emet-Selch at the end of ShB, but it comes drat close, over and over and over. The sheer quantity of amazing scenes is very high, even if I don't think it quite takes the crown for best scene in the entire game. Labyrinthos kind of sucks, unfortunately. Garlemald probably would have been good if I wasn't doing the side quests but holy moly the aetheryte situation is super dire if you don't just beeline the msq. The rest of the game was varying amounts of great. The obvious highlight was of course Elpis. I smiled so much my fave hurt in that zone. And my absolute favorite bit of the entire expansion was right at the end, where it shows Venat becoming Hydaelyn. Absolutely stellar. Almost in contradiction to that, I was actually a bit deflated at the end when Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus showed up again. They're dead, let them be dead. I think the scene would have flowed much better if the WoL's Elpis flower had stayed whole throughout the expansion and you just, gave it to Meteion. Took the wind out of my sails a bit and I didn't get it back until Soken's banger of a final boss theme re-awakened me. To my knowledge, it's still a mystery why Emet-Selch and Lahabrea weren't sundered. Perhaps Pandaemonium will tie up that loose end. And perhaps it will explain why Venat is such a cryptic weirdo who doesn't tell you jack poo poo even when she knows exactly what you need to do the whole time and the fate of Etheirys is on the line.
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Dec 8, 2021 07:24
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Both 90 dungeons are amazing, imo.
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Dec 8, 2021 07:26
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I bet a bunch of people are mad at the final sequence but I loved the Zenos duel. He's just such an interesting alternate take on the core themes of the expansion. That there's no grand meaning, but you just proceed forward, day by day, as best as you can, to make your own way through life. And sometimes that produces suffering but sometimes it produces joy. Like obviously he's not a forgivable person and a proper redemption arc would have been ridiculous, but I'm glad that, for at least the last five minutes of his life, he became a person who could reach out to you, as a friend, like a normal person, to ask for his duel to the death instead of demanding it with a genocide.
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Dec 8, 2021 07:31
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Were we supposed to recognize Hermes when he takes off his mask? The WoL does a shocked expression when his face is revealed, and I wasn't sure if it was referring to some old character we've met in the other expansions, or if the WoL was just shocked because the mask came off. 
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Dec 8, 2021 07:38
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Clarste posted:Both 90 dungeons are amazing, imo.
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Dec 8, 2021 07:38
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Happy Blue Cow posted:Were we supposed to recognize Hermes when he takes off his mask? The WoL does a shocked expression when his face is revealed, and I wasn't sure if it was referring to some old character we've met in the other expansions, or if the WoL was just shocked because the mask came off. I think they're just shocked the masked came off, Hermes doesn't look like anyone. It would be weird if he did, since Asahi didn't actually have his soul and Amon always wore a mask.
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Dec 8, 2021 07:42
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Begemot posted:I think they're just shocked the masked came off, Hermes doesn't look like anyone. It would be weird if he did, since Asahi didn't actually have his soul and Amon always wore a mask. Sharing a soul doesn't even make people look the same. Ardbert and the WoL share a soul and aren't even necessarily the same species
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Dec 8, 2021 07:44
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cheetah7071 posted:I bet a bunch of people are mad at the final sequence but I loved the Zenos duel. He's just such an interesting alternate take on the core themes of the expansion. That there's no grand meaning, but you just proceed forward, day by day, as best as you can, to make your own way through life. And sometimes that produces suffering but sometimes it produces joy. Like obviously he's not a forgivable person and a proper redemption arc would have been ridiculous, but I'm glad that, for at least the last five minutes of his life, he became a person who could reach out to you, as a friend, like a normal person, to ask for his duel to the death instead of demanding it with a genocide. Completely agreed. It's extremely thematically appropriate that the final battle once despair is defeated is between, essentially, two different existential conclusions formed from the lack of inherent meaning: a life of self-satisfaction versus a life of selfless service.
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Dec 8, 2021 07:55
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It just occurred to me that of all the side characters to be rounded up, Ardbert doesn't appear once. Being dead didn't stop a dozen other characters from showing up, we even got freaking Cape Westwind (Hard), where the heck is he
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Dec 8, 2021 07:57
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cheetah7071 posted:I bet a bunch of people are mad at the final sequence but I loved the Zenos duel. He's just such an interesting alternate take on the core themes of the expansion. That there's no grand meaning, but you just proceed forward, day by day, as best as you can, to make your own way through life. And sometimes that produces suffering but sometimes it produces joy. Like obviously he's not a forgivable person and a proper redemption arc would have been ridiculous, but I'm glad that, for at least the last five minutes of his life, he became a person who could reach out to you, as a friend, like a normal person, to ask for his duel to the death instead of demanding it with a genocide. Yeah. Zenos is a monster, but for a moment, he has peace, and something warm, and we can hope that he enjoyed it. Because he did save us when all hope was lost. cheetah7071 posted:It just occurred to me that of all the side characters to be rounded up, Ardbert doesn't appear once. Being dead didn't stop a dozen other characters from showing up, we even got freaking Cape Westwind (Hard), where the heck is he Inside us. And also, of course, he does appear, in the final "voice from the past" section, like all the others you've loved who are with you in spirit.
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Dec 8, 2021 08:00
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Ending spoilers: I liked the fight with Zenos but I hope he stays dead.
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Dec 8, 2021 08:00
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cheetah7071 posted:It just occurred to me that of all the side characters to be rounded up, Ardbert doesn't appear once. Being dead didn't stop a dozen other characters from showing up, we even got freaking Cape Westwind (Hard), where the heck is he Ardbert is stored in the wol
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Dec 8, 2021 08:01
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Flavahbeast posted:Ardbert is stored in the wol Lmao
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Dec 8, 2021 08:02
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cheetah7071 posted:I guess we're still using spoiler tags in here? Here's a big pile of thoughts This was weird to me as well. It's not outright stated, but my assumption is that she doesn't reveal her knowledge about the cause of the Final Days to you (or anyone else) because she'd then be risking altering the timeline between her time and the WoL's in a unpredictable way. She has to wait until the WoL goes to Elpis and completes the time loop (her line about "timelines converging") before she can talk about it, knowing that the past is now "set".
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Dec 8, 2021 08:25
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related to the 4th zone but not related to the actual plot of Endwalker. Does reveal what the zone IS though, obviously! The moon gives us a pretty good look at what is, based on geographical knowledge previously mentioned, almost certainly "The New World". 
Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Dec 8, 2021 |
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Dec 8, 2021 10:07
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I finished Endwalker yesterday. I don't normally post here, but I feel like my take on it is pretty unpopular with the people I normally talk about it with casually, so I'll scream a bit into the void here. Overall, I appreciated what the writers were going for with the central message of finding meaning in life despite it being, fundamentally, pretty cruel and awful in a way that's never going to go away. I feel like a lot of pop-media which does the whole "life sucks, ergo why live" hope vs. nihilism thing will ultimately rely on there being some fundamental good to life that the characters merely have to discover, or try to create a definitive answer to the question that comes across as a little ingenuine. The writing being absolutely unabashed about the fact that everything you accomplish will ultimately end in meaningless tragedy and pain, and there's nothing to assure you'll even get catharsis along the way, yet still asserting there's value to life and pursuing the things one loves even in vain - well, it's hard to put into words, but it hit the right note for me when it comes to that sort of story where I didn't feel condescended to. The character writing and setting-building was also incredible overall, Elpis and the final area being highlights in that respect, even if Meteion kinda came outta nowhere in the vein of old-FF final bosses. However, there was an aspect to the fundamental theme that I really disagreed with, and as I result I've kinda walked away from the experience with mixed feelings... Which is the way it kinda moralizes about how it's bad to be too prosperous/happy/free of strife. It's not the first time the trope has come up in FFXIV - a critical part of the Allagan backstory has always been that their society became too prosperous and "decadent" from hundreds of years of peace, which ultimately made them ambivalent to suffering and bloodthirsty - but it's only really in this expansion that it felt like it took center stage, both with the Unsundered civilization, the Ea, and the final part of the last dungeon. Plus a bunch of other little references to the concept sprinkled around through the scenario. Particularly, I struggled with the narrative portraying Venat/Hydaelyn's judgement of humanity (and subsequent, uh, identity-murder and ultimately literal murder of everyone on the planet) as an unambiguously good deed, and pretty much every single character lionizing her and her "sacrifice". Like, sure, the ancient's culture (or at least Amaurot's culture, since we never see the other civilizations) was callous in how it treated other forms of life, and that was obviously due in part to their relative power and longevity. But the writing hammered in the point that they weren't just wrong for wanting to reclaim their paradise through dubious ends, they were wrong to want to live without suffering no matter what. And thus having suffering inflicted on them, forcing them to die young and be miserable, is treated by the narrative as a good thing and a point of spiritual growth for mankind. They went as far as baking that idea into their setting mechanics - if you're made of too much Aether, too healthy and happy, you are spiritually incapable of controlling the empathy-based magic the universe is made of. Likewise, the Ea eliminated strife and pain and became miserable and self-loathing. The civilization at the end of Dead End created a perfect world and, according to the log you find in the dungeon, found life empty as a result and all decided to kill themselves. So the message that it seemed like they wanted to deliver wasn't "to live is to suffer and you must accept that," but rather "to be spiritually healthy, one must suffer, and to seek the elimination of suffering is actively bad". And like. What? Isn't the whole point of going around doing hero stuff to minimize suffering? Is the narrative saying that there is a Goldilocks threshold we're aiming for here, where afterwards we'd need to switch to making life worse for people for their own good, like Venat did? It's just such a weird conceit at its core. Like, in real life, the people I know who are the most constructive and empathetic, broadly speaking, are those who didn't go through too much poo poo during the critical parts of their lives - who've had the material and emotional resources around them to avoid trauma. To mature into a decent, stable person requires being challenged and exposed to the struggles of others, but both of those can happen without harm to oneself. Far from being cruel or nihilistic, societies which do the best at supporting their members and eliminating strife as much as possible tend to produce the most mentally-healthy, caring people. So I don't understand what the writers were trying to convey. The idea it seemed to be low-key pushing seemed dissonant and gross to me, that it's okay to hurt others if it'll help them grow/learn the right lessons/it's for their "own good". And people who want to achieve fundamental change in terms of averting strife are pathetic and short-sighted... One line in the script, which I unfortunately can no longer remember the context of, explicitly says something along the lines of "trying to perfect society is self-defeating". There's something cult-ish about that sentiment, or at least the way it was delivered, which really weirded me out. I dunno, I'm probably hyper-fixating on something pretty minor, or maybe reading to much into it, but that was my gut response. Again, overall, I still liked it a lot. PoorWeather fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Dec 8, 2021 |
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Dec 8, 2021 10:46
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cute bird girl I wonder what she's about- oh. oh dear.
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Dec 8, 2021 12:30
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cheetah7071 posted:I bet a bunch of people are mad at the final sequence but I loved the Zenos duel. He's just such an interesting alternate take on the core themes of the expansion. That there's no grand meaning, but you just proceed forward, day by day, as best as you can, to make your own way through life. And sometimes that produces suffering but sometimes it produces joy. Like obviously he's not a forgivable person and a proper redemption arc would have been ridiculous, but I'm glad that, for at least the last five minutes of his life, he became a person who could reach out to you, as a friend, like a normal person, to ask for his duel to the death instead of demanding it with a genocide. asking for a duel to the death, like a normal person thread title imo
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Dec 8, 2021 13:03
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PoorWeather posted:I dunno, I'm probably hyper-fixating on something pretty minor, or maybe reading to much into it, but that was my gut response. Again, overall, I still liked it a lot. Nah, it's bullshit and you're right to pick up on it. People have been coping with pain by assuring themselves that it makes them stronger in some nebulous sense from the year dot and sour-grapeing at the idea that a world where suffering is minimised is possible/desirable for just as long. All very convenient for those who profit from the suffering of others in the hear-and-now of course.
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Dec 8, 2021 13:30
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If anyone told me before the expansion that Asahi actually comes back from the dead just to beat up Fandaniel for messing around with his body, I'd have called them a troll. Lol
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Dec 8, 2021 13:58
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double posted
Endorph fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Dec 8, 2021 |
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Dec 8, 2021 13:59
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ZeusJupitar posted:Nah, it's bullshit and you're right to pick up on it. People have been coping with pain by assuring themselves that it makes them stronger in some nebulous sense from the year dot and sour-grapeing at the idea that a world where suffering is minimised is possible/desirable for just as long. All very convenient for those who profit from the suffering of others in the hear-and-now of course. no, not really, it's talking about being human. they aren't talking about the idea that suffering must be enforced or that you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but the idea that artificially eliminating literally any sources of pain or conflict would create a stagnant world, as undesirable as one that's constant suffering. the human experience needs to have highs and lows. thats not saying that therefore we cant have medicare for all, but that some amount of heartache is good for the soul. like you point out that the magic is empathy-based and. yeah. of course people who haven't experienced any real hardship in their life can't have empathy for the suffering of others. it can be different levels and different amounts, but if youve never suffered in your life, then of course you cant understand someone else's suffering. you used the word 'minimized' here, not 'completely magically eliminated.' its good to have a world where people can live long, healthy lives. its bad to have a world where people literally never die. its good to have a world where people have access to resources to help them with social conflict or misunderstandings. its bad to have a world where social conflict literally cannot happen because nobody has developed enough emotions or world view for it. also not gonna lie, quote:It's just such a weird conceit at its core. Like, in real life, the people I know who are the most constructive and empathetic, broadly speaking, are those who didn't go through too much poo poo during the critical parts of their lives - who've had the material and emotional resources around them to avoid trauma. To mature into a decent, stable person requires being challenged and exposed to the struggles of others, but both of those can happen without harm to oneself. Far from being cruel or nihilistic, societies which do the best at supporting their members and eliminating strife as much as possible tend to produce the most mentally-healthy, caring people. this bit has insane homeschooled energy lol. like no, the people in real life you know who are the most empathetic arent the people who dont have trauma. for a fun game imagine reading this post aloud to anyone you know who does have trauma. i can get having some misgivings with the 'trauma makes you stronger' plot beat because i have seen it mishandled, but gently caress off with that. Endorph fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Dec 8, 2021 |
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Dec 8, 2021 14:01
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Endorph posted:no, not really, it's talking about being human. they aren't talking about the idea that suffering must be enforced or that you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but the idea that artificially eliminating literally any sources of pain or conflict would create a stagnant world, as undesirable as one that's constant suffering. the human experience needs to have highs and lows. thats not saying that therefore we cant have medicare for all, but that some amount of heartache is good for the soul. I don't really doubt the writer's motives at all, but pontificating about how hypothetical ideal worlds would be bad actually while we live in a world where children freeze in the snow always comes across as a bit self indulgent and PoorWeather is right to pick up on it.
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Dec 8, 2021 14:14
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ZeusJupitar posted:I don't really doubt the writer's motives at all, but pontificating about how hypothetical ideal worlds would be bad actually while we live in a world where children freeze in the snow always comes across as a bit self indulgent and PoorWeather is right to pick up on it.
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Dec 8, 2021 14:16
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Post zone 5, not a huge fan of the 11th hour villain reveal. dungeon with ES, hythlo and venat was cool though. idk if it's because it's late or what but I'm also not really following what happened with venat. she rejected the amarautians wanting to return to the gif times and was like "life sucks deal with it"?
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Dec 8, 2021 14:21
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Endorph posted:this bit has insane homeschooled energy lol. like no, the people in real life you know who are the most empathetic arent the people who dont have trauma. for a fun game imagine reading this post aloud to anyone you know who does have trauma. i can get having some misgivings with the 'trauma makes you stronger' plot beat because i have seen it mishandled, but gently caress off with that. I was gonna write a longer response before your edit, but this is honestly a really presumptuous and mean-spirited thing to say to someone in response to them sharing their thoughts about a video game. My perspective on EW, and particularly being upset about it portraying inflicting suffering on others as virtuous, comes largely from my own experiences with grief and physical disability. I qualified my post by saying broadly-speaking, because yeah, I am close with people who have been through a lot of stuff and come out as kinder, genuinely better people at the other end. I've met far more who've been through a lot of a stuff and just been broken by it in one sense or another, including both of my parents and several former friends. Maybe that's not the case for you, but I really don't know what you hoped to accomplish in saying this. PoorWeather fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Dec 8, 2021 |
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Dec 8, 2021 14:25
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Zeruel posted:Post zone 5, not a huge fan of the 11th hour villain reveal. dungeon with ES, hythlo and venat was cool though. Her point was that trying to sacrifice lives to get back to the good ol' days is fruitless and will only lead to more suffering, rather than accepting that those days are gone and learning to live with the current situation and its limitations.
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Dec 8, 2021 14:28
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PoorWeather posted:I was gonna write a longer response before your edit, but this is honestly a really presumptuous and mean-spirited thing to say to someone in response to them sharing their thoughts about a video game. My perspective on EW, and particularly being upset about it portraying inflicting suffering on others as virtuous, comes largely from my own experiences with grief and physical disability. I qualified my post by saying broadly-speaking, because yeah, I am close with people who have been through a lot of stuff and come out as kinder, genuinely better people at the other end. I've met far more who've been through a lot of a poo poo and just been broken by it in one sense or another, including both of my parents and several former friends.
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Dec 8, 2021 14:31
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I didn't read the game's themes nearly that cynically. (Full MSQ spoilers below) Look at it in the context of everything else that happens. The story celebrates the Warrior of Light's and the Scions' achievements in bringing the people of Eorzea and Etheirys as a whole together despite their differences--the peace forged between people and dragons is a recurring element in Endwalker, and we see the start of that again with the people of countries formerly subjugated by Garlemald giving aid to Garlean refugees. Meanwhile, one of the major plot beats involves convincing people to reject the cynical option--fleeing Etheirys, leaving the "beast tribe" peoples behind to die, in hopes of finding a new home in a universe that we later learn is dying an accelerated death due to the same force that threatens Etheirys--in favor of tackling the problem at its source. The problem with the Ea wasn't that they achieved immortality. It was that they became obsessed with permanence, with everything lasting forever, and then discovered the concept of entropy, forcing them to realize that every single thing they have achieved will, no matter what, one day be lost. Change was forced back onto them and by that point they couldn't accept it. The problem with Amaurot wasn't that they were too happy--it's that their power blinded them to the suffering that was going on around them. They were blind to the suffering they inflicted on the life around them, and they were also blind to the fact that some of them, like Hermes, weren't blissful in their mastery over their world. The Ancients weren't evil or anything, they were doing their best to make what they saw to be a perfect world, but they didn't see the flaws in their own systems. The commonality between all of this is that it's all about working to create a better world, not magicking away all of your problems and then sitting back in bliss, blind to the fact that you haven't actually solved everything. To boil it down to one sentence, I think Hydaelyn's whole idea is like... "wishing for a perfect world gets in the way of building a better world." Something like that. I suppose some people might still see that as unacceptably cynical, but I'm not sure. PoorWeather posted:They went as far as baking that idea into their setting mechanics - if you're made of too much Aether, too healthy and happy, you are spiritually incapable of controlling the empathy-based magic the universe is made of. I think you're reading the metaphor much differently than I am here. For me, the metaphor with aether opposing dynamis is about power, not happiness or health. Having a ton of aether, as we see in Elpis, means you're very, very powerful, but it also means you might not see the suffering of those weaker than you as clearly. Zeruel posted:idk if it's because it's late or what but I'm also not really following what happened with venat. she rejected the amarautians wanting to return to the gif times and was like "life sucks deal with it"? This makes more sense in the context of what we learn in Shadowbringers. To keep what they had, at that point, they would have had to continually make sacrifices to Zodiark which, IIRC, mostly involved sacrificing the new life that had begun to flourish on Etheirys after Zodiark's summoning. Venat refused to accept that returning to their former bliss--something that she had seen was itself imperfect--was worth that level of constant sacrifice. It's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" except she blows up Omelas. Harrow fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Dec 8, 2021 |
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Dec 8, 2021 14:32
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Full MSQ spoiler thoughts to add to this discussion personally I don't think Venat/Hydaelyn is a bad person, but the shattering has been recontextualised to be an intentional, knowingly monstrous, action. Because she doesn't want her people to die futilely doing something she knows won't work. They're doing exactly what the worlds she heard of from Metion did, reacting to strife and trauma with mass death and acceptance instead of struggle and hope. So she removes any possibility to go back, because she thinks it's the only way people will move forwards. That doesn't make it okay she did it, and it could be argued she created more suffering than she solved, but in doing so saved the universe.
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Dec 8, 2021 14:43
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Endorph posted:I mean, the fantasy stuff is a metaphor. What's the closest real world equivalent of 'a perfect world where literally no bad things happen?' Shutting your eyes to the fact that bad things happen, numbing yourself to it, shutting down any discussion of them, not allowing yourself to feel anything about them and moving on with your idealistic existence. Living so far above them that they barely even enter your world view. It's making the opposite of the point you think it's making. It's saying you need to acknowledge and care that that stuff is happening, even if you can't do anything about it, and that that will make you a more empathetic person even if it hurts. Not that a kid dying in the snow gives the world +5 empathy points. Well, that's the nature of the high fantasy genre. Internal and external conflicts blend together through the medium of the supernatural imagery. The thing is that this cuts both ways; the audience will always assume that some kind of societal commentary is intended along with the psychological meditation. There's a tendency among fantasy fans (and I guess writers) to dismiss these concerns and insist that the reader should recognise the material as entirely psychodrama rather than reckoning with the fact that political/social/etc readings of your world building are inevitable. I very, very much doubt that Ishikawa is trying to insinuate that improving society somewhat will inevitably lead to species suicide, but its worth acknowledging why some of the games themes might stick in the some reader's craws. Anyway, expansion good. I cackled with glee irl when Venat was revealed as the previous Azem.
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Dec 8, 2021 14:43
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ZeusJupitar posted:Well, that's the nature of the high fantasy genre. Internal and external conflicts blend together through the medium of the supernatural imagery. The thing is that this cuts both ways; the audience will always assume that some kind of societal commentary is intended along with the psychological meditation. There's a tendency among fantasy fans (and I guess writers) to dismiss these concerns and insist that the reader should recognise the material as entirely psychodrama rather than reckoning with the fact that political/social/etc readings of your world building are inevitable. No, you're misunderstanding me. I'm saying the game does have intentional political implications, but it's saying the opposite of 'we shouldn't improve society.'
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Dec 8, 2021 14:45
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Lord_Magmar posted:Full MSQ spoiler thoughts to add to this discussion personally I don't think Venat/Hydaelyn is a bad person, but the shattering has been recontextualised to be an intentional, knowingly monstrous, action. Because she doesn't want her people to die futilely doing something she knows won't work. They're doing exactly what the worlds she heard of from Metion did, reacting to strife and trauma with mass death and acceptance instead of struggle and hope. So she removes any possibility to go back, because she thinks it's the only way people will move forwards. That doesn't make it okay she did it, and it could be argued she created more suffering than she solved, but in doing so saved the universe. Also full MSQ spoiler, somewhat related to this: One thing I think the game regularly kinda stumbles over is the idea that light (and therefore Hydaelyn) is "stasis" and dark (Zodiark) is "change" or "chaos," which was brought up in Shadowbringers. It felt weird even in Shadowbringers, but seeing what we did in Endwalker is makes precisely zero sense. Zodiark is regularly said to be preserving "natural laws." Meanwhile, Venat's act--and Hydaelyn's whole deal--is entirely about moving forward, about growth, accepting change and fighting on. That's about as far from "stasis" as you can get. It's not a serious issue at all but I do sorta think the setting's metaphysics, and some of the statements even in Endwalker about what Hydaelyn does, don't really make any sense. That said, by posting this here I fully expect that someone who understood it better than me might explain it to me, so haha, you've all fallen for my trap, presumably.
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Dec 8, 2021 14:49
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PoorWeather posted:I finished Endwalker yesterday. I don't normally post here, but I feel like my take on it is pretty unpopular with the people I normally talk about it with casually, so I'll scream a bit into the void here. I can see how you took that away from the story, but I don't quite agree. What Venat does isn't presented as an unambiguously good thing, but an ethically complicated thing that she feels is necessary based on her knowledge of the future. Hell, that cutscene where she's marching through time past angry and hurting people while becoming increasingly covered in grime? That's not even subtext. She hates that what she did caused so much pain. The Scions appreciate that her becoming Hydaelin enabled them to exist in the first place and then protect their world, but I don't think any of them are saying how cool they think it is that a lot of people suffered so they they could have rad adventures. It is pretty dark that multiple alien societies are depicted as having offed themselves from the ennui of having achieved utopia. I'm not sure we learned enough about them to decide whether they were truly all that great though. I mean, everybody in your civilization killing themselves simply because you discovered the concept of the heat death of the universe? That's honestly kind of funny. I'd say that they didn't reach perfection, but instead removed every reason they had to care about living and then gave up on seeking out a new one. The Scions were literally using the emotional parts of themselves to counteract the acquired doomerism of the people they encountered in order to create a path forward. The thing here that's actually bleak is that if the Meteia found any civilizations that did have a healthy approach to living, they apparently didn't survive the waves of despair the bird girls projected onto them. Basically Meteion is Twitter ruining society by amplifying doom and gloom.  Hero work, or at least the brand that the WoL gets up to, isn't about preventing all bad things from ever happening at all but mitigating the worst consequences of the bad things that do happen. It isn't able seeking a happy medium. People are gonna get hurt and it's gonna suck. But we can keep working on making things better and more just so that people have the opportunity to seek out their reason to live.
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Dec 8, 2021 14:56
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Endorph posted:im saying that what you said there sucked rear end. like what you said was also mean-spirited and presumptious. im not talking about the video game here, im talking about the 'the kindest people i know' line. there is zero correlation. living a privileged, trouble-free life can also make people petty, cruel, and flippant, same way living a troubled life can break someone down. im not exactly into the idea that people with trauma are statistically less empathetic. I didn't say that people with trauma are 'statistically less empathetic'. I said that the people who have personally shown me the most kindness and empathy have more often than not been people who haven't gone through painful or difficult lives, at least in relative terms. My point was that suffering doesn't per-se make you a better or more understanding person, just like the absence of suffering doesn't. And that growing up in communities where you're cared for and supported is, generally, better for you than not. So long as we're being personal, I have gone through experiences where I was made to suffer for what others defined as my "own good", because it was presumed it would be constructive for me and my personality. It wasn't. So, my post was me trying to say (in an overly-long and windy way) that I was fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea that suffering per-se makes you a better person, which the narrative seemed to be trying to promote by playing rock mom killing everyone on the planet and making their descendants lives artificially far more painful and difficult as a good thing. It was really weird for you to hone in on the most callous interpretation of what I said possible. PoorWeather fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Dec 8, 2021 |
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Dec 8, 2021 14:57
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