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my only comment for this thread is that I find it hilarious the amount of “oh well maybe western audiences don’t get the subtle Buddhist cultural framing” posts, as if the Bible doesn’t have quite a bit to say about suffering and paradise. it’s almost like every faith tradition and culture throughout time has grappled with this stuff because it’s part of the human condition.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:05
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kitten emergency posted:my only comment for this thread is that I find it hilarious the amount of “oh well maybe western audiences don’t get the subtle Buddhist cultural framing” posts, as if the Bible doesn’t have quite a bit to say about suffering and paradise. it’s almost like every faith tradition and culture throughout time has grappled with this stuff because it’s part of the human condition. Ibblebibble's Buddhism effort post is probably the most interesting thing anyone's posted in the last few pages
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Dec 18, 2021 22:09
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I wasn't hooting and hollering with joy when Quintus shot himself but I still don't feel any sympathy for him. The man was faced with a clear path forward, difficult as it may be, for the survival of his people. By choosing to die for his pride instead of helping the people that he claimed his ideals were in service to, he proved that his ideals were and always had been lies. In the end all he wanted was bloody revenge against the entire world for what had been done to his ancestors.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:11
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kitten emergency posted:my only comment for this thread is that I find it hilarious the amount of “oh well maybe western audiences don’t get the subtle Buddhist cultural framing” posts, as if the Bible doesn’t have quite a bit to say about suffering and paradise. it’s almost like every faith tradition and culture throughout time has grappled with this stuff because it’s part of the human condition. name every human condition
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Dec 18, 2021 22:11
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yea I do agree that the Japanese writers were likely using Japanese touchstones as inspiration (and that was a good post about the parallels) but yea most every culture and creed has some form of 'happiness can only be found by accepting that suffering is inevitable and making peace with it as best you can'. I found a lot of Jewish parallels in that as well but yea I think that's kinda the point, it's a universal concept that most cultures can find bits of to go 'oh I recognize that'.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:15
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Dryzen posted:name every human condition Blind, poisoned, sleep, stop, slow, paralyzed, confused, berserked, toad, mini, death
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Dec 18, 2021 22:15
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it's almost like coming to grips with the nature of suffering is a major component of the human experience... waaaaaaaaaait a sec 
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Dec 18, 2021 22:16
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Pollyanna posted:This thread perfectly illustrates why Endwalker has to exist in its current form. The story of some of these doomed civilizations apparently hit too close to home for some players. Fundamentally Endwalker is about overcoming suffering, even if it takes having to confront it head on instead of trying to eliminate it from reality altogether (which is clearly impossible if you spend even a second thinking about it). "If perfection isn't possible then nothing in existence matters" is so left side Nihilism meme it hurts. (Reposting for the sake of illustration, not to be glib, but if anybody's take from the story is that Meteion is right, that's a sign to step back, reassess, and really think about the world and their place in it.)  But these discussions also put into stark relief how unsubtle the story's themes are and how it functions as a complete whole. Not that "split EW into two expacs" has been a running discussion in this thread, to be fair.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:18
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kitten emergency posted:my only comment for this thread is that I find it hilarious the amount of “oh well maybe western audiences don’t get the subtle Buddhist cultural framing” posts, as if the Bible doesn’t have quite a bit to say about suffering and paradise. it’s almost like every faith tradition and culture throughout time has grappled with this stuff because it’s part of the human condition. This is true but the Book of Job got rewritten enough times over the years that its current form basically undermines itself.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:20
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"You claim to want peace, yet you defend yourselves when attacked. I am very intelligent."
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Dec 18, 2021 22:22
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I do think there is some degree of "I'm upset at the idea that utopia isn't truly possible" in the discussion that is hard to get past which is why it keeps coming back to some degree to the flaws of current society. Even if we instituted perfect gay space communism tomorrow there would still be suffering. Tragedies would still happen. People would be left out or feel out of place. Even in a post-scarcity society suffering would be inevitable because at some point something is going to go wrong and it might go wrong enough to wreck the peaceful society. Living is not reaching an end goal and being finished. Achieving happiness is not a storybook ending where you are eternally happy forever. If you are lucky you can live in a time of plenty and peace but at some point something will go wrong no matter how much power and control you have.To eliminate all chances of unhappiness, all suffering, all misery, you'd effectively need to be sealed in a plastic bubble and then you'd have the misery of isolation and loneliness. And even that only focuses on personal happiness, not the cost that happiness requires. To be alive doesn't just mean being happy. It means to be able to deal with troubles as well.This isn't "suffering is good" but "suffering exists and is part of life and you can't escape that, not even with the powers of a demigod." Even if Hermes never happened that didn't mean the Ancients would live in eternal peace forever, because almost inevitably something else would have happened, either internal or external. The point of their story isn't to analyze the "Well maybe they could have done (X)" because that is irrelevant. The actual cause of their downfall is less important than how they handled it and how they handled it was atrocities. And if "I can maintain my temporary happiness as long as it comes to other people and not trying to reevaluate myself" isn't a meaningful story in the year 2021 I don't know what to tell you. Like yeah it isn't exactly fun to think about but we're currently in a situation where we're pretty passively sitting by doing nothing while the planet's situation grows more and more dire because we're desperate to maintain our current lifestyle. Endwalker is a nice relief from the omnipresent misery but it isn't shying away from that fact either which is why the story is meaningful. Like I could do a pretty lengthy writeup for why Endwalker is immensely relevant in the modern world but it's probably too political for the Games forum. It doesn't change the fact that it is addressing something actually relevant to the modern world. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 22:24
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The plot of Endwalker has given me the strength to deal with horrible times, such as when I am in a queue to play Endwalker
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Dec 18, 2021 22:26
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Regy Rusty posted:I dunno if it's supposed to be tragic though I also don't think it's triumphant. It's more to me just "this is the inevitable outcome of such an untenable ideology". Don't do a fascism kids I didn't take it as tragic for him, necessarily, but for the Garleans in general. He could have helped so many.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:30
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I feel like we're at the part of the discussion where everyone who disagrees has either changed their mind or stopped posting and everyone else has either not noticed or decided not to notice so they can continue to pat each other on the back.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:32
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I think what we have here is a case of 'goons bein' goons'. Especially ppl saying the ancients were genociding their creations. They put down a few now and then (so they could be recreated, not dead forever like in reality), but calling this ~genocide~? Elpis was a laboratory. Hope yall never worked with lab rats/mice because, heh, lemme tell yall about 'genocide'.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:33
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I really hope that they do more with the ragnarok in future patches. Because if it exists in its dock and at the other end of the galaxy at the same time, the other location needs a enclosed dock or something to stop micrometeors and floating debris from damaging the ship as its being used as a portal. Plus there's all the bizzare life in space, and you don't want voidweed or cosmic barnacles to start growing on it.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:46
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central dogma posted:I think what we have here is a case of 'goons bein' goons'. and its not like they don't do it without good reason. "this creature is hyperaggressive to the point where it threatens to wipe out all life in the vicinity, and it will then starve to death"
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Dec 18, 2021 22:46
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derra posted:I didn't take it as tragic for him, necessarily, but for the Garleans in general. He could have helped so many. yea that's the framing I was looking for, it was tragic as a thing, for what it represented, not really because I felt any real empathy for mr 'I'd rather blow my brains out than admit I need to work with my lessers'
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Dec 18, 2021 22:47
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Pharohman777 posted:I really hope that they do more with the ragnarok in future patches. Space magic protects it.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:47
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Regy Rusty posted:Ibblebibble's Buddhism effort post is probably the most interesting thing anyone's posted in the last few pages sure but there’s been enough subtle orientalist-adjacent takes over the past hundred pages or so that I found it lol-worthy.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:50
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ImpAtom posted:The point of their story isn't to analyze the "Well maybe they could have done (X)" because that is irrelevant. The actual cause of their downfall is less important than how they handled it and how they handled it was atrocities. Yeah, we've had multiple discussions in this very thread over the past couple of years about how much of a monster Emet is, even if his motives are sympathetic.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:53
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Zeruel posted:and its not like they don't do it without good reason. eeeeh as flawed as Hermes was I don't think he was completely fabricating 'we're too casual with disposing of subjects', we see with the floaty whale snake that their go-to for problematic creations is destruction. They're not sadistic monsters cackling as they shove space puppies into furnaces, they don't even really view 'death' as a thing as we see. That's part of the problem, though, they're cosmically speaking not wrong that death is simply a return to the star's lifestream and all but they do ignore the pain and sorrow caused by such things. I don't think they were killing poo poo for fun but we see in the butterfly quest they do clearly view their subjects as expendable even for non-study things like 'I need a nice robe for my friend'.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:53
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sexpig by night posted:eeeeh as flawed as Hermes was I don't think he was completely fabricating 'we're too casual with disposing of subjects', we see with the floaty whale snake that their go-to for problematic creations is destruction. They're not sadistic monsters cackling as they shove space puppies into furnaces, they don't even really view 'death' as a thing as we see. That's part of the problem, though, they're cosmically speaking not wrong that death is simply a return to the star's lifestream and all but they do ignore the pain and sorrow caused by such things. Yeah, within the context of their society it's clearly a blind spot, but not necessarily an especially egregious one, considering that most of these creatures are animals. It's even clear that they distinguish between things that have souls and things that don't. It's once they stop making that distinction that this slight blindspot becomes a fatal flaw, but that doesn't happen until after they summon Zodiark.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:58
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sexpig by night posted:eeeeh as flawed as Hermes was I don't think he was completely fabricating 'we're too casual with disposing of subjects', we see with the floaty whale snake that their go-to for problematic creations is destruction. They're not sadistic monsters cackling as they shove space puppies into furnaces, they don't even really view 'death' as a thing as we see. That's part of the problem, though, they're cosmically speaking not wrong that death is simply a return to the star's lifestream and all but they do ignore the pain and sorrow caused by such things. 
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Dec 18, 2021 23:04
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sexpig by night posted:They're not sadistic monsters cackling as they shove space puppies into furnaces, they don't even really view 'death' as a thing as we see. That's part of the problem, though, they're cosmically speaking not wrong that death is simply a return to the star's lifestream and all but they do ignore the pain and sorrow caused by such things. yeah the game doesn't need you to see the ancients as sadists or anything (as the Amon flashback shows, it's more than capable of driving that point home if it wants to), but the way ancients feel about death is actually intended to feel weird to the player, it seems. it both represents a significant point of cultural departure from pretty much any modern culture and signals that the ancients shouldn't necessarily be understood 1-to-1 as people because, among other things, they appear to be immortal, or at least effectively so (the game uses angelic metaphors a lot, from Venat's speech to the line literally describing the sundered ancients in To the Edge as "like broken angels, wingless, cast from heavens' gates"; lends weight imo to the idea that they're inspired at least in part by Buddhist devas). it's a point the side quests in Elpis hit too: there's one about an ancient frantically searching for her mentor, because she wants to give her a farewell gift by telling her the concept the mentor made has been approved and is ready for naming. the mentor completely brushes it off, because her work is done and she must go join her predecessors in the hereafter, and says some stuff that indicates the mentee had already tried to dissuade her from dying previously. the game doesn't have any issue with the idea of death as rejoining the lifestream, but does flag that the ancients generally have a very alien culture around death which is implied to involve at least some degree of emotional repression (and their ostensibly accepting facade completely cracks and falls apart once zodiark is created and half the ancients die. understandably so!). Valentin fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 23:06
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I'm just glad Quintus ordered his troops to stand down before he shot himself. A real Nazi would have ordered them to attack
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Dec 18, 2021 23:06
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sweet geek swag posted:Yeah, within the context of their society it's clearly a blind spot, but not necessarily an especially egregious one, considering that most of these creatures are animals. It's even clear that they distinguish between things that have souls and things that don't. It's once they stop making that distinction that this slight blindspot becomes a fatal flaw, but that doesn't happen until after they summon Zodiark. The problem I have with that argument is classifying it as "just animals." Like the Lupin are one of the groups specifically mentioned including how they are intelligent and then they mention how at the next meeting they're going to have to 'design them for human speech' which doesn't imply very good things for the existing ones. They are certainly treating them like animals but that's a different thing. I don't think that means they are evil or anything but I do think there's a level of discomfort we're supposed to have with the idea of recreating intelligent beings because you think it'd be better if they could speak your language.
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Dec 18, 2021 23:07
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I found Quintis’s death tragic not because “poor nazi” but because “it’s tragic that you can’t actually reach everyone with words, good intentions, and good deeds and some people are so poisoned by their worldview that they’d rather die than change”. Additionally it’s symbolic of the death of the Garlean empire itself: killed from within from the true believers eating themselves from the inside. The empire was doomed the moment Emet allowed Solus to die, as was his intention.
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Dec 18, 2021 23:18
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ImpAtom posted:I do think there is some degree of "I'm upset at the idea that utopia isn't truly possible" in the discussion that is hard to get past which is why it keeps coming back to some degree to the flaws of current society. The part that sorta plates the meal for me was the back half of the endsinger trial. Like, you'd just burnt the limit break for that arena-wide tankbuster and when she queues up a second, your friends basically come through with a healer LB3 to carry you to victory. Nevermind that this phase is basically exposition rather than a part of the main fight, your friends catch you as all seems lost and say "we've been through poo poo before, we've pulled each other back up every single time and fought against what everyone said was fate, that's how we know this won't be any different" while the light of their prayers is visibly pushing back against despair on the screen. and then lmao as though the devs were working with perfect future knowledge, they had meteion, queen of trauma-sharing, try and poo poo on the power of friendship:  her thesis is an insistence that her self-defining trauma is also a universe-defining one, and she's taken it upon herself to reshape reality to better coddle her trauma. But of course she would, she'd never been so much as told she can't have an extra scoop of ice cream in Elpis and after Hermes sent her selves out to the stars she ran face first into the crushing ennui of omnipotent immortals who'd reached the limits of their imagination and were waiting to die. How the hell was she supposed to know any different though, it's not like she's ever had a wish that wasn't granted. So as an amplifier for all that bad dynamis, she managed to drag the rest of the universe into her pity party and only the best pals in the universe can save her by putting up with all her poo poo and still being her friends. That's why they're heroes after all.
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Dec 18, 2021 23:21
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ImpAtom posted:The problem I have with that argument is classifying it as "just animals." Like the Lupin are one of the groups specifically mentioned including how they are intelligent and then they mention how at the next meeting they're going to have to 'design them for human speech' which doesn't imply very good things for the existing ones. They are certainly treating them like animals but that's a different thing. It's weird because they are creating whole species and races out of wholecloth. But there is a definitely a point when a creation ceases to be a creation and becomes its own thing. At that point they are (presumably) less willing to just obliterate them.
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Dec 18, 2021 23:23
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It’s also worth noting again that Quintis’ particular brand of idealogical true believer is not for Solus’ Empire. He’s a true believer in Varis’ vision, post Emet-Selch revelation. His question is why did you refuse Varis at the Ghimlyt Dark when he offered a plan for everyone to become godlike. The answer of course is that Varis’ plan is still monstrous, and would involve killing anyone who didn’t become as gods. At least that’s my understanding, which changes the context of his questions without absolving his world view.
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Dec 18, 2021 23:23
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ImpAtom posted:Even if we instituted perfect gay space communism tomorrow there would still be suffering. Tragedies would still happen. People would be left out or feel out of place. Even in a post-scarcity society suffering would be inevitable because at some point something is going to go wrong and it might go wrong enough to wreck the peaceful society. Living is not reaching an end goal and being finished. Achieving happiness is not a storybook ending where you are eternally happy forever. If you are lucky you can live in a time of plenty and peace but at some point something will go wrong no matter how much power and control you have.To eliminate all chances of unhappiness, all suffering, all misery, you'd effectively need to be sealed in a plastic bubble and then you'd have the misery of isolation and loneliness. And even that only focuses on personal happiness, not the cost that happiness requires. Moreover, the presence of suffering is often taken as some sort of refutation or discrediting of communism. Okay, we had a revolution, but I still have to work afterwards? Wow, what was even the point?
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Dec 18, 2021 23:26
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Lord_Magmar posted:It’s also worth noting again that Quintis’ particular brand of idealogical true believer is not for Solus’ Empire. He’s a true believer in Varis’ vision, post Emet-Selch revelation. scions are doing drunken bob ross painting parties and the ancients/allagans/garleans/ascians are hrrming and yessing about the subtle glow of thomas kinkade.
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Dec 18, 2021 23:26
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sweet geek swag posted:It's weird because they are creating whole species and races out of wholecloth. But there is a definitely a point when a creation ceases to be a creation and becomes its own thing. At that point they are (presumably) less willing to just obliterate them. They straight up say that after the star accepts them they gain a soul. And we know because of Emet that they can definitely see souls, it's not just a metaphor for them being 'ready'.
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Dec 18, 2021 23:28
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Eimi posted:They straight up say that after the star accepts them they gain a soul. And we know because of Emet that they can definitely see souls, it's not just a metaphor for them being 'ready'. Yeah that's actually what I was thinking about, but I didn't remember the details.
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Dec 18, 2021 23:29
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FAUXTON posted:The part that sorta plates the meal for me was the back half of the endsinger trial. Like, you'd just burnt the limit break for that arena-wide tankbuster and when she queues up a second, your friends basically come through with a healer LB3 to carry you to victory. Nevermind that this phase is basically exposition rather than a part of the main fight, your friends catch you as all seems lost and say "we've been through poo poo before, we've pulled each other back up every single time and fought against what everyone said was fate, that's how we know this won't be any different" while the light of their prayers is visibly pushing back against despair on the screen. This post is real good and makes a good case for The Power of Friendship is Good, Actually. FAUXTON posted:scions are doing drunken bob ross painting parties and the ancients/allagans/garleans/ascians are hrrming and yessing about the subtle glow of thomas kinkade. This post, however, is violence and I can't believe you'd do Hythlodaeus dirty like this
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Dec 18, 2021 23:30
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FAUXTON posted:scions are doing drunken bob ross painting parties and the ancients/allagans/garleans/ascians are hrrming and yessing about the subtle glow of thomas kinkade. I feel like the Allagans would find Thomas Kinkade’s work unsatisfying, really only the Ancients would do what you describe. The Allagans and Ascians would both consider it too kitsch, the Garleans would only want Garlean paintings.
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Dec 18, 2021 23:30
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ImpAtom posted:I do think there is some degree of "I'm upset at the idea that utopia isn't truly possible" in the discussion that is hard to get past which is why it keeps coming back to some degree to the flaws of current society. All of this, plus “suffering” doesn’t have to be some horrible capital-s Suffering, you know? You don’t need a tragedy to cause suffering, you can find more than enough just from an average day. Here’s some examples: my grandma died, my boyfriend broke up with me, my dog died, I had an argument with my friend, I stepped on a lego and it loving hurt, I ordered something different at a restaurant but it wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. How do you solve any of these things? They all cause suffering to some degree but they’re not indicative of an unhealthy society or even an issue in general. Unless you’re prepared to either outlaw or mandate relationships, ban legos and pets, only have one kind of food for everyone, and make ourselves immortal and incorporeal so there’s nothing to hurt, then there’s not much you can do about these things other than learn how to deal with them. And wouldn’t you know it, but relying on your support network can actually make dealing with it easier!
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Dec 18, 2021 23:48
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Kind of disappointed that the Fending gloves for the tomestone set aren't a bracer variant of the Gauntlets of Light since that's what Cecil wears in Amano's old designs.
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Dec 18, 2021 23:56
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central dogma posted:I think what we have here is a case of 'goons bein' goons'. Labs don't usually invent whole species of flying lab rats on a vague sense of "hey wouldn't this be cool?" then kill all of them because one of them was a little too sad to fly. edit: Also there's that whole "let's sacrifice everyone else to Zodiark" moment Eimi posted:They straight up say that after the star accepts them they gain a soul. And we know because of Emet that they can definitely see souls, it's not just a metaphor for them being 'ready'. Where exactly are you getting that? When Hermes is going into which creatures have a soul, he's talking about arcane entities like sprites. It has nothing to do with whether or not they survive in Elpis but whether or not they conform with physical laws. edit: Oh hey Gamer Escape has the quest dialogues up. "Be it a soulless arcane entity such as the pneuma, or an ephemeral life-form such as the petalouda, all seek to perpetuate their existence. To survive." The sprites are identified as not having a soul while the butterflies are contrasted with them as being ephemeral but not soulless. TGLT fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Dec 19, 2021 |
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Dec 19, 2021 00:01
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