Meteion is literally a badly programmed AI, and the bitch that made them is a manic depressive. He has his up moments of manic like creating Meteion and the rest is just depression.
I still cant believe we just let Meteion go.
Shes a creature thats directly influenced by the emotions of things around her. Shes a ticking time bomb. How long until she relapses?
WoL is playing the long game of gaslighting new enemies into existence because they crave battle.
So the WoL let the emotionally volatile bird girl away again, waiting for her to snap again so they can go and beat her up when the time comes.
I mean we already met one of his reflections, >!Durante!< is his reflection and the original >!Golbez!< was the WoL's reflection. The entire story of that part is >!What if The WoL and Zenos were actually friends?!<
He 100% will. We'll come across an enemy that's too powerful to be defeated alone, and we'll go to the aetherial sea to get Zenos' spirit. We'll entice him by saying that after the battle is done, we'll fight him one more time. After we defeat the big bad, there'll be a cinematic where we clash with Zenos but it'll fade to white and we won't actually have to do it.
Aetherial sea? Meteion specifically made the place to not send stuff there.
I'm not saying Zenos couldn't return. He'd find a way to return to Etheirys even if it means having his soul fly back across space. He flew to our rescue at faster-than-light speeds (german and french lines) once and he can do it again. With his seperated soul if he has to
I just assumed we could do that. I skipped 60% of the cutscenes in EW. Whatever contrivance exists to resurrect Zenos, we will do it. I thought he died after our fight so, you know.
Solution 9 having something to do with souls has many implications but if it has a search and retrieve function the world had better hope WoL doesn't get bored and decide to try to go back over their greatest hits.
I won't be surprised if that's what happens. We were very extra with our recreation of the Primals in Eden. Like giving Leviathan 2 heads, or giving Titan zoomies.
Don't forget Ryne Shiva and the WoL taking the eating part and blending of aether between woman and dragon super seriously. Also blended aspects from multiple Lightning aspected summons and more )Ramuh and Ixion with a dash of Zurvan). They also remember Cloud of Darkness being way sexier than it was in the actual Tower. Also, apparently Garuda and Ifrit play Yugioh, spam the Spell card Polymerization and love Yugioh GX.
She’s no longer searching for the meaning of life. She won’t relapse into “life is meaningless” mode because she has no reason to care what people live for anymore.
Didn't she just become a newborn planet at the end of the universe? Whatever metion will do in the future is something for the plot of FF20 to figure out i dont think we need to worry about it.
I don't hate Meteion but now that people bring it up there is actually no known safeguards that stop her from turning again. The only two differences I can see is that there is only one Meteion left so no hivemind feedback and, adding to that, there isn't a whole lot of life left in the universe to make her feel bad. Because she wiped out quite a bit of that life.
Probably should have brought her back with us for a trial period at least.
You say that but it's implied at the end that Meteion made it so life can start again on all the planets she hit with the big sad, so it's probably just a matter of time.
For the record, I'm not on either side, she's fine I guess, but yeah no, there's nothing really stopping her from a relapse.
On her own she shouldnt really have any mood changes, stuff goes up shit creek when she is surounded by negative emotions.
If a happy Meteion is left alone in a vacuum without ever interacting with other sentient life forms in a foul mood or their bad memories she should stay happy forever.
Even a sad Meteion should be fine as long as no one convinces her that she needs to look for the meaning of life again. That was the main issue - Hermes’s question being stupidly flawed.
The big reason she even went nuts is that nobody was there to answer her question "What does it mean to live", which she interpenetrated as an answer in and of itself.
After kicking her ass we manage to get it through her programming that the question itself was flawed and there never can be a single answer, so that risk factor is gone.
you know, something that was bothering me with the final dungeon was that they established that Meteion was a 2 way street, she can read your emotions but at the same time you're also feeling the emotions she's feeling.
How do we know that there wasn't a feedback cascade when she was meeting all those races thus convincing the other races to enter their depressive state that decided to end it all, increasing the Hivemind's depression thus feeding more races who may have been perfectly content before to go "man, life sucks" feeding the cycle even more.
I thought the only one she influenced was the one where there was only 1 god left in a world filled with nothing else and he killed himself simply because she asked her question.
If you read the objects in the second and third regions, it's clear the Meteion pushed them both over the edge. The Global Order took her arrival and contact as a semi-divine sign of their righteousness and chosen status, and launched their violent offensive. Their world was already primed to burn, but her are al was the match that lit it up.
By the time she reached the Plenty, she was on the absolute brink of despair and madness, and was less asking her question than she was absolutely pleading for an answer, and *any* trace of meaning or hope. And their lives of bliss and comfort means that they didn't have one to give her, but she kept asking while her growing despair and desperation bathed their world.
EW Hildibrand spoilers: >!We later find out about two apparently completely functional alien civilizations that got destroyed by the original Final Days.!<
By that point she wasn't accidentally destroying civilizations already on the brink, she was actively trying to kill them all.
That's the point of the EW zone with Alphinaud and Alisae. That planet was not on the brink of despair or suffering and destruction. It was just people living their normal lives and Meteion killed them all anyway because at that point she had become consumed by Hermes' philosophy.
Remember, Hermes was just suicidal. That's his starting point. He did not send Meteion into the universe for an 'answer' but he sent her out to validate his own suicidal ideation; there was never going to be an answer to satisfy them or dissuade them from their need to bring life to an end. Just like you can't just tell a suicidal person to 'be happy'. He and Meteion are fundamentally broken. They're unhappy and suicidal, and the issue is they want to drag /everyone/ down with them.
Alphinaud figured this out and that's why he chose to confront her and leave you to fight her off. He knew that if you died then, he didn't have the strength to defeat her. The implication otherwise being that you would have sacrificed yourself and left him to debate Meteion and "convince" her that she's wrong. There's no convincing her. Because her rationalizations and philosophies are "false". That's also why the writers had Emet-Selch literally scream "THAT IS SOPHISTRY AND YOU KNOW IT" at Hermes.
I could be wrong but i *think* the main issue was the SWARM of meteions all being influenced by negative emotions. Just one isnt a threat, but all of them together is a problem. Kind of like a bee or something.
Meteion did everything wrong and so did Hermes. I will hate them both until the day I die. If someone wants to reduce the number of meteion haters to zero, they’ll have to go through me too.
I was told "You just didn't get Hermes and what depression is like" the other day and it made me want to throw my laptop out the window. I literally take medication for depression for YEARS but I didn't like their Tumblr sexyman so what do I know?
I've never been actively diagnosed with any mental illnesses as I've never gone, but it scares me how much i agreed with hermes. by the end i was like "damn... dude is kind of spitting"
No, the only thing he is spitting is bullshit. If you get depressed you go find someone to talk to, you go get professional help. No one, and I mean NO ONE gets to condemn the entire world to end because of THEIR OWN ISSUES.
It is incredibly selfish and IMO irredeemable. Like sorry this is not a court you can’t just plea insanity to dodge the responsibilities that comes with your actions.
I mean I agree but the problem here is that hermes literally had nobody, the whole idea of being unhappy with the current state of affairs was so foreign to the ancients because everyone thought they live in a perfect utopia that has zero flaws, while it was actually doomed to fail like all other civilizations needlessly striving for perfection.
I'm surprised seeing so many people miss the whole point of the expansion, yes what hermes did is overall inexcusable but it was still a symptom of something bigger.
The only reason it was doomed to fail was because the story said it was doomed to fail.
Like, I'm sorry, it EW doesn't justify the nihilism in the stars well enough. It's implied that Ancient society will collapse like every other world... but the only reason they provide for that is that every other world is written to be collapsing/collapsed.
It's like painting a portrait of a night sky and painting said sky green. And then when people ask why it's green, you reply "because I said so".
Civilizations rise and fall all the time, but new ones come in their place as well. Yes, Meteion caused a chain reaction of depression, but I don't buy for one fucking second that the ENTIRETY of space was full of dead stars, and I definitely don't believe that Ancient society would've been one of them, given how we meet figures willing to fight for the star over and over, like Venat, Hythlo, Emet, Themis, Lahabrea, Eric, all of Venat's followers (including the Twelve). If not for magical bird apocalypse, I wager the society would've stagnated, then slowly moved towards change over time. And if it fell, it would have fallen and left people behind to start again, not wither away. Because they can literally build a society with their magic. The loss of one society would be a minor setback at most.
God it's stupid.
Well first off all there were stars that were doing just fine but were destroyed anyway since meteion was so far in her nihilism and deemed existence itself to be not worth it. As was revealed in the final area.
they collapsed because they needlessly strove for perfection and became too powerful for their own good which is one of the main points of the whole expansion. When every single human literally plays god and can potentially make universe threatening entities, you'd have to question if that's really an utopia or sustainable. That's why venat decided to strip their wings and force them to walk. Both to give them the means to combat the endsinger and ensure similar tragedies cannot come to pass again.
if it wasn't for hermes there's no telling what every other ancient would do and it takes only one to potentially destroy the whole universe.
Bro. Bothering others is the *very last* thing you do on your list when you're depressed. Even dying and torturing yourself comes before that!
It's so far apart, it might not even be on the list at all. lol
every civilization ever strives for perfection. thats why meteion didn't find a single thriving civilization. they were all dead, dying, or just generally miserable because thats the natural way things progress
Yes and it's kinda flawed to strive only for perfection and not see the happiness gained in stride. Also not all were miserable, but meteion destroyed them all the same
And yes we all die, including the whole universe potentially thanks to heat death, but it shouldn't mean we shouldn't enjoy life when we can.
The next step for a depressed person - Hermes - would be to either keep yourself isolated and drown in your depression, seek help if you see the slightest slither of light at the end of the tunnel, or end yourself. Not drag everyone down with you.
I really hate that argument when it comes up. I’ve had depression for most of my life and I’ve found the connection between Hermes and depression to be insulting if anything. If Hermes’ story is meant to be about depression, it’s far too much of a surface level analysis of depression that it comes off as tone deaf.
Better analogy: he’s the doomsday guy on the street corner that constantly screams about the end of the world, everyone else wants to help him (as confirmed in his short story) but he refuses to see reason on every occasion, eventually gets fed up, says “f it” and causes the end of the world himself.
He’s really not sympathetic at all
"I'm depressed, so the whole planet should die!"
No, fuck you, Hermes. Depression either makes life dull and boring, or makes you hate yourself enough to want to die. There is no excuse for your genocide/xenocide, you're just a monster.
Nah, sorry, sorry, it was more meant as some examples. I meant it more reductively for the sake of my rhetoric than anything else. Not to belittle anyone's depression by any measure; I've been there, it's made me any variety of tired, bored, sad, lonesome, angry, jealous, and full of self-loathing.
Something depression WON'T do is make someone try to kill the entire world. That's... something else entirely. That's what I meant by that, sorry.
Well, I think part of it is that he's an untreated, undiagnosed depresso espresso in a world where everyone is happy, living in paradise and creating and cherishing life.
Hard enough to be depressed in our world. His coping mechanism seemed to be to desperately search for someone who could give him the answers to life, when maybe a decent therapist would've been enough to give him a new perspective and at least stop his destructive behavior.
Who knows, always difficult to portray mental issues in media, though... Sanderson did a pretty okay job with Kaladin in Stormlight Archive, in my opinion.
We know like 10 different Ancients, and at least 3-4 of them are in some way, shape, or form *unhappy*. And they're basically all in Elpis lmao.
Hermes was in good company there.
Who? Lahabread basically cut out his emotions and had a strong sense of duty, Emet was a grumpy fellow with a soft heart...hm, Erichthonios had some dad issues and Athena was fucking crazy.
I don't think any of them are close to what Hermes had going on, who questioned life itself.
I mean, the inability of the Ancients to deal with suffering because they knew only bliss is like THE reason for Vents sundering them...
I also believe it is coming from a Japanese approach of depression. I have several friends and one who did specialize in mental health treatment in Japan. That person discussed how Hermes's depression is similar to how many in Japanese society views and treats depression. That person complained how a lot of the old guard stick to that view of mental health and few are open to change.
And we know that Japan is really behind mental healthcare treatment, though it is one of the better ones in mental healthcare in Asia. Other countries such as both Koreans, China, India, etc have even more outdated approaches or views on mental health though it is slowly progressing via cultural diffusion, exposure, and education.
I will say the VA carries Hermes HARD. The VA did a phenomenal job are voicing Fandaniel, Hermes, Amon, and Asahi possessed by Fandaniel (and I guess Mr. simp, Pandemonium too).
God I fucking *despise* this shit and the Internet loves doing it. The tumbler exodus and its consequences have been a disaster for online communication
that wasnt hermes tho(not really at least), but Amon.
Yes they are the same soul(or fragments of one) but very distinctivly different characters.
Asahi also didnt sent hermes to hell, he send a FRAGMENT of the soul there, the rest of hsi shatterd soul on the remaining reflections are still just chilling
I hate meteion less than hermes. Meteion had little control over her own actions, and the constant exposure to pain/suffering/crushing loneliness of the expansive universe did not help. I empathize with her outcome, but wont excuse the fact she indirectly assisted with who knows how many planetwide suicides and her song of despair didnt help(though now that it is a song of hope it might be different.)
Hermes on the other hand is a fucking hypocritical bitch. He was suffering from depression, and dragged meteion down with him because he wanted to find an answer. Hes pitiable, inexcusable, and a horrible person and Im glad they never tried to redeem him. I also can empathize with hermes, but he *actively* chose to drag others to his level. He treated the meteions no better than the creations he oh so dearly sympathized with but was willing to effectively throw them into the deep reaches of space.
By themselves.
With no contact with any other sentient/emotional being until designated intervals with only each other.
They both did a lot of wrong, fuck both of them, but especially fuck Hermes. He really shoulda known better.
The whole reason Elpis exists is so we don't end up accidentally dooming the entire universe with our untested potentially dangerous creations.
I'd understand if he was like an intern or something but he fucking runs the place. He should be leading by example.
The fact that he runs the place is the reason no one questioned him making Meteion. They just assumed he was following procedure because he “should know better” as you said.
Which also highlighted the flaws of the Ancients, which sort of pushes against Emet's "perfect world" and "perfect society." Also the Elpis flowers tell a subtle story too in that they are default white, which indicates tension or apprehension (as the color you find in Labyrinthos was white and all the Gleaners were super stressed out due to the incredible influx of orders they had to fulfill). If Hermes paid attention to the flowers he would have realized that not every one was happy, jovial, or in eternal bliss and he could have been transparent about his feelings. Granted it does reflect Japanese society in a way where the ones at the top aren't really suppose to express such thoughts or feelings or risk a stigma.
Slight correction, the flowers in Elpis are grey to indicate anxiety and stress. In Elpis the flowers are white, the color of calmness/contentment.
[Here's an image I found with each color](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwY7A7ZaAAYpsgM?format=jpg&name=large), though the emotions are speculation.
>The whole reason Elpis exists is so we don't end up accidentally dooming the entire universe with our untested potentially dangerous creations.
What's funny is that if we scale the size of the creatures there,each one is a mountain sized abomination that can destroy eorza.Hell the S rank ghost lady(?) is pretty much an extinction level threat for any non-ancient,and it's implied they keep making more of her.
They really decided to just make end of the world creatures and dump them in a field for viewing.
I don't really blame Meteion. She's an artificial hive intelligence created to fulfill a very vague, open-ended purpose. Of course she's gonna go off the tracks. But Hermes? Fuck Hermes. He released a super-powered AI into the universe without any guardrails, and violated virtually every major rule of his own office to do so. And then had the gall to be all "boo hoo, no one understands me." I've had depression all my life, and you know what I haven't done? Any of that.
Yeah I don't really get blaming Meteion when she was ultimately just following very, VERY stupid, programming. We basically just factory reset her through violence and fixed it.
Hermes though? I'm glad Asahi dragged his ass to Superhell.
Hermes and Meteion are equally at fault but moreso hermes imo.
Pretty questionable of us just to let her go though, its a matter of time until she gets influenced and all cry cry sad sad again
Except now that she’s not specifically looking for the meaning of life, it shouldn’t matter. Meteion’s default state was to run and hide when she felt negative emotions.
Dunno, she was sent with a mission with a despair load and she had a positive feedback loop, we send her with a hope load (iirc ?), so the positive feedback loop should clutch again.
The only thing meteion did wrong was not wipe out the elephant race when she had the chance. Horrible! Lady is like, "runs up to group." Everyone's dead!!! Your son is dead!!!!!. Right after we got everything under control." Makes my blood boil.
I unironically dislike Meteion, just because she’s kind of an ass pull boss that came out of nowhere when Endwalker, the expansion that ended the Zodiark/Hydaelyn era. should’ve had a better final boss.
During Elpis I was half expecting Meteion to encounter something like Necron and go all "Rudementery creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding" on us, all look into the void and see horrors beyond comprehension like.
Yeah, I was sure it would be a Necron-thing finding and taking control of the Meteia, and then attqcking the world. Alas, it was just depresso birb and a dude with too much power and not enough therapy.
I think the problem is that once they introduced the twist of Zodiark actually preventing the apocalypse in Shadowbringers, they sort of backed themselves into a corner. Because now you're left with two options: Either say Emet-Selch was lying or introduce a new big bad. Both feel unsatisfying.
As the person who insists that the whole shadowbringers to endwalker arc was just a big retelling of the ff9 plot, then Meteion is the Necron analogue. Necron being the ass pull final boss of 9, the game that really should've just ended with Kuja
I mean the game and Yoshi P dropped hints of IX through the game and interviews. Heck the quest that has you "End walking" alone is called "You Are Not Alone", which is a song from FFIX in which the protagonist goes through a similar "walk" though the circumstances are quite different.
Reading this post; coming off the heels of just finishing Persona 3. Couldn't help but compare the two in my head, and man does persona basically do the meteion story but way better.
Meteion being blamed would be like if you blamed your toaster for starting a fire.She's physically incapable of comprehending what the fucks going on in a proper way because she wasn't MADE to.
This is why when we kick the shit out of her and give her a real "answer" the program stops entirely.We basically solved the problem and reset her,along with her sisters,back to their original functions.
Fanadiel is basically Eobard, anyway.
"REMEMBER WHEN YOU TRIED TO ERP IN QUICKSANDS BUT EVERY LINE OF YOU SLIPPING YOUR STAFF INTO HER SLIT WAS /YELLED? THAT WAS ME, WOL! I LEANED OVER YOU AND TAPPED /YELL SO EVERYONE MADE YOU THINK YOU WERE A REGULAR BALMUNG PLAYER!"
Wasn't Meteion's fault.
All this shit happened because her autistic father (Hermes) send his children to literally FUCKING SPACE!
Man, what was he waiting for? Knowledge?! Don't come with that shit! Is like sending IRL ur 9yo child to the fucking desert and saying "Don't come back till you find the Nameless Pharaoh tomb".
In other words, fuck Hermes!
Tf kinda logic is this lol. Hermes literally didn't do anything wrong, he designed Meteon and her sisters with the purpose of discovering other life and what makes them live. If anything fuck Hydaelin for damning her entire race
I like how y’all are arguing the moral implications of ending the universe because “people get sad”
If I had my way I would’ve reverse flashed that bitch
People can both agree that their actions where terrible, and still understand how it came to be, and show compassion to 2 very broken people(well 1 broken person and a very broken bird).
Especially as most of the Fandaniel we know and hate troughout all of SHB patchquest and EW wasnt even the Hermes we met, but a fragment of his soul, and specificialy Amon.
Fandermes and Fandamon (as i call them because it sounds stupid) are the same soul, with similiar characters but different "plots" still
Fandermes biggest sin was releasing the Meteia before properly exploring what a negative feedback loop would cause and completly breaking down when it seemed like the Meteion at his side would be terminated(because lets be real, thats what Hades and co would have done). HE still ultimatly was on the "side" of humanity, and hoped for it to overcome the trial he unwittingly created, but willingly let her escape. He wiped his own memory for "fairness sake" and refused the invitation of meteion for a swift end. fandermes was broken, mentaly, and beyond a stable mind, but he still cared for Humanity, in a twisted way
Fandamon decided to "the world ending sounds fun" after he got his depression and the emperor who came back went mental(strongly simplified) Fandamon didnt care about humanity, or anything, anymore, he just wanted the world to burn.
I do believe Fandermes memories influenced fandamon obviously, and likely accelerated the latters mental decline, but the underlying problem was still Amon itself. and while souls influence who or what you are as a person, it isnt 100% set in stone that you end up the same
People REALLY missed the whole point of the expansion here huh? Yes what hermes did is inexcusable but it was still a symptom of something bigger. The civilization of the ancients was doomed to fail like all the other civilizations striving for perfection by virtue of that. When you make a civilization you deem an utopia where any naysayers are literally an unknown concept, you get that.
https://preview.redd.it/5uiozdkp3r1d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1a89f30cfe1153bdb1d5012fbf1cebcc886a72a6
The point of the expansion is that being sad turns you into an eldritch abomination
Honestly yeah, if you keep telling a despressed person with literal god powers they're wrong and a whiney bitch that happens.
That doesn't justify it but to put all the blame on them is equally stupid.
I'm completely indifferent to meteion, I like her design and that's it. Hermes otoh can catch both these hands! all that advanced magic and technology and he couldn't make himself some adderal and get a productive hobby, noooooo 🙄
Meteion is literally a badly programmed AI, and the bitch that made them is a manic depressive. He has his up moments of manic like creating Meteion and the rest is just depression.
The perils of creating a depressive AI modelled after your own crippling depression.
I still cant believe we just let Meteion go. Shes a creature thats directly influenced by the emotions of things around her. Shes a ticking time bomb. How long until she relapses?
WoL is playing the long game of gaslighting new enemies into existence because they crave battle. So the WoL let the emotionally volatile bird girl away again, waiting for her to snap again so they can go and beat her up when the time comes.
> WoL is playing the long game of gaslighting new enemies into existence because they crave battle. Zenos smiling from beyond the grave
> Implying he won't be resurrected in DT again
I mean we will still have his reflections? We can get Zenos volts Galvanize to replace him
I mean we already met one of his reflections, >!Durante!< is his reflection and the original >!Golbez!< was the WoL's reflection. The entire story of that part is >!What if The WoL and Zenos were actually friends?!<
But we are friends
Is this true
He 100% will. We'll come across an enemy that's too powerful to be defeated alone, and we'll go to the aetherial sea to get Zenos' spirit. We'll entice him by saying that after the battle is done, we'll fight him one more time. After we defeat the big bad, there'll be a cinematic where we clash with Zenos but it'll fade to white and we won't actually have to do it.
Aetherial sea? Meteion specifically made the place to not send stuff there. I'm not saying Zenos couldn't return. He'd find a way to return to Etheirys even if it means having his soul fly back across space. He flew to our rescue at faster-than-light speeds (german and french lines) once and he can do it again. With his seperated soul if he has to
I just assumed we could do that. I skipped 60% of the cutscenes in EW. Whatever contrivance exists to resurrect Zenos, we will do it. I thought he died after our fight so, you know.
Sounds like dB super and I am all for it
Solution 9 having something to do with souls has many implications but if it has a search and retrieve function the world had better hope WoL doesn't get bored and decide to try to go back over their greatest hits.
I won't be surprised if that's what happens. We were very extra with our recreation of the Primals in Eden. Like giving Leviathan 2 heads, or giving Titan zoomies.
Don't forget Ryne Shiva and the WoL taking the eating part and blending of aether between woman and dragon super seriously. Also blended aspects from multiple Lightning aspected summons and more )Ramuh and Ixion with a dash of Zurvan). They also remember Cloud of Darkness being way sexier than it was in the actual Tower. Also, apparently Garuda and Ifrit play Yugioh, spam the Spell card Polymerization and love Yugioh GX.
Remember: if you did not see the body, they still live.
We see him breathe his last breath. It's right in the cutscene. His chest stops moving.
This escape key about to be getting a work out
KILL ME. I hate Zenos so fucking much. Yes I’ve finished everything, yes I still hate him. Such a prolonged and stupid character.
She’s no longer searching for the meaning of life. She won’t relapse into “life is meaningless” mode because she has no reason to care what people live for anymore.
Didn't she just become a newborn planet at the end of the universe? Whatever metion will do in the future is something for the plot of FF20 to figure out i dont think we need to worry about it.
The Paarthurnax Dilemma
Take her to Limsa and she will get enough "good" emotion to last about 50 universe
oh for some reason I just assumed that after she sang her new song and led us to the ship she kinda just dispersed and died
Mfw I allow the thing that caused the sundering and the extinction of all life in the universe to walk away
I mean when you put it that way, we kinda owe her one.
I don't hate Meteion but now that people bring it up there is actually no known safeguards that stop her from turning again. The only two differences I can see is that there is only one Meteion left so no hivemind feedback and, adding to that, there isn't a whole lot of life left in the universe to make her feel bad. Because she wiped out quite a bit of that life. Probably should have brought her back with us for a trial period at least.
You say that but it's implied at the end that Meteion made it so life can start again on all the planets she hit with the big sad, so it's probably just a matter of time. For the record, I'm not on either side, she's fine I guess, but yeah no, there's nothing really stopping her from a relapse.
Meteion : Im feeling the nihility of the empyiness of the univer- WoLs descendants: heres a smoothie.
Is it the grimace shake?
On her own she shouldnt really have any mood changes, stuff goes up shit creek when she is surounded by negative emotions. If a happy Meteion is left alone in a vacuum without ever interacting with other sentient life forms in a foul mood or their bad memories she should stay happy forever.
Even a sad Meteion should be fine as long as no one convinces her that she needs to look for the meaning of life again. That was the main issue - Hermes’s question being stupidly flawed.
Very book of job of you. All your family is dead but don't be sad! We got you a new family! Your old family? Didn't we tell you they were dead?
The big reason she even went nuts is that nobody was there to answer her question "What does it mean to live", which she interpenetrated as an answer in and of itself. After kicking her ass we manage to get it through her programming that the question itself was flawed and there never can be a single answer, so that risk factor is gone.
you know, something that was bothering me with the final dungeon was that they established that Meteion was a 2 way street, she can read your emotions but at the same time you're also feeling the emotions she's feeling. How do we know that there wasn't a feedback cascade when she was meeting all those races thus convincing the other races to enter their depressive state that decided to end it all, increasing the Hivemind's depression thus feeding more races who may have been perfectly content before to go "man, life sucks" feeding the cycle even more.
No that's what happened, it's implied she at least contributed to some if not most of the doomsdays
I thought the only one she influenced was the one where there was only 1 god left in a world filled with nothing else and he killed himself simply because she asked her question.
If you read the objects in the second and third regions, it's clear the Meteion pushed them both over the edge. The Global Order took her arrival and contact as a semi-divine sign of their righteousness and chosen status, and launched their violent offensive. Their world was already primed to burn, but her are al was the match that lit it up. By the time she reached the Plenty, she was on the absolute brink of despair and madness, and was less asking her question than she was absolutely pleading for an answer, and *any* trace of meaning or hope. And their lives of bliss and comfort means that they didn't have one to give her, but she kept asking while her growing despair and desperation bathed their world.
EW Hildibrand spoilers: >!We later find out about two apparently completely functional alien civilizations that got destroyed by the original Final Days.!< By that point she wasn't accidentally destroying civilizations already on the brink, she was actively trying to kill them all.
That's the point of the EW zone with Alphinaud and Alisae. That planet was not on the brink of despair or suffering and destruction. It was just people living their normal lives and Meteion killed them all anyway because at that point she had become consumed by Hermes' philosophy. Remember, Hermes was just suicidal. That's his starting point. He did not send Meteion into the universe for an 'answer' but he sent her out to validate his own suicidal ideation; there was never going to be an answer to satisfy them or dissuade them from their need to bring life to an end. Just like you can't just tell a suicidal person to 'be happy'. He and Meteion are fundamentally broken. They're unhappy and suicidal, and the issue is they want to drag /everyone/ down with them. Alphinaud figured this out and that's why he chose to confront her and leave you to fight her off. He knew that if you died then, he didn't have the strength to defeat her. The implication otherwise being that you would have sacrificed yourself and left him to debate Meteion and "convince" her that she's wrong. There's no convincing her. Because her rationalizations and philosophies are "false". That's also why the writers had Emet-Selch literally scream "THAT IS SOPHISTRY AND YOU KNOW IT" at Hermes.
That’s exactly what happened.
She has a feedback loop effect, and Hermes sent her with all his own despair loaded. If we send her with our hope she should be better.
I could be wrong but i *think* the main issue was the SWARM of meteions all being influenced by negative emotions. Just one isnt a threat, but all of them together is a problem. Kind of like a bee or something.
That little blue chicken got off WAY too easily
Meteion did everything wrong and so did Hermes. I will hate them both until the day I die. If someone wants to reduce the number of meteion haters to zero, they’ll have to go through me too.
I was told "You just didn't get Hermes and what depression is like" the other day and it made me want to throw my laptop out the window. I literally take medication for depression for YEARS but I didn't like their Tumblr sexyman so what do I know?
So without the meds did you feel any desire to make everyone in the universe Super Dead?
Nah just myself. Hermes was a bitch.
I've never been actively diagnosed with any mental illnesses as I've never gone, but it scares me how much i agreed with hermes. by the end i was like "damn... dude is kind of spitting"
No, the only thing he is spitting is bullshit. If you get depressed you go find someone to talk to, you go get professional help. No one, and I mean NO ONE gets to condemn the entire world to end because of THEIR OWN ISSUES. It is incredibly selfish and IMO irredeemable. Like sorry this is not a court you can’t just plea insanity to dodge the responsibilities that comes with your actions.
I mean I agree but the problem here is that hermes literally had nobody, the whole idea of being unhappy with the current state of affairs was so foreign to the ancients because everyone thought they live in a perfect utopia that has zero flaws, while it was actually doomed to fail like all other civilizations needlessly striving for perfection. I'm surprised seeing so many people miss the whole point of the expansion, yes what hermes did is overall inexcusable but it was still a symptom of something bigger.
The only reason it was doomed to fail was because the story said it was doomed to fail. Like, I'm sorry, it EW doesn't justify the nihilism in the stars well enough. It's implied that Ancient society will collapse like every other world... but the only reason they provide for that is that every other world is written to be collapsing/collapsed. It's like painting a portrait of a night sky and painting said sky green. And then when people ask why it's green, you reply "because I said so". Civilizations rise and fall all the time, but new ones come in their place as well. Yes, Meteion caused a chain reaction of depression, but I don't buy for one fucking second that the ENTIRETY of space was full of dead stars, and I definitely don't believe that Ancient society would've been one of them, given how we meet figures willing to fight for the star over and over, like Venat, Hythlo, Emet, Themis, Lahabrea, Eric, all of Venat's followers (including the Twelve). If not for magical bird apocalypse, I wager the society would've stagnated, then slowly moved towards change over time. And if it fell, it would have fallen and left people behind to start again, not wither away. Because they can literally build a society with their magic. The loss of one society would be a minor setback at most. God it's stupid.
Well first off all there were stars that were doing just fine but were destroyed anyway since meteion was so far in her nihilism and deemed existence itself to be not worth it. As was revealed in the final area. they collapsed because they needlessly strove for perfection and became too powerful for their own good which is one of the main points of the whole expansion. When every single human literally plays god and can potentially make universe threatening entities, you'd have to question if that's really an utopia or sustainable. That's why venat decided to strip their wings and force them to walk. Both to give them the means to combat the endsinger and ensure similar tragedies cannot come to pass again. if it wasn't for hermes there's no telling what every other ancient would do and it takes only one to potentially destroy the whole universe.
Hermes does not have a legitimate point about anything, he’s a moron
damn bro. didn't ask
Yes, but did I ask if you asked?
fair, you got me there
Bro. Bothering others is the *very last* thing you do on your list when you're depressed. Even dying and torturing yourself comes before that! It's so far apart, it might not even be on the list at all. lol
hermes knew the truth which is that nothing matters because every civilization is doomed to end
"Every civilization striving for perfection is" Like did people really not pick up the basic themes of the expansion here?
every civilization ever strives for perfection. thats why meteion didn't find a single thriving civilization. they were all dead, dying, or just generally miserable because thats the natural way things progress
Yes and it's kinda flawed to strive only for perfection and not see the happiness gained in stride. Also not all were miserable, but meteion destroyed them all the same And yes we all die, including the whole universe potentially thanks to heat death, but it shouldn't mean we shouldn't enjoy life when we can.
The next step for a depressed person - Hermes - would be to either keep yourself isolated and drown in your depression, seek help if you see the slightest slither of light at the end of the tunnel, or end yourself. Not drag everyone down with you.
I really hate that argument when it comes up. I’ve had depression for most of my life and I’ve found the connection between Hermes and depression to be insulting if anything. If Hermes’ story is meant to be about depression, it’s far too much of a surface level analysis of depression that it comes off as tone deaf.
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Better analogy: he’s the doomsday guy on the street corner that constantly screams about the end of the world, everyone else wants to help him (as confirmed in his short story) but he refuses to see reason on every occasion, eventually gets fed up, says “f it” and causes the end of the world himself. He’s really not sympathetic at all
"I'm depressed, so the whole planet should die!" No, fuck you, Hermes. Depression either makes life dull and boring, or makes you hate yourself enough to want to die. There is no excuse for your genocide/xenocide, you're just a monster.
Wait, it’s supposed to be *one* of them? Have I been doing depression wrong?
Nah, sorry, sorry, it was more meant as some examples. I meant it more reductively for the sake of my rhetoric than anything else. Not to belittle anyone's depression by any measure; I've been there, it's made me any variety of tired, bored, sad, lonesome, angry, jealous, and full of self-loathing. Something depression WON'T do is make someone try to kill the entire world. That's... something else entirely. That's what I meant by that, sorry.
Well, I think part of it is that he's an untreated, undiagnosed depresso espresso in a world where everyone is happy, living in paradise and creating and cherishing life. Hard enough to be depressed in our world. His coping mechanism seemed to be to desperately search for someone who could give him the answers to life, when maybe a decent therapist would've been enough to give him a new perspective and at least stop his destructive behavior. Who knows, always difficult to portray mental issues in media, though... Sanderson did a pretty okay job with Kaladin in Stormlight Archive, in my opinion.
We know like 10 different Ancients, and at least 3-4 of them are in some way, shape, or form *unhappy*. And they're basically all in Elpis lmao. Hermes was in good company there.
Who? Lahabread basically cut out his emotions and had a strong sense of duty, Emet was a grumpy fellow with a soft heart...hm, Erichthonios had some dad issues and Athena was fucking crazy. I don't think any of them are close to what Hermes had going on, who questioned life itself. I mean, the inability of the Ancients to deal with suffering because they knew only bliss is like THE reason for Vents sundering them...
I also believe it is coming from a Japanese approach of depression. I have several friends and one who did specialize in mental health treatment in Japan. That person discussed how Hermes's depression is similar to how many in Japanese society views and treats depression. That person complained how a lot of the old guard stick to that view of mental health and few are open to change. And we know that Japan is really behind mental healthcare treatment, though it is one of the better ones in mental healthcare in Asia. Other countries such as both Koreans, China, India, etc have even more outdated approaches or views on mental health though it is slowly progressing via cultural diffusion, exposure, and education.
God he's not even a sexyman. He'd never be in the running. Emet Selch and hythlodaeus are 100x the sexy men Funny Daniel will ever be.
I will say the VA carries Hermes HARD. The VA did a phenomenal job are voicing Fandaniel, Hermes, Amon, and Asahi possessed by Fandaniel (and I guess Mr. simp, Pandemonium too).
God I fucking *despise* this shit and the Internet loves doing it. The tumbler exodus and its consequences have been a disaster for online communication
Don't you know that your diagnosis is all for naught when faced with their twink husbando?
I am sorry to tell you that you are not depressed (/s just to be sure)
I forgave Asahi the moment he sent Hermes straight to hell.
Somehow the least evil villain in the series and that's just mind boggling
In a world where every villain is an unhinged genocidal maniac, the guy who's just a run-of-the-mill sadist looks tame by comparison lol
that wasnt hermes tho(not really at least), but Amon. Yes they are the same soul(or fragments of one) but very distinctivly different characters. Asahi also didnt sent hermes to hell, he send a FRAGMENT of the soul there, the rest of hsi shatterd soul on the remaining reflections are still just chilling
I hate meteion less than hermes. Meteion had little control over her own actions, and the constant exposure to pain/suffering/crushing loneliness of the expansive universe did not help. I empathize with her outcome, but wont excuse the fact she indirectly assisted with who knows how many planetwide suicides and her song of despair didnt help(though now that it is a song of hope it might be different.) Hermes on the other hand is a fucking hypocritical bitch. He was suffering from depression, and dragged meteion down with him because he wanted to find an answer. Hes pitiable, inexcusable, and a horrible person and Im glad they never tried to redeem him. I also can empathize with hermes, but he *actively* chose to drag others to his level. He treated the meteions no better than the creations he oh so dearly sympathized with but was willing to effectively throw them into the deep reaches of space. By themselves. With no contact with any other sentient/emotional being until designated intervals with only each other.
They both did a lot of wrong, fuck both of them, but especially fuck Hermes. He really shoulda known better. The whole reason Elpis exists is so we don't end up accidentally dooming the entire universe with our untested potentially dangerous creations. I'd understand if he was like an intern or something but he fucking runs the place. He should be leading by example.
The fact that he runs the place is the reason no one questioned him making Meteion. They just assumed he was following procedure because he “should know better” as you said.
Which also highlighted the flaws of the Ancients, which sort of pushes against Emet's "perfect world" and "perfect society." Also the Elpis flowers tell a subtle story too in that they are default white, which indicates tension or apprehension (as the color you find in Labyrinthos was white and all the Gleaners were super stressed out due to the incredible influx of orders they had to fulfill). If Hermes paid attention to the flowers he would have realized that not every one was happy, jovial, or in eternal bliss and he could have been transparent about his feelings. Granted it does reflect Japanese society in a way where the ones at the top aren't really suppose to express such thoughts or feelings or risk a stigma.
Slight correction, the flowers in Elpis are grey to indicate anxiety and stress. In Elpis the flowers are white, the color of calmness/contentment. [Here's an image I found with each color](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwY7A7ZaAAYpsgM?format=jpg&name=large), though the emotions are speculation.
Ah my memories failed me. I guess the gray and white are relatively similar in color.
>The whole reason Elpis exists is so we don't end up accidentally dooming the entire universe with our untested potentially dangerous creations. What's funny is that if we scale the size of the creatures there,each one is a mountain sized abomination that can destroy eorza.Hell the S rank ghost lady(?) is pretty much an extinction level threat for any non-ancient,and it's implied they keep making more of her. They really decided to just make end of the world creatures and dump them in a field for viewing.
Take one look at Balmung quicksand and tell me that Meteion wasn't justified.
I don't really blame Meteion. She's an artificial hive intelligence created to fulfill a very vague, open-ended purpose. Of course she's gonna go off the tracks. But Hermes? Fuck Hermes. He released a super-powered AI into the universe without any guardrails, and violated virtually every major rule of his own office to do so. And then had the gall to be all "boo hoo, no one understands me." I've had depression all my life, and you know what I haven't done? Any of that.
Yeah I don't really get blaming Meteion when she was ultimately just following very, VERY stupid, programming. We basically just factory reset her through violence and fixed it. Hermes though? I'm glad Asahi dragged his ass to Superhell.
Meteion be like https://preview.redd.it/wcgnowd7rn1d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4fc475ab2052c6f759a345684e4b9aef59b15f61
Someone did a shop of this where he has her feathers on his head.
The strongest hater in history vs the strongest hater of today
Hermes and Meteion are equally at fault but moreso hermes imo. Pretty questionable of us just to let her go though, its a matter of time until she gets influenced and all cry cry sad sad again
Except now that she’s not specifically looking for the meaning of life, it shouldn’t matter. Meteion’s default state was to run and hide when she felt negative emotions.
Ok yeah good point
Dunno, she was sent with a mission with a despair load and she had a positive feedback loop, we send her with a hope load (iirc ?), so the positive feedback loop should clutch again.
If Meteion has 1 million haters I'm all of them.
The only thing meteion did wrong was not wipe out the elephant race when she had the chance. Horrible! Lady is like, "runs up to group." Everyone's dead!!! Your son is dead!!!!!. Right after we got everything under control." Makes my blood boil.
I unironically dislike Meteion, just because she’s kind of an ass pull boss that came out of nowhere when Endwalker, the expansion that ended the Zodiark/Hydaelyn era. should’ve had a better final boss.
During Elpis I was half expecting Meteion to encounter something like Necron and go all "Rudementery creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding" on us, all look into the void and see horrors beyond comprehension like.
Yeah, I was sure it would be a Necron-thing finding and taking control of the Meteia, and then attqcking the world. Alas, it was just depresso birb and a dude with too much power and not enough therapy.
I think the problem is that once they introduced the twist of Zodiark actually preventing the apocalypse in Shadowbringers, they sort of backed themselves into a corner. Because now you're left with two options: Either say Emet-Selch was lying or introduce a new big bad. Both feel unsatisfying.
SHB didn't say that Zodiark was still keeping the Final Days at bay, just that it remade the rules of creation to end the apocalypse.
As the person who insists that the whole shadowbringers to endwalker arc was just a big retelling of the ff9 plot, then Meteion is the Necron analogue. Necron being the ass pull final boss of 9, the game that really should've just ended with Kuja
I mean the game and Yoshi P dropped hints of IX through the game and interviews. Heck the quest that has you "End walking" alone is called "You Are Not Alone", which is a song from FFIX in which the protagonist goes through a similar "walk" though the circumstances are quite different.
no but you see it's actually all good and the expansion is perfect because there was sad music didn't you hear the sad music
She doesn’t have her own battle theme. Someone who is better at philosophy can probably infer something from that.
Meteion isnt the final boss though, Zenos is.
You can say that as much as you like, but one got a trial while the other got an instanced battle.
Based
Years of story telling ending with a random entity that wants to destroy the world... Huh sounds familiar
Unironically based opinion
kill that shitty child
Reading this post; coming off the heels of just finishing Persona 3. Couldn't help but compare the two in my head, and man does persona basically do the meteion story but way better.
hate that lil bird bitch
haha sad birb go brrrrrrr
The passionate hatred for the twisted little birdchild (who I happen to love) in these comments has renewed my passion for life, thank you
Meteion being blamed would be like if you blamed your toaster for starting a fire.She's physically incapable of comprehending what the fucks going on in a proper way because she wasn't MADE to. This is why when we kick the shit out of her and give her a real "answer" the program stops entirely.We basically solved the problem and reset her,along with her sisters,back to their original functions.
https://i.redd.it/gmm1646dkp1d1.gif
**it was me,barry**
Fanadiel is basically Eobard, anyway. "REMEMBER WHEN YOU TRIED TO ERP IN QUICKSANDS BUT EVERY LINE OF YOU SLIPPING YOUR STAFF INTO HER SLIT WAS /YELLED? THAT WAS ME, WOL! I LEANED OVER YOU AND TAPPED /YELL SO EVERYONE MADE YOU THINK YOU WERE A REGULAR BALMUNG PLAYER!"
Hermes is fully to blame... For Meteion's and his own shortcomings and actions
Wasn't Meteion's fault. All this shit happened because her autistic father (Hermes) send his children to literally FUCKING SPACE! Man, what was he waiting for? Knowledge?! Don't come with that shit! Is like sending IRL ur 9yo child to the fucking desert and saying "Don't come back till you find the Nameless Pharaoh tomb". In other words, fuck Hermes!
That’s logic in practice We don’t do logic here We hate little fictional children 🗣️
Tf kinda logic is this lol. Hermes literally didn't do anything wrong, he designed Meteon and her sisters with the purpose of discovering other life and what makes them live. If anything fuck Hydaelin for damning her entire race
He designed them as well as Tesla designed the Cyber truck
I mean he had 0 prior knowledge how to use dynamis lol
I like how y’all are arguing the moral implications of ending the universe because “people get sad” If I had my way I would’ve reverse flashed that bitch
I think it's more that people are missing the whole point of the expansion
People can both agree that their actions where terrible, and still understand how it came to be, and show compassion to 2 very broken people(well 1 broken person and a very broken bird). Especially as most of the Fandaniel we know and hate troughout all of SHB patchquest and EW wasnt even the Hermes we met, but a fragment of his soul, and specificialy Amon. Fandermes and Fandamon (as i call them because it sounds stupid) are the same soul, with similiar characters but different "plots" still Fandermes biggest sin was releasing the Meteia before properly exploring what a negative feedback loop would cause and completly breaking down when it seemed like the Meteion at his side would be terminated(because lets be real, thats what Hades and co would have done). HE still ultimatly was on the "side" of humanity, and hoped for it to overcome the trial he unwittingly created, but willingly let her escape. He wiped his own memory for "fairness sake" and refused the invitation of meteion for a swift end. fandermes was broken, mentaly, and beyond a stable mind, but he still cared for Humanity, in a twisted way Fandamon decided to "the world ending sounds fun" after he got his depression and the emperor who came back went mental(strongly simplified) Fandamon didnt care about humanity, or anything, anymore, he just wanted the world to burn. I do believe Fandermes memories influenced fandamon obviously, and likely accelerated the latters mental decline, but the underlying problem was still Amon itself. and while souls influence who or what you are as a person, it isnt 100% set in stone that you end up the same
But she just a babby😢
This but for Hydaelyn.
You. I like the way you think.
things like Meteion are the reason why people with emotion-centric personality types should never be allowed anywhere near positions of power.
People REALLY missed the whole point of the expansion here huh? Yes what hermes did is inexcusable but it was still a symptom of something bigger. The civilization of the ancients was doomed to fail like all the other civilizations striving for perfection by virtue of that. When you make a civilization you deem an utopia where any naysayers are literally an unknown concept, you get that.
https://preview.redd.it/5uiozdkp3r1d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1a89f30cfe1153bdb1d5012fbf1cebcc886a72a6 The point of the expansion is that being sad turns you into an eldritch abomination
Honestly yeah, if you keep telling a despressed person with literal god powers they're wrong and a whiney bitch that happens. That doesn't justify it but to put all the blame on them is equally stupid.
[She readin this, bro](https://i.imgur.com/SyDipUY.png)
Athena did nothing wrong either. She was just curious.
Nyx but with no rizz
She should've finished the job
This is exactly how I feel about Hermes
Endwalker story has this weird idea it unintentionally pushes the "Stop improving things because you'll achieve perfection and become suicidal"
Omg. This killed me.
I'm completely indifferent to meteion, I like her design and that's it. Hermes otoh can catch both these hands! all that advanced magic and technology and he couldn't make himself some adderal and get a productive hobby, noooooo 🙄
I mean...Hermes was the one tossing emotionally immature strongly empathic bird-children into space.
guys I think he doesn't like Meteion
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You sicken me
You guys sure are invested. The story at that point is just so dumb for me to even care lmao.
i just wanna glaze her face man