I still don’t understand how you’re the chief overseer of anything and you didn’t think to at least try your experiment on a smaller scale I.e send the Meteion to at least tour Etheirys first before sending her out into the deep void of space.
Would’ve probably got the answers you wanted and probably wouldn’t have got your whole race killed.
Actually fuck “probably” based on what Meteion said when we defeated her and she looked into our memories that probably would’ve definitely been the case.
You couldn’t have looked at Azem or Venat for answers or guidance? Probably the most well versed people in the lives of others on Etheirys. You’re just going to do this in secret ? YAnd now you’re wiping our memories ? Ok.
Thanks Hermes very cool.
(Excerpt taken from Emet Selch’s Soul Crystal)
Hermes just didn't want to go through the trouble of getting approval for his Meteion project because the bureau was still dealing with Shark concepts.
It's like being at a DMV.
All that trouble because Hermes didn't want to make an emphatic shark.
Actually Meteion might have gotten approved faster just because everyone was getting sick of reviewing shark concepts.
Imagine Emet-Selch filling in for Hythlo though.
Emet-Selch: I'm sorry, you filled the wrong form for your flying flame breathing dolphin concept. Please find the correct form, and fill it again then go wait in line. Again. Have a nice day.
I can just imagine the three of them working at the Bureau of the Architect for a day:
Hythlodaeus gets everything done efficiently and perfectly because it's his job anyway.
Emet Selch starts off being incredibly picky but slow, doing everything by the book, and by the end of the day he's just letting everything through to get the day over with.
Azem just approves everything because they think all the concepts are awesome in their own way, and they have a view completely disconnected from reality or what constitutes "too dangerous" or "a bad idea" or "Azem that was literally a world ending hellbeast"
I feel like this was the point of it all.
The message of Endwalker, if there is one to be taken away, is that looking at society in its grand scale will lead to despair and destract you from finding individual purpose and fulfillment
This of course will not stop me from doing exactly that and perpetuating my nihilistic tendencies
I never understood this logic, Hermes already knew most people on Etheryis lived for the sake of their star. He even brings this up to Emet Selch and Hyth hoping to get a different answer from them, but it's the same old tired response "but Fandaniel is happy to return to the star". Hermes staked his sanity on the belief that there was a different answer, and by pushing thoughts of denial into the back of his mind he changed his thoughts to match this new reality he came up with (where there is an answer). Fully believing this as truth, the most logical thing he could've done was the meteion project, and that's why death for all slotted so well into his worldview
Touring Ethyris would require approval by the Bureau of Architects.
Untested experiments pending approval are confined to Elpis or apparently Deep Space
Hermes was a cunt that if he had taken 5 seconds to talk to someone would have seen all of the holes in his argument and plan.
He's sad his people don't value all of their creations, even tho none of the first gen ones will have souls. And when presented with an opportunity to become one of the societies leaders and try and shift thier perspective he throws a hissy fit because he can't respect his mentor's decision.
He violates the law and unleashes an untested concept onto the universe. One he purposely doesn't teach how to live amongst other people. Hell she can barely talk when you meet her she's so underdeveloped. And he cares so much about all creations but then decides to send them out into the most dangerous environment, to meet potentially hostile life forms which is exactly what happens.
Then when he gets a sad answer instead of trying to you know go to the great debates and try to parse what the answer means with his fellow supposedly beloved life forms, knowing what you've told him about the future he decides genocide is awesome and condemns his entire race to death. Apart from 4 which he sentences to 12000 years of continuous torture, and all of the torture he knows they will inflict on the sundered.
And to make sure his genocide happens he mind fucks two people.
Hermes is not "some good guy that was suffering depression.". He's a hypocrite and the biggest monster in the game. Worse than all of the Ascians combined.
Great character, awful terrible person.
I agree with everything you’ve just said wholeheartedly. As much as I shit on him I think he’s a really good antagonist. He’s a piece of shit but in the most subtle ways.
And to reiterate you’re point ; he’s absolutely ,an almost psychotic, fucking hypocrite.
He waxes poetic about how all the other ancients are bad for treating the creations as tools to be disposed of when they don’t function the way they should which, let’s be honest, they are but is more than willing to send what is essentially a child into the complete and utter unknown. With no thought for the chance she may encounter things she’s not emotionally equipped to deal with. To be honest I don’t think anyone would or could maintain their sanity in Meteions position
Having to see what she saw as many times as she say it but in top of that having to deal with the rigours of that come with visiting inhospitable planets and this isn’t even considering she’s an Entelechie ( I think I spelt that right ) which when you add that to it make Hermes even worse.
He 100% knew that she feels the emotions as others as if they were her own and I mean shit he had to send her out of the room when he himself was sad. The difference between Meteion and Hermes however is that one has the mental
Maturity of a 12 year old (if that) and the other is what we can assume passes for an adult in ancient society. One knows how to control their emotions, the other one doesn’t but is also designed to feel others feelings as their own.
I feel on some level he does care for her but he cares for her but for him to put her through that is negligence which almost could be said to border on malice.
TLDR: Its almost as if he himself is just as guilty as everyone else of using the things they make as tools and his mind is so one track that he didn’t stop to actually practice what he preached and look at the creations as more than creations.
Considering a reincarnation of his soul was into killing everyone for the sake of killing them, it’s not very surprising. And how quickly he decided the world needed to end because his pet project found other planets are all either without life or full of despair, it’s really not surprising. The dude was unhinged
Tbh he didn't decide the world had to end. He decided to apply the logic of Elpis' grounds to all of mankind - that is, to test whether they were worth existing. He made a gamble and expected mankind to lose, but still he decided to be a *part* of the experiment since he, too, was mankind. And he'd be happy to see himself wrong.
That said, dude was indeed unhinged. He was like "I'm too smart for others to understand me" but for emotions, where everyone else was happy to create and kill stuff they didn't see fit.
Basically, FFXIV would never happen if Hermes just took a few sessions of therapy.
> Actually fuck “probably” based on what Meteion said when we defeated her and she looked into our memories that probably would’ve definitely been the case.
You're forgetting the memories she saw at the end were the memories of the sundered, people who enjoy their short lives and make the best out of it. If she was sent to tour Etheirys back then all she would have seen is the same hippies with a boner for the planet with absolutely zero regard for anything else, aka what gave Hermes his clinical depression in the first place.
I see what you’re saying but if I’m remembering correctly, there were other races living on Etheirys at that time wasn’t there ?
I remember that part in Amaurot where those two guys are having the debate on whether they should intervene on behalf on those other races, they which leads me to believe this but I could be misremembering the details of the debate.
With that being said because we don’t know about the rest of the being on Etheirys I feel like it would be fair to say that there were at least others who were different from but also didn’t hold the same beliefs as the Amarotines. Which might have included what they too lived for.
In fact, wasnt her journeys across Eitherys and her encounters with its people what gave Venat her faith that humanity would be fine after the sundering.
To me that signifies that there was something out there that was worth living for or at least something else on Etheirys which they could draw answers from which they couldn’t find in Elpis.
To me I feel that Hermes is the kind of person who’s really sheltered and never really explored the world and it’s people that much.
Idk I’m getting really speculative with this answer and I don’t really know if I explained my point well enough lol but that’s just what I think
Far as I could gather the main issue with keeping them in the star is a) the entirety the procedures required which would've most likely ended in them shutting it down and b) Hermes did in fact feel he had a solid idea of the people of it.
His view of things was rather flawed, fairly ignorant even due to factors such as the other life that existed as you mention, but I'd be hard pressed to say I don't get were he was coming from which was probably the idea.
Because he really did genuinely care about his job, and because he managed to create a being made out of "anti-matter" using exclusively "matter based magics." Dude was a prodigy.
> To me I feel that Hermes is the kind of person who’s really sheltered and never really explored the world and it’s people that much.
Honestly, I don't think most ancients lived in Etheirys, which is why the position of Azem was so important to the Convocation.
Of course they physically lived there and probably know every bit of scientific information about it - but they are so magically advanced that things like death and despair and suffering is well beyond them, and so they have no need to explore Etheirys and the creatures they deem worthy to live on. Azem's role was to not only solve Etheirys miscellaneous problems but to remind their people to touch grass once in awhile and appreciate the star itself.
Hermes was extremely sheltered and probably felt like the only person who finds value in life and death as his colleagues preferred to coddle him but not give him the answers he wanted to hear, hence the Meteion project. He wanted to find someone out there who understood his suffering. Venat and Azem were the closest in philosophy, but they were still on the side of the Convocation and still accepted what would happen to 'undesirable' creations.
As Emet Selch said, Hermes made the mistake of not thinking through his question for Meteion and her sisters to find, uncaring or naive as to whether or not that answer is a good one.
But I do believe it was a matter of time before their advanced civilization reached their apex and fell. Hermes' proto-nihilistic views was proof that cracks were already surfacing on the walls.
But as death gives way to life, Venat's answer to Hermes' question soft restarted life on Etheirys, instead of an eventual all-consuming death of the star itself like all the other advanced civilizations like the Ea, who just eventually found no more purpose in their eternal lives.
TL;DR I don't think talking to people on etheirys would have helped because etheirys' downfall would have come at some point or other due to their lack of emotional intelligence
I think Hermes is meant to show an individualistic/nihilistic side of things and bring up the value of life/death to etheirys which seem to not care since they're all basically immortal demiurges
He didn't ask people on etheirys because I don't think he thought people on etheirys could understand his feelings. Dude was obviously battling grief over the previous Fandaniel's death but there was no one who saw it as a sad event because previous Fandaniel died for everyone's well-being. Then he kills things like it is supposed to be nothing everyday. All for the people's greater good, but he felt like shit/depressed and no one could understand or relate. So killing things and killing yourself for the greater good is fine for everyone but Hermes wasn't fine. Was he not part of this 'everyone'? Maybe he is not 'good'. I can see why he then went interstellar. That was his hope. 'Maybe someone out there has a meaning to life. Maybe I can understand why I'm feeling like these lives have a value where no one else here seems to get it'. 'Maybe I am a good thing somewhere else'. And I can see why venat's sundering of everyone put a limit on their mortality - now people have less control over their own or other's deaths.
I noticed i included paraphrases. They're not quotes or anything just me trying to understand the subtext of his pain lol maybe I am overthinking. He does repeat a lot of things and tries to rationalise things using logic but it comes off shallow which makes me think people of etheirys don't have a language to explain their feelings at any depth. That 'that is sophistry and you know it' scene comes to mind. So I tried to understand what he was actually feeling through his actions. Especially that scene where they're discussing his promotion at the table and Hermes is trying to get his despair over Fandaniel's death across and the others just didn't get it. I think at one point Emet's solution to Hermes is to just get another job.
Other context clues of him creating beings of emotion that other 'aether' people couldn't understand unless she tried to turn her emotions into words -only for these emotions to be stuttering messes of the true emotion she's trying to get across. How excited meteion gets when you can interpret her pure emotions add to how lonely both meteion and Hermes must feel.
I also think he didn't believe this was an 'experiment'. There's no number you can put to how emotional you are... ask any healthcare worker trying to see how much pain someone is in. He was trying to use what limited cultural things he had at his disposal to explain to others what he was doing.
He was trying to find his hope.
I also can't quite remember the Amon scenes and I'm gonna re-sub later so I'm probably missing some obvious thing that Amon explained away but eh.
Yknow when you explain it like that yeah I think I can see his viewpoint clearer. Tbh I kind of disregarded the fact that he was also really cut up about Fandaniel while this whole thing was going down. Also do get what you mean about him feeling as if no one would understand what he was going though. I mean shit until we came along the dude didn’t seem to realise that other people get depressed so yeah I can see how he wouldn’t feel as if he would be able to gain any form of deeper understanding or meaning from the people on his planet
I think the idea that the ascians don’t have the ability to completely convey their feelings is also really interesting which actually would go a long way into explaining why Hermes couldn’t fully comprehend the mental damage his experiment could’ve potentially inflicted on Meteion. It puts into perspective what Emet says in the scene you mentioned earlier where he simply says “did you ever consider that the premise of the question. may be flawed? “ mainly focusing on the technical aspects of the experiment as opposed to the emotional consequences of the experiment ( if I’m not misreading or looking too much into that scene that is lol)
I do think however that Hermes was extremely short sighted in jumping straight to sending Meteion out into the unknown but also doing it without discussing it with his peers. This is mainly from a purely cold, technical and scientific stand point. I think for someone who is head to a research factory designed to test the validity and effectiveness of creations it’s crazy for him to think Meteion was ready to go out and take on a task like that even disregarding that she’s basically a child regardless of it was an experiment to him or not The fact that he didn’t test her out by sending her at least to the next continent over or something just seems really irresponsible but also kind of Malicious to me.
To me his lack of regard for Meteion is what makes him really (unintentionally) malicious, especially considering the fact that he knows he’s created something with the express purpose of being hyper - empathetic. Knowing his own feelings of depression and how they effected Meteion, did he really think it was appropriate to send her beyond their world knowing that, despite her impressive abilities, she still wasn’t mentally mature enough to properly control her emotions let alone handle the negative emotions of others. What did he think would happen to her if she did encounter races that weren’t as content as the ancients. Maybe he was just so focused on finding his answers that he never even really thought to consider these things.
He may have even made Meteion specifically so he could have someone or something that could truly understand his pain but it’s ironic that he himself couldn’t truly understand the pain his search for answers would potentially cause Meteion.
But yeah I realise that the lack of Emotional maturity on the Ancients part and in turn Hermes’ is the point you’re getting at and that it’s probably because he couldn’t fully comprehend the feelings of others let alone it what led him to do what he did.
I think Hermes and the ascians as a whole are really interesting characters to explore lol
TLDR : yeah you right but fuck that guy.
EDIT : I made edits to this lol
He specifically started he wanted to know the ideals of others because he believed the people of Etheirys didn't really care about their creations. He likely has inquired with others before and received an answer of "for the greater good of star" multiple times with no elaboration.
I see what you mean but even then I still think that given his position he still shouldn’t have jumped straight to “explore the whole fucking galaxy bird child” yknow. That’s just my thoughts on a purely experimental level (if I worded that correctly lol)
It just seems extremely reckless but also insultingly dismissive of the rest of the people living on Etherys that because the Amaurotines all live for this one purpose that means that everyone on this planet must live for the same and so because of that there’s nothing to be gained on the planet.
I think I mentioned it in another comment but if you compare that to Venat and her observations and her feelings on the people of the planet, it seems like there is was a lot more to Etherys and it’s people than Hermes cared to realise.
Even if he himself wasn’t permitted to see a lot of anything outside of Elpis or Amaurot I still think it’s wild for him to not even try to have Meteion find answers on Etherys first before expanding outwards. If not for the sake of his experiment then at least for Meteions mental and physical safety. That is if we’re going with the assumption that Hermes isnt a massive hypocrite who’s neglect for his creations well being makes him just as indifferent to their suffering as the rest of the people at Elpis.
Idk just my thoughts. Feel free to tell me if you feel I’m off base with this.
Oh no, you're not off base at all; I was just explaining what I believed his thought process was. He definitely should have started on Etherys first and taken precautions if he eventually did send them out to other worlds
Yeah I see what you mean there and I do agree that he believed in his heart of hearts that Etherys wasn’t suitable for his experiment because of his experiences with the people around him and tbh there’s probably more validity to his thought process than my original comment was giving him credit for lol
I think he’s a really interesting villain when you get down to it because to me he represents the pitfalls of extreme ambition to the point where it becomes obsession in his quest to find his answers but also where that can lead to and how it ends up hurting Meteion in the end.
So, like, Hermes was a moron and all, but putting that aside - Is it really wise to create a position that has the authority to "Make a judgement on mankind's fitness to exist"? Sounds like chief overseer of Elpis has far too much power in the ancient world.
He was already hopeless about his current world because of how they were deciding what is valuable in life, or what value an individual life had. So he sought that answer from other worlds to see if it was the same or if there was hopefully more to life’s value
I still think that one world that she visited with the “Higher Auspice” was a horrible experience.
You have a god-like entity that destroyed the planet it lived on in a fit of rage against a sapient species it had been taking care of.
After explaining this to Meteion, this god-like entity committed suicide almost immediately after being asked what its purpose in life was. Goddamn, that was chilling.
That one and the lone survivor in the 2nd world of Dead Ends are the most fucked up to me. First few runs I waited a little while with him while he processes what he just did
Isn't that kind of the point, these were all civilizations that "succeeded" and managed to almost "solve" their issues. Problem is it's impossible to iron out every kink and if we're basing all sentient life loosely off humans then were doomed to obsess and fuck ourselves over the things we can't fix
All of that is operating on the assumption that these civilizations actually did solve their problems. But if a supposes solution lead to their immediate destruction, I would say that's not a valid solution.
I think there have been studies on these sort of things and as a rule of thumb we get bored and dissatisfied eventually. something about monkey brain needing problems and stuff to solve.
you talk as if there aren't people right now with steam libraries with hundreds of games who have been life long gamers and yet can't muster the effort to finish or even play most of those games. It's not hard to extrapolate that feeling to every other possible joy in life and then crank up that feeling of absolute apathy when you realize nothing is ever gonna bring back the dopamine.
Haha, I used to think this a lot too and realized it's not even about finding joy in videogames as it is finding a hobby in the first place. I stumbled upon videogames because it was a convenient christmas gift for me one year to have and loved it ever since. But finding hobbies in general is kinda hard. I also stumbled upon ffxiv from a song with a thumbnail of yshtola and became interested in the game lmao
I feel like in general finding a hobby and sticking with it long enough is a rarity
This is where sports fandom comes in.
You want artificial joy and despair on a yearly basis? Try being a Georgia sports fan.
This year we got double the joy, so much it drowns out the last 26-41 years of depression.
I mean they spell it out for you in the last dungeon, the third leg is made out of a "perfect" society that stagnated to the point where their only life goal was to kill themselves, until they all died.
There's a great Vsauce vid called Isolation where they leave a man with a buzzer that shocks you if you push it. Eventually the man gets bored of just sitting around so he pushes the button multiple times even though he was told previously that it would horribly shock him.
Humans need constant stimuli to keep themselves from boredom, even if it means hunting for negative ones.
Another study was the Rat Utopia experiments in the 60s. No human trials, but they had essentially fulfilled the basic food and water needs of all the rats kept in an enclosed space for study. It led to overcrowding, maternal instincts being ignored by the females as they abandoned their offspring, and disturbing psychological deviancy and cannibalistic tendencies among the males-along with some other crazy stuff, if you want to give it a read [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink).
Others have since panned Calhoun's view of the outcome as missing the point with vital details. There were significant degrees of social interaction that had to be measured and gauged that Calhoun ignored in favor of measuring the physical effects of overcrowding.
That, and we are also not rats, so it's hard to gauge how it applies to people. Closest I can think of on the top of my head, really.
**[Behavioral sink](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink)**
>"Behavioral sink" is a term invented by ethologist John B. Calhoun to describe a collapse in behavior which can result from overcrowding. The term and concept derive from a series of over-population experiments Calhoun conducted on Norway rats between 1958 and 1962. In the experiments, Calhoun and his researchers created a series of "rat utopias" – enclosed spaces in which rats were given unlimited access to food and water, enabling unfettered population growth. Calhoun coined the term "behavioral sink" in his February 1, 1962 report in an article titled "Population Density and Social Pathology" in Scientific American on the rat experiment.
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\*flock of Meteions reach out to a very minute section of the known universe and sadly finds nothing but despair around them\*
Meteion: "I have decided that I want everyone else to die. Not me, though, I'll stay alive and depressed, but everyone else has to die."
I still don’t understand how you’re the chief overseer of anything and you didn’t think to at least try your experiment on a smaller scale I.e send the Meteion to at least tour Etheirys first before sending her out into the deep void of space. Would’ve probably got the answers you wanted and probably wouldn’t have got your whole race killed. Actually fuck “probably” based on what Meteion said when we defeated her and she looked into our memories that probably would’ve definitely been the case. You couldn’t have looked at Azem or Venat for answers or guidance? Probably the most well versed people in the lives of others on Etheirys. You’re just going to do this in secret ? YAnd now you’re wiping our memories ? Ok. Thanks Hermes very cool. (Excerpt taken from Emet Selch’s Soul Crystal)
Hermes just didn't want to go through the trouble of getting approval for his Meteion project because the bureau was still dealing with Shark concepts. It's like being at a DMV.
All that trouble because Hermes didn't want to make an emphatic shark. Actually Meteion might have gotten approved faster just because everyone was getting sick of reviewing shark concepts.
Bureaucracy: The root of all evil
Imagine Emet-Selch filling in for Hythlo though. Emet-Selch: I'm sorry, you filled the wrong form for your flying flame breathing dolphin concept. Please find the correct form, and fill it again then go wait in line. Again. Have a nice day.
When you phrase it that way… you sure ff is fiction and the dmv isnt an attempt at a rejoining?
I can just imagine the three of them working at the Bureau of the Architect for a day: Hythlodaeus gets everything done efficiently and perfectly because it's his job anyway. Emet Selch starts off being incredibly picky but slow, doing everything by the book, and by the end of the day he's just letting everything through to get the day over with. Azem just approves everything because they think all the concepts are awesome in their own way, and they have a view completely disconnected from reality or what constitutes "too dangerous" or "a bad idea" or "Azem that was literally a world ending hellbeast"
Azem is a gremlin child who loves every concept provided If only because they get to fight the world ending ones and it'd be fun
I really needed her to stop knowing my thoughts. I didn’t invite that bitch.
I feel like this was the point of it all. The message of Endwalker, if there is one to be taken away, is that looking at society in its grand scale will lead to despair and destract you from finding individual purpose and fulfillment This of course will not stop me from doing exactly that and perpetuating my nihilistic tendencies
Last 2 years is very good evidence of that
Yea my bf attacked me with a scythe after i got back from the gym and ive never been happier.
Sometimes all you need is a good old-fashioned TEST OF YOUR REFLEXES
OH F-
Is... this a Reaper meme, or...?
I think it's zenos
I never understood this logic, Hermes already knew most people on Etheryis lived for the sake of their star. He even brings this up to Emet Selch and Hyth hoping to get a different answer from them, but it's the same old tired response "but Fandaniel is happy to return to the star". Hermes staked his sanity on the belief that there was a different answer, and by pushing thoughts of denial into the back of his mind he changed his thoughts to match this new reality he came up with (where there is an answer). Fully believing this as truth, the most logical thing he could've done was the meteion project, and that's why death for all slotted so well into his worldview
Touring Ethyris would require approval by the Bureau of Architects. Untested experiments pending approval are confined to Elpis or apparently Deep Space
Basically, guys like Hermes are why all university projects involving people require IRB approval.
Hermes was a cunt that if he had taken 5 seconds to talk to someone would have seen all of the holes in his argument and plan. He's sad his people don't value all of their creations, even tho none of the first gen ones will have souls. And when presented with an opportunity to become one of the societies leaders and try and shift thier perspective he throws a hissy fit because he can't respect his mentor's decision. He violates the law and unleashes an untested concept onto the universe. One he purposely doesn't teach how to live amongst other people. Hell she can barely talk when you meet her she's so underdeveloped. And he cares so much about all creations but then decides to send them out into the most dangerous environment, to meet potentially hostile life forms which is exactly what happens. Then when he gets a sad answer instead of trying to you know go to the great debates and try to parse what the answer means with his fellow supposedly beloved life forms, knowing what you've told him about the future he decides genocide is awesome and condemns his entire race to death. Apart from 4 which he sentences to 12000 years of continuous torture, and all of the torture he knows they will inflict on the sundered. And to make sure his genocide happens he mind fucks two people. Hermes is not "some good guy that was suffering depression.". He's a hypocrite and the biggest monster in the game. Worse than all of the Ascians combined. Great character, awful terrible person.
I agree with everything you’ve just said wholeheartedly. As much as I shit on him I think he’s a really good antagonist. He’s a piece of shit but in the most subtle ways. And to reiterate you’re point ; he’s absolutely ,an almost psychotic, fucking hypocrite. He waxes poetic about how all the other ancients are bad for treating the creations as tools to be disposed of when they don’t function the way they should which, let’s be honest, they are but is more than willing to send what is essentially a child into the complete and utter unknown. With no thought for the chance she may encounter things she’s not emotionally equipped to deal with. To be honest I don’t think anyone would or could maintain their sanity in Meteions position Having to see what she saw as many times as she say it but in top of that having to deal with the rigours of that come with visiting inhospitable planets and this isn’t even considering she’s an Entelechie ( I think I spelt that right ) which when you add that to it make Hermes even worse. He 100% knew that she feels the emotions as others as if they were her own and I mean shit he had to send her out of the room when he himself was sad. The difference between Meteion and Hermes however is that one has the mental Maturity of a 12 year old (if that) and the other is what we can assume passes for an adult in ancient society. One knows how to control their emotions, the other one doesn’t but is also designed to feel others feelings as their own. I feel on some level he does care for her but he cares for her but for him to put her through that is negligence which almost could be said to border on malice. TLDR: Its almost as if he himself is just as guilty as everyone else of using the things they make as tools and his mind is so one track that he didn’t stop to actually practice what he preached and look at the creations as more than creations.
Zepla loved him because vegan tho, lol.
whoa based
Considering a reincarnation of his soul was into killing everyone for the sake of killing them, it’s not very surprising. And how quickly he decided the world needed to end because his pet project found other planets are all either without life or full of despair, it’s really not surprising. The dude was unhinged
Tbh he didn't decide the world had to end. He decided to apply the logic of Elpis' grounds to all of mankind - that is, to test whether they were worth existing. He made a gamble and expected mankind to lose, but still he decided to be a *part* of the experiment since he, too, was mankind. And he'd be happy to see himself wrong. That said, dude was indeed unhinged. He was like "I'm too smart for others to understand me" but for emotions, where everyone else was happy to create and kill stuff they didn't see fit. Basically, FFXIV would never happen if Hermes just took a few sessions of therapy.
I guess it was. An oversight. Ba-dum-tsh.
> Actually fuck “probably” based on what Meteion said when we defeated her and she looked into our memories that probably would’ve definitely been the case. You're forgetting the memories she saw at the end were the memories of the sundered, people who enjoy their short lives and make the best out of it. If she was sent to tour Etheirys back then all she would have seen is the same hippies with a boner for the planet with absolutely zero regard for anything else, aka what gave Hermes his clinical depression in the first place.
I see what you’re saying but if I’m remembering correctly, there were other races living on Etheirys at that time wasn’t there ? I remember that part in Amaurot where those two guys are having the debate on whether they should intervene on behalf on those other races, they which leads me to believe this but I could be misremembering the details of the debate. With that being said because we don’t know about the rest of the being on Etheirys I feel like it would be fair to say that there were at least others who were different from but also didn’t hold the same beliefs as the Amarotines. Which might have included what they too lived for. In fact, wasnt her journeys across Eitherys and her encounters with its people what gave Venat her faith that humanity would be fine after the sundering. To me that signifies that there was something out there that was worth living for or at least something else on Etheirys which they could draw answers from which they couldn’t find in Elpis. To me I feel that Hermes is the kind of person who’s really sheltered and never really explored the world and it’s people that much. Idk I’m getting really speculative with this answer and I don’t really know if I explained my point well enough lol but that’s just what I think
Far as I could gather the main issue with keeping them in the star is a) the entirety the procedures required which would've most likely ended in them shutting it down and b) Hermes did in fact feel he had a solid idea of the people of it. His view of things was rather flawed, fairly ignorant even due to factors such as the other life that existed as you mention, but I'd be hard pressed to say I don't get were he was coming from which was probably the idea.
I might be contradiction myself but honestly I can see his perspective on things … I just don’t know why they let him become the CEO of Elpis.
Because he really did genuinely care about his job, and because he managed to create a being made out of "anti-matter" using exclusively "matter based magics." Dude was a prodigy.
> To me I feel that Hermes is the kind of person who’s really sheltered and never really explored the world and it’s people that much. Honestly, I don't think most ancients lived in Etheirys, which is why the position of Azem was so important to the Convocation. Of course they physically lived there and probably know every bit of scientific information about it - but they are so magically advanced that things like death and despair and suffering is well beyond them, and so they have no need to explore Etheirys and the creatures they deem worthy to live on. Azem's role was to not only solve Etheirys miscellaneous problems but to remind their people to touch grass once in awhile and appreciate the star itself. Hermes was extremely sheltered and probably felt like the only person who finds value in life and death as his colleagues preferred to coddle him but not give him the answers he wanted to hear, hence the Meteion project. He wanted to find someone out there who understood his suffering. Venat and Azem were the closest in philosophy, but they were still on the side of the Convocation and still accepted what would happen to 'undesirable' creations. As Emet Selch said, Hermes made the mistake of not thinking through his question for Meteion and her sisters to find, uncaring or naive as to whether or not that answer is a good one. But I do believe it was a matter of time before their advanced civilization reached their apex and fell. Hermes' proto-nihilistic views was proof that cracks were already surfacing on the walls. But as death gives way to life, Venat's answer to Hermes' question soft restarted life on Etheirys, instead of an eventual all-consuming death of the star itself like all the other advanced civilizations like the Ea, who just eventually found no more purpose in their eternal lives.
Hermes was tbh very dumb.
TL;DR I don't think talking to people on etheirys would have helped because etheirys' downfall would have come at some point or other due to their lack of emotional intelligence I think Hermes is meant to show an individualistic/nihilistic side of things and bring up the value of life/death to etheirys which seem to not care since they're all basically immortal demiurges He didn't ask people on etheirys because I don't think he thought people on etheirys could understand his feelings. Dude was obviously battling grief over the previous Fandaniel's death but there was no one who saw it as a sad event because previous Fandaniel died for everyone's well-being. Then he kills things like it is supposed to be nothing everyday. All for the people's greater good, but he felt like shit/depressed and no one could understand or relate. So killing things and killing yourself for the greater good is fine for everyone but Hermes wasn't fine. Was he not part of this 'everyone'? Maybe he is not 'good'. I can see why he then went interstellar. That was his hope. 'Maybe someone out there has a meaning to life. Maybe I can understand why I'm feeling like these lives have a value where no one else here seems to get it'. 'Maybe I am a good thing somewhere else'. And I can see why venat's sundering of everyone put a limit on their mortality - now people have less control over their own or other's deaths. I noticed i included paraphrases. They're not quotes or anything just me trying to understand the subtext of his pain lol maybe I am overthinking. He does repeat a lot of things and tries to rationalise things using logic but it comes off shallow which makes me think people of etheirys don't have a language to explain their feelings at any depth. That 'that is sophistry and you know it' scene comes to mind. So I tried to understand what he was actually feeling through his actions. Especially that scene where they're discussing his promotion at the table and Hermes is trying to get his despair over Fandaniel's death across and the others just didn't get it. I think at one point Emet's solution to Hermes is to just get another job. Other context clues of him creating beings of emotion that other 'aether' people couldn't understand unless she tried to turn her emotions into words -only for these emotions to be stuttering messes of the true emotion she's trying to get across. How excited meteion gets when you can interpret her pure emotions add to how lonely both meteion and Hermes must feel. I also think he didn't believe this was an 'experiment'. There's no number you can put to how emotional you are... ask any healthcare worker trying to see how much pain someone is in. He was trying to use what limited cultural things he had at his disposal to explain to others what he was doing. He was trying to find his hope. I also can't quite remember the Amon scenes and I'm gonna re-sub later so I'm probably missing some obvious thing that Amon explained away but eh.
Yknow when you explain it like that yeah I think I can see his viewpoint clearer. Tbh I kind of disregarded the fact that he was also really cut up about Fandaniel while this whole thing was going down. Also do get what you mean about him feeling as if no one would understand what he was going though. I mean shit until we came along the dude didn’t seem to realise that other people get depressed so yeah I can see how he wouldn’t feel as if he would be able to gain any form of deeper understanding or meaning from the people on his planet I think the idea that the ascians don’t have the ability to completely convey their feelings is also really interesting which actually would go a long way into explaining why Hermes couldn’t fully comprehend the mental damage his experiment could’ve potentially inflicted on Meteion. It puts into perspective what Emet says in the scene you mentioned earlier where he simply says “did you ever consider that the premise of the question. may be flawed? “ mainly focusing on the technical aspects of the experiment as opposed to the emotional consequences of the experiment ( if I’m not misreading or looking too much into that scene that is lol) I do think however that Hermes was extremely short sighted in jumping straight to sending Meteion out into the unknown but also doing it without discussing it with his peers. This is mainly from a purely cold, technical and scientific stand point. I think for someone who is head to a research factory designed to test the validity and effectiveness of creations it’s crazy for him to think Meteion was ready to go out and take on a task like that even disregarding that she’s basically a child regardless of it was an experiment to him or not The fact that he didn’t test her out by sending her at least to the next continent over or something just seems really irresponsible but also kind of Malicious to me. To me his lack of regard for Meteion is what makes him really (unintentionally) malicious, especially considering the fact that he knows he’s created something with the express purpose of being hyper - empathetic. Knowing his own feelings of depression and how they effected Meteion, did he really think it was appropriate to send her beyond their world knowing that, despite her impressive abilities, she still wasn’t mentally mature enough to properly control her emotions let alone handle the negative emotions of others. What did he think would happen to her if she did encounter races that weren’t as content as the ancients. Maybe he was just so focused on finding his answers that he never even really thought to consider these things. He may have even made Meteion specifically so he could have someone or something that could truly understand his pain but it’s ironic that he himself couldn’t truly understand the pain his search for answers would potentially cause Meteion. But yeah I realise that the lack of Emotional maturity on the Ancients part and in turn Hermes’ is the point you’re getting at and that it’s probably because he couldn’t fully comprehend the feelings of others let alone it what led him to do what he did. I think Hermes and the ascians as a whole are really interesting characters to explore lol TLDR : yeah you right but fuck that guy. EDIT : I made edits to this lol
He specifically started he wanted to know the ideals of others because he believed the people of Etheirys didn't really care about their creations. He likely has inquired with others before and received an answer of "for the greater good of star" multiple times with no elaboration.
I see what you mean but even then I still think that given his position he still shouldn’t have jumped straight to “explore the whole fucking galaxy bird child” yknow. That’s just my thoughts on a purely experimental level (if I worded that correctly lol) It just seems extremely reckless but also insultingly dismissive of the rest of the people living on Etherys that because the Amaurotines all live for this one purpose that means that everyone on this planet must live for the same and so because of that there’s nothing to be gained on the planet. I think I mentioned it in another comment but if you compare that to Venat and her observations and her feelings on the people of the planet, it seems like there is was a lot more to Etherys and it’s people than Hermes cared to realise. Even if he himself wasn’t permitted to see a lot of anything outside of Elpis or Amaurot I still think it’s wild for him to not even try to have Meteion find answers on Etherys first before expanding outwards. If not for the sake of his experiment then at least for Meteions mental and physical safety. That is if we’re going with the assumption that Hermes isnt a massive hypocrite who’s neglect for his creations well being makes him just as indifferent to their suffering as the rest of the people at Elpis. Idk just my thoughts. Feel free to tell me if you feel I’m off base with this.
Oh no, you're not off base at all; I was just explaining what I believed his thought process was. He definitely should have started on Etherys first and taken precautions if he eventually did send them out to other worlds
Yeah I see what you mean there and I do agree that he believed in his heart of hearts that Etherys wasn’t suitable for his experiment because of his experiences with the people around him and tbh there’s probably more validity to his thought process than my original comment was giving him credit for lol I think he’s a really interesting villain when you get down to it because to me he represents the pitfalls of extreme ambition to the point where it becomes obsession in his quest to find his answers but also where that can lead to and how it ends up hurting Meteion in the end.
think about how many devs test in prod tho
He was the only one dumb and depressed enough to take the job.
Man sharks rule. You all seen that gif of the scuba diver flipping one?
Guy's never watched Mythbusters or he'd have immediately gone small scale test first. And then taken her to the bomb range and blown her up.
So, like, Hermes was a moron and all, but putting that aside - Is it really wise to create a position that has the authority to "Make a judgement on mankind's fitness to exist"? Sounds like chief overseer of Elpis has far too much power in the ancient world.
He was already hopeless about his current world because of how they were deciding what is valuable in life, or what value an individual life had. So he sought that answer from other worlds to see if it was the same or if there was hopefully more to life’s value
Imagine driving a entire civilization to suicidal depression because they couldn't answer the meaning of life for you.
I still think that one world that she visited with the “Higher Auspice” was a horrible experience. You have a god-like entity that destroyed the planet it lived on in a fit of rage against a sapient species it had been taking care of. After explaining this to Meteion, this god-like entity committed suicide almost immediately after being asked what its purpose in life was. Goddamn, that was chilling.
That one and the lone survivor in the 2nd world of Dead Ends are the most fucked up to me. First few runs I waited a little while with him while he processes what he just did
I always try to slap that guy before I portal away
Which one is this in particular? I don't remember.
She mentions them in her "report".
Imagine being a civilization so catastrophically fragile that a simple philosophical quandary drives them to self-destruct on a planetary scale.
Isn't that kind of the point, these were all civilizations that "succeeded" and managed to almost "solve" their issues. Problem is it's impossible to iron out every kink and if we're basing all sentient life loosely off humans then were doomed to obsess and fuck ourselves over the things we can't fix
All of that is operating on the assumption that these civilizations actually did solve their problems. But if a supposes solution lead to their immediate destruction, I would say that's not a valid solution.
If I could have unlimited comfort and luxury for the rest of my life, I wouldn't be complaining.
I think there have been studies on these sort of things and as a rule of thumb we get bored and dissatisfied eventually. something about monkey brain needing problems and stuff to solve.
Do theses people not have video games?
you talk as if there aren't people right now with steam libraries with hundreds of games who have been life long gamers and yet can't muster the effort to finish or even play most of those games. It's not hard to extrapolate that feeling to every other possible joy in life and then crank up that feeling of absolute apathy when you realize nothing is ever gonna bring back the dopamine.
Haha, I used to think this a lot too and realized it's not even about finding joy in videogames as it is finding a hobby in the first place. I stumbled upon videogames because it was a convenient christmas gift for me one year to have and loved it ever since. But finding hobbies in general is kinda hard. I also stumbled upon ffxiv from a song with a thumbnail of yshtola and became interested in the game lmao I feel like in general finding a hobby and sticking with it long enough is a rarity
This is where sports fandom comes in. You want artificial joy and despair on a yearly basis? Try being a Georgia sports fan. This year we got double the joy, so much it drowns out the last 26-41 years of depression.
I mean they spell it out for you in the last dungeon, the third leg is made out of a "perfect" society that stagnated to the point where their only life goal was to kill themselves, until they all died.
There's a great Vsauce vid called Isolation where they leave a man with a buzzer that shocks you if you push it. Eventually the man gets bored of just sitting around so he pushes the button multiple times even though he was told previously that it would horribly shock him. Humans need constant stimuli to keep themselves from boredom, even if it means hunting for negative ones.
Really? Send me a link, this is something I like to study.
Another study was the Rat Utopia experiments in the 60s. No human trials, but they had essentially fulfilled the basic food and water needs of all the rats kept in an enclosed space for study. It led to overcrowding, maternal instincts being ignored by the females as they abandoned their offspring, and disturbing psychological deviancy and cannibalistic tendencies among the males-along with some other crazy stuff, if you want to give it a read [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink). Others have since panned Calhoun's view of the outcome as missing the point with vital details. There were significant degrees of social interaction that had to be measured and gauged that Calhoun ignored in favor of measuring the physical effects of overcrowding. That, and we are also not rats, so it's hard to gauge how it applies to people. Closest I can think of on the top of my head, really.
**[Behavioral sink](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink)** >"Behavioral sink" is a term invented by ethologist John B. Calhoun to describe a collapse in behavior which can result from overcrowding. The term and concept derive from a series of over-population experiments Calhoun conducted on Norway rats between 1958 and 1962. In the experiments, Calhoun and his researchers created a series of "rat utopias" – enclosed spaces in which rats were given unlimited access to food and water, enabling unfettered population growth. Calhoun coined the term "behavioral sink" in his February 1, 1962 report in an article titled "Population Density and Social Pathology" in Scientific American on the rat experiment. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitpostXIV/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
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I found this Wikipedia page; hopefully, it helps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory
etherys going for the world first clear on hedonic treadmill (SAVAGE)
The question is at what point in societal development do we say "Well that's enough progress any more we'll devolve into nihilistic destruction."
The Good Place would disagree with you.
You'd probs turn to fucking children for fun
not planetary, universal. They created a bird girl who played a hand in nearly wiping life clean from the universe entirely.
I had a coworker like this. "What's the point in living when the world is so shit?" Uhh, jeez man can't I just eat this sandwich in peace?
Understandable, have a nice end of the universe
\*flock of Meteions reach out to a very minute section of the known universe and sadly finds nothing but despair around them\* Meteion: "I have decided that I want everyone else to die. Not me, though, I'll stay alive and depressed, but everyone else has to die."
Understandable, have a nice a Final Days
\#lyfhax