A look at Emet Selch and why we like him.
Philosophy Tube Trolley Question : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozcaLnTuidU
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I still admit, I fell hard for him.
Couple house keeping things: USUALLY I don't have this many jump cuts, I got better with them as time went on, HOWEVER, the elephant in the room here is I got top row braces (bottoms to come). It was difficult to edit, I hear where I struggled in speech, and even though I THOUGHT I had it all down pat, I didn't.
So they should be better as time goes on and I adjust to the new.. umm. gear, but I do appologize for it now.
Ktisis Hyperboreia with Emet as a Tank:
Emet: "Out of MY Way……"
It's why after going through the Amaurot dungeon and thrn watching in horror as EW kicks off and the final days start anew and you see what he lost in Elpis that Emet-Selch's words before that fight hit home and boy do they hit hard. He is by far the best villian i've come across in any MMO i love him to pieces.
Emet also understood Elidibus' situation, hence setting up the pieces to allow you to get past him once he was the only unsundered left.
I do wonder why Hydaelyn, after the sundering, never told him about what happened in Elpis. It was always Hermes she was concerned about and even that was a moot point by that stage. Perhaps, knowing the future you foretold, she feared trying to reason with the Unsundered ones would cause a divergence to an even worse future scenario.
I absolutely LOVED Emet, but yeah – he's so complex. I loved his reprise in EW. LOVED this take…… I need an in-game portrait of him to put in my house.
All villians are the hero of their own story. But Emet thinking he is isn't entirely irrational. Take that trolley question. Now put a herd of cows on one side vs a single human. If you start with his basic premise that the people of Eorzea aren't really people everything makes sense. He's wrong of course, and deep down he knows it. It may have seemed true right after the sundering before the peoples of the shards regained speach and civilization, but he knew it by the time we confronted him. He just couldn't admit he'd spent thousands of lifetimes doing something to get Azem and Hythlodeus back and neither of them would have been happy with it.
I love Emet even when he was the so-called villain. I could feel the hurt and pain and then hearing him alone carrying the weight of his people. His shoulders were slouched. This is good attention to detail. He was so burdened it affected his posture. Only at the end of Shadowbringers and he is defeated that he full stands upright. Relieved of this burden. I see Emet a soldier. Why. Because he followed the orders of his people and would do anything to complete the mission. There is nothing wrong with that. I was glad Ardbert got his redemption, but I wasn't happy at the end. It was bittersweet. Emet was like true man. He loved deeply, was sarcastic, but kind. He wasn't a villain. For crying out loud. He even understood loss. He brought back Yshtola just to show he isn't evil. I even got mad at Thancred when he quipped about it after. No. His actions did not speak of evil, but of man trying to make you understand his view. And while people say billions of lived. Yes and no. Those souls would have been unified back into one person. Remember they were split from the original person. Like us and Azem. So, I get why he didn't see it as loss. But we get to see it to through Ardbert. Yes, he unified with us, and we got his memories, but alas he is no more. This is painful to watch. Also, Emet was also humble enough to create a stone for Azem who disagreed with him in case she was right. This shows just how much he cared for other opinions and beliefs.
I am team Emet! Let me at that Switch! 😀
Emet is one of the greatest villians, and I use that label lightly as i feel Antagonist better suited to him, I have come across in media. He was intruguing as there was no arguing he was evil but that you had to consider his point of view and atleast think on it for a moment. I knew the betrayal was coming but was still shocked when it happened, mostly because I was also taken back by certain people revealing themselves. But once that happened, my focus became to stop him at all costs. But litlle moments along the way pushed me back, but then he would say things that would sharpen my focus again. And it wasn't until after the end of our showdown, and he bid me remember, that I felt that mix feeling again. Yes, we did the right thing in defeating him, but there was that twinge of sympathy for him and wanting to carry on his wishes, even if we found other ways to do so.
Fast forward to Endwalker and I started hearing him narrate, I felt mixed: while it was good hearing him again, I was VERY concerned to what roll he was going to play. Then Elpis happened. And just like you, I fell in love with him. To see him not being crushed by his burnden, and being this grumpy, sassy and reliable ally when push came to shove, made me respect him even more. Then we get towards the very end of Endwalker. His speech touched my heart and made me cry just as much as the maxium emotional damage we were put through leading up to that point. And in the end, to see him honestly smile, just that once, makes me hope we will meet again in a later expansion, this time as friends and allies.
An MMORPG that asks one of the difficult question, what is life? What makes them alive and sentient? As far as I can remember from countless MMORPG I have tried since 1999, I never had one that dove deep into that philosophy like FF14 has. Emet Selch was the perfect vessel for the narrative to question it. What really amazes me that they were able to create a villain who has committed genocide that we sympathize to. There aren't many fictional characters like this in history of our entertainment as far as I can recall.
The analogy you gave with the train was very interesting. It pits against logic and personal bias. There was an episode in Star Trek that delved into this. It was about a hologram doctor who had authority to grow to be unique. One day, he had a triage between two patients that had equal chances of survival. The doctor chose who he was closer with in terms of friendship. Later, this decision broke him down. His original programming was in conflict with what he has become. There was a battle going on inside the doctor between logic and bias.
Emet-Selch is an amazing character because he wasn't just a villain, (SPOILER ALERT), he was in a way a friend that told you the unpleasant truth that you had to kill….. it was either he died or you and your friends including your world will die. Deep down I believe the Emet-Selch was a scholar who (which is even more prevalent in Endwalker) simply knew more than you and his greatest flaw and downfall was his arrogance. He may be a villain but even villains care about their friends and family. The end of Shadowbringers made stakes being so high that we will always remember him because Emet Selch forced us to make the choice. Someone had to live, someone had to die. A story begins while another ends. That's the real tragedy of Emet-Selch.
But Emet didn't let the train go. He actively pulled the lever to drive the train toward the higher number of victims. It wasn't a dilemma at that point but an act of villainy
Emet has the Ardbert thing going on where he's confused but just trying to do what he feels is right. Basically blinded by his greater good, but still humble.
Honestly, I think the best moral defense of Emet-Selch is simply that he had a right to fight for himself and his people and friends.. So he did, and he lost. It also gets a bit more complicated when you consider that Hydaelyn knew what he was going to do and basically set him up in order to preserve the timeline.
why i love him well its uhhhhhhhh……….. his BIG LONG HARD THICK (READACTED)
When I first started in 1.0 then ARR I thought the Ascians just odd wizards from the past with no bodies. They way they fleshed them out is wonderful. You can disagree but still look from things from their perspective. If Azem had not taken their stand canonically our character may have been one of them.
Still hate what Hermes did to him (the memory loss)
I consider both Emet and Zenos to be good villains. I know what a lot of people think about Zenos and idgaf. I like Zenos cause he's simple, cause I find it refreshing cause there's an overabundance of complex characters, and villains with a simple agenda are in the minority. Not to mention I find him relatable to a degree, mainly because he explains that he's always been strong and that he never took the time to understand people because of his love of fighting to his limits and aside from Asahi and Fordola nobody tried to get close to him. So he was never able to understand people. Me personally I am getting to the point that I don't understand people of today and the more I hear the more I don't want to and would rather the world burn. The stupid shit I hear, I feel like society is long overdue for a hard reset cause people are getting too soft and complacent. As far as whether or not people agree with me I can care less. I have at least a half dozen true friends and that's plenty of friends for me. It does annoy me that people get upset over opinions, they're just opinions, get over yourself holy shit 😂. I refuse to change just to make strangers happy with me, a hard lesson I learned is the more you try to make everyone like you the more likely everyone will hate you. Just be yourself, only necessary changes are compromising with your significant other like who does what chores, how the bills are paid, stuff like that. Anyway I got really sidetracked 😂😂😂, but yeah I like Zenos as much as Emet. Zenos is just trying to live life to the fullest even if he's going the wrong way about it
And what's great about this is that in the Nier: [Re]incarnation collab event going on, we see fragments of Emet's time in Amaurot with Hyth and Venat and Hermes and watch from his perspective how he feels about the fall of Amaurot. It's really well done, so thank you Ishikawa-san for a wonderful story again!
Dang, I'm not through all of endwalker yet. I thought he was gone is Shadowbringers. Big thumbnail spoils, feels bad man.
You said you wouldn't debate, but I gotta point out that the trolley question is not really accurate in this situation. It is proven that the people who underwent the rejoining aren'T really dead, and the people who die in the source aren't ever really permanently dead, the story does say that our soul returns to the lifestream, is washed clean of our previous life (mostly) and then is returned to the land of the living, we are stuck in a loop of rebirth, so even if we die, we don't really die. Reincarnation is a proven fact in FF14. So he isn't really killing anyone, just putting the pieces back together, if not for the rejoinings we did go through, chances are that we wouldn't have been able to fight anything past ARR, because each rejoining makes us more powerful. It is why we could withstand the massive amounts of light aether in ShB after Ardbert decided to rejoin with us, and why we could give Hades a run for his money… and of course the fact we summoned 7 other heroes, had the scions to help us, as well as white auracyte and a lot of light aether to use against him (in short, he would have stomped us in a fair fight.)
I can't remember the exact moment in Shadowbringers, but when that one moment I see Emet sitting, hunched forward, his eyes closed, this face of heavy sadness, depression… like he's just waiting… waiting for someone to come and give him the release he wants from all the suffering he's gone through. That's when I just started to cry. He might have shot my boy Exarch, but gods, that anger I felt… and I see Emet sitting there, sad and depressed… I just sympathized with him. Because I've gone through a similar hell, with friends leaving me behind, with loved ones abandoning me… I truly felt his sadness as my own, and I cried. I cried like a child and when I saw him in Elpis… I cheered… although knowing full well what kind of hell awaited him in that timeline's future. I wanted to grab him and Hythlo-papa along to the future to save them… Alas…. I couldn't…. Curse you, Yoshi-P! My essentials are the best boys! Emet included.
Long time, no see!
You are right about him being #1 as far as antagonists go. I read somewhere that he has overtaken Sephiroth as most liked FF villain.
I'm actually looking forward to experiencing it again on my alt, but my alt is too busy being easily distracted by everything post-ARR has to offer, including a few things I definitely missed on my main the first time around.
As Emet-Selch himself asked:
"Wouldn't you wish for the same?"
And the answer for most of us, I think, is a resounding 'yes'. The question of whether or not we'd all aspire to do what he did is another question entirely.
I do know that, when we beat him in ShB, I felt bad – and felt the slightest bit '…seriously?' when I saw Alphinaud smiling as he said Emet-Selch was no more. We'd won the battle, yes, but it didn't feel like a victory to me. I didn't feel as if I'd struck down a great evil.
EDIT: Typo fix.
I did not want to kill him. T-T