#venat and hydaelyn encompass a lot of the themes about divinity in fiction that really fascinate me idk

[inkedinfantasy]

@leafstranger​ sure!! making a separate post for this so I’m not dumping paragraphs of text on someone else’s art post (link to original post/art)

basically the thought that started it all was the desire to examine how the context of the player’s relationship to hydaelyn is turned on its head in shadowbringers when it’s revealed that she’s a primal. I just felt that was such a fascinating idea to introduce at that point in the story where it comes with this sense of betrayal, almost, this crack it puts in the trust the player has put in her thus far as the fantasy trope of “benevolent goddess bestowing her blessing on a chosen hero.” what does it mean for the WOL if hydaelyn has been a primal all along? is the reason the blessing of light protects you from tempering because you’re already tempered? have you truly been acting of your own volition all this time? how would you even know?

that’s one thing I kind of wish they’d explored more thoroughly in the story; just letting the WOL sit with some of that uncertainty. the idea that you’ve potentially spent so long not acting of your own free will is terrifying! I think having a moment of doubt like that could’ve ended up feeding really well into venat’s story they set up in endwalker to show you that hydaelyn isn’t and was never some perfect, all-knowing, infallible being; she was just a person doing what she thought was best. and that circles around back to the very idea of what a primal is!! none of them are actually the gods or legends or whatever they're taking the form of, they're made out of prayer and belief. they’re reflections of what the people who create them want to see in them.

there’s another moment where you’re asked to think on these kinds of ideas in the endwalker omega questline, I don't have the whole conversation screenshotted, but it’s the part where you're on the moon and you're talking about everything that led up to the events of endwalker and you’re asked who you ultimately think was justified in what they did and you get this choice:

and I remember even knowing that the choice would have zero effect on anything, I just sat here for several minutes actually thinking about it because it's an interesting question. I ultimately think I ended up picking "none of them were" just because the way I see it, all of them made choices that led to a lot of awful things happening, knowingly or unknowingly. I don't know that any of them are justified in what they did, per se, but I do think that they were all doing what, in their own way, they thought was best, for better or for worse. which I think is something else entirely and a distinction that’s important to make. and that's interesting!! I think it's a testament to the writing that regardless of whether or not their actions were justified, you can clearly see why each of them would truly believe what they were doing was the best course of action. I’d be interested to hear what other people think!