T w e n t y S i d e d
I’d like to review just exactly what happened on our trip to the Pharos.
Settle in.
Before even starting, Reddas has already sent an entire fleet of his lackeys to their deaths investigating the Cataract even though its been know from time immemorial to be fatally impassable by sea or air.
Starting off, we don’t actually have a solid reason to come here. If we choose not to use the nethicite, we have no reason to disturb the Sun-Cryst whatsoever. Even if we choose to use the nethicite, we still don’t actually know how to do so, because we never asked. We have chosen to determine on the way whether we have arrived for no purpose whatsoever, or merely to attempt something we cannot accomplish.
Despite constantly browbeating Ashe to destroy the stone rather than use it, everyone in the party, even Reddas, seems to be perfectly willing to go mournfully along with her if she carves an entire suit of nethicite armor and Iron Mans her way across Ivalice, scorching every man, woman and infant to molecules in the name of her power-lust.Note to self: Get that game made!
We park all the way across the island from our destination, fighting mutant plants and giant insects to even reach the entrance, whereupon we fight a zombie dragon for the right of entry into the tower proper.
We then fight our way up one hundred fucking floors worth of elementary-school puzzles, a three-of-four set of guardian deities, giant beast-men, fallen angels, living bombs, dragons, zombies, zombie dragons, evil horses, skeletons, ghosts, giant frogs, pterodactyls, sorcerous megachickens, a blasphemous abomination, and the general creaking and cracking of Reddas’s and Basch’s hip bones as we ascend more stairs than should rightfully exist.
Upon reaching the top, we watch our party’s helmswoman, an actual (sort-of) head of state, careen wildly back and forth across a buffet line of various motivations, before we are preempted by three of our worst enemies, who arrived in two independent groups and by means which we ourselves possess but did not think to use.I grant that Venat and Cid may have straight-up teleported. Cid did leave Draklor by airship, but he might have just flown to the Five Guys across town and noshed a burger, giggling with Venat while she shared his mountain of fries and our party’s sorry asses hightailed it to Balfonheim agog over the mystery of Giruvegan. We more or less deduce that he never left to Giruvegan himself, so for all we know he just hunkered down until Venat sent him a text (“they at the cryst bb lmao XD”) and then blinked themselves to the top of the Pharos just in time to put Gabranth in the unemployment line. On the other hand, Venat more or less abstains from using her power to directly aid her human allies, and I can’t really see her transporting Cid around when he has the means to fly there himself. Ergo: airship!
The first of these enemies urges us hysterically to pursue the course of action most threatening to him and his allies, to satiate his own inscrutable personal whims. The party, with difficulty, declines, with aid of a tortured skein of pure dis-logic and spite.
Ashe then totally alienates herself and possibly all mortalkind from the Occuria, the Undying, a race of immortal, incalculably-powerful creatures whom we know terrifyingly little about; other than, taking these claims with appropriate skepticism: that they once absolutely dominated the entire world at their whim; that they chose to grant humanity near-total freedom only through their sense of relative mercy and goodwill; that they control an unknown number of doomsday weapons humanity can scarcely comprehend, which they have been known to grant to those willing to carry out their will; and that the carrying out of their will largely results in the extinction of those who oppose them or detract from their unknowable goals.
Reddas, the man whose entire life since the tragedy at Nabudis has been defined and controlled by that event, and who works violently against those who oppose his new ideals, sermonizes about not letting the past control your actions or lead you to violent reprisal.
Gabranth’s attempts to create an enemy that he and his allies could not hope to defeat, and which they otherwise could destroy easily whenever they chose, having been spat on, he attacks a group of seven people with whom he was ordered to parley, and is defeated utterly— though not killed.
The second of our enemies, Cid, explains in plain terms everything wrong with that last paragraph, and for this insult Gabranth attempts to take his life. Gabranth is again routed easily by a literal god, who again does not kill him.
Having cast it away in a symbolic gesture, our party’s potential superweapon is recovered by the enemy most singularly knowledgeable and capable of its use, who immediately uses it to accomplish his long-held master plan, which we, through sheer inaction, do nothing to prevent. This plan could not have been accomplished if we had not left the superweapon on the floor, or indeed if we had never shown up at all.
Having already accomplished his objectives, Cid attempts to destroy the party rather than flee, as he easily could. The party obliges his stalling tactic, choosing to ignore completely the Sun-Cryst, which we now fully intend to destroy, and the destruction of which at this moment could well halt or hinder Cid’s plan.
Venat, a being of near-unstoppable power, who only moments ago so proudly swore to work as an equal partner with Cid and the Empire, watches passively as the party slays Cid outright in battle, stepping in to assist only when Cid has already been mortally wounded and shall momentarily expire.Do note that, while this doesn’t jibe with her stated motivations, it fits perfectly with my read on her character in the broader view.
Upon death, Cid dissolves into mist, nothing similar to which ever occurs elsewhere or ever shall occur again. He is then seemingly absorbed into the Sun-Cryst, for reasons unknown and to unknown effect.
Venat, through this, has been using the three nethicite shards to channel the full measure of the Sun-Cryst’s power to the Sky Fortress Bahamut, which— spoiler alert— is an actual Imperial Death Star, whose might cannot be opposed by any weapon known to man, other than perhaps deifacted nethicite. The Bahamut is presumably docked at Archades, meaning that while the stones’ power can be channeled thousands of miles away, the stones themselves cannot receive this power from from the Sun-Cryst from further than arm’s length. Venat, an Undying, is the only creature capable of performing this task, which she is only accomplishing now despite seemingly being able to instantly teleport anywhere in the world without difficulty. This either means that our enemies are thoroughly incompetent, yet still managed to best us soundly, or that they really did need all three lesser stones for their plans to work, in which case we truly did accomplish their task for them: first, by showing up at all, and secondly by delivering the Dawn Shard into their hands because it seemed cute and poetic at the moment.
Despite being used to channel power to the stones— presumably one of its regular purposes— the Sun-Cryst is apparently critically destabilized. To prevent its imminent detonation, Ashe and Vaan attempt to destroy it in a fashion that will result in exactly this disaster. Note that perhaps only Ashe might possesses the means to do this.
Venat does nothing to stop us in this attempt, having likely already fled to see her own plans through to fruition. This is either a grave misstep on Venat’s part, or an indication that they have already accomplished everything they need here, and that we are wasting our time, to our peril, by remaining. I would believe either with eagerness.
They are, however, unable to destroy the crystal, as approaching the stone is impossible for anyone except Reddas, who manages it easily for drama’s sake. He then destroys the Sun-Cryst with the Sword of Kings in a grand gesture, resulting in his death and the detonation we were attempting to prevent.While I’m bitching about this, why didn’t Reddas take the Sword of Kings and the Treaty Blade for this scene? You know, since he’s a dual wielder, like all Judges? You know, bring his character arc full cicle and comport himself as a Judge while bringing the legendary blades to bear on Sun-Cryst, banishing the scourge of nethicite he once visited upon Nabudis? Eh, whatever.
The rest of the party escapes by [SCENE MISSING], which must mean one or more of three possibilities: first, that the party must have either run down ten flights of stairs, taken various elevators and waystones ninety more floors down, and fled across the entire island to the Strahl before flying to a safe distance, all in the time it took for the crystal to explode after being struck; or second, that the moogle mechanics aboard the Strahl had flown the airship to the tower’s summit just in time to rescue the party, proving definitively that our entire assault on the tower was, from the very start, a fools errand of literally deific proportions and a staggering waste of everyone’s time; or third, that however we escaped the tower, there must have been ample time for Reddas to escape with us, meaning he either perished by means other than the explosion we witness, or he deliberately chose to stay and wait as long as it took to accept his death in penance for Nabudis.
If it hasn’t quite sunk in yet: This is the climax of this fucking game. The entire narrative has built up to this scene.
In sum: because we showed up at all, and conducted ourselves like fools, the Empire was able to accomplish their overarching scheme. Because we failed to make any meaningful decisions regarding our course of action before they did so, we lack any means to oppose them.
Two of our three nemeses present escape, one of them through mysterious means while off camera. The only villain we manage to defeat accomplished his entire role in the plot beforehand.
In not choosing to destroy the Sun-Cryst immediately, we allowed the Empire to carry out their own plans to completion. Because we did not cut any stones of our own before they did so, we now lack any means to combat the Empire’s new and pre-existing weapons, other than wishful thinking and spite. In destroying the Sun-Cryst, we denied ourselves the opportunity to ever do so, even though we apparently could have fled its overcharge catastrophe without difficulty and returned at our leisure to see what remained, if anything, and decide a course of action in cool blood.
And the only black guy in the game dies.
I
that
but
…I swear. I swear, sometimes, once every now and then, I think I might love this game. But much, much more often, I am absolutely certain that I hate this fucking game, and that it hates me right back.
Back in Balfonheim Port, Reddas’s remedial freebooter trio mourns his death. I used to think Reddas was pretty cool, but looking back on it now, I can’t imagine what I saw in the pathetic, maudlin old son of a bitch. The pirates point out that Reddas was looking for a place to die satisfied, and they hope he found it. Personally, I look forward to Other Lando’s tortured soul haunting the Cataract in agony till the end of days. Which should be any day now, given how current events are going.
The pirates close by saying it’s up to them to keep Balfonheim running right in Reddas’s honor. The sequel, Revenant Wings, shows that they do no such thing, and run away to more or less troll Vaan for sport. So take that Reddas, you dead asshole. Oh, and thanks for the help with the Behemoth King; that thing was kicking my ass so hard it was wearing our party like two pairs of slippers.
Meanwhile, the party rests up in the late Reddas’s manse, and… hold the fuck on… quiet a second… do you hear power ballads? No, really, I swear I smell leaded gasoline and small-batch bourbon…!
Praise Ajora! AL-CID MARGRACE IS HERE!!
Vaan asks how he even knew we would be there, which he wisely ignores entirely to give Lady Ashe the ol’ “how you doin’”, and to deliver some grave news.
Despite his efforts to calm things down in Rozarria, his nation’s generals met with the Resistance leaders in secret and forged a plan. A large contingent of Rozarrian airships rendezvoused with Ondore’s forces, posing as Resistance ships but in truth under direct command of Rozarria. With Ordalia’s forces now actively marshaled— though in secret— this division began exchanging fire with Imperial ships over former Nabradian airspace, prompting both sides to intervene with the full might of their forces.
The war has begun, and it shall be waged over Dalmasca.
Once they are ready, Rozarria is sure to join the war officially and fully. In fact, their plan is to attack only once the Resistance expends itself, sacrificed to wear down the Empire as they can. But Al-Cid is sure this will do nothing to stop the Empire’s momentum, and will doom Resistance and Rozarria alike.
Basch disagrees, hastily pointing out that the Empire no longer possesses the Dusk Shard. Yeah, Basch really is so slack-witted that the idea Cid and Venat must have had some purpose in sacrificing the stone willinglyThe three nethicite shards just kinda… fly towards the Sun-Cryst when Cid and Venat use them. They seem to be gone? *shrug* is utterly lost on him, despite the pair all but explaining as much in plain terms. But Al-Cid already knows about the Bahamut, and is rightly scared entirely shitless of it.
Realizing just what happened at the Pharos, Balthier and Fran reiterate just how drastically we up-fucked everything out there. Yet upon hearing that Vayne himself marshals the Sky Fortress towards Rabanastre, Ashe resolves to stand and fight. I can’t imagine how she intends to do so, nor what she otherwise intended to do instead.
The party shares some feel-good sentiments in the face of their certain death and the known world’s subjugation, and the Margrace turns to depart, promising to delay the Rozarrian war machine as long as possible.
Why? We failed to prevent the war; what use can there be in holding back our forces and letting the Archadians devour all opposition piecemeal? Wouldn’t this be the best-case scenario for the Imperial war pavilion? Assuming any assembled force could be sufficient to overcome the Bahamut— and if you’ve read ahead in the script a little you might know whether or not this seems to be the case— mightn’t our best hope be an all-out, all-forces assault to try and overwhelm the Bahamut, killing Vayne and depriving the Empire of its trump card? The only leadership left in Archadia would be Larsa, who would end the campaign immediately, and Judge Magister Zargabaath, who hasn’t the spine to contradict Lord Larsa, just as he never contradicted Lord Vayne despite knowing how crooked he is.
Preparing to depart, Al-Cid whips off his shades and unleashes his full power on Ashe, imploring her to visit Rozarria in better days to come. He would take her to the magnificent Ambervale, and show her… such amazing things…
Ashe is left in a sort of wide-eyed erotic trance, unable even to bid him farewell as scenes from my unspeakable fanfiction bloom and whirl in her head like a kaleidoscope. In the background, Balthier growls and gesticulates, unable to leash an envy without equal. Fran stares into the middle distance, plotting desperately how to parlay her dubious claim to viera quasi-royalty into an RSVP+1. Penelo’s reaction is not depicted, presumably to keep this game T-rated.
But happy times are over. It’s time to finish this fucking game. And if we’ve been on a downhill slide of stupidity and insanity since Archades, we’re about to hit the sudden stop at the bottom with a bit of force.
The Travelog continues next week.
Footnotes:
[1] Note to self: Get that game made!
[2] I grant that Venat and Cid may have straight-up teleported. Cid did leave Draklor by airship, but he might have just flown to the Five Guys across town and noshed a burger, giggling with Venat while she shared his mountain of fries and our party’s sorry asses hightailed it to Balfonheim agog over the mystery of Giruvegan. We more or less deduce that he never left to Giruvegan himself, so for all we know he just hunkered down until Venat sent him a text (“they at the cryst bb lmao XD”) and then blinked themselves to the top of the Pharos just in time to put Gabranth in the unemployment line. On the other hand, Venat more or less abstains from using her power to directly aid her human allies, and I can’t really see her transporting Cid around when he has the means to fly there himself. Ergo: airship!
[3] Do note that, while this doesn’t jibe with her stated motivations, it fits perfectly with my read on her character in the broader view.
[4] While I’m bitching about this, why didn’t Reddas take the Sword of Kings and the Treaty Blade for this scene? You know, since he’s a dual wielder, like all Judges? You know, bring his character arc full cicle and comport himself as a Judge while bringing the legendary blades to bear on Sun-Cryst, banishing the scourge of nethicite he once visited upon Nabudis? Eh, whatever.
[5] The three nethicite shards just kinda… fly towards the Sun-Cryst when Cid and Venat use them. They seem to be gone? *shrug*
Best. Plot Twist. Ever.
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Netscape 1997
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It seems like a simple question, but it turns out everyone has a different idea of right and wrong in the digital world.
Silent Hill Turbo HD II
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I complained at length about the attitude of the villain in this scene in the previous post, so now I’m gonna take the opportunity to complain about the heroine’s actions.
In LOTR there’s this constant back and forth between the protagonists, who wish to destroy the one ring and a few individuals who wish to keep it to use it against their enemies. The former know the influence the ring exerts is too powerful but the latter believe out of arrogance that they can be strong enough to resist it even if no one else has accomplished it before. We as the audience side with the former and denounce the attitude of the latter, even if we find it understandable and realistic. See just how many people in real life become addicted to drugs because they think they can resist them.
But, unless I missed something, there is no evil influence in the weapons in this game. There is no possibility of corruption to avoid their use. A choice between keeping them and destroying them as in LOTR is then simply reduced to a matter of strategy. Do we have a better chance by using these weapons against them or simply by destroying them so they can’t use them against us? Each choice is perfectly viable and you only have to pick whichever you think might make things easier. There’s no such thing as “not using them because we might be turned evil ourselves”.
Worse, rather than picking any of the sensible two options they eschew the use of the weapons but they don’t try to destroy them (at least not until it’s certifiably too late). And the reason they don’t want to use these weapons is, what, spite? This is like traveling first class in a plane where you’re given the choice to dine steak or fish and instead you choose to gobble up in toilet chemicals to protest capitalism. Even if there’s any value to your sudden air of superiority this is not the way to do it, not the time and is far too late. You can renounce the use of a weapon you believe is somewhat morally wrong in the middle of a competition. You can’t do that when your country is in the middle of a freaking massacre and it’s the only viable option you have against an enemy who’s already using it.
I mean, the Jedi refuse to use the dark side of the Force when fighting the Sith, but they don’t eschew the use of the Force altogether, because that’d be fucking stupid.
It’s kind of obvious at this point that Ashe suffers from some kind of brain damage and the rest of the team are a bunch of jerk enablers who follow her around just to laugh at whatever dumb thing she comes up with.
Now imagine we take every character in this game and mash them all together into one super stupid character who has all the bad decision making and ideas from them and none of their possible redeeming qualities. Imagine now that you make a whole game populated with these characters. That is FFXIII.
FFXII is secretly a metaphor about unilateral disarmament
I think there’s a case to be made that the only times we really see nethicite used as a weapon, it is indeed in ways that are inherently evil, the most high-profile of which being the destruction of Nabudis. You don’t need to worry about the corrupting influence of a nuclear missile turning you evil if you believe using a nuclear missile is an inherently evil act. Similar remarks apply to the handful of characters possessed by Venat (Ghis, Mjrn)
The problem with this interpretation is the same gaps in the plot discussed in these posts; the story has failed to establish specifically what the nethicite is supposed to do and how we’re supposed to use it, which means the objections can’t really be justified.
EDIT: I actually wrote this post while Thomas was writing his post, so that’s at least two of us who hit upon the nuclear weapons analogy independently, heh.
Didn’t someone use nethicite as a self-buff? It also can power airships without exploding, apparently, and you could also target the imperial air fleet with it while it’s in transit.
That’s been the manufactured stuff, and it’s unclear if the buff is from the nethicite or from Venat directly.
I’d actually disagree with this interpretation of LoTR – it seems you’re arguing that the only argument against using the Ring was that it had some corrupting power that was magical and external, (like a cursed item in an RPG) and if it didn’t have that force there wouldn’t be the moral dilemma.
I largely think that’s not true – I don’t think the “corrupting force” of the ring is primarily meant to be considered an external, magical thing. (Though there’s maybe an element of that in play, especially in the movies) Rather, I think the corrupting nature of the Ring is primarily part-and-parcel with it’s power – the point of the story is that “power corrupts”, not that “magical rings forged by pseudo-demons corrupt”.
This is why Hobbits are less-effected: it’s not that they have a racial trait that gives them +2 in dice rolls against external compulsion, or something, but because they’re just inherently much less interested in power as a concept.
So I don’t think “the Ring, but not addictive” is a coherent thing to talk about – the very nature of power makes the ring addictive (and any magical aspect of this is just to exaggerate the existing dynamic).
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So moving back to the story at hand, I don’t think it’s fair to object to Ashe’s dilemma here because the stones are not “magically addictive”. They’re conventionally addictive, and Ashe has been holding one of them basically all game long and has clearly become addicted. We establish this pretty clearly about half the game ago, when she plans to smash the Dawn Shard with the Sword of Kings but “misses”.
We can armchair quarterback about what the most “rational” course of action for a character to follow, and yeah, of course, “dramatically throw it on the ground and where it rolls into the reach of your mortal enemy” is not very high on my list of suggestions. … but it’s easy for me to take the “rational” view, I don’t have any skin in the game, and drug addicts aren’t known for their rational behavior.
If you view these stones as coded for nuclear weapons… well, it’s not surprising that a Japanese game is going to have a different view than the one you’re expressing here.
Sauron’s Ring absolutely corrupts, even in the books. At a bare minimum, it makes everyone who gets a hold of it extremely possessive of it, even if they don’t use it much and even if they’ve had it for only a short time. See, for example, Isildur and Sam. It’s true that it doesn’t make Gollum, Bilbo, or Frodo into power-hungry lunatics bent on global domination or anything like that, but it very clearly affects their behavior and judgement.
I’m not arguing that the ring doesn’t corrupt, I’m arguing that the primary mechanism of corruption is not meant to be an literal, external magical force, but largely an inherent element of power itself, (which may be somewhat exaggerated by a literal, external magical force). The danger of power is kind of an ongoing theme in the books, not limited to just the Ring itself. (e.g. Saruman and Denethor are good examples of being addicted to and corrupted by power, but not the Ring itself)
I think the books are making a broader critique of power itself, and you miss some of that if you just read it as a cautionary tale against secretly-cursed magical rings.
Having just re-read the books with my 2 year old daughter:
The reason the Ring corrupts is because it’s literally powered by evil.
Sauron put all his malice and evil into it, intending to use it to focus his will and thus corrupt the wielders of all the other rings of power.
So anyone owning it is continually bombarded by Sauron’s malice, and any works done with it also twisted.
– Perhaps one could think “monkey paw that whispers to you all the time” or similar.
For example, the only power we see invoked is invisibility.
However, this is acheived by literally turning you into a (temporary) Wraith – hiding you from your friends and making you a bright beacon to your enemies.
It’s stated that people who actually understand how to wield magical rings could make it do other things, but that the result would be … terrible.
Going beyond the actual text:
Hobbits are ordinarily extremely good at hiding, so perhaps what it actually does is amplify and endarken things you can already do.
Smeagol, Frodo and Bilbo weren’t warriors or skilled in magical arts, so it just turns them from “very good at moving while hidden” to “literally invisible”.
There may be some critique of power, but the cursed magical rings are, I think, impossible to ignore. Consider that the three elven rings, which Sauron did not participate in making, are non-cursed and that the only reason that their bearers don’t wear them openly until the epilogue of Return of the King is that they’re trying to hide them from Sauron. The Three are undoubtedly powerful, if perhaps not as powerful as the One, but Elrond, Gandalf, and Galadriel are certainly not corrupted by them.
There’s definitely a broader critique in there, but I think it has to do more with the dangers of blind expediency than with “power” perse.
Not that either of those themes are in any danger of being meaningfully touched on in FFXII.
The Elven rings are powerful, but they’re a meaningfully different sort of power than the traditional corrupting kind. From wikipedia: (emphasis mine)
I think the whole forging of the rings itself is part of a theme of “power corrupts”: the men and dwarves take rings that make themselves more powerful and they end up dominated by evil, while the elves take rings that primarily protect and preserve and they don’t end up dominated by evil.
I don’t think it’s an accident that the only rings that were untouched by evil grant a passive protective “power”, while the rings touched by evil all grant a more traditional, dominating sort of power. I think the “evilness” of the rings and the “power” of the rings are inherently bound together – and trying to treat them separately (as in thinking of Nethicite as “the one ring, but not evil / addicting”) is incoherent.
I think Tolkien would argue that the power to dominate and destroy others is inherently evil and cannot be used for good – in his universe, this evil is represented via the direct, literal influence of a fallen angel. In the real world… well, Tolkien was a Christian, so you do the math.
I feel like we have gotten dangerously close to “power corrupts, because power that doesn’t corrupt doesn’t count as power” territory here.
If you want to argue that Lord of the Rings is a critique of power rather than a critique of fictional supernatural evil, then you need examples of power corrupting that don’t involve either those pesky cursed rings or magical seeing-stones that have been tainted by Sauron. In other words, you need the Sackville Baggins and possibly Saruman, as you mentioned elsewhere.
And at this point I’m pretty sure we have lost even the most tangential of connections to FFXII, so I will let the matter drop.
That’s less an argument against his point than it is exposing Tolkien’s bias as a writer.
I’m sure things are different in the books, but speaking as someone who’s only watched the movies… the ring is pretty much the only powerful item in the entire trilogy that’s seen corrupting anyone. There are many powerful good people that never show any signs of corruption (well, save for Théoden, but what corrupts him is very clearly not power). If the message is really “power corrupts” then the movies don’t make a good job of conveying it.
And please note that the ring corrupts instantly, without anyone knowing it’s an item of power. When Sméagol merely takes a look at it he instantly becomes murderous and only because he thinks the ring is pretty. If that’s not magical influence, then I don’t know what it is. Hell, isn’t that pretty much what happens to Bilbo too? He has no idea what the ring was all the time he had it with him, and he still was affected by it (albeit clearly slower).
Really the only example I can think of of “power corrupts” in the entire film franchise is in The Hobbit trilogy, when Thorin got overwhelmed by greed after retrieving Smaug’s gold and the circumstances around that make it only a tangential example of this.
But, again, perhaps the books make this whole distinction much more clear. If that’s the case then fine. The point I made still stands, though.
I don’t think the books are going for ‘power corrupts’ because Sauron and his predecessor aren’t particularly powerful in the Lord of the Rings cosmology. There are a lot of good beings of similar or higher power. Arguably even Gandalf may have, if not similar power, closer than it appears. My understanding is that he’s been told to only use some of his power because they want the people of the world to make their own path.
There is however, something of a theme that powerful _things_ corrupt – the lust for the Arkenstone in the Hobbit, the rings in LoTR and the Simarils in the Simarilion. I think Sauron and perhaps his predecessor were both artificers, and being too proud of their abilities and creations were their key character flaws.
It’s not universal, the eleven rings aren’t corrupting, although their bearers (except Gandalf) use them in a passive, protective sense. But even then there’s a sense that in making them the elves were tricked into falling into Sauron’s plan.
It fits the nature, anti-industrial vibe that a lot of LotR has. Saruman is also obsessed with making things and warping nature to his own ends.
In Magic the Gathering philosophy, the Lord of the Rings is base green and the bad guys are mostly blue-black.
Power is a funny thing in Lord of the Rings. There’s no convenient single measure of power. Different supernatural entities are good at different things. A notionally weaker being can take a notionally more powerful being if she goes about it the right way. Melian is weaker than Morgoth, but her illusions kept him and his armies out of Doriath. Luthien, her daughter, is weaker still, but her spells were good enough to knock out Morgoth and his entire court long enough for her and Beren to steal a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown and escape. It’s worth noting that Morgoth is the setting’s devil-analogue, and probably the second most powerful being in the entire universe. It’s also worth noting that, despite that fact, Morgoth always loses physical fights against Tulkas the Valar.
All that said, while Sauron has a lot of approximate peers–beings like Gandalf, Saruman, and even the Balrog–there aren’t that many supernatural entities we can definitely say are more powerful than he is. There’s the Valar, who are, depending on how you look at it, either the pantheon or the archangels of the setting, and Morgoth and that’s about it.
Are there?
The only examples I’m coming up with are Gandalf and the elves (and Tom Bombadil, but nobody wants to talk about Tom Bombadil), beings of super-human wisdom, wisdom that seems to often boil down to knowing that they can’t trust themselves with more power – Elrond is one of the strongest arguers that the Ring cannot be safely used and Galadriel refuses to take the Ring – which fits with the general elven attitudes on power: while they’re inherently powerful creatures, they don’t seek power, a bit like hobbits, they’re content to mostly live in their forests.
Meanwhile most of the other figures of power – particularly the humans and the dwarves – in the books do struggle with corruption one way or another: Saruman, Theoden, Denethor, Thorin, Boromir, and the Sackville-Baggins’.
Tolkien isn’t an anarchist, he’s not anti-power, and after all, the book ends with the Return of a King – but it’s worth noting that a big part of Aragorn’s character is an elf-like disinterest in power. If Tolkien has a message about power, it’s probably that the ones best suited for it are the ones who don’t want it.
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And, yeah, I’m not denying that there’s a literal evil force at work in these books, but it more functions as a magnifier of what’s already in someone. Your point about Smeagol immediately being murderous… well, you’ll notice that nobody else has that instant of a reaction – it says a lot about what was already lurking in the heart of Smeagol. Yes, maybe some external power of the ring magnified that, but it didn’t create it from nothing.
Similarly, it’s no accident that Boromir – who from the start wanted the power of the Ring to defend his home – is the one in the Fellowship who is ‘corrupted’ by the Ring, not anyone else who spent equal time in its presence. (Boromir, incidentally makes the exact same sort of arguments you are: “we’re in the middle of a war, this is our only chance, we can’t renounce this weapon, etc.”)
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As for your overall point? Lord of the Rings aside, I still don’t think it’s inconceivable that Ashe is behaving irrationally, in part because she gets addicted to the power of the stones and the idea of, like Boromir, wanting to use that power to defend your country.
I don’t think you need a literal magical addictive force for that to happen, and the story has been laying the groundwork for that idea for ages.
As another example: the Palantir were not forged by Sauron and do not have any sort of corrupting magical influence, and yet Pippin, after merely glimpsing one and holding it for a short time, is tempted into sneaking it away from Gandalf(!) in the middle of the night to have a look. And sure, he encounters Sauron then, but it’s not like Sauron was whispering in his ear to take it the whole time—it’s exposure to an object of power that causes him to want to experience it more, no magical influence required.
Which is to say, I largely agree with your view, based on a wide reading of Tolkien’s works; yes, the One Ring does contain Sauron’s malice and evil and has something of a will of its own and works on those who hold it, but even if it didn’t it would still be a powerfully tempting force. I’m not sure that “power corrupts”, since there are counterexamples; what I think it does is tempts.
Some might even recall that a certain famous quote isn’t “Power corrupts”. It’s ” Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.”
Though the original was actually referring to historians’ trend of glorifying powerful people instead of cool-ly judging them.
Very apropos. I didn’t actually know the original quote, thanks.
I suppose in the films we don’t ever see Saruman as being anything but creepy and evil in a “why didn’t Gandalf ever notice this before” sort of way. Possibly not in the books either. But I assume he’s meant to be a big example of this. He was good, but possibly always had a streak that was exploitable by the lure of power, be it good or bad, so was tempted to the dark side of power – dominion, the One Ring notwithstanding.
In addition to the arguments others have made, I’d also like to point out the flaw in applying “power corrupts” to a tool of frankly moderate power in the hands of most. Because by that logic… a toaster corrupts merely by being a tool which you can do something you don’t natively have the ability to do. At which point “corrupts” basically loses all meaning.
The power granted (or would be granted) to most beings by the One Ring is very disproportionately limited in comparison with its corrupting influence on individuals. Also, if it was just the capabilities granted by the tool itself, it wouldn’t really be a threat in the hands of most leaders of nations as they can more or less already accomplish anything you could do with invisibility by other means.
(Want to take wealth that isn’t yours? You can just raise taxes or have your nation invade one with resources you want.
Want to abuse your power over others in ways they can’t do anything to prevent…. your social status and control of a military force already allows that.
Want to kill all who oppose you? Military and hired assassins are already things.
Want to learn things people don’t want you to? Employ spies and informants. Which you’re probably already doing anyway.)
The One Ring’s power extends well beyond mere invisibilty. It was mostly inert when Smeagol and Bilbo found it, and only used its invisibility (While being possessive of it). But what the ring’s actual power is, when known and claimed, is dominion. Those bearing the Nine and Seven rings, and those loyal to those bearing those rings, become loyal to you. The forces of Mordor answer to you. It possibly has other ways to dominate the wills of those around you.
Frodo just didn’t have it for long enough to actually do anything once he claimed it and its power for himself (Which was the moment Barad Dur and the forces of Mordor wavered)
Whoops, my bad.
Well, it has been like 25-ish years since I read the books. Bound to forget some stuff. Still, I’ll admit that rather well counters my particular counter-argument at least.
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Since everyone seems to think I’m super-off base with my read of Lord of the Rings being about addiction to power and the idea that power corrupts, this wikipedia page may be good reading: Addiction to power in The Lord of the Rings.
Obviously it’s not the only way to read the story, but it’s certainly not an obscure reading, and I think the idea is useful and relevant to FFXII even without a literal mind-controlling dark force involved.
That article itself contains a table of characters who each have different attitudes to power, finishing with a character who safely gains and uses power because he understands how to use it justly.
Its clear that the characters who are powerful and good are more careful and discriminate in wielding power, and to some extent, the more they have the less they use.
EDIT: I guess if you wanted a funny negative reading of Tolkien the actual message is “Understand your station”, everyone who used the power they were born with is just. Everyone who tries to gain more power than they were born to is evil.
I’m not even sure that’s all that off-base. In the Ainulindalë (the creation story of Tolkien’s work), the Ainur (of whom Gandalf, Saruman, and Sauron were all originally members) perform a great work of music under the direction of Eru Ilúvatar which brings into creation the universe (including Middle Earth). Much like an orchestra, each player has their part to play, and it’s at this point that Melkor (not yet named Morgoth) tries to come up with his own music, essentially usurping Ilúvatar’s role as creator and designer. Some of the Ainur (like Sauron) choose to follow him, while other remain faithful to Ilúvatar and their place in the work. When those of the faithful Ainur who later choose to enter Middle Earth do so and become the Valar, they come with relatively defined spheres of influence from which they don’t generally deviate. (Aulë creating the dwarves might be one of the few examples, since he did it of his own initiative despite “living beings” not being part of his wheel-house as the Valar of matter and craftsmanship [and the text even notes this overreach might be partially behind why the dwarves have generally been at odds with elves and trees and living things].) So the idea of accepting your given role in life and not grasping for more power is not necessarily foreign to Tolkien’s writings.
I like this snippet :D
I have to assume there was a whole Rozarrian plot that was cut for time, and Al-Cid’s sudden appearance here to summarize the cut content is all that remains of it. If not, I have no idea why Rozarria even gets brought up again.
I do. Did you not SEE that chest hair?!
The Burbs? Interesting choice, I happened upon it on TV in my teens or the DVD at university or both, and found it rather odd. Didn’t seem to withstand a second watching when I showed it to my family. I remember an alluring yet weird scene of the wacky military man’s wife bending over gardening in shorts, and not being sure what was intended by the scene.
Hi general question if anyone sees this, thanks!
1) How does one change one’s profile picture on here? (I’ve noticed some people have.)
2) Is there a way to get notifications for replies? (Been here years and always wondered.)
1) the profile pictures are generated by a service called Gravatar (www.gravatar.com). I assume if you create an account with them you can choose a custom icon rather than the random one you get by not having an account
2) I don’t think Shamus has set up any kind of notification plug-in for the comments section
1) Correct.
2) Despite the RSS feed being continuously reported as broken, it actually does work! Links are in the menu-bar at the top, but here’s the current feed for the comments:
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?feed=comments-rss2
Indeed, I get here from the feed.
Ah interesting so that’s what the orange RSS thing is about, I’ll have to look into it, thanks!
Currently getting a wall of (html?) plain code-looking text on white background when I click that link or the links at the top of the page.
Yeah, RSS is XML, which is supposed to be a human readable data format. In practice, it’s not particularly human readable or good for storing data.
Also in practice, you’re supposed to use an RSS feed viewer. I use a Chrome extension, but there are tons of options out there.
I use a Firefox plugin- but it’s one of the plugins that died when they did the big whatever change that killed all the old plugins (so I’m running a years out-of-date firefox). There should be plenty of feed reader plugins available, but most I found were way, way, waaaay too busy, trying to be a million things I don’t want (no I don’t need to process dozens of feeds into a wall of news, I don’t care about readability in the “reader” sidebar, I just want a list of links to my comics and blogs that popup when they update). There was nothing actually small and simple at the time. But it’s been a few years, or there might be better offerings on Chrome.
Thanks both
I switched to Waterfox when they did that. It’s a fork that integrates the security updates from Firefox, but keeps the legacy add-on support.
Thanks :)
Even better: if you keep changing your ’email address’, you cause Gravatar to generate a different image every time. As long as you end it with ‘@[emailprovider], Gravatar will accept the ‘address’ and generate a new avatar.
Plus, you can occasonally stumble upon other people’s Gravatar pictures if you guess/accidentally enter their email address – as I’ve done here.
Funnily enough, my own image is based on on a Gravatar but on Github’s equivalent, from an email address that no longer exists.
Most of Github’s identicons just look like random nonsense but I lucked into this weird low-res smiley by total coincidence.
The more this series is described, the more it seems like plot twists are written by people who watch fiction (and therefore crib in the tropes) as opposed to storytellers who understand why those tropes exist in the first place and therefore how to set them up beforehand and use them.
It’s interesting that this is pretty much the complete end of the Occurian plot. We have no idea if destroying the sun cryst cripple the occurian. Do they have other one? Can they make more? Presumably they can, and so if our party failed to stop Vayne they’d presumably just find some new rando (preferably more competent than Ashe) and they’d just show up and would woop Vayne and the empire ass using the nethicide. So the game climax in a situation where none of the outcome are bad one, we either stop Vayne or someone else will. Going further, the best move would probably be for the party/resistance to just capitulate and let the empire do what they want for a few weeks while the occurian fix everything. It would avoid an incredible number of casualty from the fighting and the empire isn’t shown to be particularly bad toward region they take over.
On the other side Venat is also apparently done, the plan was seemingly just to power the Bahamut (which turn out to be little more than a big paper weight, except it flies so even that it can’t do). So maybe the goal of the plan was to break the cyst crystal and occurian really only have one cyst stone and cannot make anymore of it. If so, why didn’t Venat tell Cid to grab the sword of king and break the crystal at any point? This must mean that powering the Bahamut really was the end goal… but its not particularly effective as a weapon, certainly not strong enough to resist someone who was using Occurian granted nethicide.
So in the end… I think Venat just really like to make ship plastic model but they’re so expensive that the Occurian didn’t want to shell for Venat hobby, so Venat ran away from home to make a big one for real and “giving rein back to human” was just bullshit she used to con Cid/Vayne into helping.
It’s mad that we’re at the climax, and things have been so vague that we don’t even know the plans of either of the big antagonists (if they really are antagonists,) to the extent that you can’t really tell that it’s the climax.
Something someone was planning has been achieved, or it hasn’t.
That the whole mess was really to fuel a god’s plastic crack addiction is a theory I can get behind.
The game is pretty explicit about this in the climax:
It is interesting that Venat’s ambition is ultimately fulfilled by the player, rather than by the side it works for the entire game.
It seems Venat’s main action was teaching the Empire how to make Manufacted Nethicite – seemingly with the logic that the Occuria can’t manipulate mankind with the lure of unbelievable power of Nethicite if mankind already has “Nethicite at home”.
The fact that this makes the empire more powerful, thus motivates their neighbors to find a way to destroy nethicite – which they find that in the form of a nethicite destroying sword left by their ancestors… well I’m not sure if Venat was playing 7-dimensional chess here, or if they just got lucky. I’m more inclined towards the former, it’s more interesting if this story was essentially a big Xanatos Gambit of Venat setting up a situation where either the protagonists or the antagonists could end up achieving their goal, but yeah, the game is definitely not clear on this point.
Well if the occurian really are incapable of making new crystal, then Venat plan could have been accomplished by simply having Cid get the sword of King (where did that thing come from anyway?) and just break the crystal. Don’t even need to teach the empire how to make nethicide, just tell them the occurian are eventually going to try and stop the empire and that the crystal should be broken to prevent that.
Maybe this could work better if the sword of king didn’t exist and treaty blade was needed to break the crystal, so Venat plan would require a new Occurian champion to show up.
The Sword of Kings was in the Stilshrine of Miriam and required the Dawn Shard to enter – so at a minimum Venat would have to have Cid steal the Dawn Shard from the Rabanastre Palace, then steal the Sword of Kings from the Stilshrine, then travel to the top of the Pharos lighthouse and put the Sword in the Stone.
Maybe this was plan A – and the invasion of Rabanastre was the first step of that plan. Though I’m not sure what Cid gets out of this plan, if it were – destroy the shard is Venat’s win condition (or at least one of them), not Cid’s. Whereas powerful magic stones via Mad Science is a plan that furthers both of their ends.
The Dawn Shard was in Raithwall’s tomb, wasn’t it? It was the Dusk Shard in the Rabanastre Palace. So they could have in fact done the whole thing without ever bothering to stop by Rabanastre. Or was the Dusk Shard needed in the tomb?
Ah, yup, my mistake on the Dawn/Dusk mixup. I feel like there should have been sort of checkpoint requiring an heir of Raithwall to claim it (which would have done a lot for the whole “we need this stone to prove our lineage” idea), but AFAIK there wasn’t.
It was apparently supposed to be “only the heirs of Raithwall know where the tomb is hidden”, which I’m not sure is a plausible barrier in Venat/Cid’s path.
I do think there’s still merit to the argument that the issue would be getting Cid/Vayne interested in the plan – going and taking the Sword of Kings and destroying the Cryst doesn’t directly further their goals – yeah they’re theoretically on the same page with Venat about “putting the reins of history back in the hands of man”… but they’re a lot more particular about which hands of men end up holding those reins than Venat is.
The occurian would eventually try to stop Cid/Vayne, so they have every reason to try and break the crystal before that happens.
While I might question Venat’s treatment of Cid (what exactly are you trying to acheive with this guy? Are you helping him, or not*?) their actions do seem to make sense in broad strokes.
Timeless, godlike beings don’t care what the current empire of the moment is; they think longer term. The Occuria presumably expect to outlast Vayne, Ashe, and even their descendants.
*Also related: what, exactly, was the point of posessing Mjrn and that random Judge?
Venat seems to just follow people around and strengthen them, which works because there’s only ever one person in the field doing things at any given time. So possessing Judge Bergan makes sense; Bergan’s all-in on the scheme, as far as we ever see.
Mjrn’s possession makes less and less sense the longer the game goes on. It could have been a cool thing to pay off in the finale, but… nope. Never explained, leads to nothing.
The combination of Cid’s backstory of going missing for six years in Giruvegan, the general implication that people don’t come back from Giruvegan, and him turning into pyreflies when he dies, makes me think he might be dead the whole time and just a vessel for Venat. Would make the ending make slightly more sense. Not much, but a little bit.
It seems like the Occuria didn’t appear in the plot nearly enough before this to end up having the climax reveal that the villain’s plot is all about securing free will from their yoke.
Sounds like Venat was the hero of a different story tangentially intersecting FFXIIs mess. I don’t know that story, but I do know a similar one- Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. Darkness in Final Fantasy seems to include forces of change and Dynamic Agency, which can be scary and violent to the Light’s Status Quo.
I never knew you could spell “prise” (the verb) with a z (as in the fourth image caption). I’ve learned something today.
I think “prise” is more correct, but this may be one of those “champing at the bit” things where the less correct spelling (“chomping at the bit”) is common enough that it’s just recognized as an alternate form.