man it really fucks me up how much of Shadowbringers and Endwalker are just. putting people in situations so they have to just say the most true and/or metal shit! every other npc line of dialogue is a fundamental truth or a soul-deep conviction or a commentary on the human condition
anyway y'shtola hitting Runar with "If you would pray, pray for your children, that they may one day know a better world" gave me goddamn goosebumps
Before I hop into Shadowbringers (!!) for Éliane's playthrough, I did want to quickly get one thing about Emet Selch addressed, which is his name.
I'm going to copy what I wrote for the wiki:
The word emet in Hebrew means "truth", leading to several possible interpretations of Emet-Selch's name. One possibility is אמת שלך ("emet shelkha"), which translates to "your truth"—a central theme of Emet-Selch's involvement in the post-Shadowbringer story and in Endwalker.
* teeeeechnically emet shelkha doesn't translate 1:1 to "your truth," because of the differences in the way the languages are set up (v little is a 1:1 translation in life, ofc). The most natural equivalent of "your truth" is האמת שלך - but a perhaps more literal English interpretation of that is "the truth (of) yours," so dropping the ה (ha, "the") and still loosely taking the meaning of "your truth" feels like fair game to me in terms of backwards-interpreting from the name that was given to the character.
...double-technically, emet shelkha (rather than ha-emet shelkha) could mean something like "yours truly" which is very funny since he's a villain who ultimately winds up on your side!
I'll talk a LOT more about him (and all my Jewish Feelings About ShB/Endwalker) as the playthrough goes on, but yeh.
"Prove yourself heroes brave and true, and I will be glad to embrace you as allies. Allies worthy of bearing the burden of truth."
Also, this comes at the end of his response to Thancred hitting him with "Even if there were a sliver of truth in your words, I would never accept your help. Not in my darkest hour─not after all the suffering your kind has wrought." Given the help we do in fact receive in our very darkest hour, I am not OK.
moving and starting a new job have majorly cramped my xiv style but as i find myself with time and energy i'm poking in again and I just did the mission where you rescue Minfilia from the Eulmoran amy at Laxan Loft very early in ShB and it had completely slipped my mind that that's Emet-Selch's first introduction in the expansion so I naturally got very excited.
This is my first time re-playing through since we've had all the context from 5.3-6.0, and it was neat to see in that context. His line:
Then again...with a soul such as that...Mayhap there is another way. One which does not require bloodshed...
Is one o' them great early on lines because there's a bunch of things it could mean. On first playthrough at launch, I had just assumed it was something about the strength of our souls since we'd been through all the rejoinings and had the Blessing etc, so it was something about a capacity which would provide a way forward without bloodshed. When I finally cottoned on that it might have been about an inclination which might provide a way forward without bloodshed—that the WoL might be persuadable—in addition to any capacity, I was absolutely heartstruck.
Before I hop into Shadowbringers (!!) for Éliane's playthrough, I did want to quickly get one thing about Emet Selch addressed, which is his name.
I'm going to copy what I wrote for the wiki:
The word emet in Hebrew means "truth", leading to several possible interpretations of Emet-Selch's name. One possibility is אמת שלך ("emet shelkha"), which translates to "your truth"—a central theme of Emet-Selch's involvement in the post-Shadowbringer story and in Endwalker.
* teeeeechnically emet shelkha doesn't translate 1:1 to "your truth," because of the differences in the way the languages are set up (v little is a 1:1 translation in life, ofc). The most natural equivalent of "your truth" is האמת שלך - but a perhaps more literal English interpretation of that is "the truth (of) yours," so dropping the ה (ha, "the") and still loosely taking the meaning of "your truth" feels like fair game to me in terms of backwards-interpreting from the name that was given to the character.
...double-technically, emet shelkha (rather than ha-emet shelkha) could mean something like "yours truly" which is very funny since he's a villain who ultimately winds up on your side!
I'll talk a LOT more about him (and all my Jewish Feelings About ShB/Endwalker) as the playthrough goes on, but yeh.
