Zodiark: Good or evil? thoughts

[Anvaire]

Except for Elidibus, the rest of the ascians have so far been shown as no more than mustache-twirling villains.

I’m not sure how Lahabrea could be considered “morally grey”. The man was a sociopath and said it was all for him and had to be corrected by Elidibus that it was for Zodiark. The rest of the ascians even called him an idiot.

Not everything Emet-Selch does is directly “for the cause” either. Like possessing a random innocent on the First and mutating their body until it looks like a form he’s comfortable with. Then there’s the Garlean Civil War, which he instigated on purpose to cause bloodshed and chaos despite it not being essential to his plans since the gas weapon was already tested and done.

And then there’s their whole MO: spread the seeds of conflict all across the world over and over, and then reap their harvest later when it suits them. They taught the elezen about the power of dragon eyes and started the Dragonsong War. That had no benefit to them for 1000 years until they decided they could use Thordan to go on crusade as a primal with the power of the Warring Triad.

Even with their goals in mind, they still seem intent on terrorizing the realm constantly and I’m not sure what part of that is “not being a villain”. Elidibus is their baby sitter and without him, everything would have gone to hell in a hand basket. They don’t even start listening to him until after Nabriales went rogue and got himself killed because he saw an opportunity.

I think whether the ascians are seen as evil comes down to perspective. Yes they are comitting genocide on a regular basis. But you have to consider, they have seen a "perfect" version of the world.The sundering is an unatural occurance and has splintered something that should be whole into multiple parts. It is an anomaly. To use a real life example, if a bout of radiation or an illness fundementally ultered the biology - those who had known what they should have been would look to heal or repair. But those who were born altered and did not know would see themselves as how they should be even though thier chang was due to x reason.

This is the very argument that the MSQ is making. To the ascians the sundered lifeforms are broken and incomplete, something that naturally should never have been. But to those sundered they are "natural" because they have not seen what was before. Worse still is that the ascians can see the hue of a soul and so know exactly who the sundered soul once was, to them they are seeing a friend or loved one who has been altered and broken.

i think Emet's story in shadowbringers was his inner conflict between seeing the sundered life as 'alive' and whole or broken. He was desperate to guage them worthy because then the burden he had carried was lost. To a being that lives forever and has multiple conscious lifetimes, knows that souls are reincarnated again after death, the premature end of their "current" life would not matter overly much. Obviously it is horrendous to those who are sundered and to us who can relate to them due to the natutre of our own existence. Essentially while we can imagne whats its like to be an immortal god like being, we cant really relate, but we can to the ordinary person.

Ultimately when it comes to the ascians they are villains because their method and resolve is horrendous. Their intentions though, I can't actually find something bad in the motivation behind them. They just want to restore the world to how it should have been. Effectively they just want to heal their people and although it is wrong, it is also understandable from their perspective.