*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Kozh]

What other people? I thought it was established that unlike the partially aborted 7th calamity, the 8th was a full calamity and all of society crumbled. A large chunk if not the majority of people left are wandering bandits and it's a true apocalyptic scenario that hasn't changed for the better in hundreds of years and will take many hundreds more yet for the world to get back up on its feet again to a semblance of where it was before.

UH, the people at the New World? Meracydia? Other smaller continent? During the flashback, they never say that it spreads outside of the three great continent (eorzea, ilsabard, far east).

In the end though, what the Ironworks did was pretty much the same as what the game keep opposing: An individual/a group of people decide the fate of the star by themselves. Imagine you were born and live in a post apocalypse world. You struggle to live everyday but keep (as EW love to put it) to 'forge ahead'. Then one day someone came and said "hey, we do have a plan to save the world, but by erasing it from existence. I hope you're cool with that."

Additionally, there's nothing that could be done about Black Rose by this point. The Calamity had already come and gone and since the end of the story says they're in a new Astral Era, I'm sure it's assumed that Black Rose has already dissipated. Black Rose was already stated to have destroyed the Garlean Empire 200 years ago during the Calamity so who is going to be continuously producing and releasing it? And in a world with no more countries and severely limited communications, how much of the world even knows who the Ironworks are?

They never said it dissipated, nor do we know if it's possible to considering that it's light aspected (stagnancy).

In all of the scenes of Amaurot and Elpis, we never see the Ancients gather together in darkness and raise their hands up in prayer to the "one true god", yet we see them do that in ARR. The lopporits may have said it causes a "tug", but Emet-Selch outright states he is tempered and the dialogue of the others does not sound like sane individuals possessed of their complete will.
Nabriales: "Witness the terrible might of a true servant of Zodiark!" "Insatiable hunger of the void! Devour all light and return this world to perfect darkness!" "Writhing powers of ruination! From the deepest pits of the abyss I summon thee!"

Ah yes, ARR, where nearly all the villains are morning saturday cartoon level of evil.

[MikkoAkure]

UH, the people at the New World? Meracydia? Other smaller continent? During the flashback, they never say that it spreads outside of the three great continent (eorzea, ilsabard, far east).

In the end though, what the Ironworks did was pretty much the same as what the game keep opposing: An individual/a group of people decide the fate of the star by themselves. Imagine you were born and live in a post apocalypse world. You struggle to live everyday but keep (as EW love to put it) to 'forge ahead'. Then one day someone came and said "hey, we do have a plan to save the world, but by erasing it from existence. I hope you're cool with that."

The people of the New World and Meracydia may not have been effected, but they're also not very high-density populated areas. We don't know much about the Far West, but we know that Meracydia has already been in a post-apocalyptic situation for 6,000 years. In the end, their timeline wasn't deleted, it was just a possibility. Also, I don't remember anywhere saying that the original summonings of Zodiark were a bad thing. If Zodiark wasn't summoned in the first place, then the world would have ended.

They never said it dissipated, nor do we know if it's possible to considering that it's light aspected (stagnancy).

You're answering my assumption with another assumption. The scene where we learn all this shows people walking around and mourning amongst the dead so I was of the mind that it still works as a normal gas. I'm not sure why you would be against the idea of the Ironworks doing something to fix the past if they lived in a world where the Calamity was still happening and continuing to happen and Black Rose will never fade so I don't know how that helps your argument.

Ah yes, ARR, where nearly all the villains are morning saturday cartoon level of evil.

It's still a part of the canon of the story and most importantly, the beginning where everyone is introduced to these characters. It's one thing for the story to evolve and to add nuance, but it's another to introduce inconsistencies and altogether pretend that the whole beginning of the story never happened.

In this case, we know why Zodiark was summoned and we know the Ascians had a good reason for doing so. At the same time, we know that they were tempered, are told specifically by one of their leaders that they were tempered, and that it has turned the previous logic-minded "protectors of the star" into zealous ghosts who twirl their mustaches and laugh as they wreak destruction and cause genocides. That makes the whole thing more tragic and the writing better than the alternative.