*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Veloran]

but that it was the point when they were no longer willingly sacrificing themselves to help the planet, but rather forcing others to involuntarily sacrifice lives for their own comfort.

If this was their sin, it's one we perpetuate every single day.

It's even going against the wishes of those sacrificed; remember that we heard from those souls in Mare Lamentorum, and they are still completely okay with their own sacrifices.

Did you just forget the part where the souls within Zodiark say, "We must return and be made whole!"?

I got it from the themes and motifs of the story being told, and the fact that the ancients created Zodiark the god who demands sacrifice to restore the world. Not Zodiark the aether-conversion engine that needs fuel to operate. Perhaps in some strictly literal sense, those two are the same. But they have a completely different thematic vibe. Basically, the story just starts falling apart on a metaphysical level if you postulate that you could run Zodiark on sacrificed chickens.

Yes, and I'm saying that the story does fall apart on that level.

Two of those there would go on a multi millennia campaign to do what they thought was right for humanity and the third sacrificed themselves to create a god.

You seem to be confused. Again this part of the conversation isn't about the ethics of the rejoining, it's about the question of the Ancient's ability to handle the idea of a dead universe. When that information is revealed neither Venat, nor Emet, nor Hythlodaeus break down in shock from it. Emet and Hythlodaeus soon got their memories wiped and none of their actions related to that idea, while Venat knew and still didn't break down about it. I'm saying there was a serious lack of evidence that this idea would cause the Ancients to destroy themselves.

Of course she thought it possible, my point however is that’s not a solution the way silencing the song of oblivion is and would only lead to the destruction of Etheirys and all life.

Why could she not have left and enacted a plan against Meteion? In fact, why do you consider not defeating Meteion a barrier towards a notion of fleeing, when it was already Venat's plan B (plan A being "never unseal Zodiark and safeguard the world forever") and the idea of going to challenge her was plan C?

Yes, my argument is she is specifically made to restrain Zodiark and Her powers are limited due to the fact that 2/3 of the world did not sacrifice themselves to power Her. If you can’t recognize there may be effects unique to that case then perhaps this discussion will be fruitless.

It's obvious that they are not the same, my point is only that a very vague line of distinction is made purely for the purposes of narrative convenience.

I choose to believe 99% of people wouldn’t sacrifice innocent lives.

You're wrong. Flat-out. People do so every day without even thinking about it. WoL has done it on countless occasions.

Then don’t take my word for it. Here’s Venat.

Venat does not say that they would specifically need Hermes "expertise" for anything. She says "well he's smart, and maybe his intelligence will be useful?" If you actually pay attention to her dialog in this scene, she suggests to WoL that the world may be completely different when you return to your own time, meaning that she is actually intending to do things differently. And yet she also says that the others being mind-wiped may have set the stage for a conjunction leading to the timeline remaining the same, meaning she knows that not telling the others increases the chances that everything goes unchanged and the Ancient's world is destroyed.

Not only is the entire thing a godawful contrivance with little logic behind it, what Venat is talking about with Hermes there is her MO to a T - Withhold knowledge from someone and try to manipulate them into aiding your cause, even when revealing the truth of the situation to them might make them your enemy. To be clear, this is a mistake, and leads to the deaths of billions as the Ancient's world is razed while everyone is scrambling around to figure out the cause of the situation. Keep in mind that she also says that she needs to "prepare their defenses", and yet absolutely nothing comes of this.

And then you must concede you have 0 evidence of this.

They didn't buy her arguments regardless. Either way she was predicating them on lies.

I wonder why they didn’t just breed a bunch of chickens and sacrifice them to Zodiark then.

That was quite literally their plan with the third sacrifice.

It's been a while, but I don't think so? My recollection is that we traveled to the aetherial sea via the antitower, and then spoke to Minfilia as the Oracle by using the little crystal macguffins we got during ARR. It never seemed like the crystals were an energy source for that - more like a catalyst to make communication possible.

The crystals were explicitly used as an energy source, both to bring you to the aetherial sea to meet Minfilia and to take her and the Warriors of Darkness back to the First. Iirc the journal even describes WoL's crystal as having been "spent" afterwards.

Also, Emet-selch's view of Sundered life is not just born of out of some inherent Ancient sentiment either. We heard from the man himself that he measured the worth of modern people for thousands of years, and concluded they were simply too stupid, violent and frail to care for the star. He's not some prejudiced idiot with no deeper understanding of the world, he's lived more mortal lives than any mortal. He has been rendered bitter by eons of watching people bump into eachother and die, and even then, we know that these were not his complete feelings, but something he was using to remain true to his convictions. The idea that the Ancients don't care in the slightest for lesser life is directly contradicted by the numerous Elpis sidequests, as well as their scholarly understanding that most of their arcane constructs do not have a soul, and thus cannot emulate life. When they can perceive a soul in something, it is a completely different matter entirely, such was the case for the 'immortal bird' in the novella, or the WoL as 'Azem's familiar.' Even if this deduction to determine a life's worth is incorrect, as is attempted to convey with Hermes, this is not then cause to decide the entire world is cruel. At worst they simply don't realize.

There's something to note here that I think hasn't been recognized very much - Emet-Selch's motives and ideals and Venat's motives and ideals appear to be exactly the same, simply flipped around. Emet believed that the Sundered were morally and physically deficient, selfish, indolent, given to the temptations of power, and both magically and ethically incapable of true fulfillment, and so they must be rejoined. Whereas Venat believed that the Ancients were morally and physically deficient, selfish, indolent, given to the temptations of power, and both magically and ethically incapable of true fulfillment, and so they must be sundered. Many of the arguments that were once applied to the Sundered, that they were inferior beings prone to self-destruction, are now being turned around and used with the Ancients to justify their destruction without a hint of irony.

It's stuff like this that makes me question whether the story was actually some kind of grand 5D meta commentary on the nature of narrative presentation and audience reception, or if everything was just a complete accident and they just unintentionally doubled back on a bunch of ideas they were trying to dispute.