*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Lauront]

To counter the idiotic plan to sacrifice half their population to bring forth a god, then sacrifice more to bring them back, and then do yet another sacrifice to...restore the world? A world that was still hurtling headfirst into the Final Days. Remember the last species in the Dead Ends? That was where the Ancients were headed.

Venat's plan was far from perfect but it was absolutely the lesser of two evils.

If the plan seems idiotic, it's because you've completely misunderstood it - here are the relevant sources on it. They had no option but to resort to sacrifices of their own because of what the Final Days did to the planet. It's never stated to be their preferred option. They then had to resort to more to revive the planet. And it is only with the final, more contentious stage that they'd sacrifice some of the new lives to restore those inside Zodiark. The scenario shown within the Dead Ends final area, facile caricature as it is, was not an inevitability if she but shared that knowledge of the fate of that star (derived from a few lines of Meteion's report) and her deeper concerns... of course the story introduced various contrivances to stop that. Her entire plan is parasitic upon Zodiark's existence, all the same. It wouldn't work without him.

Were the ascians guilty of genocide? Sure. But so was Venat. And I rarely see anyone on Team Hydaelyn acknowledge that fact. And tbqf I want to have a way to break the timeline into two separate ones so the Ancients can have the happy ending they deserve too. If Venat had not committed genocide first with the Sundering the Ascians would never have even been a thing.

Absolutely. She's the very person who put them into that situation with no real understanding of why. She does not escape culpability in all this.

Rejoinings are 100% a power increase. This is why the Ancients are all so magically gifted and WoL is able to contain the Light after rejoining with Ardbert, because higher aetheric density means higher aetheric capacity. The denser your soul, the more aether you can take on.

We don't know the actual density of the residents of the First compared to other shards, and with the introduction of Dynamis there is an alternative way for less dense souls to still exhibit exceptional power, consider the extremely zealous Ran'jit (the only notable trouble WoL actually has on the First) for example.

Indeed. Here is a source on it:

4. Emet-Selch remarks that we are of the Source, "seven times rejoined". Is he talking about our soul, or only the world? If our soul has been rejoined, does that mean everyone on the Source has been rejoined to another soul-fragment each Calamity, or are we (and perhaps other specific characters) special in some way?
Oda: Each time there is a rejoining, any living things have the souls rejoined. This is true for everyone equally. The souls get more dense, and potentially more powerful.

Yoshi: The Rejoining isn't just for the characters, but for the whole world. Of course, this does apply to yourself, as well.

As you point out, this allows the WoL to carry more aether and there are ambiguities which make direct 1:1 comparisons between First/Source denizens difficult to make, plus none evidently come much closer to ancients, but they definitely do point out they can grow more powerful out of this process.

Yo dude, can you help me destroy the world and all life upon it including your own and everyone you care about? I swear it's for your own good.

What do you mean no! How unreasonable!

Ironically, how Venat would've sounded to the ancients.