When are we supposed to stop fighting?

[Cleretic]

So again i have to ask, why is it okay then, for Ironworks to mess with time, potentially killing millions of lives in the process to reverse their tragedy? It’s really not any different to the ancients plight. Who states they needed to learn this lesson in the first place? The psychopathic mother figure who fractured the entire world because people didn’t agree to her beliefs? If the ancients made a “wrong choice” with wanting to bring back their loved ones, then jesus, Venat made the worst possible choice known to man in keeping secrets from them and then sundering them all without consent, and this doesn’t even stem to just the ancients, she sundered other civilizations as well who had nothing to do with any of it.

If you want to go send Time Cops after the Deviant Future Ironworks, sure, go ahead; you're assuming I'll jump to their defense for some reason, but to be honest I just don't care about them.

Venat's choice was, and I've been saying this for months, morally questionable but strategically correct. Whether she was right to do what she did is essentially an academic ethical question, with a lot of fiddly little sub-questions because to really grapple with the problem you have to answer things like 'was the sundering death', and then also enter in what the other side was doing (which involved much clearer instances of death). It is a complicated question that you cannot devolve into a basic 'Venat was right/wrong' binary,

But then we have one question you genuinely ask here, 'who said they needed to learn that' (ironically, clearly a rhetorical question), because it's important to remember that Venat is, because Venat is not a complete nobody outsider. Venat held the seat of Azem; her literal job description was going out and helping people, a job she was apparently quite well-regarded for, and who we can confirm from tales of the next Azem took her around the world. So we know as a fact she's seen more of the world than most anyone, meaning that when she comes back with what we as humans recognize as a basic life lesson like 'suffering sucks, but we have to get up and move forward', we can reason it probably applies to her people as well.

And two other things:
1. Don't call her a psychopath, that either proves you don't understand that word or the character you're applying it to. A psychopath is someone who has no empathy, and if there's anything Venat has in spades, it's that. She feels the pain she's caused deeply, and she wishes she didn't have to bring that world on, it's just that at the end of the day she felt she had to.
2. There are no 'other civilizations' to the Ancients. It's unclear if Amaurot was the only civilization, but we do know that the Ancients were the only people. And from the fact that Zodiark involved sacrificing half the planet's population (twice), we can assume the world was making decisions in concert, even if we don't know if there was a one-world government at play. You can't just say 'and also she sacrificed other civilizations than the Ancients', because there's no evidence to their existence.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

I can call her a psychopath if i so wish to. I can call her mentally ill as well which is what i attribute her to be with the way she contradicts herself and does a complete 180. Based on Hythlo, we know the ancients were going to move forward after the 3rd set of sacrifices. They werent given that chance. Strategically correct? Not in the slightest unless you mean mass genocide is ever strategically correct, in which case i guess Valens is a hero. Cant have evil if you destroy everyone on the planet and burn out the bad.

Strategically correct wouldve been believing what she preached so much about and having hope in her people.Instead, she gave up on them, didnt tell them a word of what would happen, and then shattered them because they disagreed with her. Her mindset is wrong, because as we're shown the ancients experiences suffering everyday, but they still moved on from it. It was only her and hermes that could not. Doesnt give her a right to play god and rip people apart without her consent, nor does it make her in any way right. Unfortunately the game itself did devolve it into a "Venat is totally right" and thats what people have a problem with. If they left it morally grey, where we neither agree or diagree with her actions, i dont think as many people would be up in arms as they are now as shes quite literally pampered and painted as a hero. Imagine if they did this in ShB with Emet, and we got a minion calling him a hero. You know for a fact there would be countless threatds and posts of people calling this out and ranting and raving. We basically got some of that because they strayed away from calling him a clear cut villain.

As for other civilizations, the ancients term is used to describe anyone from that period, not just the elpis members or amaurotines. Based on the short stories we know there were people who lacked in some way in the creation magicks field, who they helped, and we know of that whole island native people with the azem volcano incident. They sent azem specifically to that civilization lol.Either way it doesnt matter from my original points, its other people that didnt consent. Its funny to me people defend her for this but they raised such an incredible deal against Mitron and consent with Gaia.

In terms of Ironworks, my point is the themes it follows, which someone already pointed out so ill just point to their great post about that.