What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Lucida3b]

The only detail that wasnt really symbolic seems to be the face features on zodiark being a mask. (talking bout the cave painting)

Honestly my headcanon is that zodiark looks a lot less demonic if he was complete with elidibus as his core, apparently the ancients are sooo unable to comprehend sadness or dark things. Yet they envisioned THAT?

This is us talking past each other.

"Venat was right" is today's "Emet-Selch was right", which was itself that day's "Nidhogg was right". It's an attempt to contextualize a new morality by adding quote-unquote "nuance" to previously-established morality. In order for Venat to be correct, the Ancients had to be thrown under the bus. "But mommy had a good reason for the genocide, and she felt really bad about it" is their attempt at creating a moral relativism.

I have to disagree here, the difference between emet and venat is massive due to simply the fact that the story takes great pains to say "you can sympathize and understand, but what he is doing is terribly terribly horrifying and wrong" . They say flat out say he has murdered millions.

And This has led to a realization, what sours many people isnt a characters evil deeds, it's how the narrative treats the deeds. Emet's narrative was very honest and blunt, Venat's is very manipulative narrative wise. (also notice how the worst characters retroactively fuck with other character arcs?)

Or to use wow, sylvanys was evil for all of wow but she was liked because the narrative before... legion? was blunt on her, it didnt mince words on her, but when the narrative started twisting and warping to suit the writers favoritism people started to hate her quite quickly.