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

[Lauront]

It is if not outright stated, at least HEAVIYL implied that they intended to sacrifice the new races and species that sprung forth after the second sacrifice for the third and beyond, not themself(or atleast not themself exclusivly)

It's not implied - what is implied is that they'd use the life seeded by Zodiark, which given what we now know of how creation magicks functioned and the apparent emergence of life on the star (i.e. that the ancients were responsible for at the least a good chunk of it), is very likely to be further creations. When you say "new races", there are none. The sundered are sundered ancients who evolved in specific ways in response to their new circumstances according to the Q&A. All this leaves is animals, plant life and arcane entities/familiars (of which the WoL is not considered to be a characteristic example, as per the sidequests... even Meteion, an unapproved familiar which nonetheless is herself in some facets robotic, is exceptional.) So effectively, arcane AIs in the last category.

Were they really sacrificing those who they saw as "beneath" them or were they trying to put the pieces of fractured souls back together to undo the damage the was caused by the sundering in the first place? It's really not difficult to understand why Emet and crew saw us as not being alive. If you sister threw a vase across the room and broke said vase because it was in danger of being knocked off a table that you already put supports under, are the pieces still a vase? That is up for a philosophical argument. But you have a couple things you can do right now. You can either throw the pieces away or remake them into the vase it used to be, and if that vase was important to you, what would you do? Are you destroying the pieces for the sake of the whole or do you leave the vase broken for the sake of the pieces? The whole evil ascian thing is really not so cut and dry, esp with what we know now.

And it really wasn't spelled out that the ancients would not have succeeded, except by hydaelyn, who of course is going to use any means necessary to justify her actions, which is where the gaslighting comes in. Because that is what narcissists, abusers and straight up dictators do. When anything bad happens, the majority tend to hide, that much is true. But all it takes is a few with means and knowledge on the subject to come together and find a solution. Hydaelyn had that knowledge and as a people that had the means. Imagine, when the first plague hit mankind and we were dying by the thousands, if the top scientist who could save us because they knew exactly what was happening, decided just to kill everyone because future generations could do it better, even if the virus that killed most of humanity set us back millenia evolutionarily speaking.

Very well said.

[CrownySuccubus]

It's not implied - what is implied is that they'd use the life seeded by Zodiark, which given what we now know of how creation magicks functioned and the apparent emergence of life on the star (i.e. that the ancients were responsible for at the least a good chunk of it), is very likely to be further creations. When you say "new races", there are none. The sundered are sundered ancients who evolved in specific ways in response to their new circumstances according to the Q&A. All this leaves is animals, plant life and arcane entities/familiars (of which the WoL is not considered to be a characteristic example, as per the sidequests... even Meteion, an unapproved familiar which nonetheless is herself in some facets robotic, is exceptional.) So effectively, arcane AIs in the last category.

Hm. In that transcript, though, Emet-Selch says that the opposing view was to hand over the star to the new life that had been created from the second sacrifice. That doesn't imply plants, animals and unintelligent familiars.

Or, even if it did, it seems like a "Mass Effect"-esque situation where the anti-sacrifice faction felt that the unintelligent species would eventually evolve into intelligent ones to carry the torch.

[Lauront]

Hm. In that transcript, though, Emet-Selch says that the opposing view was to hand over the star to the new life that had been created from the second sacrifice. That doesn't imply plants, animals and unintelligent familiars.

Or, even if it did, it seems like a "Mass Effect"-esque situation where the anti-sacrifice faction felt that the unintelligent species would eventually evolve into intelligent ones to carry the torch.

Yes, I'm aware of it, and your second paragraph is something I've offered in the past as a potential way to reconcile that, because the writers have really cornered themselves following the Q&A and what we know of creations in terms of what these beings could be.

Something to bear in mind is that Hyth's shade is stating that the opposing viewpoint came from her faction. So with that in mind, given that we know that from every scene we've seen of them, her faction not once opposes the sacrifices intrinsically (even going so far as to reinforce that she will not speak against the Convocation for they only do what is best for the star), but only ever in the context of those sacrifices being the potential catalyst (in her mind) of them eventually reaching the fate of the Plenty (in SHB, repeating their doom), and with Venat's willingness to manipulate through withholding the truth or even lying, I am leaning towards that ME scenario you describe as what was going on there, as the narrative they were using to undermine support for the sacrifices. Again, with the end goal being to avoid the Plenty. Not so much any inherent regard for the sacrifices in question.