In regards to something involving the main cast

[kaynide]

You haven't been paying attention to anything at all then.

Ancient Concepts/Creation magic - Can be anything from clothing, to cities, to creatures.

Concepts at Elpis - Flesh and blood creatures designed to become part of the ecosystem and even perhaps gain souls and become an integral part of the Lifestream and the circle of life. When these die in Elpis, they still remain as corpses as normal animals would.

Familiars - Both in the Ancient and modern days, beings created of pure aether and can be dismissed into aether. They are created for a specific task.

I don't really have a dog in this fight, but food for thought:

I'm not sure if a creature being flesh and blood, having a soul or even leaving behind a corpse is necessarily a good indicator on how it should be treated;

For example, the queen porxie needed to be beat into submission, so it clearly has some kind of will of it's own. Or the Poroggos which seem to have varying levels of free will (or at least, Sass).

I would also struggle to categorize summons, because as we saw in the starship liftoff, Garuda was not into what was going on at all..although she was forced to do it.

[kaynide]

(Incidentally, my next video is related to the Ascians quite directly, but I suspect you won't be the biggest fan of what I have to say about them. Largely unrelated to this, though.)

Don't know if it's a thing you go into..but a big irk of mine that you might shed light on is.. why did it have to go down at all like it did? If they could create Meteion, why not create dynamis-based creatures to battle Meteion once the Zodiark shield was up? They could have just unmade Zodiark once all was said and done...

...probably because "reasons".

[KageTokage]

The game itself already went on at length about the various wrongdoings of the Ascians to a point where discussing it further would feel like beating a dead horse .

They weren't justified in what they did, but they wouldn't have even been placed in that position in the first place if Venat/Hydaelyn had handled things differently. I'm honestly surprised that they decided go with "She let them escape" as the reason for the unsundered existing as opposed to simply "missing" them somehow so she at least couldn't be held indirectly accountable for all the harm they caused as well.

I really don't see any logical reason for her doing that aside from trying to ensure the future didn't change because a world bereft of Ascian influence may not have even needed to deal with Meteion and it would still be rife with the suffering and strife supposedly required to grant man the resilience to overcome despair if it came down to it.

[sidurgu-12]

Don't know if it's a thing you go into..but a big irk of mine that you might shed light on is.. why did it have to go down at all like it did? If they could create Meteion, why not create dynamis-based creatures to battle Meteion once the Zodiark shield was up? They could have just unmade Zodiark once all was said and done...

...probably because "reasons".

mainly because the study of dynamis was borderline dead. since aether is basically an unlimited power source they can freely manipulate there was no reason to continue researching it. though the game does say there are a handful of ancients who kind of knew about it.

[Cleretic]

Don't know if it's a thing you go into..but a big irk of mine that you might shed light on is.. why did it have to go down at all like it did? If they could create Meteion, why not create dynamis-based creatures to battle Meteion once the Zodiark shield was up? They could have just unmade Zodiark once all was said and done...

...probably because "reasons".

As mentioned by others, dynamis study just wasn't strong enough to do anything with that. And incidentally, we know from going ourselves that the deck was stacked super hard against them; frankly, even if they were good enough at understanding dynamis to make shock troopers, and good enough at space travel to get them there (which, to be honest, feels like a bigger barrier than we often give credit for), they still would've lost.

As for 'why did it have to go down like it did', well... it kinda didn't? Other options were theoretically available, although even they might not have been any good, but the problem was that the Ancients were ultimately stubborn people who locked themselves into certain approaches. The Convocation didn't have to keep sacrificing to Zodiark, and could've stopped anytime... but they didn't, and kept going down an unsustainable road. Similarly, Venat and her group had other options, and were even trying to pursue some of them, but ultimately the only plan left on the table, for reasons both personal and practical, was the Sundering.

There were other options available to both parties, but that doesn't mean that those other options were inherently better options, or that either side was objectively morally wrong to take the ones they did. Ultimately, they're just... choices made by people. You can love or hate them for those all you want, but no stance is 'correct', even if one or another is the majority in certain circles. It's just up to you to decide where your feelings lie.

Personally, my feelings lie at 'I cannot possibly abide by or dismiss the Ascians' later actions even if I understand the road they took to get to them'.

[Lurina]

This is technically entirely unrelated to the points the OP brings up, but it's true to the spirit of the initial question, because... well, why is it that when two sides have ostensibly committed the same acts of violence, why does this subforum only pull the knives out against one of them?

While there are definitely a few people who support the Ascians entirely for their own sake for strange reasons, I think most people are less willing to forgive Venat because the scenario surrounding her both makes her come across as inhuman and is also not written particularly cohesively. Emet-Selch is a character that is easy to relate to because he is willing to commit atrocities in order to save his loved ones and people; even if you condemn him, you can easily understand where he's coming from.

On the other hand, at best, Venat is a much more utilitarian character with a goal that's difficult to relate to on a personal level. She wants to ensure the survival of life in the universe at any cost, regardless of the people who are hurt in the process. This would already make her controversial, but on top of that, the more you try to interrogate the specifics of her motives, the more they start to fall apart. The only reason she could possibly have to spare Emet and massively endanger life on the Shards would be that she is determined to re-create the circumstances that lead to the player character being sent into the past, despite knowing billions will be murdered to make that happen. However, the writing in the codex and elsewhere frames her as wanting to stop the Rejoinings. These two goals are incompatible. If she wanted to prevent the Rejoinings and did not care about specifically creating the time loop where you met her in Elpis, she could have easily done so by Sundering him. On the other hand, if she was dedicated to ensuring the time loop happened no matter what, making a sincere effort to stop them would be shooting herself in the foot.

This dissonance, despite being a flaw in the writing rather than Venat as a character, leaves the player with a vague sense of her being dishonest or hypocritical, and further makes it feel like the entire scenario surrounding her is just nonsense from a mechanical (if not thematic) perspective. And if it is nonsense, that means that the Ancients, who people might care about quite a lot, 'died for nothing' from a meta-narrative perspective. Emet killed to save his friends, Venat killed to <incomprehensible post-hoc plotting goop>

It's a lot easier to sympathize with the former.

[Alleo]

The original topic was "why is it fine for the Sundered to do similar things?"

And the examples are not really comparable because even if we are not completely weak and helpless we are still much below the power of the Ancient. We need to kill and harvest animals because we cant just simply create the things we need to live out of thin air. The Ancients can do that. So much that even growing your own food is seen as something strange. So of course WE would need to kill things and yet still can be surprised when the Ancients do that because they dont have to do it.

We are part of the Circle of life and many people died to beasts. The Ancients are normally not. They create all these really dangerous creatures but wont be the ones that really have to live with them.

And they create being with bones and blood that bascially can get souls and still delete them from existence when they dont like their design while Ysthola sent a purely magical construct (which is not alive) into the void and still cared about them in some ways.

Edit:

And to make it clear: I do like the Ancients. I really enjoyed my time in Elpis. I dont believe that they are horrible people that deserved their fate, but I also dont put them higher up than the people living now. They are us but more powerful and seemingly might have seen anything below them as not worth their time (seeing how Emet and Hthylo called us an it, how even others reacted to us and how the Ascians threated the sundered). It does not make them evil but flawed people.

I do understand Hermes view but I also dont agree with his solution at the end. (Which showed how crazy he has become since Meteion would also bring death to all the innocent creations)

I just dont get the need to compare their actions to the main cast. The main casts also has their flaws because they are also not perfect people. I have no problems with someone bringing up their flaws either. But I dont get why some actions that are different because of how we are, should be counted as equal.

[Cleretic]

While there are definitely a few people who support the Ascians entirely for their own sake for strange reasons, I think most people are less willing to forgive Venat because the scenario surrounding her both makes her come across as inhuman and is also not written particularly cohesively. Emet-Selch is a character that is easy to relate to because he is willing to commit atrocities in order to save his loved ones and people; even if you condemn him, you can easily understand where he's coming from.

Well, this is also where things ultimately come down to subjectivity. Because this exact logic is why I ultimately can only ever condemn Emet-Selch, while Venat just elicits a 'well that happened' response for me.

No human being has ever done anything even remotely resembling what Venat did; indeed, the Sundering works pretty well as sort of a mythical origin story for that reason, it's the sort of weird abstractness that you see in real religions and mythologies. Because of that, I can't really level anything all too hateful towards Venat, it'd be like getting mad at Kronos.

Meanwhile, the Ascians (mostly Emet-Selch) orchestrated identifiably human crimes. Like, the Garlean Empire are responsible for acts that the real world has seen in not-very-ancient history, I know people whose families were affected by events that have very tangible parallels in FFXIV's story. It's outright impossible for me to sympathize with Emet-Selch especially among the Ascians (and Varis among the Garleans, but Varis is not a sympathetic figure), because I cannot look past that the things he did are very real indeed. It also doesn't help that I've met people who act like Emet-Selch (without the genocide, thankfully), and I've had pretty much universally awful experiences of them.

Again, not a problem for every single Ascian; my favorite is Fandaniel mostly because, again, his crimes are so far beyond what's possible for humans that nothing gets filed into 'Too Real', and Elidibus has a strong and interesting story that I never really had issues with. It's really only Emet-Selch, so him being their 'face' doesn't sit well for me.

[kaynide]

mainly because the study of dynamis was borderline dead. since aether is basically an unlimited power source they can freely manipulate there was no reason to continue researching it. though the game does say there are a handful of ancients who kind of knew about it.

As mentioned by others, dynamis study just wasn't strong enough to do anything with that. And incidentally, we know from going ourselves that the deck was stacked super hard against them; frankly, even if they were good enough at understanding dynamis to make shock troopers, and good enough at space travel to get them there (which, to be honest, feels like a bigger barrier than we often give credit for), they still would've lost.

I mean, we went from risky ocean crossings using sails to landing on the moon in like, 150 years.. without any magic.

If Venat could make an entire moon with a moon base, or Lahabrea his own personal "Hell", and indeed Hermes/Fandaniel could make Meteion, I just don't find it hard to believe they could make something dynamis powered and entirely void of emotions (aka immune to despair).

Personally, I had HOPED the Omega project was Ascian based as an attempt to do just that only it failed- as in Meteion simply can not be defeated using force and it took emotion to beat her (power of friendship, and all). Where the Omegas lost, and (wrongly) decided the only way to defeat her in a rematch was to fight other things and get stronger.

[Cleretic]

I mean, we went from risky ocean crossings using sails to landing on the moon in like, 150 years.. without any magic.

If Venat could make an entire moon with a moon base, or Lahabrea his own personal "Hell", and indeed Hermes/Fandaniel could make Meteion, I just don't find it hard to believe they could make something dynamis powered and entirely void of emotions (aka immune to despair).

Personally, I had HOPED the Omega project was Ascian based as an attempt to do just that only it failed- as in Meteion simply can not be defeated using force and it took emotion to beat her (power of friendship, and all). Where the Omegas lost, and (wrongly) decided the only way to defeat her in a rematch was to fight other things and get stronger.

...I don't think you understand dynamis, because dynamis is emotional energy. 'Dynamis powered and utterly void of emotions' is a complete contradiction of terms.

You asked me a question directly, and I answered it: yeah, maybe those options did exist in theory, and maybe they were better--or maybe they were dismissed. But the choices made were made because the Ancients are people, and people make decisions based on a whole lot of factors, most of which actually aren't pure logic. And we know that emotions were at play on both sides, both Venat and the Convocation were making decisions based on emotions rather than logic. That doesn't even make those choices wrong, but they do remain the choices that were made.