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

[Teraq]

Emet-Selch doesnt even agree with Emet-Selch on that. If he actually believed that he wouldnt have subconsiously had his recreations refer to the Scions as young children and not un alive monsters, and he wouldnt have subconsciously spawned a Hyth that activly disagrees with that take and goes out of his way to help.

Thats not even an Endwalker thing, base SHB is very unsubtle with showing that no matter what he actually says Emet clearly sees them as people. Foolish and young people, but real people non the less.

IMO the gap between what Emet says he views the Sundered as and the implications to the contrary just comes down to the Unsundered having to tell themselves sundered lives don't matter. Otherwise, the feelings of empathy and guilt might come in the way of their duty, and considering they are the only 3 survivors (no, she doesn't count) and they probably feel a massive responsibility to bring their people back as they were world leaders, they just plain couldn't afford that. It's like any job where you have to watch animals or people die, but a lot more extreme; you have to have a certain degree of detachment, otherwise you are destroying yourself emotionally. (Which is one of the reasons why Hermes's character made no sense to me. Consider another job, dude, please, how long have you been doing this????)

That emotional conflict is, I suspect, one of the reasons Elidibus did not want to refresh his memory. Beside his reason of not wanting to suffer through the memory loss again, Emet's recognition of us as Azem, and his overall sentimentality, is part of what caused him to have a change of heart after his defeat. Elidibus most likely wanted to avoid precisely that, considering he was bothered enough by Emet recognizing our Ancient self to ask us who we were. Notably, even though he was able to see us as Azem with soul sight at the beginning of 5.3 (our character appearing as an Ancient shade with a black mask), he never did recognize us, not even in Endwalker. A very sound choice from a purely professional and utilitarian point of view, given that it's now canon that he and Azem were good friends and investigated things together, at least, if not having a brotherly relationship like the short story implies. The virgin Emet-Selch falling to his sentimentality VS. the Chad Elidibus purposely steeling himself.

Even so, I was relatively fine (given the constraints the writers appeared to want for the story) with where SHB left things, i.e. a position of mutual understanding and honouring the legacy of the ancients, but then EW comes in, throws in time travel but denies an AU with a better ending for the ancients, and also tries to present what she did to the ancients as unambiguously justified (vs SHB's more perspective-driven approach), and yes, I am salty over that. All that plot gimmick amounted to doing is making the story more convoluted and not being used for the one good thing it could've done.

Exactly, and it sucks, sorry not sorry Endwalker.