Quote Originally Posted by Rulakir View Post
I don't know what to tell you if your takeaway from Elpis was that the unsundered were significantly worse off than the sundered. Matter of fact, we're rather explicitly shown that their primary issue is lack of inspiration, which certainly seems the preferable existence to one that still involves war, homelessness, sex trafficking, etc.

Emet also never said they didn't have problems, only that their differences were insignificant next to all they had in common. Were they as perfect as you claim he presented them as there would be no need for the seat of Elidibus. Plus, he's not wrong. As said in the NieR crossover, "Their pitiable lives are fleeting. In the simplest of ways, they die and die." The Ancients "lived nigh for eternity", so from that perspective it is providing "the greatest amount of happiness and the least amount of suffering in the long run".
That definitely wasn't my take away and I wish you wouldn't be so rude and assuming.

And while it's unfortunate, you clearly need reminding that Elpis is only a portion of the ancient's civilization. My take away from watching Hermes wasn't that they were worse off. It was that they too had problems, that they too had issues to deal with. Watching Hermes struggle with grasping the meaning of life, with him struggling at the thought of his predecessor choosing to pass on to the star made me wonder how many other ancients were struggling in their own ways. It might not have been quite as awful as the struggles that exist in the sundered shards and source, but to me it's significant because that's his claim for denying the sundered peoples their existence.

If even the tiniest of flaws was enough to deny someone life, then no one sundered or unsundered would be deserving. The ancients did not deserve what happened to them but that did not give them any right to take it out on the new life that had taken hold after the sundering.