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

[Brinne]

To me, the most telling scene with Venat is when an admirer of hers gleefully asks her when she plans to return to the star, Venat politely gives her a non-answer, and then confesses to the WOL that she actually has NO plans to ever do it, because she sees her personal mission as neverending. Venat's demeanor there gave me impressions of a real-world woman with a successful career being asked when she plans to get married, retired and have a baby, and withholding the urge to say she doesn't want to do any of those things, because their society values it so highly. It gave me the impression that Venat had her dissatisfaction or unease about aspects of Ancient society, but didn't know how to go about changing things without hurting peoples' feelings. Then, when Hermes makes his "challenge", and the Final Days comes, she's disappointed because her people didn't make the changes she expected on their own.

The problem with this, of course, is that the writers intended for the players to see the Ancients as "scary", where they defined scary as "not like us". The writers, apparently, thought that the Ancients having basically no struggles whatsoever, and having little reaction to death as long as it serves a "purpose" (for example, killing the petaludas to make some robes and being excited about others of their own returning to the star) would make them seem cold and alien enough that the players would agree that modern day spoken races are an overall "upgrade". The Ancients were intended to be portrayed as detached and in denial, but (in my opinion) they failed to show that during Elpis. They tried to double down on it by showing irrational strawman version of the Ancients during the Sundering scene, but even that doesn't work because, following the Kairos incident, Venat herself had all the keys in her hand to prevent things from coming to that and she did nothing.

As I've said before with friends and on this forum, approaching the text from a Watsonian perspective, pretty much the only way you can make Venat's character coherent is understanding she's very much like Hermes - had a pre-existing dissatisfaction and unease with Ancient society to begin with, then had "confirmation" of those beliefs through her acquaintance to the WoL and Meteion's report. Venat's response to Hermes's test not being "no, we can't let this happen! We have to save as many as possible!" but rather "Yes, we must rise to be equal to his challenge, bring it on" is very telling. She completely agrees with him that "people must prove they're worthy to exist" and "the Ancients have to prove this by reacting in the Correct way to overwhelming despair (so I will let the Overwhelming Despair play out and observe them like bugs under a microscope)."

The other aspect I find utterly baffling in regards to the approach to the Ancients being "scary" is - look at the world we live in, and actually look at the Sundered world. It's hilarious that they actually expected us to be outraged over the Ancients being willing to "take life" when they see it as justified - let alone the demonstrations of this being butterflies and an out-of-control murder wolf. Meanwhile, here I am, checking my leatherbound planner, using my communication technology whose materials are almost certainly produced in highly unethical and inhumane ways, thinking about what meat I want to unnecessarily and indulgently consume for my evening meal later on. If a spider dares show its face while I am doing this, I will crush it, for it does not belong in the perfect space I want in my room. And I consider myself a relatively harmless, benign person who doesn't actually engage in violent crime, hunting for sport, actively participating in or beginning wars, etc. Either they didn't think this through at all, or this premise is coming from an incredibly sheltered place, or both. The only way I can make any sense of people uncritically going along with these premises is if they were pre-disposed to look for any reason to justify the demise of the Ancients, and pin the blame for their slaughter as "their own fault."

Figuring that people would near-universally see a peaceful, consensual death (in a universe where reincarnation is a fact and the people who practice this are ageless) would also be horrifying and scary is also something I file under "are you just really, overwhelmingly naive here or"