Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
Hardly anyone here has been asking for Hydaelyn to be a straight up villain. It was suggested that in the context of her story it would make sense for her to be well meaning antagonist who happened to benefit the Sundered but still needed to be stopped and called out for the horrific atrocities she committed on the Unsundered. No amount of handwaving makes genocide suddenly acceptable - let alone to those who happen to be the victims of it.

My own stance is that it makes perfect sense for the Sundered not to want to roll over and die for the sake of the Unsundered but the reverse is true as well. The game can disagree with that all it wants, can gaslight into pretending Venat is some quirky 'herois' and straight up retcon lore in a vain effort to make her look better...but I strongly disagree that it was 'always obvious' that she was going to be a perfect loving goddess. She was literally a talking crystal who never spoke in clear terms and shifted the blame from herself to those she deliberately tormented.

At this point the best way to salvage Venat would be to create some sort of alternate universe and quietly shuffle the Ancients over there so they can have their happy ending. If, at any point, the writers try to double down on the 'Ancients deserved to be genocided' rhetoric then I'm sure you can imagine the frustration and backlash that will arise.

Generally speaking if we wouldn't consider something acceptable for the protagonists to be subjected to then there's no reason anybody else in the setting needs to be fine with it happening to them.
I fail to see where in the context lies that us as the audience were supposed to be see Venat as this "antagonist" when all this time we've been helped by her blessing numerous times in our endeavors. The most we get in terms of questioning were her status as a "primal" and in the context at the time we assumed that all primals were bad news considering their nature of sapping away aether from the land and tempering people into mindless zombies who do nothing but worship them. Yet none of those qualities applied to Hydaelyn herself as:

1. She being the mother crystal, didnt cause any danger to the world by siphoning aether.
2. Tempering? I suppose her giving us the Echo and the Blessing of Light is a boon, but not once did our character nor any other of the WoLs went around worshipping her mindlessly or act out of their own volition; traits that reflect one from being actually tempered.

The setup that was established with Venat/Hyadaelyn during the end of Shb was mostly just "what exactly are you, and what is the grand plan here"