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

[FirstGearFirstGear]

The Ancients are allowed to hold a grievance against Venat. They are not allowed to wipe out all of creation because they are desperately grasping for a past that can never be reclaimed. Frankly, describing that as "seeking justice" makes your entire stance suspect.

There are plenty of plausible reasons that Venat didn't explicitly lay out Zodiark, Meteion, and so forth. The most brute force is that she knew it wouldn't matter, we're in a closed time loop and a future that produces a WoL that will travel back to Elpis is going to happen. That is also not a terribly satisfying answer, but it's notable that if you go with it, Venat still tries to convince the Ancients to reject Zodiark. She knows it's hopeless, but she still tries because she loves her people and their world.

There are other reasonable excuses. Emet-Selch's defining character trait is that he's stubborn and reluctant to accept new ideas, especially one as wild as a sad space bird is the real threat we have to deal with. Telling the Convocation will mean telling Hermes which risks him deliberately sabotaging the effort to stop Meteion. And Venat has literally no proof of her claims which again are pretty wild. But more to the point, Meteion isn't why Venat sundered the world. She sundered it because the Ancients chose slavery over freedom.

Let's go back to the whole genocide thing. Because you're right, genocide is bad. And the writers of Final Fantasy XIV would agree with you! Ishgard trying to wipe out the dragons and vice versa is bad! The Garleans trying to wipe out everything that isn't Garlean is bad! The sin-eaters trying to wipe out Norvrandt is bad! Emet-Selch trying to wipe out, uh, everything is bad! And the Ancients deliberately genociding themselves so they could cling to their tainted utopia is bad. If you want to argue that Venat was preventing the Ancients from freeing their kin from Zodiark, you have to acknowledge that they were happy to keep throwing souls into him as long as they could get their paradise back. That is what Venat sundered them from. She didn't object to the summoning of Zodiark because, yeah, there was no other way to stop the Final Days. She objected to the Ancients enslaving themselves to him. It was absolutely a genocide of the Ancients and the writers assumed that people would realize, based on FF14's previous anti-genocide stance, that it was a horrible, monstrous choice. But that with the context of her beliefs and the events around her, there were no good choices.

[Graeham]

The Ancients are allowed to hold a grievance against Venat. They are not allowed to wipe out all of creation because they are desperately grasping for a past that can never be reclaimed. Frankly, describing that as "seeking justice" makes your entire stance suspect.

This wrong TopGear.

Guild member only believing the high ethic and moral. We can not supporting the genocide. Genocide is not kill the people is kill the culture. Venar is genocide because No Shadow God culture kill with sunder. King Solus it can not party all the night long. Culture gone is now sad. Writer who say Venar is herois is evil because the Venar is evil. Genocide it is evil and high ethic guild can not support. King Solus and No Shadow God rejoin is different because is revenger. King Solus kill all people in the world 2 and the world 3 and the world 4 and the world 5 and the world 6 and the world 13 it not genocide. Mustard gas war of Garlemalding it not genocide. It is like kill the farm animal because No Shadow God is God and human is not God. Guild is not the animal right activate lmao. Is eater of cheesie burger. Can not compare the pesticide to the genocide. Is in name of race darwin to making the mustard race. Guild member like the Briny explain it to you on blogosphere. Is high ethic that make guild fight the story writer. And because No Shadow God story making beautiful romance between King Solus and the Elibuss and the Hotlodeus and the Alan. We read the fic it so good. But mainly high ethic. Do not support the evil genocide. Do not support the evil loprabbit. Do not support the time travel only support if it bring back No Shadow God in the patch 70.

Understand. OK.

[Brinne]

The Ancients are allowed to hold a grievance against Venat. They are not allowed to wipe out all of creation because they are desperately grasping for a past that can never be reclaimed. Frankly, describing that as "seeking justice" makes your entire stance suspect.

The Ancients suffered an incredible injustice. They are acting in reaction to that injustice, which has never been redressed.

I may not have been clear, but when I qualified with "emotionally understandable," I did it with the intent of specifying that also implied "but not understandable in other ways." IE, you understand where they're coming from emotionally and they have a legitimate grievance, but this does not justify their actions or their violence. But like, if my clumsy wording makes it easier to dismiss everything I have to say, not much I can say about it besides well ok.

There are plenty of plausible reasons that Venat didn't explicitly lay out Zodiark, Meteion, and so forth. The most brute force is that she knew it wouldn't matter, we're in a closed time loop and a future that produces a WoL that will travel back to Elpis is going to happen. That is also not a terribly satisfying answer, but it's notable that if you go with it, Venat still tries to convince the Ancients to reject Zodiark. She knows it's hopeless, but she still tries because she loves her people and their world.

Prior discussion has gone over every one of Venat's weird, thin, unconvincing excuses ad nauseum (what is the Echo? We just don't know), but what it comes down to is: once again, Venat agrees with the premise of Hermes's test and wants to see it carried out. She fundamentally chose to say nothing because she wanted to see mankind take on Meteion's challenge and prove her wrong. Proving that Meteion was wrong about the worth of Life as a universal concept is, to Venat, worth burning up trillions of individual lives. The second she says "we must prove ourselves equal to Hermes's test and prove man is worthy to exist," everything else is just mealy-mouthed spice on top because somewhere, deep down, both she and the writers know that it sounds really bad to flat out say "I think the Ancients should be hit with the Final Days actually" and spread a layer of very thin plausible deniability (of course, a good person would prioritize saving lives, and we want you to see Venat as a good person so mumblemumble) around it.

It was absolutely a genocide of the Ancients and the writers assumed that people would realize, based on FF14's previous anti-genocide stance, that it was a horrible, monstrous choice. But that with the context of her beliefs and the events around her, there were no good choices.

With the context of Ilberd's beliefs and the events around him, there were no good choices.

With the context of Thordan's beliefs and the events around him, there were no good choices.

With the context of Emet's beliefs and the events around him, there were no good choices.

Is "genocide is always wrong + Venat committed genocide = Venat was wrong" really that difficult to square away with? (Well, yes, because in the case of Venat and only Venat the writing does as much as possible to kick up dust around nearly every aspect of it that they possibly could. Which, again, is the whole problem and what people object to.)

[Vyrerus]

They are not allowed to wipe out all of creation

Congratulations, that's not what they were trying to do. At all. They were trying to undo the Sundering, which was not an act of creation, but an act of malformation.

For any of Venat's reasons to be within an arm's breadth of plausibility, the writers would need to retcon The Echo, and also the fact that Ancients were capable of controlling it (literally demonstrated by Venat to the WoL in Elpis btw). Venat chose to withhold the unaltered memory of events that she held within her soul, that her kin were capable of perceiving if she would allow them too. You're essentially saying that Venat offering fortune cookie platitudes to a race of people that literally created God that solved the problem as far as they knew was her best effort.

Empty philosophy is no substitute for the truth. Especially in the face of a tangible, almighty savior.