On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Brinne]

"But it's for us, they did it for us, they love us!" is also something the writers have figured out is the quickest way to get a character to appeal to the audience, no matter what the actions or behaviors were otherwise. If it was done for us, it must have been loving and heroic in some capacity. You mentioned G'raha, but there are obviously, um, several others. And I can easily include even some of the characters I really like as deploying this trick - Themis and Erich, just recently! - and not just the one who, ah, definitely can't be compared to Athena.

So the answer to your question:

G'raha et al. doing all of that [insert vague gesturing] just to save us and prevent chaos in a future timeline was suitably heroic and proportionate to the crisis at hand, but saving or preserving - even in part - an entire race wasn't even in the realms of consideration?

Yeah, basically. Screw you, got mine.

[Lurina]

"But it's for us, they did it for us, they love us!" is also something the writers have figured out is the quickest way to get a character to appeal to the audience, no matter what the actions or behaviors were otherwise. If it was done for us, it must have been loving and heroic in some capacity. You mentioned G'raha, but there are obviously, um, several others. And I can easily included even some of the characters I really like who are included to deploy this trick - Themis and Erich, just recently! - and not just the one who, ah, definitely can't be compared to Athena.

This is it, ultimately, yeah.

Whenever there's ambiguity around a character or the writers are cognizant of the fact they're writing a plot beat that might be controversial or contradict with their other messages, they gloss over it by having that character be motivated by love for the player character.

G'raha. Zenos. Venat. And yes, Emet-Selch, even if I like him.

Their cheat for having us accept characters and their roles in the story even even when we might feel visceral objection to them is to frame their actions as done, to one degree or another, out of devotion to us. The intent is that we're so moved personally that we'll forget that G'raha broke the rules of both how time travel is supposed to work in setting and the message about accepting the past that the story otherwise espouses, that Venat and Emet are both mass murderers in a way that renders some of their scenes bizarrely atonal and the worldbuilding surrounding the former especially odd, and that Zenos is a psychopath who condemned an entire country to die in agony because he was bored and does not really deserve a cool quasi-redemption arc.

Again, the world itself is ultimately there to soothe the ego of the player. Nothing else the characters do matters in comparison.

Furthermore, ultimately... this is fiction, and as much as I love a good emotional investment, there's only so much effort I want to put in to getting indignant on behalf of a fictional race that the writers don't want to defend because they've written themselves into a corner.

It's just a shame.