On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Lunaxia]

This is monstrously long, and for that I apologise. Don't feel inclined to answer, and if you choose to in any way, take your time, lol.

I think the group of people who feel I'm alluding to them is larger than the group I alluded to, and part of me is just stuck on the "Why?"

Basic forum etiquette, perhaps. When I - and I think it's fair to say, most others who congregate here on a daily basis (?), even if not always in the lore forum itself - join a thread and express my views therein, unless it's explicitly stated as a "give your own opinion" type thread that permits me to go off on my own tangent, I assume it's a given that I'm responding in reference to the OP and what has already been posted, rather just sounding off on my views in general. Reading the OP in this thread and the following discussion, and then seeing your post where you appeared to address those expressing dissatisfaction with the story led me to believe you were referring to the people voicing their own discontent in this thread, or at the very least this forum at large (as it has been lately.) If you were not, and you were speaking broadly in terms of the FFXIV community as a whole (and lore threads have worked like this in the past, I acknowledge), then I can see it's a case of crossed wires - but suggest a small disclaimer in the future if venturing into threads with an established debate ongoing.

I see Emet-Selch (12,000-year-old wraith) as the Ascian I knew from the story, [...] that's not possible under those circumstances.)

(I lol'd at "12,000 year old wraith", I gotta say. It's such a perfect description.) If we could purely have met Hades as he was pre-Sundering independent of the ongoing story in the present day (similar to the first two tiers of Pandaemonium) I might agree with you. But the attempt to tie him into the central story, particularly the time travel aspect, on top of the insistence on bringing him back at the end (for what felt like a bit of a tacky and pointless finale-type spectacle) was where the lines began to blur and it started treading on the toes of his Shadowbringers appearance, at least for me. It's like, you developed these two incredible characters over the course of an expansion and built up to such a moving and impactful ending for them both, why was there any need to undo all of that bring them back to have them agree with our course of action when I thought we'd established we understood their plan and their motives from a logical standpoint (as far as they're concerned) but ultimately couldn't accept or allow their plans to come to pass? Did we need to bring them around to our course of action when they had every reason not to agree, and showing rather than telling their fall from grace with the time spent in Elpis would have been more subtly impactful than narrating the ways in which everything went wrong?

As an interesting aside, I also don't feel like a distinction existed between Emet-Selech prior to his defeat in Amaurot and after, and I kind of (very low level) feel like it's a little unfair to his character to suggest there was, personally speaking, like it shears off some of his innately intriguing complexity by taking that really significant moment and applying it to some other version of him we brought to light by defeating him. I think it's simply one more facet of a fascinating character that always existed. But yeah!

This is getting a bit closer to the framing I'm used to seeing, and a perspective I can't get to, myself

Oh, this is such complex discussion, but I'll do my best not to write a dissertation. Yes, senseless and destructive vs necessary and beneficial is rather simplistic, to be sure - would "justified murder" and "not justified murder" be more acceptable? (Which sounds a little tongue-in-cheek, but I'm not being dry here.)

I have to say, I don't think the number of remaining Ancients is exactly relevant to the discussion, nor a fair parameter to judge whether or not they deserved to live or be wiped from existence and memory by. Even if you were somehow to make a case for it, by all accounts, they had made it through the Final Days and were on their way to recovery, which makes it feel all the more tenuous a ground to build a case on. We also know from Ere Our Curtain Falls that far from being mindless zombie drones seeking to perpetuate the cycle of sacrifice, the Ancients were in relative control of their faculties, and that "no small number" actually opposed offering more to Zodiark to the point it became a sizeable schism within their society, so that's another assumption out the window, and again, we don't know whether there even would have been more sacrifice after that, given there's nothing to suggest Zodiark would have demanded any more now that the truth of the primals' "hearts" has come to light and considering that Hydaelyn managed to exist rather benignly for millenia.

Ultimately, the basic point is that a lot of the fundamentals of the argument for and against Hydaelyn come down to impressions that are unavoidable simply because we don't have a lot to go on, and individual perception inevitably comes along to fill in the gaps. Personally, given what we do know and in the absence of concrete knowledge, I reiterate I do not think the story provides sufficient distinction between why, from a moral standpoint, there is much difference between the actions of Hydaelyn and those of the Ascians, even as I know what the writers want me to believe, and I do not believe the fault or responsibility for that lies with me for not trying to find coherency among the chaos, but for them not creating a story with a solid enough foundation to make their intentions clear and acceptable to me.

I can see how it could read as a "pthy generalisation"...

I appreciate the clarification and apology, and would for the record like to state that is absolutely not the case. I've actually yet to come across anyone harbouring such a view (and kind of hope I don't, to be honest.)