Quote Originally Posted by jameseoakes View Post
*snipped for space*
The scene is clearly allegorical. The Final Days were "over" by the time Venat becomes Hydaelyn, and it is made explicit she fought against Zodiark before the sundering. This is especially clear since we see Hythlodaeus go on to be sacrificed and people being eaten by terminus beasts while at the same time Zodiark exists to be worshiped, which makes it clear it's not an actual point in time. Venat is also not "ranting" at people standing in a burning city, either; it's a dialogue and it's presented in a very clear way. There's no shouting, no wild talking, no tirade from her. Nothing that would qualify as a rant.

And, once again, I must ask you to read the dialogue (or failing that watch the cutscene here). There's no hate or malice in any of the words she says, nor in any of the acting by any of the voice actors. Nothing like that "drips" from any of the dialogue. I would certainly not characterize her speech as one of a villain either. I could see it from an antagonist in another context, mind, but not a villain. Maybe an anti-villain in the right story (i.e. not this one). She's certainly not a villain in a literary sense here. Maybe not in any sense? Layman's terms has villain as opposite of a hero (conflating with antagonist), while villain as a stock character (the blackhat) is nothing close to Venat.

You may consider her a monster because of her actions and that's perfectly valid, but you don't have to make stuff up about her motivations or stuff for your feelings to be true. Your feelings about Venat's actions are perfectly valid. However, Venat, textually did all she did without malice, hate, or spite.

Related, note that I keep insisting that ancients are unique in their capacity for inhumanity by sheer scale of their powers because not because they were "worse" people like you imply I'm saying there (individual ancients are clearly as much people as any other, no worse, no better), but because they were more capable of bringing their "bad" to bear, again, by their sheer power. We see this in Pandæmonium, we see this with the modern unsundered Ascians. They literally are so powerful that a depressed bird breeder made a being that brought about the end of countless civilisations throughout the universe. That a misanthropic theatre devotee manage to set up multiple empires designed to cause untold chaos and orchestrated to literally end 7 worlds full of millions of people. That a scientist with delusions of godhood almost literally became one by sacrificing their child. Modern humanity, at its worse, caused terrible things to happen with the help of the remnants of the ancients, whether their knowledge, direct intervention, or literal remnants of the empires they orchestrated the downfall of. A singular human, even a powerful one like Zenos, can only do so much.