Disappointed in one Endwalker Aspect [SPOILERS]

[Alleo]

What Venat could have done with all of the knowledge at her disposal was ask of her followers to be willingly Sundered individually in order to have the requisite low aetherial concentration in their form to receive of Dynamis, and then test through that to make a team of Meteion-killers who might even be able to manipulate Dynamis at will. The Ancients had far more knowledge of all things aetherial, and if she could build the moon ship, then I see no reason why she couldn't create something to build a ship equal or greater to the Ragnarok.

I mean we dont know what she tried before the Final Days happened. She at least managed to get some supporters. After the Final Days most of the planet was death. Only a few survived, so getting many people that would be willing to be sundered to face something at the edge of the universe would be hard. After all they need to be fighters (not every ancient is strong in that part) and withstand the utter despair of Meteions place. (And they would not be able to manipulate aether in their sundered forms anymore and its not like information about Dynamis was widespread) Even our group had a hard time. The only reason they were also able to beat her, was their experience with despair. I am not sure if any of the Ancients could truly answer any of the hard questions and doubts these death races posed.

And this of course is all only possible if they even get there.

If Venat had unlimited time then maybe they could have done it. But she had to work against the Zodiark supporters that planned another sacrifice.

Venat being responsible for genocide isn't even up for debate for me. Knowing the future as she did, that the sundering would create the Ascians who would spend thousands of years trying to make the world whole again, she went into it knowing billions of people would die. I have thought from the beginning anyone who has a problem with rejoinings should have a problem with the sundering.

And if she had done nothing the Ascians would have sacrificed untold numbers of lifes to get their people back while the problem with Meteion remained and may have destroyed them later too (and nobody would even been able to be reborn because she bascially cages the souls inside her nest)

As long as we dont really know what exactly the sundering does we (imo) cant really compare it to the rejoining. After all it could simply be that they lost their creation magic and their long lifespan. Or they lost everything down to every single memory. We dont really know.

Rejoining next to that is pretty clear. The person dies.

So for me at least they are not the same. Does not meant that I think that the sundering is morally right but its not on the same step as rejoining, at least not with the missing information we have right now.

Honestly for me this story ending arc for Zodiark and Hydealyn was perfect. Both are bascially morally grey. Hydealyn had to do something bad, yet still loved her children deeply. Zodiark was created to stop the final days and saved the day but was then used by the Ascians as their god for their plan to regain what is gone by sacrifices. People wanted it to be more grey and yet of course Hydealyn must be evil now. If that is the case Zodiark is too.

[Rulakir]

This is why Venat knowing the future is so problematic. Why make 13 reflections? Because the WoL said so? We know the WoL could interact with dynamis at 8x rejoined, so why the additional ones? Were they a buffer for the Ascians? Was the goal always to loop back to the WoL, in which case she knew 8 had to be condemned for that future to unfold?

I'm sure I've said before that Venat's actions turned out to be more antagonistic than I ever expected. She was in a better moral position for me in ShB than she ended up being in EW. The sundering being both intentional and done with full knowledge of future was too much to accept. The only thing that makes her morally grey is the narrative bending over backwards to justify it. I don't care how good a person she was, what she did was inexcusable and is more similar to the villains in the game than the heroes.

[EaraGrace]

Unfortunately, it has the unintended consequence of meaning that Venat also sundered most of the dead, too. And the unborn. And those awaiting rebirth. It turns out that in some, so far unexplained, maneuver that a few of the Ascians and those within Zodiark weren't sundered, somehow.

Then it's even told to us that the shards rely on the Source as a nucleus of sorts, so that the stakes rise higher, but this also intrinsically means that the shards are explicitly lesser to the Source, too. This opens up the sticky mess, that is a fact, that Hydaelyn's Sundering caused there to be Nucleus Lives and Orbital Lives, the Orbital Lives aren't even on the same dimensional plane. They can't even be made to come and combat Meteion, unless they are Ascian or unless they are Rejoined. Even the mechanism most important to our time conundrum and story came from an alternate Source, made by Nucleus Lives.

It's actually an incredibly complex vilification, and the real rub comes from essentially being told by the story to push that complexity out of your mind.

"Don't think too hard about all this, just go out and save the universe. It's for your own good."

"Her cannibalization of her own people was noble. They was no other way to live and win."

Survival is not intrinsically noble.

"Killing and eating my companion on the mountainside was noble. There was no other way for me to live."

It is actually a choice that debases her. Literally everyone who has said that the Ancients couldn't find a way and had no future are just echoing what Emet-selch said about the sundered.

So no, Hydaelyn wasn't a good girl all along. She was a survivor, willing to be morally unsound to live at the expense of everyone she ever knew.

I fail to see how a being that condemns themselves to a multi millennia vigil, stuck in the aetherial sea and forced to give up their life force bit by bit is just acting out of selfishness. I also fail to see how a person who sacrifices themselves for the lives of others is “living at the expense of everyone she knew.” We know her, we know her passion and purpose in life was to journey forth, helping those in need. She was not “killing and eating her companion.” She was trying to save life, not hers but everyone’s. And She gave her own life to see that happen. A person concerned only with survival would not do that.

[OhNooo]

I fail to see how a being that condemns themselves to a multi millennia vigil, stuck in the aetherial sea and forced to give up their life force bit by bit is just acting out of selfishness. I also fail to see how a person who sacrifices themselves for the lives of others is “living at the expense of everyone she knew.” We know her, we know her passion and purpose in life was to journey forth, helping those in need. She was not “killing and eating her companion.” She was trying to save life, not hers but everyone’s. And She gave her own life to see that happen. A person concerned only with survival would not do that.

I really do feel like she saw herself as a messiah. She really did believe that she and her supporters were the last hope left.She saw the ancients as flawed and made the judgement to change them by force for what she truly believed was the greater good. She did sacrifice herself for her ideals.

I wonder if she could hear those souls that were trapped inside of Zodiark crying out the whole time he was imprisoned.

[Veloran]

I fail to see how a being that condemns themselves to a multi millennia vigil, stuck in the aetherial sea and forced to give up their life force bit by bit is just acting out of selfishness.

I know right? Lahabrea was the coolest guy.

[EaraGrace]

I know right? Lahabrea was the coolest guy.

Ignoring of course the repeated genocides to bring his friends back. Say what you will of the Sundering, but at least it wasn’t for her benefit but for the benefit of all life.

[Cilia]

Ignoring of course the repeated genocides to bring his friends back. Say what you will of the Sundering, but at least it wasn’t for her benefit but for the benefit of all life.

Between Elidibus needing to correct him for whose sake he was acting in the final cutscene of A Realm Reborn and Ere Our Curtain Falls having Emet-Selch remarking on how much he'd changed, it's implied Lahabrea wasn't onboard for the sake of restoring the Ancients' world anymore.

[Vyrerus]

Ignoring of course the repeated genocides to bring his friends back. Say what you will of the Sundering, but at least it wasn’t for her benefit but for the benefit of all life.

Hydaelyn's genocide count stands at 14 x 120 worldwide lifetimes(providing generous 100 year lives for everything living) via the Sundering. The Sundering didn't benefit all life. It benefitted our present-future, and the unknown regions of the universe by proximity. (The entity trying to kill our planet just happens to want to and be able to kill all planets, but the story presents none that are still living so it is an unknown).

Everything it benefitted was unknown to her at the time she did it, save for what was described to her by a time traveler. She would go on to eventually know the life that it benefitted, years afterwards, but only after the Sundering destroyed everything she knew and was raised by.

[Vyrerus]

I fail to see

She did not save everyone's lives. She was given her Hydaelyn powers by her followers' lives, and then she killed the entire ancient world. She only saved our present-future.

For the survivor cannibalism analogy, look at it like this: When someone is forced to eat another human, it comes from desperation (usually). The Sundering came from supposed desperation, and it used the lives of everything from the Ancient world to make the new life that you value more than the old. That's cannibalization.

Real live people who've survived desperate situations by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of others do generally go on to have good lives and do good things afterwards. The fact that they intend to and do good afterwards doesn't make what they did right. Neither does the sympathy of the public, who generally place the blame on the dire situation.

As for her giving her own life... she didn't do that. She challenged us to a trial by combat and lost. If we had lost, then she would have commanded the exodus. She wanted us to win, but supposedly fought with intent to kill. It wasn't self sacrifice. It was, "Prove you're better saviors than me."

We don't know her, not really. We know her mission. It's our mission, and we made it hers via time paradox.

[RyuDragnier]

As for her giving her own life... she didn't do that. She challenged us to a trial by combat and lost. If we had lost, then she would have commanded the exodus. She wanted us to win, but supposedly fought with intent to kill. It wasn't self sacrifice. It was, "Prove you're better saviors than me."

I wouldn't put the line in those words. I'd say more of a, "If you cannot defeat me, then you have no hope of defeating Meteion."