What lore do you ignore?

[Anonymoose]

That would also mean she knew that the Convocation would turn into brainwashed zombies

Not everyone who's tempered is a brainwashed zombie. Several characters have been, to quote world director Oda-san, "not puppets that do nothing but repeat words of worship, but nevertheless ensure that they would obey and never betray" (specific reference here to the Heavens' Ward, not the Convocation, to be clear). I don't recall official materials blaming Convocation tempering on anything but the vague "spreading of His Darkness" and leaving us to decide what's what. It's true that they are, regardless of whether it means anything or nothing, but whether it means anything is up to one's interpretation for now, as far as I recall. (I'm used to being on the receiving end of this citation.)

Likewise,

In attempting to bend over backwards to have the Convocation be the unreasonables due to tempering

EE3 doesn't blame their tempering. Emet-Selch says only that the act of summoning tempered them (which, again, has degrees; no one can speak to the level of influence, unfortunately), Venat's compatriots say only that the Convocation won't hear debate, and - much later - EE3 says only that the Convocation would not be dissuaded. Correlation is not always causation. Do I think there's some influence there, myself? I think it's probably non-zero. But that's an opinion. Moreover, if they effectively tempered themselves to their own plan, their plan existed before the tempering, anyway. Who's to say the continuation of that plan certainly was solely because of tempering? If anything can be attributed to their tempering it would be their inability to re-evaluate the course despite the fact that there's now a civil war. And that's a maybe, even if it's one I accept in my personal interpretations.

Her design is based off Zodiark's, you'd think if the Convocation was so bad at making gods, she wouldn't have modeled herself after him.

It was the only thing capable of challenging him; the summary refers to it as a "disconcertingly familiar solution", and considering her summoners were sacrificed wholly to power it, the tempering angle conveniently failed to come up. (By design? No idea.)

She wasn't trying to stop the third sacrifice for her deep love of plants and animals.

The Convocation decided thus: we would nurture our world until it was bursting with vitality. Then, when the time was right, we would offer some portion of its living energy to Zodiark... In return, He would restore to us those brethren whose souls had fed His strength, and together we would resume our role as stewards. There were, however, those who disagreed with this plan. They argued that enough had been sacrificed to Zodiark─that this new world should belong to the lives newly born. These dissidents surrendered their life energies in the creation of Hydaelyn

Whether this is framed as the primary motivation does wobble from scene to scene, I'll give you that, but personally I wouldn't dismiss it entirely when it was the first explanation we got, from an entity imbued with its knowledge by Emet-Selch, no less.

why would she be trying to protect some random life energy that I'm sure you've made sentient in your headcannon

I never could fully pin that one down, honestly. Most of what I can find says the plan is to sacrifice "new life" and Venat's faction says the future should be determined by the "newly born". The fact that this could be mentioned so many times without explicitly specifying whether they were the same entities is comical, and almost seems deliberate. "A Friendship of Record" does state "His devotees then resolved to sow new life─a bounty of souls to take the place of their sacrificed brethren." But these days everything has souls, so I'm left with this one citation by Alphinaud in French:

La vie nouvelle qui a germé de ce labeur a été à nouveau offerte à Zordiarche, dans le but de ressusciter celles et ceux qui avaient été sacrifiés pour permettre son existence.
The new life that sprouted from this labor was to be yet again offered to Zodiark, with the aim of resurrecting those who had been sacrificed to allow its existence.

Or, Venat et ses fidèles ont estimé que cette vie nouvellement créée était celle qui avait le droit de déterminer l'avenir de la planète. C'est ainsi qu'ils ont décidé de donner naissance à Hydaelyn.
However, Venat and her followers believed that this newly created life was who had the right to determine the future of the planet. This is how they decided to give birth to Hydaelyn.

That's the only one I have that appears to link the "new life" born in the wake of Zodiark's recovery to the "new generation" Venat says deserves a say in the future.

Emet-Selch says that after the rejoinings are complete he's going to sacrifice the entire populace of the planet rather than some "plants and animals"...

Then we shall offer up the Source's remaining inhabitants in sacrifice, that we might resurrect our brethren who died to bring Zodiark into existence.

...but whether this reflects the original plan or an enhancement, I couldn't prove, I don't think.

Lastly, to assume that because I question the minimizing of how sideways things had gone in Amaurot I believe there is an automatic and complete vindication of Venat involved somehow is inaccurate. I'm still all for interrogating how the big-picture of the story looks, every bit as much as my personal interpretations are still rooted in taking the story's intentions for granted and trying to make them work as best I can with the citations I have (And I'm under no delusion that I have them all, or even the most recent in some cases.). There are still plenty of interpretations where it looks pretty dang bad, which isn't a surprise to me because she herself says it was pretty dang bad, and the developers have likewise described it in Q&A panels as pretty dang bad.

The whole framing relies on whether one accepts the writers' request to trust that it was this or eternal oblivion for everyone forever. The Ardbert Defense, cranked up to eleven.

That was, as everyone here has said, a regrettable position in which to leave the fandom, in retrospect.

And, as you said, in your opinion, the difference is meaningless, anyway.