Problematic notion about Zone 5 & 6 story bits.

[Kirutsuki]

It's also disturbing that people who paid close attention to the story still think that ending this necromancy was a bad thing and would even go so far as to call it "genocide". If anything Alexandria got off EXTREMELY leniently with seemingly no reparations paid for forcefully fusing their reality into our own, destroying an entire region of country of Tural and absorbing its population into its own, and then deliberately attacking civilians and launching a surprise war in an attempt to empower their dead. People seem to be laser-focused on "self-aware consciousnesses" without thinking of the context they exist in or the ramifications. Players can mow down legions worth of unwilling Garlean conscripts with their conscience clean, but pulling the plug on a bunch of glorified zombies is bad because the story made you dance for them in a bunny outfit.

In ARR we have to put down Lady Amandine for killing others to keep up her undeath. Is this not the same thing? She was self-aware. As are other ashkin we kill whether or not they're monstrous like Lorelei or human-looking like Edda.

Again, what Sphene was doing was wrong. No denying that, invading another shard, stealing peoples souls and sustaining Living Memory with their deaths.
No-one really is denying that. There is however a difference between innocent people and guilty ones. Sphene's people in the Living memory were innocent to whatever she was doing.
Heck even the invading force into Tuliyollal was all Sphene, none of the Alexandrians had anything to do with it.

You can argue back and forths about what the memories are, yes at the end of the day they are not quite their original selves, but I honestly believe its not up to us to judge if they are real or just ghosts in a machine.
It's up to them, had they had the chance to prove they are something more than memories.. what then?

We are willing to mow down Garleans because the game clearly shows and states multiple times that Garleans are raised with extreme prejudice towards the free folk to the point where they literally would have killed us instead.
All of them would have, without hesitation. Not just because their leader said so, but because they were raised to hate magic wielders and their yolk. And even non combatant folk would rather kill themselves than associate with Eorzeans.

If it was so that the memories in Living Memory were ok with sustaining their own lives and were rooting for Sphene's plan to invade other reflections we would be in agreement, but that's not the case.

But ultimately I think I will just have to accept what the game is telling me instead of trying to insert something of my own into it. The game clearly states and wants the players to know that these are pure memories and there's
no wrongdoing in shutting them down even if I myself do think there is quite a bit wrong in acting as the executioner without fully understanding what you are shutting down.