i think a lot of the handwringing about venat is like. cus the core thing of ew was “you have to find an answer to meteion and the lost worlds in order to solve the problem at its root”/this is what the entire hearthinkfeel shit was about & a lot of fans are really attached to the ancients as a faction and believe their destruction to be pure senseless cruelty when it’s part of a more symbolic storyline and the sundered are meant to be a direct continuation of them and not a lol great replacement. i see a lot of counterpoints being like “well they should have imprisoned/executed/manipulated hermes to keep him in the dark while everyone else was in the know so that he could help kill meteion” (dont know where to even start impossible anyways because ancients cant easily lie to each other once suspicion exists), “well they should have created another mega entelechy being that can only feel joy can only obey the command of the ancients and could kill meteion” (most insane fucking suggestion by far for multiple reasons that would shit entirely on ew’s themes far more than the sundering), “they should have only sundered a voluntary faction only to give them the mechanical ability to fight and kill meteion” “they should have just made a Stronger Zodiark that could have killed meteion with raw aetherical force”. LIKE DO YOU SEE THE. METEION IS NOT supposed to be a single invididual villain entity, like the head of a beast you have to cut off. she’s a representation of something that has existed far before her and far beyond her. the fact that every other alternate solution revolves around “how can we kill meteion instead of answer to her” (on the basis that she’s an irredeemable individual with volition and autonomy who’s just morally corrupt and/or nothing but a completely literal apocalypse bringer, like maybe a plague, so simply just too big of an issue to exist so she should just be killed and offered no compassion). i guess the line here is blurred because all characters in a story represent something but some people dont see that meteion is more metaphor than not and think she is just another “representation of a person” like most fictional person shaped characters. the very question “why didn’t venat just help kill meteion” is so like. i dont know hideously ugly way to parse the story to me which sets me so far from the line where ppl are like It’s hideously ugly that venat “gave up” on her people and genocided them or whatever