Omg yes this. We talk about BotW being a post-apocalypse for sure, but dang, Wind Waker is especially post-apoc too! Like...how many people died in that flood... an entire civilization drowned, and the Great Sea doesn't even have fish to support the surviving generations.

Ganondorf may be a merciless war criminal with a lust for power, that I'm not denying, but sheeeesh, the Three Goddesses really went full Old Testament out there on their people 😳

I feel like it also really speaks to how dire the situation was that the Goddesses considered that response at all warranted or proportional?

like - there’s monsters all over Hyrule Castle. *All* over the castle. They’ve penetrated and ransacked every chamber of the kingdom’s capital building except one. Hyrule Field is just a straight walled nature path from the castle to Ganondorf’s tower. And as peaceful as Hyrule looks under the waves there is nothing to suggest any kind of effective resistance was mounted when Ganon returned and there was no Hero to stop him.
Even Breath of the Wild had scattered outposts and keeps that got blasted into smithereens when the Calamity came calling. But there isn’t even a Castle Town left by the time the Hero of Winds shows up, and its exclusion feels wrong somehow (yes I know there was only so much space on the GameCube disc shh)

it’s still chilling in its implications either way because it suggests Ganon won because either literally nobody could stop him or because past a certain point there was literally nobody left to try. And even all together, only so few people inhabit the Great Sea islands already.

How little of a kingdom must there have been left for the Goddesses to try to save, that this was how they saved it?

Ooooh you know what?? Excellent additional perspective on the story as shown to us. That's an angle I hadn't considered fully and it's really got me thinking...

Intense brain ramble incoming.

Often I think of the Three Goddesses as some inconceivable force, or an entity beyond human comprehension. So "decisions" they make aren't decisions which mortals can perceive the context or reasoning for.

So when looking at the Flood in the way you presented it above, and even with the idea that the Goddesses are of the nature I described - if Ganon's encroaching influence was to utterly and totally destroy, it feels very different. Now, it would be like ... the equivalent of looking down and noticing a disease on your potted plant one day. It's too late at this point, and you just need to cut off all the rot and re-plant it in a new pot and hope for the best. And it's sad, or maybe mildly frustrating to you...but absolutely devastating from the plant's perspective. It was a decision you made out of a desire to preserve, but you're unable to comprehend the utter world-ending destruction which the plant just experienced. And the plant may wonder, "why couldn't you have just snapped your fingers and sent the rot away, so that my leaves could continue surviving? Aren't you bigger than me, and able to perform wondrous miracles for me?" It in turn, is unable to comprehend that you can't do something like that, that it was out of your control.

That might not make much sense and I'm too wordy for my own good (and definitely just finished a meditation session lol). But tl;dr, in spite of my initial view, it's also interesting to think of the Goddesses not as uncaring, but maybe just doing what they can in an otherwise hopeless situation.