Which JS VMs have you tried embedding? People in this thread have suggested https://github.com/Moddable-OpenSource/moddable, https://bellard.org/quickjs/, and https://duktape.org/, but I haven't tried any of them.
Indexing, I give you this one... I think it was intended as some kind of a gift to a "non programmer", a choice many other older language made, by the history decided to go another way, unfortunately for Lua. Still, I haven't had any issues adjusting to this one, personally. It seems kind of like Python whitespacing, I think I forget about it.
It is beyond a footgun, more like a footgun concealed as a shoehorn.
Either way I find embedding a Lua VM into a project so much easier than embedding a Javascript one.