Just A Heads-Up: Gamer Escape Interview with Koji Fox (Fan Festival 2018)

[DarthSanguine]

In FFXIV's case, calamities are occuring every couple hundred years and Hydaleyn eats a shard to rebalance the source's aether.

Calamities happen roughly every millennium and a half, not every couple of centuries.

[Anonymoose]

That aside, sometimes you word stuff like you're getting ready to fight me

If it's hypothetical vs. hypothetical (as opposed to pointing out how the hypothetical is at odds with established themes or precedent) and I decide to reply anyway, it's usually because I found it interesting when juxtaposed against my own ideas, so then I felt compelled to very clearly state my current positions and thoughts (often because they were somehow altered or crystallized by the reflection). In this way either I get it on paper or inspire you to hit me back and cause further evolution, lol.

Think of it like theorycraft Omega sh[kupo!]t.

And that door swings both ways. Whatever I'm thinking or predicting or theorizing, smack it. See what breaks. As long as you don't smack me, we're still buds.

[Fenral]

Think of it like theorycraft Omega sh[kupo!]t.

And that door swings both ways. Whatever I'm thinking or predicting or theorizing, smack it. See what breaks. As long as you don't smack me, we're still buds.

I'll admit that I said it half (20-25%?) for you, half (75-80%?) for the audience at home. My recollection is hazy, but last time I went anywhere with Light vs. Darkness here, I got a little impassioned, you got a little impassioned, one or two other people may have stepped in to try and "defeat" me in your place, I probably made someone cry and definitely got blacklisted by some folks. But here we are again.

Definitely game for that, but I'll get back to you with more in the morning, after I've slept on it a little more. Assuming it isn't all buried pages deep by then.

[Cilia]

Unfortunately, the answer given does NOT allow us to discard the possibility that the big H is chowing down. People in Eorzea don't seem to think she is, and those that know about her seem to hold her in high regard, but it also notes that they don't know WHAT is happening, exactly - just that "something" breaks, then "things" go crazy, then healing "happens". That's a whole lotta vagueness, and that last bit is disturbingly unclear as to just HOW healing happens. It leaves plenty of room for a planet-munching scenario! Especially so, given that later in the same article it's noted that what the people believe may not be what's actually going on; they think Hydaelyn is great now, but maybe they don't know the whole story...

In my defense, I did say "to the best of our knowledge..."

As it's incredibly unclear exactly what is going on beyond the drawing out of massive amounts of aether from the planet, saying that She's eating shards is a pretty big jump to a conclusion. Best to operate under the "false until proven true" and "correlation does not even imply causation" maxims.

... [C]alamities are occuring every couple hundred years and Hydaleyn eats a shard to rebalance the source's aether.

Every few thousand (the one that wiped out the Allagans was ~6000 years ago; the one that ended the War of the Magi was ~1500 years ago, if I recall correctly), and saying a shard is eaten is jumping to conclusions (see above).

(And don't you dare give me any of that Urobutcher "Darkness is just stronger than Light because lol heat death of the universe" bullcrap. Ahem. That wasn't at you, Moose.)

Er... well, technically, if chaos is one of Zodiark's domains, then so is entropy... which would make His victory all but inevitable.

I'm not saying that the balance was upset just because it was in Zodiark's nature to lust for power and thus do so; exactly why He would suddenly do so if the two existed in harmony for untold ages beforehand remains a great mystery. Entropy does lead to darkness, and thus Darkness could be considered more powerful than Light on the most basic physical level. Entropy is what makes the primals so dangerous.

... but that's just physics, probably not too important in a fantasy world, lol.

[Theodric]

Pretty much everything we know of Hydaelyn and Zodiark is coloured by in-universe bias. What we do not know is shrouded by mystery and subject to speculation and debate.

We're likely due some major plot revelations very soon similar to those revealed at the end of 4.4. The sort that shake things up quite a bit. :')

[Fenral]

Er... well, technically, if chaos is one of Zodiark's domains, then so is entropy... which would make His victory all but inevitable.

Except more current projections suggest that as the universe expands, its maximum possible entropy increases at a greater rate, moving the system further from heat death over time. But all that really means is that when any of the other possible end scenarios takes place or the universe reaches equilibrium, it won't be completely devoid of warmth, at least.

Perhaps when a distinction was made between Light and Darkness, a division between forces of genesis (order, separation) and entropy (disorder, consolidation), it was merely the Dark's inherent nature to covet and consume.

I think you have separation and consolidation backwards there. So long as collectivism is considered a virtue by the writing team (we've had how many heroic sacrifices now?), it stands to reason that unification is an aspect of Light, and not Darkness.

It also makes "Darkness is necessary" an easier pill to swallow if you think of Darkness as being responsible for our individual forms, as while individuality is the root of all conflict, without it we wouldn't have empathy and compassion. A world lost to Darkness has a bunch of life-starved immortals flapping about, while a world lost to Light has nothing. It's (perhaps) a unified whole in which distinction itself ceases to exisit.


We might also be able to extend this a little further, too. Hydaelyn can create life ex nihilo, but she creates it as a perfect whole. Meanwhile, Zodiark cannot create, but he can separate. Instead of destroying Hydaelyn's new creation, he separates it. Destroys the perfect unity of the whole. Empowers it to destroy itself. After all, what is destruction but the undoing of structure?

"But Zodiark created the Ascians". But did he? In response to, or perhaps right before, being sealed away, he separates Himself. Fourteen (plus one) individual mini-Zodiarks cast out from the main body to intervene in the world.

Meanwhile, Hydaelyn doesn't split Herself off directly, but instead gives out Crystals of Light. "She's separating her power! Light is separation!" I think instead, She's loaning it.

If the assumption is that all aether sooner or later cycles back into the lifestream and through the Mothercrystal, then Hydaelyn is free to give out as much aether as She wants in the short term, on the assumption that it will get paid back after use. One of the wrenches thrown into this particular machine is Primals, which act as alternate foci for aether distinct from the Mothercrystal. Another is Rejoining, in which the Ascians syphon off as much aether as they can from a dimensional collapse to feed to Zodiark.


Assuming these rules of aetherophysics hold, we arrive at the million dollar question I stumbled upon while writing all this up: what happens to the aether released when an Ascian dies?

...Uh, oops?

This is Final Fantasy! Anything that stands between man and control of his own destiny and we will smote its ruin upon mountainside with the power of friendship and /gpose.

Agreed! In general, though, I never put forward theories that I think will lead to anything otherwise. So even when I say "we need to reconcile Hydaelyn and Zodiark", it's not to say, "we need to end the universe as it is," but always, "this may be the only way to keep our universe."

[Anonymoose]

I think you have separation and consolidation backwards there.

I think you are assuming I had a different connotation of the words in mind. Entropy is a gradual accumulation of chaos; everything gets consolidated and blurred, predictability and order decay. Think the active blender of the Lifestream, but everything, souls included, going the other way. (Turns to look at Ascian Prime, turns back.)

"Let expanse contract, eon become instant..."

The Light, making constant distinctions as it generates new things, would thus be separating that mass into ordered blocks. Perhaps that's why energies associated with Hydaelyn are neatly separated into a rainbow of discrete elements, but all of Zodiark's are the same dark purple. And yet that connotation can be taken wrong, too. You could also arrive at the idea that a messy pile of LEGOs is far less orderly than Zodiark's blurred and consolidated mass.

Even in that sense, though, I agree with you about most of the rest. If you remove all separations and consolidate everything, individuality vanishes.

"If you truly mastered the Echo, there would be no strife between our peoples─for we would be of one mind."

[Fenral]

Right, and then there's the Echo, more literally the power to transcend barriers of language/space/time/etc.

If it's Hydaelyn's power, then hers is the power to break down barriers and return things to their true form, i.e. a bunch of aether in the Mothercrystal. But when you put it that way, it makes me think back to the pet theory that the Echo is a parting gift to creation from Zodiark, not Hydaelyn, and she merely reaches out to those who have it to keep them from doing anything drastic.

But if all that's true, then Light and Dark voids should be reveeeeeersed! *kicking and screaming*

[Anonymoose]

I actually had to look up a years-old post to remember how the hell I phrased it, but you could also see Hydaelyn's Echo not as adding ability, but subtracting limitations, as in choosing not to subject you to the standard program; "jailbreaking your soul". Recall Lahabrea cursing you for using the power of Hydaelyn to "restore the walls" from which Zodiark saw him freed. It would be the equivalent of a Mothercrystal-sanctioned black operations mission in violation of the laws of the known corporeal world, lol.

[ObsidianFire]

The Echo isn't even necisarrily specific to Hydaelyn. The Ascians all have it and they need to get it somehow. They could have gotten from Hydaelyn and misused it from how she wanted them to use it. Or then could have gotten it from Zodiark and are using it exactly how he wants them too.