Emet-Selch *Major Spoilers*

[Shougun]

Did G'raha "wipe out everything and everyone" when he went back in time? Is that how time travel works in FFXIV? If he travels back in time 5 minutes, did he just commit genocide and wipe out the previous world?

If ending someone's conscious existence is death. . . ? If it's simply atoms then when Emet makes everyone whole that should be fine, so it's got to be the conscious part that's important (ending one conscious to reform another). Though then you've got things like teleporters then, if it takes you apart and then makes you again did you die? Murder for only a little whlie? lol.

Honestly I feel most stories, and probably this one too, could have been better without time travel- the amount of what if's / but then what about's... I feel time travel is almost always a misstep to introduce. That said I still enjoyed ShB, just the time travel part of it wasn't the highlight. If I'm prepped from the outset I'll probably be fine with that expectation and build a world view around things are not permanent / not always the true experience (Chrono Trigger), but generally, imo, introducing it after already inhabiting the world for a while and using existence is existence material to suddenly switch to vague "but it's a dream, but it's only one of many timelines", so even something like in Harry Potter and the time turner, is a bit frowny face for me.

The whole losing experience concept really bothers me, who are you to decide that my experience should be removed? So I understood Emet but he wasn't going to get my vote, even if he thought he was making me whole and not actually killing me, too late the country is already made- we can't restart everything now because history was unfair. Forced amnesia (not done by self) usually really annoys me too. Leave my memories alone (same deal, leave my experience alone, if something failed it failed). Also why I think villains that can manipulate thoughts are both exceptionally scary and frustrating.

[TeraRamis]

Honestly I feel most stories, and probably this one too, could have been better without time travel- the amount of what if's / but then what about's... I feel time travel is almost always a misstep to introduce. That said I still enjoyed ShB, just the time travel part of it wasn't the highlight. If I'm prepped from the outset I'll probably be fine with that expectation and build a world view around things are not permanent / not always the true experience (Chrono Trigger), but generally, imo, introducing it after already inhabiting the world for a while and using existence is existence material to suddenly switch to vague "but it's a dream, but it's only one of many timelines", so even something like in Harry Potter and the time turner, is a bit frowny face for me.

Well put. Time travel stories are almost a subgenre unto themselves in that regard. I, too, always felt like the time turner was jarring nonsense of the first order (and a strong [though by no means isolated] example of why Harry Potter is profoundly overrated fantasy).

If you're going to tell a story about time travel - if its idiosyncrasies are the very fabric of the tale that you are trying to convey - then it's an excellent vehicle for thought-provoking fiction. But when it's deployed in an otherwise-stable universe (typically in the form of a distraction, unplanned narrative crutch, or even the dreaded deus ex machina), it is at best distracting, and at worse stupid. The time turner didn't break Prisoner of Azkaban, but it left yet another gaping lore wound (akin to Sirius' "veil" moment, why some people become ghosts, why so much time was devoted to the house elf revolution only to drop the thread entirely, etc., etc.) in the series that was never properly stitched up.

[SamRF]

I mean it depends how time travel works. If you're just reversing time (as in all the atoms and molecules are just moving backwards), your not destroying the previous world, it's just been altered. The previous consciousnesses will still be there, just altered.

It's still somewhat the same thing though, isn't it? As soon as you reverse time and start at a different point, a billion random butterfly effects will happen and you will never get back into the same state of conciousness as before the time travel, effectively killing that consciousness? Killing that reality?

[TeraRamis]

It's still somewhat the same thing though, isn't it? As soon as you reverse time and start at a different point, a billion random butterfly effects will happen and you will never get back into the same state of conciousness as before the time travel, effectively killing that consciousness? Killing that reality?

If modern (contemporary writing) time travel doesn't include a multiverse component, it's essentially bad lore.

The Exarch existed in a future where the eighth umbral calamity had happened. He travels back to the past to stop the calamity with no suggestion that he is entering some alternate reality in the process. By succeeding, he should therefore have no reason to travel to the past in the first place. Ergo, the calamity must happen.

I hate to go the Emmett Brown, route, but that right there...



... is a paradox.

Good time travel stories eliminate the element of destiny (the all-important question of: was Harry always in the past to summon the petronus to save himself? How did Harry get to the past to summon the petronus if he had never been saved by it in the first place? Destiny) by generating multiverse "ripples" whenever the time travel occurs - all actions, no matter how small, generate alternate realities, each of which can be dealt with individually without necessarily stomping like elephants on the bodies of the previous ones. The time travel in FFXIV doesn't deign to dally on those details, so the consequence is that it is fairly branded ludicrous storytelling.

[wereotter]

1. The Ascians don't regard them as people, but that doesn't make for a compelling argument because they are still very clearly people.

2. For all that the Ascians claim to be better than everyone else, the "lesser" race accomplish things they hadn't expected, like G'raha Tia pulling off his Crystal Tower thing. Other than a denser soul/bigger battery they haven't really demonstrated anything that makes them "better" than others.

These two arguments (that I agree with) are exactly why I can't have any sympathy for Emet.

I can't hear what he's saying after interacting with the NPCs of this world and the other player characters and not help but think of him as being not entirely unlike humans of the 19th century who viewed people of color as not actually being human, and using that mindset to justify the terrible acts they committed. And that's not an attitude I can condone or be sympathetic to. He's been a much bigger and more culturally relevant villian than any other we've seen so far, but not deserving of our sympathy. It's a good thing he and his kind are being wiped out.

[Avidria]

If modern (contemporary writing) time travel doesn't include a multiverse component, it's essentially bad lore.

The Exarch existed in a future where the eighth umbral calamity had happened. He travels back to the past to stop the calamity with no suggestion that he is entering some alternate reality in the process. By succeeding, he should therefore have no reason to travel to the past in the first place. Ergo, the calamity must happen.

I hate to go the Emmett Brown, route, but that right there...



... is a paradox.

Good time travel stories eliminate the element of destiny (the all-important question of: was Harry always in the past to summon the petronus to save himself? How did Harry get to the past to summon the petronus if he had never been saved by it in the first place? Destiny) by generating multiverse "ripples" whenever the time travel occurs - all actions, no matter how small, generate alternate realities, each of which can be dealt with individually without necessarily stomping like elephants on the bodies of the previous ones. The time travel in FFXIV doesn't deign to dally on those details, so the consequence is that it is fairly branded ludicrous storytelling.

Yeah I'm still kind of hoping it'll get explained at some point. I've kind of been operating on the assumption that G'raha effectively did create an alternate reality, meaning that world that saw the 8th umbral calamity still exists and will probably keep on doing so until it's eventually destroyed anyway. Otherwise we've got all sorts of head-hurting questions to deal with. Compounded by time apparently behaving differently on different shards. It's enough to give a headache trying to puzzle it out.

[Edax]

It's still somewhat the same thing though, isn't it? As soon as you reverse time and start at a different point, a billion random butterfly effects will happen and you will never get back into the same state of conciousness as before the time travel, effectively killing that consciousness? Killing that reality?

Not exactly. If I woke up tomorrow and there never was a pandemic and I don't remember a pandemic, I wouldn't consider that death of my consciousness. If I woke up tomorrow and my Grandpa was alive again and I remember that always being the case, I would just consider that an altering of consciousness, not death. Heck, brain trauma can cause a person to lose memories or have their personality altered, but that doesn't mean their consciousness has died.

[Shougun]

Not exactly. If I woke up tomorrow and there never was a pandemic and I don't remember a pandemic, I wouldn't consider that death of my consciousness. If I woke up tomorrow and my Grandpa was alive again and I remember that always being the case, I would just consider that an altering of consciousness, not death. Heck, brain trauma can cause a person to lose memories or have their personality altered, but that doesn't mean their consciousness has died.

If you go back in time some people will not be born anymore and new actions will alter their timelines entirely (some for the worse some for the better, depending on what it could obviously be "a lot more for the better"). For you personally perhaps you've lost nothing or actually gained ("eeeh I got my grandpa back!"), but some will have lost something even if they don't remember it (or not existed, and due to new changes in the timeline may never exist again- so a full stop end to their story). So by going back some will have gone and stayed gone (and some will have been brought back/be born that would not have been born otherwise). Not selling it as a pure negative but to me traveling back within a singular timeline (vs cross infinite dimensions) is at least like using a mass destruction bomb to end a war, the war may have cost a trillion times the bomb and so some groups may argue "worth it" but the bomb still cost something too. Might understand why you used the bomb but not sure I'd want to dance around and high five for it.

That's also ignoring talking about all those what ifs, paradoxes, why doesn't y do x sort of stuff time topics raise and just that focusing on reverting time can revert conscious states to pre-existence and may mean they'll never exist again depending on new events which would mean a termination of existence or death if we view the timeline as a whole. Of course if there are infinite dimensions and he traveled cross that and not time then he only helped out one dimension and left another, which changes the discussion quite a bit over just changing the timeline.

[Edax]

But it is nonsense to argue that G'raha is a good guy, he does exactly the same thing as Emet Selch; he destroys entire world/s to save the people in the past who are already dead and gone.

If you go back in time some people will not be born anymore and new actions will alter their timelines entirely (some for the worse some for the better, depending on what it could obviously be "a lot more for the better"). For you personally perhaps you've lost nothing or actually gained ("eeeh I got my grandpa back!"), but some will have lost something even if they don't remember it (or not existed, and due to new changes in the timeline may never exist again- so a full stop end to their story). So by going back some will have gone and stayed gone (and some will have been brought back/be born that would not have been born otherwise). Not selling it as a pure negative but to me traveling back within a singular timeline (vs cross infinite dimensions) is at least like using a mass destruction bomb to end a war, the war may have cost a trillion times the bomb and so "worth it" but the bomb still cost something too. Might understand why you used the bomb but not sure I'd want to dance around and high five for it.

My point being I wouldn't equate G'raha's actions with Emet's on the morality scale. If I'm alive in both timelines, I've not really been "destroyed" because I don't consider the world having been destroyed just because it's been altered. G'raha is not only trying to save dead people, he could be trying to save the living people in this timeline as well. For all we know, the Eighth Calamity was an extinction level event, one that would last centuries.

[Haruka_R]

I wish they'd kill off this forum.

Thank you.