Nothing makes sense and it's all Elidibus' fault (Spoilers)

[Adeacia]

For me this is the most glaring plot hole in a plot that's so full of them.

Clearly she does, which means she did when she first 'chose' us in 2.0 .. yet she never once has mentioned it till now. 6.0 is in the 'future' in 2.0's time obviously but our trip to Elpis happened in the 'past' for her at that moment.

This is the problem when stories try to use time travel as a plot device, no story I've ever read/played made a satisfactory use of it likely because if a writer tries to close all the plot holes this device creates the time travel device itself would fall apart.

She never told us because she's aware that she never did. We told her our story starting from ARR. We never mentioned anything about her knowing us from the past, so she knows she never brought it up. Being that the entire story up until we leave Elpis is one giant time loop, nothing can change.

[Saraide]

I could handle G'raha Tia's time travel shenanigans, but the stuff with Elpis I just cannot get behind.

First of all, it is all but confirmed that the Warrior of Light's presence in the unsundered star did have an effect on the future, as Venat as Hydaelyn does remember the Warrior of Light from the past. Nobody else does for some reason; Meteion, as the largest example, is surprised when we know Hermes' name, even though during that span of time we interacted with Meteion more than Hermes did.

Additionally, while it's also implied that the sundered souls inherited some of the personality(?) from their Amaurotine selves, this manifests nowhere even though the Warrior of Light was seen by, conservatively, a few dozen ancients in Elpis, who likely should have spoken of the sightings of 'Azem's Familiar' or even talked to him about it.

Branching off of that, if the Warrior of Light being handwaved away in Elpis as Azem's Familiar was made aware to more Amaurotines than the one who were mind wiped by Kardion, wouldn't query of this have reached Azem themselves, or at least some member of the convocation?

Would Zodiark contain a soul that knew about the Warrior of Light? Would this have influence how Zodiark acted in the WoL's presence? Would they know they had a connection to Azem even while carrying Azem's funny lemon-flavored crystal that can summon the Scions back from the dead?

I blame Elidibus for all of this. Time is a flat circle.

We interacted with a hopeful meteion that got drowned out by the despair that infested the shared consciousness. Azem very well could have been in on the entire thing, we know venat was gathering trustworthy people around her for her plan and we also know that Azem should have been purged from ancient history because of treason. Many ancients are extremely polite, some say they'll just wait until azem publishes the concept. I think none of the ones that remember would even dare to take up a moment of a convocation member's time. Most of them recognize you as familiar but I dont think we tell a lot of them about being azem's familiar. When we met zodiark, he was controlled by fandaniel and I dont think he cared about us that much, he just wanted to pave the way for the song of oblivion.

[-Mira-]

Thing is it is more Hemes his fault (not intentional, more like an experiment gone very very very wrong) because he had already send many of Meteion’s sisters away who all just found death. As for Meteion not remembering us I think that could be to information overload and trauma the shared information her sisters bought upon her. We only met her for a small sliver of her time. She spend more good hours with Hermes in her lifetime so it is only natural for her to have more emotional memories tied. We spend maybe 2 days with her one happy day and the day she got traumatised. So maybe she blend us out based on that experience.

[Jennah]

If you ask me, either the rules G'raha's time travel make sense, or the rules of the Elpis journey do.
Both at once in the same story do not.

[Hysorn]

They also seem to imply that the current Azem at that time had an unusual personality that essentially labeled them as sort of an oddball due to whimsical things they would do for their own amusement.

Which makes me wonder if one of our shards hasn't inherited this aspect of our old complete soul.

[Hysorn]

If you ask me, either the rules G'raha's time travel make sense, or the rules of the Elpis journey do.
Both at once in the same story do not.

I assume that this happened because G'raha travelled to another shard instead of directly to the past, he travelled to the First 100 years prior to when he expected to.

You gotta remember that our characters are a causal loop, we always went back to the past which led to Venat choosing us, we don't know how that loop started but that's what happened, so it's safe to assume that G'raha having experienced the rejoining, travelling to the First and pulling us from the Source is part of how we got back to the past in the first place, so in a way, his time travel stuff was always part of the main timeline.

[Penthea]

Which makes me wonder if one of our shards hasn't inherited this aspect of our old complete soul.

We can see from Ardbert that personality traits of the soul do persist. His path to becoming a WoL isn't too different to ours. It's clear that the drive to seek adventure, roam new lands and help people along the way are things that define who our soul is. Later we find out that these traits are part of what makes a person suitable for the seat of Azem.

We can also see it in Hermes. As both Hermes and Amon he became very disenchanted with the idea of having great power yet being unable to achieve what he thought was true happiness which lead to a depression that lead to nihilism. As both people he introduced an entity that lead to ruin in his attempt to feel fulfilment - Hermes made Meteion and Amon resurrected Xande. Hermes appears to be a person who is doomed to lose his way if left to his own devices. Also as both people he became a highly respected scientist who excelled in creating new lifeforms.

Y'shtola sees similarities between Beq Lugg and Matoya. Though them being shards of the same soul is at most speculation as it has never been and may never be confirmed. But from this we can see that the idea that personality traits being part of the soul is something even characters in the game consider to be a strong possibility.

[Raven2014]

I gotta ask though, isn't weird people discussing about what's supposed to make sense in time travel as if it's a hard science? I mean ... time travel itself is purely a fiction concept, we have seen a few "popular" concept established in previous works, but they're not proven theory. So when people say "this or that doesn't make sense" ... what exactly is your frame of reference? Star trek? Chrono Cross? Or anyone have some non-fiction/scientific work they want to cite?

I don't see any problem with the way FF14 is handling the concept. It pays due respect to existing work, but for the most part treating time travel and an unknow thing. For example, the people of Graha's Tia future was resolved to disappear after their experiment, but after CT disappear and they were still around, they wonder it means that actually fail at sending him to the past. Tia too was thinking he gonna be erased, and when it doesn't happen, he was just as confused. Basically, the story so far (at least from the character POV) had some theory about what effect time travel would have ... and those theory turned out to be wrong. Right now there is no material to serve as the universal "fact" of what time travelling would entail.

You can't claim the story contradict a fact that it had never established.

[Vrankyl]

For me this is the most glaring plot hole in a plot that's so full of them.

Clearly she does, which means she did when she first 'chose' us in 2.0 .. yet she never once has mentioned it till now. 6.0 is in the 'future' in 2.0's time obviously but our trip to Elpis happened in the 'past' for her at that moment.

This is the problem when stories try to use time travel as a plot device, no story I've ever read/played made a satisfactory use of it likely because if a writer tries to close all the plot holes this device creates the time travel device itself would fall apart.

The reason for that is because if she had told us it might have changed the future. If you subscribe to multiverse theory, if they do anything different than has already been done then it doesn't impact that time line but splits it off into its own alternate timeline. This is what happened to G'raha's original timeline. He went back and changed the future, resulting in an alternate timeline that is unrecognizable to the main one. If Hydaelyn had acknowledged our meeting before it happened it would have done the same thing, thus when we returned may not return to the same present we left. It's a causal loop, so long as the conditions remain the exact same there is no change to the timeline and does not result in an alternative timeline. Which is why she kept quiet until the exact point where she knew we had already traveled to the past. This exact method and reasoning of time travel is actually pretty common and used a lot in media, and is the most reasonable sense of it.

[NishaSetsuya]

I assume that this happened because G'raha travelled to another shard instead of directly to the past, he travelled to the First 100 years prior to when he expected to.

You gotta remember that our characters are a causal loop, we always went back to the past which led to Venat choosing us, we don't know how that loop started but that's what happened, so it's safe to assume that G'raha having experienced the rejoining, travelling to the First and pulling us from the Source is part of how we got back to the past in the first place, so in a way, his time travel stuff was always part of the main timeline.

From what been told about Azem the WOL keep a huge part of azem dumb reckless habit like throwing ourself in the midst of battle, affronting alone a world ending creature to protect our friend and the world
Like... Azem literally threw himself into a volcano to stop it from erupting and do so much reckless stuff that Emet complaint everydays xD

For me this is the most glaring plot hole in a plot that's so full of them.

Clearly she does, which means she did when she first 'chose' us in 2.0 .. yet she never once has mentioned it till now. 6.0 is in the 'future' in 2.0's time obviously but our trip to Elpis happened in the 'past' for her at that moment.

This is the problem when stories try to use time travel as a plot device, no story I've ever read/played made a satisfactory use of it likely because if a writer tries to close all the plot holes this device creates the time travel device itself would fall apart.

IMO the time travelling was on point on FFXIV and doesnt make plot hole everything is explained to you directly

See that's something that bugs me. It's obvious Themis is Elidibus. Really obvious. TOO obvious.

Like, every other time this expansion there was a "twist" that was super-duper obvious they just call it out right away. Loporrits with a mysterious group they're in contact with? Yeah, it's the Forum, we know. A mysterious dragon ally of some dude who rules Thavnair with some weird red-eyed kid with a weirdly large amount of authority? Yeah pull down the curtain and show yourself, Vrtra. But then there's Themis and... nobody's calling it out. Maybe the WoL is just kinda dumb, one too many hits to the head. Y'shtola and Estinien were the ones to call out the ones above. I dunno. I think they might do some weird double-fakeout.

You talk about obvious plot, i talk about very detailed plot, so detailed that you can connect point by point the overall story, it's not bad writting and plot twist arent always the thing that make a good story