[ENDWALKER MSQ SPOILERS] Timeline weirdness

[Iscah]

His timeline is wholly separate from ours, so how did it work back there?

The simplest answer is: it isn't wholly separate. It only diverged from our own timeline when G'raha altered the events of "his timeline's" past to the point that those events couldn't come to pass any more. A new branch of time forms to hold this new future, and now is of equal importance as the original.

Prior to Shadowbringers there is one timeline. Afterwards there are two. The timeline is a Y shape.

When we travel to Elpis, we move from our "branch" of the split timeline to the "trunk" that is shared by both halves of the split. Thus our actions there affect both timelines.

Unfortunately there's no satisfactory answer as to how the time loop formed, but it did, and things have just always happened that way. All the parts interconnect neatly.


Also, just in case you're working under what seems to be a common misconception: the First is not a "timeline" separate to the Source, it is a "shard" and still aetherically connected to the Source. A copy of all the shards exists in each half of the split timeline, with the other timeline ruined because of the First's rejoining.

[Veloran]

An issue with the branch notion - Beyond the unsubstantiated nature of it - is the narrative implications in-universe. 8UC is basically a complete "bad end" for Venat right down to people again trying to return to the past over going forward in the future (and by his very nature G'raha is the biggest thematic walking contradiction in the entire universe) and despite the short story existing to try and suggest some hopeful future for it, the storyline of Endwalker would imply that it's completely doomed. Frankly the existence of that short story makes me think that they didn't know what they were going to be doing in Endwalker when it was written.

[Lersayil]

They sort of messed up with using both closed loop and branching path time travel concepts at the same time. The use of both lead to a myriad of questions and plot holes that have to be adressed on a case-by-case basis... which as of yet they didn't do. We can speculate, but the information just isn't there currently.

Personally I like the idea of Graha's timeline being a yet unresolved closed timeloop, but I'm unsure if it can be pulled off in a narratively (and logically) sound way.

[EaraGrace]

An issue with the branch notion - Beyond the unsubstantiated nature of it - is the narrative implications in-universe. 8UC is basically a complete "bad end" for Venat right down to people again trying to return to the past over going forward in the future (and by his very nature G'raha is the biggest thematic walking contradiction in the entire universe) and despite the short story existing to try and suggest some hopeful future for it, the storyline of Endwalker would imply that it's completely doomed. Frankly the existence of that short story makes me think that they didn't know what they were going to be doing in Endwalker when it was written.

Which we know isn’t true after the interview with Yoshi P.

[Jandor]

Also, just in case you're working under what seems to be a common misconception: the First is not a "timeline" separate to the Source, it is a "shard" and still aetherically connected to the Source. A copy of all the shards exists in each half of the split timeline, with the other timeline ruined because of the First's rejoining.

It's not a misconception, it's a theory. There is confirmation that the 8th calamity world still exists, somehow, but nothing beyond that.

[Kordarion]

It's not a misconception, it's a theory. There is confirmation that the 8th calamity world still exists, somehow, but nothing beyond that.

They mean the first as in the world we visit in Shadowbringers, some people think that is a different timeline to the source, where eorzea, othard ilsabard and others are located.

[Jandor]

They mean the first as in the world we visit in Shadowbringers, some people think that is a different timeline to the source, where eorzea, othard ilsabard and others are located.

lol yeah I might have jumped the gun a tad.

That said though, honestly, it kind of is a different timeline. They were both one world with one version of events happening in the past, an event happened and they were split, they've since diverged down different paths.

The only real difference between a timeline and a shard is that a timeline in most fiction is more all-encompassing in scale, while the shards are implied to be a local space-time phenomena.

[Kordarion]

I mean, honestly, it kind of is. They were both one world with one version of events happening in the past, an event happened and they were split, they've since diverged down different paths.

The only real difference between a timeline and a shard is that a timeline in most fiction is more all-encompassing in scale, while the shards are implied to be a local space-time phenomena.

Considering our only source on what happened in the sundering, Emet-Selch, says that that the ancients and the world were physically split into 14 separate parts from each other doesn't work with them being branch timelines. Especially not when time travel doesn't have an impact on the sundering, as far as we know. Therefore if we had to compare it to any modern theories they would instead be fourteen separate universes as per a multiverse theory rather than 14 branching timelines. But even then neither work as changing the past in a branching timeline or an alternate universe should not be able to directly change the future of our original universe/timeline, not unless said other universe/timeline invaded ours which doesn't happen.

Which for me leaves only one plausible outcome, the source and the shards are a series of interconnected pocket realities carved from the unsundered world.

[Iscah]

I mean, honestly, it kind of is. They were both one world with one version of events happening in the past, an event happened and they were split, they've since diverged down different paths.

It is, kind of, and that's where some people get confused when we start talking about actual timelines.

In some timeline discussions I've seen people talking as if the First is the timeline that G'raha came from, which isn't the case at all, and it takes a few posts back and forth to establish why people are talking past each other because they're picturing something else at a fundamental level.

The shards might be thought of as sub-timelines, with their varying time flows and all stemming from copies of the Source, but this is ultimately a confusing detail that has nothing to do with time travel. We don't call it time travel when we teleport from the Source to the First – we are simply moving from "now" here to "now" there.

For the sake of discussing the timeline as a whole, the Source and all the shards function as a single unit. The First and the Source have a shared flow of time (slight fluctuations of speed aside) and what happens to one can affect the other.

When the timeline splits due to the effects of Shadowbringers, there is a Source and a First in our timeline and a Source and a First in the other timeline. They affect their paired shard in the same timeline but have no bearing on the fate of the other.

[Ilenya]

Query. Why would the 8th Umbral Calamity timeline lead to the Final Days as we had in Endwalker? The only reason Fandaniel could do what he did was because we went and off'd Emet-Selch and Elidibus, who would presumably still be alive to reign in Fandaniel in the Calamity Timeine.