Quote Originally Posted by Rosenstrauch View Post
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Let's say that we live in a universe where free will exists. If that's the case, the entire timeline doesn't exist from start to finish its entirety, because otherwise we're just making decisions on rails. A decision doesn't exist until its made. As such, I should be able to take any subsection of the timeline from the start to a particular timepoint without running into any paradoxes. Let's start with an easy one.

1. Start
2. Elpis

In this subsegment of the timeline, we haven't made any decisions about travelling back in time. Yet events happen on Elpis. This in itself suggests that there was originally some set of events on Elpis that is similar to, but not exactly identical to the original. Let's try a slightly more complex one.

1. Start
2. Elpis
3. Sundering
4. ARR/Heavensward/Stormblood
5. Eighth Umbral Calamity

Let's stop here. Again, this timeline also requires a set of events to happen on Elpis that occur without involving time travel, because Azem is dead. Now let's keep going to the present.

1. Start
2. Elpis
3. Sundering
4. ARR/Heavensward/Stormblood
6. Eighth Umbral Calamity
5. G'raha alters timeline (original events overwritten)
6. Venat tells us about a conjunction between two timelines
7. Time travel to Elpis (original events overwritten)
8. Battle with Meteion

So we have a 'time loop', but it's not a strict circle. We can unroll it out and lay it out flat. We re-write two parts of the timeline, but the parts that we re-write have an original sequence of events that gets replaced by an altered one.

In order for your explanation to work, everything must be pre-ordained from the start. If that's the case, then we don't need to for all sub-timelines to be consistent as well, because the future has always existed the way that it has. G'raha's actions in Shadowbringer are critical. Until the moment that he makes his decision to travel back in time and alter events, the events in Elpis cannot play out the way that they currently have. In order for that flag to be raised even before the event happens, he has to be fated to make that choice. Although it's unclear if events in a separate timeline can re-write your own, and we have nothing except your claims that it works this way and that Biggs III is wrong. Which is fine, I don't mind seeing a bit of headcanon as long as there's some attempt made at internal consistency.

So yes, this is all very relevant. I'm just curious what your starting set of axioms are, because that determines whether the rest of your explanation is internally consistent or not.

And I'll leave you with the last point, which we still couldn't explain before: Why is past Azem seemingly able to predict the future? Again, I think that this isn't the case, and that the original sequence of events has been disrupted.