Zodiark's Codex entry what do we think about it?

[Cleretic]

The idea that the divergence of the Sundered races happened over time rather than as an immediate response to the event makes no sense because the player races are the same across all Shards, when if that were the case they should be radically different in accord with their divergent early history.

Actually, that just sounds like convergent evolution to me. The shards and the Source were all (at least at first) the same places geographically, with the same environmental and climate challenges, so I don't find it surprising at all that they evolved similar life forms that basically have parallel niches. The thing that came up in the live letters of 'the sundered people subconsciously yearned for certain features' adds a bit of a (semi-)intelligent design bent to it, but I still see it the same; if all fourteen versions of the planet had the same circumstances that meant that, say, cat-people were a viable evolutionary niche, it stands to reason that all fourteen of those planets would produce cat-people. Especially if, as suggested in the Live Letter, they were being semi-consciously shaped by minds that knew that 'cat people' were a thing that fits the purposes they need.

It's carcinization, only with elves.

[Lyth]

...

Yes. That's in the same breath that he tells us that he does not believe that we are truly alive. To Emet, the sundered were less than human. We naturally beg to differ.

[Brinne]

Yes, which, again, has no correlation to whether or not the Nier portrayal is consistent or lines up. How Emet continues to see the Sundering, even after its targets have evolved, and how one evaluates that in relation to his personal character is irrelevant to that question, and a completely different discussion.

[Lurina]

The thing that came up in the live letters of 'the sundered people subconsciously yearned for certain features'

If we're talking about this anyway, then I'm going to digress for a moment to say that, like the Black Mage materia eyes you like to cite, this is a basically fanon invention that's become accepted because people find the idea of the Ancients subconsciously yearning to become elves and catgirls relatable. And while that is relatable, let me remind you what the liveletter response actually was:

Question: If you look at the Source and it’s reflection today, they are inhabited by various races such as Miqo’te, Au Ra, Lalafell and so on. However, all the Ancients seem to be human-like races so is there a lore regarding how mankind came to have such a varied amount of races?

Answer: When the world was Sundered all living beings became incomplete. But that said incompleteness allowed them to develop strengths and weaknesses and that overtime compounded into racial traits. That sort of thing like strengths and weaknesses over time, with elements of little bit more or little bit less increases or be stronger in certain tribes and in turn developed into distinctive features.

I don’t know about the official lore for this but people are asking things like “Ok why are Miqo’te’s ears are so big?” and I was like “I don’t know maybe they couldn’t hear that well and tried super hard to hear and maybe that…was what led them to develop those big ears.

So why are the Lalafell so tiny…like I don’t know, maybe they are under a lot of pressure, or maybe they were really…intense?

It had nothing to do with what they wanted.

Anyway, the key point of ambiguity here is in the phrase "over time" - whether that means over generations (with the Sundered 'evolving' into their present states) or over the lifetime of a single individual, which is what I meant when I said "immediate" a minute ago, since we're talking about a species timescale here. If it wasn't immediate but rather something that happened over thousands of years (as Lyth seemed to be suggesting), one would think that the landscape and its circumstances would also change in a way that wouldn't be so tidy a convergence. It is more ambiguous than I remembered, but that just makes me more confused about how it was supposed to have happened.

But again, none of this is even really related to why I brought up the Nier story in the first place. I was trying to make a comment about cultural knowledge and food scarcity, and now it's derailed the entire thread.

[Ayche]

In all honesty, any answer to why big people turned into catgirls and elves is probably going to sound asinine. I mean they get asked the question and feel responsible to respond with something, but it is almost worse trying to really rationalize it. You will just dig yourself into a hole if you need to explain catgirls and lalafell.

[Cleretic]

In all honesty, any answer to why big people turned into catgirls and elves is probably going to sound asinine. I mean they get asked the question and feel responsible to respond with something, but it is almost worse trying to really rationalize it. You will just dig yourself into a hole if you need to explain catgirls and lalafell.

I dunno, I understood it well enough the moment I realized that meant the sahagin were probably the fragments/descendants of the guys who were Really Into Sharks.

[Lurina]

In all honesty, any answer to why big people turned into catgirls and elves is probably going to sound asinine. I mean they get asked the question and feel responsible to respond with something, but it is almost worse trying to really rationalize it. You will just dig yourself into a hole if you need to explain catgirls and lalafell.

I agree, but they said it, so we have no choice but to try and have it make sense. Or else we might wonder why we're on a forum devoted to obsessing over JRPG story minutia at all and have to question our life choices.

I dunno, I understood it well enough the moment I realized that meant the sahagin were probably the fragments/descendants of the guys who were Really Into Sharks.

I just posted the quote that rebuts that interpretation of how it works! You can't just say it anyway!

...I mean, you can, because none of this is even really important to the rest of the lore anyway and is basically meaningless fluff, but...

[Iscah]

I'm not sure why the suggestion of "Emet-Selch's biased viewpoint" must necessarily reflect "oh, he must be lying in the third-person sequence written by Ishikawa about his experiences and perspective for no reason" instead of "he simplifies and partially sanitizes the explanation of what was a horrifying and traumatic experience for him when speaking to a crowd that includes a child."

Ryne is not a child, she is described as a young woman – and Emet is trying to horrify them and convey the horror he felt. If he was trying to protect her poor childish sensibilities then surely he wouldn't have picked her to creep out with a duplicate?

Either we accuse him of being inaccurate in one of those two passages or we accuse him of it in the other. All points considered, I think inaccuracy in the non-FFXIV story to be more likely.

[Ayche]

I dunno, I understood it well enough the moment I realized that meant the sahagin were probably the fragments/descendants of the guys who were Really Into Sharks.

I agree, but they said it, so we have no choice but to try and have it make sense. Or else we might wonder why we're on a forum devoted to obsessing over JRPG story minutia at all and have to question our life choices.

I know this sounds really silly to say in the Lore forum, but sometimes less lore is better than more lore. Like in that QnA moment, you could had left it at "well sundered people started changing due to reduced aether" and that would had left enough mystery to it while also satisfying the question. The moment you gotta start thinking "Well uuuh, cat people, now cat people started appearing because uuuh there were ... a lot of ... mice..." you know you have gone too far. Miqote were not in FF14 because someone had something really profound to tell us that what if we were not evolved from apes, but cats instead...

Sometimes things are aesthetic, but I think everyone already knew that.

[Kozh]

Ryne is not a child, she is described as a young woman – and Emet is trying to horrify them and convey the horror he felt. If he was trying to protect her poor childish sensibilities then surely he wouldn't have picked her to creep out with a duplicate?

Either we accuse him of being inaccurate in one of those two passages or we accuse him of it in the other. All points considered, I think inaccuracy in the non-FFXIV story to be more likely.

Okay I think emet doesn’t try to protect ryne from the horror of sundering, yet I disagree thta he picked her solely to creep them out, as it’s literally just making an illusion of her copy.

But anyway, idk what you guys even want. Nier collab is written by Ishikawa, the Word of God, basically. While it contains some pf emet’s perspective (which, yes, is bias), the rest are historical depiction that don’t contradict any info from shb. One other thing to remember, the souls are particularly important for the Ancients. Would it be far fetched to you to consider that when emet said the sundered are “malformed creatures”, it’s not only due to their physical appearance but also because of the souls?

We have proof from anamnesis anyder that the sundered truly are smaller than the ancient btw