Quote Originally Posted by Chasingstars View Post
To me it seemed strange that Sphene didn't just "delete" some of her citizens. As its even told to us that this place reached the energy limit with what happened at Heritage Found. As surely within that mess of logistics of Sphene's Ai, there has to be programming that would let Sphene know that there is a finite amount of energy to keep her city alive and that human soul batteries take longer to create.

So wouldn't animal souls work? And if animal life energy would work, can't she just have large herds of cattle and chickens that are raised, died, the meat used to feed the citizens, and then that life energy of those animals used to fuel her city. As while it is dark to consider it wouldn't that be a more peaceful option? It also makes me wonder how much energy her digital city even uses per day.
Somewhere in the story it's stated that to keep the citizens materialized (correct me on that specific if I'm wrong pls) it HAS to be specifically life essence aether - not animal aether.

There are lots of ways around the problems in Living Memory that a two second look at Endwalker post patch as well as Stormblood could've fixed. There were plenty of loopholes to keep the sad goodbyes in. However, that takes good writing to do.