Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Galvuu]

I also love how people are so certain of what's alive or not in FF XIV.
I'd love people who're on that camp clearly define what it means to be alive in XIV according to the lore right now, and then define what consciousness/sapience/self-awareness are on top so we can label things as "alive" and "not-alive" or "intelligent, creative consciousness" and "AI chatbots" clearly. They clearly seem to know.

Please avoid the "soul-sucking bots" tangent- I don't think anyone is saying that, when push comes to shove, the WoL/scions aren't justified in putting down the existential threat to the Source. Of course they are, the Endless had to die for the Source to live.
The question is, in the process of saving the Source, were we forced to destroyed a mindless simulation of philosophical zombies, or were actual lives- even if fundamentally different from ours- destroyed?
This is a question worth pondering and could greatly strengthen the plot.

But, of course, it's much easier to go "did you not read the story?! Evil soul-sucking chatbots evil and not alive!!!" than realize that the question being posed is profound and almost impossible to answer, so that shade of doubt endures in our minds.
(Could be a great setup for future patches too... but I already know it's wasted)

[Alaray]

I also love how people are so certain of what's alive or not in FF XIV.
I'd love people who're on that camp clearly define what it means to be alive in XIV according to the lore right now, and then define what consciousness/sapience/self-awareness are on top so we can label things as "alive" and "not-alive" or "intelligent, creative consciousness" and "AI chatbots" clearly. They clearly seem to know.

Personally, I don't really care about the lore in this case. Not because I dislike world building, or find it useless and pointless, but there is a line where an analysis of a story as it's written and presented is more important to me than making sure every single brick fits neatly within cohesive diegetic boxes from the many disparate stories that exist within the game itself (with multiple writers contributing to it over the span of years). A rose in one story may mean, or symbolize, one thing; a rose in another may mean the opposite, and the context to know which is what would be where that rose is blooming.

I do feel the intended idea of this specific story is as I mentioned (above somewhere) since that is how it reads, that is how the language is couched and the characters presented in their statements, behaviors etc... in conjunction with the heavy talk of commemorating the dead prior, from a civilization influenced from this one, as well with the ending context showcasing:

A somber graveyard, filled with blackened tombstones etched with memories once projected onto the eternal play place that now lies dormant.

(well, barring gameplay purposes).

What you're going for, to me, feels almost like a completely separate discussion wherein you're more trying to figure out what the internal mechanics of the world(s) FFXIV encompasses would classify "Living" and "Dead" as (or, even, in-universe philosophy regarding "what does it mean, to be 'alive'?"), versus this specific story's theme and statement as it presents itself with the context it exists within.

[Galvuu]

snip.

You kind of touch on the problem yourself. All these stories are meant to take place in the same universe, which should have a consistent set of laws/rules. Even if you want to approach a different theme or subject matter, as you're working in a per-established universe, you're constrained (or, well, you should be) to the previously established rules.
Otherwise you get some of the laziest writing where anything goes. The story isn't divorced from the mechanics of the world it takes part- yes, it's fiction, you have liberty to set the rules, but that doesn't equate to being able to change those rules, once established, to whatever you want arbitrarily. Or rather, technically you can do that, it just leads to a bunch of inconsistencies and bad writing.
Which really is the problem, isn't it? Yes, sure, you can make a new story in XIV where the element of Darkness is now shown to be that of stasis instead of Light, or where the Sundering actually created 37 shards and we just didn't know, or where there were actually 11 moons in the world, or where souls don't reincarnate, or where you can defeat primals by throwing a banana at them because banana-aether is primal-destroying and the Heart of Sabik was a banana all along. You definitely can write all of that to drive a specific point- but that's just shoddy writing that retroactively undermines all the previous work and established lore/world-building.
If this is truly the way XIV wants to go, just ignore the lore/world-building. Just stop wasting time with Encyclopedia Eorzeas and trying to make a logical framework of things because nothing matters. It can be retconned or changed at the whim of any random future author to fit whatever nonsense message they have in their minds.
I find this to be appalling, but maybe people like it. Still doesn't change the fact it will raise a lot of questions.

snip.

If I read then the argument that the Ultima Thule beings aren't live can certainly be made. Which is probably why you immediately deflected it "those are ok because they're not hurting anyone!". The beings in Ultima Thule are either alive, or are not. Same for the Endless. I'm not pretending to have a definitive answer based on what the game has shown throughout the entirety of its lore/writing across all expansions, because the game changes its mind when its convenient. I dunno why you keep mentioning the "defy Sphene" thing. I've been saying every time, we were justified in destroying the Endless- I'm not arguing we shouldn't have done that. I'm wondering if we destroyed something that was somewhat alive, or not, or somewhat in-between. But yes, read, because what's written doesn't somewhat contradict what was written before. Maybe in 8.0 there are new not-Endless who don't need souls but are the same in every other way and the game goes "these things are alive!" (like they did with Omega/Alpha/Ultima Thule/etc) and then they retroactively become alive. Until 9.0 needs them to retro-retroactively become not-alive for some reason.

[Alaray]

You kind of touch on the problem yourself. All these stories are meant to take place in the same universe, which should have a consistent set of laws/rules. Even if you want to approach a different theme or subject matter, as you're working in a per-established universe, you're constrained (or, well, you should

What you describe, with details clashing diegetically, is inevitable (and to be fair, the potential discrepancy here isn't congruent to the over-exaggerated "what if" scenario). It's in almost every story you can pick up, every world ever imagined: nothing is perfectly consistent, there is always an inconsistency somewhere. It is what it is, and for all I know, the Ultima Thule shades have something different at their core, but I don't need to really care if that is true or not true to understand what the Living Memory story is trying to communicate.

A rose at the Edge of the Universe is still rooted in a different soil, than a rose bloomed in the Unlost World.

And, I enjoy the stories of loss, death, acceptance, that are told. I have my complaints, but I dunno, I felt it was really obvious we're just helping would-be ghosts move onwards. That we're turning off the lights to another haphazard, memory of the past made into a false eden to show it for the graveyard it is and to accept that fact and not to be mired in the infatuation of "eternity".

[Eyrilona]

What you describe, with details clashing diegetically, is inevitable (and to be fair, the potential discrepancy here isn't congruent to the over-exaggerated "what if" scenario). It's in almost every story you can pick up, every world ever imagined: nothing is perfectly consistent, there is always an inconsistency somewhere. It is what it is, and for all I know, the Ultima Thule shades have something different at their core, but I don't need to really care if that is true or not true to understand what the Living Memory story is trying to communicate.

I think the key thing to observe here is, there is room for things to be different in different expansion to an extent. But not the fundamentals. You can't have a new Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock is suddenly a bumbling fool constantly being rescued by his clever assistant Watson, even if the idea of a bumbling inspector with a competent helper can in its own right be good standalone story material. Those things do not make sense, you are going to get complaints from people who bought your story because it had promised a continuation of a story universe they know and love, and if you are not consistent with that, then you have sold your story on a false premise.

[Alaray]

I think the key thing to observe here is, there is room for things to be different in different expansion to an extent. But not the fundamentals. You can't have a new Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock is suddenly a bumbling fool constantly being rescued by his clever assistant Watson, even if the idea of a bumbling inspector with a competent helper can in its own right be good standalone story material. Those things do not make sense, you are going to get complaints from people who bought your story because it had promised a continuation of a story universe they know and love, and if you are not consistent with that, then you have sold your story on a false premise.

That's an entire character, though? I disagree with this analogy, since it'd be more akin to G'raha suddenly being written as a cannibal than a potential oversight on even the reader's end here, since I don't necessarily agree with the postulation that there's a true inconsistency to begin with (just that I, personally, don't really care /that/ much even if there was)

Like, if I had to guess I would presume that what separates Endless from everything else marked as "Alive" is just the "soul" part of the equation. Endless don't have that. They're more like Primals, like Garuda, in the sense that they are memories projected outwards in a constructed facsimile. Or akin to Amaurot, which is the narrative parallel, which was another "Living Memory" in a manner of speaking. And the story is often extremely harsh to the concept of "Eternity". It never really puts prospects of being "eternal" in a positive light, usually it opts to look at the concept as: foolish, anathema to life itself, fruitless, a regression of Life in the context of apotheosis, or a Hell in Waiting for stylings of Salvation. Throw in the, Endless' case, that their supposed afterlife subsists off present temporal life, and that's the sort of point being reiterated again.

But, that's just with regards to the notion of an inconsistency. And, the framework and message of the story goes back to the original post I made with regards to how I perceived this specific storyline as not really... about killing beings that are alive, but instead, helping them pass on from the eternity they've been forced into by a false god that can't let go. And overall, I felt this theme to be very clear, very obvious, and I don't actually feel like there's a true inconsistency at least with how the fictional world denotes things. Could they have written a much lengthier, in depth narrative and explored the notion of "What does it mean, to be 'Alive'?" Sure, but they didn't, and had they in this section I don't think they'd have the time to develop that through to any satisfying direction. They chose to continue the parallels to older expansion stories, with Wuk Lamat predominately as the WoL proxy for the small parallels.

Arguing whether or not a fully fleshed out, choice making Artificial Intelligence is alive or not in like, the real world, or utilizing real world concepts to apply them to a fantasy world that inherently breaks them, is whatever to me -- I'm not interested in that kind of discussion, since I feel like it's a discussion better to have in the framework of the real world, and not a fictional one, and it's ultimately not really the point being made by the narrative.

[Galvuu]

What you describe, with details clashing diegetically, is inevitable (and to be fair, the potential discrepancy here isn't congruent to the over-exaggerated "what if" scenario). It's in almost every story you can pick up, every world ever imagined: nothing is perfectly consistent, there is always an inconsistency somewhere. It is what it is, and for all I know, the Ultima Thule shades have something different at their core, but I don't need to really care if that is true or not true to understand what the Living Memory story is trying to communicate.

I mean, sure, inconsistencies will show up with sufficient scrutiny on most- if not all- media. But there are degrees to this, and degrees to what you might tolerate on a work.
I would not be able to accept a LotR sequel where anyone could bribe your way, with influence and money, to the Undying Lands and it actually works, because such a retcon uproots so much of the themes and fundamental lore of that world that it's irreconcilable with the past work. It can exist, people can love it, but I feel it would aggressively undermine the established framework. If you require this to communicate your narrative, then it's either unsuited for that world and should be released in a different world, or you should preserve the message while abiding by the existing lore.
XIV requires more malleability because it's not designed with an ending in mind- and I feel this makes it even more critical to have some pillars that cannot be shaken, a solid foundation that cannot be undermined.
To me, personally, it starts being progressively hard to be invested in a world where, essentially, anything goes. No rule is sacred, anything can be randomly twisted or undone. If we don't abide by some core principles, nothing prevents a patch 9.0 where we suddenly decide that some of the dragons aren't really alive and we go fight them ignoring all the previous history of making peace with them, or anything to that effect.

I think the funniest part is that I don't even care that much for the Endless in a vacuum. I didn't feel particularly bad about shutting them down (I didn't feel anything for most of DT), especially with the context of their incompatibility with life on the Source, but I definitely think that many issues surrounding their existence, such as the question if they were alive in some capacity, warrant discussion and are just ignored or quickly glossed over. My problem is that I feel what's presented to me might conflict with was presented before.
(And I may be wrong, but aren't the Endless powered by aether when they re-manifest anyway? It's all very murky)