Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[TheMightyMollusk]

“These people,” except none of them have any agency in the actions committed by their monarch, even if those actions are done to perpetuate their own lives. Remind me why we cared about anyone in Alexandria, again? Why we wasted time learning how they farm instead of just cutting our way through the city to reach Zoraal?
I know the writer said we don’t do these things because we’d rather put Tuliyollal- full of civilians who just suffered one sudden attack- at risk again. But I’m asking under your logic as you’ve just proposed it:If any action take against Alexandrians is justified by Sphene’s intentions, then why should we not kill our way to Zoraal, and then the Meso Terminal?

I don't recall saying anything like that, but: Zoraal Ja is dead before we ever learn that Living Memory or the Meso Terminal exist. We spent that part of the arc thinking we were helping Sphene rebel against him. It's not until after he's dead that she declares she's going through with the dimensional merge anyway. And at that point, there's no reason to go through Solution 9, because Sphene isn't there anymore. So the living Alexandrians aren't even a factor in that part of the final arc. So, no, there was never a justification to go on a killing spree through the city.

[MikkoAkure]

At this point it's only a matter of time before someone gets so upset about all this that they post a fanfic rewrite of the expansion where Wuk Lamat's role as top story NPC is replaced by a blonde Russian OC, Wuk Lamat herself turns into a caricature, and everybody tells Alphinaud he's wrong about everything.

[OMGJesuis66]

At this point it's only a matter of time before someone gets so upset about all this that they post a fanfic rewrite of the expansion where Wuk Lamat's role as top story NPC is replaced by a blonde Russian OC, Wuk Lamat herself turns into a caricature, and everybody tells Alphinaud he's wrong about everything.

And it will be praised as the highest-quality writing that ever existed, given how people speak as if they are masters in writing and everyone else is incompetent or illiterate.

[Karious]

At this point it's only a matter of time before someone gets so upset about all this that they post a fanfic rewrite of the expansion where Wuk Lamat's role as top story NPC is replaced by a blonde Russian OC, Wuk Lamat herself turns into a caricature, and everybody tells Alphinaud he's wrong about everything.

That sounds amazing, omg.

[Avenger]

Definitely a setup when you keep asking "is there a better way" but the only path before you is death and destruction.

Then again we have always been the Ascians - it is just becoming more obvious now how we view "lower" life forms - from adorable wildlife to literal gods - with absolute contempt and their existence as meaningless and unnecessary except as a resource to be harvested.

[Boblawblah]

it is just becoming more obvious now how we view "lower" life forms - from adorable wildlife to literal gods - with absolute contempt and their existence as meaningless and unnecessary except as a resource to be harvested.

Am I taking crazy pills or was that the EXACT reason we were fighting Sphene???

[hydralus]

Definitely a setup when you keep asking "is there a better way" but the only path before you is death and destruction.

Then again we have always been the Ascians - it is just becoming more obvious now how we view "lower" life forms - from adorable wildlife to literal gods - with absolute contempt and their existence as meaningless and unnecessary except as a resource to be harvested.

If they didn't want to be harvested they should stop dropping weapons and armor.

[Colt47]

My favorite part of this entire part of the MSQ was turning on the fountains, because burning more innocent souls so people could have fountains and a fireworks display before we shut everything down makes perfect sense. But again, the problems are mostly ignoring everything that came before this when writing the story. We could literally have cured levin sickness via the same methods we handled the light sickness, we have ultima thule to prove we don't need living aether to keep the memories of someone alive, we have the knowledge to seal a soul in a crystal without destroying it since we made the journey with our allies back from the first, so we could have just trapped Sphene harmlessly to prevent her memory erasure or to simply stop her from doing something, yet somehow we decided to take the most unnecessary and risky method for the sake of an epic fight.

[OMGJesuis66]

My favorite part of this entire part of the MSQ was turning on the fountains, because burning more innocent souls so people could have fountains and a fireworks display before we shut everything down makes perfect sense. But again, the problems are mostly ignoring everything that came before this when writing the story. We could literally have cured levin sickness via the same methods we handled the light sickness, we have ultima thule to prove we don't need living aether to keep the memories of someone alive, we have the knowledge to seal a soul in a crystal without destroying it since we made the journey with our allies back from the first, so we could have just trapped Sphene harmlessly to prevent her memory erasure or to simply stop her from doing something, yet somehow we decided to take the most unnecessary and risky method for the sake of an epic fight.

Cure tempering shouldn't have ever been a thing, that was a dreadful MSQ choice that trivialized one of the biggest issues in the narrative reality, and yet it was done and somehow only one person has this now miraculous cure. The presence of dynamis is what preserves Ultima Thule nature, how to apply that to an actual world is still akin to a mystery. Living Memory is still part of the world, while dynamis has spoken to be only extraterrestrial energy. It's still an untouched territory, and yeah, Dynamis could solve a lot of the narrative problems. Again, god-like tools. The knowledge of putting people inside a crystal comes from the pursuit of White Auracite, a resource that only a few actually have in hand and it is not exactly a reliable effort, as one can tap into the memories within and pull the memories out at any time. A more reliable method would be the contramemoria method. One which wasn't spoken to us how to make it and also a method that set the 13th on their path for the Flood of Darkness.

It's awful that the MSQ kept giving answers for all the problems in existence precisely because of that, now no threat is relevant because we have the answers for everything. It's removed the weight of so many problems, it is one thing to give them methods that can tend to those issues, but finding a complete and absolute cure is bad if you plan to keep the story consistent of this still being an issue. But well, what do I know?

[Bright-Flower]

My favorite part of this entire part of the MSQ was turning on the fountains, because burning more innocent souls so people could have fountains and a fireworks display before we shut everything down makes perfect sense. But again, the problems are mostly ignoring everything that came before this when writing the story. We could literally have cured levin sickness via the same methods we handled the light sickness, we have ultima thule to prove we don't need living aether to keep the memories of someone alive, we have the knowledge to seal a soul in a crystal without destroying it since we made the journey with our allies back from the first, so we could have just trapped Sphene harmlessly to prevent her memory erasure or to simply stop her from doing something, yet somehow we decided to take the most unnecessary and risky method for the sake of an epic fight.

We should have been able to mention something about the levin sickness. However, we can't really hold up ultima thule as an example of anything. The laws of reality literally work differently there.

Cure tempering shouldn't have ever been a thing, that was a dreadful MSQ choice that trivialized one of the biggest issues in the narrative reality, and yet it was done and somehow only one person has this now miraculous cure.

I personally feel like the tempering cure was earned narratively. Plus it came at a time when primals were no longer really a focus of the story anyway. Just because something like tempering is a problem at the start of a story doesn't mean it has to stay that way the whole time and that the world shouldn't find solutions to its problems. And while Alisae was the one to sprearhead the development there's no 'one person' that can do it now because that knowledge has been shared.