Spoilers for 7.0 Alexandrian life style

[Alleo]

DT brings into question what a soul does. The beings in Living Memory are feeling, thinking people capable of love, ambition, hope, compassion, deduction, they meet every metric of personhood I can think of.

Well we do know from the lore of this story that in this universe you need at least a soul and body to be alive. (Memories do come later through living their lives) The soul houses the core personality which is not washed away after death (and sometimes memories can stick to it too). This is the reason why we and Ardbert are similiar to Azem for example. So the soul is a very important part in shaping who we are. (And I guess its also the reason why they do need to imprint the memories of the person again after they used a spare soul. Otherwise the personality of the other soul may influence them) In real life of course we have no idea if a soul even exists so for us the memories and experiences we built are us.

I guess for me the endless are mostly just like ghosts, stuck in a everlasting cycle of repeat. They cant choose stuff on their own free will. Even Erenvilles mom was just able to do all the things she does because she once had a huge adventures spirit. So to fufill her wishes the tower gave her the options to go beyond anyone else. No NPC we meet there has a will to live on no matter the costs. Nobody truly cares what happens to them. Even those few who stuck around after we deactivate the towers are not doing it because they dont want to "die" but because they just want to do one last thing. Like ghosts they linger on because they had unfinished business.

It was kinda creepy how many where just fine to being stored away in the towers because of the low amount of power. And how many of the children in that one zone where once adults but their happiest time was as a child. Those wont change. They wont ever grow. At least not without some sort of outside influence. Just like Namika was young again at first eventhough she died as a old woman with all the memories intact. Yet she was forced by the system into that younger form that was constantly on the search for little Wuk Lamat because it saw it as her happiest time. Only when she meet Wuk againg does she change back to the old form and I am honestly not sure if that wasnt the tower who did it. So all those children probably also dont have a huge amount of their memories because the system does not want them to suffer. What a horrible way to exist.

About the shades: Well we do know that Hythlodeaus shade had a sense of self. Is he now alive? While at the same time the real Hythlo was stuck in Zodiark? Or what would happen if someone copies our memories and stuff them in that zone. Is that person alive? (Its like Otis, who was still alive the whole time while his endless was part of living memory.)

Edit: Found a interesting old reddit thread from someone that played the game in japanese:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._system_works/

It seems that in JP they do use different terms for these three energy sources, making it much easier to understand. The OP does interpret it though that the spent souls do get back in the life stream after the person using them dies, while the unspent souls still in the regulator will stay in the device for further use. Thus it takes longer for all of those souls to return to the sea. (There is a debate going on though if that last part is correct or only assumption. So its not 100% clear in JP too.)