Why Erenville succeeded as a character where others did not

[Kuroka]

they're not treated as lesser for not having a soul, just as other things we've met without souls weren't treated as lesser. Meteion didn't have a soul. Alpha didn't have a soul for most of its story. Do you describe them as lesser beings, did Alpha suddenly graduate to being any different in your eyes at the last minute?

Also Athena's creation in the Pandemonium finale, she used fragments and memories with "empty" souls to recreate ppl we know, which besides being powerless (by her design) were just like the real deal.

MY question would be, whats the difference? why does Eternal memory use up souls, while those constructs seemed to be fine until their creator died and their power was used up?

We just dived a bit into the whole soul & memory stuff and now we got.. that lol

[Iscah]

We met Namikka in both human and Endless form, we met Otis' soul separate from his Endless form. Were they somehow lesser to you? We met Cahciua before we knew she was an Endless, were you thinking of her as lesser back in Solution Nine?

Well... yes?

Not Cahciua, because we met her before we knew what was going on and had no reason to not regard her as a living person (or suspected possibly dead person in possession of soul and memory).

But finding Namikka's Endless self isn't exactly an argument in favour of these being real people fully engaged in the world around them. She's trapped in a memory, panicked that she can't find the "little girl" she's been charged with looking after, despite that girl not existing in Living Memory at all.

And Otis – we already met Otis, saw him die, and can reason that this is an incomplete copy of the real person from an earlier stage in his life. We can engage with him like a real person when he's speaking to us, but a chatbot does that too.

I think the underlying reason [for Erenville's accent] actually stems from exactly what I said in the first reply, to bring things back to the topic: they weren't writing him for Dawntrail in Endwalker. They didn't write him or cast him knowing he'd be from Tural (in fact, a few of us noticed his Endwalker short story was edited after publishing to remove a mention of his name origin that doesn't line up with Dawntrail). And then naturally we get into a weird situation where the English localization specifically has been painted into a corner, because only English gave him a noticeably different accent.

The far simpler solution would be to give all of the Shetona that standard Viera accent, just like Lyna has it despite being raised in a culture with a predominantly different accent. Erenville, even if not originally planned to be Shetona, is still the first Shetona character in the game and so should be a reference point for what follows.

There are a number of locations specified as being in "the Shetona language" so it's not a stretch for them to have a different accent to the other cultures if they're intended to have a different language. Accents in FFXIV have been race-based for such a long time that it's bizarre they've chosen this moment to decide that everyone from the same location gets the same accent even if it messes with an existing character fitting into his own culture.

Or at minimum, give Cahciua that accent and imply that she's Othardian Viera originally.

[Cleretic]

MY question would be, whats the difference? why does Eternal memory use up souls, while those constructs seemed to be fine until their creator died and their power was used up?

Permit me an 'Um Actually' here, but the Endless don't consume souls, they consume life force, which is a different thing (and was stated more clearly in Japanese but they are at least consistent about what terms are used where). That's a thing that can only come from living people, so it's not much of a difference, but it does mean that the Endless aren't powered by souls, that's not part of their system; the souls go to the regulators.

But yeah, you're right: Anabaseios Erich and Lahabrea are pretty much exactly as 'fake' as Living Memory Namikka and Otis. And yet we never threw stones at Anabaseios' story for that, and the story itself treated both instances exactly the same: as people, not as some frankensteined non-person. If we trust the story to be right about itself, and to be teaching us the right way to read it, then we should take it as the story does: that they're people, deserving of all the respect and dignities of people, regardless of whatever intangible element they do or don't have.

The far simpler solution would be to give all of the Shetona that standard Viera accent, just like Lyna has it despite being raised in a culture with a predominantly different accent. Erenville, even if not originally planned to be Shetona, is still the first Shetona character in the game and so should be a reference point for what follows.

There are a number of locations specified as being in "the Shetona language" so it's not a stretch for them to have a different accent to the other cultures if they're intended to have a different language. Accents in FFXIV have been race-based for such a long time that it's bizarre they've chosen this moment to decide that everyone from the same location gets the same accent even if it messes with an existing character fitting into his own culture.

Or at minimum, give Cahciua that accent and imply that she's Othardian Viera originally.

And see, that would just leave us with a different question of 'why is every viera Icelandic, even the Turalian ones'. Even I'd find that a harder buy than 'Erenville's adopted an accent for long enough to not drop it around his mom'.

[Iscah]

Anabaseios Erich and Lahabrea are pretty much exactly as 'fake' as Living Memory Namikka and Otis. And yet we never threw stones at Anabaseios' story for that, and the story itself treated both instances exactly the same: as people, not as some frankensteined non-person.

That's not how I recall it. We were fully aware that we were only dealing with imperfect copies of those people, woven from memories without the original soul, and it felt strange even then.

They, too, were aware that they were not really their original selves and are happy to fade away when their task is done.

The only real difference is that they only exist within the aetherial sea and apparently do not require life force to physically manifest there.

And see, that would just leave us with a different question of 'why is every viera Icelandic, even the Turalian ones'. Even I'd find that a harder buy than 'Erenville's adopted an accent for long enough to not drop it around his mom'.

As I said, that's already a question – the Othardian Viera, the Viis, even Lyna raised by the English-accented Exarch, all have that accent across dimensions.

The prospect of Erenville adopting an accent so perfectly and irreversibly (and apparently only in a few years) seems weirder, especially when Erenville's accent is a genuine one from the voice actor. I'd find it easier to accept if the actor was putting it on to begin with.