[Spoiler] Isn't Dark Knight using Akasa ?

[RyuDragnier]

People have already put in work and given points on why it is a retroactive change. Just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t make it any less true.What does internet points have to do with it? It just sounds like you’re upset about other peoples takes on the story elements and deus ex machina inserts and trying to throw things around to make them less relevant. Dynamis is just one of the many faults in the writing this expansion.

Except it isn't a fault in writing, and its inclusion does not contradict anything. If anything, it explains a lot in hindsight. What Omega was trying to figure out and replicate in the raids, what saved Nero at the end of CT (remember, his corruption vanished after he swore he would not die there and would live on), how we were able to survive a hit from A12's Holy Judgement (our first canonical use of tank LB3), etc etc.

[Theodric]

What does internet points have to do with it?

Yeah, I always end up with a big grin of disbelief whenever I read that particular phrase. It's a discussion forum for a make believe video game, not an Olympic sport for people to 'win'. When I'm in the mood for a bit of competition, I'd rather do something more productive such as indulge in a friendly race or bout of weight lifting.

[KariTheFox]

I just want to point out this was originally a thread about how dynamis could be intregrated into the story as a concept and how it could maybe be applied to old lore retroactively, for people who are interested in the subject.

And it has quickly devolved into people coming in and saying "actually dynamis is shitty writing and I do not like it". You're free to have that opinion, but it is a shame it has completely overshadowed the original point of the thread.

[Lyth]

I'm genuinely interested in seeing how Dynamis is a retroactive change that contradicts established fact. If someone has written a post on this subject and I've missed it, I would love to be directed to it.

[Veloran]

I'm not sure how you can say dynamis "solved problems" when it was quite literally the cause of the final days. If anything it was an antagonistic force that our aether-based characters had to find ways to counteract.

It explained the Final Days and it explained how we stop the Final Days. Narratively that's solving the two biggest problems in the plot with one element.

Also, in the context of Endwalker, it was introduced very early on through the Elpis flowers and in Thavnair, and explored more throughout the Elpis questline before being central to the ending. And even prior to Endwalker, there was a looming question of what unknown force caused the Final Days; and then Endwalker goes on to introduce and explain a previously-unknown force that caused the Final Days; seems like decent enough set up and payoff to me.

Dynamis doesn't get introduced in the eleventh hour, in this story, however.

Endwalker is merely the last chapter in a story that's been running since 1.0. In that context it's only insistently hinted at 85% of the way through the plot, then only formally introduced in Elpis at level 87, at like the 95% point. To tie back to what I linked before, even though Sanderson had hinted at the existence of another magic throughout Mistborn, he recognized that introducing it in the final chapters of the book to resolve the climax was faulty writing.

As Theodric pointed out, it's very easy for people to get too comfortable with the idea of retroactive continuity, and allow themselves to fill in the blanks and explain things away that the writers aren't bothering with. This sort of thing can ultimately end up seriously undermining long-running narratives.

I'm genuinely interested in seeing how Dynamis is a retroactive change that contradicts established fact. If someone has written a post on this subject and I've missed it, I would love to be directed to it.

Attendant to what I was just referring to, consider Ryu's explanation that A12 was our first canonical use of LB3, and thus explained by a use of Dynamis. But consider then that Dynamis is stated to be suppressed and negated by aether - How, then, did we use Dynamis while inside of a Primal, a being composed entirely of aether? Or, consider the idea that sundered peoples' aetherially thin beings are partly composed of Dynamis. If that is so how does anybody teleport, when that is undertaken by transforming an individual into their composite aether, and whisking them through the (obviously incredibly aetherially dense) aetherial sea? And if there is a massive veil of aetherial energy enshrouding the world coming from Zodiark, then how could anybody ever have been able to use Dynamis prior to his destruction? And of course - If LBs are Dynamis, why can the Ancients in Elpis and Elidibus in SoS use LBs?

To be clear here, with this I'm not intending to state that these questions are definitively plot holes. Only that they are unanswered questions raised by the introduction of Dynamis. The issue is, I'm not confident that any such questions will be answered. Because I've previously seen writers get too carried away with utilizing retroactive continuity to the point that questions continue to be raised only for layers and layers of retcons for the sake of "cool writing" to be added over time without clarification ever coming down the line. I'm very nervous about XIV going down such a path, and Dynamis does the opposite of assuaging such concerns.

[Lyth]

Sanderson's first law is not 'Thou shalt not introduce in new world-building lore in the sequels of a serial work.' It's a principle of foreshadowing, in which you plant plot elements well in advance of them becoming plot significant so that the reader/viewer gets an 'aha' moment when you stab them with a plot twist. (Otherwise you'd know the complete ideals of all the Knights Radiant by now and not just be fed them during climactic plot moments, but I digress.)

On the subject of Limit Breaks, there's no clear cut line on what exactly is Aether and what is Dynamis. Emet, for example, uses the line 'Mine is the Aether!' when he uses a Caster Limit Break. Likewise, it's never definitively stated what Elidibus uses to power his Limit Breaks. There is, however, this unresolved bit of dialogue from your showdown with him (Hope's Confluence):

What of it?! I have my mission! I am Elidibus! And it is my duty to steer mankind and the very star upon their true course. This I swore to... to someone. We spoke, and I swore... what? What did I...?

Ah, poor old amnesic Elidibus. I really can't help but wonder if his Warrior of Light, his summoning magicks, and his 'Limit Breaks' all draw inspiration from a certain chance encounter on Elpis, countless years before. I'll laugh if he makes that promise after discovering the cause of the terrible cry from within the earth that set off the Final Days. Perhaps in a place in the depths with lots of Creation magic.

So now let's look at the A12 example that you put out. If Hermes is to be believed, the unsundered Amaurotians were too aetherically dense to perceive, manipulate, or interact with Dynamis in a meaningful way outside a few observations made about entelechies. So how did the Final Days as a Dynamis based phenomenon have any effect on the Ancients? It affected their creation magic. And what is the modern day derivative of creation magic? Primal summoning. Meaning that if Meteion can warp an Ancient's creation magicks on Etheirys from the edge of the universe, then it wouldn't be a stretch for us to unconsciously use Dynamis inside a primal.

Part of the difficulty here is that we don't have the rules, so there probably isn't enough here for you to go off of show a contradiction just yet. Can you utilize Dynamis miles beneath the veil of Zodiark's moving celestial Aether currents? It would seem that way, otherwise the Elpis flower from Sharlayan wouldn't change colour in the present era. Does Dynamis have a mass-like property similar to Aether, or is it completely intangible? What are the Aether thresholds at which you can use/not use Dynamis effectively? If the Garleans are unable to manipulate aether but their Reapers are capable of summoning Voidsent, does that mean that Void magic is based off of Dynamis? Are there any civilizations that are actually based off of utilizing Dynamis (the Amaurotian quest Debate and Discourse, for example, alludes to another civilization co-existing at the same time as the Ancients 'across the pond' that had the capabilities to build a metropolis and a calamity of their own to deal with.) As you can see, this doesn't just have implications for Endwalker, but future storytelling as well.

[Veloran]

Sanderson's first law is not 'Thou shalt not introduce in new world-building lore in the sequels of a serial work.' It's a principle of foreshadowing, in which you plant plot elements well in advance of them becoming plot significant so that the reader/viewer gets an 'aha' moment when you stab them with a plot twist.

Yes, but as Sanderson says he had already foreshadowed the existence of a secondary magic system in the first book, but still recognized that introducing it at the very end of that book to resolve the plot was erroneous writing. In the context of XIV, this is where I think the "missing expansion" between Shadowbringers and Endwalker, the original 6.0, would have significantly smoothed out the story. Introducing Dynamis there and allowing us to stew and learn more about it for a couple of years would have integrated it much more seamlessly into the narrative before we went into the final chapter.

On the subject of Limit Breaks, there's no clear cut line on what exactly is Aether and what is Dynamis. Emet, for example, uses the line 'Mine is the Aether!' when he uses a Caster Limit Break. Likewise, it's never definitively stated what Elidibus uses to power his Limit Breaks.

As you point you, we lack the rules about any of this, and so are left with nothing but headcanon to fill the blanks. For example, all player Limit Breaks are observed as aetherical by the characters in-universe through the EE, which would suggest that, if LBs are indeed partly Dynamis, that both aether and Dynamis are combining to produce the effect. Which runs in contradiction to the notion that they are incompatible.

So how did the Final Days as a Dynamis based phenomenon have any effect on the Ancients? It affected their creation magic. And what is the modern day derivative of creation magic? Primal summoning. Meaning that if Meteion can warp an Ancient's creation magicks on Etheirys from the edge of the universe, then it wouldn't be a stretch for us to unconsciously use Dynamis inside a primal.

As above, there is no explanation. We don't know how the Ancient's magicks were warped, only that concepts were seemingly siphoned from their minds and made real by creation magics taken from their control. We have no idea how Dynamis could be capable of this. And with the issue of the Primals, there's also the fact that they are formed partially through faith and prayer - Something that, now, we could easily conceptualize as Dynamis. But if so, that raises the question of how Hydaelyn and Zodiark could even exist, given the Ancients evident inability to manipulate Dynamis.

While I am interested in the ways Dynamis could factor into the story in the future, at the moment I have my doubts as to the question of whether or not they'll get around to explaining some of the oddities surrounding it, such as what is and is not Dynamis on a basic level. To do so in-game we might need to return to ARR-levels of exposition dumps. Otherwise we'll be left awaiting a potential new EE in the future.

[Cleretic]

The point about new zones and areas in the map are a good one; FFXIV is generally very good about revisiting old lore and places instead of abandoning them for the new thing. Like the primals, they will often re-contextualize and add to with additive retcons, but that's in part because this is a MMO.

Spoken like someone who definitely wasn't super invested in Gelmorra or Silvertear Lake. They do drop interesting setting hooks sometimes, it's just that it's more often 'quietly file a side thing back into nonexistence' rather than 'yeah this big thing is no longer a thing anymore'.

I just want to point out this was originally a thread about how dynamis could be intregrated into the story as a concept and how it could maybe be applied to old lore retroactively, for people who are interested in the subject.

And it has quickly devolved into people coming in and saying "actually dynamis is shitty writing and I do not like it". You're free to have that opinion, but it is a shame it has completely overshadowed the original point of the thread.

Honestly, the lore subforum's had a lot of that going on lately, a few people consistently stomping into discussion about any part of the story they don't like, going 'IT BAD' and derailing the entire discussion. I'm getting rather tired of it, because I really am ready for a good talk about what was actually laid out.

[Lyth]

...

The Mistborn analogy doesn't apply well here. The central problem is 'main villain is immortal, nobody can defeat him.' When the resolution to that conflict is 'The protagonist was secretly more powerful than she realized', then there never was a conflict to begin with. It doesn't really matter when you introduce that fact. Deus Ex Machina eliminates the central conflict by sidestepping it. Sanderson's point about having a 'victory condition' is important. He contrasts Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields in that the solution to both problems is similar (big army shows up, we win), but one has a foreshadowed victory condition (survive for five days) and the other does not. Without that victory condition, there is no dramatic tension, because you can just win at any point that you feel like. You can, however, distract the audience from that condition, which is why its to your advantage to introduce the rules of the game earlier rather than later.

None of this really applies to Dynamis. I think if you want to see a better example of this principle, look at Ultima Thule. As you progress through the area, you're given some bits of information on how it works:
- Meteion can unmake people at will.
- Emotions govern the land, allowing a soul to stand up in defiance of Meteion even if she unmakes them. She has to break their spirit to win.
- You can use Azem's magic to summon your friends souls back at any point, but that resets your way forward. (this effectively sets the terms for the victory condition and hints at the solution - your 'friends' are more than the people that you're travelling with)
- When people return to the star, they regain the memories that they've lost.

All the pieces are on the table beforehand. The main conflict is an ideological one. Stand up to Meteion, and show her your will to live. If you wanted to discuss whether this setup works or not using the above framework, it would be relevant. Is it contrived? Anything can be if you choose to be critical enough. That's really up to individual interpretation. Maybe you liked it, maybe you didn't. I thought it was clever.

But as for the explanation of Dynamis that we get? I don't think that it has any impact on dramatic tension outside of pure symbolism. It's a world-building element. It's not the MacGuffin that solves the conflict. If you're going to blame anything, it should be Azem's soulstone.

When you have limited information to go on, you have to be careful not to infer more than you actually can. Aether interferes with Dynamis somehow. Does that mean that the two are incompatible? Meteion is still made up of Aether, even if it is a little thin, so they're not 'incompatible' per say. Is it that Dynamis transmits less effectively through Aether? Or is a better analogy to compare Electromagnatism and the Strong interaction, where the dominant effect depends on something like scale, causing one to 'drown out' the other? Can you use the two together, by say creating a box of Aether and opening it to stuff it full of Dynamis so that it can't escape? Break in case of emergency. What if the Flame in the Abyss refers to an interplay between Aether and Dynamis?

I don't think that Limit Breaks need to universally be one thing. In times of emotional duress, people can surpass their limitations. Perhaps some of these cases involve just Aether. Perhaps some involve just Dynamis. Perhaps they involve both. What we do know is that there are a lot of jobs out there that draw on forces that are not entirely aetherical in nature. Wrath, Darkside, and so on. Perhaps these have something to do with Dynamis. Perhaps there are other forces out there that we're not aware of. Either way, it adds a bit of nuance to our understanding of these things. Emotions are powerful in this universe.

I'm sure that we'll learn more as we go. For one, there is a lot about Void Magic and the Voidsent that we still yet don't know, and this is probably the one thing that I'm the most curious about. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a referential tie in here somewhere, especially given that Diabolos was the creator of Dynamis in FFXI. Second, as powerful as Amaurot was, it was isolationist, and it sounds like their contemporaries from 'across the pond' were quite technologically advanced as well. I doubt it was the center of the universe that its denizens made it out to be. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an 'Esthar City' lurking out there in the 'wastelands' of Meracydia or even in the New World. If Dynamis exists, there are surely people out there who have mastered its use, and yet others who would find our current powers to be underwhelming. There should always be room for growth, learning, and the promise of a journey to that next horizon.

[KariTheFox]

But as for the explanation of Dynamis that we get? I don't think that it has any impact on dramatic tension outside of pure symbolism. It's a world-building element. It's not the MacGuffin that solves the conflict. If you're going to blame anything, it should be Azem's soulstone.

Even Azem's soulstone didn't quite resolve the conflict with Meteion. It allowed the scions and the WoL to move into a position where we could confront the Endsinger directly. But immediately after that, the scions were all blown away into space, and the WoL was forced to use the teleportation device to get them all to safety.

After that point, there were two central conflicts to be solved. The first was the physical confrontation with the Endsinger. The second was the matter of reaching Meteion on an emotional level.

The first was solved by Zenos showing up in a manner that kind of was a deus-ex-machina, but in a good way in my opinion. He literally breaks into the scene and gives the WoL the means to fight the Endsinger directly, but doesn't actually resolve the conflict directly. And this where FFXIV's nature as video game differentiates it from other forms of literature, you're allowed to solve violent conflict by directly asking the player to do it through gameplay.

And even the fight itself has a narrative. After the Endsinger seemingly destroys you, the prayers and hopes of the scions reach you, and gives you the strength to finally defeat the Endsinger (represented by the enormous potency buffs you get after that.) And that mirrors both the prayer scene of the scions in the very first cutscene of ARR, and reinforces the themes of Ultima Thule that state that even if your friends aren't physically with you, their hopes and prayers can propel you forward.

As for the second, emotional conflict. That was resolved by showing compassion and kindness to Meteion directly, and sharing with her both your pain and your hopes. Sure, kind of simple, but sometimes the answer to despair is to just reach out and give someone comfort.

The point being that neither dynamis, nor Azem's soulstone actually ever resolved the conflict. They were just there to help move the WoL to be in a position where they could solve the conflict themselves.