Thread: On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

Originally Posted by Kozh

Uh, not really. Why would it be a trolley problem when the 8UC still exist? G'raha can't return because he's tied to CT and doesn't see the reason to go back to his timeline (after living in the First for 100 years). Plus he kinda died before any attempt was made, so...

Let's just say, if the writer wants to have both an AU and WoL returning to their timeline, it can easily be done.


Why? It's supposed to be a heroic thing to do, isn't it? After all that's what the 8UC Ironworks did. Sacrifice themselves so that other generation can be spared the pain of experiencing it.

G'raha and the generations of Ironworks engineers in the 8UC sacrificed their own timeline for the sake of another, flipped the switch the trolley towards themselves, and now face an uncertain future. 8UC still exists but now they have a further weakened Hydaelyn and a further strengthened Zodiark along with 2 of 3 Unsundered Ascians still kicking. Things look a bit better in the short term that Midgardsormr woke up and decided to lead humanity into the next era, but that world isn't safe from the Rejoining and it could and probably would still happen in that timeline.

If we're dealing with some combination of Bill & Ted and Back to the Future-style time travel, then there's no way according to our (limited) knowledge of how timelines work here that would allow you to make sweeping changes to the timeline and return to the unaltered timeline you came from. By all evidence, G'raha's journey was a one-way trip.


Everything the WoL has done in the game up to and including EW was to save their own world from the Ascians. It would be out of character for them to forget all of that for a world they barely know about that has an uncertain future and was Sundered partly for the express purpose of being able to save them from the cosmic dilemma both worlds were facing. We already know that Venat's plan worked because we lived it and to try to save the Ancients could jeopardize our own world's existence, especially since there's still stuff happening in the MSQ that threatens the world if the WoL doesn't show up to save it because they decided to play with the Ancients.

The reasons the writers gave like memory wipes, aether too strong to interact with Dynamis, and that Hermes would stonewall any attempt at solving anything if he found out the truth are all admittedly weak. But at the same time story exists in MMO form, the story about the Ascians' origins hasn't even been a concept for half the game's lifespan, and everything revolves around our world being more important to the characters and the story than that of the Ancients so we're not likely to get any happy ending for them.

Even if there's "an AU where WoL helped save the Ancients from Meteion without the aid of a God of Darkness", the player will still have to return to our original world where the Ancient world was Sundered and the Ascians lost in order to continue our adventures and play in the living MMO world. There's always going to be one where things went bad for them, so to have the narration say "well, in one of three existing worlds, the Ancients are happy in their own different, un-interactable timeline" changes nothing except gives some people warm and fuzzies. But I guess that's what fan fiction can be for, just means it's not canon unless we're also dealing with a story where every action makes its own, separate timeline in a sea of infinite timelines.

Originally Posted by Kozh

If it's still exist, then it's no trolley problem at all.

It exists, but is almost certainly doomed. 2 Unsundered Ascians are still around to continue the Rejoinings and re-mantle lost Sundered Ascians. Hydaelyn in our own timeline was barely strong enough to possess Krile to speak to us, let alone provide the same amount of direct assistance she did in ARR in confrontations with the Ascians. Future WoLs will not have the same advantage we had.

Originally Posted by Kozh

If. And again, there's lack of evidence considering there hasn't any attempt made by G'raha to go back to his timeline, iirc.

It's a trope in most time travel media that if you time travel back to the future after changing the past, you go to the new timeline's future and stay on the same timeline instead of skipping over whole timelines. I don't see why this would be any different unless the writers want to go out of their way to make some AU Ancients happy.

Originally Posted by Kozh

Wow, so selfish. Louisoux would be rolling in his grave if he learned about this. Should we decide to stay, we could potentially save many more people in the long run. Not just the Ancients, but probably the aliens too. Who knows how many planets died in the span of 12k years while Hydaelyn waited for the WoL. And hey, the WoL won't be alive forever, shouldn't the sundered learn to take care of themselves by now?

This is an MMO so we have to deal with the limitations of having to be chained to the original world and always having new threats to face until the service ends.

We're the player character. We're not going to sacrifice ourselves and become unplayable. The writing around Elpis wasn't great and the dance around time travel repercussions was awkward, but it's silly to suggest that there's a better end for the Ascians they could've gotten or that our WoL needs to pull out all the stops to save them. It's a trolley problem because either their world exists or our world exists. In the timeline that our world exists, theirs cannot. One world needs to end in order for the other to continue. Opening up room for both to exist simultaneously in separate unique timelines is meaningless because in the timeline that will always be playable that we have been in for a decade, the Ancients have to die in order for it to exist so there will always be a failed world of dead Ancients that got Sundered no matter what you do.

They could have made a throwaway line that would affect a whole other timeline of Ancients, but it still won't change the fact that in our timeline they die and I'd rather the story address the ones who have direct involvement with our timeline rather than a separate one that won't matter. Ultimately the Ancients are backstory for the world and an explanation for the Ascians long after the Ascians were originally written, they're not the main event.

I'm always very confused as to how people don't understand FFXIV's time travel rules. It's actually remarkably consistent given the different types of stories they've told with it. Basically, there's two possible results for what happens:

1. You create a stable time loop, where the stuff that happens are just how it always happens; this runs on Bill & Ted logic. This is what happened (several times) in Alexander, it's what we were doing in Elpis with Venat's knowing help, and it's what we did in Pandaemonium with the unknowing help of everyone there.

2. You create a new timeline and orphan the old; that timeline is now inaccessible, either in total or just with the techniques we've got. This runs on Dragon Ball logic with extra tragedy, the Crystal Exarch is basically Trunks. This only happened once, with the Crystal Exarch, but is underlined as basically a failure condition by Elidibus when we're traveling to Elpis.

We don't exactly know what causes one to happen but not the other, save that evidently we were at risk of causing the second while going to Elpis; natural assumption is that actually setting the time loop into motion/doing something that definitely COULDN'T be a time loop does it, but we don't have any proof of that. For all we know, the determiner is whether or not we eat cheese on the trip.

I don't see what people's difficulty is, except for perhaps just really wishing it was different to the point where they ignore the reasons it's not. I dunno, maybe it's because I grew up on Doctor Who, which tuck carefully to the time travel rule of 'it works how this specific story needs it to work', so I've got a solid training in not demanding too much of time travel rules.


And as for Themis... well, I wasn't a fan.

Setting aside Athena (who I think the story wasted but that's beside the point), Themis was my least favorite part of the story. And to understand why, I think it's worth contrasting with how Anabeisos especially treated Lahabrea, which was my favorite part of the story. With Lahabrea, the game is very conscious that yes, this is the same guy that caused us so many problems; he hasn't done them yet by his timeline, but he is very clearly the man who will do them. In Abyssos, we're allowed the options to not trust him because of that. And in Anabeisos, we have that scene where he grapples with learning the things he will do, and has no ability to stop himself doing--and we're allowed to give it to him very bluntly and matter-of-factly. I think a hugely valuable part of humanizing a villain like that is the story grappling with the villainous things they did, and that one Lahabrea scene does that in a way that no other Ascian story truly did.

All of this is also true of Elidibus... but despite this, the game never turns that same critical eye to Themis. Even in Anabeisos, when we don't have the argument of 'he hasn't done those things yet', because it is confirmably exactly Elidibus, who already did those things. We basically just skip over the many times when he tried to destroy our world (and sometimes us specifically), with the casual wave-away of 'oh he wasn't all there', and... no, that doesn't fly with me, especially because he's the reason he was in that state in the first place. If the game wants me to look at a villain as a sympathetic person, it needs to not ignore the villainous things they did, and while they did well with that with Lahabrea, 'ignore the villainous things' was exactly what they did with Elidibus.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

I'm always very confused as to how people don't understand FFXIV's time travel rules. It's actually remarkably consistent given the different types of stories they've told with it. Basically, there's two possible results for what happens:

Cleretic, you can't just laud a a plot device as "remarkably consistent" if it's only been used three times, and one out of those three it worked entirely differently for reasons you admit are largely ambiguous. That's a terrible consistency rate versus the sample size.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

no, that doesn't fly with me, especially because he's the reason he was in that state in the first place.

He was in that state because he sacrificed himself to stop the Final Days destroying the planet. Everything morally wrong (or arguably so, for the undefined third sacrifice) the Convocation decided to do came after Zodiark was created.