Thread: On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

Originally Posted by Cleretic

To clarify: The memories seemed to come from the memory crystal that started all this. Erich and Lahabrea were etched onto random souls, but with Themis she somehow pinned down the actual one, probably because he died very recently, which is why he remembered the events of the not-as-distant past when Lahabrea didn't. Which... yeah, actually doesn't make a lot of sense, since he'd be off in the First's aetherial sea. Hydaelyn was still alive at the time, maybe she moved him like she did Minfilia and Emet and just didn't say anything. Or maybe Athena did it (she mentioned he was proving more difficult, after all), although I'm not sure why she'd have gone through the effort.

I think it'd be mighty horrendous of Hydaelyn to not have moved his soul as well, so I think it's that.

I don't think it's inappropriate for discussions about the Ancients and their broader writing to burst their containment thread in this situation. We're talking about the end of the storyline of a character who lies at the absolute epicenter of the Sundering plotline, and specifically the tragic aspect on top of that. Even if some people are looking for a fight, it's difficult to do that without touching the poop.

As I've said previously, I don't see the time travel mechanisms as inconsistent, because the one time it resulted in a split rather than a loop is also the one time that the time traveller was both in possession of all the facts and determined to (and successful in their efforts to) change reality rather than maintain it.

It's a working theory with a small sample set, but we're yet to have an example that disproves it.

I almost agree with both sides of this - my anger with the Exarch never stronger than the disapproval of condemning the 8UE and the sop wasn’t for my WoL being saved but that his time-travel plan also reversed the Ascians’ obliteration of the First. Fantasy Absurd Utilitarian Math where two planets saved is better than one (and fourteen planets full of diversity better than one.) I count the Shards as equally valuable as the Source, so yes, Hydaelyn’s backup Moon Escape plan was as much a non-starter as me pretending Rejoinings were remotely something to desire.

The mind-boggling hypocrisy of that combat line in the Hades fight “our tragedy shall not be repeated” when the Ascians had erased all existence and memory of not just one world but done so at least seven times and counting meant that as upset at the seeming sacrifice of the 8UE made me feel paled to what the Convocation did and was planning to do. Why to this day Emet’s plea to ‘Remember Us’ makes me snort because that was a quid pro quo courtesy he was actively denying others and to us. That while it was not the intended reason that he saved Cylva and Unukalhai, I give gratitude that Elidibus plucking two people from the 13th inadvertently allowed, through our actions in the Warring Triad and Ardbert’s mercy, some memories of the 13th survived. (Then 6.2 happens…) Like how the Crystal Tower kept Future Ironworks alive in their recordings. And that if it wasn’t for the Ascian-caused Calamities, the Source would have the records of the UnSundered predecessors same as The First.

But for the UnSundered World - yes frankly as my WoL in-universe as well as myself this tiny sliver was and would never be more important than the rest of the game, its universe, and characters. And that Unsundered World, at least the little bit we interacted with? It was like Eulmore under Vauthry or Ishgard during the Dragonsong War without a large cast of interesting conflicting NPCs- a place that I immediately wanted to reform or at least not leave it functioning as it was when I entered. So sharing what info the WoL had to give them a chance or at least to plant the seeds to save their future generations without stranding ourselves in the past was what I wanted and expected. Because if I was to stay in a branching preSundered Timeline? I’d demand and work towards some cataclysmic alteration to that society and their powers which ultimately the Sundering fulfilled if to a slightly more extreme extent. I have no interest in a ‘Tales from’ outlining a branching timeline where Venat was able to carry out a plan to forestall the Final Days without the summoning of Zodiark and thus Hydaelyn, but if so, for that new setting to ring true and have appeal, for me it would have to be a world where Amaurotine society is no longer pretending that they can have a paradise where death is always a beautiful choice and that their overriding purpose is whims of creation magic under the label of ‘will of the star’.

The primary flaw with the writing of the 8UE situation is that the writers didn't go hard enough. The timeline-overwriting plan needed to hinge around the idea that there simply was no stopping or undoing the impact of Black Rose – it needed to not be a destructive historical event but an ongoing process that would freeze the whole world and spread to the shards as well, so they rushed to give the people of the past a second chance before all was irreversibly lost.

Unfortunately, they didn't do that. They held back and then tried to undo it altogether with An Unpromised Future. They confused their own storywriting and undermined their own point.

They tried to be less brutal and actually made it worse.

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Meanwhile, I go into our visits to the past with the prospect of the time loop first and foremost. Yes, it would be nice to have the freedom to tell the whole truth and save the ancients from their fate, but that is inherently impossible. There is no mere "planting the seed to save their future generations" and then retreating to your own timeline – if you've changed it, you've changed it, and still not actually undone the suffering that has already happened.

In fact, given that we cannot undo the suffering experienced so far by the ancients in this timeline, then I would argue that the best thing we can do for them is to make sure we stick around in this timeline to bring about a happy ending to what they were trying to achieve. If we vanish off into a second timeline and abandon this one, all that they went through up to now was for nothing.

Originally Posted by Iscah

Meanwhile, I go into our visits to the past with the prospect of the time loop first and foremost. Yes, it would be nice to have the freedom to tell the whole truth and save the ancients from their fate, but that is inherently impossible. There is no mere "planting the seed to save their future generations" and then retreating to your own timeline – if you've changed it, you've changed it, and still not actually undone the suffering that has already happened.

In fact, given that we cannot undo the suffering experienced so far by the ancients in this timeline, then I would argue that the best thing we can do for them is to make sure we stick around in this timeline to bring about a happy ending to what they were trying to achieve. If we vanish off into a second timeline and abandon this one, all that they went through up to now was for nothing.

Why would this timeline be doomed when meteion has been defeated? The ultimate boss has been defeated, the world has been saved and the sundered got their happy ending. What prevents us to give the alternate timeline the chance to prevent all those tragedies? Also what happy ending exactly we can achieve for them? Etheirys being saved is like a consolation prize, the Ancients are no more. The real elidibus died crying. Real Laha died knowing he failed his son. Only emet has a bit of catharsis but only because the game butcher his character into more WoL wank.

Originally Posted by Kozh

Why would this timeline be doomed when meteion has been defeated?

In this very immediate example, Claudien would have woken up Athena and we wouldn't be here to stop her.

How many more threats loom?

This world exists now and we are here to protect it.

Or we could go off and create a second world and leave this one to its fate after all that so many people have done to protect it? No thanks.

The world is never permanently "saved", it is only ever saved from a specific threat while many more lurk ahead.