Problematic notion about Zone 5 & 6 story bits.

[MikkoAkure]

And someone else mentioned that because they are just memories they don't go to the aetherial sea if they are erased as an endless, because it's just lines of code, so the soul has already gone it's merry way.

Up until now, I was under the impression that when a soul is used as fuel, one of two things can happen:

- In Zodiark's case, the souls were still kept intact somehow and a promise to return them was made later. This could be how Alexandrian soul use works since we see souls leave Zoraal Ja after his demise. But if this were the case, then the souls that were forcefully taken by Tuliyollal citizens or from inhabitants in Yyasulani that were used for the Endless are now stuck on a separate reflection and will never reincarnate on their home plane of existence.

- But then there's Hydaelyn's case, where the souls were used up as fuel utterly and completely. Pieces of them were able to somewhat reconstruct personalities of 13 of Her friends, but mostly it seems that everyone was converted to pure aether. The way the Alexandrians refer to souls as fuel and the living will just use them up willy nilly makes me feel like this scenario could also be the case. It could be that all the souls of all the Alexandrians since Sphene has been running things have been ruined to the point they cannot reincarnate and the energy provided by their souls' aether was converted to other means and is completely unrecoverable. The Endless left behind in the Rift when Dreamborough and other districts were accidentally separated off in Sphene's first failed fusion show that the Endless need a constant supply of aether or else they turn into monsters. I don't think that would happen if they just needed 1 soul at a time.


Either of these options has disturbing consequences when you think about them.

It's also disturbing that people who paid close attention to the story still think that ending this necromancy was a bad thing and would even go so far as to call it "genocide". If anything Alexandria got off EXTREMELY leniently with seemingly no reparations paid for forcefully fusing their reality into our own, destroying an entire region of country of Tural and absorbing its population into its own, and then deliberately attacking civilians and launching a surprise war in an attempt to empower their dead. People seem to be laser-focused on "self-aware consciousnesses" without thinking of the context they exist in or the ramifications. Players can mow down legions worth of unwilling Garlean conscripts with their conscience clean, but pulling the plug on a bunch of glorified zombies is bad because the story made you dance for them in a bunny outfit.

In ARR we have to put down Lady Amandine for killing others to keep up her undeath. Is this not the same thing? She was self-aware. As are other ashkin we kill whether or not they're monstrous like Lorelei or human-looking like Edda.

[Kirutsuki]

It's also disturbing that people who paid close attention to the story still think that ending this necromancy was a bad thing and would even go so far as to call it "genocide". If anything Alexandria got off EXTREMELY leniently with seemingly no reparations paid for forcefully fusing their reality into our own, destroying an entire region of country of Tural and absorbing its population into its own, and then deliberately attacking civilians and launching a surprise war in an attempt to empower their dead. People seem to be laser-focused on "self-aware consciousnesses" without thinking of the context they exist in or the ramifications. Players can mow down legions worth of unwilling Garlean conscripts with their conscience clean, but pulling the plug on a bunch of glorified zombies is bad because the story made you dance for them in a bunny outfit.

In ARR we have to put down Lady Amandine for killing others to keep up her undeath. Is this not the same thing? She was self-aware. As are other ashkin we kill whether or not they're monstrous like Lorelei or human-looking like Edda.

Again, what Sphene was doing was wrong. No denying that, invading another shard, stealing peoples souls and sustaining Living Memory with their deaths.
No-one really is denying that. There is however a difference between innocent people and guilty ones. Sphene's people in the Living memory were innocent to whatever she was doing.
Heck even the invading force into Tuliyollal was all Sphene, none of the Alexandrians had anything to do with it.

You can argue back and forths about what the memories are, yes at the end of the day they are not quite their original selves, but I honestly believe its not up to us to judge if they are real or just ghosts in a machine.
It's up to them, had they had the chance to prove they are something more than memories.. what then?

We are willing to mow down Garleans because the game clearly shows and states multiple times that Garleans are raised with extreme prejudice towards the free folk to the point where they literally would have killed us instead.
All of them would have, without hesitation. Not just because their leader said so, but because they were raised to hate magic wielders and their yolk. And even non combatant folk would rather kill themselves than associate with Eorzeans.

If it was so that the memories in Living Memory were ok with sustaining their own lives and were rooting for Sphene's plan to invade other reflections we would be in agreement, but that's not the case.

But ultimately I think I will just have to accept what the game is telling me instead of trying to insert something of my own into it. The game clearly states and wants the players to know that these are pure memories and there's
no wrongdoing in shutting them down even if I myself do think there is quite a bit wrong in acting as the executioner without fully understanding what you are shutting down.

[MikkoAkure]

Again, what Sphene was doing was wrong. No denying that, invading another shard, stealing peoples souls and sustaining Living Memory with their deaths.
No-one really is denying that. There is however a difference between innocent people and guilty ones. Sphene's people in the Living memory were innocent to whatever she was doing.
Heck even the invading force into Tuliyollal was all Sphene, none of the Alexandrians had anything to do with it.

In the real world, even if you personally didn't do anything wrong, if you lose a war your country will typically pay some sort of consequences, especially if they were the aggressors.

You can argue back and forths about what the memories are, yes at the end of the day they are not quite their original selves, but I honestly believe its not up to us to judge if they are real or just ghosts in a machine.
It's up to them, had they had the chance to prove they are something more than memories.. what then?

It doesn't matter whether or not they can prove themselves to be more than memories. They are the product of an institutionalized necromantic ritual involving separating the soul and memories from a corpse after death to preserve an endless undeath and their existence is just wrong. It perverts the cycle of life and death. Even animals were being sent to be killed and have their souls extracted. Would you feel the same about them if instead of science and cyberpunk and clean-looking Endless it was more like Palace of the Dead or Tam-Tara and the Endless had the same personalities but looked rotten? Just look at the Deadwalk where Endless have ran out of aether and turned into monsters. That's the outcome if we just let everything be and didn't turn them off.

We are willing to mow down Garleans because the game clearly shows and states multiple times that Garleans are raised with extreme prejudice towards the free folk to the point where they literally would have killed us instead.
All of them would have, without hesitation. Not just because their leader said so, but because they were raised to hate magic wielders and their yolk. And even non combatant folk would rather kill themselves than associate with Eorzeans.

I was specifically talking about the conscripts. The pure-blood Garleans are one thing, but the Ilsabardian and Othardian conscripts who were pulled into the army against their will are another. We kill Lupin outside Ala Mhigo who just wanted to go home but were forced to fight.