Problematic notion about Zone 5 & 6 story bits.

[Alenore]

There's a lot I wanted to say but can't because of the text limit and rather than post like three different posts in response, I'll sum it up...

You're still forgetting one very important thing. The Endless themselves say they are not alive. The Scions were initially apprehensive but they were told they were just digitalized memories given form, but not living creatures.

We have no reason to believe that this was a lie.

You can edit your post to bypass the 3000 characters limit.

Wuk Lamat: It is wrong to sacrifice others to sustain the Endless. This, I firmly believe. But talking to you now, you seem as real as any of us. And if you need an answer right away, I don't know if I can give it. Is there a reason we must act so soon?
Cahciua: Because, as you've just said, it's wrong to sacrifice others to sustain us. Remember, we need life force - other forms of aether don't cut it.
.....
.....
Erenville: But does this need to be done now? Can't we stop Sphene first, and then take it from there?
Cahciua: It's precisely in order to stop Sphene that it must be done now. Her own memories are stored within the Meso Terminal, which stands at the heart of Living Memory. As you would expect, the terminal's defenses are extremely tight. But it has moments of vulnerability, such as when it has just finished calculations, which we can exploit to shut it down from within. Whilewe wait for that opening, we erase the Endless. Once we are gone, Sphene will no longer have a reason to plunder aether from other worlds.

Cahciua doesn't deny they have their own existence, albeit at the cost of others.
Also, the whole point of erasing Endless was to make Sphene realize she didn't have to plunder other worlds. Didn't really work, right? What was it all for?

Krile: There's sense in your strategy, and in reoslving to stop Sphene, we had anticipated that it might come to this. But to actually talk about erasing the Endless... is difficult.
Cahciua: You needn't feel any guilt. No matter how lifelike we may seem, we Endless are but facsimiles crafted from memories. Besides, stopping Sphene requires that you shut down the Meso Terminal, which sustains all of us. Sooner or later, it will need to be done. If we are to be erased, then let it be before more people come to harm. Living, breathing people with futures they deserve to experience.

What difference with the recreations in Ultima Thule? We try to make them move on, we build a café there, and we've seen it even led to new life.
I don't even get the second half, since stopping Sphene requires shutting down the Meso Terminal before she manages to fusion and so harvest souls. There's no point shutting them down here and there, but I digress.


Now, you say Endless themselves say they're not living. That's true for Cahciua, who's from the Source, and Krile's parents (who wanted to erase themselves before their knowledge could be used). However, let's see what other Endless think when we approach them:

Genial Endless: I couldn't be more grateful for the chance to spend these blessed little moments together again. I have no more regrets. Whether Her Majesty's plan succeeds or no, I can rest with peace in my heart.
Milalla: I'm so glad we can be together again...
Hyune: I want to stay forever like that...
Petra: A most wondrous thing has happened─my mother was recently reunited with a good friend of hers. I imagine they're doing their best to make up for lost time, speaking of all that has happened since last they met.
Sapphire: But the Endless have greatly diminished, the buildings in the distance have grown dark... What will come next, I wonder?
Hyune: I wouldn't trade these quiet moments for anything.
Floating Milalla: This is the life...
Mozeo: I'll not deny my work as a courier was fulfilling, but look around. We have everything we could ever want here.
Euclase: I myself have been reincarnated three times now (note the "reincarnated")
Euclase again: ...The're a part of me that wonders if this is wrong. Not that I expect us to exist forever, even in this form. But to be with the one I love once again and make her happy, However wrong this world may be, I have nothing but gratitude for Queen Sphene.
Otis: Be at ease, one and all. So long as I, Ser Otis, live and breathe, no citizen shall come to harm!

They clearly sound like people who think they're not living, right? I mean, it's literally in the name of the place. LIVING Memory. They acknoewledge they died, were reincarnated, and live a new life there. And even if some npc do say they don't want to live at the depend of others, others like Euclase are fine with it even if it's wrong, and others don't even give it a thought because they enjoy themselves here. Multiple of them use the word "live".

Meanwhile, the text of the game specifically states that Emet's view on the worthiness of our life was wrong and that the Sundered had every right to life.

The text written from the perspective of Eorzean, yes. If that subject was so easy to figure out, there wouldn't have been pages upon pages of debate about Venat and Emet in this forum.

Don't get me wrong; parts of that story certainly had problems. It felt like it was a bit too heavy of an anti-AI allegory even deal with the whole sustainability problem... But people are flat out ignoring the text and trying to read things into it.

Are we to ignore every NPC who have no problem being in living memory and enjoy their new life? Alexandrian who say those taken to the cloud are there to live forever?
Which again, isn't "living" by Eorzean standards. But Alexandrian think it is.

[Cleretic]

Also, the whole point of erasing Endless was to make Sphene realize she didn't have to plunder other worlds. Didn't really work, right? What was it all for?

It also had the effect of messing with Living Memory's process queue, creating the gap that we later use to get into the Terminal to deal with her ourselves. That part did work.

What also happened was the element Wuk Lamat added to the whole process: actually talking to and learning about the Endless, to ensure that they didn't go silently. Remember, Living Memory created the deep irony where nobody could remember them, despite Alexandria having the belief that people live as long as they're remembered; without Wuk Lamat's willingness to talk to everyone, they would just be... gone. By Alexandria's own beliefs, Living Memory's denizens would be deader than dead.

Speaking of, I wonder if you actually did learn about those people.

Are we to ignore every NPC who have no problem being in living memory and enjoy their new life? Alexandrian who say those taken to the cloud are there to live forever?
Which again, isn't "living" by Eorzean standards. But Alexandrian think it is.

Because if you listened to all of those NPCs as you claim to, you'd know that they all generally accept what has to happen, or in the case of sidequests, already has. They know they were running on overtime, and when that final bell rang, most of them just wanted someone to say goodbye to.

You're actually falling, perhaps even worse, into exactly the thing you're accusing DreadCrow of. You claim she's ignoring 'every NPC who has no problem with being in Living Memory', but I think you're ignoring or dismissing every NPC who agrees that it has to go. And that's a bigger list, of more prominent characters; why does Euclase outclass Cahciua, Otis, Krile's parents, and every NPC given their own sidequest to you?