Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Gortys]

You know, the problem with attacking me on a position I did not take, is that you will always miss me.

It wasn't meant necessarily as you personally, but more as I don't see anyone pointing this out either.

But some would say not taking a position on what I wrote is taking a position and implicitly approving it.

[Alaray]

I also love how people are so certain of what's alive or not in FF XIV.
I'd love people who're on that camp clearly define what it means to be alive in XIV according to the lore right now, and then define what consciousness/sapience/self-awareness are on top so we can label things as "alive" and "not-alive" or "intelligent, creative consciousness" and "AI chatbots" clearly. They clearly seem to know.

Personally, I don't really care about the lore in this case. Not because I dislike world building, or find it useless and pointless, but there is a line where an analysis of a story as it's written and presented is more important to me than making sure every single brick fits neatly within cohesive diegetic boxes from the many disparate stories that exist within the game itself (with multiple writers contributing to it over the span of years). A rose in one story may mean, or symbolize, one thing; a rose in another may mean the opposite, and the context to know which is what would be where that rose is blooming.

I do feel the intended idea of this specific story is as I mentioned (above somewhere) since that is how it reads, that is how the language is couched and the characters presented in their statements, behaviors etc... in conjunction with the heavy talk of commemorating the dead prior, from a civilization influenced from this one, as well with the ending context showcasing:

A somber graveyard, filled with blackened tombstones etched with memories once projected onto the eternal play place that now lies dormant.

(well, barring gameplay purposes).

What you're going for, to me, feels almost like a completely separate discussion wherein you're more trying to figure out what the internal mechanics of the world(s) FFXIV encompasses would classify "Living" and "Dead" as (or, even, in-universe philosophy regarding "what does it mean, to be 'alive'?"), versus this specific story's theme and statement as it presents itself with the context it exists within.

[AddictedToWitches]

Snip[/I]"?
But ty for illustrating my point, it's all just "next level cope" and whatnot.

Bo the endless are literally ghosts, they are not living creatures, this is such a stupid analogy to make my man.
Read the MSQ dude, READ. You are told this multiple times. These are facsimiles of people, memories, ghosts. They are long dead, and Sphene's living memory was barely sustainable. Sphene was killing people in order to preserve what were essentially advanced AI chatbots based on dead people. Everyone hammers home multiple times that it's fucked up that they are continuing to live like this, and not even all of the endless either, just a few at a time and the algorithm specifically plans out meetings of people who knew each other. It's a hollow existence. You are ushering on the dead. You are letting go. That's the point. The lights go out in living memory because you need to learn to let go. You need to teach Sphene to let go. This is all foreshadowed in the Yok Huy segment, where it's hammered in that even when people are long dead, they live on through the memories of those close to them. As long as they aren't forgotten, they will never truly die. So keeping them in a hollow endless dream is madness.
And before you start with me again, need I remind you that this almost PERFECTLY mirrors Emet and the Ascians as well. We defied the Ascians because we are protecting all of our people, despite knowing the Ascians' plans to revive their people. We defy Sphene because we are protecting our people, the only difference is instead of Sphene actively reviving her people, she's parading around hollow memories of them, not even the real living beings.
Earlier people mentioned "Well why not genocide the Omicrons?" The Omicrons are a dead race, what few exist in Ultima Thule are merely just existing, and posing no threat to basically anyone.
Also very very epic argument on your part belittling my intelligence, that certainly helped your argument and didn't entirely destroy any remaining respect I might have had for you.

[LuciferMournstar]

But... They can interact with the real world. The entire story is predicated on Cahciua, an endless, leaving via a robot to plot against Sphene. I don't understand why everyones acting like they're just empty replays of old memories when they constantly show that they're sentient and capable of aspiration. These aren't faded recordings of dead people on repeat like the shades in Amaurot, these are the memories of dead people continuing to live. I mean for gods sake we literally see one of them attain a happier memory and change before our eyes. Yes allowing them to persist as is is out of the question, the needs of all shards outweigh a single city, of course it does. I just cannot see the warrior of light or the scions not even bothering to discuss this obvious ethical dilemma, theres more discussion in this thread about the Endless than we get in the game itself. It just feels incredibly shallow that none of the characters we know stop to think about this, given everything we went through redefining the definition of what it means to be "alive" over the past 4 years. That's my issue.

To me the total disinterest in this from both the game and people in this thread showcases a weird and unfortunate shift from topics this game used to excel at and relish exploring. Now we're told to just not think about it too much.

There is a reason for that out of character shift and why we're "not supposed to think about it too much", but it's IRL politics. Last time I tried to explain that, all that happened was I got called paranoid and crazy. Let's just say, they want you to "just accept the message and let it happen."

[Galvuu]

snip.

You kind of touch on the problem yourself. All these stories are meant to take place in the same universe, which should have a consistent set of laws/rules. Even if you want to approach a different theme or subject matter, as you're working in a per-established universe, you're constrained (or, well, you should be) to the previously established rules.
Otherwise you get some of the laziest writing where anything goes. The story isn't divorced from the mechanics of the world it takes part- yes, it's fiction, you have liberty to set the rules, but that doesn't equate to being able to change those rules, once established, to whatever you want arbitrarily. Or rather, technically you can do that, it just leads to a bunch of inconsistencies and bad writing.
Which really is the problem, isn't it? Yes, sure, you can make a new story in XIV where the element of Darkness is now shown to be that of stasis instead of Light, or where the Sundering actually created 37 shards and we just didn't know, or where there were actually 11 moons in the world, or where souls don't reincarnate, or where you can defeat primals by throwing a banana at them because banana-aether is primal-destroying and the Heart of Sabik was a banana all along. You definitely can write all of that to drive a specific point- but that's just shoddy writing that retroactively undermines all the previous work and established lore/world-building.
If this is truly the way XIV wants to go, just ignore the lore/world-building. Just stop wasting time with Encyclopedia Eorzeas and trying to make a logical framework of things because nothing matters. It can be retconned or changed at the whim of any random future author to fit whatever nonsense message they have in their minds.
I find this to be appalling, but maybe people like it. Still doesn't change the fact it will raise a lot of questions.

snip.

If I read then the argument that the Ultima Thule beings aren't live can certainly be made. Which is probably why you immediately deflected it "those are ok because they're not hurting anyone!". The beings in Ultima Thule are either alive, or are not. Same for the Endless. I'm not pretending to have a definitive answer based on what the game has shown throughout the entirety of its lore/writing across all expansions, because the game changes its mind when its convenient. I dunno why you keep mentioning the "defy Sphene" thing. I've been saying every time, we were justified in destroying the Endless- I'm not arguing we shouldn't have done that. I'm wondering if we destroyed something that was somewhat alive, or not, or somewhat in-between. But yes, read, because what's written doesn't somewhat contradict what was written before. Maybe in 8.0 there are new not-Endless who don't need souls but are the same in every other way and the game goes "these things are alive!" (like they did with Omega/Alpha/Ultima Thule/etc) and then they retroactively become alive. Until 9.0 needs them to retro-retroactively become not-alive for some reason.

[Boblawblah]

There is a reason for that out of character shift and why we're "not supposed to think about it too much", but it's IRL politics. Last time I tried to explain that, all that happened was I got called paranoid and crazy. Let's just say, they want you to "just accept the message and let it happen."

Why do I get the feeling that these "IRL politics" you're talking about are somehow related to "woke ideology" or something similar? idk, I'm just getting an alt-right vibe, let me know if I'm wrong though.

[LuciferMournstar]

Why do I get the feeling that these "IRL politics" you're talking about are somehow related to "woke ideology" or something similar? idk, I'm just getting an alt-right vibe, let me know if I'm wrong though.

As if you don't know, considering you were one of the people to go after me. "Alt-right" and more buzzwords you use to cancel anyone who brings attention to something you want kept quiet and not brought attention to. "Let me know if if I'm wrong though", don't play coy with me.

[AlysCamoa]

Bo the endless are literally ghosts, they are not living creatures, this is such a stupid analogy to make my man.
Read the MSQ dude, READ. You are told this multiple times. These are facsimiles of people, memories, ghosts. They are long dead, and Sphene's living memory was barely sustainable. Sphene was killing people in order to preserve what were essentially advanced AI chatbots based on dead people. Everyone hammers home multiple times that it's fucked up that they are continuing to live like this, and not even all of the endless either, just a few at a time and the algorithm specifically plans out meetings of people who knew each other. It's a hollow existence. You are ushering on the dead. You are letting go. That's the point. The lights go out in living memory because you need to learn to let go. You need to teach Sphene to let go. This is all foreshadowed in the Yok Huy segment, where it's hammered in that even when people are long dead, they live on through the memories of those close to them. As long as they aren't forgotten, they will never truly die. So keeping them in a hollow endless dream is madness.
And before you start with me again, need I remind you that this almost PERFECTLY mirrors Emet and the Ascians as well. We defied the Ascians because we are protecting all of our people, despite knowing the Ascians' plans to revive their people. We defy Sphene because we are protecting our people, the only difference is instead of Sphene actively reviving her people, she's parading around hollow memories of them, not even the real living beings.
Earlier people mentioned "Well why not genocide the Omicrons?" The Omicrons are a dead race, what few exist in Ultima Thule are merely just existing, and posing no threat to basically anyone.
Also very very epic argument on your part belittling my intelligence, that certainly helped your argument and didn't entirely destroy any remaining respect I might have had for you.

It’s funny that you call other people speed-readers while ignoring the game’s lore yourself. Classic.
Suggestion for you: go read the Unending Codex entry on souls that got added this very patch.
Also, consider whether Cahciua telling us something- immediately after requesting we do a horrific action that would never otherwise be considered- means her words are objective truth in-universe, or her own biased outlook.

Unrelated to you, I had a real good laugh reading a reply that says Endless don’t respond to stimuli. That’s a good one, gamers. Almost as good as ‘they’re copies’ or ‘they’re chatGPT’.

[Boblawblah]

As if you don't know, considering you were one of the people to go after me. "Alt-right" and more buzzwords you use to cancel anyone who brings attention to something you want kept quiet and not brought attention to. "Let me know if if I'm wrong though", don't play coy with me.

I'll be honest, I remember your name because it seems intentionally provocative, but I don't remember anything you've said in the past. If we've clashed before though, yea, that answers the question. I'll leave you to it.

[Magikazam]

It actually doesn't matter if the Endless are alive. The intention behind turning them off is still of the utmost importance.

It does matter for the quality of the story. you know like, the thing the game is known for.

I'll be honest, I remember your name because it seems intentionally provocative, but I don't remember anything you've said in the past. If we've clashed before though, yea, that answers the question. I'll leave you to it.

Biblical references are provocative now? You sure you ain't a fisher main? Cause that bait be looking juicy rn.