Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[AnotherPerson]

If Asahi was in the Lifestream the whole time, where is he watching everything from? We were there. It’s just thick aether. Are you saying he can magically part clouds and watch from above like a cartoon?

The only thing that makes sense is that he was there as a spirit, which means he wasn’t in the Lifestream. The encyclopedia says this can happen, as does the presence of ghost enemies in-game. The souls of the dead indeed are generally called to the Lifestream, but it doesn’t always happen.

How else does Hyadelyn watch everything going on in the Aetherial Sea and have full knowledge of what's happening? They just do. Plotwise it's not mentioned how they do it but they just have the ability to do so from the Lifestream. According to FF7, the Lifestream contains the essence of the planet and the memories, emotions, memory, knowledge of all who have lived on it. The Aetherial Sea/lifestream in FF14 has shown to be able to recollect memories that were thought to be lost in their lifetime. We also know people who teleport travel through the lifestream with a beacon to their destination after being reduced to an aetheric consciousness before arriving at their destination. Hyadelyn has the ability to drag a person's consciousness into the Aetherial Sea to communicate. In all likelihood, they were just naturally able to gather the information in the Aetherial Sea because the Aetherial Sea makes that information readily available for them to see.

The full quote from your examples:
Heavenly Yuki - Some cultures believe that when the dead are not provided proper burials, their souls remain trapped in the corporeal realm. Attuned to the scent of mortality, these tormented spirits seek out their neglected remains and “possess” them in much the same manner voidsent inhabit vessels to facilitate their entry into our plane, leading some scholars to draw the conclusion there may be some connection between the void and the afterlife.

Revenant Things FATE - Sometimes, people are unaware when the end knocks, and their souls miss the opportunity to journey back into the Lifestream. These wretched creatures are known as revenants, and they need your help in realizing there is no place for them in this realm.

Hunt: Flame Sergeant Dalvag - “Flame Sergeant Dalvag was among the thousands of defenders who met the Garlean invasion force in northern Thanalan soon after the Calamity. His company was ill placed to hold their position, yet given strict orders not to retreat." "Many fell, and suffered much in the falling. Multiple witnesses attest that Dalvag was the last of the company and fought as a man possessed till the end, the names of the dead tumbling in hoarse barks through cracked lips. Scholars theorize that his mortal remains are animated by a thirst for vengeance alone. Flame Sergeant Dalvag is classified as a Voidsent (Persona).

Hunt: Alben the Ashen - “When the Hyuran tribe came to Thanalan some eight hundred years ago, Albin the Ashen was at the head of one of the columns." "Then-native Belah'dians rose against the invaders and prevailed, as history records. Albin was but one of many slain in the abortive conquest, yet his mortal coil still roams the land in search of vengeance.” Alben the Ashen is classified as a Ashkin (Zombie).

Heavenly Yuki and Revenants have *corporeal forms*. Asahi is neither a Heavenly Yuki (he did not possess his own body as Fandaniel is inhabiting it) nor a Revenant (He is fully aware of his corpse was hijacked, so it's not as if he unaware he is dead).

As for Flame Sergeant Dalvag, his race is considered a Voidsent, specifically the race of the persona. Asahi is most assuredly not a voidsent.

We learn a bit more lore on what happens to Flame Sergeant Dalvag from Dalvag's Final Flame. Much is told of the corpse-soldier, Flame Sergeant Dalvag, yet mainstream scholarship has lagged woefully on the matter of what became of the rest of him.
Efforts by hunter-scholars with intimate knowledge of northern Thanalan have resulted in persuasive identification of a malevolent local demon as the late sergeant's spirit. This one's race is considered an Ashkin (Bhoot).

Ashkin represent beings which, at one time, were full to bursting with vigor, but, for some reason (most commonly death), have that life energy drained of them leaving naught but a shell—a shell that is then reanimated by some outside means, denying the creature's thoroughgoing return, be it either physical or spiritual, to the Lifestream. Ashkin are united by the characteristic that they cannot die in the conventional sense of the word. While the precise origins of many beings in this class are shrouded in mystery, naturalists theorize that many ashkin are created when souls are prevented from rejoining the Lifestream, causing them to take on grotesque forms and haunt the material plane in search of peace that never comes.

None of this applies to Asahi as he himself was not reanimated after having his life energy drained. His body is also not impervious to death, nor did his body take on a grotesque form.

Zombie - These undead soldiers are created through dark rites of forbidden spellcraft. Though slow and shambling, zombies are relentless and terrifying foes who know neither pain nor fear. The incredible feats achieved by the Immortal Flames of old gave rise to the rumor that the Grand Company's ranks harbored the living dead—a claim which the Ul'dahn royal palace declared unworthy of comment.

Asahi is neither an Ashkin or a zombie. He was not recreated as an undead with spellcraft.

[OMGJesuis66]

Damn. People are realizing that Endwalker was the one that broke the stablished lore of the Aetherial Sea and dead people, not Dawntrail. Imagine that.

[MikkoAkure]

They just do.

So instead of the simple answer that a vengeful, murdered guy becomes a ghost and just watches it happen, your answer is that everyone who dies suddenly gains omniscience on the level of the elder primal that has been taking care of the Lifestream for 12,000 years and they magically know everything?

[AnotherPerson]

So instead of the simple answer that a vengeful, murdered guy becomes a ghost and just watches it happen, your answer is that everyone who dies suddenly gains omniscience on the level of the elder primal that has been taking care of the Lifestream for 12,000 years and they magically know everything?

You should direct that question to the writers. I'm not the one who wrote the story. They are the ones who wrote the lore and plot and made the playerbase question the ethics of Living Memory.

[Carolingian]

A big problem with the Endless is that what we're being shown contradicts completely with what we're being told.

Everything we see in Living Memory points to the Endless being their own sentient people who hear, feel, and think like every other person on Etheirys. They're intelligent, self-aware, and conscious. We even see them pass the Turing Test. Yet what we're being told constantly by Cahciua (and others like Erenville who copy her words) is that they're just "facsimiles constructed from someone's memory" and therefore erasing them is fine. And it's that contradiction which causes the confusion and debate.

The writers had three options when it came to the Endless:
1) They're sentient/alive and their own individual people
2) They're not sentient/alive and not their own individual people
3) It's not clear whether they're really sentient/alive and whether they are their own individual people

Each of those scenarios could have made for a great story as long as what we were being told and what we were being shown was the same.

But we didn't get that. We were shown that scenario 1 was going on, but were being told that we're dealing with scenario 2. And because of that the Scions/WoL never really care too much about shutting down the terminals beyond feeling a bit sad about losing Cahciua. But apart from that everyone is just completely fine with it and they barely care.

If they wanted to keep things vague on purpose and went with scenario 3 there should have at least been some discussion amongst the Scions about whether or not this was the right course of action. Some philosophical debate. And also some hints and teases that would have pointed to the Endless maybe not being completely sentient after all. But instead we got this contradictory mess.

Even if they went full in on scenario 1 it could still have ended with us having the erase them all. If anything if the Endless were treated as real people by the Scions and the WoL the story would have ended up being even more tragic. I can only imagine the desperation of the Scions to come up with an alternative solution and finally being forced to choose erasure.

But right now it really feels like the writers wrote a story but didn't want to go too serious and mature so they needed to soften it up by making it extra clear that erasing the Endless isn't actually bad. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the scene in Shaaloani where we're being shown a gun duel only to then be told "don't worry, they're just rubber bullets, there aren't any actual bad things going on here".

[Turtledeluxe]

How did EW break anything? In case no one noticed, both Endless and the dead are restricted to a localized area that isn't part of the tangible world we live in, hence your useless attempts to compare them to races who live in the actual world. They're in data, or in the case of the Aetherial Sea, a world of the dead.

It's like talking about the rights and sentience of beings who live in a black hole.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

So instead of the simple answer that a vengeful, murdered guy becomes a ghost and just watches it happen, your answer is that everyone who dies suddenly gains omniscience on the level of the elder primal that has been taking care of the Lifestream for 12,000 years and they magically know everything?

Emet-Selch is narrating EW from the afterlife. He's complaining he can't get a proper rest because he's watching to make sure we don't botch it and there is still a star to reincarnate back to when he wakes up. The fight for our continued existence is the "clamorous show" he's complaining is disturbing his rest. So yes, the people in the aetherial sea can see what we're doing. That's how Haurchefant and Yasale know to show up to help us free Estinien because they can see us and know we need help. So yes, the dead in the FF14 universe are "watching over us" but from below instead of above. That's made perfectly clear from the short stories, EW and the time we went tromping through the aetherial sea.

The people in the FF14 universe don't just immediately lose consciousness or self-awareness the moment they die. They can fade slowly and wait for their loved ones to join them in the aetherial sea. "At duty's end, we will meet again. We will. We will." They know how their own afterlife works. They can literally dig a hole and visit it.

And it's a process that can be resisted. Something Amon fully intended to do because he wants to stay dead and not be reincarnated, but Asahi's punishment for what he did was to drag him forcefully to the bottom of the aetherial sea so that he'd reincarnate faster.

[Eraden]

Peoples STILL arguing abouts this? Mao has solution. (Mao bites machine whats making makes-believe place and shuts it all down forevers) There! No more makes-believe place with nots-peoples whats Mao can't eat.

[SamSmoot]

Why we do even have to erase them instead of just shutting the system down? We know that only 1/10 of Endless are online, so that means they can be kept archived offline for no or much less energy. We could just put them all offline temporarily, without erasing the data itself, and take any amount of time to search for the solution of their problem.

Perhaps the servers have no mass storage, and everything is kept in RAM, and there's no sleep mode, but only full shutdown, which is needed to delete Sphene (and everyone else as collateral damage.)

[Destati]

So, the moment I saw Sphene in the Dawntrail key art she struck me as a character I knew I was going to hate. And I was right.

I already had a bunch of issues with Dawntrail's MSQ refusing to dip into what could be intriguing and complex issues beyond a superficial level which I will save for another time but the way Solution Nine/Sphene/Alexandria was handled really took the cake with that. In fact, I remember the music distinctly having a cue of "this is a rather ghoulish and eerie subject" during the cutscenes involving the Endless/Souls/etc. But none of the characters really stop to question or criticize it.
I also take issue with how "clean" Everkeep or whatever it's called is. There are times where it almost dips into dystopian territory but it just... doesn't? It's all just a Utopia with no real consequences, even for the people of Tural who were assimilated. Like, I'm surprised Sphene didn't try to round up the Turali people to use as soul fodder for her people until she set her sights on the rest of the source. That would have made things a bit more dark an interesting IMO.

I have not reached the end of the MSQ yet; I needed to stop for a little while once Cahcuia told us we need to shut everyone off. Because I was baffled by how easy of a choice that was to make, and it bothers me because it really shouldn't be. But I know the rest of the zone is going to make a weak argument on why it's right/wrong to kill everyone. At this point, I'm ready to just flip the switch out of spite for Sphene. We've had Hades, we've had Golbez, but now Sphene has the most irritating motivation for her wanting to destroy our world to save hers. And it's even more irritating that the game refuses to do something interesting or meaningful with the concept of reusing souls, everlasting life/memory, and the ethics/consequences of using them.