Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[AnotherPerson]

They won't ever add Side Content as mandatory again, or else they would've done so by making Eden mandatory.
The whole patch with Zeromus would make MUCH MORE SENSE if they brought Eden onto the 13th in order to clash Light X Darkness. The First Sin Eater, against the Primordial Darkness.
Plus, Eden can terraform the land, which would also start fixing the 13th.
Unukalhai (Heavenswater Warring Triad NPC) and Cylvia(Final Shadowbringers Role Quest), both DENIZENS of the 13th searching for a way to restore the 13th back to its former origin, as you reunite them post SHB Role Quests in the First, were not even mentioned in appearance over a whole year of Void Plots.

As canon as it may be, none of it will ever be brought into the main narrative, and yes. It creates plot holes in every single expansion. Therefore you really cannot make a base on that argument.

If that's the case, FFXIV storytelling might as well be dead and any side plot might as well not exist since they can't add onto the story and world-building to the lore. I don't look forward to future expansions with this big of a plot hole in the storytelling aspect if they can't maintain a congruous narrative.

The principle of Dynamis is still vastly alien to us, but my understanding is simple: They do not follow the compositions required for a living being. If they are dead in the aetheric sense, why Dynamis make them 'alive and kicking'? They are dead, Ultima Thule displays only extinct and dead people. Even if you make a new place for them, it is just a limbo. I hardly even believe any denizen of Ultima Thule could ever dream of going away of it, or even trying to go to Eitherys. Conjecture, all of this sentence, but we have nothing to prove or disproof it.

Dynamis and [Life] Aether are effectively two separate energy sources and are unrelated to the psyche of a person itself. Dynamis is far more flexible because it can be whatever you want as long as you can influence and accumulate enough of it. The scions don't need to know how to use Dynamis to remake Ultima Thule. Neither did Meteion. That should speak volumes about how dynamic the energy source works. It's like a black box. You don't need to know how it works to use it. It just works. Limit Break is a manifestation of it. Healer LB3 and Tank LB3 are obvious examples. That's not the same as aether because we have to manually manipulate it to a certain way to get the desired output. Dynamis can be summarized as layman's creation magicks that gets better the more you have of it. Also Meteion basically used Dynamis to make 'life' exist, so... yeah, they're alive.

What constitutes your definition of being "alive"? That it has a corporeal form? That they only run on aether? Or by the definition of living - capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction? What is it that makes someone 'live'? To breathe air? To have a beating heart? What about the alien lifeforms before they were converted in Dynamis beings like the Omnicrons? What about the Ea, who shed their corporeal forms? The dragons clearly fulfills all these requirements to be considered alive, but are they considered not alive now that they're reconstituted with dynamis? What about the Voidsent and Zero? There's a lot of things that can be defined as alive even if they are dead in the aetheric sense or don't necessarily fulfills all the requirements to be living. Heck Ascians can be considered dead because they're fundamentally a ghost / a soul that embodies a host. But after the events in Shadowbringers we can conclude they are very much 'alive' as an individual. You can survive being just a soul with the Echo. The definition of being 'alive' has constantly been refreshed throughout our journey.

To me, being able to "feel, hear, and think" are effectively the core tenets to being alive, as cliche as that may sound. Any sentient being that can do all those 3 things are considered alive to me because it shows they can react and respond to stimuli on their own accord and demonstrate growth of an individual.

And no, please, people need to stop with that quote. The Endless ARE NOT THE SAME AS THE SUNDERED. They are not alive, they do not have hopes or dreams, and they have processed data where they act according to a code of past memories, nothing more. If when alive, a person had the dream of being the best chef, naturally the Endless version would have the same 'dream'. It's their aspiration of when they are alive, something that influenced their memories and importance, but it is not the person. It cannot evolve beyond that, the best representation is a Ghost unable to move on because they have unfinished business. If people cannot accept that it's just AI, that is by far the best comparison to what an Endless is, and a Ghost ain't a person.

Yes, they are not the same person, but that doesn't stop them from being a person themselves. A better example is the Blue sidequest 'Well-wishing at the Wishing Well", where the Endless has lingering sentiments and he mentions he wants to live again in another life as a tour guide -- which makes no sense because he currently already is living his dream as an Endless. The words "And I'm proud of that. Proud of staying true to myself." means he definitely felt the influence to do something else in this new lifetime, and it was an active decision on his part that kept him as a tour guide in this life based on the stimuli he received in Living Memory. In other words, the Endless himself has the same dream that separates him from the original dead self based on the experiences he had during his time as an Endless. The Endless then become more akin to a clone with similar experiences and memories.

By the way, in definition of the game... a ghost is alive and is a person, just not in the same circumstances of being alive with flesh and blood.

Alphinaud: “Hmmm… In the past, when I sought to identify the true nature of ghosts, I came upon literature examining a similar subject. The soul was likened to a core that resides in the aether, and its presence is what differentiates us from such beings as sprites and arcane entities. Upon death, said core ordinarily dissipates alongside the aether that composed the flesh. However, it may be held together and bound to the corporeal realm, either by the will of its owner or by means of certain arts. In time, the soul may regather aether unto itself to assume another form, or find newly emerged life in which to abide. The pixies may be one such instance of this.”
Alisaie: "...If ghosts are merely souls without bodies, what does that make us? I think you've become that which you fear most, Brother dearest.”

Sentient too, in fact. Edda also exists. Edda can be considered physically dead, but her ghost pervades the City-States at 2AM Eorzean time if you haven't completed Palace of the Dead after completing Tam Tara Deepcroft. She is still alive but not in the same sense as being physically alive. She's also gotten some experiments done by the real boss of PoTD and went off the deep end since losing her fiance though.