Omicrons and The Endless (Do Endless Dream of Electric Sheep?)

[VoidsentStatus]

I have a bit of an issue with your assessment of G'raha's statement here as I interpreted it differently.

You seem to assume the word 'prolong' implies it is related to life, however, that isn't the case. You can prolong anything as it's definition is 'extend the duration of'.

So, from the start, 'All Men die.' Easy to see what he means there. 'If you make Endless of everyone, you will never have enough Aether to sustain them.' This then goes into killing the natural cycle of life and death. We are taking Aether out of the cycle and storing it unnaturally. Do note that G'Raha is neither saying they are alive, but he is also not explicitly stating they are dead. It is a neutral statement on the topic of alive or dead.

The last thing, 'You but prolong the inevitable', is talking about the fact that the Endless are every growing and will need an ever growing supply of Aether, one that eventually, no matter how much you try, is going to have a requirement greater than what you can supply, leading to it being shut down. The prolonging of the inevitable here is the fact, at some point, whether it is us or just nature, Sphene's hopes and dreams for her people are going to fall apart. Her idealistic vision is not going to work, no matter what.

All G'Raha has done is look at the facts and said the plan is unsustainable, that is all. There is no precedent set for whether the Endless are alive or not.

I think you're confusing your grammar as "the inevitable" is the shut down. That is death/dying which is stated at the beginning. There is no point in "the inevitable" referring to the aether shortage problem because the grammar format is supposed to link back to All men die. not All men have limited resources. or All men multiply. As for prolong, he states what is being prolonged, literally, the inevitable. Which is death. Your response does not define an alternative to what is being prolonged that would also fall under inevitable without it being death. If I was to take it that prolong is a reference to "needing endless resources", that would imply doing something to work in the opposite effect of that. Ex: Eating healthy to prolong death. The death is being prolonged by eating. Endless are not created as a means to avoid/prolong needing endless resources. They are not motive related. You also stated "taking aether out of the cycle" as if someone would go from life to some other arbitary wording that is not death. We have things that are living and things that are not living. Things that are not living do not have emotion, cognitive functionality, etc. That is what it what it means to be immortal by definition, is to be in a life only situation. Not to mention that they still die after a set point, so they haven't actuallly been removed from the cycle, they've simply hit the pause and reset button.

[LuciferMournstar]

Snip

Glad someone else made the Dynamis connection. We could have literally told Sphene about Ultima Thule, taking The Endless there, and finding a way for Endless to use Dynamis. Though NOPE, couldn't do that. Just went with the "Sphene bad, don't even mention Dynamis, just take them out." Lazy writing at best.

[Jojoya]

Repeat after me:

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fictional creations created for the purposes of a fictional story are not alive. We are simply watching the story the writer(s) wanted to tell even if our character avatars seem to give us a more personal role. Whether those creations are alive, dead, inanimate, imaginary, simulations or anything else is up to the writer(s). There is no moral onus on us.

Please help yourselves. You're taking this way too seriously.

Turn off your ChatGPU waifus, go outside and interact with the real world for a change. Can it be scary? Sure. Is there a chance you will be hurt? Yes.

There's way more to living than clinging only to your happiest memories and ignoring everything else.

[Ozmandis]

Repeat after me:

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fictional creations created for the purposes of a fictional story are not alive. We are simply watching the story the writer(s) wanted to tell even if our character avatars seem to give us a more personal role. Whether those creations are alive, dead, inanimate, imaginary, simulations or anything else is up to the writer(s). There is no moral onus on us.

Please help yourselves. You're taking this way too seriously.

Turn off your ChatGPU waifus, go outside and interact with the real world for a change. Can it be scary? Sure. Is there a chance you will be hurt? Yes.

There's way more to living than clinging only to your happiest memories and ignoring everything else.

Most L take possible.

[OMGJesuis66]

I love it when people say: "We could've taken the Endless to Ultima Thule."

NO, WE CAN'T. THOSE PEOPLE CAN'T LEAVE LIVING MEMORY. HOW DO YOU PLAN TO TAKE A PEOPLE WHO *CANNOT* MOVE FROM LIVING MEMORY, TO THE FAR END OF THE UNIVERSE, AND HOPE THAT DYNAMIS, AN UNEXPLORED MAGICKS, CAN KEEP THEM ALIVE?

[Ozmandis]

I love it when people say: "We could've taken the Endless to Ultima Thule."

NO, WE CAN'T. THOSE PEOPLE CAN'T LEAVE LIVING MEMORY. HOW DO YOU PLAN TO TAKE A PEOPLE WHO *CANNOT* MOVE FROM LIVING MEMORY, TO THE FAR END OF THE UNIVERSE, AND HOPE THAT DYNAMIS, AN UNEXPLORED MAGICKS, CAN KEEP THEM ALIVE?

Life sure is easy when you don't think or ask questions.

[Bright-Flower]

Repeat after me:

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fictional creations created for the purposes of a fictional story are not alive. We are simply watching the story the writer(s) wanted to tell even if our character avatars seem to give us a more personal role. Whether those creations are alive, dead, inanimate, imaginary, simulations or anything else is up to the writer(s). There is no moral onus on us.

Please help yourselves. You're taking this way too seriously.

Turn off your ChatGPU waifus, go outside and interact with the real world for a change. Can it be scary? Sure. Is there a chance you will be hurt? Yes.

There's way more to living than clinging only to your happiest memories and ignoring everything else.

By that logic all fictional stories are meaningless and we shouldn't ever discuss them ever.

[Kaurhz]

Repeat after me:

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fictional creations created for the purposes of a fictional story are not alive. We are simply watching the story the writer(s) wanted to tell even if our character avatars seem to give us a more personal role. Whether those creations are alive, dead, inanimate, imaginary, simulations or anything else is up to the writer(s). There is no moral onus on us.

Please help yourselves. You're taking this way too seriously.

Turn off your ChatGPU waifus, go outside and interact with the real world for a change. Can it be scary? Sure. Is there a chance you will be hurt? Yes.

There's way more to living than clinging only to your happiest memories and ignoring everything else.

This is an incredibly reductive comment.

There is no moral onus on us but that does not preclude people from discussing the moral implications behind a story.

[Rowde]

Repeat after me:

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

The Endless do not exist.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fictional creations created for the purposes of a fictional story are not alive. We are simply watching the story the writer(s) wanted to tell even if our character avatars seem to give us a more personal role. Whether those creations are alive, dead, inanimate, imaginary, simulations or anything else is up to the writer(s). There is no moral onus on us.

Please help yourselves. You're taking this way too seriously.

Turn off your ChatGPU waifus, go outside and interact with the real world for a change. Can it be scary? Sure. Is there a chance you will be hurt? Yes.

There's way more to living than clinging only to your happiest memories and ignoring everything else.

I wish you were around to tell us about this take when we had to discuss the Great Gatesby in school.

Alternatively, do you think the Trolley problem is a popular philosophical problem to discuss because it actually happened?

[aTanpopo]

At the time I wasn't thinking too deeply about it, so I didn't see all the plotholes living memory is littered with, but I didn't come out of Living Memory thinking I'd genocided a whole world of people. The way I see it, the endless are neither alive or dead. Cahcuia saying she shouldn't "exist" at the expense of other's deaths is saying just that- she died and, as an endless, she has not been brought back to life in a physical sense, she is just existing in a perpetual limbo state where she is able to "live" but only within the confines of this environment that sustains her by using energy from the lives of others.

When we turn off the terminals, I was assuming the people "living" in each area were returning to the aetherial sea, and how Erenville says in the post-credits scene that he will have a lot of stories to tell his mother when he eventually meets her there made me think that all the more. But because I haven't had a chance to go back through and read all the logs in the dungeon talking about the process of the soul extraction and cleansing idk if that's true or not. I'm getting the impression its all presented in this complicated explanation and maybe me approaching it brain off could have saved me from having even more complaints with the MSQ writing than I already have lol.

Either they should have introduced the area earlier, or made it post MSQ content, because the area feels kinda like a rush to the end and the emotional moments they have there kind of suffer for it. Giving the plot a bit more time to be explained clearly and maybe touch on the philosophical parts of whether these people were "alive" or not would have helped it not just feel like a plotline shoehorned in from another FF game (that I haven't played and so don't really understand) and more of a place to feel genuine emotion about what you had to do there.

I didn't cry at the last 2 sections of Living Memory because I felt guilty about switching off the endless or any kind of real care for all these "people" around me, or out of sympathy for Sphene's internal struggle with the love she had for her people, I cried cause I felt bad for Krile and Erenville having to be faced with getting to spend time with someone you love, knowing they are actually dead and you will never get to do that again and then having to be the one who actually flips the switch and make it so you can never experience that again. Graha's little talk about loss and what you would do to spend time with someone again also compounded that, I'm sure anyone who's lost someone close to them (family or friend) has thought about it at least once. I just wish the whole plot was executed a little better, so the whole area could have had that impact and not just ones relating to characters I had personal investment in.