Why Erenville succeeded as a character where others did not

[Jaxtaro]

Look, I still suffer trauma from them killing off Moenbryda, the single best new character FFXIV ever had.

As a matter of fact, I almost want to go get fitted for a Solution 9 earpiece so that I don't have to live through the separation trauma of her absence.

Also, I don't much like Erenville. He is way too pouty and incapable of joy or humor.

[OolongCow]

The game explicitly tells you multiple times that these are soulless digital creations. And I'll be the first to agree that it's bizarre that the writers chose to write it that way, given that for so much of the story you interact with the Endless as if they are people with hopes and dreams. But the text of the story outright states that they are fabrications.

Which is just insane to me. Did G'raha's speech in Endwalker just mean nothing? The Omicrons are just copies of a copy. An explicit illusion fabricated to hinder us based on a memory of a long-barren world. There was none of this apathy for their existence then. The game has repeatedly made its position on this sort of thing clear in the past: that people passing judgement on others and their lives for their own selfish benefit are the bad guys.

[Iscah]

Which is just insane to me. Did G'raha's speech in Endwalker just mean nothing? The Omicrons are just copies of a copy. An explicit illusion fabricated to hinder us based on a memory of a long-barren world. There was none of this apathy for their existence then. The game has repeatedly made its position on this sort of thing clear in the past: that people passing judgement on others and their lives for their own selfish benefit are the bad guys.

The core difference is that all the Omicrons need to support their existence is the ambient dynamis in the area. They're not bothering anyone else to our awareness.

If they were actively draining the life from other parts of the universe, we would probably have put a stop to that, too.

[Cleretic]

The core difference is that all the Omicrons need to support their existence is the ambient dynamis in the area. They're not bothering anyone else to our awareness.

If they were actively draining the life from other parts of the universe, we would probably have put a stop to that, too.

I mean, that's a difference to the stakes of their existence, not the state of their personhood. That's what Oolong is saying; we accepted that the Omicrons are real people, and people are trying to equivocate personhood away from the Endless, despite them being for all intents and purposes the same.

I do think that there's an underlying connection between those two things, though: that people are only trying to unperson the Endless because we had to shut them down, and going 'it's okay they weren't really people' makes that act easier to swallow.

[Turnintino]

I do think that there's an underlying connection between those two things, though: that people are only trying to unperson the Endless because we had to shut them down, and going 'it's okay they weren't really people' makes that act easier to swallow.

For some, I'm sure that could be a factor, but speaking for myself, I never felt that the game was telling me the Endless were "real" people, and so I felt kind of a disconnect throughout most of that zone, at least during the points it felt like the story was trying to have its cake and eat it too by contriving emotional weight where I still wasn't quite buying it. I felt more unsettled than anything (everything is artificially "happy" while the zone itself is showing signs of the disrepair caused by the underlying horror of this place's circumstances). I found that dissonance difficult to reconcile with, for the most part. And I'd like to say that was the intent, but the text never really gives that sense of discomfort room to breathe, in my opinion, despite the conclusion.

The scene with G'raha highlights that a place like this is a boon for the living who miss the departed, and a tempting lie all the same, so I was able to emotionally connect in that sense (I've lost loved ones, as I know many others have, and I don't if I could say no to a place like Living Memory if it provided some facsimile to find closure with)... But at least in this stage of Alexandria's development, that's explicitly not what Living Memory is for. The living citizens know some version of it exists that people theoretically go to, but they have no memory of the dead to begin with, and so have no need to visit them. So it also ends up kind of feeling a little pointless. Who is this actually for? It feels like the result of a gross misinterpretation of Sphene's directive by her programming. But I'm veering (more) off-topic now.

(Sorry if this is kind of all over the place; I'm struggling to articulate what is essentially just "vibes" lol.)

[SannaR]

Let's not pretend that some saw the beings in Ultima Thule as not alive even after the Ea created what they think is how they must have looked like as children happened. For me it's the uncertainty of how much free will do the Endless have. Shutting down Living Memory for me was easy. I saw it as an illusionment of life that was working within the parameters that the AI running the place allowed them to run in. That and after Sphene said was going to kill all other life and not give any allowance for rebirth I instantly thought of Meteion and her sisters and didn't like that we were going to retread that story beat so soon after we had just done it. So any emotional beats really didn't work as well.

Especially not with how even with the newest sad/somber music we got this expansion (again to me) was too light and upbeat. They didn't even use any of the various pre-Shadowbringers sad/bad things are happening music to beat you over the head that you should be sad. That doing this should have weight and maybe give you pause. When the game this expansion takes heavy inspiration from does a better job at making me feel bad and sad at the last of the Black Waltzes deaths, beings you're meant to question if they're alive than this one does with the Endless who you are shown that you should at least sympathize with don't then a ball was dropped somewhere.

[LilimoLimomo]

Which is just insane to me. Did G'raha's speech in Endwalker just mean nothing? The Omicrons are just copies of a copy. An explicit illusion fabricated to hinder us based on a memory of a long-barren world. There was none of this apathy for their existence then.

My subjective interpretation was that G'raha's speech to the Omicron simulacra in Endwalker was a philosophical counterargument made with the literal intention of making the Omicron it was delivered to explode into a bird, thus unbarring the way for the rest of the group. It was a good and effective speech, but nothing about it suggested to me that G'raha thought he was making it to a living being that would benefit from this advice. On the contrary, he knew that if his speech hit the mark the Omicron he was speaking to would cease to be.

The game has repeatedly made its position on this sort of thing clear in the past: that people passing judgement on others and their lives for their own selfish benefit are the bad guys.

That's true, but who counts as "others"? Who counts as having "lives"? FF14 constantly dismisses some lives while championing others, constantly demonstrates how it believes that some lives are worth more than others.

In the MSQ, it's not uncommon for us to kill some animals. Sometimes we need them for a potion to save someone's life, sometimes for food, etc. It is unquestionable that these animals had lives, and yet we don't tend to see any conflict in ending them so that those we value more highly can live more comfortably. I remember that one of our interactions with the Chirwagur was interrupted when a large bird attacked them, and even though the Churwurgur were clearly preparing to attack us, Wuk Lamat defends the Chirwagur from the bird and fights it off. This was framed as a noble act. And yet...what about the bird? Was it defending its territory? Had the Chirwagur perhaps done something to warrant this treatment? The authors make it clear they're uninterested in the bird's side of the story, and we can only presume it's because despite being alive, the bird innately has less worth than the Chirwagur. We go on to kill that bird, the same as we have killed so many creatures whose natural habitats we have encroached upon.

To be clear, I'm not saying the authors are hypocrites; I'm saying that the authors clearly believe that different kinds of lives have different kinds of values. There's a difference between "being alive" and "being a person".

So, how do we determine what is alive, and what is a person? There is no objective answer; it will always be a judgment call based on incomplete information.

All of which is to say, the everyday subconscious act of categorizing what things deserve the labels of "alive" and/or "person" is itself a way that we pass judgment on others. To truly not judge other things, we would need to treat bacteria and plants and Tamagochis with the same personhood as humans.

As for what criteria we use to determine what goes in what category...that's a big enough topic for a separate and much larger post. But suffice to say, the judgment is always happening, and it's worth thinking about the fact that we do it and the way we do it.

EDIT: I wanted to make sure I unambiguously tied this back to the conversation. So in closing, we can't determine whether Omicrons or Endless or Chirwagur count as "others" without first running them through our personal criteria for "alive" and "personhood" and judging them based upon that. And depending on how they score, that's going to impact whether we see them as "others whose lives we shouldn't mess with for our own selfish benefit".

[Dikatis]

That's true, but who counts as "others"? Who counts as having "lives"? FF14 constantly dismisses some lives while championing others, constantly demonstrates how it believes that some lives are worth more than others.

I never got this impression. The game makes no bones about how you sometimes have to defend your ideals and the people you love with violence. We had to kill Nidhogg and Thordan in order to prevent them from perpetuating the Dragonsong War and end the status quo that will keep the battle raging forever. But it never calls anyone more inherently worthy of living than the other. That's our central beef with the Ascians, who believe that the World Unsundered is more "worthy" of existing than the inhabitants of the Source and reflections when they both have a right to live. But the problem was that our survival is dependent on the ancients having lived their lives to the end. And thus, while the ancients are no less worthy of living, we fight the Ascians to defend our right to live as the people existing in the present.

We don't know why the eagle attacked, but it certainly wasn't for "territorial" reasons given that the Chirwargur were at the foot of the mountain and the eagle's nest was miles above. I don't understand why you would condemn Wuk Lamat for backing up her ideal of mutual coexistence and peace by defending people who'd be out to kill her from a beast that attacked them without warning. The eagle aimed to kill so we responded in kind as self-defense. We did not "value" the eagle's life as being somehow "lesser" than the Chirwargur's. But we're not going to roll over and let the eagle kill us because we also have a right to live and it's in our rights to defend ourselves. So your example is faulty.

To be clear, I'm not saying the authors are hypocrites; I'm saying that the authors clearly believe that different kinds of lives have different kinds of values. There's a difference between "being alive" and "being a person".

But at no point do the Scions consider the Endless "not people". By all accounts, the heroes treat the Endless as they were when they were alive. But the Endless themselves acknowledged that they've lived and died already. A significant number of them also show doubts about the system perpetuating their existence, since their continued lives require others to die in order to sustain their physical forms. If the Scions considered the Endless "not people", then they wouldn't have been broken up about it, as we see with Erenville's and Krile's reactions, in which they offer to look for another way without shutting down the terminals but are gently pushed along by Robor, Alayla, and Cahciua.

Sphene's plan was the harvest all life on the Source for the sake of keeping the Endless running. There was no dissuading her from this path, particularly after she formatted herself to remove her conscience and doubts in order to stay the course. The Endless have a right to live, but so do we. Choosing to let the Endless live means sacrificing all life on the Source, since Sphene will stop at nothing to keep them alive. And so we invoke our right to self-defense by shutting down the terminals. It's a messy situation that could have potentially been cleaned up if Sphene hadn't pushed so hard and had been more amenable to reason. But we didn't have another option given the remoteness of Living Memory and the astronomical costs required to keep it running as well as the deadline imposed by Sphene. It was never about "others" and "not valuing their lives", but about whether the living should have to give up their futures for the sake of those who've already lived theirs.

Choosing to revive the dead at the expense of the living is an unconscionable act and stepping aside was never going to be an option.

Anyways, this has nothing to do with the topic of the thread, which is about the usage of characters within the story rather than the moral conundrum presented by the Endless.

[LilimoLimomo]

I don't understand why you would condemn Wuk Lamat for backing up her ideal of mutual coexistence and peace by defending people who'd be out to kill her from a beast that attacked them without warning.

I think you're misunderstanding me, to the extent that I'd like to ask that you give my post a re-read. Because I don't condemn Wuk Lamat, I simply cite that story beat as an example of a time when the narrative values the lives of "people" as being more important than "non-people".

I never got this impression. The game makes no bones about how you sometimes have to defend your ideals and the people you love with violence. We had to kill Nidhogg and Thordan in order to prevent them from perpetuating the Dragonsong War and end the status quo that will keep the battle raging forever. But it never calls anyone more inherently worthy of living than the other.

With respect, you're talking about self-defense when the examples I provided don't touch on that topic; the examples I start with are about using animals as resources.

Because if we considered animals to be just as worthy of living as humans, then we would not kill 3 animals (that were just peacefully living their lives) in order to make the medicine that saves a single human. And yet this is a thing we do in quests. To kill 3 to save 1 requires that the 1 be considered more valuable than the sum of the 3. We don't have to explicitly say that animals are of lesser value, because our actions clearly demonstrate it.

But we're not going to roll over and let the eagle kill us because we also have a right to live and it's in our rights to defend ourselves.

And yet this highlights more disparity in the rights that are afforded to different kinds of living beings. When dangerous animals wander too close to our townships, it's not uncommon for us to get quests to end their lives. We feel that we have the right to defend our homes and keep them safe. Okay, fair enough. But we never extend that right to animals. On the contrary, we regularly wander into their homes, and when they try to defend their home and keep it safe, we slay them. We expect our homes to not be intruded upon, and yet we intrude upon the homes of others and kill them when they dare to defend it. That's a very blatant double-standard...but it's one we don't generally think about because our idealogy (both in real life and in the game) is that animals deserve fewer rights — among those, the right to life — than humans.

But at no point do the Scions consider the Endless "not people".

I never said anything about whether the Scions did or didn't consider the Endless people; and whether they do or not doesn't impact the idea that whether we acknowledge it or not, we are always making judgments on what is alive and what is people.

[Dikatis]

I think you're misunderstanding me, to the extent that I'd like to ask that you give my post a re-read. Because I don't condemn Wuk Lamat, I simply cite that story beat as an example of a time when the narrative values the lives of "people" as being more important than "non-people".

I mean, yeah. It's a double-standard. But at the same time, what about it? The alternative is letting a wild animal do as they please, which can lead to a great deal of casualties. It's unfortunate, but people tend to value other people more than animals, whether it's using them for their meat, to earn a living, or to make medicine. To live is to die and to kill. It's just easier to do that to animals than other people because they don't talk or think like we do. But I don't really see how it pertains to the topic of the thread since, again, this topic came up because people are debating the moral quandary of the Endless.