Demons, Heaven, Hell and parallel universes

[MikkoAkure]

you'd still wind up with a load of temporo-spatially displaced people and alien structures, which would still wreak environmental chaos on wherever they fused onto, but the people themselves aren't the problem.

My issue with the people is that you’re taking an entire nation and transplanting them into someone else’s world. Now that world needs to make room for them for resources and a place in greater world politics where neither side has cultural context for each other and each other’s ways are completely alien. Historically this hasn’t exactly worked out for the people receiving the visitors.

We still do not understand the effect Alexandrians will have on the Source. They are an EXTREMELY highly advanced and populous nation with a culture and sensibilities alien to our own and trying to avoid DT and 7.1 spoilers but the situation isn’t stable and the people in general aren’t exactly crying tears of joy to have received help from the Source.

In a realistic scenario, there will be issues further down the line in years to come regarding resources for the newcomers, fights over technology, fights over land (they effectively annexed a whole region of Tural’s), and fights over ideology. 7.1 proved that the instability of their situation is not over and we have at least 2-4 more patches revolving around it before their situation is solved in the near term but tens or hundreds of years down the line it could change again for the worse.

[PorxiesRCute]

The whole thing started with the Milala and was only later corrupted and refined by Preservation

This is such a good point. Azem's Sippy Cup doesn't even necessarily have to do worldmerging (although it might be beneficial for everyone if a small part of the First was merged with the Thirteenth and vice versa...). Also, it's pretty blatantly set up for the WOL to use the thing to travel to other worlds at some point in the future, maybe in 8.0.

[Cleretic]

The real problem with interdimensional fusion isn't really the displacement of people, but that it brings along the environment from the area fused. Theoretically if you fused an area from a more environmentally healthy and aetherically balanced world (as opposed to the lightning oversaturated hellscape the Ninth apparently became) it wouldn't have the sort of impact Alexandria did on Yyasulani - you'd still wind up with a load of temporo-spatially displaced people and alien structures, which would still wreak environmental chaos on wherever they fused onto, but the people themselves aren't the problem.

Still not a great idea.

Also worth saying, fusing locations still leads to a net negative.

Like, let's say just as an example you're fusing Il Mheg onto Coerthas; that's probably the best single one you do ecologically, Il Mheg's one of the healthiest parts of Norvrandt, while Coerthas is still dealing with a winter that may well be permanent. But when you do that, you basically overwrite Coerthas with Il Mheg; there's no longer two distinct locations that people live in and make the best of, there's now only one. The same amount of people, now trying to share less resources.

And that one's without factoring in the populations, which I agree with Mikko is a big problem especially in that hypothetical; let's be honest, fusing Il Mheg and Coerthas just creates the most singularly horrifying war that Eorzea's ever seen.

[No_Nick_Needed]

Coerthas might have trouble, but is still alive. Now a far better target in the Source would be the Burn. With the aether flow having been restored in Stormblood, that land will eventually come back to life, but that will take a long time. I don't fully remember what Y'Shotola said, but I wouldn't be surprised if it'll take centuries.
Though taking Ill Mheg out of Norvrant would probably undermine the restoration work we did, in the Eden raids.
Now taking Living Memory might be worth considering, under certain circumstances. If it's the last bit of that reflection, that's still around, we probably lack the means to restore the reflection, meaning it won't be missed over there (unlike Ill Mheg would be). Furthermore, we need to consider side-effects, like triggering a calamity in the Source. There might be no liveable land there, but there's a whole lot of lightning aether. If there's a chance that with no land to ankor it to, it's going to crash into the Source and cause a calamity, then better not even think about it.

But if we can be sure that won't happen, and the Cloud was confirmed to have saved the actual souls and not just memories, it might be worth considering to transplant Living Memory into the Burn. After all, with no living beings left in Living Memory, those souls wouldn't be able to reincarnate, due to lack of anything to make babies, right?

Hmm... that makes me wonder... if Source citizens were to travel to Living Memory and beget and birth a child in a year long stay and then returned to the Source with their new child, would that child have a soul from that reflection? It should, shouldn't it?

[Zero-ELEC]

Coerthas might have trouble, but is still alive. Now a far better target in the Source would be the Burn. With the aether flow having been restored in Stormblood, that land will eventually come back to life, but that will take a long time. I don't fully remember what Y'Shotola said, but I wouldn't be surprised if it'll take centuries.
Though taking Ill Mheg out of Norvrant would probably undermine the restoration work we did, in the Eden raids.
Now taking Living Memory might be worth considering, under certain circumstances. If it's the last bit of that reflection, that's still around, we probably lack the means to restore the reflection, meaning it won't be missed over there (unlike Ill Mheg would be). Furthermore, we need to consider side-effects, like triggering a calamity in the Source. There might be no liveable land there, but there's a whole lot of lightning aether. If there's a chance that with no land to ankor it to, it's going to crash into the Source and cause a calamity, then better not even think about it.

But if we can be sure that won't happen, and the Cloud was confirmed to have saved the actual souls and not just memories, it might be worth considering to transplant Living Memory into the Burn. After all, with no living beings left in Living Memory, those souls wouldn't be able to reincarnate, due to lack of anything to make babies, right?

Hmm... that makes me wonder... if Source citizens were to travel to Living Memory and beget and birth a child in a year long stay and then returned to the Source with their new child, would that child have a soul from that reflection? It should, shouldn't it?

We don't know the state of the unlost world (the Ninth reflection, according to interviews) outside of Living Memory—besides the fact that we see the sun and moon and regular weather patterns once the meso terminal is shut down, implying the shard exists past the Storm Surge—but we do know that there are no souls stored in Living Memory, just memories. That's the whole point of Origenics, memories are separated from the souls and souls are used as fodder for regulators for the living in Alexandria and the memories are stored "in the cloud".

[No_Nick_Needed]

But that still leaves the souls of the original habitants, plus the Aloalo immigrants, minus the ones that went over to the Source with Alexandria and Solution 9, presumably floating around in their lifestream, unless of course there's still inhabited land around, outside of Living Memory.

[SilverArrow20XX]

I don't see any reason why there couldn't be parallel worlds like Star Trek's mirror universe or Abyssea on top of shards.
It's already established as a thing that happens in the FF multiverse.

The Interdimensional Rift allows for free travel through space and time and connects the franchise.
It's basically 6th dimensional space. The shards are rights next to each other, almost touching, in this space, but other FF worlds exist, further away.
These worlds, in theory, all follow the same basic rules and all exist, did exist, will exist, or could exist, in the same universe, at some point in time.

World of Final Fantasy introduced the Extraverse.
This is a higher level of interdimensional space that allows crossovers with other IPs that may not follow the same rules as FF at all.
So 9th dimensional space that connects different, unrelated multiverses, and a convenient plot excuse to handwave crossovers from other IPs while letting them stay mostly irrelevant to the series cosmology.

[unlimitedBLACK]

The main reason to NOT do that is the same reason why each FF has been in a separate world from the previous one: if you say that you're connecting to the world of FF1, you have to recreate the world of FF1, with all of the limitations that the 8-Bit NES version had to impose on the design of the world at the time. It's constraining yourself to the limits of an earlier design team's creation.

FF has always been about breaking limits instead of adhering to them, and so they recreate the limits with each iteration. And FF14 has continued that tradition by incorporating stuff that REFERENCES the other FFs, but doesn't go so far as to connect to them DIRECTLY; that allows for what happens in 14 to be something that's 14's creation, not 14 re-creating what the 9 team or the 13 team or the 3 team did.

Hell, to dip into 7.1 spoiler territory for a second (re: the Alliance raid series):

... this is the reason why Sareel Ja talks about seeing the Walk of Echoes and drawing inspiration from THAT when creating his little pocket universe to train up his copy of Gulool Ja Ja. He's not stealing anything from the REAL Vana'diel, but instead blendering together stuff from possible futures of the real Vana'diel that have been consumed by Atomos and dropped in the Threshold. Which means the depiction of Vana'diel we're seeing in the Alliance raid doesn't need to adhere to any of the limitations we see in 11.

So while we on the outside can look at Dissidia or WoFF or Stranger of Paradise and say "oh, these games acknowledge that the FFs are kind of in a multiverse continuum with each other" I don't think any FF game should actually attempt to break through those barriers (for anything other than fun running gags like Gilgamesh, obviously).