This is a bit of drunken stream of consciousness so forgive me if it's a bit messy.
So there's a certain narrative that stands the test of time (pun intended): a timeline leads to a bad end, leading someone to come back from the past to help avert the coming storm by helping the heroes of the present day. ShB's story is basically this to a T. What I'd like to touch upon here are the circumstances surrounding said bad ending.
You win. You win a lot. You save Eorzea from an imperial threat. You end a thousand year war, stopping a cycle of endless hatred and sadness by taking a few steps of faith. You save two nations from horrible oppression, finally giving hope to peoples who had none. And presumably in the original timeline, you kept winning and winning and saving countless peoples.
And then it all ended.
Some asshole released some evil fart gas with the help of two ancient giant assholes and now everyone you know is dead. Nothing you did matters anymore. Those nations you saved? Fucked. That war you ended? Doesn't matter, your beloved new home is burning and the dragons can only watch in horror as their pain will begin to echo for another millenia as they watch their new friends die. Goodbye Ala Mhigo and Doma, we barely knew you.
You did everything right and it still came to this.
You see, there is no inherent meaning in the FFXIV universe. Fate doesn't truly exist. Even Hydaelyn and Zodiark are just creations of man trying to make sense of it all. The Warriors of Darkness lost their home in a senseless occurence, and the Amaurotians lost everything out of nowhere when they had done nothing wrong. The good guys don't win in this universe just because they're good. Shit's fucked, yo. There's no meaning here, just like there were no Hulkamaniacs in the Dungeon of Doom.
Or is there?
What makes G'raha's timeline so special isn't just that it sacrificed everything to save another timeline. It's because it sacrificed everything to save you, the hero in the tales.
There's a quote from the level 60 DRK quest that springs to mind, it goes something along the lines of "What people fear most is not death, but the unfinished story" and that's what's truly at the heart of this sacrifice. If you had gone in a blaze of glory, sacrificing yourself to buy others more time, maybe they would have been satisfied to carry on in your stead. But that wasn't what happened, is it? The tale of the WoL ended in the lamest way possible, the hero simply perishing when the world needed them most, and the world burning with them.
In the end, their timeline's sacrifice wasn't just to change history, but to let history be unwritten and give a proper ending to the story of the Warrior of Light. Their sacrifice was to make sure that the world they lived in was one where good guys won because they were good. Their sacrifice was to write a proper story.
In short, by changing time, man forced meaning on a universe that had none, and it's beautiful.
submitted by /u/Deadeye117
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...
So there's a certain narrative that stands the test of time (pun intended): a timeline leads to a bad end, leading someone to come back from the past to help avert the coming storm by helping the heroes of the present day. ShB's story is basically this to a T. What I'd like to touch upon here are the circumstances surrounding said bad ending.
You win. You win a lot. You save Eorzea from an imperial threat. You end a thousand year war, stopping a cycle of endless hatred and sadness by taking a few steps of faith. You save two nations from horrible oppression, finally giving hope to peoples who had none. And presumably in the original timeline, you kept winning and winning and saving countless peoples.
And then it all ended.
Some asshole released some evil fart gas with the help of two ancient giant assholes and now everyone you know is dead. Nothing you did matters anymore. Those nations you saved? Fucked. That war you ended? Doesn't matter, your beloved new home is burning and the dragons can only watch in horror as their pain will begin to echo for another millenia as they watch their new friends die. Goodbye Ala Mhigo and Doma, we barely knew you.
You did everything right and it still came to this.
You see, there is no inherent meaning in the FFXIV universe. Fate doesn't truly exist. Even Hydaelyn and Zodiark are just creations of man trying to make sense of it all. The Warriors of Darkness lost their home in a senseless occurence, and the Amaurotians lost everything out of nowhere when they had done nothing wrong. The good guys don't win in this universe just because they're good. Shit's fucked, yo. There's no meaning here, just like there were no Hulkamaniacs in the Dungeon of Doom.
Or is there?
What makes G'raha's timeline so special isn't just that it sacrificed everything to save another timeline. It's because it sacrificed everything to save you, the hero in the tales.
There's a quote from the level 60 DRK quest that springs to mind, it goes something along the lines of "What people fear most is not death, but the unfinished story" and that's what's truly at the heart of this sacrifice. If you had gone in a blaze of glory, sacrificing yourself to buy others more time, maybe they would have been satisfied to carry on in your stead. But that wasn't what happened, is it? The tale of the WoL ended in the lamest way possible, the hero simply perishing when the world needed them most, and the world burning with them.
In the end, their timeline's sacrifice wasn't just to change history, but to let history be unwritten and give a proper ending to the story of the Warrior of Light. Their sacrifice was to make sure that the world they lived in was one where good guys won because they were good. Their sacrifice was to write a proper story.
In short, by changing time, man forced meaning on a universe that had none, and it's beautiful.
submitted by /u/Deadeye117
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...