Dying is kind of a big deal.
It’s such a big deal that we as humans have come up with countless stories and myths to explain what comes next. “You go to an afterlife when you die,” “you’re reborn as something else when you die,” whatever. I don’t believe any of it.
And there are just as many attempts to rationalize death. “It’s necessary”, “it’s part of the cycle of life”, “everyone has their time”. I don’t believe any of that either.
Death is as tragic as it is inevitable. It’s bad. Being unable to avoid it doesn’t make it righteous.
If “everyone has their time” then why do we even bother trying to prolong our lives with medicine? If using technology to vastly extend our lifespans in a transhumanist way would be a vile transgression against nature, why is our current use of technology to do the same okay? Why don’t we all just go die right now? What’s even the point?
Spoiler alert: I’m gonna talk about Final Fantasy XIV, including the ending of Dawntrail.
The way FFXIV handles the inevitability of death both uplifts and frustrates me, because it puts forth two different arguments, and I love one of them and hate the other.
Neither one is particularly revolutionary; we’ve seen both of them a million times before. So why am I focusing on this example?
Because I started playing FFXIV during a low point in my life — it was covid lockdown times, and while I’d always been kind of a shut-in, even I had my limits. In this game I found a new world (but a familiar one, since I’ve played other Final Fantasies before) full of other people. Lots of people have the same story, with FFXIV and with other online games and hobbies. That’s not particularly unique either. But that’s how it went for me.
And then Endwalker released, with its beautiful message that even in the face of overwhelming adversity, it’s still worth it to persevere. And I needed that.
But Endwalker also brought with it the Ancients, and their weird culture of living forever until you accomplish your life’s work, whatever that means to you, and then “returning to the star”, i.e. dying. Committing suicide, in real-world terms. “Oh, but they wouldn’t think of it that way” — but Hermes did. And Hermes is a whole bag of worms that I’m not going to delve into here. I think he’s pretty good evidence that not all was perfect in the ancient world, but that message gets muddied by the fact that he becomes an antagonist (and reincarnates into an even bigger antagonist) and everyone else continues along on their merry way talking about how returning to the star is always such a glorious, beautiful, noble thing. And it’s an attitude I see a lot in this fandom too: “Their time is over so it’s good for them to die.”
Venat chose not to do so, but in her case, the attitude was more like “There’s still so much more to do!” Then in the end, when her long mission was finally complete, she was happy to pass on and not even leave behind enough aether to reincarnate. The same goes for the Twelve, save for Deryk, at the end of the Alliance Raid series. Which is an even more stark example of “returning to the star” as a beautiful destiny, since in that case there’s at least the rationalization that your soul will be reborn as some new person.
Let’s back up to Shadowbringers real quick. I want to talk about Emet-Selch’s motivations. No, I’m not going to try and justify his actions. Killing everyone to bring back the dead is clearly wrong. But also, Shadowbringers into Endwalker into Dawntrail feels kind of like a frog-boiling situation.
Shadowbringers: “Killing everyone to bring back the dead is wrong.” –> Obviously true, unobjectionable unless you’re a fucking lunatic.
Endwalker: “Death is inevitable, so live your life to its fullest and if you live long enough to die of old age then it will be beautiful.” –> I mean, sure, I guess. I’d rather not die at all, but this is the best-case scenario. I can be realistic.
Dawntrail: “Going against the natural order is bad, and if anyone does successfully resurrect the dead, it’s good to kill them again.” –> Like… no.
“But but but the Endless were aether vampires who would have—” Shut up, that was a choice the writers made so they could justify their worldview. Even aside from that aspect, the whole way everyone talked about the use of regulators and Living Memory made it clear that we were supposed to see the very concept as inherently wrong.
And I don’t.
Even in a world where reincarnation is explicitly known to be a thing, I don’t think that nullifies how bad death is! Your reincarnation is not you. The Warrior of Light isn’t Ardbert isn’t Azem, and Amon isn’t Hermes. From my perspective, the future being who inherits my soul (even if souls exist in the real world!) is as much “me” as someone who inherits the atoms of my body. If they don’t remember being me, how are they me?
From that perspective, I actually see the inhabitants of Living Memory as more authentic versions of themselves than anyone who might inherit their souls in the future. Cahciua has continuity of consciousness between her pre-death and her Endless forms. Hermes and Amon do not.
Is there a point to this disjointed rambling?
There’s another work of fiction I wanna talk about, one that I think actually handles similar themes in a way that makes way more sense to me.
17776: What football will look like in the future is a serialized web story by SB Nation sports columnist Jon Bois, in which the Pioneer 9 space probe spontaneously develops sentience and carries on extended conversations with Pioneer 10 and the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) in the year 17776, 15 millennia after all humans suddenly and inexplicably became immortal.
It’s an excuse to have weird, centuries-long games of American football where teams can literally fall off cliffs and then just keep playing at the bottom of canyons. And why? Because they can. Because when you strip away death and injury and sickness, what’s left? Why toil when you don’t have to? You can just play games. You can just exist.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Sure, people in the 178th century still get bored, have existential crises, question the meaning of life, wonder if there’s a god, wonder if they’re actually all in heaven or hell. But there’s no overarching authorial message that living without death is bad, or meaningless, or a perversion of the natural order.
And I much prefer this approach.
In the end, I can’t really say the Ancients’ method of “returning to the star” when they decide they’re “finished” is actually terrible. It makes sense? Like, if I knew I would live forever unless and until I proactively chose to end my life, I know I’d probably get bored after a few hundred or thousand years, so maybe I would wind up offing myself?
But it’s the implication that it’s bad not to die. That’s what gets me. That’s what I just can’t get past.
(There’s also the whole thing where storing souls for use in the Regulators has affected Solution Nine’s birth rate but like, if fewer people are dying, is it really a problem that fewer people are being born? I don’t trust people who get all precious about declining birth rates tbh. Too much weird political baggage with that subject.)