FFXIV, and who counts as “alive”?

It’s no secret that I don’t agree with Dawntrail’s messaging about death.

I recently picked up the new Pictomancer job. (Well, it’s a year and a half old at this point, but “new”.) It has a cute little storyline about a Moogle named Kupopo looking for his friend, a Pictomancer named Beruru.

Spoilers for the Pictomancer storyline:

After the death of their traveling companion Janquetilaque, Kupopo and Beruru had a falling-out and separated. It turns out that Beruru painted Kupopo into existence, and after Janquetilaque’s death, he told her that she would have to learn to stand on her own without him. She was so hurt by Kupopo “abandoning” her that she magicked herself inside one of Janquetilaque’s paintings and painted an illusory version of Janquetilaque to keep her company.

The obvious message here is “escaping from reality is bad”. But in what way is Kupopo not “real”? He’s obviously sapient — he travels the world looking for Beruru after she disappears, even to the point of recruiting the Warrior of Light and giving them Janquetilaque’s old Pictomancer soul stone. And Beruru never even tried to escape from reality until after Kupopo said he couldn’t stay! And there’s no reason he couldn’t stay; he wasn’t even a drain on anyone’s aether like primals or the Endless were! (Or if he was, they just plain forgot to say so in the script.)

One could make a comparison to Fray and Myste from the Dark Knight quests, but they were more obviously representative of the Warrior of Light’s inner trauma or whatever. (Myste made that super unsubtle by literally breaking your soul stone in half when he manifested.)

Kupopo seems more similar to Gigi, Brandihild, or Alpha; a created lifeform that gained its own consciousness. When Gigi broke down, that was a tragedy. The story treats it as a great happy thing that Alpha has a soul now and can go on fun little adventures with Omega. Hell, what about the other Omicrons, and the other denizens of Ultima Thule? They’re alive, right? Even though they’re artificial re-creations of previously dead beings? What makes them alive if Kupopo and the Endless “aren’t”?

Would Brandihild even have gotten his post-credits stinger scene if the Endwalker Hildibrand quests had been written for Dawntrail? Would Alpha and Omega be wandering the world on their adventures if the Omega raids were part of 7.X? It kind of feels like the answer is no, and that fucking sucks.