#Cid's nickname got a whole lot more relevant

[kopykunoichi]

Okay, I know this has come up on Reddit and other places, but I just haven't found any satisfactory explanations or theories to solve the mystery of:

Why is Omega so freaking "tiny"?!

Canonically, she's older than the guys; Tech said she was an unaltered first generation clone and also referred to her as an adolescent. When Order 66 takes place, the first gens are already 13 years old (born in 32 BBY). The Bad Batch season one spans several months, and by the time season two rolls around, it would be reasonable to assume they're 14, or close to it.

Omega is less mature than a typical teenager in many ways, but that is easily explained by how sheltered her life was. She is very insightful though, which is an interesting contrast to her childlike wonder at experiencing new things.

But her physical development has me stumped. Omega is 1.1 m (3'7")...that's the same height as my four year old daughter! Yet, she's supposed to be a 14 year old adolescent.

Look at her standing next to Hera. Hera is 10 years old here (maybe 11 depending on when in the year her birthday is, but she was born in 29BBY). Not only is she a lot taller, she's also clearly a bit further along into puberty than Omega is. I don't know if that's a Twi-lek thing or not, but she definitely looks like an older adolescent. Compare Hera to the animation of Ahsoka when she was 14 and it's even more apparent. Meanwhile, Omega shows no signs of a maturing body. Even her facial structure looks more childlike.

At first I was just going to chalk it up to animators being inconsistent or not being able to properly depict a teenage girl, but now I'm beginning to wonder if there's more to it.

What if Omega's growth has been delayed as opposed to the other clones' growth being accelerated? What if the reason she looks like a seven year old when she's actually fourteen is because she ages half as fast as normal humans? And if that's the case, could that be why the Kaminoans wanted her DNA so bad? Think how marketable it would be if you could sell someone a way to make their natural lifespan twice as long?

It would also explain why Omega sometimes has moments where she has the reasoning capabilities of a teenager (because she does have fourteen years of life experience, such as it was), but retains the playful exuberance of a younger child, because developmentally, she's still seven.

What do you think? Have any of you come across any similar theories that I missed in my brief perusal of the forums?

[avauntus]

I was recently lured back to Final Fantasy XIV by their “returner” campaign (if you are away a while, log in and play for free for two weeks). I’ve been having a great deal of fun, got over my “healing yips” and jumped into group content, and finished the Shadowbringers main “5.0″ storyline.

(Yes, it made me cry. Yes, like everyone else-- I concede it is excellent as everyone says.)

Final Fantasy games always kind of...”wink and nod” at their series traditions. And thus I’ve been happily playing along (when I’m not sobbing, natch), running across the occasional call-back to threads I know from earlier in the series, going “Oh, that’s cute. That’s clever,” and not thinking too hard...until the most recent breadcrumb dialogue line for the continuation of the story (patch 5.1) made me put down my controller, put my head in my hands, and go “Aaaaaargh!”

Urianger in brief: “I think I’ll be a problem ON PURPOSE.” lol.

Theory overthinking hours! I can come back later and see if I was right. 

SPOILERS, after the cut, for Shadowbringers through 5.0 and, uh...Final Fantasies 3/6, 7, 10, and 12. (lol)

One of the very, very clever things Shadowbringers did is finish up much of the story of the Umbral Calamities by retconing the existence of the FFXIV storyline as taking place and/or belonging to the same universe of every single other Final Fantasy game all at once, many worlds existing side-by-side ignorant of each other, each just sliightly different from the next.

Which means all those “clever callbacks” aren’t just fun Easter eggs for fans-- they’re also fair game for the plot. If the game isn’t just being goofy, it’s leaning really hard into the Final Fantasy tradition of the “Oh NO Statues.” 😆

The what now?

The “Oh NO Statues” are my mental nickname for the recurring powerful, often sentient monuments that show up in Final Fantasy and invariably break the world:

 Kefka did a number on home values with these three in FFVI, for example.

Later Final Fantasy games would refine and riff on this, of course. “Oh no, the statue is a space alien (?)” (Jenova, FFVII); “Oh no, the statue came to life and destroyed our civilization!” (Sin, FFX).

This isn’t Zanarkand, but it totally could be, right?

And my personal favorite of the “Oh NO Statues” incarnations, The Occuria, FFXII. Statues who aim “guide the History of Man,” ancient beings who manifest as aetheric masked forms, often visible only to a few, whose origins are (in FFXII) unknown:

Balthier: This creature... So this is your Venat?

Cid: Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca! Just how far will you go for power? Does your lust for nethicite consume you? Am I right? I am, aren't I. A worthy daughter of the Dynast-King! You would do well to go to Giruvegan. Who knows? You may receive a new Stone for your trouble.

Ashe: Your words mean nothing to me!

Cid: The reins of History back in the hands of Man.

And later:

Cid: To hell with the Occuria and their stones! What good a power that cannot be harnessed? Baubles best-suited for study, no more.

Vayne: We conquered two kingdoms, that you might study these "baubles."

Cid: Oh, I am grateful for the sacrifice. Without it, manufacted nethicite would have eluded us - an unrivaled weapon. Tell me, Venat. Have I not been an apt pupil?

Venat: My counsel did but guide your able hand. Through power of Man, the Stones did you perfect. Yes. So much accomplished in six fleeting years. Man's fervor o'er all obstacles prevailing.

Cid: Our lives are much too short. You undying might waste long centuries away, but we, I fear, cannot.

Vayne: Just so. Had we more time, we might have used more "prudent" measures.

Cid: Your greatest work still lies before you. Not lightly will the Occuria allow you to wrest the reins of History from their grasp.

Venat: Indeed. What claim does Gerun have on history's reins... seated on throne immortal, rent from time? For your ascendance, Vayne, I offer prayer. May you attain all that which is your due.

Vayne: Attain it I shall.

This is... fascinating, because it is heavily implied by a different storyline in FFXIV that Ivalice and the events of FFXII, exist somewhere in the worlds that were shattered from the Source that was FFXIV’s ‘main world.’ There is even an Ivalice in FFXIV, but it is NOT the one we know from FFXII-- Fran exists in FFXIV as a general of Dalmasca, and to all appearances (that I’ve seen, so far), a key difference is Balthier never existed, or never left his position in the Empire.

(On realizing this, I took a good minute to be amused that Balthier really WAS the “leading man” as he so often trumpeted, that apparently so much depended on his existing in his bravura sky piratery, all unknowing-- bless.)    

As Ivalice exists -- well, the ‘Occuria’ are much like Emet-Selch and the other Ascians, aren’t they? “...seated on throne immortal, rent from time...” indeed.

Of course, in FFXIV, we’ve struck down most of the “relevant” Ascians by the end of Shadowbringers so what then? Almost certainly, the last “sane” one is gone. 

But what’s interesting to me is this: Emet-Selch asked us to remember his people, and he mentions the three Ascians we know as antagonists-- but every single time he talked about his “purpose” it wasn’t to save the named Ascians. It was to save some unnamed other or others, his “lost friends and loves”-- one of which is heavily implied to be connected to the player character. 

(There’s a whole “fragments of a shredded soul thing,” but-- ‘we don’t have time to get into that’ meme-- here.)

The other-other Ascian that is eluded to --heavily-- in the run-up to the end of Shadowbringers 5.0 is the Unnamed Fourteenth-- the Paragon who turned away from the other Ascian councilmembers when the details of their plan to save their civilization and the toll that would be paid were revealed. I think we’re meant to think this conscientious objector is the one who summoned the Light, to grant autonomy to mortals rather than guide them towards a destiny that would serve the Ascians’ return, even if the mortals were “shadows” of what had come before the worlds were split.

Beyond a lot of breadcrumbs, we don’t get much more than that in the ending bit of 5.0, but that sure sounds like Venat to me.

Venat was always portrayed by a woman voice actor, despite the Occuria being “genderless,” and...

OK, so...what does this have to do with nethicite?

In FFXIV, “manufactured nethicite” exists -- it’s called White Nethicite Auricite (oops!) and the Scions (the faction our character belongs to) use it to trap Ascians’ will and shatter their energies.

It’s also heavily implied that if natural auracite is allowed to feed on mortal souls and imbued with aether (energy), it will cause mortals to go insane. The Ivalice raid sequence spells all this out, but in short-- your fears and desires are made manifest in exchange for your life energy. Over time, auracite exposed to mortals gains a low-level chaotic will of its own, like the One Ring in Tolkien’s works.

It is, in short, a staggeringly insane idea to propose putting your soul into a soul-eating crystal as Urianger is doing. And Urianger has no way of knowing this, of course, but this will of the nethicite in FFXII came from the Occuria -- their tools to “guide the History of Man.”

There are no more unsundered Ascians left worth mentioning (Elidibius, lol), but the energy of that Unnamed Fourteenth is out there scattered in the Light-- and this is “White [light] Auracite.” Despite everything, I don’t know that the Light are all sunshine and rainbows for mortals. For one, they like stability. 

If the Scions start unknowingly imbuing themselves with the powers of Ascians by merging themselves with insane immortal chaos crystals (!!), they may manage to bring about the Eight Umbral Calamity and the end of civilization anyway by unbalancing the world(s) themselves.

...Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants for Emet-Selch? I mean, if the main character hadn’t had to put him out of his misery already. (*sob*)