u/Free_Record_8635

Back again to yap right before the update maybe debunks this theory too. Sorry it is once again hoyo length if you saw my other since I don’t know how to make it make sense without context (…and I’m just a yapper), but a TLDR again at the end.

An intro on how I think Ether functions, because the theory doesn't land without it.
The working model not just from me but from many others including this video is something like the Ether field is the underlying medium that reality runs on like the signal that keeps everything updating. Objects, people, Ethereals, everything that exists is a pattern being continuously maintained by Ether activity. That activity has perhaps two properties that matter here: oscillation (how much the Ether is moving and changing) and coherence (how well-organized and structured those patterns are). Reality works properly when both are within a stable range. Too far outside that range in either direction, and things start to break down.

Theory, again not all mine that this is why there’s heavy CRT TV imagery in game, it’s an analogy (I mean it’s even the Home Screen). When everything is working, the screen produces a clear, colorful picture. That color is a byproduct of the signal maintaining differentiated, layered frequencies all at once. But if something goes wrong with the signal, the image degrades, and it can degrade in different ways. Too weak a signal and the picture freezes, fades to grey, stops updating. Too much chaotic interference and the picture washes out into noise. Both produce loss of color, but they're technically opposite problems with opposite causes.

This is me trying to understand CRT TVs, any tech people can let me know otherwise, but same idea. Reality is a narrow band where oscillation and coherence are both balanced. With the frozen Ethereals in 2.7 the instinct is to read their description as depletion, the Ether drained out of them somehow. But going back to the CRT analogy: a paused image on a screen isn't a screen that ran out of electricity. The electricity is still there, the signal is still present. What's gone is the updating, the continuous cycle of the signal refreshing the image. The picture on screen is the last stable frame, preserved exactly as it was, paused.

That's akin to what I think Remielle is doing. The Ether is still there, what's gone is the oscillation, the continuous activity that makes an Ether structure a living, functioning thing rather than a static shape, hence inert. With that established, Remielle’s ability starts to look like something very specific and very unusual. That's an intervention at the level of the Ether field itself. She’s maybe imposing a localized field state where oscillation simply isn't permitted. In my other post I mentioned this briefly, but so far the things that can seemingly impose their own rules locally we’ve seen and would make total sense for her either as the OG herself or a descendent to have are VH weapons. (And in the post also mentioned a reason that would explain maybe why the proxy seemed to be able to fight that state ever so slightly, when the eyes flashed).

Looking at maybe the limits and precision of Remielle’s ability, as many have pointed out she warned us with the grappling talk, and warned again. Because it does seem to require proximity, specifically maybe proximity to a high-sensitivity point as each paused entity has an individual feather aka localized. For living beings that seems near the head maybe, which if the brain and CNS might control Ether in the body would make sense. For Ethereals, it's the core; if an Ethereal is a signal, the core is what keeps that signal from just dispersing into the field (and why it must be destroyed), which means it's also the most sensitive point for any intervention at the field level.
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Melinoe Hollow
This is where contrast becomes useful.
Melinoe Hollow produces washed-out, colorless, degraded environments. Fragile terrain, pale structures, things that look like they've lost their coherence and vitality. On the surface that sounds similar to what I believe Remielle was doing. But the underlying cause is almost exactly opposite, Melinoe doesn't suppress Ether activity it has *strong* Ether activity. The problem is that the oscillation has become so chaotic that the signal is overdriven into noise. Not a frozen frame, but a screen overwhelmed with interference. Wipe out stability with too much uncoordinated activity and you get the same visual result as having too little: a washed-out, low-information image. I bring it up since they did in the 2.7 livestream too [last image], and it looks like we might be going back based on the 2.8 trailer. Maybe being there helps drive the proxy over the edge re their ether.

What I think this points to is that the coherent reality of the ZZZ world only functions properly within a narrow range. Too little oscillation and you get stasis, too much chaotic oscillation and you get dissolution. Both extremes produce colorlessness, fragility, and loss of functional coherence and from a distance they can look similar.

TLDR: Reality functions in a way similar to a CRT TV signal, it only works when oscillation and coherence of Ether are both stable. What Remielle’s ability is doing perhaps is a localized shutdown of Ether activity itself, that oscillation. What we’ve seen so far capable of that and would make sense for her to have is a VH weapon. Melinoe Hollow looks similar from the outside, colorless, but is the opposite problem: too much chaotic Ether activity rather than too little because for both the “signal” is being disrupted, just in different ways.

Edit: Fixed links

This is very long, you’ve been warned! TLDR at the end. I’m not fussing too much with specific mechanisms of how things function or what they are, mainly the broader picture otherwise this would be twice as long. And in case this all gets debunked in 2.8/3.0 lol. Of course a lot of people have been referring to it as a stand etc but I am only referring to the context of ZZZ and not possible inspirations.

Without going too deep into theories on Ether aptitude and how exactly it may function, what is it really? Fow now I am going to propose this: Everyone has something functioning like an internal “Ether grid,” a network in the brain and nervous system that regulates how the body and mind resonate with the Ether field and how much Ether is in the body. Think of it a bit like being in the ocean, and how long you are able to float and ride the waves before going under (or getting out).

So what happens when you reach the end of *your* Ether aptitude? When this system can’t handle any more, when regulation fails and adaptation runs out as someone goes past their threshold, and the system has to resolve its instability by becoming something new. For most people, the answer is corruption and becoming an Ethereal (or death). And this is preferable for the Creator. The Creator (始主), literally something closer to "Primordial Lord," is described as a "convergence of countless logics" that seemingly wants to return everything to an original unified state. The elimination of differentiation. Our existence is fundamentally incompatible with that goal as life as we know it relies on differentiation.

What exactly the Creator, and likewise the VH weapons, truly are is something I think we don’t have enough information about yet to say and I have several theories, but for now let’s just simplify it and think of the Creator as something that is trying to impose its logic onto everything else. Every other structure, every living person etc is something that exists with its own internal rules. The Creator wants all of those rules to collapse into one. Etherealization fits into this, even if imperfectly. When a person loses coherence inside a Hollow and reorganizes into/becomes an Ethereal, they stop being a bounded individual with their own internal logic. Not exactly what the Creator wants, but adjacent to it, one more distinct self integrated into the field but not a complete collapse.

So when thinking about how humanity fights back against this, against something trying to impose a single logic onto everything...I think the TOPS PV trailer actually told us, but not just about TOPS’s own aims. I think it also showed us three different approaches to this threat overall that are being considered, Pyrois the result of one of them.

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Path one: Void Hunter weapons
Again without getting into what they *are*, the way I'd maybe describe how these weapons function is they're like having admin access to a system you don't fully understand. The Ether environment has rules: who can do what, how much, under what conditions. The Void Hunter weapons contain something that operates at a deeper level than that, able to override those rules locally.

The problem is that these weapons are rule systems in their own right. They don't just grant power, they impose their own logic onto the wielder. Using these weapons means using something that operates under rules that the human body pays the difference for. The Creator wants this “stolen authority” and whether that framing is literally accurate (whether the weapons genuinely contain something that originated with the Creator, or whether the Creator simply considers anything operating at that level to be its domain) I don't think we can determine yet. But the weapons and the Creator are operating in the same space (also I do not think VH weapons are made from messengers of the Creator), which is both what makes them effective and what makes their wielders targets. It's the most direct form of opposition, meeting the Creator on its own terms, with power drawn from the same level of operation.

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Path two: Rebirth
If Hollows are expanding and the world is becoming uninhabitable, evolve humanity to survive in it. This is its own kind of resistance, and the approach that Tin Crown advocates for in the PV.

Sacrifices are forcibly pushed past the threshold intentionally. A successful one in the eyes of TOPS would retain identity while crossing the Ether threshold that normally causes Etherealization. They're Ethereal in stability, but still human in memory and cognition. A truly successful experiment would perhaps allow changing between forms. The cost is that (so far) the process is dangerous, often fatal, often unsuccessful and the long-term stability is unclear. It also requires forcing the threshold crossing immediately and artificially. It's an override, and the body either holds or it doesn't. Perhaps riskier in the process to get there than what is going on with the MC, but also perhaps less risky once achieved? Time will likely tell.

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Path three: The Legacy of Helios and Pyrois
I think that beyond what we’ve been told, the real goal of the HDD or Helios may have been perhaps to build a stable interface between human cognition and the Ether field, allowing humans to interact with and navigate it without being overwritten by it. Maybe the aim was to try to get rid of Hollows at a foundational level.

So what happens when the MC reaches the end of their aptitude, goes past their threshold?
Well to start with the wording on the graphic about the Ether building up in their system was interesting to me. This normally shouldn’t be happening, where a body is storing excess Ether. Outside the Hollow in general ambient Ether still exists and people also carry an amount in their body that exist in a balance. It can’t be accumulating otherwise there would already be massive issues with just the ambient Ether, the body has to have a mechanism for regulation. Corruption occurs instead when that balance is overriden, and something is causing the MC to accumulate Ether. 

It’s most likely because of the HDD, or my best guess, though it's only a guess, is that it involves porcelume being a material used for the implant. It is known to absorb Ether and hold it without releasing, and if the crystalline lens uses it, it could be slowly retaining Ether in a way a normal body wouldn't. There is a newsletter post about how “Jonathan’s newly developed implanted crystalline lens can correct vision, but there is still risk of the body rejecting the implant.” (a commission also involved someone getting one…but also if they use it maybe there is a reason why their bodies accepted the implants.)

But regardless of how, an accumulation is happening. While again most of the time the answer to the end of aptitude is unpleasant, for the MC, the answer that Helios seems to have accidentally or not enabled is instead: partition. Essentially sort of the opposite of a Sacrifice, as rather than fusion separation occurs. At that threshold, partitioning happened, the excess Ether was offloaded into a separate but coupled structure. That accumulated Ether self-organized into something stable on its own terms, Pyrois, the Etheric Other. This is why Pyrois has its own will too I believe.

Why exactly the HDD made partition possible, not sure, or if it even is the HDD specifically. I think there’s still not enough information to determine if they are special just because of the implants, or if the MCs were chosen for a specific reason. With the other two Helios students shown, it would be interesting to learn if they also have implants and could also access the HDD. If so, then I believe they could also potentially have an Etheric Other, but I do not think it is something we will see from other agents.

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Competing systems
The weapons, presented by Rusty Cliff/Edmund in the TOPS PV, containing their own internal logic that they force onto their wielders and, to a degree, onto their local environment, say: use its own power against it. Meet it with an equally dominant rule system and force it back. The cost is that you're hosting a foreign logic that could consume you. It would also make sense why different factions are trying to create Void Hunters that are aligned with them.

Rebirth says: exist within the field as a coherent self that refuses to dissolve. Prove that individuality survives even beyond the threshold. The cost is unclear beyond transformation if they become successful.

The Helios path, that Lead Scepter wants to make use of, says something different maybe. It doesn't wield authority as a weapon, and it doesn't transform the human into something field-compatible. It might build a relationship between a human and the Ether field that allows both to exist, linked, without either one overwriting the other. How stable this could be, what risks it poses like risk of further corruption, are hopefully questions that will be answered if this theory does turn out to hold any water.

Perhaps this is why the trailers have ended with the phrase they have. Disclaimer any CN speakers correct me please if needed, but the verb is left out of it in CN. It’s essentially “(will)[do something to] New Eridu…” and the action is left open ended (though different markers). The ability to wield authority essentially over reality to at least a degree is not at all foreign to hoyo, and everyone’s goals of what the world should look like are going to differ, hence the unfinished sentence maybe (and also brings additional interesting thoughts about the AIs, but that’s for another time perhaps).

TLDR: The Creator wants to collapse all life into one system. VH weapons fight that and impose authority at the same level. Sacrifices (fusion) resist assimilation by remaining a coherent self. When the MC hits the end of their Ether aptitude, instead of becoming an Ethereal (collapse) or dying, something Helios enabled is instead partition, offloading the excess into Pyrois as a separate but linked structure. This partitioning along with rebirth/Sacrifices and VH weapons are three approaches presented in the TOPS PV of dealing with the Creator.