KHUX ► *SPOILERS* So, what the heck are Worldlines in the end?

[HamHamJ]

We got a couple of references to worldlines in the KH3 secret reports that painted a certain picture, that in the light of the actual Union X finale doesn't seem to make any sense. Specifically, what we have is:

1) The virus has begun a strange undertaking: a reckless plot to allow the Five to escape into another worldline. Surely such a thing can't be possible? We're talking about the same trick that allowed the Dandelions to transfer to other worldlines after the Keyblade War.

2) Even on a worldline with no Keyblade War, peace is but a dream. In the absence of us and our Master, a "darkness" arrived—one that shall surely lead the World to yet another demise.

3) I watched as the Five were sent to another worldline

This all sounds like some kind of parallel universe stuff is going on.. but in reality "the same trick that allowed the Dandelions to transfer to other worldlines after the Keyblade War" was just... turning them into data and shoving them into Data Daybreak Town? But also sending them forward in time. So wordlines above are referring to Data Daybreak Town, and the future of the existing timeline. Which are two different things, and neither of which is a parallel dimension IMHO.

Is this just a retcon? It doesn't help that there seems to be a larger issue of Secret Report 12 just being complete lies.

 

[LoneFox]

It is actually a well known concept even in our reality. It is how the past, present, and future are according to a particular observer.

As I've said before, "the same trick" is re-living part of one's past (therefore changing the past part of their worldline), and also I don't see any lies or inconsistencies in the secret reports.

 

[AegisXIII]

It is actually a well known concept even in our reality. It is how the past, present, and future are according to a particular observer.

As I've said before, "the same trick" is re-living part of one's past (therefore changing the past part of their worldline), and also I don't see any lies or inconsistencies in the secret reports.

Do we know if rewriting the events with the tears in the fabric of time creating two different worldlines, then?
I think I managed to understand that you cannot rewrite the past. But with the Power of Waking it seems Sora managed to rewrite the present. Is it linked with that?

 

[LoneFox]

Do we know if rewriting the events with the tears in the fabric of time creating two different worldlines, then?

I'm not sure what you mean with this. Different worldlines to whom? The Player at least seemed to have two different ideas of their past, one where the war didn't happen and other where it did, with the latter one manifesting itself as nightmares.

I think I managed to understand that you cannot rewrite the past. But with the Power of Waking it seems Sora managed to rewrite the present. Is it linked with that?

Enchanted Dominion was created only as a data world to prevent Maleficent from changing the past. Doesn't this imply that she could have been successful if the world had existed like the others did before the war?

It is possible that Brain is doing something similar to what Sora did instead of "regular" time travel. There are a couple of things that can be interpreted as hints for that. But I'm not sure if such implementation details even matter.

 

[HamHamJ]

It is actually a well known concept even in our reality. It is how the past, present, and future are according to a particular observer.

As I've said before, "the same trick" is re-living part of one's past (therefore changing the past part of their worldline), and also I don't see any lies or inconsistencies in the secret reports.

The union leaders didn't lose their original memories of the war. I'm not sure they even took part in the reliving? Or if they did it would have had to be just straight up acting for them. By your definition that would mean they never left their original worldline.

And taking the arcs into the future definitely doesn't involve them reliving anything so how does that remotely fit with what you've described?

As for the secret reports, let's just look at this one sentence:

I watched as the Five were sent to another worldline—at no small cost—ensuring the line of Keyblade wielders will live on.

• Six people escaped from Daybreak Town (Lauriam, Elrena, Ventus, Ephemer, Skuld, and Brain).
• None of them went to another worldline.
• Ensuring the line of Keyblade wielders would live on seems to have come down to just Ephemer.
• When Luxu shows up he acts like he has no idea where the Union Leaders are so even if he stuck around to watch Ephemer and Skuld he at best watched three of them leave.

 

[LoneFox]

The union leaders didn't lose their original memories of the war. I'm not sure they even took part in the reliving? Or if they did it would have had to be just straight up acting for them. By your definition that would mean they never left their original worldline.

This looks like you are confused about the terminology used in the secret reports. It also looks like you either didn't read or didn't understand the Wikipedia article I linked (or perhaps you didn't see the link because of how the dark theme renders them). Some of it is very advcanced stuff, but the basic idea should be understandable by anyone.

When Luxu talks about the Five (note the capital F), he means the five union leaders. When he talks about Dandelions, he means the non-leader ones. The virus is Luxu himself, but also Brain, because they are the same person.

Now, what it means to move into another worldline? This is a complex question, because KH universe has different laws of nature than our reality, so we can't use exactly same definition for both. But I think we can define it as any kind of disconnection on how one experiences reality. By this, both time travel and memory alteration would count.

About losing memories, the Five didn't, but the regular Dandelions did, and that is what the report says.

And taking the arcs into the future definitely doesn't involve them reliving anything so how does that remotely fit with what you've described?

I was talking about Brain going to the past and becoming Luxu. What he actually did may be somewhat more complicated than that (I'm not sure about it, and I don't think there is enough information for that right now), but the general idea is the same.

Six people escaped from Daybreak Town (Lauriam, Elrena, Ventus, Ephemer, Skuld, and Brain).

Seven, actually. Elrena, Ventus, and the Five including Strelitzia.

None of them went to another worldline.

Time travel counts, so all but Ephemer did.

Ensuring the line of Keyblade wielders would live on seems to have come down to just Ephemer.

Also Brain. This was enough, since there are keyblade wielders in the modern timeline.

When Luxu shows up he acts like he has no idea where the Union Leaders are so even if he stuck around to watch Ephemer and Skuld he at best watched three of them leave.

Luxu was hiding somewhere nearby, and saw (or at least heard) what was happening. The purpose of his questions was to make sure that he has understood the situation correctly, and that no-one else is hearing their discussion. Brain didn't know how much Luxu knew, and interpreted his questions the same way you did.

 

[Noivern]

When Luxu talks about the Five (note the capital F), he means the five union leaders. When he talks about Dandelions, he means the non-leader ones. The virus is Luxu himself, but also Brain, because they are the same person.


I was talking about Brain going to the past and becoming Luxu. What he actually did may be somewhat more complicated than that (I'm not sure about it, and I don't think there is enough information for that right now), but the general idea is the same.

Brain and Luxu are not the same person, that's purely your speculation and as of the end of UX and the current state of Dark Road, is not confirmed anywhere.

 

[Beamer]

I actually just posted a series of questions regarding this on the KH Reddit.

From my understanding, Luxu took Brain's body for himself and sent his heart into the future to be completed as we saw. That means there's an apparent inconsistency between the 2 observation reports and what we see occur there in addition to the others that Ham pointed out.

Also, just to add a further wrinkle into this, in Chi proper, Ava mentions that Ephemer entered an "unchained state" and is sending messages in the form of dreams to the player and Skuld. What does that mean in this context?

 

[HamHamJ]

Also, just to add a further wrinkle into this, in Chi proper, Ava mentions that Ephemer entered an "unchained state" and is sending messages in the form of dreams to the player and Skuld. What does that mean in this context?

It would seem to mean being converted to data. Why that gave him dream powers is anyone's guess. Actually maybe Ephemer just has the Power of Waking, because heart projecting yourself from a datascape isn't that far-fetched when compared to that time Mickey did it from the Realm of Darkness.

It really feels to me like future plans got changed or refined and some things got soft-retconned at some points. Because the terminology keeps changing and descriptions of events don't line up with the actual events.

On the other hand, I expect even if these inconsistencies weren't planned they will end up being made into plot points just like the whole Ansem mess was.

 

[Beamer]

I had completely forgotten about Mickey's ability to speak to the hearts of others. Making yet another aspect of the very vague "power of waking" makes sense.

I'm definitely convinced stuff got altered as time went on. This is the second time we've had a title in development while others were being released and with Coded it affected things such as the inclusion of Roxas and the BBS trio. I guess in this case it was just a tad more blatant because of the nature of the Secret Reports. Nomura does seem fond of writing things on a whim.

I do hope it's explained in-universe though and isn't a more extreme example of "There can only be one keyblade master" from KH1.

 

[Beamer]

Apologies for double posting, but after conferring with the KH Subreddit, I think I have a grasp on what worldlines are. In a nutshell, they would be similar to the actual scientific term, but used in the same (honestly incorrect) way pop culture uses timelines to describe different points in time.

So to recap some important points from Luxu's reports in KH3:

The virus has begun a strange undertaking: a reckless plot to allow the Five to escape into another worldline. Surely such a thing can't be possible? We're talking about the same trick that allowed the Dandelions to transfer to other worldlines after the Keyblade War. - Observations, Exerpt 1

Even on a worldline with no Keyblade War, peace is but a dream. In the absence of us and our Master, a "darkness" arrived—one that shall surely lead the World to yet another demise.Amid the chaos, I bequeathed my Keyblade to one of the Union leaders, just as the Master instructed. I watched as the Five were sent to another worldline—at no small cost—ensuring the line of Keyblade wielders will live on. - Observations, Exerpt 2

In real-world physics, a world line is defined as the path in that object or elementary particle traces in 4-dimensional spacetime for the time and distance that it retains its identity.

We know based on the reports and the events of KHUx that:

1. The Dandelions escaped the war by traveling to the data daybreak town, although they didn't know the nature of the realm at the time. Luxu refers to this as jumping worldlines.
2. Everyone but the new Union Leaders had their memories erased of events in the real Daybreak Town and relived the events leading up to the war occurring.
3. Data Daybreak Town has no Keyblade War, as it seems it was programmed to divert from established history at that point.
4. In the end, the Union Leaders plus Elrena escape from the Data Daybreak Town back into the real world, and from there into the future at various points.

All of these events can chronologically be placed on a timeline that maps one's progression through time. However, in physics, space and time aren't separate, they're one thing called space-time. In order to map a person's progression through space-time, you need what's called a worldline. In media though, they sometimes refer to different "timeframes" or points in time incorrectly as "timelines". I would postulate that the same is the case with worldlines here, in that they're different "space-timeframes" if you will.

It's needlessly complicated and confusing, but that's Kingdom Hearts and Nomura for you. As an aside, I have suspicions that Nomura might be neural-atypical or have Asperger's Syndrome since this is the sort of the twisted way we think about things...

How or why Luxu believes it a capability only Keyblade Masters have is beyond me, same goes for why they refer to being in the data world as an "unchained state". Someone on Reddit speculated it's because the worlds weren't connected, but obviously, the 2 versions of the town are.

 

[Chie]

Is nobody else going to mention that there was another Daybreak Town between the original and the simulation?

The original (X) was destroyed in the Keyblade War. The Dandelions were sent to another version (Unchained), and from there ended up being shuffled into the simulation (Union X). That second, middle version, is presumably the "other worldline" they were sent to.

I thought this was commonly understood now.

 

[HamHamJ]

Is nobody else going to mention that there was another Daybreak Town between the original and the simulation?

The original (X) was destroyed in the Keyblade War. The Dandelions were sent to another version (Unchained), and from there ended up being shuffled into the simulation (Union X). That second, middle version, is presumably the "other worldline" they were sent to.

I thought this was commonly understood now.

That was the version of events I remember seeing in an old summary video, but literally no one mentioned anything like that in either part of this finale, and with all the world hopping only two version of Daybreak Town actually show up so I think that was just wrong.

 

[Chie]

That's because the first version of Daybreak Town has already been destroyed.

Also, MoM mentioned it, like, two updates ago.

 

[HamHamJ]

That's because the first version of Daybreak Town has already been destroyed.

Also, MoM mentioned it, like, two updates ago.

Just skimmed 977 and I didn't see a anything about that.

It's actually kind of weird because he refers multiple times to "this world" in his conversation with Luxu and Darkness but apparently in reference to the data world because he's talking about using it to trap the darkness.