And why was it so problematic for Caius to kill Etro in the first place if he's been carrying around her heart all this time? I just don't understand this at all. Yes, he felt that only Noel could do it, but, uh, why? Was it because of that Guardian tradition bullshit?
I thought it was just physically impossible for him to do it. That the only way for the heart of etros to perish is if a guardian destroys it with enough resolve. There's definitely a sense of magic behind how to destroy the heart because a guardian CAN destroy the heart, but if it isn't done right, then instead of destroying it, it's simply passed down to him. That's what happens in one of the paradox endings.
What I don't get is that Noel actually doesn't want to kill Caius, and therefore doesn't have the right mindset to destroy the heart of Etros. Caius has to force him to do it. By those rights, Noel should have been given the heart of etros and lived forever as well.
the out-of-game explanation that Serah's powers are a result of being touched by Etro when the goddess freed her from crystal stasis at the end of XIII.
This never bothered me the same way I never questioned why some people learned magic when arriving on Gran Pulse and some people did. Or why Etros blessed Caius instead of the other guardians before him. I mean, they are all blessed by Etros if they are able to time travel at all, the fact that Lightning was chosen to guard Etros and Serah was chosen to see time never really stood out to me. Luck of the draw.
And poor Hope. He gets nothing. Except science, and that's the only thing that doesn't look like it comes without any side effects so, good for him.
My biggest issue is with the time paradox endings. Like, if the paradoxes are finished, does that mean everything relating to it disappears? That's some serious history changing shit. I mean, even the Brain Blaster quiz notes that the most talked about issue in textbooks is time paradoxes and travel. That means an entire chunk of the culture is written out. And what about Alyssa, if she is written out of time, so should all the things she's done. And wasn't she the one that created the time-sleeping-travel machine? So Hope shouldn't be there in the first place. What about the NPC that lived happily and managed to start a family when he stumbled in a different time? Does he go back, or does he stay.
The time travel stuff makes perfect sense for me, up until how its resolution affects the timeline.
Well, I guess none of that shit matters because time is destroyed. JOKES ON ME I GUESS.
EDIT
There's a few theories going around that it deals with Serah's relation to Yeul; that Serah is like one of her "incarnations" or meant to inherit her eyes the way Noel was meant to inherit the heart from Caius (and in both cases THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE and since Noel was destined to protect her anyway...)
Isn't there a Yuel you meet in the Void beyond that is from Serah's time?