The fact that Materia derives it's power from carrying the memories of the ancient implies that the "energy" within the life stream is knowledge. Tifa asks a great question basically asking about where the byproducts of mako go, but the physical aspects of mako are not what gives it power. My assumption is that the reason why processing mako into energy saps the total life force of the planet is that the knowledge is destroyed in the process, much like how the information on a page is lost when burning it, or how our own memories are actually the pulses and links between neurons and not the neurons themselves. This also adds greater context to Jenova, a parasitic, shape shifting, mind altering creature from beyond. It craves life itself, and while at a glance we can say she consumes energy, it makes sense for a creature like Jenova to want information, namely genetic information. It also expands the plot to be more than just a commentary about the destruction of the environment, but also a willful ignorance or even the intentional destruction of history and culture under capitalism and war, which is pretty hardcore. But back to Tifa's question, it's possible that they had her ask that specifically to imply that the memories and emotions "recorded" in the life stream have to go somewhere. The ending seems to indicate that Zack was saved not by the happenstance, but explicitly because for that brief moment Aerith willed fate to give her something lost. And since Aeriths precognition in Remake was selective, and she lost it after fighting the arbiter, I think it possible that the "future/informed" versions of her and Sephiroth are just timeless cognitions or consciousness within the life stream and they are using themselves in another world to influence events. That external influence is the reason the whispers appear (as they are only after Aerith before she presumably alters the fate of Cloud and passes them on to him) I have no idea what the deal is with the empty White materia. I mean thematically it's obvious. It's in Clouds possession now with means it's reflecting his blank state, as well as indicating the boundless new possibilities of a world that's been touched by outside influence. But evidently this prime Aerith was protecting the White materia for a reason, and she pulls a switcheroo on Cloud. Since they recontextualized the Black materia as being forged by the influence of the Gi's plea for nothingess, it's possible that a pure, clear materia needs to be filled with something. I really wonder how that's going to change the usual post meteor shenanigans of the original. One cool concept I like to toy with is that while the Summons have lore, it is still just in the form of in universe legends. So who is to say that humans with their own creation myths and divine entities just didn't have such collective faith that creatures they dreamed up are now embodied within summon materia?
Have you played ffx? This is basically how ffx summons are created: "One cool concept I like to toy with is that while the Summons have lore, it is still just in the form of in universe legends. So who is to say that humans with their own creation myths and divine entities just didn't have such collective faith that creatures they dreamed up are now embodied within summon materia?"
Maaaaaan. I missed this because I got too close to the circle and triggered the cutscene, despite wanting to listen to all the dialogue. I was a little bummed I missed it but thought to myself, "It probably wasn't super important". How wrong I was xD
This isn't a new concept in FF7. This is literally what the Lifestream sequence was: a world made up of Cloud's memories, including his false memories bcs the Lifestream doesn't distinguish between fact and fiction. When a soul fades or a person exits the Lifestream, the dream world also fades (that's why they're temporary worlds). The doctor in Mideel also implied that mako-poisoned patients are stuck in trippy dreamlike worlds, which is why they're comatose.
Possibly the most important dialogue in the entire game. Is that what the clear materia is? A literal looking glass? That allows one to see these worlds that are manifested by hopes, dreams, and memories? Is that why Cloud is able to speak with Aerith and fight alongside Zack?
As materia is crystalized wisdom, knowledge, memories, etc. from the Lifestream, I figured that Aerith's White materia became clear when the Whispers took her memories away from her. As Cloud still doesn't really remember himself and thus is frequently subject to Sephiroth's puppeteering, I think that it's more representative of himself at the moment. While it may be his dreams and desires that facilitate some of those interactions, those things have largely been taking place since the end of Remake when it was in Aerith's possession, so it's hard to know exactly what its core purpose is mechanically compared to the White & Black Materia. Thematically, I think it's that Cloud has to be able to make his own choices rather than following the echoes that others have for him to decide what it is he really wants (which he struggles with through ACC), but it is an interesting mystery either way!
My only question remains. When cloud went to sleep in chapter 12, he was able to see aerith & Marlene thru the eyes of another cloud, was this referring that maybe it’s possible the cloud we’re playing is dead or about to die. Remember in chapter 13 during the date with aerith, she says “ this isn’t about saving me tho, it’s about saving the world & you” this tagline is also mentioned during one of its trailers “the world will be saved but will you?” Sephiroth also seems intent on keeping “our” cloud alive considering the end of remake & when the snake dragged cloud into the water, sephiroth saves him but it never shows us how cloud got out? Another thing to point out. Sephiroth doesn’t seem to go after the aerith & cloud who are unconscious in Zack’s timeline. But goes after the one where aerith & cloud are on a date? So many questions lol.
Cloud hasn't been just the "real" Cloud since the Nibelheim incident when he got impaled by Sephiroth. He's been in a mako-poisoned catatonic state, and then sort of patched together with fragments of other people's mannerisms like Zack's thanks to Jenova cells. *_Remake_* addressed this with Jessie's dad being in a mako-poisoned coma from collapsing in the reactor with her theory that his spirit was stuck in the Lifestream disconnected from his body. In that sense, our Cloud is sort of only half alive, thus he slips between those realms when he's sleeping. Sephiroth doesn't arrive until Aerith is actually there, since she's the only one he's pursuing - which he's able to do because Cloud killed him in Nibelheim, but his consciousness has refused to return to the Planet. He's in that same liminal state, most of which is covered in *_On The Way to a Smile Case of Lifestream Black & White_* which came out years ago. Sephiroth doesn't want Cloud dead, because they're reflections of one another and he's always wanted a friend. He's being the antagonist for Cloud because Cloud wants to get stronger to save the people he cares about, and so Sephiroth is guiding him through the pain to make Cloud embrace that power in the same way he did.
Bruuuuuuh what? I didn't catch this AT ALL. But man, this huge shit. Why would they put something so crucial in such a goofy spot and be so missable? Those cheeky SE devs are wild as hell.
Yup. FFVII has always been a story about how to cope with significant loss where the terms like "returning to the Planet" and "the Promised Land" have always been metaphors about death and finding peace, so seeing them represented this way in the Remake Project is really just in line with the way it's always been. There is also a lot of spiritual existentialism that comes from Hinduism & Buddhism that Western audiences aren't implicitly familiar with from a cultural perspective, which intersects with multiverse themes in fiction that ARE very familiar, so it's not too surprising that only half of that gets picked up on, which is why I'm glad for things like the overt dialogue from this NPC to clearly lay some of that out.
@@ericstaples7220 Well, yes and no. The concept of the Lifestream is heavily based in a few existential themes about life that originate in Hinduism & Buddhism where reality itself is just as much of an illusion. That's why there are the scenes of Sephiroth and Cloud in a space outside of that looking at the true nature of reality of choices and decisions forking off into various realities that end, and why Sephiroth wants to prevent them from ending and stitch them all together as a form of Reunion. Essentially this would invalidate individual agency as none of the choices you make would matter, and while that would remove the pain from loss or death, it wouldn't prevent suffering from emerging as the Gi Tribe demonstrates. The world where Zack is alive is just that collection of hopes, dreams, and ambitions in a Promised Land that represents when people and experiences that you lost and have a longing for but can never return to, and the desire to see them again some day. (It's a metaphor for Heaven in the Lifestream that Shinra has also conflated with a literal physical place made of Mako, similar to where the real world metaphor originates).
Lmao yuuup. Had to know what Max was talkin about. I completely missed this shit. The sound of my jaw hitting the floor every 4 seconds must have drowned it out.
Cloud is probably a component of that, as he's a VERY close reflection of Sephiroth's own trauma. There's a portrayal of them in *_Kingdom Hearts 2_* where Sephiroth is the darkness in Cloud's heart that he can't let go of, while Cloud is the little piece of light left in Sephiroth's that he can't bring himself to fully snuff out. Like yin & yang, perfect opposites like that are just a mirror of one another, which is why Cloud's identity about being a Sephiroth Copy and his behavioural slips in *_Rebirth_* all show him displaying Sephiroth-like characteristics. (There's some critically important context in that relationship that's also very true of people with visual hallucinations from PTSD like Cloud experiences, which is that the inability to recognize someone who traumatized you as a human very much like you reinforces the fear and trauma responses for things like visual hallucinations. They do a really good job in portraying his condition even amidst the scifi & magic elements).
Cloud's dream has always been wanting to meet Aerith again. What if that desire created another world where he could be able to save her? And that would be this Remake timeline, a second chance.
Here's my take: Chapter 14 in *_Rebirth_* specifies that the alternate reality we see with Zack surviving in is Aerith's Dream (which is why it's populated specifically with the people of Sector 5). *_Remake_* also always has the visions of Zack's fate coming from her memories in Chapter 18, and she sees the fragmented sky at the end of that game when they leave Midgar the way Cloud sees it now after *_Rebirth._* While Aerith's Dream is where she got to be reunited with Zack, it's ALSO where she's trying to find the "real" Cloud, since his mind is still lost in the Lifestream from the mako poisoning. His memories & dreams are all confused still in a similar way, which is why Sephiroth has such an easy time confusing him and why he sees things others can't (since Sephiroth, Zack, & Aerith have now all passed on and are interacting from a spiritual plane). That's why Aerith & Cloud both wake up there together and specifically she tells him it's her dream - a world where everyone has accepted their fates. Cloud keeps a connection to this even after he recovers, which is the pure white space where Aerith's hand reaches out at the end of the original *_FF7_* and also where he sees her & Zack in *_Advent Children_* because he's still holding on to those memories as he's healing from the loss, while they're helping him to move forward and smile again. The main events in *_Remake_* seem to be following the original and leading naturally into *_Advent Children_* so I don't see it as a different timeline of sorts, and more just a way of conceptualizing the spiritual realization of the dreams of those who have passed on as a way of understanding what the Promised Land is for both the life you're left living without the people who are gone and the idea of all of your dreams becoming intertwined when you eventually return to the Planet with them.
@@PierceArner Late reply but I think you have the correct gist of the situation. The lifestream doesn't follow the rules of time and space as any other living being does, it's a gateway that connects all, and a place where all souls go to when their original body dies. My take is that OG was the correct and original timeline, and it already "happened". The problem is that Sephiroth by the end of it, once reunited with the lifestream, decided to "remake" things through the lifestream itself. FF7 follows a completely different setup compared to Kingdom Hearts, for example, where there is only one timeline and if I go to the past then I can't change the present because the consequence of my actions are already would already there. In FF7 instead through the lifestream it is possible to alter fate and create different branches (note that most of those are just very limited in scope and serve a very specific purpose, there should be only one main timeline which is the one we follow during the game), Sephiroth wants to use this ability to create the perfect timeline where he ends up as the winner. Aerith by the end of OG is also part of the lifestream and probably decided to play the same game as Sephiroth, but her objective is to make things ultimately go as planned (OG)
@@PierceArner So in an essence Square Enix has decieved Zack fans into thinking he survived to get their money and then told them he was dead all along? That's completely BS and I truly hope you're wrong dude.
No matter how you cut it if this is actually what's going on Square Enix has decieved Zack fans and they should be called out on it if this is actually true.
So just to make sure I have this right, There are no timelines, there are no multiverses, and these other worlds we’ve been seeing are basically our deceased heroes desires to live or their “promised” land. Basically Zack is dead, cloud never saved aerith, and Aerith is also dead but manifested in another lifestream world (she’s still dead) after cloud deflected the sword. This is all the lifestream then, and it makes SENSE because Zack doesn’t have any gear or materia you can update, he is dead. OOOOOOF. I need a cigarette after this bro…..
Bingo. This is also why, when Zack touches Aerith's hand and talks to her, Aerith literally feels it from a strand of the Lifestream making contact with her hand while she's on Gi Nattak's boat headed towards the Village of the Gi.
This may be how it used to be... until we killed the Arbiters of Fate in Remake. Now it seems like those pre-existing boundaries are gone, and those worlds now do actually exist. Sephiroth is feeding on many many lifestreams trying to protect their worlds from dying instead of one. So what you said is probably the case when the Arbiters were alive. But now that they aren't, those boundaries are gone.
This is the answer. This right here is what’s going on!
The fact that Materia derives it's power from carrying the memories of the ancient implies that the "energy" within the life stream is knowledge. Tifa asks a great question basically asking about where the byproducts of mako go, but the physical aspects of mako are not what gives it power. My assumption is that the reason why processing mako into energy saps the total life force of the planet is that the knowledge is destroyed in the process, much like how the information on a page is lost when burning it, or how our own memories are actually the pulses and links between neurons and not the neurons themselves. This also adds greater context to Jenova, a parasitic, shape shifting, mind altering creature from beyond. It craves life itself, and while at a glance we can say she consumes energy, it makes sense for a creature like Jenova to want information, namely genetic information. It also expands the plot to be more than just a commentary about the destruction of the environment, but also a willful ignorance or even the intentional destruction of history and culture under capitalism and war, which is pretty hardcore.
But back to Tifa's question, it's possible that they had her ask that specifically to imply that the memories and emotions "recorded" in the life stream have to go somewhere. The ending seems to indicate that Zack was saved not by the happenstance, but explicitly because for that brief moment Aerith willed fate to give her something lost. And since Aeriths precognition in Remake was selective, and she lost it after fighting the arbiter, I think it possible that the "future/informed" versions of her and Sephiroth are just timeless cognitions or consciousness within the life stream and they are using themselves in another world to influence events. That external influence is the reason the whispers appear (as they are only after Aerith before she presumably alters the fate of Cloud and passes them on to him)
I have no idea what the deal is with the empty White materia. I mean thematically it's obvious. It's in Clouds possession now with means it's reflecting his blank state, as well as indicating the boundless new possibilities of a world that's been touched by outside influence. But evidently this prime Aerith was protecting the White materia for a reason, and she pulls a switcheroo on Cloud. Since they recontextualized the Black materia as being forged by the influence of the Gi's plea for nothingess, it's possible that a pure, clear materia needs to be filled with something. I really wonder how that's going to change the usual post meteor shenanigans of the original.
One cool concept I like to toy with is that while the Summons have lore, it is still just in the form of in universe legends. So who is to say that humans with their own creation myths and divine entities just didn't have such collective faith that creatures they dreamed up are now embodied within summon materia?
Yeah I've always felt a link in theology and design of Gnosticism between FF7 and FF10 for the reasons you mention at the end.
That little bit about summons is basically FFX's whole lore resumed.
You should play FFXIV. You would really like a couple of plot beats regarding what you've mentioned.
Have you played ffx? This is basically how ffx summons are created: "One cool concept I like to toy with is that while the Summons have lore, it is still just in the form of in universe legends. So who is to say that humans with their own creation myths and divine entities just didn't have such collective faith that creatures they dreamed up are now embodied within summon materia?"
@@aurus33 same in ffxiv as well!
This is very important for people to understand the ending.
Yup. Probably one of _the_ most important bits of in-game information for that.
And so easily missable. Wild.@@PierceArner
Thank you! I accidentally cut this convo bc I walked closer to the seminar. Beautiful explanation.
I was too busy avoiding people here so I could listen to the music, so thanks for this!
Maaaaaan. I missed this because I got too close to the circle and triggered the cutscene, despite wanting to listen to all the dialogue. I was a little bummed I missed it but thought to myself, "It probably wasn't super important". How wrong I was xD
Damn
She knows the truth 😮
This isn't a new concept in FF7. This is literally what the Lifestream sequence was: a world made up of Cloud's memories, including his false memories bcs the Lifestream doesn't distinguish between fact and fiction. When a soul fades or a person exits the Lifestream, the dream world also fades (that's why they're temporary worlds). The doctor in Mideel also implied that mako-poisoned patients are stuck in trippy dreamlike worlds, which is why they're comatose.
Yup. It's what the whole concept of "Returning to the Planet" is.
Possibly the most important dialogue in the entire game.
Is that what the clear materia is? A literal looking glass? That allows one to see these worlds that are manifested by hopes, dreams, and memories? Is that why Cloud is able to speak with Aerith and fight alongside Zack?
As materia is crystalized wisdom, knowledge, memories, etc. from the Lifestream, I figured that Aerith's White materia became clear when the Whispers took her memories away from her. As Cloud still doesn't really remember himself and thus is frequently subject to Sephiroth's puppeteering, I think that it's more representative of himself at the moment.
While it may be his dreams and desires that facilitate some of those interactions, those things have largely been taking place since the end of Remake when it was in Aerith's possession, so it's hard to know exactly what its core purpose is mechanically compared to the White & Black Materia.
Thematically, I think it's that Cloud has to be able to make his own choices rather than following the echoes that others have for him to decide what it is he really wants (which he struggles with through ACC), but it is an interesting mystery either way!
My only question remains. When cloud went to sleep in chapter 12, he was able to see aerith & Marlene thru the eyes of another cloud, was this referring that maybe it’s possible the cloud we’re playing is dead or about to die. Remember in chapter 13 during the date with aerith, she says “ this isn’t about saving me tho, it’s about saving the world & you” this tagline is also mentioned during one of its trailers “the world will be saved but will you?” Sephiroth also seems intent on keeping “our” cloud alive considering the end of remake & when the snake dragged cloud into the water, sephiroth saves him but it never shows us how cloud got out? Another thing to point out. Sephiroth doesn’t seem to go after the aerith & cloud who are unconscious in Zack’s timeline. But goes after the one where aerith & cloud are on a date?
So many questions lol.
Cloud hasn't been just the "real" Cloud since the Nibelheim incident when he got impaled by Sephiroth. He's been in a mako-poisoned catatonic state, and then sort of patched together with fragments of other people's mannerisms like Zack's thanks to Jenova cells.
*_Remake_* addressed this with Jessie's dad being in a mako-poisoned coma from collapsing in the reactor with her theory that his spirit was stuck in the Lifestream disconnected from his body. In that sense, our Cloud is sort of only half alive, thus he slips between those realms when he's sleeping. Sephiroth doesn't arrive until Aerith is actually there, since she's the only one he's pursuing - which he's able to do because Cloud killed him in Nibelheim, but his consciousness has refused to return to the Planet. He's in that same liminal state, most of which is covered in *_On The Way to a Smile Case of Lifestream Black & White_* which came out years ago.
Sephiroth doesn't want Cloud dead, because they're reflections of one another and he's always wanted a friend. He's being the antagonist for Cloud because Cloud wants to get stronger to save the people he cares about, and so Sephiroth is guiding him through the pain to make Cloud embrace that power in the same way he did.
Bruuuuuuh what? I didn't catch this AT ALL. But man, this huge shit. Why would they put something so crucial in such a goofy spot and be so missable? Those cheeky SE devs are wild as hell.
they were playing elden ring when they were figuring out where to put this shi 😂
This seemingly debunks the multiverse and timeline theory that the majority of the fandom over-eagerly and prematurely decided on.
Yup. FFVII has always been a story about how to cope with significant loss where the terms like "returning to the Planet" and "the Promised Land" have always been metaphors about death and finding peace, so seeing them represented this way in the Remake Project is really just in line with the way it's always been.
There is also a lot of spiritual existentialism that comes from Hinduism & Buddhism that Western audiences aren't implicitly familiar with from a cultural perspective, which intersects with multiverse themes in fiction that ARE very familiar, so it's not too surprising that only half of that gets picked up on, which is why I'm glad for things like the overt dialogue from this NPC to clearly lay some of that out.
So the world Zack is alive in isn't an alternate universe? Is it just a dream world?
@@ericstaples7220 Well, yes and no. The concept of the Lifestream is heavily based in a few existential themes about life that originate in Hinduism & Buddhism where reality itself is just as much of an illusion. That's why there are the scenes of Sephiroth and Cloud in a space outside of that looking at the true nature of reality of choices and decisions forking off into various realities that end, and why Sephiroth wants to prevent them from ending and stitch them all together as a form of Reunion.
Essentially this would invalidate individual agency as none of the choices you make would matter, and while that would remove the pain from loss or death, it wouldn't prevent suffering from emerging as the Gi Tribe demonstrates.
The world where Zack is alive is just that collection of hopes, dreams, and ambitions in a Promised Land that represents when people and experiences that you lost and have a longing for but can never return to, and the desire to see them again some day. (It's a metaphor for Heaven in the Lifestream that Shinra has also conflated with a literal physical place made of Mako, similar to where the real world metaphor originates).
Well, isn't that splendid
Who’s here after spoiler mode😂
Lmao yuuup. Had to know what Max was talkin about. I completely missed this shit. The sound of my jaw hitting the floor every 4 seconds must have drowned it out.
So I have a question. If Cloud were to die, would Sephiroth die also? Is Cloud keeping his memory alive?
Cloud is probably a component of that, as he's a VERY close reflection of Sephiroth's own trauma. There's a portrayal of them in *_Kingdom Hearts 2_* where Sephiroth is the darkness in Cloud's heart that he can't let go of, while Cloud is the little piece of light left in Sephiroth's that he can't bring himself to fully snuff out.
Like yin & yang, perfect opposites like that are just a mirror of one another, which is why Cloud's identity about being a Sephiroth Copy and his behavioural slips in *_Rebirth_* all show him displaying Sephiroth-like characteristics.
(There's some critically important context in that relationship that's also very true of people with visual hallucinations from PTSD like Cloud experiences, which is that the inability to recognize someone who traumatized you as a human very much like you reinforces the fear and trauma responses for things like visual hallucinations. They do a really good job in portraying his condition even amidst the scifi & magic elements).
Cloud's dream has always been wanting to meet Aerith again. What if that desire created another world where he could be able to save her? And that would be this Remake timeline, a second chance.
Here's my take:
Chapter 14 in *_Rebirth_* specifies that the alternate reality we see with Zack surviving in is Aerith's Dream (which is why it's populated specifically with the people of Sector 5). *_Remake_* also always has the visions of Zack's fate coming from her memories in Chapter 18, and she sees the fragmented sky at the end of that game when they leave Midgar the way Cloud sees it now after *_Rebirth._*
While Aerith's Dream is where she got to be reunited with Zack, it's ALSO where she's trying to find the "real" Cloud, since his mind is still lost in the Lifestream from the mako poisoning. His memories & dreams are all confused still in a similar way, which is why Sephiroth has such an easy time confusing him and why he sees things others can't (since Sephiroth, Zack, & Aerith have now all passed on and are interacting from a spiritual plane).
That's why Aerith & Cloud both wake up there together and specifically she tells him it's her dream - a world where everyone has accepted their fates.
Cloud keeps a connection to this even after he recovers, which is the pure white space where Aerith's hand reaches out at the end of the original *_FF7_* and also where he sees her & Zack in *_Advent Children_* because he's still holding on to those memories as he's healing from the loss, while they're helping him to move forward and smile again.
The main events in *_Remake_* seem to be following the original and leading naturally into *_Advent Children_* so I don't see it as a different timeline of sorts, and more just a way of conceptualizing the spiritual realization of the dreams of those who have passed on as a way of understanding what the Promised Land is for both the life you're left living without the people who are gone and the idea of all of your dreams becoming intertwined when you eventually return to the Planet with them.
@@PierceArner Late reply but I think you have the correct gist of the situation. The lifestream doesn't follow the rules of time and space as any other living being does, it's a gateway that connects all, and a place where all souls go to when their original body dies.
My take is that OG was the correct and original timeline, and it already "happened". The problem is that Sephiroth by the end of it, once reunited with the lifestream, decided to "remake" things through the lifestream itself. FF7 follows a completely different setup compared to Kingdom Hearts, for example, where there is only one timeline and if I go to the past then I can't change the present because the consequence of my actions are already would already there. In FF7 instead through the lifestream it is possible to alter fate and create different branches (note that most of those are just very limited in scope and serve a very specific purpose, there should be only one main timeline which is the one we follow during the game), Sephiroth wants to use this ability to create the perfect timeline where he ends up as the winner. Aerith by the end of OG is also part of the lifestream and probably decided to play the same game as Sephiroth, but her objective is to make things ultimately go as planned (OG)
@@PierceArner So in an essence Square Enix has decieved Zack fans into thinking he survived to get their money and then told them he was dead all along? That's completely BS and I truly hope you're wrong dude.
@@punkpop101I think the moral of the story is accepting fate and learning to move on. Zack died. He isn't coming back.
yo
No matter how you cut it if this is actually what's going on Square Enix has decieved Zack fans and they should be called out on it if this is actually true.
As someone whose favourite FF7 character since 1997 has been Zack - I don't feel deceived. Not sure what exactly anyone would even be called out on.
So just to make sure I have this right,
There are no timelines, there are no multiverses, and these other worlds we’ve been seeing are basically our deceased heroes desires to live or their “promised” land. Basically Zack is dead, cloud never saved aerith, and Aerith is also dead but manifested in another lifestream world (she’s still dead) after cloud deflected the sword.
This is all the lifestream then, and it makes SENSE because Zack doesn’t have any gear or materia you can update, he is dead. OOOOOOF. I need a cigarette after this bro…..
Bingo. This is also why, when Zack touches Aerith's hand and talks to her, Aerith literally feels it from a strand of the Lifestream making contact with her hand while she's on Gi Nattak's boat headed towards the Village of the Gi.
This may be how it used to be... until we killed the Arbiters of Fate in Remake. Now it seems like those pre-existing boundaries are gone, and those worlds now do actually exist. Sephiroth is feeding on many many lifestreams trying to protect their worlds from dying instead of one.
So what you said is probably the case when the Arbiters were alive. But now that they aren't, those boundaries are gone.