Final Fantasy X Fanfiction - Stone Cold

A short story regarding Yuna and the statue of Braska in Besaid Temple.

Stone Cold

She is seven years old and the whole world is celebrating. Her world isn't very big right now, of course. She's quite sheltered.

Still, today, everyone is celebrating and she cheers along with them, her tiny voice drowned in the crowd. She knows why they're all so happy. Sin is gone because of her daddy, and she's so proud she can barely breathe.

Then she hears someone talking about High Summoner Braska. She knows these words. Braska is her daddy. High Summoners are the people who defeat Sin. She knows that High Summoners don't survive, but she hasn't put these facts together properly before now.

She is seven years old, and she doesn't understand. She starts to cry.

***

She is older now, almost eight. She lives in a village on a small island, a place that already feels more like home than the big city ever did.

There is something going on at the temple. She hangs back at first, shy, and then, later, days later, when everyone has lost interest, she creeps back to see what it is.

It's a statue, a tall grey one that towers over her tiny body. She backs away, and looks into its face.

"Daddy?"

When she places her hands on it, they are warm under her skin.

***

She returns to the statue constantly. She hides there talking quietly about the things she cares about. Her childish words become more serious, and the day to day events change, but the essence of what this means to her stays the same. She tells him that one day, she will visit him on the farplane, not fully understanding what this means. She brings him flowers, and sometimes she has to tell him why she's crying. This doesn't happen often. Her childhood is idyllic. Every time, the statue is warm to her touch, and she knows that her Father isn't really gone.

***

She is fifteen and Sin has returned. She is frightened, but tries not to show it.

Chappu has died fighting Sin, and when she sees the statue she can't hold back the tears.

When she touches the statue, it's cold under her hands. It's never been cold before.

She is confused, a little afraid. Then she realises. She can't rely on her father anymore. His influence has faded. It's time she grew up.

She begins training as a summoner the next day.

Kids with Swords

I played my first RPG, Final Fantasy VIII, when I was around twelve or thirteen. Now I'm twenty-two.

The heroes of Final Fantasy VIII were all seventeen or eighteen, and it's been very odd growing past that age. At first, the characters seemed impossibly mature to me - now they seem very young and out of their depth. I wonder how the older characters will look, in later games, as I grow past them? I've past Cloud's age (21) now. I'm the same age as Aeris (22)(I insist on calling her Aeris. Bite me, it's my blog and my playthrough). I've passed Alice Elliot (21). Soon I'll catch up to Yuri Hyuga (24).

I played Final Fantasy X and X-2 between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. That is, I started off at Rikku's age (15) and grew up through to Yuna's (19) in X-2.

I defended Yuna strenuously when her new look was criticised. I suspect that all teenager girls go through a stage like that, when their clothes become sexier and more revealing, as they realise that they're becoming women and not girls. It's not a bad thing. It can be dangerous, if they are encouraged in the wrong ways or by the wrong people in their budding sexuality, but it doesn't mean that Yuna has essentially changed as a person - no more than any teenager does during those years.

If it helps, though, think about how the monsters' hit points are represented, numerically. The characters don't see that - that's there for the player, to make things easier. Is it not possible that the revealing outfits are there purely for the player, that the in-game characters don't see them that way? After all, while people comment on her new outfit, they don't mention that it's overly revealing.

Final Fantasy X-2 - On Yuna

Final Fantasy X-2, and the character of Yuna especially, caught a lot of flack. And I suspect that at least part of this is due to the close-mindedness of some of the fans.

In Final Fantasy X, Yuna was a shy white-mage/summoner. In X-2 Yuna's a gunner who happens to sing. It's generally the singing that gets criticised the most, and I'm not entirely sure why.

Firstly, singing and song-writing has been a well-respected profession for thousands of years. Bards were the keepers of oral history, and songs were used to incite strong emotions during battles, or to mourn the dead. Hymns are used in religious worship. The "popstars" we have today, who sing tinny canned repetitive music do not make up the majority of musical history. They are the tip of the iceberg.

Secondly, it was never really Yuna's idea to sing. In the first instance, LeBlanc stole her appearance, and in the second instance, it's highly likely that she was being strongly influenced by Lenne. At the very least, Lenne designed the style and the lyrics of the song.

Another thing which I think influences the dislike of Yuna in X-2 is the fact that...well. To explain this, I'm going to have to talk about high school cliches. The jocks, the cheerleaders, the nerds, whatever. Now, it's the nerds (or whatever term you prefer) who play RPGs, but, in X-2, Yuna is more cheerful, more active, and more popular than nerds are generally perceived to be. She's a cheerleader. And I think that at least some of the bad feeling towards her comes from the nerds feeling abandoned, or feeling that Yuna has "sold out" or "lost intelligence" by dressing and acting the way that she does - in a way that makes her happy.

Firstly, these stereotypes do not exist outside of TV-Land. Nobody's that flat and 2D, not even characters in videogames (barring some of those background characters, who repeat the same line ad infinitum). And no one says that someone has to stay one way, or else they're being disloyal to themselves. Yuna went from seventeen to nineteen, and that's a period where girls change a lot - even without losing the burden of their upcoming suicide.

And that's another thing. Yuna in X faced the fact of imminent death and sacrifice for the sake of the world. Yuna X-2 has lost her, for want of a better word, lover, but she has also lost the burden that she faced before. Yuna is easily lead, and, wanting to be happy and having lost her goal, she now follows Rikku. Perhaps she also feels that she owes it to Tidus to live her life to the fullest, and just have some fun.

I'd also like to reference the Avril Lavigne song Complicated here. That song always offended me. Listening to the lyrics, it would seem that a friend of hers wants to change, for whatever reason. She views this as them being untrue to themselves, or faking. Now, it's true that you should be true to yourself - but it's equally true that your teenage years are a time for changing and experimentation. Sometimes, being true to yourself does mean changing your actions - especially when the circumstances have changed as drastically as Yuna's have.

Finally, the other criticism I've heard levelled at Yuna is that her actions are "not becoming of a High Summoner". Firstly, it's debatable whether Yuna is a High Summoner. Yes, she's a Summoner who helped defeat Sin - but there's a key word in that sentence and it's not the word 'defeat'. She helped. She, alongside her guardians, defeated Sin, and one of their members died doing it. It's arguable whether this is the same as using the Final Summon, which would have destroyed both Guardian and Summoner. However, it's simpler to let the world of Spira believe in the story they've always understood, rather than break apart the entire religious structure of the world, so she keeps that label.

If we do consider her to be a High Summoner, then we must also acknowledge that she is the first one to get up and walk away. The only precedent for a High Summoner's actions is lying around, being stiff, and sometimes being made in a statue. Yes, it is true that Yuna's actions are not typical of a High Summoner - but, since she didn't kill herself immediately after defeating Sin, there is no way she could act like a typical High Summoner. There's also no way that Spira can have any expectations of her actions. She is the first of her kind, and she gets to make the rules. When people claim that Spira should expect religious figures to act a certain way, they're basing this on precedent from our world, and there's no reason why that should affect Spira's mindset. That precedent does not exist there.

Leave BritneyYunie alone!