FFX Discussion: What are Unsent, Fayth, Aeons, Fiends, Etc?

[auronlu]

I'm hesitant to post this while the discussion's ongoing, but I wanna file away my thoughts on the topic on my own LJ.

muggy_mountain asked three FFX questions on her LJ, including, "What happens to the Unsent when they die? Phoenix Down works on them, but...aren't they dead?"

Disclaimer: The following essay is uber-geeking, based on the premise that the game is presenting consistent, fully-thought-out canon, not simply things that look cool or are convenient for gameplay.

Maechen: The Al Bhed have a theory, you know. They say the pyreflies are just reacting to visitors' thoughts and dreams. But only the dead appear on the Farplane. No image of the living has ever been seen. It's a great mystery! But maybe...Maybe the dead leave a bit of themselves in the hearts of the living. And that little bit borrows the pyreflies' power for their paranormal performance! Or maybe not. Who knows?
[...]They may be called "pyreflies" but they aren't really "flies," you see. They're those lights you see whenever a fiend dies. The little fellows are responsible for a few fantastic phenomena. Visions of the past, spheres, fiends-- these are all the pyreflies' doing. In fact... pyreflies have something to do with aeons, too. The dreams of the fayth reach through the spirit of the summoner... And that which is unreal becomes real for all to see! Or maybe not. Who knows?

Unified Theory of Spiran Metaphysics
With a Dose of Jungian Psychology

There are a number of non-living states of existence in the world of Spira, most of which seem to be sustained by magical, animate energy particles called pyreflies. Or, as I think of them, "Mitichlorians with a glue gun." They translate psychic images* into visible images, or, with a material substrate on which to build, corporeal forms.


*[Psyche means "soul". In Freudian and Jungian psychology, psyche ("mind, soul") is the sum total of one's conscious thoughts, the part that says "I think, therefore I am", and also unconscious urges, fears, irrationalities, instincts, and the "deeper" parts of your mind of which you aren't consciously aware. ALL of them constitute your "Self". In the real world, "unconscious contents" manifest visibly in dreams, poetry, and myths, whereas in FFX, pyreflies can make those "psychic images" manifest in the real world. As Maechen puts it, "that which is unreal becomes real for all to see."]

Okay. Back to those "non-living states of existence" in Spira. Here they are:

1. Zombies are dead bodies kept animate by some icky form of magic, but NOT pyreflies. The soul is gone. Healing magic works in reverse.

2. Fiends are the souls of the dead still clinging to this world. They're corporeal, can be healed, but are no longer human. To me, it looks as if the dead souls have lost almost all their self-identity, and all that's left are fragments of the unconscious self. The pyreflies are preserving them in a mutated form that visibly manifests what little is left of their souls: primal animal/vegetal urges, pain, madness, etc.

3. Unsent are the souls of the dead clinging to their self-identity through some powerful emotion or purpose: some focused bit of the psyche that death can't break down. I believe that unsent retain the original matter of their dead bodies patched, reassembled and preserved by the pyreflies, which act as magical life support systems after the body's processes give out.

My reason for thinking this is that the unsent usually retain their original shapes, although they are susceptible to wounds, signs of strain/aging (see Auron), and healing magic.

Evidence that they retain their original bodies (or some form of biological matter):
–Seymour's body is hauled away by the Guado before Yuna can send him.
–Before turning into his first "Boss" form, Seymour absorbs the dead bodies of Kinoc and three of his guards. His first "boss" form is larger than he was by about the same amount of matter as those he absorbed.
–in the Mt. Gagazet battle, after killing a bunch of Ronso, Seymour appears in a third, larger form with a huge bony exoskeleton. I suspect he absorbed the Ronso as he had Kinoc. (Possibly, Yunalesca's creepy forms are made of all the summoners and guardians she's killed).

Evidence that maybe they don't retain their original bodies:
–In Zanarkand, Auron kneels and briefly dissolves into pyreflies to show Tidus his memories.

I've waffled back and forth on whether the pyreflies are patching and repairing the original body, simply acting as artificial life support for it, or whether they've dissolved the body into basic building blocks/atoms/energy (as when Seymour dissolves Kinoc and his guards) and reassembling it like a transporter beam using the blueprint of the Unsent's self-image and (possibly) others' memories of him/her. Because Auron disappears into a puff of pyreflies, I'mn now leaning towards "reassembled matter" as opposed to "body on magical life support".

Either way, I think there's biological matter being held together by the pyreflies based on a mental memory of the person. Seymour apparently has learned to manipulate the pyreflies into making new shapes that seem to manifest the inner twistedness of his psyche, the way fiends seem to reflect the unconscious, "primitive" parts of the soul.

Fans debate whether Auron's white hair and signs of age are a conscious attempt at camouflage, a choice, since other unsent don't seem to age. I think it's not so much physical aging as premature aging of his soul reflected in visible form. As camouflage, it's lousy: he looks far older than 35. Also, if he were able to manipulate his pyrefly-constructed form, he would have kept his eye.

I'm also not convinced Seymour consciously designed his mutated forms. I think he simply stuffed an excess of pyreflies, magic, and dead bodies together and said "Go!" The first time we see him shapeshift, he's clearly in pain and not in control of his body as the shape change occurs.

4. Fayth

Lulu: The fayth are people who gave their lives to battle Sin. Yevon took their souls, willingly given from their still-living bodies.
Lulu: Now they live forever, trapped in statues. But when a summoner beckons, the souls of the fayth emerge once again. That's what we call an aeon.

Fayth are non-corporeal images of the dead person, which retain the appearance of the dead person. They can go through walls.

Lulu's description sounds to me like an esoteric rite to mimic the way pyreflies "naturally" preserve the unsent, using a statue instead of biological remains as a housing/anchor for the soul. "Fayth" refers both to the ghostly image of the person (e.g. Bahamut appearing as a little boy), and the portrait preserved as a fanciful statue under glass. Hymns and a temple help maintain the magic that knits soul and statue together. The Fayth is not bound within its statue the way Unsent are bound to their bodies: it can wander around, so long as the statue is preserved.

This reminds me of ancient Egyptian metaphysics. For them, the soul of the dead could exist after death only so long as there was a mummified body, even though the mummy stayed in the coffin and the soul went to the Duat (Farplane). Early on, the Egyptians started making realistic portrait-statues of themselves to serve as backup bodies, in case the original mummy was lost.

5. Aeons are the fayth manifesting an external, physical form through a summoner. The summoner's body acts like a lens, allowing the pyreflies to manifest the dead person's spirit not in terms of their former appearance, but as a fantastic, powerful representation of their inner souls. Aeons are like fiends, except that instead of manifesting only broken, primal, splintered fragments of the psyche, aeons incarnate the "better" parts: aspirations, virtues, inner character, courage, dreams, spirit. That's why, if you go back to Macalania Temple late in the game to talk to Shiva's Fayth (as opposed to aeon), what you see is not a sexy ice goddess (her inner self) but a frumpy-looking Mother Superior nun (her appearance while alive).

In psychological terms, the aeons are incarnations of the total self, conscious and unconscious, instead of mostly the conscious self (unsent) or unconscious self (fiends).

The odd thing about aeons is that, unlike fiends and unsent, they can't be built on the matter of the Fayth's body, since they appear and disappear each time they are summoned. They manifest through the summoner, anchored in some way to the foci of the statue and summoner's body.

Perhaps the physical forms of aeons are actually summoned from the summoner's surroundings: the animations seem to imply matter being pulled forth from soil, air, clouds, fire. (Yes, the aeons are a weak point in my theory that the pyreflies are assembling bodies from real matter.)

6. Final Summoning Aeons - We see two final aeons: Braska's Final Aeon for certain, and perhaps Anima. The script suggests that Seymour's mother sacrificed herself for the Final Summoning, but Seymour didn't use her because he wanted to live, and he wanted power. That explains why Yuna says, "His aeon... it was so powerful."

Braska's Final Aeon involves complications. We meet Jecht as a Fayth inside Sin -- that's the Jecht whom the party meets at the end of the game, and whom Tidus catches after he collapses. We also see his Aeon inside Sin. This is problematic, because (a) the laws of physics may be different there, and (b) Jecht may be a special case, because he's from dream-Zanarkand.

We also get two flashbacks that provide clues. In Zanarkand, Jecht says "Make me a Fayth". In the next scene, he's walking away from Yunalesca's chamber with Braska, and claps Braska on the shoulder. Either (a) the second scene's Jecht still resided in his original body, because the transformation wasn't yet complete or (b) he was already a Fayth, but unlike Bahamut and all the others, his Fayth is solid. Because Tidus catches him at the end of the game, I'm pretty sure it's (b).

My guess is that Yunalesca can convert people to Fayth by using their real body the way the lesser aeons are "housed" in a statue. In other words, her power is so great that she doesn't need the additional "battery" or "technology" of a fayth statue: she kills the person, keeps the body alive as an unsent, and then the summoner can call the aeon as usual.

Just as aeons are more powerful than ordinary unsent, Final Aeons are tremendously more powerful than ordinary aeons.

Why? Because they're doubled. Love is, essentially, carrying an image of the person you love in your soul: your love is anchored to your impressions about, memories of, and feelings for them. So, while an ordinary aeon is built on the pyschic contents of one soul, a Final Aeon is founded on a doubled soul-image: the person's self-identity, and the summoner's impression of him/her. The "Beloved" image may not be factually accurate, but it can be powerful, maybe even more powerful than the person's sense of self.

An alarming thought: the Final Summoning may build the Aeon partly from the matter of the summoner's body.

7. Sin: Sin is very odd. It's solid, but it's only a vessel; it has no soul unless there's a Fayth/Aeon inside it serving as a host for Yu Yevon. At Operation Mi'ihen, Tidus has a vision of the freshly-killed Crusaders walking around inside Sin (the same crystalline grove appears inside Sin during the endgame). I suspect that Yu Yevon has found some variant of what Seymour was doing with Kinoc and the Ronso: absorbing the bodies of the dead in order to fashion their bodies into "unholy armor". When pieces break away from Sin's carapace, they turn back into fiends, broken remnants of the person (or amalgamations of several people) they had been.

7. Tidus and Jecht. Originally they were simply figments of the Fayth's imagination, dreams. But the magic Yu Yevon used to animate Sin's carapace seems to have interacted with Dream-Zanarkand in some unique way, imbuing ordinary dreams with a vital spark such that they becomes independently self-aware. At that point the pyreflies can make them real, temporarily (like the aeons) or -- in X-2, after their "psychic images" have taken root in the memories/hearts of "real" people -- in reality.


And that, as they say, is that. Or maybe not. Who knows?

Comments

[ladygunblade.livejournal.com]

This is a reaaaally late comment, but I happened to stumble upon this and I think it's fascinating! It's good to see I'm not the only one who muses about the plot holes mysteries of this game.

About your theory about the Final Summoning Aeon; pyreflies can create an image of the person you love, right? As we see in the Farplane. So, perhaps that's why Jecht retains his own form (or maybe all Final Fayths do at first, who knows?)? Your theory is logical and I support it, I just thought I'd add this little note.

"An alarming thought: the Final Summoning may build the Aeon partly from the matter of the summoner's body."
Interesting you should say that. I don't think it's ever explained why the Summoner dies when summoning the Final Aeon (or I might just have a bad memory). Rikku says in Home that "the Final Aeon is gonna kill [Yuna]", but she doesn't say how. She might mean the Aeon physically grabs the Summoner and kills it with its hands, or maybe she means it absorbs the Summoner's energy/life/pyreflies/soul/ whatever you call it.

"Sin is very odd. It's solid, but it's only a vessel; it has no soul unless there's a Fayth/Aeon inside it serving
as a host for Yu Yevon."
But in the ending FMV, we see Sin explode in pyreflies when Yuna sends her it and her aeons. It Sin's only mass
without soul, how is that possible? At first I thought this might be (because of) Yu Yevon or the Final Aeon, but
it's clearly Sin that explodes into pyreflies (not to mention Yu Yevon was tiny and Yuna didn't have a Final Aeon).

I also have an interesting theory about the whole Tidus/Shuyin and Yuna/Lenne connection, but I'm still missing some things, and seeing as you like to muse about this as well, maybe you can help me? I keep giving myself headaches trying to solve this, ugh.
My theory is; Tidus is the dream-version of Shuyin. Simple as that, really. Shuyin actually existed in Real Zanarkand and Tidus was "him" in Dream Zanarkand. It explains the similar appearance and the fact that they were both the star blitzball player: because they couldn't both have been the star at exactly the same time (1000 years ago), could they? (I also suspect that the Bahamut Fayth kid dreamed Tidus, seeing as he appears in all Tidus' dreams/visions).
But this doesn't explain Lenne. In fact, Lenne is a mystery to me altogether. They say she was a Summoner, BUT: When Lenne lived, Sin didn't exist yet (Sin appeared after the Machina War, which was when Lenne was already alive for quite some years). Then why was she a Summoner? Summoners exist to defeat Sin, to send the people killed by him so that they don't become fiends. What was her purpose then, if Sin didn't exist yet? Hell, the Fayth didn't even exist yet!
(It's also strange that there is no Dream-Zanarkand!Lenne; if Tidus had had a soulmate-girlfriend in his hometown, we would have known, right?)
Could it be that the Fayth were selective about what they dreamed, maybe in order to prevent another war/another Sin?

I'm also trying to figure out how Sin traveled to Dream Zanarkand. GAH, Squeenix, stop giving me migraines!

You don't have to answer if you don't know/don't want to. I just thought I'd offer my two cents xD
Definitely mem'ing this!

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Oo, welcome to the party! Summoning-meta is pretty much the heart and soul of my geekery. I have ulterior motives for this. Since I was not quote satisfied with parts of X-2, I've been writing Love Her and Despair (), a dark AU alternate X-2 set 13 years after Yuna accepted Lulu's offer to become her fayth. Hence, I've got Lulu as a Final Aeon, and Isaaru and Auron having to deal with what she's become.

I digress. You observe:

"...pyreflies can create an image of the person you love, right? As we see in the Farplane. So, perhaps that's why Jecht retains his own form (or maybe all Final Fayths do at first, who knows?)?"

Who knows indeed! But that does tie in with the way the approach to Yunalesca's lair shows echoes of people from the past. The tricky bit is that Fayth and dream-echoes don't tend to be solid, and I believe that was also true of Chappu, Yuna's parents, and Lady Ginnem when we glimpsed them on the Farplane. So Jecht is somewhat more solid.

I have moved a bit further in my thinking on the Final Aeon since this post.
-- Given: Regular fayth are people who sacrifice themselves and let their bodies be bound into statues.
-- Suppose: The fayth of the Final Aeon is unsent. Instead of being bound into a statue, the Fayth of the Final Summoning remains somewhat tied to his/her physical form. Willpower + Yunalesca's mojo allows this fayth to exist as unsent, sans need for a statue. That would also account for Jecht disappearing in a puff of pyreflies at the end.


You're right: Sin seems to outlast Jecht's death. Not Yu Yevon, though. The final FMV is misleading: it shows Besaid Village applauding Sin's demise, then Sin exploding into pyreflies, and THEN we see Yuna dancing on the airship's hull, and Sin -- now solid -- explodes again! There is also some confusion with the dream-Zanarkand Fayth disappearing, and Tidus hanging around for about 10 minutes afterward. So the timing in that FMV is obviously somewhat artistic. More realistically, I think that Sin exploded into pyreflies after (a) Yu Yevon was no longer summoning it and (b) possibly the Fayth Wall on Gagazet was contributing to maintaining Sin, although it's hard to tell whether they were helping with that or just Dream-Zanarkand.

Which brings me to Tidus/Shuyin and Lenne.

I think you are spot-on with Tidus:
-- Shuyin was a man who existed 1000 years ago.
-- Everything in Dream-Zanarkand, where Tidus lived, is a virtual reality simulation contemporary with Yuna. Tidus wasn't really from 1000 years ago; that's just what people assumed when he showed up and started talking about Zanarkand. Instead, he's part of an ongoing holographic simulation based on the memories of Zanarkand's fayth -- people who died a thousand years ago. They remember Shuyin. They vaguely reconstituted him, only not exactly, just as people we meet in dreams often have characteristics of people we know in real life, but aren't quite the same.

I like your idea that Bahamut may have shaped Tidus somewhat manually, borrowing a likely character that he hoped would break out of the simulation and do something more.

I also suggested in LHaD that Lenne may have influenced how Tidus came out; he seems to be a fuzzy reflection of Shuyin's good parts with none of the bad. How Lenne could be affecting dream-Zanarkand I don't know, but all fayth appear to be on the border of the Farplane, suspended between life and death.

As is Sin.

(Cont'd below)

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

This dream = near-death gets into mythology and depth psychology, which is my major. In individual dreams and in mythologies around the world, sleep and death treated as overlapping states: they blur together, so that dreamers may enter the afterlife, and the dead may come to us in dreams. Psychologist James Hillman talks about how we go into a state of suspended animation every time we sleep, and this daily death-state profoundly impacts our psychology and symbols for both death and dreams.

In FFX, dreams and the Farplane, dreamers and the dead seem to blur together in a similar fashion. A magical substance is posited to make this dream = death metaphor real, rather than simply symbolic. The pyreflies, spiritual/soul participles, seem to span and link the solid, dream and afterlife planes of existence like bridges of the soul.


So how does this tie into Sin's ability to enter Dream-Zanarkand?

Dream-Zanarkand is a simulated, collective memory of dead people, being summoned much like an aeon, but on a massive scale.
Sin is an aeon, summoned by the memory of Yu Yevon and the Final Aeon's hapless fayth, who is also well-nigh dead.
Once you are dead and/or unsent, you can ride Sin.
And now I have a recommendation for you. Not my Lulu-as-Sin story, which is good but loooooooong.

Instead, I urge and encourage you to check out justira's incredible 3-part story Clarion (http://justira.dreamwidth.org/302262.html), the tale of Braska from acolyte to High Summoner, with the greatest meta and insights into summoning, aeons, and Braska that I have ever seen. It is...GAH. You MUST read this. I was just listening to it -- I actually downloaded it and put it into text-to-speech to help inspire me when I write my aeon-foo.

[ladygunblade.livejournal.com]

*scribbles both fanfics on Yet-To-Read list* I should really, really read more FFX fics. Both sound fascinating!

Maybe Jecht was just an exception. After all, he traveled from Dream Zanarkand, so he might be a different case.

But Lord Zaon was turned into a statue as well. Though of course, we never know when this happens. It might as well have been after he became a Final Aeon or even after Yunalesca defeated Sin. It might just be a symbolic statue, made much later in honor of Zaon (and Yunalesca). OH! I just remembered the fact that Zaon's power was later (initially, at least) also the power for other Summoners. So that's probably why he was made into a statue; so that Summoners who pilgrimaged to Zanarkand could also receive his Final Aeon. I like your theory of the person of the Final Aeon being unsent. Suppose this is so; then why? I like the idea that the love between Summoner and Guardian remains as strong as possible when the Final Aeon still has his human form. Maybe that's just me.

Yeah, the footage of Besaid Village and Yuna sending her aeons surely happened at the same time, but Squeenix of
course can't make their figurative camera be at two places at once. So maybe those events did occur at the same time. Same for the disappearance of the fayth and Tidus. It could have happened at the same time, but Squeenix probably just wanted to show off their pretty graphics and flashy transits. Then again, Tidus (and Jecht) also had the strength to come to and remain in Spira for quite a while despite being a dream, so he could have had the strength to stay in Spira for just a few minutes (just to say goodbye, or because he couldn't quite grasp the truth yet). I think Sin and the Zanarkand Fayth were connected, if even just a tiny little bit, seeing as Sin managed to travel between Dream Zanarkand and Spira.

"Everything in Dream-Zanarkand, where Tidus lived, is a virtual reality simulation contemporary with Yuna."
...I can't believe I never realized that. Of course! Damn. I need to pay more attention when playing this game, instead of grinding like crazy and fangirling when Auron does 'Provoke' (but come on, it's sexy). Anyhoo!

I always thought it was a shame we never got to know more about pyreflies (and all the other metaphysical aspects
of FFX, but then again, if we had, we wouldn't be discussing this, would we?), because those are some very interesting and credible things you say there. I think pyreflies are able to connect no matter what their purpose. So dream-pyreflies and death-pyreflies, so to speak, could intertwine. This might explain the connection between Sin and Dream Zanarkand a little as well, though of course you explained it all.

(I just thought of something interesting; what if Lenne had given her soul at the very last moment to become a
fayth, and what if she was there in the Fayth Scar? In other words; what if Lenne contributed to dreaming the Dream Zanarkand? Then again, while typing this, I realized it's kind of impossible: not only would Shuyin be completely different if Lenne contributed to his dream version, would she not also have dreamed herself into the dream world? Not to mention her soul would have gone after Yuna sends the Fayth, and she's there in X-2, so yeah. I need sleep. Still, it's an interesting fic theory. *scribbles in plotbunny-notebook*)

[ladygunblade.livejournal.com]

Gah, sorry for format and grammar mistakes and general typos.

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Apologies not necessary; I am sure my last stream-of-consciousness reply was full of typos!

This post deserves more response/thought, but my brain is tofu, and what little I have needs to go into writing the trippy "We are now entering Sin -- ohgodsno, Lulu's Final Aeon" chapter.

But I just wanted to say: I did read this earlier today, when my brain was less tofu, and I like the way you think!

I wish I could drag justira back here for more aeons-meta.