Final Fantasy Fun

D'oh. You all probably realized this already, but.

-- Yuna's ultimate weapon is Nirvana.
-- Nirvana is a state of Enlightenment/Eternal Calm achieved by breaking the cycle of reincarnation and escaping life's suffering.
-- So the moral of FFX is: ditch dogmatic religions like Yevon and become a Buddhist, or you'll never get anywhere.

P.S. SQUIDOO WILL YOU PLEASE HURRY UP AND PAY US. MONEY IS NEEDED THIS MONTH!!!

HMmmmm.

10 minute break in class on N. and professor Christine Downing just summarized one of the points of commonality between Freud and N.

Religion and metaphysics are illusions created by the deep human longing to fulfill 3 unfillable needs:

1) that the world be ordered.
2) being good and being happy are linked.
3) death is not the final word.


In FFX, Yevon gives #1, but it's definitely an illusion. The Calm is the result of Summoners' noble sacrifice, which is actually in vain. And death ISN'T the final word, but it turns out that Spira is much worse off because death dominates so much.

I was writing a lengthy essay on the special appeal and qualities of Auron, Lulu, and the pair of them, after muggy_mountain challenged us on aulu.

I first noticed the similarities between Auron and Odysseus: wiley, well-respected fighters who nevertheless are a bit suspect in their unorthodoxy and sideways manner of doing things; also, Odysseus is astray for ten years after Troy.

There's a lot of Tenneyson's Ulysses in Auron (much as Babylon 5's Sinclair was Odysseus, and John Sheridan Telemachus).

But if Auron is the Odysseus archetype, then Lulu is Circe.


I had been seeing them as Orpheus and Eurydice (save that in this case, it's Eurydice who returns), but that's fun too!

I was just pondering archetypes, psychology, mythology again. There's a common thread that runs through a ton of fantasy and science fiction.

1) Invent a fantasy world with a system that's been in place for a long time.
2) Create heroes who push through the chinks in the system, discovering its flaws, and (usually) showing it to be corrupt.

If you think about it, it's kind of funny. Old myths tended to be about heroes creating or building culture, establishing traditions, or doing things in the traditional way.

Nowadays, we've got the rebel against tradition, who finds a new way of getting things done and overturns the old. It's obvious, and yet it's not.

Why do creators keep setting up cultures where we get to be indignant about how they operate, where sooner or later, we're going to be outraged by some aspect of the world we're trying to save? (think of our righteous indignation on Yuna's behalf.)

I haven't played many of the Final Fantasy series, but just from the ones I've played:
( spoilers to X-2, X, VIII, VII )

Psyche's story is told in Apuleius' The Golden Ass. It's a long romance.

The early part is in an odd way the paradigm for the Beauty and the Beast story. Psyche, youngest and most beautiful of three sisters, is carried off by Cupid. She winds up in a castle with invisible servants and never sees her husband, she only feels him at night. He commands her never to look upon him. Eventually he lets her invite her sisters for a visit, but they are secretly jealous of her wealth, and sow the seeds of doubt: what if her husband is a horrible monster? So she lights a lamp while he is asleep and discovers he's not a monster, but a god; unfortunately hot oil drips on his shoulder, and he flees.

Then we get the wicked stepmother story. Psyche yearns to win her lover back, but she has to undergo several awful ordeals first. Aphrodite won't give up her son easily. All the ordeals are supposed to be fatal, but Psyche keeps getting aid from unlikely places. The ants help her sort a bag of mixed grains. An eagle helps her get water from the Styx. I can't remember what helps her pluck wool from the golden carnivorous goats (another odd staple of Greek myth).

At any rate, the last task is for Psyche to go into the underworld and retrieve a box which Aphrodite had loaned Persephone (or possibly the other way around). Psyche gets past the ferryman and Cerebus and faces all the dangers of Hades alone. On the way back, however -- as Aphrodite had intended -- Psyche can't resist a peek in the box. She is killed instantly.

Cupid can't stand it any longer. As a god, he's not supposed to become too attached to mortals -- he has duties, he is NOT mortal. Zeus' idle flings are the only acceptable form of immortal/mortal intercourse. One isn't supposed to fall in love with them. But when Psyche finally dies for him, he throws all that to the wind, swoops down, scoops her up in his arms, and restores her to life, duties be damned.

I have been thinking of Orpheus and Eurydice all along while writing the Resurrection story, but I see a few faint parallels with Psyche's ordeals as well.

Like most archetypes, though, there's a great many differences too. :)


The odd thing is, I'm suddenly taking a very deep and thoughtful class on psychology and the Orpheus myth and the way Orpheus continues to manifest in poetry and life to this day.

Kitt on the semi-moribund Auron x Lulu yahoogroup mentioned something which a onetime classics major like me should've spotted immediately.

Mars Crest/Sigil (god of war) = Auron
Venus Crest/Sigil (goddess of love and beauty and sex) = Lulu

In Greco-Roman mythology, these two deities were famous for their love affair, although (unlike all other divine couples I can think of) they never married.