168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy X is a game that undoubtedly turned a lot of heads when it first released. A lengthy JPRG in a popular series and the first among Final Fantasy games to have voice acting, the fantasy-epic both challenged and carried out a lot of series tradition. Yoshinori Kitase, the producer behind X, said in that he wanted to change people's preconceived ideas of 'fantasy' with the game - to change the idea that 'fantas✤y' settings meant 'medieval European themed'.
Whether it meant to or not, Final Fantasy X ultimately ended up changing another, entirely separate preconceived idea I had when I first picked the game up in middle school: that a "strong" female character could not also be gentle. How did a game make me completely change the way I looked at media? It's simple - Yuna. For anyone who hasn't played FFX yet, brace for spoilers ahead.
Yuna is the female protagonist of FFX (she and Tidus share the spotl♏ight) and someone that a lot of folks probably found it easy to typecast. I did, anyway. Another soft-spoken, polite wallflower type girl, complete with a bit of pining after the central male character. At 12 years old, I saw her and basically expected her to be set dressing to Tidus' story. Then I reached Kilika and watched the iconic sending scene and thought, alright, she's a bit melancholy too. It wasn't until I replayed later that I realized just how impactful that early scene alone was.
Here we've got a 17 year old orphan agreeing to not only take on a difficult journey (as is admittedly JRPG staple) but actually to take it a step further and take up the mantle of, let's face it, the closest thing the FFX universe has to a mortician. To willfully surround herself with the dead, dyin♈g, and grieving, and offer everything she can. The sending scene is beautiful - and, as Tidus points out 🦂in his narration, horrifying and strange. Lulu even notes offhand, after the cutscene, that performing the sending actually brought Yuna to tears. It's not something she does because she enjoys it, or that it comes naturally to her.
Yuna's strength and appeal, for me, wasn't just that she would carry out her job faithfully. It wasn't that she never had moments of weakness or that she had a disregard for her life (did I mention Summoners die at the end of their journey?) that made her 'cool' like many other "strong female characters" of the time. On the contrary, she acknowledged her feelings - even recorded them to make sure they'd be understood later, after her death - and admitted to Tidus that she did have moments of sadness. She pushed through them, because she felt what she was doing was important. It was an impressive level of commitment, and I'd respected it, but those things in and of themselves w🍷eren't 𒆙what made me reevaluate the way I looked at 'strength' in media.
The most powerful thing Yuna did in the story was actually abandon her duty. Even being excommunicated from the church didn't stop her from carrying out her pilgrimage to the letter. But when she was told that finishing it meant killing one of her guardians, she stopped. Rather than give up and🌳 let Sin continue rampaging, or defeat Sin but sacrifice her morality in the process by killing a friend, Yuna rejected both options. Two lives was not, in Yuna's eyes, an acceptable price to pay for what amounted to a temporary solution. Another ten-year hope ꦏbuilt on a lie wasn't good enough.
When the world asked her to be cruel, she refused. And that refusal turned out to be a step towards a much more permanent resolution. To the me of middle school, constantly submerged in a stream of escalating violence portrayed as heroism, of the "strong female character" always having to be as combat-proficient as Black Widow, Yuna was a unique story. She wasn't dismissed by the narrative as weak-willed or stupid for trying to be nice, nor did she die a martyr, even if she'd planned on it at first. She was kind, and she survived to see that kindness vindicated. At the end of everything she'd suffered to get to that point, Yuna's victory held an i🔯mportant lesson. Kindness is not a weakness. It was kindness that killed Si🐎n for good: the rejection of sacrifice just for sacrifice's sake.
Yuna was strong without sacrificing her gentleness. When I finished and really looked at the game, I recognized that she was strong because she's so kind. She bore the weight of sendings, and made the decision to become a Summoner, because she saw sorrow and wanted to ease it. Even knowing much of that decision was also rooted in following her father's legacy, the main, driving force behind her decisions was deceptively simple: she just wanted to help people however she could. And that was, honestly...incredible.
FFX subverted a lot about the series, but kept a lot the same. Final Fantasy protagonists rarely compromise their ideals, but they're also usually men, and that comes with its own set of pitfalls. Yuna is handled with a great deal of respect in the story, in a way I realized was rare in 2012, and probably rarer still in 2001 when the game first came out. So much buzz about female characters in media comes from their action scenes. Lara Croft is strong because she can wipe out an island full of cultists basically solo. Lightning is strong because she has a gunblade and no time for bullshit. This isn't an attempt to dismiss them and their narrativ♈e arcs; it's just to point out the popular perception of these martially skilled characters versus characters like Yuna. Which aღre considered "strong" by most people?
What Yuna speaks to, which very few other female leads in the media I consumed did, is the idea that strength of character can matter as much as physical strength. That choosing to do things that might be difficult or painful because they're the right thing to do is a type of strength everyone is capable of, not just action-heroes. Strength, for Yuna and me and so many other people, isn't (and shouldn't be) about rejecting and distancing ourselves from what others consider 'weakness'. Strength can be found in dignity and kindness. In refusing to partake in "necessary evils" just because they might temporarily make our lives easier. I have never forgotten that idea, even closing in on a decade since having played FFX for the first time.