the spiral of death
Jan. 17th, 2019 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaSo I replayed a bit of Final Fantasy X over Christmas, and—man. While Auron’s “spiral of death” speech doesn’t hit particularly well out-of-context, I rightly remembered it as one of the most affecting moments of the whole game:
When Auron says these lines, he is tired. He's seeing a kid finally "wake up" to the reality of the world that he's known and lived for a long time. And he's complicit in it just as much as the foul maesters are, to his own disgust.
It sounds a little hippie-dippy to say so, but, I've thought about this a bit on-and-off throughout my life, when regarding governments, social organizations, and so on—this system we're building, what's it spiraling around? Is that thing horrifying; has it become horrifying?
For instance. The classic case in Silicon Valley is "data." There are so many goddamn "data-driven" companies, which started out as a beautiful, liberatory thing (if you can prove with numbers that this is better then you can just go make it better!). But before long, data turns into a bizarre fetish in-and-of-itself—UX people have to contort qualitative user experiences into "data" to be taken seriously, people represent data dishonestly or end up pursuing certain metrics until they become useless or actively harmful, people who vainly say "I dunno everything just feels worse" are ignored because they can't express their concerns in a spreadsheet, until no one's even thinking about users anymore, they're so damn busy chasing those numbers.
I mean, that's one cynical take, in one domain. Pick your favorite domain, system, whatever—I'm sure you can find plenty of other spirals.
FFX's final act is arguably overly optimistic, arguably a power fantasy—not because they defeat the villain, but because there is a villain, a man with a name who we can slay to make this horrible cycle end.
Because in the real world, the first shock is realizing the spiral exists, and the second shock is realizing no one person can stop it. Even the people who, in theory, could make it stop, you discover cannot, or have bought so much into the spiral that they cannot believe they have the power to make it stop. (Like every other summoner who approached the heart of Zanarkand, and made the hard choice to bring the next Sin into the world, all for just a precious few years' reprieve from Sin's suffering.)
((Also, as an aside: FFX is quite literally a game about letting dead things go. It's interesting to replay it, with that in the forefront of your mind, since that theme is less obvious on a first playthrough.))
Auron: "[Yuna's] strong. She'll make it."
Tidus: "She'll make it? What, so she can die? Why is it...everything in Spira seems to revolve around people dying?"
Auron: "Ahh, the spiral of death."
Tidus: "Huh?"
Auron: "Summoners challenge the bringer of death, Sin, and die doing so. Guardians give their lives to protect their summoner. The fayth are the souls of the dead. Even the maesters of Yevon are unsent. Spira is full of death. Only Sin is reborn, and then only to bring more death. It is a cycle of death, spiraling endlessly."
When Auron says these lines, he is tired. He's seeing a kid finally "wake up" to the reality of the world that he's known and lived for a long time. And he's complicit in it just as much as the foul maesters are, to his own disgust.
It sounds a little hippie-dippy to say so, but, I've thought about this a bit on-and-off throughout my life, when regarding governments, social organizations, and so on—this system we're building, what's it spiraling around? Is that thing horrifying; has it become horrifying?
For instance. The classic case in Silicon Valley is "data." There are so many goddamn "data-driven" companies, which started out as a beautiful, liberatory thing (if you can prove with numbers that this is better then you can just go make it better!). But before long, data turns into a bizarre fetish in-and-of-itself—UX people have to contort qualitative user experiences into "data" to be taken seriously, people represent data dishonestly or end up pursuing certain metrics until they become useless or actively harmful, people who vainly say "I dunno everything just feels worse" are ignored because they can't express their concerns in a spreadsheet, until no one's even thinking about users anymore, they're so damn busy chasing those numbers.
I mean, that's one cynical take, in one domain. Pick your favorite domain, system, whatever—I'm sure you can find plenty of other spirals.
FFX's final act is arguably overly optimistic, arguably a power fantasy—not because they defeat the villain, but because there is a villain, a man with a name who we can slay to make this horrible cycle end.
Because in the real world, the first shock is realizing the spiral exists, and the second shock is realizing no one person can stop it. Even the people who, in theory, could make it stop, you discover cannot, or have bought so much into the spiral that they cannot believe they have the power to make it stop. (Like every other summoner who approached the heart of Zanarkand, and made the hard choice to bring the next Sin into the world, all for just a precious few years' reprieve from Sin's suffering.)
((Also, as an aside: FFX is quite literally a game about letting dead things go. It's interesting to replay it, with that in the forefront of your mind, since that theme is less obvious on a first playthrough.))
no subject
Date: 2019-01-20 08:56 pm (UTC)FFX is still my favorite Final Fantasy game. It's more layered, and feels like it has so much more depth.
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Date: 2019-01-23 07:20 am (UTC)please blog about it if you replay :)
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Date: 2019-01-26 06:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 08:43 am (UTC)i have like, three wheelhouses, but i think about them a lot, so tune in for more "hot takes inspired by mashups of Vidya Games and Silicon Valley Nonsense" lmao :P