Talk:Mythology of Final Fantasy X/Archive 1

All right!

Hopefully this will be as cool as we all are imagining it will be! The first thing we need to do is to figure out is a good opening paragraph. Any ideas concerning style, wording, and content for this and the article in general are appreciated! Because I can't think of anything right now. :)PiccoloNamek 09:03, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, as far as style goes, I suppose we should just shoot for sounding verbose. XD

What to do for an opening paragraph...

How about this?:

In the detail rich world of Spira in the role-playing games Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2, there are many supernatural elements that influence events both great and small, from the every day situation to earth-shattering conflicts of unimaginable proportions. Here, the concepts of magic and the spirituality of the common people are closely-tied, well beyond the point where the lines that may distinguish the two begin to blur. Their effects are constantly felt in the everyday lives of Spira's citizens, whether they're aware of it or not. Everything from sporting events and simply preserving memories on video to religious practices and the existence of beasts who harness power that could decimate civilizations are all tied together by the common bond of spiritual energy itself, the magic that lay at the center of Final Fantasy X's mythos.

Witnessed throughout Spira in the form of Pyreflies, its presence is felt most notably in the concepts of Fayth and their physical manifestations, the Aeons, as well as in the destructive beast known as "Sin" and the Church of Yevon, Spira's political, spiritual, and military ruling order.

From here, I'd suggest we start out with the pyreflies section, move into describing the Fayth and Aeons, establish the concepts of Sin and the notable backstory of Spira (we could either copy that from Yevon or Spira, and then describe the hierarchy of the Church of Yevon, the Teachings of Yevon and the other notable related info on the current Yevon page. Thoughts? Ryu Kaze 11:06, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, although we shouldn't elaborate too much on the backstory other than what is necessary within the context of the other information. It shouldn't become redundant, having the same information as Spira.PiccoloNamek 14:44, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I'll try to set it up in such a way that it flows logically from one section to the next and doesn't get too bogged down. But first... breakfast! In the meantime, if you've got an idea for how to do it, be my guest. The more excuses for me to be lazy the better. Ryu Kaze 14:48, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll do some work later. Right now I'm actually going back to bed. (It's 9:50AM here and I only went to bed at 4:30AM!)PiccoloNamek 14:52, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll go ahead and get us started. By the way, I take it you want Pyreflies removed from Spira, correct? For now, I'll just copy the information over here and leave it to you to remove that if you'd like to see how this goes over here first (though I have a good feeling about it, as I'm sure you do). Ryu Kaze 16:19, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, once I got started, I kind of got carried away. I've now incorporated stuff from all four pages/articles that have been discussed as being part of the merge. If you'd like to add more, feel free. Hopefully we can get the merge itself under way soon.

Anyway, I think it's pretty cool like this, though it still feels like there's room for more. Any ideas? Ryu Kaze 20:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

It looks good, although I'm feeling that the middle section is too much like the "The Beginning" section from Spira. Perhaps we should trim it down a little. I might work on it a little later. I've been busy playing on my brand new Cobalt Flux dance pad. It just arrived today!PiccoloNamek 22:29, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

It is pretty similar, isn't it? For the most part, I just copy-pasted what was on the Yevon page from the "History" and "Yunalesca" sections, merged them, and cleaned up where it was necessary so that they'd fit together and flow well. The only things I actually took from the Spira page for that section were the world map and the images of Zanarkand and Bevelle. XD It's a testament to the pity that the Spiral of Death is such a fundamental aspect of any discussion on Final Fantasy X's storyline that its impossible not to bring it up at some point, and harder still for it not to turn into a meaty section like this one that sounds strikingly similar to other summaries on the subject.

That said, I know we wanted to avoid redundancy, and on the whole, I think we're doing it well enough. The sections are different enough to have different flavors, I think. While this section is about the same length as "The Beginning" added to "Yuna's pilgrimage and the Eternal Calm," it goes into more depth on certain things than "The Beginning" (for instance, here, I focused more on Yevon's intentions concerning Dream Zanarkand, Bevelle's reaction in dealing with Yunalesca, the Teachings, and the possibility that it was all according to a conspiracy between Yunalesca and Yevon) while "The Beginning" goes into more depth on some geographical-related info (which it obviously should), such as the Calm Lands being the war zone for Bevelle and Zanarkand, and that the warriors -- and, later, the scouts -- from Bevelle had to climb Mt. Gagazet to reach Zanarkand; "The Beginning" also does more to emphasise Bevelle's warmongering nature, the reason why Bevelle believed Sin to be an Aeon (because of the Fayth the scouts discovered on Mt. Gagazet), the status of village infrastructure after Sin's coming (mentioning how the people live in constant fear and how towns don't get very big), and the effects that followed Yuna bringing the Eternal Calm.

The places where we have some overlap in material are really unavoidable, I think, and both sections taste different to me. "The Beginning" and "The Eternal Calm" feel more personable and oriented toward geography and Spira's citizens, while "Sin, Yevon and the Spiral of Death" feels more concept-related. At least I think so. I feel like I already trimmed it down to the bare-bones of concept-related info in making it. XD Ryu Kaze 03:47, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've been working on the formatting a little bit, but one line is bothering me:

"In order to accomplish this, Yevon manifested the city out at sea in an undisclosed location, far removed from the Spiran mainland and the warmongering Bevelle."

I thought the dream Zanarkand was that giant piller of gel at the top of Mount Gagazet. After all, during the ending movie, it fragments into many small bubbles, each of which is one of the people living in the dream Zanarkand.PiccoloNamek 06:04, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

That's just the wave of memories that's flowing from the Fayth; the stuff that Yu Yevon is channeling to wherever Dream Zanarkand's exact location is. If you were to look at any Fayth when it's being accessed, you'd see threads of energy coming out of them like we see coming from each Fayth on the Fayth Cluster. In their case, there was just a bunch of them and they were all being used for the same thing, so their memories flowed together in one giant wave.

That said, at one time, the creators thought about having Dream Zanarkand be above Gagazet, but that presented a bunch of logical errors (why the Ronso never saw Sin flying into the sky above their mountain, how no water ever fell down from the massive ocean that would have been needed to appear around the city, etc.), so it wasn't given a definite location in the end. It's just somewhere far removed from where it may be interfered with. Ryu Kaze 07:08, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

By the way, do you think it's okay to go ahead with merging these pages? I don't want to do it prematurely, but it's looking like this is going to work out, and there haven't been any objections on any of the source pages so far. Ryu Kaze 17:25, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if this is correct, by in my opinion, the Dream Zanarkand isn't located in any actual physical place. I believe that it could best be thought of as a one-dimensional holographic projection, if that makes any sense. In the Dream Zanarkand, there is only one dimension, and all three-dimensional movement is merely an illusion. Even though the city itself appears to be huge, it doesn't actually take up any space, and it has no volume or mass.

See: Holographic principle

As for merging, I say go for it, it can always be undone later if needed.PiccoloNamek 18:35, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Alright, I'll go ahead with the merge. I'm glad you liked the idea of making this page as much as I did.

Renmiri: If you read this, thanks for the suggestion.

As for Dream Zanarkand, I actually used to think the same thing, but the way Ultimania talks makes it clear that Dream Zanarkand's somewhere in Spira; it just doesn't specify as to where. It's just like every other Aeon and gets manifested in Spira: The memories of a Fayth get processed through their dreams, the Summoner taps into these dreams, accesses the memories, and then uses their affinity for channeling spiritual energy to let them manipulate pyreflies into a physical presence based on those memories. Aside from Dream Zanarkand being a really huge Aeon full of smaller Aeons that function just like regular Spirans, it's not distinguished from the other ones in any notable manner (aside from it taking a lot of energy to power it and a peerless Summoner to form it, of course).

Also, Yevon specifically wanted the use of machina to come to an end so that Dream Zanarkand wouldn't be infringed upon; the widespread, unbridled use of machina would have allowed the city to be discovered easily (imagine airships like the Celsius or the Fahrenheit going hither and thither all the time; it would just be a matter of time). Anyway, Yevon's desire for machina to be put down, even without the other stuff, directly implies that it was physically manifested in the same manner as the other Aeons, and that he didn't want people going out at sea. Sin does tend to attack ships, after all. The Fayth on Gagazet, however, were well known to Bevelle, and even finding that, they didn't realize what it was, thinking that it was a Fayth for Sin (thinking it was an Aeon).

Anyway, I'll get the merges take care of soon. I don't think we'll have to worry about reversing it. Ryu Kaze 20:27, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, merges done, and I've added another image to the article, as well as the little "FFX navigation box" at the end. Ryu Kaze 21:06, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding force-breaking of images

I've just removed several {{-}} (a.k.a. <br style="clear: both;"> tags) from the article. Such tricks are essentially dirty hacks that should only be used to resolve serious layout issues (such as overlapping divs, or horizontal image stacking), not to ensure that images show up exactly where intended. Overuse of it creates too much excess white space, which is just messy looking. See also Wikipedia:Picture tutorial#Forcing a break. – Seancdaug 21:16, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the assist. I'm not too familiar with those things. By the way, can we keep "Spiral of Death" capitalized in the "chapter" title? It's fine if the "section" titles don't remain fully capitalized -- and actually looks better that way (good move) -- but that just looks really odd, especially since the other chapter titles remain consistently capitalized. Ryu Kaze 21:24, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Housekeeping

Nice page, guys - don't forget to keep the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Final_Fantasy/Index up to date though! >Gamemaker 10:58, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Very nice work

Kudos to both Piccolo and Ryu Kaze, it looks great! I added a bit about the pyrefly / Spirit energy theory , hopefully just fact not POV. And also added a bit about fiends and unsent, other byproduct of pyrefly magic. We could perhaps also add a reference to here on FFVII's page too. Renmiri 17:39, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Ryu did all of the work. :) I just haven't had much time lately. :(PiccoloNamek 17:47, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliments, Ren, but you should pat yourself on the back, as well. It was your suggestion, after all. Ryu Kaze 23:12, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

By the way, the spiritual energy section you added wasn't a bad idea at all. I just reworded it a little and replaced your link with one to the most current version of that author's essay. The section on Fiends and Unsent, though, is already covered in-depth under the "Pyreflies and death" section. As for a reference to this page over on the Final Fantasy VII page, feel free to try to work it in somehow if you can. I don't have any objections to that and the subject matter is related... and most of your ideas so far have been really good, so I'm not going to start doubting you now. Ryu Kaze 23:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

It looks good but the link to Squall's article can not be to GAMEFAQ. Try it and you will see what happens. The GAMEFAQ site links you to a page that says GameFAQs is not a free public file server. Bandwidth costs money, and when sites link directly to files stored on the site, it becomes both a financial and resource drain. We've tried asking, but some sites simply don't care, so now we've implemented a technical solution.. That is why I was linking to the older version of his article... Do you have another source less stingy than GAMEFAQ ?

Yeah, I've got another link to it, this time on IGN: http://faqs.ign.com/articles/657/657331p1.html Ryu Kaze 05:23, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

It looks like this thing is really starting to come together. The edits of the last couple of days have really brought it to life. I'm fully convinced at this point that this was a great idea and worth-while endeavour. Great idea once again, Renmiri. And, hey, we're still under the 15 image fair-use thing! Ryu Kaze 13:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the page is looking great IMHO. I see Ryu has been having a lot of fun with the "quotes" tag... "Mythology of Final Fantasy X/Archive 1". Germplasm Resources Information Network. Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture. Great, I doubt anyone will be able to say we need documentation after all those quotes from the game! Renmiri 18:40, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

What can I say... once I figured out how that sweet little quote box worked, I couldn't stop myself. And, yes, let those who would call our information false try standing up in the face of those quotes and the link to Squall's article! We will, like... laugh, or something. Yeah... I'm too hyper right now. Shouldn't have had that nutri-grain bar. But, yes, the page is beautiful! Ryu Kaze 19:01, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

By the way, no offense to Spira, PiccoloNamek, but this page is now my official favorite on Wikipedia. Ryu Kaze 19:11, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Can Spira still be your second favorite? :)PiccoloNamek 21:05, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, indeed! Ryu Kaze 22:44, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

More Merging

Does anyone see any reason why Hymn of the Fayth and Machina (Final Fantasy X) can't be merged here ? And how about Suteki Da Ne ? Shouldn't it be merged to the Soudtrack page ? Renmiri 19:05, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm in full agreement with you, Ren (which seems to be becoming a trend). At the very least, the Hymn and Machina pages should be merged in here. Not sure if there's some kind of music loophole that would keep Suteki Da Ne around, so I'll let someone else weigh in on that. Ryu Kaze 19:10, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe one obscure song would qualify as a page that should be kept but let's wait for more input. On the same note The end of Yevon and the Birth of New Yevon reeks as a page and shoud be merged here IMHO. Renmiri 20:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with you about the song, but I admit to knowing little about the folkways around here as far as songs are concerned. I really can't see any reason for it to remain as its own page, though. As far as that The end of Yevon and the Birth of New Yevon page goes, I can't conceive of how that thing managed to get created and remain as an individual for this long. That's definitely one to mark for being merged out of autonomy. Great suggestions all around the board. Ryu Kaze 22:43, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

We should leave Suteki da ne alone. A lot of popular songs have their own pages. Liberi Fatali, One Winged Angel, Aria di Mezzo Carattere, and Eyes on Me all have their own pages. If it's notable enough (and SDN is) it will usually have its own page.PiccoloNamek 22:45, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. But Hymn of the Fayth can get the axe, right? And Machina and The end of Yevon and the Birth of New Yevon? Ryu Kaze 23:09, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I think so, especially for The Yevon page. The HOTF page is very complicated and well-done, and should definitely be copied to the FFWiki and Wikibooks as well. This page should have a basic discussion on the hymn's history, how it came to be, what it actually means. We should be sure to mention that it was originally sung in defiance of Bevelle.PiccoloNamek 23:11, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Should the Hymn be in the Fayth or the Church of Yevon section? Hell, I'll go ahead and add it, you can move it if you'd like.PiccoloNamek 23:13, 22 February 2006 (UTC)