The Pros of the Yevon Religion

February 29, 2008, 7:02 PM

Maechen
Rumors flew in Bevelle about Sin's sudden appearance. They said that the people of Zanarkand became the fayth, that they had called Sin. And that the man responsible...was none other than the summoner Yevon, ruler of Zanarkand! Yes, the lord father of Lady Yunalesca. On the eve of Zanarkand's destruction, Lady Yunalesca... had fled to safety with her husband, Zaon. Later, the two used the Final Summoning to defeat Sin. Yet the people of Bevelle still feared Yu Yevon. It was to quell his wrath that they revered him, and first spread his teachings. And so were born the temples of Yevon.
I suppose it's possible Yunalesca had planned it that way from the start! A fair trade, she defeats Sin in exchange for her lord father's honor."

Now most people see the negatives of the Yevon faith: lies, deceit, corruption.
Those are all certainly undeniable and ugly blotches on the face of the religion but it was not all bad.

FFX-2 really helps to show the positives of Spira’s fundamentalist reign.

For a millennium Yevon ran Spira and for a millennium Sin ravaged the world. People lived in fear of Sin and to help conquer that fear, and to find hope, they believed in Yevon. Yevon rewarded the people with peace of mind and general order in their everyday lives.

It wasn’t that they deliberately lied about Sin being permanently gone eventually - they sincerely believed the Final Summoning was the only method to defeat Sin. Everyone from Mika to Seymour to Yunalesca echo that the Final Summoning was the only way to defeat Sin and that it being gone would result in the destruction of everything.

Mika himself says:
Mika
"Spira has lost its only hope. Destruction is inevitable.
Yu Yevon's spiral of death will consume us all.
I have no desire to watch Spira die."

At which point he apparently jus tgives up on life and fades off to the Farplane (he’s in the Via Infinito but that whole thing was a plothole).

It’s clear to me that Yevon did not do what it did out of malicious intent but out of being wrong int their beliefs.

One of the greatest showcases of the benefit of Yevon's control was worldwide unity (except for the Al Bhed minority) and peace. Look at Spira post-Yevon. 2 years later and to fill the vacuum two factions sprout up and begin to prepare for all-out war. For the thousand-year reign of Yevon, we heard nothing of real war or conflict except with Sin. Everyone was together and believed in the same thing and thus such petty things were avoided.

Another bonus of Yevon's rule was the great amount of respect and civility people had. Summoners, the Calm Lands and other such places are given the greatest of respect. The post-Yevon world shows bandits and criminals spread all over Spira as well as the places where the greatest heroes in history died (Calm Lands and Zanarkand) beign turned into amusement parks and torust traps.

And I'm outta ideas for the moment.

Thoughts?

February 29, 2008, 7:23 PM

Aye, I think these are the generally accepted thoughts on Yevon. It relates to the debate regarding Seymour and how you would class him - a cold-blooded villain, or an anti-hero with undesirable motives? He genuinely wanted to help Spira ease its sufferring and he thought that the only way to do so was, well, murder. He spoke about the sweet release of death and the peaceful slumber (the exact words escape me) and he would be able to vouch for this, given that he is ... well, dead.

I suppose there's some form of hidden message behind it - while the religion immediately looks disguisting, it really was for the best.

February 29, 2008, 10:16 PM

The obvious argument of course, is that the negatives outweighed the positives, Mika, Yunalesca and the maesters knew damn well where Sin really came from and put a gigantic shroud over Spira's people.

March 1, 2008, 12:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Megalo

The obvious argument of course, is that the negatives outweighed the positives, Mika, Yunalesca and the maesters knew damn well where Sin really came from and put a gigantic shroud over Spira's people.

Agreed. The church did alot worse than good.

You mentioned the Al Bhed minority, well, minority or no they were persecuted by the church. And not only the church, but were shunned by nearly all other people on Spira. People let the church do their thinking for them (like Wakka) and if the church said something was bad, it was bad. No one even thought to question WHY certain things were bad.

You also say how there was no war or conflict when the church was in power...but there was also no development. No cultural development, no technological development, Spira was stuck in an evolutionary rut. Much as people may have been civil toward each other, nobody was moving forward...they were suspended in a perpetual state of false hope and manipulation.

And I really just prefer to discount X-2 as being canonical, since it was just a disgrace and ruined X's perfect ending and makes no sense anyway (Tidus shouldn't still be around).

March 1, 2008, 12:42 AM

Well, if you think about starting a war while knowing a that a huge beast can attack at any moment, then the people of Spira would be quite some retards. Sin, one way or another, was the reason why Spira had no wars, because Sin would probably:
A) Kill both opposing armies during the battle.

B) Destroy them before the battle even begins.

Also the fact that Sin did not allow any city to grow made it hard for any faction to be born to oppose the Yevonites, except Luca and Bevelle, Bevelle and Luca were protected due to the fact that Bevelle was the center of the Yevon Religion and Luca was the pinnacle of Blitzball, and people needed to get distracted with something....

The Al'Bhed were quite screwed and required to live in secrecy to avoid extermination, so they never opposed quite a threat to Bevelle.

Now that I think of it, creating Sin wasn't such a bad idea after all, at least it kept the world without wars.

And agreed, FFX-2 was a disgrace, they killed the plot started with FFX. If they wanted to do something about Tidus, they should have added that in FFX, not make a crappy sequel.

March 1, 2008, 2:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Megalo

The obvious argument of course, is that the negatives outweighed the positives, Mika, Yunalesca and the maesters knew damn well where Sin really came from and put a gigantic shroud over Spira's people.

Well duh they lied about Sin's origin.

The whole faith was founded on worshipping Yu Yevon, spreading his teaching snd thus calming and quelling Sin's/Yevon's wrath.

If the world knew Yevon himself was the reason they and their families were under constant threat of death, they wouldnt' be so eager to join up.

If you want to blame someone, blame Yunalesca. The leaders of Bevelle did what they felt was best for the people and the only way to save all the planet from being destroyed. And it did.

Quote:

You also say how there was no war or conflict when the church was in power...but there was also no development. No cultural development, no technological development, Spira was stuck in an evolutionary rut. Much as people may have been civil toward each other, nobody was moving forward...they were suspended in a perpetual state of false hope and manipulation.

True, was no development. There also wasn't attempted genocide which there very nearly was in X-2 with the Ronso and the Guado. Hat eit all you want bu tit's canon. I don't discoutn Advent Children from FFVII continuity just because it sucked balls. And that movie sucked way more than X-2 did as a game.

Quote:

Now that I think of it, creating Sin wasn't such a bad idea after all, at least it kept the world without wars.

Indeed. It also kept the people in line, with hope and prevented the destruction of the world. Some Guardians die...boohoo. Ends justify the means. Yuna had to sacrifice her aeons to beat Yevon. Yevon (religion) had to sacrifice some Summoners to save the planet.

Before Yuna and Tidus came, there was no way of beating Sin except the Final SUmmoning.

March 1, 2008, 5:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nikkolas

Well duh they lied about Sin's origin.

The whole faith was founded on worshipping Yu Yevon, spreading his teaching snd thus calming and quelling Sin's/Yevon's wrath.

If the world knew Yevon himself was the reason they and their families were under constant threat of death, they wouldnt' be so eager to join up.

So they lied to get people to believe in their faith so that they could have power to control Spira, basically.

Quote:

True, was no development. There also wasn't attempted genocide which there very nearly was in X-2 with the Ronso and the Guado. Hat eit all you want bu tit's canon. I don't discoutn Advent Children from FFVII continuity just because it sucked balls. And that movie sucked way more than X-2 did as a game.

Uh, hello? Remember when the Guado attacked the Al Behd at Home in X? Not many of them survived. I'm pretty sure that counts as attempted genocide.

And I do discount AC. It blatantly ignores canon in VII just so it can look pretty and make fanboys/fangirls wet themselves.

Quote:

Indeed. It also kept the people in line, with hope and prevented the destruction of the world. Some Guardians die...boohoo. Ends justify the means. Yuna had to sacrifice her aeons to beat Yevon. Yevon (religion) had to sacrifice some Summoners to save the planet.

Well I guess now we know you would have been a Maester if we lived in Spira.

Quote:

Before Yuna and Tidus came, there was no way of beating Sin except the Final SUmmoning.

Wrong. What Yuna and Tidus did was nothing special. It could have been anyone in Yuna and Tidus's positions, it could have been anyone who found the Fahrenheit and piloted it (hell the Fahrenheit probably wasn't even necessary, just greatly helpful), it could have been anyone who beat up whatever Final Aeon was dwelling inside Sin (it just so happened to be Jecht), and it could have been anyone who killed Yu Yevon (hell, a child could have done it with that Auto-Life spell). It just so happened to be Tidus and Yuna.

Yevon proliferated the thought that it was impossible to defeat sin without the Final Aeon and without "atonement", and nobody else really thought of getting inside Sin.

March 1, 2008, 6:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VengefulRonin

Wrong. What Yuna and Tidus did was nothing special. It could have been anyone in Yuna and Tidus's positions, it could have been anyone who found the Fahrenheit and piloted it (hell the Fahrenheit probably wasn't even necessary, just greatly helpful), it could have been anyone who beat up whatever Final Aeon was dwelling inside Sin (it just so happened to be Jecht), and it could have been anyone who killed Yu Yevon (hell, a child could have done it with that Auto-Life spell). It just so happened to be Tidus and Yuna.

Yevon proliferated the thought that it was impossible to defeat sin without the Final Aeon and without "atonement", and nobody else really thought of getting inside Sin.

Yes, but remember that the previous reincarnations of Sins were stronger than the last one. You see, even as Sin, Jecht was able to retain some of his former humanity, restraining most of Sins actions. Remember when he heard the Hymn of the Faith? That song had some effect on Sin because it affected the soul of Sin itself, who was Jecht. Tidus also remembers that song, and also there are moments when they mention that the Hymn of the Faith made Jecht feel calmed, relaxed. It appears, that even after becoming the Final Aeon and thus the new host for Yu Yevon to create Sin, the last Sin inherited Jecht's tendency to calm himself whenever he heard that song, like when Sin was under the Macalania Temple, Sin was quiet and peaceful, something rare in a beast like Sin.

The Hymn of the Faith somehow weakened Sin, making it possible to even attack it head on and possibly damage it. Sin had a powerful force field that made it immune to any attack, but when Tidus and his party attacked Sin, there were no signs of that magical barrier. Why? Because of the Hymn of the Faith. The mind controlling Sin's actions was struggling for control, Jecht still wanted to embrace his human side. This gave a huge opportunity to even approach Sin and find the heart of the beast, the Final Aeon lying deep within Yu Yevon's magical armor.

Jecht fought Tidus and was even willing to kill him, knowing that to be able to attack Yu Yevon and disable the magical barrier he used (the Final Aeon), they would require to destroy Jecht. They fought Jecht and vanquished him, and Yu Yevon emerged to possess yet another Aeon. Except, that the Final Summoning was never performed, leaving Yu Yevon with the weaker aeons, not powerful enough to create a new armor so easily and thus making him vulnerable.

One could not attack Yu Yevon directly until we destroyed every single aeon Yuna had (the more you had, the worse

) and after doing so, we were able to attack Yu Yevon directly, not any of his puppets.

Now, I admit that the development staff did an horrible work with Yu Yevon. Come one, even a Chocobo looks scarier than Yu Yevon. If I were them, I would have made something like a beast made of parts of the aeons, or have the remaining essences of the vanquished aeons fused forming a powerful and terrifying beast. Vegnagun looked cool, but the one controlling Vegnagun was a retard...Shuyin

Bad Job Shuyin...next time kill first and save the drama after you kill them

March 1, 2008, 7:49 PM