GUEST EDITORIAL: Why I look up to Yuna

[octoberpumpkin]

The Final Fantasy series is not short on identifiable characters. Having such a large range of personalities makes it so that the player can usually find a character that they can see themselves in. sometimes in a big way, sometimes in a small way. I've personally had a few characters like this throughout the games, from Tifa in VII, to Vivi in IX. But today I am not going to tell you about one of the characters I find myself in, but rather one I aspire to be. I am of course talking about Yuna from X.

While Yuna and I may have a few things in common, we are actually quite different. Yuna is the daughter of High Summoner Braska, favored to be the next Summoner to defeat Sin. Since she was a child, she has known her path in life, she has known where she must go and what she must do. I, on the other hand, am a person struggling to find her place in the world. A person who knows she wants to make a difference, but whose path is unclear and hidden.

Why do I look up to Yuna? I look up to her because she is strong. This wasn't immediately obvious to me when I first played this game many years ago, but it is becoming increasingly more so as the years go by and I replay the game many times over.

She isn't without faults, she doesn't always make the best decisions, but she is strong. She marches willingly towards the greatest terror the world has ever known, willing to sacrifice her own life to bring peace to the people of Spira, even if only for a little while. She puts herself through physical and mental strain as she bonds with the fayth of the temples, as she gets closer and closer to leaving the ones she loves, and, near the end, when she finds out that completing the task she has entrusted herself with since she was a child will result in the disappearance of the one she fell in love with. Despite all of this, she does it with maturity, dignity, and modesty, all qualities I greatly admire.

I look up to Yuna because I have let a lot of the negative and stressful moments in my life get me down. I've let them demotivate me, I've let them cause negative hateful thoughts about myself, and I've let them make me want to curl up in a ball and give up. Yuna remained strong through all of her challenges. I want to be that way too. I want to be that strong, that positive, that caring and selfless and giving.

This doesn't mean I can't have moments of weakness, goodness no. Everyone has them, Yuna herself has had them. Maybe some of you remember the romantic scene at Macalania Woods between Yuna and Tidus. She was talking to him about running away together. Finding the Zanarkand Tidus and Jecht spoke of, living out their days watching him play Blitzball, happy with each other. But she knows that isn't what she must do, and she lets out her fear and her emotions and cries. This moment let us see her as more human, alive and vulnerable. Not always able to put on the brave face for others. But regardless, she picked herself back up, put on a brave face, and pressed forward. This is something I admire in her character.

I look up to Yuna because I want to be able to face my life challenges head on, and I want to be able to do it with the same kindness and the same positivity that Yuna has inspired in me and hopefully in all of us.

[hTop]

Yuna has always been one of my favourite characters too. She's a perfect distillation of that admirable personality that comes from rock solid principles and real dedication (lets ignore X-2 where she's just a bit all over the place). She's a good person in every possible way without it becoming too idyllic.
I guess what they leave out of the story is how she came to have that kind of personal strength. It certainly helps to have all these people around you who are completely devoted to you and believe in you.

My whole view on the part about letting negative thoughts get in your way is that it's important to realise that that's a completely natural thing humans do. It's a survival mechanism. We're built to place a much larger weight on our failures than our successes for pretty basic genetic reasons. It's also important to realise that that's almost entirely useless in the modern world where we're very rarely in real danger from our failures. Negative, cynical and pessimistic thinking has almost no benefit in the modern world. Whereas positivity, belief and confidence really do make things happen.