{"id":360,"date":"2006-05-01T16:55:13","date_gmt":"2006-05-01T21:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=360"},"modified":"2008-05-04T19:40:28","modified_gmt":"2008-05-05T00:40:28","slug":"final-fantasy-x-plot-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=360","title":{"rendered":"Final Fantasy X: Plot Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

LATER: In the end: I admit my explanation Just Doesn't Fit. I think mine would have made more sense and would have been easier to understand, but it doesn't work and can't be made to fit. Read on for my analysis if you like, but people in the comments below point out several fatal flaws with all of this.<\/p>\n

Alas.<\/em> <\/p>\n

This should<\/em> go without saying, but just in case: Ahead are massive<\/em> spoilers for Final Fantasy X. Proceed as wisdom dictates.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Farplane<\/div>\n

The afterlife isn’t some philosophical concept in the world of Spira. It isn’t something you need faith to believe in. It’s an observable fact that when people die, they need a Summoner to come along and perform a sending on them to send their soul to the Farplane. They can see this happen, and they can see the results if they don’t have a summoner and their spirit remains in the world of the living.<\/p>\n

At one point Lulu says that if the unsent remain in Spira, their souls become angry and eventually they turn into fiends. We can see that this isn’t always the case, because we meet a number of counter-examples in the game. Auron, Belgamene, Seymor, and many of the Maesters of Yevon still retain the properties they did in life. They might no longer age, but other than that they seem to function as they always did. It’s possible that the fate of the unsent depends on how powerful they were in life, and how they died. Average Joe Shoopuf is probably doomed to become a fiend if he’s killed by Sin and someone doesn’t come along and perform a sending on his body, but mighty warriors and summoners can sometimes keep their identity, particularly if they aren’t killed by Sin. If they are healed, they can get back up and begin living as before, but now their soul has a tenuous grip on their body. If a nearby summoner performs a sending, they will go to the afterlife, willing or not.<\/p>\n

In any case we can see that the connection between Spira and the Farplane is broken<\/i>. It wasn’t always this way. When Tidus lived in Zanarkand, it’s obvious people had no trouble getting into the afterlife. They didn’t have summoners and sendings, and the place wasn’t overrun with the unsent. When people died they stayed dead. Tidus never even heard<\/em> of this problem until he entered modern-day Spira.<\/p>\n

Occasionally the unsent stay put and don’t get back up. This happens when their body is so badly damaged that it can no longer move and nobody is able to repair it. These dead give off pyreflies, which contain some of the memories and a little of the life-foce of the deceased. When the summoner performs a sending, these gather and around the body and carry their soul to the Farplane. But if no summoner is around, the pyreflies linger. If enough dead are gathered together, the pyreflies become so dense that people nearby will see visions and memories of the dead.<\/p>\n

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The Rise of Sin<\/div>\n

The connection between Spira and the Farplane was broken in the war between Zanarkand and Bevelle. Zanarkand was a high-tech world and fought with airships and guns. Bevelle was more skilled in magic, and fought with spells and eventually with great monsters they learned to summon, called aeons.<\/p>\n

(Note that at one point in the game a Fayth says this the other way around, claiming Bevelle had the tech and Zanarkand had the magic. This is clearly a mistake. All the technology is in Zanarkand, and the summoners come from Bevelle. Ject and Tidus had never even heard of summoners before! This goes against everything everyone else says in the game, and simply must be a fluke or the rest of the backstory doesn’t make any sense. It is unclear if this is an error in the English version, or a problem in the original script.)<\/em><\/p>\n

The thing about the aeons is that they take two people to summon. One is the summoner who controls the creature, but the other person actually provides the power for the creature with their soul. A still-living person is encased in a special container that will imprison their soul. They then become a Fayth, which are used to summon an aeon. (In the game, Fayth sort of look like a statue encased in a clear sarcophagus built into the floor of a temple.) A summoner must form a bond with the Fayth, and from then on they will be able to call on the related aeon whenever they need. The more powerful the Fayth, and the stronger the bond between them and the summoner, the more powerful the Aeon. However, the soul of the Fayth eventually gets used up. Their soul is let out, a little at a time, every time they are summoned. <\/p>\n

Yu Yevon was the foremost summoner, and he figured out something that everyone else hadn’t. He found a way to harvest all<\/i> of the power of the Fayth, all in one summoning. Instead of their soul slowly burning out over many summonings, he could draw the whole lot out at once. By doing this, he was able to summon a very, very powerful aeon. Instead of something the size of a building, he could summon something the size of an entire city. There was a catch, though: Doing so not only used up an entire Fayth in one go, it would also kill the Summoner. <\/p>\n

But Yu Yevon did it anyway. Perhaps he really<\/i> hated Zanarkand. Maybe he was just power-hungry. Maybe he didn’t know about this catch until it was too late. In any case, Yu Yevon summoned a huge aeon, and used it to utterly destroy Zanarkand. This creature was eventually named “Sin”. It was at this time that the connection to the afterlife became damaged. Yu Yevon’s huge summoning had severe effects on the world of Spira. Trapping a human soul and then releasing its power back into the world in the form of a huge monster created a rift. From that point on, souls need an extra “push” to get to the Farplane. This also may have been when the entrace to the Farplane was created in Guadosalam. <\/p>\n

Seeing how easily Yu Yevon destroyed their city, Zanarkand tried to respond with aeons of their own. Somehow Yunalesca and Zaon figured out Yu Yevon’s own trick and tried to use it against him. Lord Zaon became a Fayth, and Yady Yunalesca summoned his aeon. Their powerful love for each other formed a potent bond that made the resulting aeon quite formidable. Both of them perished in the making of it. The aeon met Sin in battle.<\/p>\n

But Yunalesca wasn’t really a match for Yu Yevon, although she thought she was. Her aeon was stronger, but her summoning skills – the skills used to command and control an aeon – were far weaker than those of Yu Yevon. He was able to let go of his own aeon and sieze control of another aeon at any time. So,, it didn’t matter<\/em> to Yu Yevon which aeon won. He would just sieze control of the winner, and keep it for himself. It turned out that the Zaon \/ Yunalesca aeon was more powerful than his own, so he allowed his aeon to die and then took the new one, re-forming it into Sin. <\/p>\n

But he was stuck. Sin was a huge, supernatural creature powered by the soul of Zaon. That soul wasn’t going to last forever. When it went out, Sin would die. Yu Yevon’s spirit remained, controlling Sin, but if Sin died he was finished. His spirit wouldn’t have anywhere else to go. He could choose to hang out in the pyrefly-infested ruins of Zanarkand as Yunalesca did, (and thus become a memory or a ghost) but that isn’t much of an afterlife. He’d given up his life to destroy the place, so he probably didn’t want to spend his time with the ghosts of his former victims. <\/p>\n

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The Cycle of Sin<\/div>\n

Yu Yevon knew he would need another aeon to posess sooner or later. But where to get one? His only solution was to turn around and attack his homeland of Bevelle<\/em>, knowing that doing so would provoke them into counter-attacking with aeons. They did, and when they put fourth an aeon that suited him Yu Yevon simply abandoned his old aeon and posessed the new. After that, he didn’t need to keep pummeling Bevelle. He had a new aeon that would last him some time, so he retreated into the depths of the ocean to grow this new Sin, to strengthen his control over it, and to bide his time. This would give the rest of the world some time to recover as well. They thought they had won and destroyed sin, but they had simply given him what he wanted. <\/p>\n

Yu Yevon would always return after ten years or so. He wouldn’t want to come back too often, since he might risk pushing humanity into extinction. (Or at least cripple society so much that they no longer had the resources to train the summoners he needed so badly.) He also wouldn’t want to wait too long, and risk getting too close to the point where his current aeon might expire. He also needed time to grow his current aeon in power and gain mastery over it. <\/p>\n

When the time was right he would then return and start hammering away at civilization, again goading them into making him another aeon to inhabit. He was always careful what he attacked. Notice that he never went after Bevelle or the Temples, because he needed them. He tended to pick on the fringes, blowing away small villages and the like. <\/p>\n

From what we learn in the game, it’s clear that the soul of the aeon (the Fayth) still had some control. They most likely fought with Yu Yevon, resisting the commands he gave whenever they could. This explains why Sin was so fickle, and why sometimes it retreated when it seemed to have quite an advantage. Yevon and the Fayth would struggle for control, making Sin come and go in unpredictable ways.<\/p>\n

Yu Yevon never wanted to do too much<\/i> damage, and in fact his real goal was to provoke anger, not cause destruction. He only needed to cause enough death and suffering to make the summoners willing to give their lives to try to destroy him. Certainly Sin was strong enough to wipe out everything if it wanted. We see clearly how it only wiped out some<\/em> of Killika. Certainly it could have killed everyone if it had wanted. They were quite helpless when Sin withdrew.<\/p>\n

When a summoner brought fourth the final aeon to fight Sin, Yevon would still need to make a show of fighting it, unless he wanted to give the game away and reveal what he was up to. He also needed to test the new Aeon to make sure it was strong enough. He never wanted to be caught in a sub-standard aeon that could be killed by conventional weapons. If the aeon was good enough for him, he would “lose” the battle, take posession of the new aeon, and retreat into the ocean until the next round.<\/p>\n

The people came to call the period between incarnations of Sin “The Calm”. They thought they were defeating Sin, but in reality they were sustaining it. What resulted was a cycle of death that lasted a thousand years, with Yu Yevon moving from one incarnation of Sin to another. <\/p>\n

The ghost of Yunalesca became an unwitting aide. She remained as a ghost in the ruins of Zanarkand among the pyreflies, guiding the hopeful summoners in the process of creating the final aeon. Most summoners came there expecting to die fighting Sin, but she was the one who gave the summoner the really<\/em> bad news: they had to choose one of their own guardians to become the Fayth. For maximum potency, it had to be the person they cared for the most. This was a bitter surprise for the summoners at the end of a long journey, but most of them accepted and helped Yu Yevon to live on. <\/p>\n

When Yunalesca was finally destroyed during the course of the game, she proved that she understood nothing. She warned them, “Even if you defeat Sin, Yu Yevon will simply create Sin anew!” She knows about Yu Yevon, but has never realized that defeating Sin without using aeons is the only way to defeat it forever. Yu Yevon never once “created” Sin, and always needed a steady supply of Fayth to keep the game going.<\/p>\n

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Bevelle<\/div>\n

When Sin began to ravage Bevelle they were caught off guard, to say the least. Some of the highest and most powerful summoners knew that this new monster – Sin – was the work of Yu Yevon. They did their best to fight Sin, but they also had another problem to worry about: If the populace found out that this killer was one of their own creations run amok, the Maesters would face a severe backlash from them. Faced with terrible calamity, their first concern was maintaining their power.<\/p>\n

So the Maesters concocted an excuse, an explanation for Sin. They claimed that Sin was punishment for easy living, particularly the use of technology. This was a brilliant move on their part. The major force that might challenge their power (besides Sin, which wasn’t exactly running for office) was technology. So they outlawed it. Notice that they only forbid technologies that threated their power. They didn’t have any problem with the technologies used for playing blitzball, which served as another distraction to keep the people pacified and under control.<\/p>\n

Magic was not much of a threat to their power either. They alone controlled the priesthood of summoners, and they alone decided who would and who wouldn’t gain access to the Fayth required to become a summoner. <\/p>\n

There was one more possible threat they had to face: Raw military power. Someone may get enough people together to depose the Maesters. Since they wouldn’t have guns, they would need an awful lot of people, but it was still a threat. We see how the Maesters reacted when the Crusaders were formed. An army was put together to fight Sin, and the first thing on the mind of the Maesters was that these were traitors planning their overthrow. Once the Crusaders demonstrated that they were there to fight Sin, they became useful idiots for Bevelle. <\/p>\n

Thus, there was nobody left to challenge them. Anyone that lacked loyalty would be denied access to the Fayth. Technology was outlawed as a handy scapegoat for the rise of Sin. All military strength was directed into the crusaders, who were more or less cannon fodder for Sin. With their lies in place, there was no way anyone could threaten the power of the Maesters.<\/p>\n

This system fed on itsef. Good, decent people would end up dying in the fight against Sin, and self-interested, power-hungry types would stay in Bevelle and join the leadership of plotters and bootlicks. It was a system which killed off the good people and promoted the jerks. Over the years they refined their teachings and even gave a name to the god they worshiped: Yevon. They developed “Yevon’s teachings”, which were carefully crafted to keep them in charge and direct the blame for society’s problems elsewhere. <\/p>\n

Recall how the Maesters all but endorsed operation Mi’ihen, and how at the end Auron noticed that this was a way to purge the unfaithful: Those that had questioned the teachings were slaughtered and those who stood firm in “Yevon’s Teachings” were vindicated. The Maesters rid themselves of a lot of troublemakers that day.<\/p>\n

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Zanarkand<\/div>\n

The first major attack of Sin was against Zanarkand. Thousands – perhaps millions – of the inhabitants fell in one day. Sin plowed through their city, killing everything. With the connection to the afterlife now broken and no summoner to perform a sending, Zanarkand became very dense with pyreflies. The spirits of the dead mingled together and combined. Rather than accept death, the dead formed a communal dreamworld from their collective memories. They “lived” there, recreating the last years of Zanarkand while Sin ravaged the world outside. <\/p>\n

After nearly a millenia, they grew tired of their dreamworld. You can’t live in the past forever, and they longed for the release of the afterlife. Perhaps if Sin were defeated once and for all the rift would be healed, and they could go to the Farplane? This was their hope. They had a radical idea: even though they were dead, they would summon something. (They were certainly the world’s larget repository of potential Fayth.) They would summon something capable of being their avatar. Something that was more than a ghost, and that could go out into the world and fight for them. They had all the Fayth they needed, but they didn’t dare summon anything so powerful that Yu Yevon might just take it for his own. <\/p>\n

So instead of summoning a creature, they elected to summon something even more powerful: A man with his own free will. From their memories they selected a champion. Since they fought with technology, they didn’t have a warrior in the classic sense. They didn’t have any great masters of the sword. They probably had tons of great pilots and gunmen, but with all of their technology smashed and outlawed, those guys would be pretty useless. No, their champion was an athlete. Among all the people of Zanarkand, they selected Ject as their hero. He was like the Barry Bonds of Zanarkand: Powerful, headstrong, arrogant, and fearless. He was the perfect man to introduce into the world to break the cycle of Sin.<\/p>\n

But when they summoned Ject, they could only make him as he was: A blitzball player. When he appeared in Spira, he was just as he’d been in life. He only had his original memories, and had no idea of what was really going on. It turned out he was also a bit too<\/i> headstrong: He ended up becoming a guardian and fighting sin. He became friends with Summoner Braska, and in the end Braska choose him to become his Fayth. Ject accepted, became an aeon, and Yu Yevon took him.<\/p>\n

This took the summoning of Ject off the hands of the ghosts of Zanarkand. With Ject now under the power of Yevon, they were free to summon another champion if they wanted, although it was hard to imagine who. After all, they had already sent their best guy. Now they needed to send someone to defeat him<\/i>. Who else was there?<\/p>\n

Tidus, of course. His hatred for his own father, plus having his father’s brash nature and athletic ability made Tidus the natural choice. He wasn’t as famous as his dad, but the potential was there. The people of Zanarkand tried one last time, and brought Tidus into the world.<\/p>\n

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Auron<\/div>\n

The dead of Zanarkand wern’t the only ones putting their hopes into this boy. When he learned that Braska and Ject had died more or less for nothing, Auron became enraged. In his anger, he stupidly tried to take on Yunalesca by himself. She crushed him effortlessly, and he crawled away. He made it down the mountain, but finally died. Not ready to give up just yet, he rose again as an unsent. <\/p>\n

As an unsent, he was able to return to Zanarkand and join in the dreamworld. He let his pyreflies mix with theirs, and he was able to see Zanarkand as it was. He was also able to interact with Tidus. He couldn’t simply re-form their memory of Tidus, but by taking part in the dreamworld he was able to give Tidus a few good nudges in the right direction. He established himself as Tidus’ friend, and was even able to “give” him a sword. Whether or not the sword existed doesn’t matter: He made the people of Zanarkand think of Tidus as having a sword, so when they summoned him he did. <\/p>\n

This also explains why Auron wasn’t around when Tidus came to Spira. At the time, Auron was in Zanarkand, taking part in the dreamworld. Once Tidus was brought into the real world, Auron had to make his way back from Zanarkand. He headed for Luca, knowing that it was likely the Tidus would wind up there for the tournament. <\/p>\n

After he joined the party, Auron gave hints and spoke in riddles on the way to Zanarkand, but along the way he was priming Tidus and the others for that moment when they would be forced to choose. From the moment Yunalesca struck him down he worked at getting back to Zanakand and evening the score. <\/p>\n

Yunalesca led Braska and Ject to sacrifice themselves, and then killed Auron. This may even have been standard proceedure for her. The information that a summoner must choose one of her dear friends to die with her is not something that ever made it back to the population in general. The Maesters certainly knew it, but it wasn’t the sort of thing they advertised to hopeful summoners. Yunalesca may have been in the habit of offing whatever was left of a summoner’s party once the summoner was dead, if only to protect the secret. <\/p>\n

But after Yunalesca struck him down, Auron began long path of revenge. He couldn’t just run back into Bevelle and tell everyone the truth. The temple would have branded him a heretic. Once it was revealed that he was an unsent, people would not be interested in hearing what he had to say. Also, being unsent made him an easy target. Any of the Maesters could have sent him packing to the Farplane in an instant if he drew their attention. So instead he was forced to keep his head down and take a more subtle approach. <\/p>\n

When Auron returned to Yunalesca ten years later, the party decided to leave without choosing a Fayth and bringing the final aeon. Yunalesca again showed that her real<\/em> job was as a keeper of secrets. She tried to kill them all rather than let them leave with what they’d learned. She made an excuse about wanting to end their sorrow, but that excuse was for her own benefit, not theirs. This brings up the question of how many other<\/em> pilgrims met their end not against Sin, but against Yunalesca. Luckily, Auron had more than enough help on his second visit, and Yunalesca met her much-delayed end. <\/p>\n

His quest really<\/em> ended once they struck her down. Note the speech he gave when the moment of truth arrived and it was time to fight her: He’d been preparing all of them for that moment for a long time. Also note that he was out of wise advice once she was gone. He didn’t know what to do after that, because he’d never planned that far ahead.<\/p>\n

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Seymor<\/div>\n

The game reveals that Seymor’s mother became a Fayth and challenged Sin. Note that she wasn’t the summoner, she was the Fayth. We don’t know if she was “successful” (if she became Sin) or if Yevon rejected her as too weak. (If she did succeed, then Seymor’s mother was the incarnation of Sin that Braska and Ject defeated. The reason this is in doubt is because Seymor’s mother is Anima, one of the secret Aeons you can obtain in the game. If she became Sin then her aeon ought not be available, because her soul would have been used up. It also doesn’t make sense that her Fayth temple is in a secluded part of the world, far from Zanarkand.)<\/em> We don’t know how her battle turned out, but we do<\/em> know the effect it had on Seymor. He dedicated his life to becoming a Maester of Yevon, although secretly he hated and resented the entire religion for what happened to his mother.<\/p>\n

He decided to follow in his mother’s footsteps: He would find a summoner, become a Fayth, and then become Sin himself. He was quite taken with the story of Lord Zaon and Lady Yunalesca. He knew their love made Zaon into a powerful aeon, and so he decided to take the same approach. Yuna was a summoner, she was the daughter of Braska, and she was named after Yunalesca. For Seymor’s purposes, she was the perfect wife. (I’m sure her fetching looks didn’t hurt, either.) His plan was to marry her, travel to Zanarkand with her, and become the next Sin. He was a powerful man, and he hoped he could become a powerful incarnation of Sin.<\/p>\n

But he wasn’t going to be like the other incarnations. He wasn’t going to play tug-of-war with Yu Yevon, fighting to keep from hurting the people of Spira. No, he was going to destroy it all. He hated Spira. He hated them because their need took his mother away from him. He was going to end the cycle of death by snuffing out all life. <\/p>\n

Seymor as Sin would probably have led to the death of all of Spira. Yevon might be able to slow him down, but Seymor was a lot more willful than the average Fayth. Even worse, it would have been a constant battle. Every time Seymor got control he would have taken another town off the map. Unlike Yevon, he wasn’t aiming to wound, he was aiming to kill everything. He wouldn’t have waited ten years. He would have begun struggling against Yevon right from the start. There would have been no calm. Civilization would have found itself facing a new Sin before they had a chance to recover from the old. Seymor would have gone after the temples first, spoiling their ability to create new summoners. Without a new Aeon for Yevon to escape to, Seymor would have had plenty of time to destroy their crops and fill their towns with sinspawn. The people of Spira would have died of exposure and starvation, and the remainder would have been hunted down by fiends. <\/p>\n

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The Al Bhed<\/div>\n

The Al Bhed were sickened by the regular sacrifice of summoners. They regarded it the way we might regard a group of savages who toss a virgin into a volcano to appease the “volcano god”. They could see that the summoners didn’t understand what was going on, and the Al Bhed believed that technology was the real answer. It’s unclear how close they came in Operation Mi’ihen, but they were on the right track. Believers of Yevon thought the Al Bhed were wasting everyone’s time, and that Sin could never truly be defeated because Sin was a punishment for technology. But if the Al Bhed had been able to destroy Sin right there, Yu Yevon would have been without an aeon to posess. He would have been helpless, and the cycle would have been broken. Sadly, they just didn’t have enough guns. (Or didn’t know how to properly use the ones they had.)<\/p>\n

Note that Operation Mi’hen revealed to everyone that the Al Bhed had become a major power in Spira. Note also that it took almost no time at all for the Yevonites, under the command of the Maesters, to launch an attack on the Al Bhed home. A thousand years of Sin was something the Maesters could tolerate, but a potential threat to their power base wasn’t.<\/p>\n

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The Story of Tidus<\/div>\n

The challenge Tidus faced (although he didn’t know it until almost the very end) was that he had to defeat the current Sin with conventional weapons. The biggest risk in his quest was that he might get to the end and become a Fayth just like his father. Everyone else, no matter how strong or how brave, ended up doing this once they reached Zanarkand. <\/p>\n

His immaturity worked in his favor. A more sensible adult (like his dad) would see the inevitability of the situation and accept becoming a Fayth. It takes lot of of idealisim and pride to break a thousand-year cycle. But Tidus also had a good bit of help. <\/p>\n

Seymor also aided in the defeat of Sin. His betrayal caused an uproar that revealed to the party (and to the devout Yuna and Wakka in particular) the depths of the corruption of the Maesters. Sickened by the injustice and selfishness of the Maesters, Wakka and Yuna had a crisis of faith that enabled them to turn on Yunalesca when the time came. <\/p>\n

Auron, having already been to Zanarkand, knew the truth and guided Yuna and Tidus to make the right choice when the time came. He was careful and spoke in riddles, probably to avoid drawing attention to himself. Ideally, he hoped they would find the truth for themselves.<\/p>\n

The Zanarkand dreamers were right to choose Tidus. His knowledge of his father gave them a key weapon against Sin. Tidus knew that his father loved the Hymn of the Fayth, and noticed that hearing it would make Sin more docile. Tidus’ hate for his father propelled him forward on his quest, and made it more likely that he would reject the path that his father took in becoming a Fayth. <\/p>\n

Finally, the Al Bhed were another key piece of the puzzle. It’s doubtful the party would have been able to enter Sin and confront Yu Yevon without the help of the Airship. It had the soundsystem to blast “hymn of the fayth” so loud that Sin could really hear it, and it was able to lift them up so they could get inside instead of being crushed on the ground.<\/p>\n

Once they entered Sin and found the Ject aeon inside, Tidus had no problem destroying it. With Ject defeated, their victory was inevitable. Yu Yevon was the greaest summoner who ever lived, but without an aeon to fight for him, he was a pushover. (Note that in the game the final battle against Yu Yevon is almost impossible to lose. It takes a little while, but he’s really a weakling compared to Ject.) <\/p>\n

When Sin was destroyed, it seems like the rift between Spira and the Farplane was repaired. We see a lot of pyreflies going up everywhere, and it’s a safe guess that all the unsent from the last millenia are finally going to where they belong. The world is healing. Sadly, this includes the dreamers of Zanarkand, who can’t even keep going long enough to let Tidus give Yuna a kiss goodbye. He fades, and his story ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LATER: In the end: I admit my explanation Just Doesn't Fit. I think mine would have made more sense and would have been easier to understand, but it doesn't work and can't be made to fit. Read on for my analysis if you like, but people in the comments below point out several fatal flaws […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-final-fantasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}