You Wouldn’t Understand (chapter 3 of 49, 6919 words)
The party arrive at their accommodation in Macalania. Auron attempts to gather information while Jecht visits a bar in the nearby village.
Read here on praze.net or here on archiveofourown.org, or read the whole fic so far as a PDF or an EPUB.
This is one of several chapters where the title quotes something one of the characters says in the chapter that later gains a deeper significance or irony; I think, by the end of the pilgrimage, Jecht understands a lot more than he ever wanted to.
Jecht continues to demonstrate his talent for picking things up quickly. Once he sobers up, he’ll even start being unusually perceptive about what’s going around him … Auron may not always appreciate this.
I wanted to operationalise the fact that Jecht has a beard while Auron and Braska are clean-shaven somehow, and came up with the idea that Bevelle people see youngish men with beards as somehow offensive against Yevon … then I remembered that Kinoc has a beard in the sphere of him and Auron, but fortunately his interest in modernising Yevonite practices can account for that. The fact that so many warrior monks have both guns and beards at the time of Yuna’s pilgrimage can therefore be attributed to Kinoc’s increasing influence, although the guns are already getting popular during the prequel era (on which, more at some point in the far distant future).
Braska’s wife’s name …! I wanted to make it something that would deeply embarrass him. Various Al Bhed have silly names like Brother and Buddy, so Girl seemed about right, and appropriately excruciating. Braska is lucky that just saying her makes it obvious who he’s talking about.
By this point, Jecht is about as fed up with Auron as Auron is with him. Auron sometimes has a tendency to interpret things literally and overexplain, which isn’t helping.
I wanted to explain the bandage on Jecht’s arm while also demonstrating his inflated sense of self-importance. The idea that Braska could come back to Zanarkand and just be Jecht’s private healer is obviously ludicrous, but Jecht thinks it’s appropriate. I guess Shell is the equivalent of paracetamol in this universe … it makes sense, kind of? Also in this scene, we see the first instance of Jecht asking people to do him a favour; this is something that will happen quite a lot, although it’s usually directed towards Auron.
I think the only people who use staves as a way of casting magic are summoners, and by the look of it, not all of them even do use them, so I wondered if most mages who become summoners might need to get the hang of the staff as part of their training. Braska uses this conversation topic as an excuse to drop in a bit of self-loathing, of course.
Jecht is slowly realising that Braska’s mental health is not great, but he doesn’t want to admit he knows it. Meanwhile Braska, as usual, becomes completely intolerant of any bad word spoken about Auron by a third party.
I wanted to get “a lecture” in because Tidus and Auron both say it in this exchange from the game: “A lecture?” “No, just a suggestion.” “You should place trust in your friends, but you can’t expect someone to protect you all the time. You would do well to remember that.” “Is that a lecture?” “It’s advice.”
Braska would be hopeless at coordinating arrangements for his own pilgrimage, partly because of his mental state, partly because he knows Auron will take care of it so he isn’t even going to bother trying, partly because he’s quite an absent-minded person who doesn’t always find it easy to pay attention to the world around him (a big difference between him and his guardians, Jecht in particular). If Auron wasn’t leading the way, he would have no idea where to go, and Jecht obviously doesn’t know either. It could be a tradition for guardians to do the navigation and planning: when Auron joins Yuna’s pilgrimage, it’s Lulu that he asks about their itinerary, not Yuna herself – although the summoner clearly has the overall say on whether to keep going or stop.
Tidus says in the game that Jecht used to sing the Hymn all the time, so Jecht must have known it before Braska’s pilgrimage started, which is an interesting example of Spiran stuff leaking into their Zanarkand. Auron also says Jecht used to sing it, so he clearly did so on the pilgrimage! Of course, at this point, Auron thinks this is proof that Jecht is from Spira after all. The narration at this point describes the Hymn in terms of what most Yevonites believe about it, but in the game, Maechen reveals that its true origin was as “a Zanarkand song, sung in defiance of Bevelle”. It’s obvious from the game that the Al Bhed know it too, as they join in with singing it when instructed.
I had originally made this travel agency one of Rin’s, before realising that the clerk in the game says “Welcome to the Lake Macalania branch of Rin’s Travel Agency, now Spira-wide!” – which I think is a pretty strong suggestion that Rin didn’t operate this particular facility in the past.
Auron’s retort of “Good” to Jecht’s “Pretty lousy entertainment that’d be” is … pretty feeble, to be honest. He’s not always the best at banter.
As a speaker of multiple languages, I was determined to have Auron be incurably monolingual. Some features of his personality are inspired by my own (this is true of all three of the guys in different ways, but maybe I’ll go into that more another time when I feel like oversharing), but this is like deliberate anti-projection or something, as is his low reading ability.
Fiend bounties are something I never really explain, just as they’re not explained in the game itself (or any FF game, to my knowledge?). There’s no reason why defeating fiends should result in monetary reward, and yet it does. I guess if we rationalise this it would consist of waypoints along the route and scouts who monitor groups of travellers to see which fiends they’ve taken down … maybe something like that is going on. I suppose the provincial peoples of Spira are happy enough to see big strong lads like Auron and Jecht seeing off all the dangerous fiends that they probably would be content to pay them for it. At this point, Braska and his guardians are in a reasonably good financial position anyway, as they still have the gil they brought to start with and Braska is pretty wealthy, but Auron happens to be a bit of a skinflint.
I’ll probably say more about this at a later date, but I think Auron probably does have a fair amount of sexual experience. I’ve seen lots of Braska’s-pilgrimage-era fic where he’s depicted as an awkward virgin … I think he’s definitely awkward, but most probably not a virgin, lol.
Gahato’s shorter Al Bhed primer is a reference, a very funny reference, I am very funny!! … anyway, because this is unreasonably obscure, Gahato is the Al Bhed for Kenedi.
Braska is quite a gullible person … a couple of Hypello will soon take advantage of this. Meanwhile, Auron’s moral compass is rapidly eroding and he doesn’t even know it yet!
Auron is usually quite assertive, but now that he’s Braska’s guardian he’s determined not to inconvenience Braska in any way at all. As a result of this, his slightly below average social skills, and Braska’s general failure to notice things going on around him, they occasionally end up in an unnecessarily awkward situation. Also re Auron’s personality: he’s often sarcastic when he’s angry, I think! This has cooled off a bit by the time of Yuna’s pilgrimage, but he does say “wonderful” in the game after seeing Jyscal’s sphere, which I suppose is a remnant of this.
Jecht still doesn’t really know what being a guardian means, but he’s already proud of it, which is cute.
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