Originally posted here at fanifesto on 2022-03-27.

Do you like slash? Do you like suffering? Do you like celebrated but old videogames that are no longer especially present in public discourse? Then read on, friend, I’ve got a ship for you!

Auron/Braska (Final Fantasy X)
voted favourite Final Fantasy ship in a recent poll*
*nine people responded to a question on an anonymous meme and this ship was mentioned 2.5 times

Most people who have switched on a games console are probably aware of the Final Fantasy series, and FFX in particular is one of the most beloved games in the franchise. Initially released in 2001 (in Japan and the USA, and 2002 in Europe), it would become the highest-selling PlayStation 2 game not loosely themed around driving cars. It’s the first Final Fantasy game for PS2, the first to include voice-acting, and the first to open with a big banger of a metal song. The combat system is also completely turn-based, which makes it a great introduction to the series: yes, there’s plenty of fumbling around in menus during battle, but you can take as long as you want doing it.

FFX is a game about learning to question dogma, complex family relationships, the conflict between tradition and technology, falling in love, the inevitability of death, and playing basketball underwater. The HD remastered version from 2013 (nicer interface, prettier character models, rearranged OST with some questionable choices) is available on Switch, PC, PS4/5 and Xbox. But while the game is brilliant, the characters and the ship we’re concerned with here are a very minor part of the narrative that we experience while playing; most of their story is told through about 20 minutes’ worth of mostly optional flashbacks.

The story of FFX follows the summoner Yuna, who is on a pilgrimage with her six guardians in the hope of gaining the trust of deities called the fayth, which allows her to summon increasingly powerful creatures known as aeons, leading up to the retrieval of the Final Aeon, which will allow her to defeat Sin, a huge monster that roams the land bringing death and destruction. Many summoners and guardians begin this journey, although few have completed it; each summoner who takes down Sin brings about a period of peace until Sin eventually appears again, but they must sacrifice themselves in the process. Yuna’s father, Braska, was the last summoner to defeat Sin, ten years before the events in the game; he was accompanied on his pilgrimage by Auron, a disgraced warrior monk, and Jecht, a man who … not really a man? … whatever. Not getting into the details of Jecht here, this is about Auron and Braska!

“I wanted to change the world, too – but I changed nothing.”

When we first meet Auron in FFX, he’s a mysterious, taciturn, inexplicably old man whose hobbies include being cryptic and laughing at people. Ten years ago, though, he was young, idealistic, and apparently humourless; devoted to Braska as the summoner he was supposed to guard (we’ll come to that later, obviously!!), he was determined to have his cake and eat it by seeing the pilgrimage through and at the same time finding a way to prevent Braska having to sacrifice himself in his defeat of Sin. Often at loggerheads with his fellow guardian Jecht as a result of an enormous personality clash, he becomes increasingly desperate towards and after the end of the pilgrimage, to the extent that he attempts to attack a thousand-year-old sort-of-deity and literally dies. Good job!

“I have come to kill grief itself … please understand, Auron.”

While Auron is still present in the main narrative of the game, which allows us to learn (a bit) more about him, Braska appears only in flashbacks, so it’s more difficult to get a sense of his personality. From what we see, he’s kind and patient, tolerating Jecht’s various misdeeds much more easily than Auron does; he cares deeply about his daughter Yuna, and he’s determined to sacrifice himself for her sake, hoping she can grow up with some respite from the destruction caused by Sin. In the present-day plot, Yuna clearly has happy memories of her father, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that her sympathetic and gentle nature is something she’s inherited from him.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am absolutely convinced that Auron was in love with Braska. The first hint at this comes from the single bit of pre-pilgrimage backstory we’re given about both of them:

BRASKA: I, a fallen summoner wed to an Al Bhed … [you,] a warrior monk doomed to obscurity for refusing the hand of the priest’s daughter.

Braska’s late wife was an Al Bhed: a member of a race of people reviled and oppressed by the ultra-religious society in which he and Auron live. As a result of this marriage, he has apparently become known as a “fallen” summoner; at the start of his pilgrimage, nobody expects him to succeed in defeating Sin. Evidently, his fellow citizens have chosen not to support him because of their religious views.

But this raises the question of why Auron doesn’t hold the same opinion: as a warrior monk, he’s very much part of the same dogmatic society – in fact, part of the elite military force that is one of its most zealous divisions. We would surely expect him not to want to accompany Braska on his pilgrimage, or to resent having to do so, but we find the opposite: he’s so dedicated to Braska that he eventually tries to dissuade him from his fate. So why doesn’t Auron take offence at Braska’s heretical past?

I think the answer to this lies in Auron’s own backstory: in a sense, it’s the inverse of Braska’s. He has turned down a marriage, and, we learn from another flashback scene, missed out on a significant promotion because of it. Despite presumably being dedicated to his career – certainly dedicated enough to have been within reach of this major promotion at the fairly young age of 25 – he’s unable to make this move because he understands love: he knows that it can’t be forced between him and this priest’s daughter, just as it couldn’t be stopped between Braska and his wife. He’s unable to dismiss Braska in the way everyone else does, because he knows that Braska’s transgression wasn’t his fault. As for Auron’s own decision, there are lots of possible reasons why he could have turned down an arranged marriage, of course, but I’d just casually like to throw “he’s not interested in women” in there as an option.

All that just sets the scene – none of it directly suggests that Auron is in love with Braska. For this, our hints come from the flashback scenes themselves. In the scenes that Auron records on the video sphere, we see things from his perspective, and we can observe just how focused he is on Braska: firstly, his attempt to pan across the impressive landscape of the Moonflow notably lingers on the sight of Braska standing at the riverbank (11:33–11:57). Later, when Braska (seemingly on a whim) asks Auron to bring Yuna to a relatively remote island after his death, Auron not only agrees immediately but does so with uncharacteristic emotion in his voice (5:24–5:41). His increasing desperation regarding Braska’s imminent death leads him to focus the sphere recording on a gull – we’re told at another point in the game that wishing on gulls is a tradition in this society – and then he abruptly, guiltily turns away once he realises Jecht is watching him (7:56–8:04). Auron isn’t supposed to be wishing that Braska doesn’t die: summoners are revered for their sacrifice, and most people who encounter them on their pilgrimage are thankful for it. According to his religion, Auron should feel the same way, but his personal feelings override that. Even after he’s failed to “change the world” and find a way of saving Braska, he resorts to begging him to turn back (5:08–5:48), and when Braska finally goes to receive the Final Aeon, Auron falls to his knees in despair (3:29–4:24).

… I don’t think there’s any evidence that Braska returns the feelings.

… but that doesn’t stop me shipping it anyway. While I enjoy Auron having a terrible time pining for someone who’s about to die, it’s just as nice to imagine and/or read about scenarios where Braska does feel the same way, whether that’s a fix-it AU or just a few moments of mutual devotion before the inevitable tragedy.

Ok, at least half of this ship may be tinhattable, but that doesn’t necessarily make it OTP material, the kind of ship you lie awake thinking about and are reminded of every time a song with lyrics has the audacity to make itself known to your ears. If you’re still reading (I apologise and) you may be wondering what this ship actually has to offer. Here’s a selection:

• Hurt/comfort potential: summoners’ pilgrimages are fairly dangerous affairs involving battles with various oddly-named creatures. Auron is a swordsman, relying on physical attacks; Braska is a mage, responsible for magic attacks but also for healing. The two of them are dependent on each other for the pilgrimage’s success.
• Loyalty: Auron unfailingly addresses Braska as “sir” and “my lord” (“Braska-sama” in the original). He does literally anything Braska asks him to, even if he has to crawl down a mountain bleeding to death in the process (spoiler: he does).
• The way their personalities play off each other: Auron is serious, irritable, and rule-focused, while Braska is gentle, patient, and irreverent enough to have married an Al Bhed and then taken some drunk guy who appeared to be talking nonsense as his second guardian.
• Angst, obviously. Braska is going to die, Auron can’t save him, etc. And that’s not to mention the fact that they’ve both been shunned by their religion: even before their pilgrimage starts, all they really have is each other.

Because I came to it twenty years late and you deserve to suffer too? Um, I mean, we’re getting a playable Braska who isn’t just a bunch of pixels later this year? Honestly, there is no good reason. I just love these lads and I need to share my enthusiasm for them.

If you want art recs I … actually cannot provide because I have hardly ever managed to find art of these two?! There are a few Japanese artists on twitter to whom I am extremely grateful for keeping the FFX prequel fandom alive, but their overwhelming preference is for old!Auron/Jecht.

If you want fic recs I have a lot of favourites bookmarked in an AO3 collection, filtered to the ship tag here. Beyond that the only person who’s posted anything to the AO3 tag within the last three years is … me. 🙃

This post has barely scratched the surface of this pairing and how much I love them. Any invitations to ramble on even more will be gratefully and earnestly received.