Hello! And oh! I didn't know I had any friends who were FF fans on LJ. I assume you have a reason for not telling me who you are, so I won't push you.
And no I don't mind at all. I LOVE discussing theories about this game. :D
I feel that Lulu is often overlooked, too, and I really like her. I haven't seen a playthrough that analyzes her in much depth so I decided to do one. A lot of her story is either hidden or very subtle so you have to be paying close attention to catch it. I've also been writing a graphic novel about her life and her motivations for volunteering to become Yuna's fayth, so I've done a lot of thinking in her point of view. It also ends with her becoming the aeon, so I've given a lot of consideration to that too!
So here we go.
Yes, it would seem like the people who became fayth for the temple aeons are trapped there in a kind of limbo until a summoner calls them. Bahamut's fayth, the most powerful of the five main ones, is able to leave his statue, since we see him in Dream Zanarkand and also briefly in Bevelle, but I don't think he is able to go very far. It doesn't seem like the others have that power at all since they only appear if Yuna enters the Chamber of the Fayth to talk to them, even Anima's fayth.
And yes, the Final Aeon is supposed to only be summoned once to defeat Sin and the previous Final Aeon inside it. Whereupon Yu Yevon leaves the dying aeon, enters the new one, kills the summoner, and begins to reconstruct Sin, a process that seems to take a few years and so we have the Calm. (After the party defeats Braska's Final Aeon, you can see Yu Yevon rise up out of him, but since Yuna has no Final Aeon it possesses each of her regular aeons one after another and forces her to fight them. If she had had a Final Aeon, this would have killed her.)
However, Yunalesca doesn't tell them that the fayth will become Sin until Yuna asks about it. It's likely that no one ever thought to ask before and the volunteering guardians didn't know they would become Sin. They only thought that they would die with their summoners, and probably go unsent because there would be no one to send them. So they are accepting that when they die they will never reach the Farplane, or else have to find it on their own. (Which they might, since they are accepting their deaths in advance.) I think the real horror of the situation is that the summoner is asked to sacrifice someone important to them, when they came there expecting only to sacrifice themselves. It's more of a price for the summoner than for the guardian.
But the guardian's soul that became the fayth for the aeon isn't released. Yu Yevon, which is by now a parasitic tick thing, takes a hold of it and uses it to control Sin. So the guardian fayth is trapped in torment inside this giant whale monster, slowly losing control of him/herself while being forced to commit horrible atrocities. Jecht was Sin for ten years, but there were only four Sins before him, so some of them lasted for hundreds of years before the next High Summoner managed to defeat Sin and free them. So while it's true that they aren't imprisoned eternally like the temple fayth, their existence is a lot more horrible.
I don't know if you've seen this yet but AuronLu has written an excellent fanfic, Love Her and Despair, which also deals with the concept of Lulu becoming Yuna's Final Aeon. There are some wonderful descriptive passages about what it's like for her being imprisoned inside Sin.
Interestingly, there is at least one Final Aeon that wasn't used to defeat Sin and now resides in a statue like the others. Anima was Seymour's Final Aeon, but he ran away instead of fighting Sin and hid the statue in Baaj temple. I'm not sure where the statues come from. Maybe the fayth manage to create them for themselves? Because that doesn't seem like something the church would do for a summoner that ran away. And since Seymour was about nine, I don't think he did it himself. It's probably also not Yunalesca either because I don't think he would have been able to move his mother's fayth statue by himself. I've also seen speculation that the Magus Sisters are Belgamine's Final Aeon, and she died trying to defeat Sin, so they are also inside a statue in Remiem Temple.
So altogether . . . no, the existence of a Final Aeon fayth isn't eternal like a temple fayth, but it is a pretty major sacrifice to become one.
no subject
And no I don't mind at all. I LOVE discussing theories about this game. :D
I feel that Lulu is often overlooked, too, and I really like her. I haven't seen a playthrough that analyzes her in much depth so I decided to do one. A lot of her story is either hidden or very subtle so you have to be paying close attention to catch it. I've also been writing a graphic novel about her life and her motivations for volunteering to become Yuna's fayth, so I've done a lot of thinking in her point of view. It also ends with her becoming the aeon, so I've given a lot of consideration to that too!
So here we go.
Yes, it would seem like the people who became fayth for the temple aeons are trapped there in a kind of limbo until a summoner calls them. Bahamut's fayth, the most powerful of the five main ones, is able to leave his statue, since we see him in Dream Zanarkand and also briefly in Bevelle, but I don't think he is able to go very far. It doesn't seem like the others have that power at all since they only appear if Yuna enters the Chamber of the Fayth to talk to them, even Anima's fayth.
And yes, the Final Aeon is supposed to only be summoned once to defeat Sin and the previous Final Aeon inside it. Whereupon Yu Yevon leaves the dying aeon, enters the new one, kills the summoner, and begins to reconstruct Sin, a process that seems to take a few years and so we have the Calm. (After the party defeats Braska's Final Aeon, you can see Yu Yevon rise up out of him, but since Yuna has no Final Aeon it possesses each of her regular aeons one after another and forces her to fight them. If she had had a Final Aeon, this would have killed her.)
However, Yunalesca doesn't tell them that the fayth will become Sin until Yuna asks about it. It's likely that no one ever thought to ask before and the volunteering guardians didn't know they would become Sin. They only thought that they would die with their summoners, and probably go unsent because there would be no one to send them. So they are accepting that when they die they will never reach the Farplane, or else have to find it on their own. (Which they might, since they are accepting their deaths in advance.) I think the real horror of the situation is that the summoner is asked to sacrifice someone important to them, when they came there expecting only to sacrifice themselves. It's more of a price for the summoner than for the guardian.
But the guardian's soul that became the fayth for the aeon isn't released. Yu Yevon, which is by now a parasitic tick thing, takes a hold of it and uses it to control Sin. So the guardian fayth is trapped in torment inside this giant whale monster, slowly losing control of him/herself while being forced to commit horrible atrocities. Jecht was Sin for ten years, but there were only four Sins before him, so some of them lasted for hundreds of years before the next High Summoner managed to defeat Sin and free them. So while it's true that they aren't imprisoned eternally like the temple fayth, their existence is a lot more horrible.
I don't know if you've seen this yet but AuronLu has written an excellent fanfic, Love Her and Despair, which also deals with the concept of Lulu becoming Yuna's Final Aeon. There are some wonderful descriptive passages about what it's like for her being imprisoned inside Sin.
Interestingly, there is at least one Final Aeon that wasn't used to defeat Sin and now resides in a statue like the others. Anima was Seymour's Final Aeon, but he ran away instead of fighting Sin and hid the statue in Baaj temple. I'm not sure where the statues come from. Maybe the fayth manage to create them for themselves? Because that doesn't seem like something the church would do for a summoner that ran away. And since Seymour was about nine, I don't think he did it himself. It's probably also not Yunalesca either because I don't think he would have been able to move his mother's fayth statue by himself. I've also seen speculation that the Magus Sisters are Belgamine's Final Aeon, and she died trying to defeat Sin, so they are also inside a statue in Remiem Temple.
So altogether . . . no, the existence of a Final Aeon fayth isn't eternal like a temple fayth, but it is a pretty major sacrifice to become one.