Sometimes, the world I live in is polygonal, with Playstation 2 graphics and moderately okay voice acting. I disconnect from the world around me and all of a sudden, one of the games that I replayed during my earliest RPG gaming years colors the atmosphere, and I find myself reflecting on some event within a game that touched me deeply. I take a deep breath, and all of a sudden, things are clearer.
Sometimes I have to step into a fictional world to make sense of this one.
And that happened as I stared out at the surrounding docks of the Navy Yard in Washington DC this past July, thinking about Jecht from Final Fantasy 10 and my real father, a man I had just met for the first time.
Jecht is a terrible father to Tidus in Final Fantasy 10, or so I thought when I first played it back in 2002. I was on the verge of college, and had got a PS2 for the first time. The game felt so elevated compared to anything I had played up to then, which I admit wasn’t much beyond Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9, Legend of Dragoon, and Chrono Cross. The voice acting made FFX feel like a movie, and I relished the thought of putting the controller down and sitting on my bedroom floor, enamored with the scenes so much that I can still quote them to this day.
“You'll cry. You're gonna cry. You always cry. See? You're crying,” Jecht tells Tidus after Jecht’s been defeated in the game’s final series of boss fights. Jecht, it’s revealed midway through the story, is Sin, the current reincarnation of an abomination summoned to keep the perpetual cycle of death going in Spira. The scene always resonated with me, because after all the turmoil between father and son, they finally understand each other.
And it happened right before the two of them disappeared.
Jecht pops in and out of the game many times. In the beginning, it’s in flashbacks. They’re never great memories. One particular flashback is a nightmare and has Tidus waking up and screaming “I hate you!” to a shadow. Tidus blames him for the death of his mom because she just seemed to let go of life when he disappeared one day.
The guy who I thought was dad for so many years turned out not to be my real dad. He was a man who came in and out of my life through various moments. He was apparently there when I was a child, but then my mom left him because he was a drunk. He then came back into my life when I was about 14 years old, and tried to have a relationship with me. Problem is, a lot of time passed, and it was too late for him to try to be the man of the house; he was too blinded my immaturity to be the father I needed
That’s probably why Jecht’s drinking problem struck me particularly deeply and gave me a gut revulsion to the character. The stories of my non-biological dad drinking were always filled with dark, heavy details and made me terrified to drink alcohol alone for years after I turned 21 because I was scared I’d somehow end up like him. Jecht’s drinking is treated quite lightly in Final Fantasy X, but it never felt that way to me. During his time traveling with Auron and Lord Braska, he drank, and one night struck a shoopuf – a semiaquatic, elephant-like creature the dwellers of Spira use to travel between large bodies of water. The in-game joke is that the same shoopuf that he struck was still in service during Tidus’s journey and is the one you ride during the events of 10. Jecht stopped drinking because of that.
Sadly, my non-biological dad didn’t stay sober himself. Not too long after he was no longer really seeing me and my sister, he began drinking again. I was devastated. I tried not to take it personally because, after all, he was his own person, but the thing is, he was my dad. I, according to society’s rules, am supposed to have a father/son bond with him. That would never happen, I decided, when I was in college. I made the choice to disconnect from him.
Just over a year ago, my mom called me and told me that he was in hospice. His body was failing him. The universe had a dark sense of humor having him pass away on St. Patrick’s Day.
I didn’t go to see him before he passed. I chose not to because I was scared that the image of him, unable to see me, organs shutting down, would be too much, and I’d have nightmares for years to come. I still stand by this decision, as cruel as it may sound.
Speaking of the cosmos and dark humor, it was quite a then-horrible feeling when I got a Facebook message from a man claiming to be my real father.
This sounds like some terrible plot twist in some badly written video game, right? The hero’s dad dies, but magically, a few months later, his real dad appears? It definitely took some mental gymnastics to comprehend. My mom and I researched my ancestry line provided by a DNA test I’d taken, and it turned out he was right. It took a lot of conversations between me, her, and my dad to finally understand how this all happened, and I’m afraid that even explaining it here wouldn’t completely give the full scope of the narrative.
These revelations would’ve taken a lot of people by surprise, and it did overwhelm me. It took me over a year to finally get enough mental energy to face up to it, but finally I booked a trip to Washington DC for my birthday, to meet him.
I’ve always colored Jecht with shades of my non-biological father.This made him more antagonistic. I was always conflicted with Tidus’s decision to forgive him for all he did. The years of replaying the game always adds another layer to how I judge Jecht though. If anything, I was scared to admit that I wanted what the two of them had: a relationship mended after much heartache.
And meeting my biological dad was that mended moment.
And there I was, at the dock. The real world dissolved into PS2-era graphics, and I found myself seeing the beauty in Jecht’s narrative more vividly through the eyes of my real dad. Turns out my real dad is a pretty cool person. A lot of our values are similar to one another. He keeps an open mind to the world around him. I showed up in Washington, wearing pink and a pronounced rainbow watch band, constantly announcing to the world that I refuse to be in the closet. He accepted me with open arms, showed me the well-kept history of his side of the family found in books and photos, and so many things began to make sense.
One of the in-game scenes that came to mind was why Tidus’s journey to Spira even happened in the first place. Jecht had decided, after realizing that death was an inevitable part of existence in Spira, and that there was no way to go home, that he’d sacrifice himself to become Sin. He gave Auron the task of trying to find a way back to his homeland of Zanarkand and bring Tidus to Spira, hoping that he’d continue where he left off. Jecht was by no means a perfect person, but in the end he was able to take up the responsibility of father—and even helped save the world in doing so.
My real dad came close to the “end” of my growing-up story. A lot of my major character growth has already happened, but there’s still more to come. It’s so strange how the world could send you on this haunting journey, then rip your father away from you, only to reveal that your father-son story has only just begun.