Intent Amidst Inquisition
I've decided to chronicle my understanding of intuitively related plot devices in hope that it will give me a better overview of reality as we know it to be + motifs in fiction that reflect to society as memetics. Examples of this may be seen on tvtropes.com, but I have no specific course of passage I yet plan to take, rather, I will be guided by happenstance and synchonicity. To me, clarity comes to me succinctly in that form.
I think I understand the wild card now... or the fool arcana/joker card, after years of considering it.
Being so scared that you would become everything and anything to avoid what feels like an inevitable truth... Wielding multiple personas for that reasons... It's not a power that shows greatness, but potential. You have that potential because you are empty... The more empty you are, the more power you may have, but you begin with nothing. He's like Adachi because he may or may not have acquired the things he needed to accomplish what he did. He's like us, because we choose his course of actions to an extent. He's like Minato, in that they were both desolate, but the truths came into fruition differently. The difference was in society...
In the end, there was a will to persist and believe things were good enough as they are that he needn't sacrifice for truth. Minato made that sacrifice with the believe he must uphold it, but it was an illusion. Had Minato not been impacted by trauma, he may have seen through it on his own; however, though he formed bonds in his own way, ultimately his wounds, caused by things apart from him, led him into a role of martyrdom, even despite the relationships he formed with the others. His was a forced hand... One crossed with fate, with the mask of destiny.
He was never truly free, and in the end, his preference for the truth, for the potential for us to find our own meaning in this state of duality where we begin searching, was upheld, allowing for a future where the inevitable may be overcome. If he had not made that sacrifice three years prior, and chosen to accept his fears rather than accept the truth of himself on his own... Perhaps not with a SEES tool, but as a natural conclusion, and countered death with the understanding of what shadows were... a truth he had to forge from his past, inherently blank, in a crucial point, about who he would become... instead of what he was made to be... I don't think there could have been hope.
The SEES team embraced opposition while the investigation team embraced through acceptance, acknowledging just what it was inside of them that would call forth that collective human will... from every point... every arcana... and though Minato was not provided that same opportunity, it was a sacrifice he believed in... It was the truth he found through what he experienced (like the trauma around him) that led him to a sense of fulfillment through sacrifice, and an atonement for a sort of karma, as with the first shot of the Evoker, he evoked a desire for death... He merely took accountability, as he committed to do with Pharos(Nyx) in exchange for a hope he never had, but through that, he still ended his life with fulfillment, as "Igor' had said, just happening to find he truth sooner...
To account for everything with such a resolution and set the stage for the future, that's what had to happen. Minato was to be a protector, as would suit his role; it's who he chose to be, he chose the appropriate sacrifice as he felt, for the price he was due to pay to Death, the appraiser. Maybe this can be seen as a sort of "deal with the Devil," aka Lucifer (light, maybe truth by extension). Yuu's role was not to pay a debt for something borrowed. Minato knew he had appropriated and accepted it, as he was due, for the contract he had signed.
His power was borrowed, but he created from what he had drawn something more to humanity that would be left as a legacy... perhaps that was indeed the miracle he had performed. To make from nothing, something. The philosopher's stone, the universe card... and have Aigis then follow, in his place, for her to achieve in her existence what he could not, if only for the memory that would linger while the rest forgot. Aigis needed no SEES tool... her mode of operation preceded that of the investigation team, maybe setting the stage for it. Aigis, too, had nothing, and her truth, because of Minato, would come into fruition otherwise. By his will, by what he would risk, was she possibly able to actually live. She was an extreme of what he needed to balance out things that caused settlements as well. Because of her, he developed a true sense of empathy, and through him, it was developed in her.
I've gone through studying mythology and looking for parallels to try to make sense of this intuitively. Further, from wikipedia, a citation is made:
In a modern translation from the original Hebrew, the passage in which the phrase "Lucifer" or "morning star" occurs begins with the statement: "On the day the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labour forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended!"[28] After describing the death of the king, the taunt continues:
"How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit. Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: 'Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?'"[29]
J. Carl Laney has pointed out that in the final verses here quoted, the king of Babylon is described not as a god or an angel but as a man.[30][31]
Finally, the lyrics of "Burn My Dread", a recurrent motif and theme of Persona 3, where Minato was the protagonist...
"I will -
(Burn my dread)
I once ran away from the god of fear
And he chained me to despair
(Burn my dread)
I will break the chain and run
till I see the sunlight again
I'll lift my face
and run to the sunlight"
and additionally:
"I will
(Burn my dread)
This time I'll grapple down that god of fear
And throw him into hell's fire
(Burn my dread)
I will shrug the pain and run
till I see the sunlight again
Oh, I will run...
burning all regret and dread...
And I will face the sun -
with pride of the living..."
The fact that this all ties together through Archetypes and the ideology of Carl Jung, including his concept of the Collective Unconscious, ties into the story associated on the Megami Tensei wiki.
Maybe I'll get a deeper understanding of the symbolism of this all as time goes on. So far, this is what I have gathered... I'm not sure why I feel so compelled to reach an understanding of this except maybe to gain a better understanding of the true nature of the self and myself by extension, along with others.
