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a quick meta on "femme fatale" lightning

lightning being dubbed a femme fatale makes me horny because they very much did not have to, and yet they designate the title to her explicitly, and that makes her unique among ff women. (to no degree are those other ladies going out slaughtering, threatening, and seducing men like lightning is canonically described and witnessed doing.)

the crux of why lightning makes this epithet so sexy is that she can operate under all the dark femininity it bestows while simultaneously living a heroic, stolid persona of toughness traditionally afforded to men, therefore reaching her unique brand of androgyny. 

her femme fatale journey starts with lightning initially being written in ffxiii with a more coy and sexy personality (“nice gun”), which they went back on to entertain less of the male gaze. she is no stranger to being a sexy badass, but where she fulfills femme fatale most is in her magnum opus, lightning returns. we’re made privy to the sins of phantom lightning, who is literally a siren-like figure that seduces and kills all hope’s scientists and lastly him. we get gothic lolita lumina. we get her hunting her sister’s ex-boyfriends. she gets a dainty little rapier called “femme fatale” which she uses to blasphemize her god-husband and save her boo brother-in-law. the weapon is so definitive of her character that it’s wielded with the outfit with the strongest narrative in her arc, and was ported to dissidia too. in ff tactics, the sword is described as especially holding “kings and kingdoms” at its whim. lightning is sexy in a man-slaughtering way that i’ll argue you can separate from the male gaze.

i love how lightning reincarnates this trope in both its historically biblical and film noir uses. lightning returns is very gothic, moody, isolationist, and film noir (hello “midnight eternal” ost). her presence in ff serves as a “stark contrast to the not-so-distant Victorian ideal of pliant femininity” and she refuses to play by society’s rules when pressed. serah is her “good woman” antithesis. where lightning deviates from the trope in film noir, is that instead of getting apprehended or killed to bring the world back to moral rights, she is in fact JESUS, and she LIVES to bring back the moral right. she is also more of a new-age femme fatale in that she’s presented as sympathetic, human, and the center of the story.

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In this world of lost moments, I begin my life anew.

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I found out that the 15 year anniversary for final fantasy xiii was on the 17th so I whipped these up in celebration!

13 also just holds a special place in my heart as it’s the game that introduced me to the series ⚡️

Follow me on bluesky! @karde22

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These men deserve significantly more love and positive attention than they get.

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Shinto Academia - Year 4xxAF (Night)

So, this painting took me quite a while but I really had tun working on it, first time I painted rain too.

So, about a month ago I finished playing the excellent FFXIII-2 (amazing art direction and superb soundtrack) and I was fascinated with the atmosphere and setting of "Shinto Academia", a futuristic city the main characters explore for a while.

Well, this is a reinterpretation: it is a reinterpretation of the City Of Academia in the Year 4xxAF (good timeline) with the coloring and lights of Academia in the Year 400AF (bad timeline).

Serah, the main heroine, sat on eaves as she admires the architectural urban glimpse of Academia.

While I was painting this, I had the Shinto Academia theme almost always on repeat to delve myself into the atmosphere, give it a listening.

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Serah's Letter

I don’t know where I am. I can’t hear anything. I can’t see anything. It’s cold, and dark, and I’m all alone. This place is… dead.

But I don’t have any regrets. I fought to the end. I never ran away. I just hope someone will remember me, now that I’m gone.

Help!? Hello!?

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2.11 - 2.12 practice. Pose from posemaniacs.

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how serah's writing in yaschas massif works against her ffxiii-2 theme

the fact that serah never gets to confront snow regarding her feelings as they relate to his abandonment and manipulation of her, as expressed in her prologue novels, despite defying him being such a pivotal moment in her asserting agency, and to see all that righteous anger and attention given instead to noel in their reunion scene was such a red flag in xiii-2’s writing.

lightning farron’s daughter, “meanie miss farron,” should have been afforded the chance to scold her own partner as she does her own schoolchildren. as canon stans, even in a story that's supposed to be all about her, the only time serah is ever afforded a voice or opinion in this relationship is when snow disappears and she resolves to save him, which she doesn’t even get to carry out. giving serah an opportunity to emulate her sister’s anger towards snow would not only have been hilarious but would’ve served to actually flesh out their relationship beyond her being his babygirl. serah should’ve come out swinging and then they could’ve kissed it better later.

i love noel handing it to snow as much as everyone else, but this was the result of the writers giving a whole plotline and world that should’ve been serah’s to noel instead as the defacto male mc, and this writing ultimately worked against snerah's favor. while noel is passionately expressing his frustration, serah is relegated to clinging to snow’s arm, dead silent. even at the world's conclusion, snow wrings his arm around noel's neck and tells him to take care of serah instead of facing his fiancé directly himself, which is completely antithetical to serah's agency in this game. her behavior throughout the yaschas massif subsection is so uncharacteristic and odd compared to what we come to know of her throughout the game, with her suddenly twiddling her thumbs saying long distance with snow is what she prefers and staying silent every time snow gaslights her into complacency.

serah's ultimate exoneration in this relationship actually comes when she defeats caius on her own, defying snow’s dream and l'cie focus of defeating caius by her side. and yes we all cheered 🎉

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for ffxiii-2 anniversary here's a reposting of something i wrote last year about its importance:

i once came across a criticism of the ffxiii sequels from an og ffxiii fan that argued that ffxiii-2 moves serah backward by returning her to a position in which she's once again dependent on her sister. now i could argue against that itself a dozen ways, starting with ffxiii in fact not resolving serah's development at all and ending with sibling relationships and reliance as well as healing never being linear in the first place, but my first instinct was to remind people they need to be viewing everything the larger context of the trilogy's message to understand why it was really so groundbreaking and beautiful.

ffxiii-2 is not so much a story of “serah being dependent on lightning” as it is that of a girl fighting to steal back her last remaining family member (not only for herself but so that her sister can live out the life she deserves), “growing up” through understanding why her sister left, and imbuing herself with the same will as she chooses again and again to fight for something bigger than herself just like her sister did.

“some things in life you just do.” where lightning and serah were once each other’s purpose, in ffxiii-2 they're given other purposes to weigh. lightning becomes entrapped as etro’s champion and chooses to go along willingly at the cost of her own freedom and leaving her family behind because her survivor's guilt and empathy make her feel like she must atone for all the death and destruction she caused in ffxiii. serah protects the timeline with full knowledge of the seerees’s fate because her survivor's guilt makes her feel like she must atone for all the death and destruction she caused in ffxiii-- and thus is the sisters' triumph and tragedy.

the ffxiii trilogy remains a subversion of the traditional fantasy trope where "women have to sacrifice themselves and their happiness to save the world" specifically because of the uncompromising lengths lightning and serah (and fang and vanille) are allowed to go successfully as they choose to find each other again and again and never leave each other behind, even in death, all while saving the world. serah's journey in ffxiii-2 is paramount to this theme, and only through these sequels where serah is fully afforded a voice and a vision does this theme become fully appreciable.

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snow villiers meta and motivation, as inspired by the following:

both related and completely unrelated, snow’s first desires in this world were to have a mother or a sister, and a blood family, without whom he felt he suffered. this is presented subliminally through his assumption of a paternal role amongst orphans, reactionary ethos in living entirely independently of the system, his heroic front and carefully hidden insecurities, his arc, ffxiii's theme, and prologue chapters. (his biggest tragedy throughout the trilogy that he is repeatedly denied this.) his chasing of the farron sisters is an extension of this desire, and viewing it this way only makes what i've written before about the farron sisters being his ruin all the more delicious.

snow is initially lackadaisical in his denial and unawareness of his formed desires, but even then, the fact that he derives such a feverish and obsessive thrill from going against lightning's wishes, getting under her skin, and stealing out serah from underneath her, suggests that serah having a sister/mother as her sole guardian was among the reason he gravitated to her. his teasing friction with lightning is stripped back to reveal a genuine interest in appeasing and appealing to her so he can join her as family. his xiii arc is about getting over his initial arrogance and affront of trying to dismantle a family unit (by saving serah from her sister), which he disdains due to having been denied that security growing up himself (not wholly incorrectly deeming it toxic), to understand that serah and lightning still need each other as much as he needs them. his eidolon straddling two sisters as an entire manifestation of self only furthers this point.

in this context, ffxiii is actually very feral insane for canonically implying that breeding serah was part of snow's intent and motivation in marrying her 🥵 which then leads to the delicious territory of unveiling that it is lightning that assumes a maternal and nurturing role in his story better than anyone. in that sense, in his fixation to have her as his sister, it is lightning who is the fulfillment of his oldest obsession that he did not even know he had, as his understanding of what it means to desire in the first place was for wanting a mother a sister, and a blood family 😮‍💨

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Squall ♥️ Lightning

Credit:

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Squall's iconic lying down on his side in a fetal position + Lightning's iconic sitting pose = absolute-fucking-alchemy.

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midnight mauve 🩷

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I love how Lightning’s and Snow’s bangs resemble each other in Final Fantasy XIII. However, I noticed that Snow’s bangs changed in Final Fantasy XIII-2, so his original hairstyle wasn’t like that. Anyway, both of them are precious to Serah, and I feel a connection between them because of that.

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I'd really like for Hope to meet Light again and finally get to live normal lives. Here's a big reuniting hug! He was looking so hard for her post XIII, I think he'd be so happy to see his old buddy! Light is taken aback, "...when did he get so tall!?"

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Conseil de Renaissance

after work（jp）