#etro IS the protagonist of the story

[fyresaber]

etro foolish? her decisions unreasonable? oh so you don't understand women. the capriciousness of young girls. lonely, desperate daughters scorned by their fathers for resembling their mother just a little too much. between vanille, serah, lumina, and yeul, ffxiii not only explores strong maternal gubernatorial roles in lightning but also approximates the complex and forgiving psyche and pain of young girls. and if you missed that i don't know what to tell you.

holding etro responsible for yeul’s fate, saying she "deserves what happened to her" is crazy considering yeul is canonically her narrative embodiment and a vehicle for her continued self-harm and suicidality in the wake of her father’s inattention and cruelty.

and so bhunivelze’s violence towards women ricochets through the ages! caius exists because etro chose him to be the father she never had, the same way she chooses lightning as her mother.

etro is capricious as yeul is. yeul who refuses to let caius go as a young girl clings to her father. etro who siphons lightning away from her family to serve as her own, drawing her father’s eye.

[lunarsilkscreen]

FFXIII and the Rest of the Owl

FFXIII has many reference to other entries in the series; of the key notes FF9's (and other FFs) red moon are reflected in Cocoon, but the roles are reversed. Where the Monsters inhabit "Earth" instead of the moon. (I like FF9 better, that's all )

The calm lands in FFX reflected in the Grass Lands of Gran Pulse (And the cities of the Nier series)

The same Calm Lands are featured in FFXV; which has a literal [Bank of Spira] inside the end zone. This game ALSO features the end of the world as it's covered in Shadow, and having to fight the Chaos bearer. (Rebranded in this game to Ardyn and Star scourge)

Star Scourge is similar FF7s Mako Poisoning and Jenova Cell influenced Geostigma. And; FFXV seems to also feature Cid's rocket as a minor sight seeing location in its parallel to the calm lands.

FFXV's Location of Insomnia (Noctis Kingdom) feature a location featured in FFXIII lightning returns. This is uncertain if it's because of the original connection between the two series as being a sort of parallel of each other; but that plot point was eventually driven to other Series like Kingdom Hearts 2 - the world that never was, and the original FFXIII-Verses game (FFXVs predecessor) being shunted into a new game featured in Kingdom Hearts 3.

It's not clear exactly how these pieces fit together; but it seems like FF7 featured heavy damages on the planet earth, which lead to the creation of Sin in FFX (as a safeguard) Sin went on a rampage, and had to be defeated by our protagonists in FFX, who were also Remnants of the pyre flies. Beings not quite dead or alive. (Except for Yuna the summoner who could summon them forth.) Essentially using Chaos to defeat Light, and starting the line of Seer that ended with Serah.

The chaos with nothing to keep it in check overwhelmed the planet (Now called Pulse, likely as a derogatory term.) and the remaining humans fled to Cocoon, and re-established Sin with beings they called "L'Cie". The L'Cie are essentially the Summons [Eidolons] Summoners would use to defeat Sin every so often (And Sin was the biggest baddest Eidolon that couldn't be killed, because it would take the form and strength of the precious eidolon used to kill it.)

Fal'cie are similar to Yuna's [Not quite dead companions] in that they're beings chosen by the L'Cie to protect the world. The problem is; humanity doesn't see them as [Chosen] just as those infected with [Chaos] like Ardyn was.

Which leads to FFXIII's main story; and why Humanity is hellbent in destroying Lightning and Co.

FFXV likely happens before humanity decides to flee to the moon. Noctis and his best friends save the world at their own detriment, and the Kingdom of Insomnia's downfall; but because of the constant war between light and dark. Are unable to stifle it completely.

Humanity flees to the Moon, and this is why the city of Insomnia, at least the clean bits seem preserved in [LR].

//In the interim; Because Cocoon's orbit diverges away from the planet for decades, even hundreds of years on end; Nier: Automata happens.

Thanks to Hope's machinations; an entire series of Androids based on a Freudian slip of Lightning continues the fight between light and dark, despite each being more or less the same thing.

In the end; the Machines defeat the Androids (Thanks to having shutdown their reproduction factories). This is explained that if the humans went to Cocoon, the records would say "Moon" and nobody would be the wiser.

Etro in FF13 could then be related to [The Red Girl], Etro is the feminine diety to Bhunivelze's patriarchy and works to undermine him. Who seems to be struggling with a sort of [Patriarchal] control module herself.

Thus the Intoners from the Drake guard series could be directly related to the Seer's from FFXIII. It should be noted that many of Hope's creations are featured prominently in Nier Automata.//

And when Cocoon manages to meet up again with Gran Pulse, we get the series finale, where Lighting takes the whole of humanity from the machine ridden, death trap to what seems like a replica of Earth. (Where she becomes a Lois Voitton handbag model.)

[historyandmyth]

Please get started on lightning returns lmao

[sputters and laughs] This is the funniest ask I've ever gotten, partially because I don't think you know what you're uncorking here, anon. I do try to keep negativity off this blog nowadays, but I'll oblige you this one time.

Salt beneath the cut, click at your own risk, dead dove: do not eat, etc etc.

Naturally, given how central Lightning is to this game, most of my grievances are with how she was treated and written, though I'll quickly note my other problems with the game:

The fanservice obvs. :U

The combat. Why did we do things like replace the fully functional stagger gauge with the weird audio waveform readout? Seems like a strange choice when XIII-2 had actually made noticeable improvements in terms of accessibility during combat (larger health bars, more readable text, etc).

The incredibly discordant and hard-on-the-ears soundtrack.

I don't usually harp on graphics because I don't really care about how pretty or "realistic" a game looks, but when the dev company boasts that this game is the "most complete and polished" in the Final Fantasy series (not the trilogy, the entire series), and then we get... copy-pasted trees... well, let's just say that that's objectively not the case.

The fact that all of the previous main protagonists don't play more prominent roles in this final installment of the trilogy is abysmal, and this goes twice for Sazh whose "character arc" has been recycled twice now.

The fact that we lose this wonderful world we've spent the past two games exploring and growing attached to is also abysmal! I hate stories where we lose magic at the end, separate the found family, etc etc. and LR is guilty of all of that. It's such a kick in the teeth.

Here's what I did enjoy about this game:

Masculine outfits. They all look great on her. And even better is when you run by NPCs and half the time they can't figure out her gender! (Really furthers the enby!Lightning headcanon I have for this game in particular.)

The fact that you can have Lightning take a jab at Etro during Noel's main quest lmao.

The guy in Luxerion that sings the New Bodhum theme.

You get to pal around with Fang in the Dead Dunes.

...And that's it, that's all I enjoyed.

And now, what I really hate about LR and how they wrote Lightning in general is... Lumina.

Do not get me wrong. I don't hate Lumina for superficial reasons like her personality or aesthetics. If she wasn't inherently tied to Lightning, I think I'd find her rather interesting. Her voice actor did a stellar job with her!

Instead, to me, Lumina's existence is a really hilarious admission from the writers they didn't know what to do with Lightning's character post-XIII. Lightning—who was shown in the first game to be incredibly self-aware, genre-savvy, and emotionally mature—gets reduced to a character that needs to have her "emotions" trot out in front of her as a little girl that harps on and harasses her for things like, I don't know, allegedly pushing her friends away?

Friends that never offer to help her in the first place, I might add. If they really wanted to drive home the idea that Lightning was being aloof, they had ample opportunities to do so. But instead all we ever have is Lumina telling us what Lightning's intentions supposedly are. Lazy writing at its finest!

Lumina also accuses Lightning of trying to be "as cold as the steel in [her] sword," which is a notion later tied to Lightning "locking away" her heart as a child which is just... a really funny retcon when you once again consider how emotionally mature she becomes in XIII.

We did this character arc before. And we did it to much better effect! The whole Lumina/Claire fiasco is one of the biggest walk-backs I've ever seen for a character's development, it's insane.

(I've already spoken at length about how Lightning's character is not the self-sacrificial type, either; you can search my blog for the word 'sentinel' if you want those posts.)

It's just sad, because there are ways they could've played with Lightning's character that would have made sense and been in line with the things she'd gone through up until this point. If you wanted to mess with her emotions, you could've written her as bitter, exhausted, and traumatized after her extended stint in Valhalla. This could have been a natural and compelling consequence of her time as Etro's guardian. It wouldn't have resulted in a terrible rehash of her first game's character arc either lmao.

Anyway there's a lot more I could say but I'm just gonna end it here. LR bad but could have been pretty good with a little effort, the end!

[scrawnytreedemon]

Shit I’ve Been Winding Up For A Long Time Now But Am Very Aware Will Probably Hold No Relevance Should I Actually Go Into This More--

This is about Bhunivelze.

I.

You know, when I was chilling out, on my bed, that evening on that half term in early June, deciding to check up on ClementJ64′s FF retrospective because-- Hey! It’s been awhile, I wonder if he’s got around to doing the final bit of the FFXIII saga --You know, I was there, chilling, just for a laff. Just a laff.

The rest of that week was spent spiralling into a hyperfixation I absolutely did not anticipate in any way, shape, or form, because the way they introduced that character was “wwhdhfjjhHJDFJKHKJHW H A T??”

That retrospective and a good amount of wiki-scrounging is all I have as a basis for this. This is not a coherent character analysis-- Though I might tag it as that for ease of access. This is not, by any means, the thoughts of someone deeply familiar with FFXIII on the whole beyond plot synopses and overarching themes.

I don’t think I’m brave enough for that.

Reading the vast yet surface-deep lore on those wiki pages on my birthday while in a delirious state of mind was enough to make me somewhat nauseous.

Do you think I’m going to go through all of that in real time?

(Someday, someday.)

Ugh, I don’t know how to begin, but let us, I guess. I’d recommend you read this church-mime-demiurge’s FF Wiki page if you want the same level of base-knowledge I had, and maybe the aformentioned retrospective if you want the experience, because I don’t think I have the wherewithal to get into all of that from the bottom-up.

I am also, so, so fucking sorry for any remaining FFXIII fans in advance. There is like, a good chance I may be butchering the characterisation completely, so bear with me here.

With that... we begin?

Where do we even start with this guy?

How on earth to you begin to explain the absolute monolith you’ve constructed from crumbs of a Guy, some material no doubt spliced in from the Pale King, Sephiroth, y o u r  o w n  G o d  O C and other characters, and the mountains of religious trauma you carry around at all times that is probably the only reason you’ve been able to latch on as hard as you did?

I’m going to try.

What gets me, in summary, about Bhunivelze is how he’s a prime example of how love and concern can become deadly forces if in the wrong hands. His first acquainting with human emotion was by deceiving and possessing Hope, reverting his body to a teenage state, and planning to live among humanity through him. He sees human sorrow and suffering, and decides that, to End This(because it must be ended, you see) he’s going to destroy all the souls of the deceased that make up the Chaos that’s been eating this world for the past five-hundred years so they all forget and Are Happy. :).

Capital G God here hasn’t been present for the vast part of human history because he’s hidden himself away from Everything due to paranoia from killing his own mother and throwing her body into the Cosmic Basement, THEN creating the beings that would come to create humanity and OTHER beings because he didn’t have the keys to the cosmic basement. And also he believes death is a thing because she’d’ve somehow cursed all things to pass(including him) out of Spite.

Which explains why he’s so fucking averse to it and anything to do with it.

Bhunivelze, to put it lightly, is Shit at stepping into others’ shoes and Getting their experiences-- All the FalCie in FFXIII are, but him especially. It’s clear(again, in the f u c k i n g JP--) that he makes attempts to sympathise with them and does what he can to help, but it’s with such a loftiness and a complete inability to Understand why anyone would want grief, The Worst Fucking Experience In Existence, and even less why they’d be willing to Go Up Against Him And HisThe New Perfect World just for it-- And what would it matter, anyway, forgetting their loved ones. It’s not like you can grieve lost memories, right?

Right.

It reminds me of when at the end of the story of Job in the Bible, where, after putting this man through hell on earth, God rewards Job by giving him ten new children to make up for the ones that he lost. I. And that’s fucked! Nothing can replace the sheer uniqueness of each individual person you loved so dearly! But if you were a nigh-omnipotent deity high and mighty, with a cursory, almost mechanical knowledge on the functionings of the human psyche, that would seem adequete; enough.

Bhunivelze is doing that on a cosmic level.

I now want to get onto the romance: that being, his affections for Lightning. I don’t know how much I’m going to say, but it’ll probably be alot. It’s something that hits very close to home.

There is this... thing, within certain branches of Christianity, perhaps even in those of various Abrahamic faiths, where God’s love is posited to be the love-- The ultimate, most-fulfilling, all-encompassing love you could ever imagine --Because, well, he is love, so the story goes, and so often the best way to convey that is through the imagery of...

Marriage.

Giving up yourself so completely, to serve, to be the Bride; to be bound by him for all eternity; and for there to be no higher bliss than this.

This angle is pushed on young girls and women the most; from the mere parallels to the woman’s role in marriage, all the way down to downright-horrifying ultra-Evangelical purity pacts. With men, God is your dad, your best bud and confidant, your boss, your king, your this, your that, and the ‘marriage‘ as it were is relegated to a sort of half-thought; a metaphor.

For me, God was an attempt at all that, and my arranged groom.

(It was almost incestuous; was incestuous, that my own Divine Father would reach for my hand in marriage.)

Bhunivelze experiences Emotions™ for the first time through Hope, experiences Hope’s sheer overwhelming admiration for Lighting(whether there were any baby-crush feelings mixed in, I can’t say), and promptly falls into a nigh-romantic obsession with Lightning, deciding that she will be Etro(his all-but daughter)’s replacement, will be his Goddess of Death to-be-- He even calls her as such, before the final boss-battle--

...In the JP.

What happened in localisation, probably due to a number of factors, all the way back in early 2014, was that everything emotionally challenging about Bhunivelze was scraped off, like it was extra fat, and tossed aside, leaving us with the bland, clichéd shell of a foe-god we’ve seen time and time again. And I mean everything. I mean his very love for humanity; the fact his ploy was, in his eyes, to save them. Because if they’d left that all on, then it would raise the question of even if there was such a seemingly pure, all-knowing, loving being hell-bent on setting things “straight,“ would they truly be unquestionable? Would we have the right to fight for our humanity in the face of the Creator of the Universe?

To reject a love so personal?

That’s what gets me about FFXIII’s tackling of God, no matter how hackneyed and poorly-executed. It’s personal.

It’s from a feminine experience.

I know that terming is... vague, and problematic, but the way Christianity and much of the video game industry handle femininity itself is weird and problematic, so as it stands, I’ll have to simplify it. Apologies.

What sets FFXIII’s Let’s Kill God™ plot aside from most JRPG Let’s Kill God™ plots is that with our protagonist being a woman, and one who is very in touch with her femininity alongside her sheer strength; often, in these stories, God is reduced to Yet Another Foe, expected or unexpected, and you are tasked with taking him down unquestioningly for the Good of Mankind-- You will fight God, because you are right to, and you will go man-to-man-to-however-many-men you decide to bring along for the bloodbath.

And that just, doesn’t speak to me.

Even as an Extian.

Especially as an Extian. And an AFAB one with a deeply complicated experience with my gender, at that.

Leaving Christianity was painful. Questioning God was painful. Coming to terms with the fact that I had been mentally, emotionally, and spiritually traumatised under the guise of All-Encompassing Love was so, so fucking painful. I had been taught since I was five years old to devote myself to him, spent my life desperate to feel something, anything, to stay connected because I just, I never could Feel It on a deeper level, never could Give Up Myself, all I was, couldn’t Die A Spiritual Death And Be Reborn As His Eager Vessel, thus deeming myself to be worthless and a broken vessel for years and years on end... And for all that to have been... Nothing.

Lightning is hollowed out, the shards of her dead sister ripped from her in-stasis, leaving her emotionally numb for the majority of the game, Bhunivelze sweeps it under the rug, pretends he’ll perform a miracle and return Serah to life in exchange for her compliance, then sends her on her way to do his work, all the while knowing he’s going to pull said-rug from under her and elevate her such dizzying heights in the aftermath--

That he’ll deny her humanity.

Sand down all the rough edges that make her her, and polish her up afterwards, gild her as he is gilded, make her a Goddess.

And he’ll do it all because he loves her.

You can’t fight God like you can everything else. To fight It is the fight Existence Itself; FFXIII even conveys that by making Bhunivelze’s model part of the arena; it’s baked into the fabric of the game, no matter how minute.

While Lightning Returns is far from perfect in its execution of this concept, and that in itself makes me wince, not even taking into account the horribly botched excuse for a localisation Bhunivelze endured, it speaks to me more than anything else I’ve seen so far.

And it’s helped uncover some things within me. Helped me untangle them, just a little more.

So, yeah. I have alot of Thoughts on Bhunivelze, I want to share them, and I’m kinda really sad I have no one but my currently-absent friend Vee to share them with. I could get into alot more, like his very Fucked relationship with familial bonds, and how Lightning’s role as saviour so deeply parallels the overwhelming panic and never-ending guilt of Evangelical proselytisation, but I think I’ll leave those for another time.

In short, Bhunivelze is the epitome of Divine Love gone deeply wrong; on all fronts.

And if all of that isn’t enough to intrigue you, then, in Vee’s words, Lightning and Velze are literally canon endgame Sefikura lmaOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--

[tenebraetrash17]

how exactly are ravus and lightning alike? I think they're too different from each other since ravus was evil :/

W e l l, yeet, you have a point, Ravus was kind of “evil” but it was more of a necessary one? He was doing what he could to protect his sister and wanted to make sure she wouldn’t suffer too much.

But ok! Onto the points! I’m going to be looking at this with FACTS AND LOGIC and not a ship standpoint, so I remain a neutral ground!

Ok! 

APPEARANCE.

So first off, we can go into design choices, I’ve made joke posts about this before, but the manner of dress these two have is actually quite similar. 

Lightning’s theme is consistent with mostly white collared tops, other than her “Knight Of Etro Garb” and in her “Savior’s Garb” she adorns a strange armored piece-shield on her left arm, which looks more fancy than practical tbh.

On the flip side we have Ravus, who is only ever seen in one costume, Tenebrae Raiment, which consists of a white collared coat-thing and a gauntlet on his left arm

Interestingly enough! If you happen to put them up side by side

You can kinda see a bit of a theme here, not to mention thigh high boots and apparently battle undies. 

We’ve got the gray-black, the white, and the coloring! Which the purple and red are pretty close on the spectrum too I suppose, or are a bit of complimentary colors?I guess it depends on points of view!

Ok, but slightly similar clothing is not enough to convince anyone, I hope.

So here we go:

STORY.

Revolves around their sister.

M O V I N G O N-

okok just kidding!

But this is honestly the truth of the matter, Luna/Serah is the end goal. Serah/Luna is why they did all this. The reason they sacrificed everything? Why they gave up their childhood? The reason why they were willing to, and in Ravus’ case, give their life away? 

It was all for Serah and Luna.

Stories can often be boiled down to a single point.

Motive.

And the motive behind Ravus and Lightning? Saving their sisters from fate.

Although…in Ravus’ case, he didn’t succeed, but that will be touched upon later.

PERSONALITY/CHARACTER TRAITS (?).

Ok, so, here we go!

Two stone cold soldiers, born and raised lacking in parents, their only weakness is for their sister, yet they slowly learn to trust others.

Well that was oddly simple.

Although I feel as if I should go more in depth because I’m trying to explain…so…

Ravus and Lightning both became emotionless out of necessity, Ravus out of need to let the Empire think his loyalty remained only to them, and Lightning because she felt the need to be more mature. And since they were both young, they decided that was the best way to do it.

They both have, in a sense, a pretty fancy way of speaking, or at least talking too much. Because, alright, let’s admit it, Ravus is a chatter box who rants and Lightning vents a lot because the world is going to shit for both of them and DAMNIT THEY NEED THIS.

Also, a little thing which kind of amuses me!Sister has a fiancé? HATE THEM WITH EVERY FIBER OF YOUR BEING, THEY ARE IDIOTS AND THEY ARE UNDESERVING OF YOUR PRECIOUS LITTLE LIGHT OF YOUR WORLD, HIT THEM, CHOKE THEM, A N Y T H I N G. But, y’know, eventually grow to have a begrudging respect and not hate them nearly as much as you once did. Friendship is wild yo.

The enlisted in the army part isn’t really a “character trait” and Square likes that theme, so you know, perhaps not the strongest thing going for them.

RANDOM/STUFF I DIDN’T KNOW WHERE TO PUT IT.

I had no idea what to call this section.

Ok, so I’ve seen a few people talk about how “Versus XIII″ was supposed to be, in a sense, an anti to 13. While XIII was meant to be about “Change your fate”, Versus XIII and XV are about accepting it.

VERSUS [vur-suh s, -suh z]

Against (used especially to indicate an action brought by one party against another in a court of law, or to denotecompeting teams or players in a sports contest):Smith versus Jones; Army versus Navy.As compared to or as one of two choices; in contrast with:traveling by plane versus traveling by train.Abbreviation : v., vs.

Versus XIII was to contrast XIII, and it carried over in XV as LITERALLY NO ONE decides. “Hey, you know what? I know it says this, but let’s do this instead!” 

Ravus remains as the only person to keep this mentality, his ffbe profile even goes as far as to have him speak about slaying the gods. SLAYING THE G O D S.

He tries multiple times to save his sister, willing to tear apart the prophecy and basically insist that she won’t die. He won’t allow it. He says follow your calling, but in reality he meant for himself overturn it. He raced through Altissia hoping he wouldn’t be too late!

And even in the end, his death is nigh, it’s probably foretold, but he believes he can win. He believes he can see it through to the end. Only he can’t. Because he’s not the protagonist. He can’t defy fate.

An interesting thing to note is that it’s Ravus who screws over the prophecy in the Episode Ignis ending, making it so Noctis doesn’t die. So I guess in a sense, he does overturn fate, although it wasn’t the outcome he wanted because Luna is still dead.

Ok, that was a bunch of rambling about the whole fate thing, but it is interesting since Ravus is the only one who had that mentality in cannon throughout the game. While the same could be said for Ignis, keep in mind that it was only the Alternate ending where he decided he wouldn’t let the gods have their say.

Oh yeah, not to mention that he’s the only one with the “Daemon Transformation” but it looks more like a Cei’th one. Just a little thing I’d throw in because I forgot this was talking about how alike Raves and Light are and not another one of my “last connections to versus” rambles oops.

ANOTHER POINT

Lightning: Serah! Wait, don’t go! Please! Don’t leave me alone!

Ravus: Oh sister, please don’t go! Please don’t leave me….

Like, sure, it’s probably a basic plea, but it’s almost word for word? 

If you want to talk parallels, let’s talk this!

Let’s also get into how Lightning was considered holy as “the Savior” while Ravus comes from the holiest bloodline? Which in fact, purges the darkness from one’s body and soul while Lightning….YEP, saves them souls! Gets them gains! whatamItalkingabouthere?

Ok, back on subject, remember how I said I would address Ravus loosing Luna again?

Well, I actually wonder if Ravus is Lightning but led astray in a sense, it might seem crazy, but his story apparently hasn’t changed since the Versus days from what most sources say. So given that he still has a stronger link with XIII, would it be so crazy to assume that Nomura would want to explore that possibility? Because rumors have it that Ravus was also going to be another ‘chosen one.’

Ravus could very well be considered as Lightning, but he never could achieve victory. Because unlike Lightning, he still lost his sister, the world still fell into ruin, and he still lost his life. And he even went as far as to fall into the chaos scourge.

Yeet, it’s a far stretch, but given the somewhat strange and weirdly specific personalities, I wouldn’t leave anything out.

But one thing to note is that while, despite similarities, they are different characters, so they will not be exactly alike!

I do realize that despite my previous posts, this isn’t an attempt to convince anyone to ship them, just kind of take note of just how many similarities the two have because it kind of is an interesting study! Especially considering the shared universe background they started out with!

This all sounded so much better in my head, it’s like, I had thoughts that were all super factual but I couldn’t write them ????

Oh well. Hope this satisfies you!!

OH YEAH, I ALSO FORGOT THAT THEY BE STORM RELATED!! SHOCKY SHOCKY BANG BANG!

[niuniente]

EDIT: SO FAR THIS HAS BEEN TURNED OUT TO BE A HOAX. PLEASE SEE OTHER, PERHAPS MORE RELIABLE RUMOR, FROM HERE

REMEMBER ALSO REBOOT VERSUS XIII PETITION

A worker, who claimed to have worked with Versus XIII before it was changed to FFXV, has leaked some information. Knowing that Versus XIII’s theme was MISERY (Nomura himself said that) and that the game would be very dark with heavy issues, this does sound legit. The original Versus XIII concept contained such things as yakuza boss Regis, him selling Noctis for a demon so that he’s bound to serve the Goddess of Death in this life and in the next, Noctis being addicted to hallucinations causing drug (manufactured by their family) and which gives him ability to see Stella (who is a real person, but no one else sees her).

The full text in the picture says: “For example, one of the main characters of the game, Stella, inflected bodily harm on herself so that she could commute with what she believed to be deceased relatives (this behavior was actually the result of a certain medication she was prescripted for sleep disorder earlier in life, an ironically is a major plot point – more on that later). This ultimately culminated at her accidental suicide, which the main protagonist, Noctis, being told he was responsible for her death (he wasn’t, at least not directly). Moreover, many of the cinematic sequences in the game contained depictions of violence against women (it was completely in the context of the story=, with one sequence involving the implied rape of Stella in the hands of the white haired character many have seen in the original Versus trailer (Seifaris, in English). A key scene involving a ceremony of sorts demanded to be pulled altogether, effectively ruining a major plot point. Said scene involved demonic “claiming” of Noctis in his mother’s womb, Cycillia Lorette Caelum, the ruling Queen and the wife of King Regis. Due the pact made by his father (originally a “don” sof sort the Lucii yakuza family, not the good, watered down king written much later) Noctis was bound to the servitude of Etro, Goddess of Death (in this life and the next). This covenant gave the line the Lucii the Ring of Binding, power over life and death, through the Crystal of the Void (all this will be explained in the footage, so don’t get too caught up on it). So that the course had to be cut, citing “potentially sensitive religious content” since the character (Noctis) was more or less written as this world’s antichrist, cursed by his father in a deal with the power behind the Void to bring the coming apocalypse.

 A sequence involving a car chase and shootout, giving the player the option to kill Insomnian citizens. This is only due the fact that the target is running and attempting to hide within the crowd. This was probably one of my favorite early game scenarios, involving Noctis, Varis (bald headed bodyguard character that drives Noctis in a particular trailer, the one that keeps telling him to wake up), GLadio and Ignis. If you takes with delivering a large quantity of a street drug (secretly manufactured by a pharmaceutical company ownded by the Lucii family, of course) called Lunatelristium, marketed ad Lunatel, street name “Luna” (seriously though) that causes its user to have a lucid dreaming effect, where the individual is awake, yet sees things in the real would as through it’s a dream (loved ones long expired, ghosts, demons, locations changing back to how they looked in your earlier memories ect. It works on putting the minf in a state on conscious REM) – originally developed as a military grade sleep substitute for the Insomnian military (this concept was later adopted into the Magitek project), and used in a weaponized forms against a particular nation with disastrous effects. 

Noctis being addicted to this substance was absolutely essential to how the was able to interact with the female protagonist (Stella), as no one else would see her for a certain plot reasons, all of which is revealed about two hours into the game. He is only convinces that she is a hallucination after being held and interrogated by the INPD (yes, the original game had a police department in Insomnia, along with all the other normal things you would see in any regular city) – with the division head showing him camera footage of him covering no one as the bullet are being fired at him (Noctis thought he was covering Stella). Stella is in fact real, but it is a bit too convulsed to type without me spending 30 more minutes that I don’t have. Much of this information I did not release in my initial post months ago anonymously, because quite frankly, I was afraid of losing my job and legal ramifications. Now that much  has changed thanks to fan outcry (yes, they DO listen),a lot has changed… which I can’t discuss at this particular moment. Now, you have my permission to release these plot details, but I am going to be honest in saying that I don’t know if Square will immediately hit your channel with a cease and desists, citing ownership of the content, but the fact is you won’t be posting any content, only information that is valid. This is where it becomes complicated and I cannot give you the best advice.”

Also a following message from the leak:

“ Hi, I am OP. I will clarify this point. Everything to described is unfortunately accurate, (I did not write it, that is the way they are explained). These events are listed as Chapter 1, with the second chapter beginning with Insomnia's Crown City have its crystal actually extracted, by a small team of special forces units that literally blow the gates to the thrown room to get to the Crystal Vault (from the email). The key person is the white haired individual who is the adopted brother of Stella, who uses the spell 'holy' to nullify the unholy magic sealing the crystal, causing a magical explosion that takes out the top of the Lucii Family's tower. They then storm the building with these forces in what is described as a "ruthless massacre", shooting simply people who work there and don't even have knowledge of the Crime Family's illegal activities OR the Crystal. Holy is cast and the Vault opens revealing the Crystal. it is then "smuggled out", collapsing the "Embrace of Etro", something that causes the city to stay in perpetual night and be covered in a huge blueish shield. Then a coordinated attack with Magitek airships and Walkers start invading during Noctis' Art of Insomnia Ball where he meets Stella. This is when the attack formally commences. I will post unreleased storyboards to display this with text in Japanese and english below it. Sorry I could not type more. I am being bombarded. “

ALSO; if this is true, we will get this original game in some extent: "Hi, I am OP. This is the next FF project that will enter full development when Episode 2 of FFVIIRemake has begun. The source says the development team is simply calling it "Final Fantasy Versus". No number.Likewise, Nomura did not come to Square to request it, but agreed it will be made in an agreement with him supporting FFVIIR project fully. Via e-mail. Thank you.I'm sorry, I know nothing else development specific."”

[matayu-sometimes-writes-stuff]

On Final Fantasy XIII-2

           I had only intended to play Final Fantasy XIII, on account of we don’t own a copy of Lighting Returns. What I didn’t count on was two things: falling in love with the characters and the setting, and Final Fantasy XIII-2’s plot revolving around time travel.

           You have to understand something about me. I’m a huge slut for time travel stories.

           Final Fantasy XIII-2 uses the same combat system as XIII, which as I stated while talking about that game, is hard to master but I love it. XIII-2 makes the assumption that you played XIII already, but there’s a handy refresher about XIII’s plot on the title screen, and there is an option tutorialize the first handful of combat instances. It’s a much shorter tutorial than XIII’s. Nineteen and a half hours shorter. Combat also moves a lot quicker; they shortened the default time the ATB gauge needs to charge by about half a second. It’s a very little change, but it feels much better. Also nice is that if the current party leader dies, control swaps over to the other character, instead of giving you a game over.

           The camera is about the same as the previous game, but as I went on to XIII-2 directly after XIII, I didn’t notice it as much as I was used to it. The one other major change to gameplay is that instead of a party of three characters, your party is made up of two characters and a set of three monsters, Pokémon-style. I don’t much care for monster-collecting in games that aren’t specifically Pokémon, but it was less of a hassle than I was expecting it to be. It helped that this is a five-year-old game, so there were plenty of guides online for how to best set up a party.

           Yes, unlike XIII I did have to resort to internet walkthroughs to find my way around. Not so much for maps of the areas, but to find the “artifacts”, or keys, needed to open every time gateway. There are ten almost completely optional areas, but I voluntarily hunted down the artifacts needed to access all of them, because I enjoyed playing this game almost as much as I enjoyed XIII. “Almost”, for reasons entirely related to the ending, which I’ll come to in due time.

           Basically I liked this game for the same reasons I liked FFXIII. Every positive that I talked about in conjunction with that game (save the linearity) also applied here. I’m pretty sure I spent most of the game overlevelled, but that’s how I like to play RPGs. If I’m not a holy terror to the basic enemies, something is wrong. The leveling system changed from the first game, but was similar enough that I didn’t mind the changes. It would have made raising the best monsters tough (as it would require farming for materials), except that I didn’t give enough of a shit to put the time in for that. Nor, fortunately, did I need to.

           The one huge complaint I had heard about this game is that it retcons the ending to FFXIII. Which indicates to me that the people making that complaint haven’t actually bothered to play the game, as the premise is that “something retconned the ending of FFXIII, FIX IT”. The game acknowledges that the ending to XIII has been changed for the worse, and the plot of the game (initially, at least) is to set it back the way it was. If you don’t like that the “retcon” happened, good, because neither do any of the characters.

          The characters are still fantastic. The plot of the game is that something went wrong during the ending of Final Fantasy XIII, and Lightning has been missing for three years. A boy from the future named Noel Kriess appears to Serah Farron and tells her he has a message from Lighting: She’s in service to Etro, the Goddess of Death, and needs Serah’s help to fix everything that has gone wrong with the timeline. Noel, meanwhile, has his own quest: to change the future so that the girl he loves, one Paddra Nsu Yeul, won’t have to die.

          Let’s face it. Serah didn’t have much of a character in XIII. Her role in the plot was as an object for Lightning and Snow to rescue, so it’s nice to see her as the protagonist for once. She’s a lot like her sister, to the extent of being willing to go to the literal ends of the earth to save her. However, she’s also definitely distinct from Lightning. She’s willing to be emotionally open where her sibling isn’t, and will willingly put her quest on hold to help others where Lightning would (in her initial characterization, at least) have pushed on, ignoring them. They share the same resolve, though, shown in Serah’s acceptance that doing what’s right will likely lead to her own death, yet still doing what she felt was right anyway. She definitely grew into her own character, and we were given much more of a feel for how strongly the two sisters care for each other.

          Noel Kreiss shares a name with my cat. This amused me. I was expecting there to be something unlikeable about him due to that same air of “these are bad games” feeling surrounding the FFXIII trilogy. There’s nothing wrong with him. His relationships with Yeul and with the game’s villain, Caius Ballard, drive the main part of the plot. Yeul is blessed/cursed with the ability to see the future; the ability kills her when she reaches the age of 15. Wherupon she reincarnates, knowing she’ll only live to see 15. Caius, on the other hand, is functionally immortal and had been Yeul’s bodyguard for millennia until he became sick of watching the girl he loved die again and again and again. Noel was only present for the latest incarnation of Yeul’s cycle, 700 years after Serah’s time. The world is dying, and after Yeul passes and Caius vanishes, he’s the only living human. He is just as determined to succeed as Serah is, because he knows what will happen should he fail.

          The entire main cast from XIII gets a look in, although some are only in small roles. Fang and Vanille only have a short cameo, as for most of the game they’re still in crystal stasis, only appearing to Serah through psychic contact to break her out of a lotus eater-type dream world. Sazh and Dajh also don’t appear until the very end, though reference is made to Sazh by several characters in different time periods, implying he’s on his own journey (he is, in a DLC scenario that I could not play as we only had the base game). Snow is also on a journey to find Lightning, and he temporarily fights alongside the party in a certain time period. He and Serah are still just as devoted to each other, which pleased me. I can’t believe I was actually happy to see him show up.

          Lightning and Hope get somewhat larger roles. Lightning spends most of the story fighting her own battle against Caius in a place out of time to defend Etro; her story is also told in a DLC scenario (that I do not have). Hope, meanwhile, has aged by 13 years since we saw him last, and is now the head of a scientific institute that will endure for 500 years. He even puts himself in a sort of stasis to oversee a project that takes that long to complete. I like adult Hope. It was nice to see him come into his own. Plus, he’s cute.

          I should make an aside regarding Caius, because his story is quite tragic all on its own. Remember that I’ve only played the first four Final Fantasy games aside from this, where the villains are a brick joke (I), an emperor that’s evil because it’s fun (II), a demigod pissed because his immortality was revoked and nobody else thought that was a bad thing (III) and a moon person sealed in a can (IV, which I still haven’t finished). So Caius is perhaps the most human villain I’ve seen in a Final Fantasy game, and everything he did could have been avoided if he’d just listened to the person he loved. Yeul was fine with dying and reincarnating, because it meant she’d never truly have to leave him. Caius’s plan was to stop time so that Yeul would never have to age and die; unfortunately, he chose to stop time at a point where the Yeul in that time period was already dead. So instead of saving his beloved, he cursed himself to an eternity without her. Whoops.

          And since I’ve mentioned it now, let’s talk about the end of the game, why I “almost” like XIII-2 as much as XIII. The heroes lose.

          Caius either tricks Noel into killing him, which Noel had been trying to avoid for literal years, or impales himself on Noel’s sword (the player is given the option of performing the killing blow or not, but it amounts to the same thing), which also kills the Goddess Etro. With the Goddess of Death dead, time stops flowing, and no one can age or be born. Serah, who was given the same life-shortening “gift” that Yeul received, gets one final vision of the future implying that there’s still hope, which kills her. Noel, Hope, and Sazh are left with her body, Vanille and Fang have been extricated from the pillar but are still in stasis, Snow is off god knows where, and Lightning has voluntarily frozen herself in stasis to ride out the end of the world. It’s a shitty situation for everyone involved, including Caius, who now has to face eternity without Yeul, knowing that it’s all his fault.

          There are alternate endings to FFXIII-2, but I didn’t have the energy to go through and achieve them after seeing the true ending, which I did first. The biggest saving grace of this was that it ended with a “to be continued”, implying there would be a Final Fantasy XIII-3.

          There are arguments to be made in film and other mediums whether a bad ending spoils the whole product. In this case, I don’t think it does. The game is a solid sequel, I just wish the ending could have been a happy one for these characters I care so much about. On the plus side, though, this game featured a return of the combat system I loved, coupled with a fun time travel mechanic. I got exactly what I wanted from this game in terms of a sequel to XIII, and I got to see (most of) the characters I had grown to love again. Ultimately, it’s the downer ending that makes FFXIII-2 a bit lower on the list than FFXIII for me. XIII could be its own contained story, meaning that the sequels are optional, and just fun additions. The story of XIII-2 doesn’t conclude in XIII-2, which is always going to be frustrating. I’m still glad I spent the time to play it.

[lavotha]

A romantic Xmas movie

Longtime friend, French actor Karl E. Landler, plays the main male character in the newly released romantic movie Christmas in Paris, written by Erica Brennan and directed by Justin G. Dyck. He is joined by star-studded cast including Rebecca Dalton and Daphne Zuniga.

The movie premiered on November 9, 2019 and is available on Super Channel, UPtv, on DVD on Amazon and VOD.

As the plot goes, Lucas played by Karl E. Landler, a wealthy French entrepreneur, heads to Montana, a western state in the USA, for a very attractive business proposal. The Frenchman meets Robin the Texan beauty (Rebecca Dalton).

She is the woman of his dreams, so he whisks her away to the City of Lights for a whirlwind Christmas adventure. But in the middle of their magical Parisian getaway, she discovers a secret about him that could push them apart.

So, this holiday season we invite you to watch the movie to find out if Lucas and robin will live happily ever after!

“Christmas in Paris” a romantic christmas movie Karl E LANDLER, Rebecca DALTON, Daphne ZUNIGA

“Christmas in Paris” a romantic christmas movie Karl E LANDLER, Rebecca DALTON, Daphne ZUNIGA

“Christmas in Paris” a romantic christmas movie Karl E LANDLER, Rebecca DALTON, Daphne ZUNIGA

“Christmas in Paris” a romantic christmas movie Karl E LANDLER, Rebecca DALTON, Daphne ZUNIGA

“Christmas in Paris” a romantic christmas movie Karl E LANDLER, Rebecca DALTON, Daphne ZUNIGA

  Behind the scenes

I first met Karl in 2014 when he was attending the Grand Prix F1 of Monte-Carlo, during an interview at the American Bar of the Hotel de Paris. He visits the Principality often and is habitué of the Cannes Film Festival.  We both presented the Cultural Fashion Award to Constanza Cavalli Etro during the 6th edition of the Monte-Carlo Fashion Week in May 2018, at the Yacht Club of Monaco.

I am really glad to see Karl as a main protagonist in a romantic film when he used to play the tough hero. He explains this new Xmas movie appeals to the sentimental kind who loves to be swept away from their daily life, and enjoy spontaneity and adventure. He enthusiastically affirmed: “You will love Christmas in Paris!”

I asked Karl about the differences and similarities between himself and Lucas, the character he plays in the movie. “I was brought up by a single parent and built himself up without a father figure, same as the character I play in the movie,” a similarity with his real life experience. “Then, like so many around us, Lucas will have to confront a ghost from the past in order to grow and evolve. Will he take the right decision?” Karl sees the role as a mirror of his own journey when he had to face an uncomfortable decision, that moment in your life that pushes out of your comfort zone, without knowing if it is for the best or not, but the only way to know is to take that leap.

He added: “You always have something of yourself in every role. You absorb the information in the story, and interpret the character through the filter of your own background. You try to open up and avoid being biased. I use the sum of my experiences to create another being named Lucas in this case, it becomes a new version of Karl enhancing or erasing different sides of my own personality.” So I asked him how he manages to get back to his own self, and he said: “When the camera is off, I am fully back in my own skin, until the camera rolls again and the director says ‘Action!'”

I wanted to know what Karl loves about the character, and he said Lucas really wants to share his world with the right person, finding in Robin (Rebecca Dalton), someone who might understand who he really is, not the businessman everyone else thinks they know. “But it is not going to be easy, as he will have to be willing to alter some of his life patterns that used to protect him. I really like his courage.”

The biggest challenge for Karl taking this role, was that Lucas is a successful businessman, a social media sensation and to top it all a womanizer, but as the story unfolds the actor adjusted those settings and made him react to a new circumstances. “I wanted to show his heart peeling off layer after layer from his social persona to give birth to the real Lucas.”

Karl spoke highly of the cast in the film. “I am really blessed to have been able to join Rebecca Dalton in this production, she is just a great person and professional actress and I enjoyed working alongside her on a daily basis. We shared some great moments during the takes and behind the camera. A special mention goes to Daphne Zuniga, who you probably know from Melrose Place. I used to watch the show every evening in France when I was a teenager. I have to confess I had a crush on her, and here I am a few years down the road playing in the same film. I am so thrilled to have the chance to work with Andrew Jackson who plays Robin’s Father, and Randy Thomas, we had only one scene together but a very intense one.”

He emphasized that the best scene partner is someone who is a great listener, someone who gives his/her attention generously while you are saying your lines. They react to the performance even when she/he is not on camera. He said that it sounds basic but not everyone is doing it.

You will love Christmas in Paris! 

Get in the holiday spirit by watching the movie Christmas in Paris on Super Channel, UPtv, and is available on DVD on Amazon and VOD.

Today’s Quote

“My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: Loving others.” Bob Hope

Heartthrob actor Karl E. Landler main protagonist in Christmas in Paris new movie A romantic Xmas movie Longtime friend, French actor Karl E. Landler, plays the main male character in the newly released romantic movie…