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themelodicenigma · 2 years ago

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I've talked about Fang and Vanille a few times on here, and lately on twitter with someone, and...

It's just, straight forward, from a contextual standpoint.

Fang and Vanille are best friends, family—they are sisters beyond blood.

This starts even as early as the FFXIII World Preview where their relationship chart has them connected by "same surname/family name"—even before the game's release, the writers already implemented a connotation of familial connection between them.

We learn that this is written to reflect their ties to Oerba, where they were orphaned and grew up together in a tight knit community where the motto is "On Gran Pulse, we're all family". Which now we can understand the obvious construction here by the writers—utilizing this attribute of the Village surname to emphasize Fang and Vanille's familial ties and representation not through blood, but that of emotional connectivity. They're family.

So much, you even have this line of dialogue once you reach Oerba:

Hope: Which is your house? Vanille: What do you mean, which is ours? All of them. They're all ours. Fang: Yep. Everyone in the village. Snow: One big, happy family? Sazh: One heck of a lot of places to hang your hat.

Fang and Vanille are the ones to even extend this meaning onto the whole group. At the time of which the group has hit their stride of closeness and resolve, Fang is comfortable with them enough to refer to the group as her and Vanille's "new family". Fang even tries to sacrifice herself and risk Ragnarok for this new family:

Fang: I made another promise too, To protect my family. Sometimes… You've got choose!

There are MANY other paratexts that cover this as well because it's such a main component to their characters.

They're family.

Despite not being blood-related, they represent the concept very well, and extend this to the group. If you deny the connotation of "family" from Fang and Vanille, you don't know these characters. At all.

So, in what way are they family?

You can feel like you're family with many different relationships, obviously including romantic. People (somehow...) mistakenly believe that "family = platonic", despite, you know, the idea of a family starting very often comes from the institution of marriage. In regards "types of relationships" that are tangibly known around the world, family is considered the highest for obvious reasons, hence the movement to consider your close friends family, whether they additionally feel like a sibling or not, and to have your romantic partner feel like family, whether you get married or not.

It's a type of relationship just as much as it is a descriptor of a bond.

Anyway, despite not being related by blood, they're sisters to one another.

If you didn't interpret it yourself from the game, this is solidified within the FFXIII Ultimania Omega where the character relationship chart outright says they have a "sisterly relationship"—this is also featured in the updated Ultimania Archive, that includes even more characters. Fang's Profile in the Ultimania Archive even says they "grew up like sisters".

In accordance to this, which makes it less of an opinion and more of a fact, you have Fang's VA saying that to Fang, Vanille is a little sister within the Ultimania Omega interviews. You even have Benny Matsuyama, whose material is used for the LR novel and is credited in the game, writing about their sisterly relationship in Fang's Scenario story in the Ultimania.

Jun Eishima, hired directly by SE to make their novelizations, makes literal parallels twice between Lightning and Serah and Fang and Vanille, equating their sisterly bond through Fang and Lightning's treatment of their younger counterparts.

Take this information, and you have a leaning context to the meaning of other things that, true, for the sake of argument, don't mean sister outright.

Such as the two being marked as the "daughters of Etro" in FFXIII-2. For one time only, they are technically referred to as "the sisters" in ENG version by Noel when recounting the Legend of Cocoon to Serah at the beginning of the game. Or Serah herself furthering the parallels by saying Fang reminds her of Lightning when she first meets Fang in XIII-2.

There's the observable parallels (not direct) of both Lightning/Fang and Serah/Vanille having met individually in the 1st game, and another observable parallel in what Hope relays to Serah of what Sazh says about Lightning's "disappearance" in XIII-2 to Lightning speaking of Fang leaving Vanille alone. I mean damn, to top it off, Watanabe and Toriyama say THEMSELVES that Fang was turned into a female not only to have another female lead, but to avoid a "romantic mood" between her and Vanille (the logic of "female and female = inherent non-romance" is stupid, I know, but that was their mindset). This reinforces the fact they didn't write romanticism between the two characters—which, would explain all of the above existing.

etc. etc. etc.

It's established. It's consistent. And it's included with the usage of family because of the fact the relationship type is established. You don't need it to say sister every single time—that's just logic. Two blood-related sisters can talk about being family, and you're not going to have someone be like "BUT IN WHAT WAY?!"

Once it's established, it's there until something says otherwise.

This isn't some stupid localization decision—it's literally their character construction and implemented consistently throughout the entire franchise and all related material. And, there is NO deviation from this relationship type. No moment that Fang and Vanille stop being family, being sisters.

As far, wide, high, low that I've looked, there's not a single moment that shows these characters have deviated from this meaning. You have the typical emphasis of their bond (not type), which in typical fashion includes things like being irreplaceable to each other, being stronger than friendship (Fairy Tail, anyone?), and it being beyond even family. And this isn't even reserved for them—this happens frequently with Lightning and Serah, who they're paralleled with.

They are obviously a very good (and common) example of close friends and siblings—look beyond the typical, bland sibling relationships in media that 90% consist of just bickering with one another, and look for the pretty common, well established relationships that have a deep, contextual depth.

But also, we don't need to romanticize everything.

From all the real life examples, media examples, and just logical comprehension to understand the nature of actions or words (i.e. whether they are exclusively platonic, romantic, or contextually dependent)—there's plenty of material accessible to build the knowledge of how to comprehend these things, even if what YOU feel is different than what IS.

There isn't a single thing that Fang and Vanille have done or said that can't be understood within the bounds of everything I just mentioned above.

The next thing I'd want to do is go on a debunking spree of all the regurgitated, misinformed things I've seen for years, but this post is already long enough, and that honestly deserves it's own post.

Fang and Vanille, for so many years in fandom, have become just a byproduct of a widespread of misinformation, incomplete information, band-wagoning on both of those things without consulting the source, personal projection, and honestly, the over indulgence of romantic lenses people put on any two or more characters who care about each other.

Shipping doesn't even cause this, and absolutely extends to self-proclaimed non-shippers—this is people using romanticism as a means to just not attempt to see things more for what they are than just what you want it to be.

I promise you, you can absolutely say "well I see them as romantic, but I know they're not", and you won't break your brain. It's okay for you to ship something even if the evidence isn't romantic—I do this with Terra and Aqua from KH myself. I don't ship often, and they are one of my top picks, and yet I'll be the FIRST person to tell you there's no actual, provable romanticism implemented between them (yet...). I've had to discuss things with other shippers to NOT misconstrue things even if we're on the same "side".

It's just really annoying when people actively, unabashedly are false. And admittedly, about something that I actually do like. Despite being a hopeless romantic, I'm a sucker for good, platonic relationships, especially ones that have hogosha-like tonality, which I'd argue Fang and Vanille do—which again, would be ANOTHER parallel to Lightning and Serah.

#ffxiii #oerba yun fang #oerba dia vanille #lightning farron #serah farron

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pyrrhicpaths · 2 years ago

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Talcott- Weaponry HC 1

Out of personal preference, Talcott isn’t an offensive fighter. He’d been trained and is capable of doing so should the need arise, but he sticks to playing support in the field and making sure to cover everyone else’s blindsides with his long-range attacks.

Tal is proficient with Hunter HQ-approved firearms and crossbows, as well as knives and daggers (which he has an obvious preference for over firearms). He’s also trained and built for brawling and general close-combat but that’ll be a different post entirely.

Talcott goes on to become a hunter himself, receiving training from Noctis's retinue of Gladiolus Amicitia, Ignis Scientia and Prompto Argentum, becoming especially friendly with the latter.[2]

Although it’s stated in the wiki and I do personally like the idea that the retinues trained Talcott, I’ll leave this detail open for changes or to be omitted completely if my writing partners aren’t down for it.

Weapon deets WIP

✧– Firearms:

Trained first by Dustin and then by various mentors during the WoR era, Talcott learned the care and use of different types of firearms ranging from pistols to shotguns to rifles. There was no denying he’s good with firearms and that he’s got great aim, but he hated every minute of his training lessons because of his anxiety over the loud noises, the use of weaponry, and the general idea of fighting.

For a good few years he also kept associating guns with Niflheim soldiers and MTs, which added to his apprehension towards the use of firearms.

Seeing Prompto in action eased Talcott’s worry over time. It probably helped that the retinue looked cool wielding his firearms in battles.

Eventually Talcott commissions a local gunsmith for his own personalized firearms. More details tba, but his line of guns are named after stars like Sazh’s. Kid’s a bit of an astrophile :’)

✧– Knives/Daggers:

The interest in wielding blades started off when he was told to carry a small one for self-defense at the beginning of WoR timeline. Dustin had given him a balisong, which ultimately ended up being a glorified, pointy fidget spinner.

Talcott’s been trained with basic shortblade combat knowledge, but he’s also a great marksman when it comes to blade-throwing.

He also worked hard to mesh well with Ignis’ fighting style in order for him to go on assignments with the retinue more often.

More details tba.

✧– Crossbows are mainly used for hunting animals for food, or to safely set off traps from afar. He always has a semi-dismantled hunting compound crossbow and ammunition hidden somewhere in his truck. Its name is Callisto, handstitched by Iris onto its cloth case.

#HC || Talcott #2 //#3 //#4 //#5 //#gun mention #long post warning #Q #astrophile tal's gonna be a separate post mebbe

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razieltwelve · 2 years ago

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Mangler Mangles (Final Rose)

Chirpy might have at least considered showing mercy to anyone dumb enough to attack him or Sazh. Mangler didn’t even know the meaning of the word.

The instant that the bandits opened fire, the massive chocobo did what chocobos do best. He charged.

Now, Sazh was pretty good at physics and engineering. It was part and parcel of being a successful pilot. However, even an idiot could have worked out what would happen when more than two thousands pounds of pissed off chocobo hit a human being at roughly the speed of sound.

It was only thanks to his Aura that Mangler wasn’t immediately covered in the fine mist he’d reduced his first opponent to.

“Well, shit,” Sazh muttered as he peeked out from behind the boulder he’d been using for cover to squeeze off a trio of shots that dropped three bandits with holes in their foreheads. “So much for the subtle approach.”

He’d gotten reports of trouble in the area, and he’d decided to check it out. Since Dajh was taking Chirpy on a trip over to a lake near the ranch to help get some new buildings set up, Sazh had decided to take Mangler with him to the frontier. Sure, the chocobo had a mean streak a mile wide, but he and Sazh had an understanding. Besides, if there really was trouble, Mangler was one of the only chocobos in the world who Sazh might actually prefer to have next to him in a fight other than Chirpy.

The golden chocobo might have been more skilled, but Mangler was just downright mean, and he had the strength, speed, and Aura to back it up. If there was fighting to be done, Mangler wouldn’t flinch away from it. He’d revel in it. He’d be beak and claws deep in the blood and guts of his enemies.

Which was basically what was happening right now.

The bandits who’d been in the middle of raiding a frontier settlement - because, honestly, why have just the Grimm causing problems? - were learning firsthand that bullets, lasers, and melee weapons didn’t matter all that much to a black and red chocobo with murder on his mind and a grudge to settle.

Sazh had never gotten the whole story about Mangler’s past, but what he’d pieced together wasn’t pretty. As far as he could tell, the chocobo had grown up as part of a small flock that had been attacked by a well-organised team of poachers. They’d killed a fair number of them, captured the rest, and treated all of them poorly.

Mangler had been only a chick at the time. He’d been too small and weak to do anything to help. But he’d grown up big. And as much as those poachers had tortured him, using him in fights and beating him, the moment he was big and strong enough, he’d killed every last one of them. Sazh had seen the photos. If someone hadn’t told him what the red smears on the ground were, he’d have assumed they were busted watermelons.

They would have put Mangler down - he was that dangerous - but Sazh had wanted to give him a second chance. He was mean, all right, but he was smart too, and he’d learned to temper that meanness to an acceptable level while pointing it at people who really deserved it. Lightning had helped a lot with that.

The pink-haired woman had the emotional sensitivity of a bazooka to the face, but she had an equally blunt approach to dealing with the sort of people who’d hurt Mangler and his flock. The two of them got along just fine, and Mangler’s hate had simmered down from an ugly, aimless thing, to something closer to a finely honed blade, a beam of unmatched aggression and violence that would annihilate anything he pointed it at.

And he was pointing it right at the bandits.

Mangler trampled a pair of bandits underfoot, simply crushing them beneath his weight, before jinking away from a stream of gunfire. His Aura flashed a deep black streaked with red as he charged forward, realising that he couldn’t dodge everything. His beak ripped a man in half, and he turned to slice another to pieces with one claw.

As the other bandits tried to get a bead on him, he leapt. His jump carried him high into the air, and he landed - claws first - on some poor son of a bitch who probably never even realised what was happening until he looked down, saw a big shadow, and then looked up to see Mangler coming down like the fist of an angry god.

There was a blur of motion, and Mangler simply barrelled through a group of bandits. They went flying. The lucky ones just died outright. The less lucky ones were left sprawled out, limbs broken, backs smashed, and alive enough to feel every iota of pain their injuries entailed as their Auras were overwhelmed by the sheer force of the charge. Sazh put them out of their misery even if they likely didn’t deserve the kindness of a quick death.

Sazh followed Mangler as he continued his rampage through the bandits. There wasn’t a lot for him to do, but he picked off any bandits that Mangler missed, as well as a few who tried to snipe the bird from range. The settlers were huddled in their homes, equal parts relieved that the bandits were being dealt with and horrified by what exactly that involved.

The last of the bandits tried to flee in the armoured vehicle they’d used to launch their attack. Sazh would have to do a bit of digging - that thing looked a bit too much like refurbished ex-military stock for his liking - but Mangler wasn’t having any of it. The chocobo slammed into the side of the vehicle with murderous force. It went flying, rolling end over end before coming to rest against a tree.

With a thunderous ‘kweh’ the chocobo ripped the bottom of the vehicle open. The terrified occupants opened fire, but Mangler’s Aura bore the brunt of the attack, and he brought his claws down like twin hammers, crushing and slicing the people inside until the only thing left of them was a bloody mess that dripped out of the ruined vehicle and onto the ground.

Great chest heaving, Mangler stepped away from the vehicle. He puffed himself out in a threat display, eyes scanning the area for anything that even remotely resembled a threat. For a moment, his gaze lingered on Sazh, and the retired pilot straightened, drawing himself up to his full height and flaring his own Aura to remind Mangler of just who he was.

Slowly, the fury faded from the chocobo’s gaze. He seemed almost to shrink - if that was possible for an animal his size - and then he plodded forward, Aura fading back to its usual level as he nudged Sazh with his beak and checked him over for injuries.

“Easy there,” Sazh said. “The only people who got hurt were those poor bastards you went after.” He pointed. “You missed a few, but I got them, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Mangler said nothing. Instead, he stepped past Sazh and walked through the settlement. Only when he was satisfied that there was nobody else to fight did he settle down under a tree. The anger in him cooled, but Sazh wasn’t stupid enough to think it was gone. It was like banked coals in a furnace. The anger was still there, just waiting to come out.

Abruptly a child ran out, and Sazh readied his Aura to intervene, but Mangler simply watched the little boy run forward.

“Thank you,” the kid said. “For helping us and fighting the bad people.”

Mangler leaned forward, towering over the boy despite his seated position. For a moment, his gaze wavered, and Sazh wondered if he was seeing the boy or someone else. From what he’d heard, the poachers had been smart enough to keep Mangler chained up and weighed down with multiple Aura suppressors. Someone must have gotten him free.

Sazh couldn’t be sure, but there had been something in one of those old photos that hinted at who it could have been. In the corner of one of those photos, barely visible, had been the body of a little boy. He held a chain in one hand, and the vivid bursts of red on his shirt made it clear how he’d met his end.

He could see it now: the kid must have been the son of one of the poachers. He would have known Mangler for years, probably come to like him too. He would have seen the pain was Mangler was in, and he might have one day gotten it into his head to free the bird because they were friends. He must have done a decent job of it too before they were discovered and one of those bastards panicked and shot him to try to stop him freeing Mangler because all of those poachers would have known what Mangler would do to them if he ever got free.

And Mangler would have seen that kid die, the only person since he’d been a chick to show him kindness. If he hadn’t been mean already by then, that definitely would have filled him with hate. The body of the poacher closest to the kid was the worst of them all. According to the officers who’d called it in, it looked like Mangler had killed him first and then come back to trample the body even further after he’d gotten everyone else.

Sazh walked over to Mangler and sat down beside him. The towering chocobo - the biggest chocobo Sazh had ever heard of or seen - didn’t say a thing or even move. Instead, he just continued to stare at that little boy as the kid walked away, imagining how nice it would have been if another kid had been able to walk away too.

“It’s okay.” Sazh ran his hand along Mangler’s back. “It’s okay.”

Mangler might have been a mean son of a bitch, but he hadn’t been born that way, and Sazh would insist until his dying day that anyone who’d gone through what he had probably would have turned out just the same.

#final rose #fanfiction #sazh katzroy #mangler

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digitalriyasaga · 3 years ago

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Hope politely covering his eyes even thought he’s already looking away is very cute.

Poor Sazh, though....He must be very envious of Fang and Vanille. Fang seems to have quite a maternal attitude towards Vanille. Or maybe like a big sister. Another protector, at any rate; he must be seeing them reunited and wishing he could be with Dajh again, too.

#sazh katzroy #oerba yun fang #oerba dia vanille #final fantasy xiii #ffxiii #riya's ffxiii playthrough

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rainbowserenity · 5 years ago

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1. “Do you want me to leave?” - Hopurai

royal!AU tag

my intention with this AU was for it to be a bunch of oneshots that could be read separately….but this is the installment that makes me wish I’d had the foresight to just make it into a multichapter fic 8D;if you don’t want to go in blindly, I would HIGHLY recommend (re?)reading at least the previous installment before the this one. all the fics are in the above linked tag, or they’re in a collection on AO3 here

sorry for being so ridiculous lmao

*****

Therewas such a strange disconnect from staring outside the windows of thepalace as opposed to when she’d had to stare out of a hole in theceiling back when she’d been living in the slums. Back then, she’d belooking up into the smog-covered sky, trying against all odds to seethe stars that the fal'cie would bring at night.

Now,sitting in her office, she could literally look down on so much ofEden since the palace towered over pretty much everything except thefal'cie Phoenix itself. It was weird, to say the least.

Well,she supposed it was no stranger than Lightning Farron, former soldierand resident of the slums, being discovered as Eden’s long-lostprincess.

Lightningfrowned slightly as she watched people go about their daily business.From up here, they looked like ants. It was hard to believe that somecould be struggling or confused or going through heartbreak…

Notthat she’d know anything about heartbreak. At all. Nope.

“Hey,you finished yet?”

Witha sigh, Lightning pulled her gaze away from the window and stared atSazh, who was officially her adviser, but really played the role of ababysitter. It was insulting if she thought about it too much. “Doesit look like I’ve finished?”

“True.”Sazh waltzed up to her desk and pointedly stared at the pile ofpapers. “'Cause if you had finishedthis incredibly easy task, I bet you would’ve found me already andclaimed that poor ol’ Sazh was overworked and needed a vacation - ”

“Itried to give you a vacation after the ball,” Lightning pointedout, raising an eyebrow. “You told me I’d probably set the palaceon fire if you left for a day.”

“AndI’m probably right!”

“Doubtful.”Lightning rolled her eyes and tapped her pen against the papers infront of her a few times. “I’m fairly sure that I, a grown adultwho’s been taking care of herself since she was a teenager, couldeasily manage without you for a few days.”

“Keeptellin’ yourself that.” Sazh picked up one of the papers. “Whichone are you working on?”

“Theletter to Vanille.” DiaVanille had been an important guest at Lightning’s introduction balla few days ago. It was a gathering that had officially presented heras Eden’s princess, which, in turn, would hopefully open up newrelations. Now she was supposed to be writing letters of intent toget people on her side with whatever she planned to do as regent.

Despitefinding the whole practice completely ridiculous, Lightning actuallyhad gotten along fairly well with the Duchess of Luxerion, Vanille.She had to wonder if this was partially because her bodyguard wasfriends with the Duchess and that made it easier to like her.

Or…formerbodyguard, she supposed.

“Keepit short and sweet,” Sazh advised. “Vanille’s not much for longletters.”

“Andyou think I am?”

“Justlet me dream a little, geez. Kids these days.”

Lightningrolled her eyes again, her mind wandering to the ball. Chatting withVanille and her girlfriend Fang, the Princess of Oerba…dancing in adress that glittered with an obnoxious amount of diamonds…steppingonto the balcony with -

Ugh,okay, definitely not goingthere.

Aftera pause where she wrote a few words, Lightning glanced up. Sazh wasscribbling something in a book – probably grading her on heretiquette, hmph. “Was there something else you needed?”

“Yes,as a matter of fact.” Sazh stopped writing and plopped into a chairwithout any grace. If she’d done the same, he would’ve recoiled inhorror. “We didn’t really get a chance to talk after the ball.Gotta say, I’m impressed with how you handled things.”

“Itwas a glorified dance. Not too difficult.”

Thatwas a lie and they both knew it. Lightning had grown up in a suburbof Eden and then spent her teenage years in the slums – she’d neverbeen to any sort of dance, never mind a ball of the caliber that’dbeen held in her honor. Beingparaded around like a doll had been one of the most difficult thingsshe’d ever done. Luckily, she’d met Vanille and Fang very early onduring the night and their new-foundfriendship had made goingthrough the motions much easier.

Therewas someone else who’d helped out, but she preferred not to think toohard about that.

“Yeah,yeah.” Sazh waved a hand. “Keep tellin’ yourself that. And tellme your thoughts –anybody there you think we could strengthen an alliance with? Or formone? Technically, Eden’s always been on good terms with the otherkingdoms since Phoenix is the most important fal'cie, but there’salways room for improvement. See any of that? Or…” He raised aneyebrow. “Any potential suitors?”

Lightningducked her head, hoping against everything that the heat she feltsimmering under her skin was from a…hot flash or something. Yeah,that totally made sense. She wasn’t about to blush atthe thought of a certain personal bodyguard taking her to see astar-filled sky and light-studded city. There was definitely nothought of his hands on her, his lips caressing hers…

“Nosuitors,” she finally said, clearing her throat and daring to lookup. At least her face felt normal. “Serah seemed to like the Patronof Yusnaan, though.” She frowned.

“What,you got a problem with him?” Sazh looked faintly amused. “I knowhe’s just a kid, but then again, so are you.”

“Hejust seemed…” Lightning shook her head. There were only a fewwords she could think of to describe Snow Villiers, and none of themwere all that flattering. “But we’ve been on particularly goodterms with Yusnaan, so it doesn’t really matter. Fang seemed to likeme, so maybe we can strengthen ties with Oerba.”

“Thatgirl’s an odd one.” Sazh leaned back in his chair, looking lost inthought. “I’m pretty sure all she really gives a damn about isVanille. For awhile, it was lookin’ like Oerba and Luxerion wouldofficially join forces, possibly to try and topple Eden and take overPhoenix.”

Lightningraised her eyebrows. “Could they do that?”

“Probably.Ain’t like the fal'cie care that much.”

Shehad no idea if that was true. Lightning had yet to see Phoenix inperson since being found as the princess of Eden. “Do you thinkFang was trying to get on my good side, then? And then betray me whenleast expected?”

“Nahhh.If Vanille liked you, then Fang’s sure as hell not gonna mess withyou or anybody in Eden. And trust me, Vanille is as genuine as theycome. Kinda hard to believe she’s royalty sometimes.” Sazh sighedin exasperation. “I’ve worked with so many of you kids over theyears that I wonder if you all share the same stick up your ass.”

Insteadof biting back with a retort, Sazh’s comment made Lightning asksomething she’d been wondering for awhile. “That’s right – bothFang and Vanille said that they knew you. You were an adviser forsome members of the old family, too.”

“Gladto see you pay attention when I talk.”

“Thatdoesn’t make much sense, though,” Lightning continued, ignoringSazh’s comment. “You’re not even twice my age. You said you’ve beenserving the old family for years, but if you served Fang and Vanilletoo…”

“Inever told you?” Now Sazh looked confused, but also a littleconcerned. It was very strange to see him with an expression towardsher that wasn’t exasperation. “Huh, guess I wouldn’t have at thebeginning. And things have been so crazy with the ball andeverything…”

“Toldme what?”

Sazhundid the top two buttons of his shirt and tugged it down a bit. Itwas still hidden under some fabric, but there were a bunch oftelltale lines and intersecting arrows that made Lightning sit ramrodstraight in her chair, eyes widening a bit. She knew what it meantbefore Sazh even said the words.

“I’ma l'cie.”

Thestories had spread among the slums – scary children’s tales thatwould send Serah crying into her arms in fear. L'cie were warriorschosen by fal'cie and sent to fight their battles, using magic farmore powerful and horrifying than the average person was capable of.They would live forever until the fal'cie grew tired of them andended their misery with agony, only to gather new warriors and repeatthe cycle anew.

Sincethere hadn’t been a real war in centuries, l'cie were just terriblestories. Even though Lightning knew they were likely just that –stories – nobody she knew had ever met or been one, so itwas hard to say what was the truth or not.

Itwas true, however – recorded in history books and all –that l'cie were branded when they were made. The lines intersectingon Sazh’s skin perfectly matched what Lightning knew.

“You’re– how - ”

“Ohc'mon, you know damn well I’m not some war machine. I hear thosestories. Most of ‘em are totally untrue. Probably made up by somefanatic or anti-war group back in the day.” Sazh shrugged andbuttoned his shirt, hiding the brand from sight.

“Thenwhat is true?”

“One,we don’t live forever. But it does stretch things out a bit.” Hechuckled. “You pretty much stop physically aging once you’rebranded. Good thing, or I’d have half a century’s worth of gray hairfrom all you kids stressin’ me out.”

Lightningdid not laugh. She still felt something akin to horror, though Sazh’snonchalant attitude and her own logic were calming her down a bit.“But why were you branded? I’ve always heard that l'cie werejust tools for war.”

“LikeI said, stories.” Sazh waved a hand. “Yeah, sure, some were madefor war, but most l'cie are branded to carry out a certain purpose,whether for war or whatever else.”

“Andlet me guess,” Lightning said, her head starting to clear, “yourpurpose is to annoy me?”

“Close.”He chuckled again. “Nah, the old queen’s mother put in a good wordfor me with Phoenix. I kinda fell into the adviser role and the royalfamily was damn impressed. They asked if I wanted to do it forlonger, and well…” He shrugged. “Here I am. ‘Course, I’d go outto ally kingdoms or whatnot. In Duchess Vanille’s case, her parentsdied when she was barely a kid, so I kept an eye on her. I only knowPrincess Fang through her, though.”

“Isee.” And she did, actually. The initial shock had finally wornoff. Honestly, she couldn’t see why someone would want to live foryears and years doing the sort of thing Sazh did, but now she knewhow he was so good at his job…literal years of practice. “And I’mguessing this is common knowledge among the other royals?”

“Well,yeah. I’m everywhere, you know.” He tapped the side of his head.“Can’t do much to hide that.”

“Isuppose not.” Of course she was the last to know…but then again,she always seemed to be the last to know things lately, sowhat did one more thing matter?

“Onthat note, I’ve got some other things I need to do.” The tone inSazh’s voice had gone so serious that it made Lightning glance upfrom her letter and frown in confusion.

“Whatthings?”

“Geez,so nosy.” He shook his head. “Don’t you worry about it. Finishyour letters and I’ll have one of the assistants come in andproofread them.”

Sherolled her eyes. “Sure.”

Hewas already halfway out the door, but still called out as thought heactually had eyes in the back of his head. “I saw that!”

Lightningshook her head and stared back down at her letter to Vanille, tappingher pen against the paper a few times. Even though it’d been quitesome time since she’d been found as Eden’s princess, the formalityand unspoken rules still baffled her. Ever since meeting a bunch ofthem at her introduction ball, however, she’d seen that many of themfound some of the rules and etiquette archaic as well.

Sowhy did they have to do it?

Shesighed heavily and slumped in her chair – a posture that Sazh wouldfrown upon, but for once, she was blessedly alone. Not even a maidwas to be seen, although she could hear people puttering in thehallways outside her office. It was so rare these days she couldactually be by herself. Usually she at least had her personalbodyguard with her…

“No,”she muttered, chiding herself. She would not think about him.She would not wonder where he’d gone after running from her atthe ball, and she would certainly not replay the images oftheir kiss in her mind.

Nope.Not her.

Lightningheaved another sigh and shoved the papers aside, going back tostaring out the window. Concentration was clearly useless, at leastfor now. She may as well take advantage of Sazh not being around todemand her to do stuff.

–

Itwas only a few days later when she got the news.

Shewas in the sitting area of her suite, talking to Serah on the phone –an encrypted, ridiculously secure line, of course. Actually beingable to see her sister would’ve been better, but Serah wascompletely swamped with work at the university and couldn’t get away.

Therewas always, however, time for a phone call.

“Ijust don’t get what you see in him,” Lightning muttered, scribblingin the margins of her scrap paper. She was still working on thoseletters and had been trying to think of good things to say SnowVilliers, Patron of Yusnaan. It was exceedingly difficult.

Forher, anyway.

“He’sso sweet!” Serah basically swooned over the phone. “And don’t youthink he’s handsome? I wonder if he’ll wear the same outfit at myintroduction ball.”

Lightningfrowned. “He’s a big lug that kept stepping on my feet.”

“Notto mention that you can tell he really cares about his people.”Serah kept going on like her sister had said nothing. “Maybe it’sbecause he was elected? I mean, I know you care about everyone in thekingdom, but some of the other royals who have lived it since theywere born….it’s different for them. Don’t you think so?”

Unconsciously,Lightning’s grip on her phone tightened. He’d said that to her morethan once.

Youknow what it’s like on the other side. You’ll be able to bring realchange.

Herstomach fluttered and she willed the door to knock – something,anything to let her know that her personal bodyguard wascoming back.

Knock-knock.

Shestared at the door. Could it be…?

“YourHighness?”

Hershoulders drooped so quickly that she nearly dropped the phone. Sherecognized the quiet voice of Yeul, one of her maids. With a heavysigh, she called out, “Just a moment!”

“Sis?Do you want me to leave?”

“Sorry,Serah.” Lightning heaved another sigh. “I have to go. I’ll callyou back tonight, okay?”

“Okay!I should probably get back to all this homework.” Her tone grewteasing. “You think they’d let a princess catch a break.”

“Ifyou’d wanted to catch any breaks, you wouldn’t have applied to themost prestigious university in the world,” Lightning teased back.“I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay.Love you!”

“Youtoo.”

Anotherquiet knock sounded at the door. This time, Lightning stood, herposture automatically straight as she smoothed down her clothes. Asthere hadn’t been anything urgent on her schedule for the day, she’dopted for comfortable slacks and a thin cashmere sweater – clothingshe’d take over diamond-studded ball gowns any day.

“Comein.”

Yeulentered the room, dropping into a curtsy. All of the servantscontinued to be ridiculously formal around her, despite herinsistence otherwise. It was sort of why she appreciated Sazh naggingher all the time, though hell would freeze over before she’d admitit.

Andspeak of the devil…

“Mr.Katzroy requests that you join him in the conference room, YourHighness.”

Lightningfrowned, the request immediately striking her as odd. Usually Sazhsought her out himself when he needed something, or at least wouldbring her to whatever room he needed. Especially since this palacewas ridiculously huge and she still didn’t always know her wayaround.

“Conferenceroom?”

“Yes.”Yeul bowed her head. “Allow me to escort you.”

“Sure.”Lightning was all too happy to leave her papers and thoughts ofwriting to Snow behind…although surely whatever Sazh had plannedfor her would be just as annoying.

Itturned out she wasn’t too far off.

Yeulmurmured something into a speaker that was attached to the earpieceshe was wearing, presumably telling her coworkers where she was. Therest of the walk was fairly quiet, which was fine with her. Lightningwas more than okay with staring at the paintings and pricelessartifacts that adorned the walls. A lot of them were portraits of herextremely distant ancestors. Apparently she and Serah would have tosit for portraits at some point and then they’d be on the wallsforever. It was a very weird thought.

Whenthe finally reached the conference room, Yeul curtsied again beforeopening one of the wide doors. “Her Highness, Princess Lightning,has arrived,” she called, her soft voice echoing into the emptyroom.

“Thanks,”Lightning said, nodding at Yeul before she stepped inside. There wasa weird flash of gold that struck Yeul’s eyes, but it was probablyjust glare from all the artifacts around them. Weird.

Theconference room was huge, with tons of folded seats and what lookedlike a stage and podium. It reminded her a bit of a theater withoutthe screen. “Sazh?”

“Overhere.” He was off to the side, where there was a table and somechairs covered with papers. She hurried over to him. “Always makin’an old man wait, huh?”

“Yeah,yeah.” It felt weird to comment on that since now she had a roughidea of just how old Sazh really was. “How come you calledme here?”

“Nobodyever uses this room and I wanted to inform you of something inprivate.”

Instantly,Lightning’s heart began to pound. For whatever reason, her firstthought was of the night of the ball. Had someone seen them out onthe balcony? Was there some protocol about a princess and herbodyguard sharing a kiss?

“It’sabout your coronation.”

Shelet out a huge breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding,slumping in her seat a bit. She ignored the evil eye Sazh gave her.“What about it?”

“Asyou know, the old family kept their power tightly reigned.” Themore he spoke, the more serious Sazh became. It was weirdlyoff-putting. “All of the descendants have been, more or less,direct from the first king. Kinda a cut and dry family tree, evenwith all the marriages and what have you.”

“Right.”Lightning vaguely recalled this when she’d been forced to study theold family. The crown almost always went to the firstborn son ordaughter, which wasn’t so unusual for royalty, she supposed, but thefamily tree was streamlined to the point where many of thefirstborn’s siblings rarely got married or had children of their own.It was why she and Serah being a part of all of this was basicallyunprecedented.

Veryweird.

“LikeI told you, I’ve had some dealings with the old family. And I’m notthat old to remember the first king, but there’s a reason theykept the family as it was.”

“Sazh,please.” Lightning was rapidly running out of patience. She wasn’treally sure why, but something in her just wanted to hear thenews already. “Get to the point.”

“Soimpatient,” he muttered. “Okay, fine – long story short – thecoronation and ruling status are only valid with approval fromPhoenix.”

Itfelt like a block of ice had suddenly dropped in her stomach,although it took her a moment to rationalize why. “Approval?”“Yes.”The serious tone in Sazh’s voice grew. “You meet with the fal'ciein a special one-on-one ceremony. Phoenix will brand you as the nextruler of Eden. Not like a l'cie,” he added hastily, whenLightning’s gaze focused on the spot where his brand was hidden.“There’s no permanent mark, although it lasts 'til you’reofficially crowned. Then you’re free to rule as you please.”

Theice turned to lead in her gut. “Okay, so I meet with Phoenix andit…approves of me.” She frowned. “Why tell me this in secrecy?This is probably common knowledge among the royals, right?”

“Yeah.Some of the others brand their rulers like this too, but Phoenix isthe most important because, well…obvious reasons and all.”

“Isee.” The perfect placeholder reply, because this whole thing madeher feel…uneasy. Phoenix was arguably the most importantfal'cie in the world. Without the sun and life it provided, therewould be no world. The fal'cie from other kingdoms couldeasily be replaced with hard work and effort from humanity.

Butthe sun? There was no replacement for that.

Theenormity of her role in the world suddenly hit her like a train. Itdidn’t matter if her sister or the other royals or certain personalbodyguards believed in her. She’d never been very good at followingrules and had always thought of herself as very independent. The factthat she was to be in charge of everything under somethingelse’s power made her want to take a sword to Phoenix just to rid theworld of it, so humanity could try to thrive on its own.

Notthat she would – or could – ever admit this out loud.

“There’sone other thing,” Sazh added when she said nothing more.

Lightningrolled her eyes a little, mostly out of habit. “What?”

Hedidn’t comment on her rudeness. “I know for a fact thatyou’re part of the royal bloodline. Ol’ Sazh did his research. Youdon’t even want to know what dusty old books and old familyrecords I had to look up to find you and your sister.”

“You’vementioned this.” She raised an eyebrow. “Many times, in fact.”

“'Causeit’s true.” There was a pause before his voice went grave.“However, if Phoenix doesn’t approve of you for whatever reason ordecides you’re not worthy of the power to rule…”

Lightningwaited a moment for him to finish, but she knew what he meant when hetrailed off. This, maybe, was the source of her instant uneasinesswhen he’d started talking. It was everything she hadn’t known she wasdreading since coming into the conference room.

“…Phoenixwill kill me.” She met his eyes. “Won’t it?”

“There’snot much of a chance it’ll disapprove of you,” Sazh repliedquickly. She wondered who he was trying to convince. “Like I said,I did my research and you’re a part of the bloodline. I’ve heardthat’s all it really cares about. It’s not like the fal'cie reallygive a damn about human affairs, y'know?”

“Right.”She ignored the unsaid words – there was still that chance Phoenixwould cast her aside and everything would be for nothing.

Betterme than Serah.

Thatwas what it always came down to, the first thought her instinct wentto. Serah was the one who deserved a comfortable life withresponsibilities chosen by her and not some rule or bloodline. It wasbecause of her sister that Lightning had worked her ass off when theywere still in the slums, doing everything she could to give Serahever opportunity possible.

Shenever thought there was the possibility it could lead to her death.

Butwhat about her role now? Though she hadn’t asked for any of this, shewas slowly finding herself eager to make changes around the kingdomof Eden and make things better for people who weren’t long-lostmembers of the royal family.

“You’veseen both sides. I think that’ll eventually come to be your biggeststrength.”

Eventhough she kept trying not to think about a certain personalbodyguard, his words from the ball popped into her head. She’d alwaystaken his reassurance to heart, but now it had a thousand times moremeaning.

Thoughshe would never deny that Serah had also suffered in the past,Lightning had always watched out for her and sacrificed somuch to ensure that her needs were met. Their experiences weredifferent because of that.

Nobodyhad ever looked out for Lightning until now.

Andbecause of that, she was the only one who could truly changethings.

Shewas quiet for another moment as though contemplating, but short ofrunning away, there was really only one answer. There had only everbeen one answer.

Lightningsucked in a breath and met Sazh’s eyes, trying to steel herself withdetermination.

“Whatdo I need to do before meeting with Phoenix?”

–

Aswith practically everything related to this princess business, thepre-ceremony rituals were completely over the top and ridiculous.Someday she’d realize that nobody around here ever did things simply.

Overthe next couple of days, she rehearsed the ancient words that wouldsummon Phoenix to an audience with her. A handful of older maids –ones that had been tasked with all of the ritual business with theold family – helped her with cleansing baths and created theceremonial outfit. They were all sworn to secrecy.

Shefigured that made sense. If she was killed by Phoenix, it’d beeasier in the long run to play it off as some kind of accident ratherthan the most important fal'cie in the world rejecting her.

Butshe tried not to think about that. Besides the maids – and Sazh, ofcourse – the only other person who knew about the upcoming ceremonywas Serah, and that was simply because there was no way shewas keeping this a secret from her sister.

Lightningdidn’t mention the risks, though. Some things were better kept quiet.

“Snowtalks to Pandaemonium sometimes,” Serah mused over the phone. Itwas the night before Lightning’s meeting with Phoenix and she decidedshe’d needed the distraction. “Maybe he could give you advice!”

“Idon’t want any advice from that big lug.” She rolled her eyes, notwanting to admit she was curious, but… “…Talks to it how?”

Serah’svoice was a little knowing, but she didn’t tease. “He told me it’snot so much words. It’s not like conversing with a person – thefal'cie send images and they get clearer the more you have a mutualunderstanding.” She hummed a little. “Maybe it’s easy for himbecause he was elected the Patron.”

“Ormaybe his head’s so empty that the images come easier because there’snothing in the way.”

“Sis.”Serah huffed in exasperation. “Be nice.”

“I’dbe nicer if you were less interested in him.”

“Buthe’s so sweet!”

“Hmph.”This was what she wanted to worry about – who was goodenough for her sister and ridiculous things like that…not if thefal'cie who basically sustained the world was going to kill her.

Shecouldn’t let herself think about it.

Luckily,Serah was eager to keep chatting – mostly about Snow, toLightning’s disgust – and her nerves settled somewhat. Her sisterwas the one person who could distract her from this whole princessthing.

Well,her and another person, but she didn’t want to think about him,either.

Thenight passed quickly and soon Lightning was too tired to even hold upthe phone. She fell asleep quickly without having time to dwell onthe ceremony the next day. Just as planned.

Ironically,the sun woke her gently the following morning, which was a nicechange from her alarm going off or someone knocking on her door. Infact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken up so calmly.

Ifonly it was enough to make up for what was about to happen.

Thecalm was unfortunately short-lived, because about thirty secondsafter she’d stood up and stretched, someone knocked at her door.

“YourHighness?”

Lightningsighed heavily, immediately recognizing the voice of the oldest ofthese in-the-know maids. “Come in.”

Therewere three of them and they filed in slowly, their hands clasped infront as they walked. She realized this was an incredibly serious andformal situation, but the realness of it smacked her in the face atthe sight of the maids looking so grave. That lead block that’dformed in her gut when Sazh initially told her about all of hisreturned in full force.

“Thisway.” One of the maids gestured to her ensuite bathroom, whereanother maid was already running the water. Lightning could see heradding special oils and herbs to the tub, apparently part of thewhole cleansing ritual.

Shewas already long used to shedding her modesty in front of otherpeople since this whole princess thing had become a part of her life,but she’d never hated it more than she had at this second. Undressingand slipping into the tub in front of the others just made this wholething feel weird and awkward and way more serious than she wanted itto be. It didn’t help that she knew arguing was useless; the oldestmaid had a glare that could probably take down Sazh – a trait she’dlove to learn, to be honest. Maybe she’d ask for lessons later.

Providedshe survived Phoenix’s judgment, of course.

Withthat thrilling thought in mind, Lightning allowed herself to be driedafter the bath and wrapped in a robe. She had to admit that whateverhad been added to the bath made her skin feel like new. There’d neverbeen any time or money to bother with girly lotions and potionsbefore Sazh had found them, but maybe there was some merit in it.

Onceshe was sufficiently dry, she was led into her enormous walk-inwardrobe, where the ceremonial gown was waiting for her. It wasactually quite a beautiful dress – a flowing garment in shades ofgold, white, and blue. There was a cape with a long train attached tothe back, maybe just to add to the ridiculousness. Phoenix’s brandwas embroidered along the edges in gold.

Themaids helped her into the gown and simple gold shoes. One of themclasped a gold bracelet with multicolored stones around her wrist.

“What’sthis?” Lightning asked, lifting her arm to inspect the bracelet. Anumber of jewels were kept in her wardrobe and a lot were in storage,but she was fairly sure she’d never seen this one before. It wasweirdly flashy and simple at once.

“Agift from Phoenix, Your Highness,” the youngest of the maidsanswered (although 'young’ in this case was about eighty years old).“It’s said that that fal'cie itself put it on the wrist of thefirst king. Ever since then, it’s been a tradition to wear it to theMeeting.”

Lightningsuddenly lost all interest in the bracelet and dropped her arm. “Oh.”

Thefinal part of her outfit was a headpiece that fit snugly in her hair.Long lines of gold extended from the band in varying lengths, thelongest about a foot. It formed a semicircle around her head – madeto resemble rays of the sun, she realized as she looked in a mirror.

“Whenyou’re ready, we’ll escort you,” the oldest maid said after apause.

“…Right.”Lightning let out a breath. “Let’s get this over with.”

Ifany of them found her comment weird, they made no mention. Instead,they simply ushered her out of her suite. The hallway – whichusually had people milling about cleaning and whatnot – was emptyexcept for them. Two of the maids stood on either side and one was infront to lead the way.

Theywalked like that the whole time in silence, the only sound being thewhoosh of her cape flowing over the floor. Usually Lightning reveledin quiet, but this silence felt way too heavy. It carried foreboding.

Doom.

Still,all she did was recite her summoning words in her mind, hoping shewouldn’t forget them. She’d never been one to crack under pressure,but this was a whole different level.

Itseemed like they’d walked for miles before they finally stopped infront of an enormous door. Lightning realized she’d actually passedthis area a handful of times, but the door was nondescript and tuckedaway, so she’d never given thought to what could be behind it.

Themaid in front slowly pulled the door open. Sunlight poured in and shetried not to squint at the glare.

“Wecan go no further,” the maid said. “Please head forward for yourceremony.”

“Thanks.”

Theyall curtsied in unison as she stepped into the light, not risinguntil the door slowly creaked shut behind her. Forget the lead in hergut; her stomach was doing cartwheels by now.

“Thatyou?”

Lightningnever thought she’d be so damn grateful to hear Sazh’s voice. She letout a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding and hurried over –as much as she could in this outfit, anyway – and even though hestill looked grave and serious, it was still a relief to be aroundsomeone normal.

Well,normal to her, anyway.

“Ididn’t think you’d be here,” she said, trying to sound composed. “Ithought it might be against the rules or whatever.”

Despitethe serious expression on his face, Sazh smirked a little. “Whathave I been tellin’ you? There’s no getting rid of me. Besides, youhave any idea what you’re doing right now?”

Lightninglooked around the room for the first time. It was weirdly bright andwhite, though she could vaguely make out ornate designs on the wallsin gold. Ahead of her was more brightness and – was that fog?

Yeah,she was totally lost.

“Thoughtso,” was all Sazh replied at the look on her face. “All right,lemme lead you through it. Ask your questions or forever hold yourpeace.”

“Justtell me how to get to Phoenix,” she replied. “I want to get thisover with.”

“Fairenough.” He shook his head in exasperation and then gestured to theweirdly bright, foggy area in front of them. “Head forward untilyou see a crystal. It’ll be floating in midair, so try not to freak.”

“I’veseen freakier things.”

“Yeah,yeah.” He rolled his eyes, which was oddly comforting. “Once youget to the crystal, hold cup your hands around it.” Sazh held uphis own hands to demonstrate. “Then recite the summons you’veundoubtedly memorized. That should take you right to Phoenix.”

Lightningheld up her hands in the same way Sazh had. “Crystal, hands,recite. I think I’ve got it.”

“Youdo.” He stared at her a moment and then sighed, bowing his head abit before nodding. “You really do. You’ve got this.”

Ifthat was his way of saying he was sure she’d survive…the confidenceactually worked somewhat. Much to her annoyance, Sazh really did knowa lot and she trusted him. It was not guarantee, but at leastit was something.

“Right,”she murmured, squaring her shoulders. “I’ll be back.”

“We’llbe waiting.”

Asshe headed into the fog, Lightning could’ve sworn she heard somefootsteps echoing behind her, but she did not dare to look over hershoulder. Eyes front. If she lost her nerve now, she’d never be ableto do this again.

Timelost all meaning as she walked through the light and fog. There wasno comfort in it, but oddly enough, she had no fear, either. MaybeSazh’s confidence in her had actually worked. Maybe it was becauseshe had to survive for Serah.

Maybeit was because, according to a certain personal bodyguard, she couldbring about real change.

Shehad no idea how long she’d walked before the crystal appeared infront of her. It was shaped a bit like a diamond and reflectedrainbows into the whiteness around her. Just as she was supposed to,she hovered her hands around it and closed her eyes, bowing her headas she spoke.

“OMighty fal'cie Phoenix, I seek you so that I may govern in yourblessed name. Guide me to your knowing light so that I may humblygaze upon you.”

Shefelt stupid chanting the words, especially since she wasn’t quitesure how much she believed in them. Apparently belief didn’t matter,though, because the crystal suddenly blinded her – even though hereyes were still closed – and she had the sensation of movement. Itfelt like falling, but she was still upright. Lightning didn’t dareopen her eyes in case it broke some kind of spell. Sazh hadn’tmentioned any of this! She was definitely going to rant at himwhen she got back.

Ifshe got back.

Whenthings finally stilled, Lightning took a moment to breathe, her eyesstill closed. It was extremely unusual for her to just stand aroundand put herself in any sort of vulnerable position, but what wasn’tunusual about all of this?Surely a breather wasn’t out of line.

Therewas about ten second of silence before an unfamiliar rumbling noiseand a flash of head made her finally open her eyes. She could notcontain the gasp that ripped through her at what was before her.

“Phoenix.”

Thefal'cie was long and skinny on both ends, with smaller pieces of itsbody – was that a body? - extending from it. Whether theseparts were something otherworldly, nature, machine – she had noidea. In the middle it was round, filled with a light so bright thatshe couldn’t stare for long.

Itwas nothing like she had ever seen or imagined.

Ofcourse she had seen fal'cie before. Most everyone had. There weresmaller ones that worked in separate jurisdictions in Eden, doingvarious tasks like providing electricity or things for export. Notall of them in other kingdoms made themselves hidden, either. Theywere just a part of the landscape and a part of life thatnobody really took notice of them.

Nowshe understood why Phoenix was hidden away.

Itwas impossible not to take notice.

Lightningstepped forward unconsciously, not sure if she wanted to run towardsit or away. She felt dazed, which was not a sensation she wasa fan of, but what else could she do?

Therewas noise coming from the fal'cie, but she wasn’t sure if it wastrying to speak or if that was just how it sounded naturally. Surelysomething so massive and powerful couldn’t be completely silent.

Thesounds were like screams and whispers all at once, having thestrength to ruffle her gown and cape, but somehow not loud enough tohear. Something about it made her want to take a sword to the massivebeing in front of her, but who was she to deny the world of this?

Andthen it happened.

Phoenixcried out and a beam of light shot right towards her, too quickly toavoid. It scorched her chest, painful yet not. She could feel theswirls and intricacies of Phoenix’s brand, letting it become a partof her and she now was of it.

Blurry,hurried images flooded into her mind. Lightning vaguely recalledSerah mentioning Snow’s experience with his fal'cie, that the imagesbecame clearer with mutual understanding.

Butshe and Phoenix had no understanding. She still couldn’t tellwhether she hated it or wanted to give thanks. There was anunderlying buzz of Phoenix not knowing what to make of her, either –just that she was of the bloodline and she could ruleunscathed.

Theimages she saw were most of people she only vaguely recognized fromthe portraits in the palace – memories of her extremely distantancestors. Some were of the stars and moon, extensions of the fal'ciefrom even farther away than this. One image would come, only to beimmediately replaced by another, and she could make no real sense ofthem.

Untilthat moment.

“Hope?!”

Everythingwas still so fast, but now Lightning willed her mind to slow,anything so that she could sort out why Phoenix was showingher images of her personal bodyguard.

Shesaw Hope, handsome as ever, talking to a group of people in a glassbuilding that gleamed with perfection.

Anotherof him in a white and yellow outfit that seemed strangely familiar –but it wasn’t the garb he wore as her bodyguard.

Himtalking to a shorter woman who, again, seemed oddly familiar.

Hiseyes sliding to look at Phoenix.

Hishands working on something that could have been otherworldly, nature,or machine.

Hisgaze on her for a thousand different reasons, most worthy of asecret.

Hisshame as he ran off from her at ball.

Inthat instant, something clicked in Lightning’s mind, though her heartwas pounding and her breath was coming too fast to really sort itout. The images abruptly stopped and the brand on her chest cooled.

“Howdo you expect me to - ”

Shedidn’t get to finish her sentence before there was that sensation offalling again. Phoenix had dismissed her?! She’d survived itsjudgment, but for what?

Therewas no making sense of it. Time had no meaning.

Whenshe stopped falling, Lightning opened her eyes in a daze and emergedfrom the light, a bit surprised to see Sazh, but also -

“Hope,”she whispered, her heart pounding again. It was too much for her bodyand mind. Her knees shook and she pitched forward.

Butlike any good personal bodyguard, Hope raced to her, his eyes widewith panic as he caught her. She settled into his arms so easily –too easily.

“Light,”he said, her name hardly a gasp. His eyes darted to Phoenix’s brand,which was on the left side of her chest, impossible to miss againsther pale skin. “Light, why? Whydid you do it?”

She stared up at him, a thousandimages replaying in her mind in an instant. How could she possiblyput them together in a way that made sense?

But maybe shealready had.

Her hand reached up to shakily brushsome of his bangs from his worried face. Worried for who, shewondered?

“You’re not a bodyguard,” shemurmured.

Theneverything went black.

55 notes · View notes

darkanima2345 · 5 years ago

Text

A continuation. It gets quite dark at the end, you've been warned. I thought I posted this on Tumblr ages ago, clearly I was wrong! Enjoy!

-----------------------------

They spent the rest of the day outside, eating, drinking, recounting tales from the previous world, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company.

“Do you remember the first time Sazh tried to mount a chocobo on Pulse? He jumped up onto its back head first, slid straight off the other side and right into a mound of behemoth droppings!” Lightning, currently doubled over in laughter, remembered it well. She had learned several dozen new expletives that day from Sazh, and distinctly remembered Vanille laughing so hard that she had to hold herself up on Fang, who was herself laughing so hard that she was using her staff to keep herself upright. Snow was on his knees, mouth open in silent laughter, and Hope was beet red, getting redder at the ever lengthening string of expletives coming out of Sazh’s dropping covered mouth.

Lightning and Hope spent a good 5 minutes laughing at that particular memory. Just when one of them was starting to calm down, they would look at the other and burst into laughter all over again.

Wiping his eyes, Hope finally managed to calm down. “Would you like another drink Light?” he said, getting up and stretching. Lightning looked over to the formally full, now empty, bottle of champagne sat on the table.

“Just a glass of water please.” Hope nodded, taking the tray that had contained their snacks back into the kitchen. Lightning looked out to the mountains; twilight has descended and Hope was correct, the view was even more magnificent at sunset.

“Here you are Light.” A glass appeared in front of her, brimming with water and a slice of lemon on its rim.

“Thank you.” She gave him one of his exclusive smiles. They spent the rest of the evening in comfortable silence, watching the sun fall over the horizon.

Lightning shivered. Hope’s jacket appeared over her shoulders without her even noticing him moving.

“If you’re cold Light, let’s go inside. Your not near immortal anymore” He offered her a hand, one which she took and he pulled her up with remarkable strength and into his arms.

“When did you get so strong?”

“When I got my adult body back,” he said sticking his tongue out at her. She smiled at him, blushing ever so slightly. You’ve smiled more today than the past year combined. I woooonder what’s different!? Lightning really needed to find a way to shut Lumina out.

They made there way inside; Hope lit a fire while Lightning made hot chocolate.

They continued talking well into the night about their lives in the new world; Hope being a Professor of Physics and Lightning being a doctor.

“A doctor!? No offense Light, but I don’t really see you being a doctor.”

“None taken. I’d always wanted to be a doctor, even in the old world. But when my parents passed, I had to look after Serah. The guardian corps was good money and I was the right age. I couldn’t afford to study medicine.” Hope had his brow furrowed and was deep in thought.

“I suppose that would explain why you specialized as a medic when we first became l'cie. I always found that odd.” Lightning raised a brow.

“What’s so odd about it?”

“Well when I first met you, I would have thought that the sabatour role would have been your thing. But your passion for healing must have been reflected in your affinity for the medic role.”

“Hmm maybe. Anyway, what’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“Well a farmers market is on every week. It’s about a mile down the road and it’s a very pleasant walk. Fancy it?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“We can also pick up some steak. Because as I recall, a certain someone promised me a home cooked meal, even if that meal is grilled steak.”

“Oh yeah. I did promise you that didn’t I?” Hope nodded.

“And I am very much looking forward to it. Its getting quite late,” he said glancing at his wrist watch. “I’m going to head to bed Light. If you want to stay up there’s a collection of books over there that you ma-"

“I’m tired myself Hope. I’ll be heading to bed too.” He nodded, holding his arm out in invitation for her to take the lead.

They arrived at the guest room, with Hope’s room being further down the corridor. Lightning opened the door and turned to face Hope.

“Thank you for letting me stay here Hope.”

“No problem Light.” He pulled her into a hug, which Lightning reciprocated. When Hope broke the hug and went to his room, Lightning felt a profound sense of lost.

Getting into bed, Lightning sank into the memory foam mattress and feather down pillows. She could feel sleep washing over her. She let sleep take her while she stared at the box containing Odin’s crystal.

Lightning found herself in a familiar place; chaos swirled round the throne of the goddess upon which sat Lumina head resting on her palm.

“Well hello there Miss Savior.”

“I’m not the Savior anymore Lumina.”

“Oh yeah, right. Shall I call you Mrs Estheim them?” Lumina wiggled her eyebrows.

“Wha- No I- What do you mean!?”

“Oh come on! You sooooo have the hots for him!”

“I think you are the one with the ‘hots' for Hope.”

“Yes, but I’m part of you. So therefore you have the hots for Hope.” Lightning growled in annoyance. It was like arguing with a little kid.

“What are you doing here Lumina? I thought we merged.”

“We have done. Yet I’m still around. Your mind hasn’t accepted me yet I think. You are still clinging hard onto the ‘Lightning' persona. You need to truly become Claire.”

“So if I accept you then you’ll disappear and leave me alone?”

“Yes, but that is easier said than do-. Hmm?” Lumina tilted her head, as if trying to listen for something. “I think it’s time for you to wake up, woman-who-was-going-to-be-a-goddess-but-changed-her-mind.”

“No. We haven’t finished talking.”

“You’re right, we haven’t. But Hope needs you.” For the first time that Lightning could remember, Lumina sounded serious. Chaos condensed around the throne, obscuring all from Lightning's vision.

Lightning eyes flew open when she heard a man screaming. She jumped out of bed and opened her door, heading to the source of the screaming: Hope’s room.

Lightning barged into the room, Hope’s screams echoing throughout the cottage. She ran up to the thrashing man, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him as hard as she could.

“Hope! Hope! Wake up!”

Hope’s eyes flew open, and for a split second, Lightning saw piercing green eyes in place of Hope's calming green. He blinked twice and his soft green eyes returned, filled with tears.

“Hope are you okay?” He was trembling, shaking in her grasp.

“So- So- Sorry Light. Just a really bad nightmare that’s all. I- I- I’m alright.” He smiled but it did not reach his eyes. Lightning saw so many emotions in his eyes; longing, fear, hate, pain, love, and anger. She wouldn’t leave him like this.

“Tell me about it,” she said climbing into his bed next to him, reaching for his head and moving it to her shoulder.

“What?”

“The dream, Hope. Tell me about it .” She ran her thumb over his knuckles.

“It was Bhunivelze.” Lightning’s breath hitched. Images came flooding into her mind; a boy held by strings of light, a huge finger snapping the boys neck, and his body being crushed into dust. Lightning shook her head in an attempt to dispel the images.

“What was he doing?”

“He tried to take me Light. He tried to make me his,” his voice was very close to breaking. Lightning could feel her chest constricting; she hated seeing Hope in so much pain. But how can she help? Hope is a scientist! Use that! Use logic! Lightning silently thanked Lumina for her advice.

“Hope, I’m going to ask you some questions and you are going to answer them.” She moved her hand from his knuckles and began to stroke his hair. He swallowed, trying to hide a sob.

“Okay.”

“Where is Bhunivelze right now? Where did we leave him?”

“In the new unseen realm. He was trapped in crystal.” Lightning nodded.

“Indeed he was. Who else is in the unseen realm?”

“The Yeuls. They became the new goddess of death in your place.” Lightning was sure she heard a ‘thank goodness’ whispered at the end of that sentence.

“Yes they did. Who is the guardian of the Yeuls?”

“Caius.”

“He is. Who does Caius have to call on, as I did when I was the guardian for Etro? Think about what you saw in the Oracle Drives.”

“The eidolans.”

“Correct. So Bhunivelze has to break out of crystal, get through the new goddesses of death, their guardian, and all of the eidolans. That is not happening.” Lightning felt Hope relax against her. “And even if he does manage all that, he would still have one more thing to get through.” Hope sat up and looked at her.

“What’s that Light?”

“Me. I make you this promise Mr Hope Estheim. As long as I draw breath, Bhunivelze will not take you, nor get anywhere near you. You’re safe as long as I am around.” A tear escaped Hope’s eye.

“Thank you Light.”

“Do you feel better?”

“Yes, thank you.” Lightning smiled and went to get up. A hand grasped her arm with substantial force.

“Please Light. Stay here. Just until I fall asleep.” Lightning looked at Hope; his eyes were down and he was clearly still shaken from his nightmare.

“Of course.” She lay down. Hope lay down next to her and she wrapped an arm around him and pulled him close.

“I’m so glad to have met you Light.” Nightmares did not trouble Hope Estheim for the rest of the night.

Lightning woke up in Hope’s bed, alone. The smell of bacon and pancakes was in the air. Smiling to herself, she went back to her room, showered and changed. Spending a moment to admire Odin’s crystal, she moved into the main room of the cottage. Sat at the dining table was Hope with a cup of steaming coffee and two plates stacked with bacon and pancakes. Lightning sat across from him. Hope picked up the cup of coffee and passed it to her.

“White, one sugar.”

“How did you know?”

“Serah. There was a small note slipped into the back of the frame of the drawing of Alexander. She also said that your favourite breakfast was bacon and pancakes. Please help yourself.” Lightning’s eyes flashed.

“I’ll kill her. I’ll absolutely kill her.” Hope just chuckled.

“I’m sure her intentions were good. She probably just wanted you to be comfortable.”

“I could have told you all this myself.”

“Its a nice surprise at least.”

“True.” Lightning took a plate and helped herself to bacon and pancakes.

“So anything else in that note I should know about?”

“No. Nothing you should know about.” Lightning did not like the way Hope was smiling.

Lightning and Hope enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, give and taking banter, and after all the food had been devoured they found themselves at the kitchen sink washing up.

“Light, about last night...”

“Don’t worry about it. Just remember my promise okay?” Hope gave her a brilliant smile.

“Thanks Light. The market will be opening soon,” Hope said as he put the last of the washing up away. “Shall we head out?”

“Yeah sure.”

Hope was correct when he said the walk to the market was a pleasant one. Fields of flowers stretched in all directions filling the air with aromas Lightning had never smelled before. The sun beat down on them while they talked about Hope’s research in space-time. Lightning struggled to keep up with some of the technical jargon but she saw the fire in Hope’s eyes when he talked about it. That was a fire she hadn’t seen in him since he was determined to kill Snow after the death of his mother.

Arriving at the farmers market, Lightning was amazed at the number of stalls there where all selling unique items. Flowers, different cuts of meat, ornaments, plants, cakes, and all sorts of desserts. They explored all the stalls eventually arriving at what Hope said was the best butcher at the market. Lightning froze when she saw who was behind the counter; one Alyssa Zaidelle. Lumina screamed. Lightning grabbed Hope and dragged him away from the stall.

“What the hell Hope? You do know who that is right!?” she said jabbing her finger in Hope’s chest.

“Yes. Alyssa. Once my assistant and potential assassin. She doesn’t remember our old life, she doesn’t know who I am or what I did, other than a customer.” Hope met Lightning’s eyes and was shocked to see them welling with tears.

“Do you know what powers Vallhalla gave me Hope?” she said, her voice unsteady. “It allowed me to see all of the timelines, whether they were paradoxes or not. I saw her kill you, so so many times. I saw the light leave your eyes. I saw you take your last breath and there was nothing I could do about it! I couldn’t be there with you!” She punched him in the chest, causing an oomph! to escape his lips. “Please Hope. Please. Don’t have anything to do with her. I can’t see you hurt again. I can’t watch you die again.” To her surprise, Hope pulled her into a hug, gently stroking her hair.

“I’m so sorry Light. I didn’t think. All I have are my own experiences. She failed in the attempt on my life, and that’s the last I ever saw of her. I didn’t realise you saw all those failed timelines. All my- All those other deaths. We will go somewhere else.” Hope released Lightning from the hug, grabbed her hand and guided her to another stall. They picked out two sirloin steaks, accepted the packs, paid the butcher and moved on.

They stopped for lunch at a van for pulled pork sandwiches, which Lightning thoroughly enjoyed. One of the last stalls they visited was a dessert stall. Hope saw Lightning’s eyes sparkle at all of the cakes and puddings. Hope picked out two pieces of succulent chocolate cake to which Lightning nodded in approval. Lightning grabbed the box they were in a little bit too quickly, but Hope just chuckled.

The walk back to Hope’s cottage was mostly silence, each individual lost in their own thoughts. Arriving back at the cottage, they moved through to the kitchen. Hope gave a pan to Lightning, who placed oil in it and rubbed around the base. She placed the pan on the stove and turned it to high. She placed the steaks in and enjoyed the sizzle they made when they came in contact with the metal. Hope passed her a glass of white wine with a smile.

Lightning was crushing garlic when she spoke, “I’m so sorry Hope.”

“For what?” He took a sip from his own glass.

“For what I said at the market. A lot of emotion rushed at once, I couldn’t control it. I don’t know what happened.” For the second time that day, Hope pulled her into a hug, stroking her hair.

“Okay, let me tell you two things. Firstly, you cannot believe how flattered I am that you took time to check on me when you were trapped in Valhalla. You were watching the rear the entire time, and I had my eyes front. Thank you for that, and I’m sorry you had to do it alone. Secondly, if I had to watch you die over and over and over again, I’d have a far worse reaction. You made your promise to me last night so allow me to make you; the same one I made in Palompolom all those years ago. I’ll do my best to look after you.” He released her from the hug and picked up his wine glass . “We are partners after all.”

Hope cut into his garlic encrusted steak. “I doubt Seedy's food was as good as this. I’m glad refused that takeout this is amazing Light.” Lightning blushed.

“Thank you. I think I overcooked the steaks though.”

“Nah its absolutely perfect. As I always knew it would be.” They spent the evening talking and joking and sharing stories about their jobs.

Night eventually fell. Several more glasses of wine accompanied by the chocolate cake went down far to easily. Eventually, after several bouts of yawning they both retreated to their respective rooms.

Lightning climbed into bed and her eyes gradually closed; her last thoughts were a prayer to any deity that was listening that Hope had a peaceful nights sleep...

“Submit to me.”

“No! No I won’t!”

Two familiar voices echoed around the crushing darkness Lightning found herself in. She spun round, trying to find the source of the voices.

“Submit to me.”

“NO! NO I WON’T!”

“If you continue to refuse, then...” Lightning suddenly became aware that she was suspended above the floor, and that she had her eyes shut, “she will pay the price.”

“No. Not her. Please.” Lightning opened her eyes. She was 10 foot in the air , suspended above a kneeling Hope. Looking around, Lightning saw she was being held by strings made of pure light, all of which lead up to a hand belonging to... No! It cant be him. He’s gone, trapped. He cant be back! Bhunivelze can’t be here!

“Submit to me. Or she will suffer. I will do to her what I did to you over those long 169 years.” Lightning tried to speak, but found she had no voice. Lightning tried to struggle, but the strings of light cut into her and spilled her blood.

“No! Please! Please don’t hurt her!”

“I will not hurt her anymore if you submit.”

“No! No! Don't hurt her!”

“I won’t if you SUBMIT!” Lightning was powerless, held in the air like a puppet unable to speak or move. Please Hope, don’t worry about me! Please look after yourself! Please, don’t let him take you again! I’ll be fine!

“I- I-...” Hope looked up, his calm green eyes looking across Lightning’s body where the strings had cut and tore and blood dripped from her. Hope prostrated himself. “Forgive me Light. I’m not strong enough... I can’t see you hurt.” Hope stood up, looking past Lightning towards Bhunivelze. “I submit. Just please let her go. Please allow her to find her happiness. Please let her be happy.” Humourless laughter echoed. A single tear fell from Lightning’s eyes. She fell like a doll, just as the hand of God rose and crushed her in its grasp.

Lightning Farron woke with a start, heart pounding, tears streaming from her eyes. Her clothes and the bed spread were drenched in her sweat and blood, cuts stinging where they stuck to her clothes. She jumped out of bed and flung the door open knocking the vase of roses to the floor, shattering it. Running down the corridor she skidded to a halt when she reached the front door. She turned and saw a familiar figure.

“Truly a beautiful view.” The man stood looking out of the giant window, head cocked to one side. Rain was lashing against the window.

Lightning smiled, Hope was here, he was safe. He was still here, with her. “Although the river should have gone through the mountains, instead of below them, creating a waterfall. That would have been much more pleasing.”

Lightning stepped closer to him heart still pounding, “Hope? Are you okay?” He turned. Piercing green met calming blue. Lightning gasped.

“Bhunivelze...” she whispered. He smiled.

“Hello savior.”

She had broken her promise.

#hoperai #hoperailoveeternal #hopelight

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sugutoad · 2 months ago

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HOW TO MAKE A COVER PART 2

So for all of you here, I assume you are here for PART 1. If not, go back! Here is the link to : PART 1

INSTRUCTIONS

Ok, we have come far! We made a cover, that looks decent at best. Our next few steps is to make it actually look good! Our current cover from part 1 should look like this

NOW LETS MAKE IT GOOD!

This sounds like a stupid step, but it helps me a lot! I want to you save your current image and then added it again in the second layer. Remeber how I said to never press extracted or remove background unless I said so? Well, this is the moment to press extracted.

Play around with the black and white. Sometimes, you want more shadows on your cover or maybe you want highlights? This is the place to decid that. Once your done doing that, lower the opacity of that layer.

See how dark it looks above without changing the opacity? This is how it looks now that you added this new layer vs before

It is more harmonized and there are sharper shadows.

2. Now this next step can be optional, but I find it helpful. Covers tend to be too colorful and you can’t see the text when it is time to come, so I like to drain some of the color out. If you open the layers button, you will be given the setting. There should be a plus sign for you to press and it will open a few options. Press Duplicate layer

Now there should be two layers! Press on the lower layer and on the side, you will see three dots. Press on that and more options will be given. Press Greyscale.

You will see that the bottom layer is now grey and without any colors, but value. Press and choose the upper layer again and lower down its opacity slightly until it pleases you. Once you are happy with it, merge the layers together (I taught you this step in Part 1)

3. Now we have this almost grayish background, it is time to add on filters! You will find filters in the same place you found the Eraser tool from Part 1.

Once you click on it, you will be given many filters. Go ahead and find Gaussian Blur. Once you click it, set it to 2%. This technique is useful and done in both art and covers.

From here, find these three filters in any order and use them. You can adjust them to your liking.

3. This filter is important to use. It is called “Unsharp Mask” and it does exactly what it is named, it sharpens everything and makes it more clear. You can adjust it however you like. This is before Unsharp mask vs after. You can clearly see some sort of difference.

4. WE ARE SO CLOSE! You can obviously play around with any of the filters that you like until it suits you. But after you’re done, it is time to add the title! Along the same place you found filters and eraser, there is a ‘T’ which stands for text. Press on that and then anywhere on the canvas and it will open up a textbox. There are many fonts to choose from and you can downloaded more (you can see a YouTube tutorial for that if you want). Simply write the title and change it to whatever size you want until your happy.

5. Ok, you might be saying “what else is there?” Well, we need more color don’t we? It was originally this gray color in order for us to add the text but now you can merge that layer and make it bright! Go back to filters, but this time press “brightness and contrast”. Play around with it as you like! I don’t like to have mine too bright, but not so dark you can barley see the characters

6. Last step is rather silly, but it helps a lot! Open a new layer on top of your main cover layer. Choose any color (it can be a color in the cover or a color you want that suits the vibe of your cover) and on the new layer, paint the whole thing in one solid color

I circled this box that says ‘normal’ and I want you to click on it. It will open up a list of blending modes and for this, you can press soft light

Play around with the opacity! And if you want to add any other layers or filters, I encourage you to try ahead.

FINAL RESULT: After all these steps, we finally finished! This is what our end product should sort of resemble.

Go ahead and try new covers. This was more of a darker mood, so I made it a bit darker, but you can make it light or colorful or even without color now that you know how to use Greyscale.

Remember this isn’t the right way to make covers, this is my own version of how I like it. You can obviously use and see other people try different things or maybe even try your own twists to it. If you end up using this tutorial, I would love to see your own covers!

#sazh rambles #Covers #book covers #wattpad #author #fiction #wattpad writer #new writers on tumblr #ibispaintx #artist help #writing help #writing reference

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thewrongexecution · 4 years ago

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thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy

I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!

I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.

...Eventually.

Spoiler Warning:

Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15

Content Warning:

Discussion of death

Cussin’

Length warning:

5621 words

13 sections

16 digressions

Let’s dig in.

- - - - -

Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.

FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.

((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.

((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))

This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.

((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))

And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.

And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.

((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))

- - - - -

Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.

Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.

Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.

((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))

Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.

Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.

- - - - -

Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:

Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.

People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.

((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))

The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?

((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))

The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:

(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])

That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.

((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.

((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))

The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.

((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))

- - - - -

But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.

Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.

Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.

Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.

Right up until the Leviathan fight.

See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--

((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))

Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.

You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.

Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.

Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?

if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.

((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))

now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!

((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.

((inhale...

((exhale...

((and move on.))

We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.

But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?

Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?

- - - - -

Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.

See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.

((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!

((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.

((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))

But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:

“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”

- - - - -

Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.

The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.

This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!

Boundless, terrifying freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.

So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?

Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.

For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.

And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...

Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.

((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))

So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!

Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!

Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?

- - - - -

Aerith dies.

If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.

Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.

Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.

((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))

And that’s the problem with answering that question.

See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.

Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.

- - - - -

But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.

If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.

And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?

And then on top of that, it’s 2020.

I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.

Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?

- - - - -

So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.

FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.

...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?

Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?

Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?

Hey, how come--

- - - - -

Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:

And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.

Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.

At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.

At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.

Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.

Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.

All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,

The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.

So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?

- - - - -

One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.

and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.

((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.

((but, still.

((Really?))

So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:

- - - - -

At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.

Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.

This is Sephiroth’s plan.

- - - - -

Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.

Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.

Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.

On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.

And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.

((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))

Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day

#In This Essay I Will but for real this time #but hell if that's stopped me before #ff7 remake #blatant speculation #ff7 remake spoilers #ff7 spoilers #ff13 spoilers #ff15 spoilers #I dip into spoiler territory on more but these ones get a deeper dive #also if any of y'all know how to get images screen-read-able please lemme know #the screenshots are to point out that the game itself does do these things #but I don't wanna content-lock anybody out of my bad garbage #also also if the wordcount didn't clue you in:#long post #posting this right now immediately listening

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