I LOVE IT 🥰😭🥹

Look, I love the Castlevania series and the Netflix adaptation made 3 great seasons ("Um there are 4 seasons" LIKE I SAID, 3 GREAT SEASONS), but we have got to talk about how disappointing it is that the main trio never met or even knew the existence of Hector and Isaac - or honestly, that entire half of the plot. I will forever find it weird that the show set up two related but never intersecting plot threads (and arguably a third, go figure during the worst season).

It's sweet and empowering that both of them found their own ways to live before and after Dracula's death, with Isaac being a total badass and even progressing to a better person despite seeing how unfair, cruel, and rude the world is - to the point that he defeats Carmilla not JUST because she was partly responsible for Dracula's death but because he actually wanted to make the world a better place. But even though Isaac could arguably be founding an entire empire and generation of peace, he and Hector don't even seem to know about Alucard's existence or contributions, let alone Trevor and Sypha.

We can debate Hector and Lenore's fucked up relationship all day, but in the end the two of them DID end up bonding through all the lies and deceit. They were able to actually talk to one another and have the other listen; in the end, both of them were just born in different worlds on different sides. Lenore genuinely seemed to want to settle things peacefully, but she got left behind in a world that valued only overwhelming strength; she decides she can't live as a prisoner even though Hector was no doubt stronger than her for enduring his own imprisonment and subjugation, but I think Lenore was already on her way to losing herself. Despite what she did to Hector, she wanted to at least believe she understood him; even though she was a sympathetic vampire, she still believed knowing enough to control someone was the only way they could be friends - so when it turns out Hector was plotting the downfall of Carmilla and her buddies, unfortunate Lenore had to be betrayed as well. Even if Hector wanted her to live, she was a living contradiction. A vampire who is physically very strong and intimidating, but a woman who other male vampires have looked down upon, and even male humans. A creature who feeds on humans, but one who wants to settle things peacefully. She absolutely had a role in Carmilla's gang of women just surviving, but in Carmilla's mad conquest, she was useless at best and a hindrance at worst.

In the end, Lenore was one of the few vampires that might have been sympathetic to the human side of the argument, but she physically couldn't live like that. I believed Lenore genuinely wasn't capable of turning her whole worldview upside down and aiding humanity in any way - being beneath them. Dracula opened himself up to one human and it destroyed him; he saved Hector and Isaac, but he also sacrificed himself and forced Isaac away, that was the extent of his personal affairs with them. I think it's fundamentally difficult for vampires to adopt human ideologies and empathy, making Alucard the only vampire ally we really have in the series - because he's only half. Unlike Alucard, she is a full vampire. She has a divide that she can't just bridge like he can.

Imagine if Alucard got to meet the only other humans beside his mother who genuinely looked up to and cared about his father. What would Isaac and Hector have to say to the son of the man they had admired and then lost as well? Imagine Alucard meeting another human who may have even fallen in love with a vampire, but who understands how far their worlds pulled each other apart. Or maybe Sypha can relate to having her eyes opened to a world outside her Speaker family. Imagine a discussion with Lenore about what it means to be caught between wanting to make peace with humans and knowing how much harm they cause - her actually getting a sympathetic vampire perspective from someone like Alucard who wouldn't look down on her.

Imagine the tension that could come from Trevor meeting a Forgemaster, Isaac trying to explain his control over Night Creatures and his ability to even make them fight for a sympathetic cause. Both Isaac and Trevor have experience being the outcasts, understanding how awful humans can be, but they both found their way to still fighting for the right thing. Trevor understands why killing Dracula's wife would make him want to purge the world in retribution, but he still knows humans are worth fighting for. Isaac fully abandoned his faith in humanity and believed in Dracula completely, and even THEN he managed to find the good amongst the rabble. Is it right to make Night Creatures from the dead, even if they were bad people? Even if it's to champion a good cause? Even if Hector and Isaac have full control over them without a potential for any sort of rebellion?

What I'm saying is, I love the idea of a new Castlevania series, but nothing will beat the OG season 1 and 2, and season 3 should have been answering questions and tying up loose ends - not going off on at least 3, 4 tangents that were just meant to come out of nowhere and make things shitty again after our happy ending and I guess they're kinda related but not really, so now we can fix the new shitty stuff and have ANOTHER happy ending and avoid showing anything resembling resolutions, just teaser after teaser for the fanfics to finish up.

Anyway so I'm going to the fanfics and if I don't come back, tell the Final Fantasy rants I love them-

What I'm most curious about is how they handle Annabeth's insecurities as a "dumb blonde" or if it will be edited to basic doubt in her abilities as a girl? I can't wait to see a more accurate portrayal of the character growth and arcs, even if some are handled differently with modern-day sensitivities in mind.

I'm certain this actor is going to be amazing portraying Annabeth's core character, no matter what she looks like. Rick knows his characters best, and if there's a conflict from the original into the new form, I trust him to handle it better than anyone else.

Rick Riordan’s response to the racism and hatred directed at Leah after she was cast as Annabeth:

“Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase”

“This post is specifically for those who have a problem with the casting of Leah Jeffries as Annabeth Chase. It’s a shame such posts need to be written, but they do. First, let me be clear I am speaking here only for myself. These thoughts are mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect or represent the opinions of any part of Disney, the TV show, the production team, or the Jeffries family.

The response to the casting of Leah has been overwhelmingly positive and joyous, as it should be. Leah brings so much energy and enthusiasm to this role, so much of Annabeth’s strength. She will be a role model for new generations of girls who will see in her the kind hero they want to be.

If you have a problem with this casting, however, take it up with me. You have no one else to blame. Whatever else you take from this post, we should be able to agree that bullying and harassing a child online is inexcusably wrong. As strong as Leah is, as much as we have discussed the potential for this kind of reaction and the intense pressure this role will bring, the negative comments she has received online are out of line. They need to stop. Now.

I was quite clear a year ago, when we announced our first open casting, that we would be following Disney’s company policy on nondiscrimination: We are committed to diverse, inclusive casting. For every role, please submit qualified performers, without regard to disability, gender, race and ethnicity, age, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other basis prohibited by law. We did that. The casting process was long, intense, massive and exhaustive.

I have been clear, as the author, that I was looking for the best actors to inhabit and bring to life the personalities of these characters, and that physical appearance was secondary for me. We did that.  We took a year to do this process thoroughly and find the best of the best. This trio is the best. Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase.

Some of you have apparently felt offended or exasperated when your objections are called out online as racist. “But I am not racist,” you say. “It is not racist to want an actor who is accurate to the book’s description of the character!”

Let’s examine that statement.

You are upset/disappointed/frustrated/angry because a Black actor has been cast to play a character who was described as white in the books. “She doesn’t look the way I always imagined.”

You either are not aware, or have dismissed, Leah’s years of hard work honing her craft, her talent, her tenacity, her focus, her screen presence. You refuse to believe her selection could have been based on merit. Without having seen her play the part, you have pre-judged her (pre + judge = prejudice) and decided she must have been hired simply to fill a quota or tick a diversity box. And by the way, these criticisms have come from across the political spectrum, right and left.

You have decided that I couldn’t possibly mean what I have always said: That the true nature of the character lies in their personality. You feel I must have been coerced, brainwashed, bribed, threatened, whatever, or I as a white male author never would have chosen a Black actor for the part of this canonically white girl.

You refuse to believe me, the guy who wrote the books and created these characters, when I say that these actors are perfect for the roles because of the talent they bring and the way they used their auditions to expand, improve and electrify the lines they were given. Once you see Leah as Annabeth, she will become exactly the way you imagine Annabeth, assuming you give her that chance, but you refuse to credit that this may be true.

You are judging her appropriateness for this role solely and exclusively on how she looks. She is a Black girl playing someone who was described in the books as white.

Friends, that is racism.

And before you resort to the old kneejerk reaction — “I am not racist!” — let’s examine that statement too.

If I may quote from an excellent recent article in the Boston Globe about Dr. Khama Ennis, who created a program on implicit bias for the Massachusetts Board of Registration for Medicine in Boston: “To say a person doesn’t have bias is to say that person isn’t human. It’s how we navigate the world … based on what we’re taught and our own personal histories.”

Racism/colorism isn’t something we have or don’t have. I have it. You have it. We all do. And not just white people like me. All people. It’s either something we recognize and try to work on, or it’s something we deny. Saying “I am not racist!” is simply declaring that you deny your own biases and refuse to work on them.

The core message of Percy Jackson has always been that difference is strength. There is power in plurality. The things that distinguish us from one another are often our marks of individual greatness. You should never judge someone by how well they fit your preconceived notions. That neurodivergent kid who has failed out of six schools, for instance, may well be the son of Poseidon. Anyone can be a hero.

If you don’t get that, if you’re still upset about the casting of this marvelous trio, then it doesn’t matter how many times you have read the books. You didn’t learn anything from them.

Watch the show or don’t. That’s your call. But this will be an adaptation that I am proud of, and which fully honors the spirit of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, taking the bedtime story I told my son twenty years ago to make him feel better about being neurodivergent, and improving on it so that kids all over the world can continue to see themselves as heroes at Camp Half-Blood.”

(x)

💖Even for a moment💖

YALL THEYRE IN A LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP IF YA THINK ABOUT It

Their growth is something that can be so personal

Very underrated dramatic moment you see, but I'm just distracted by the fact that Jin Guangyao has lost his right hand at this point so I'ma assume the novel image is mirrored for dramatic effect.

There that's better.

I need more "Lan Xichen gets a happy ending" fics is what I'm saying. Should I post a 900 page fanfic that I've invested too much of my time into?

"Even before Laurent had hit the ground, the man had drawn his sword. Damen was too far away. He was too far to get between the man and Laurent, he knew that, even as he drew his sword—even as he wheeled his horse, felt the powerful bunch of the animal beneath him. There was only one thing he could do." -Prince's Gambit by C.S.Pacat

and a continuation of the same scene with more spoilers:

Hope’s little foot stomp when he is venting at Snow is just adorable. Like this little 14 year old wants to be taken seriously and he stomps his foot, immediately ruining the effect. He is throwing his frustration and grief around–understandably–but he is also kicking a hornet’s nest by saying it is all Serah’s fault that they are l’cie. He’s a kid; he doesn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle, but none of them do. All Hope sees is this dude that got his mother killed, running around talking about saving Serah and all of Cocoon when this buffed up bastard couldn’t even save his mother. 

He’s been in a constant state of fear since getting off the train; then watching his mother walk away to join the resistance, watching his mother die, and then getting kidnapped essentially by Vanille, and talked into going onto a fal’cie vestige. He’s likely never seen half of the animals that he ends up fighting alongside Vanille; and we know that he’s never seen Cie’th or a Fal’Cie. Of course, he is terrified.  It doesn’t help that he is surrounded by strangers who have thus far: 1) failed to save his mother and keeps running around seemingly only consumed with his own self-interest; 2) attempted to help what he (and most of Cocoon even Sazh) believe to be the enemy of Cocoon and has at least once struck another person in front of him for saying something she didn’t agree with and then straight up attacked a Fal’Cie. 

He didn’t feel safe a second into that journey; he hid behind Vanille when things got bad and stuck to her like glue in the vestige. Instead of finding comfort in the adults’ presence, he latched onto someone he had just met that night who acts even younger than him and is the one that talked him into going on the vestige in the first place. Hope is adrift and is searching for any kind of substitute for a lifeboat that he can find.     

It’s not surprising that finding out he is now a l’cie himself is a last straw. He likely hasn’t been able to come to terms with the fact that his mother and he were in the Purge at all, much less dealt with his grief or rage over his mother’s death. It’s a lot for the adults to handle. To expect Hope to handle it the same as his older, non-riddled with hormones companions is completely unfair. Even Sazh asks “why me” about being turned into a fal’cie, even Lightning rages against her sister’s and her own fate. 

In short, Hope is fourteen, dealing with multiple stressors at once, cut the boy some slack.   

❗❗Trigger warning for suicide❗❗

Okay, let's talk about it.

Vanille's VA tried her best.

Moving on.

From the very beginning of the game, Vanille's character is foreshadowed very well. When she's held among the other refugees of the Purge, she's smiling and willing to joke around with a gun...even though she has no idea how to use a gun and likely her only experience with them is death. That's how good Vanille is at hiding from despair.

When Hope's mother is killed, she hugs him and tells him to face it later. Notice how she says "Ciao!" here and when she will say it again. She tells Hope to face the death of his mother and the Purge "later", so happily as if she's used to being part of a mass murder scene. She's running away from fhe fear and existential pain; her motto when things get hard has become "face it later."

*Bonus how she gives Hope a gun to defend himself, but that scene ends on a gentle musical score panning down to show how Hope doesn't take up the gun for fighting in that moment - he's not angry at Snow yet, he doesn't need his anger to survive yet.*

In the Vestiage, Vanille tells Hope that he needs to tell Snow how he feels or he'll regret it forever. This is an allusion to how Vanille has many things she needed to confess, lies that she never told the truth about that are tearing her apart - but more importantly, they're tearing others apart too. When she hears about Serah being held by the fal'Cie, remember that she knows and is friends with Serah already. Serah was the one who told her to look at her problems from a distance and that running away doesn't solve anything.

When Vanille asks "Why is she turning to crystal?" Hope answers the literally reason that "She fulfilled her Focus", but actually this was a really smart use of double-meanings. Vanille wasn't asking why Serah literally turned to crystal - she was asking why Serah is turning to crystal, what Focus did she complete? They've all just kinda been standing there, so what did Serah do?

In Lake Bresha, while Hope is having a meltdown, Sazh is loudly asking questions, Lightning is angrily reeling with her emotions at both losing her sister and being a l'Cie, and Snow is completely in denial, Vanille just interrupts by saying "Oh-oh! Then let's run away! Ciao!" Her first reaction when under duress is to run away. Her cheerful reaction is her completely absolute ability to hide her emotions when bad things occur.

*Another fun bonus: when Lightning is holding Snow at sword-point when he encourages them to complete their Focus and everyone's interrupted by PSICOM soldiers, Lightning very easily could've just pretended to still be an active Guardian Corps member from Bodhum since her resignation was so unofficial and she's still in uniform. Instead, she actively takes the chance to drop-kick that sucker because she is pissed off and it's hilarious*

When Lightning splits off from the group in the Vile Peaks and she and Hope get cut off from Vanille and Sazh, she just says, "Run? We should run. If we rush in now, we'll just get in [Lightning's] way." When they see the army converging on Palumpolum and likely on Lightning and Hope, Vanille comforts Sazh by saying, "Right, no choice. We run—the other way."

What really begins to test Vanille's resolve is when she learns that she was responsible for essentially cursing not only Serah but now Dajh too. Because of her running from her Focus by pretending she doesn't know what it is, Serah was branded by Anima into a Pulse l'Cie, and Dajh got branded in the Euride Gorge by Kujata into a Cocoon fal'Cie.

What really hurts about this reveal is that Sazh first told her that he just had a son. She's encouraging him to hold it together and defy his l'Cie fate, thinking that "the l'Cie thing" is Sazh himself being a l'Cie, not Dajh.

Vanille's running is hurting people, and when people are hurt, she runs even further. Then more people are hurt and she keeps running. Similar to Snow, Vanille doesn't know if she can ever even begin to apologize for how many lives she's ruined. Unlike Fang, she also remembers the War of Transgression, where her actions doomed many both Pulsian and Cocoon people (Cocoonians?) - she's holding the guilt of running away from a war, then when she wakes up, she runs from her Focus again because she can't stand more people getting hurt, but people get hurt anyway.

It's one thing for she herself to be a victim, but seeing Sazh mourning his son - younger than Serah, younger than Hope, just a little kid in the wrong place at the wrong time - and she knows it's all her fault is tearing her up inside because she can't run from Sazh. The last time she lied about information, Fang went on a murder spree to try and kill the fal'Cie which caused Dajh to be made a l'Cie in the first place. So naturally, it all blows up with Sazh too.

The worst part about it, in my opinion, is that Dajh was the one who found the Pulse l'Cie in Bodhum. A child was the reason that the entire town of Bodhum was Purged, but Dajh likely didn't know what he was doing, and the only reason he was branded was because Fang and Vanille attacked Kujata at Euride. Fang and Vanille waking didn't cause Bodhum to be Purged; Dajh being branded caused the Purge.

In Nautilus, Sazh is trying to cheer her up. Sazh is protecting her along their journey because he can't leave Vanille to fend for herself. He's confessed what happened to his son to her, he trusts her enough to tell her about how much Dajh loved the chocobos, how he went to the fal'Cie trying to kill it for Dajh's sake...and even that he'd considered killing his fellow l'Cie if it would save Dajh from his fate. That also means that Sazh is willing to kill himself - but his chocobo just lands on his pistol and shakes its head.

Sazh bought that chocobo chick for Dajh on the day Dajh got branded - purchasing that chick was what made him lose Dajh that day. But that chick also reminds Sazh of the reason that he's still going. Dajh wouldn't want him to kill himself or turn on his friends...so instead he's just running away with Vanille. He has no idea whether Dajh is a crystal or not, whether he'll ever be able to see Dajh again now that he's explicitly a Pulse l'Cie and his son's direct enemy.

Both Vanille and Sazh represent the party running from their fate, while Lightning, Snow, and Hope are charging head-first into delusions and danger in order to avoid confronting the truth. Keep in mind that Nautilus comes after Palumpolum, where the latter three have just confronted their feelings and have made the decision to stop running.

Now, in Nautilus, Sazh is the one telling Vanille to forget about the heavy stuff, to forget about the other l'Cie in Palumpolum, to let their brands just fade away. He takes Vanille to Nautilus Park where Dajh always wanted to go. And let's be honest, a whole park with chocobos and fuzzy sheep is heaven, okay?

Now Final Fantasy has dealt with terrible situations before, but 13 has always had an air of levity to it and a PG 13 vibe. But when Sazh finally admits that he's going to turn himself in, that's Sazh finally giving up on running from his fate and essentially volunteering to get killed if it means he'll have one last chance to see his son.

He says he's tired of running. All this time, Vanille has been living on the fact that running will help put the bad things behind them or at least give you time to face the situation later. Sazh has run away with her, but he's tired of running - running hasn't helped him, running never can.

Vanille is so desperate to give him a chance to keep living, she tries using revenge. Notice the parallels in this scene with Hope's situation. Hope is using anger and revenge as the only thing to keep himself going, and Vanille is reasoning that revenge will be enough motivation for Sazh to keep going. It all plays out a bit like a soap opera where Vanille gets cut off before she can confess that it was her, but it reinforces that Sazh may be willing to let himself get caught, but keeping Vanille alive is motivating him more than killing her might have.

The scene after the Midlight Reaper is honestly horrifying if it weren't such a cartoony game. Sazh's son should be locked up under PSICOM's security, and you almost think it has to be an illusion when Dajh runs up and finds his father like it's just a game of catch to him. Dajh has been made his father's enemy, and Dajh's ability to sense Pulse is probably what brought him there. This is the boy whose power caused the Purge, who was branded because of Vanille specifically (even if her inaction caused Fang to be reckless). And Dajh is here in Nautilus because Sazh wanted to take him to the amusement park to see the chocobos. The chocobo chick lands in Dajh's hair, Dajh is just happy to see his dad, Sazh is just amazed that he's able to see Dajh - which he thought would be impossible without turning himself in to PSICOM to die.

(Reminder that Nautilus is actually a city and the amusement park aspect is just built into it; people actually live full-time in Nautilus and there's a Nautilus security regiment just like Bodhum has a security regiment in the Guardian Corps)

Then, literally in an instant, while Sazh is close enough to embrace him, Dajh turns to crystal. The difference between Pulse and Cocoon crystals is amazing, but Dajh's crystal is made arguably worse than Serah's transformation because it happens so quickly that he doesn't get last words, and rather than being turned completely to crystal, Dajh is more encased within it - he's still smiling up at his father, oblivious to the whole situation, and he'll be frozen like that potentially forever, his last smile to his father on his face for essentially eternity.

The bell tolls above them (fun fact: there are 13 hours, as revealed in Lightning Returns), signaling the end of Dajh's time. I was honestly worried that the chocobo chick had got caught in Dajh's hair and turned to crystal too - like that would just be insult to injury.

Crystallization is essentially a family-friendly way of saying we just killed this kid. Even if it is later revealed that Dajh can and will one day wake up just like Serah, in this moment Sazh just lost his entire reason for continuing on as long as he had. His chocobo chick was a reminder of Dajh, that if he just kept surviving, there was still hope that maybe he'd see Dajh again - not knowing if Dajh was a crystal or not was one thing, but seeing Dajh fully turn to crystal essentially in his arms was enough to make Sazh completely fall apart.

Nabaat strolls in and makes a bad situation worse when she reveals footage (impossible angles and that picture is in no way grainy, but whatever) of the Euride incident showing Vanille as one of the Pulse l'Cie that attacked the energy plant. Though notably, in the footage, Vanille is advocating that they ignore their Focus, but PSICOM wouldn't care, so neither might Sazh.

Vanille's reaction is to run.

She full-on imagines Sazh angry enough to shoot her, reminding her of how many people she's used as shields. She acts kind and innocent and those who care about her like Fang and Sazh put themselves in the line of fire to save her, but Serah and Dajh and all the innocents in Bodhum, all the people of Cocoon who are Purged or will be Purged, all the people of the War of Transgression - Vanille's got an extremely high death count and running can't save her forever.

She's run for so long that her guilt has piled into an enormous weight that absolutely crushes her when she has no one left. Serah was kind to her, but Serah's a crystal now. Hope relied on her for a short period, but he's surviving with Lightning and Snow and honestly on his own now. Fang looked after her to the point that they got separated and Vanille's lies caused her to act recklessly. Now, Sazh, who had relied on her to keep smiling and keep faith that he'll see his son again, has also had his son turned into a l'Cie and then into a crystal because of her. She has no one left who need her and no one left to protect her.

Notably, that's just an illusion of Sazh. She's convinced that he's telling her to die. She stands up and is ready to die when he catches up to her. She wants to die so that Sazh can get revenge and feel better.

But unlike Hope, Sazh is an adult. He recognizes that killing Vanille isn't going to make him feel better. It isn't going to bring Dajh back. In fact, he gets even more angry when Vanille says that he should shoot her for his son's sake. Sazh isn't someone who would shoot and kill someone, let alone in the name of his son. Dajh was kind and light-hearted and comforted his father even when his mother was out of the picture. Killing someone in Dajh's name would be an insult to his son, and Sazh has no time for that bullshit when he has to do everything he can to remember Dajh and honor his essentially-dead son.

Somehow, these two suicidal l'Cie actually managed to give each other therapy because both of them want the other to survive even if they themselves die. My favorite line in this part is "You think you die and that's that? You think you die and everything will be sugar and rainbows?" He's fully aware that just killing Vanille isn't going to make anything better. Her death won't fix everything, it will only let her escape her guilt.

He's making Vanille choose whether to live or die, because if she wants to die so much, he isn't going to be the one to kill her.

Sazh is holding his brand from the moment he confronts Vanille, conflicted on whether he himself should live or die. What makes Sazh rise up to fight his Eidolon isn't his own life - it's Vanille's. Vanille is willing to stand up to keep Sazh from giving up and dying to an Eidolon who's trying to convince him to live, Sazh is willing to get up to keep Vanille from dying for him.

And Brynhildr is cool and got me into the Volsunga Saga, so like, yeah.

The fact that Sazh tries but isn't able to kill neither Vanille nor himself proves that his Eidolon actually did help him. Sazh was so frustrated at himself for being unable to shoot Vanille, no matter what she had done and how many mistakes she had made. He's frustrated that he still wants to live and he's willing to fight to live. He thought that he was fighting his Eidolon in order to save Vanille, but he was also fighting for his own life, and by defeating his Eidolon, he proved that he wanted to keep living, whether he realized what he was doing or not.

What's worse is that Nabaat comes in again and says that Dajh's crystal will be put on display as a memorial. Like literally, this little boy turned to crystal is just going to be put up as a "monument to sacrifice", as though Dajh intended to give up his father to PSICOM to be killed in a public execution, as though Dajh found his father in an effort to turn to crystal rather than just wanting to see his father in Nautilus where he'd always wanted to go. As though Dajh Purged an entire town for the sake of Cocoon, as though he captured his father so that he wouldn't live in shame as the son of a Pulse l'Cie rather than actually just loving his dad and being an innocent kid.

It really makes you hate Dysley/Barthandelus later when the anticipated boss battle with Nabaat is cut off abruptly by him. Like, the first time that scene happens, it's a huge reveal! Nabaat is a cunning and sadistic ass who you look forward to beating up, but she's struck down by Barthandelus and he reveals himself to be an actual fal'Cie, where we all thought of him as just a human tool. Turns out, Nabaat is a took, and all her loyalty and cruelty can be cut down by her own superior in an instant.

Her DLC fight in XIII-2 is pretty cool though. Nabaat as a villain is really good. She's top of her class in the army, she's got fabulous hair, she's good at emotional manipulation through a caring façade, and unlike Rosche, she actually did capture her target l'Cie. Though Rosche also had a change of heart at the end and admits to orchestrating mass murder when he falsely trusted the fal'Cie and he would've been a great villain to reform but that's not a story for now.

Sazh hears the full story from Vanille, how his son will eventually be freed from crystal, and just like Lightning and Snow, he resolves to wait and survive however long it takes to see his son again. Just like them, he doesn't know how or when it will be, but he's holding onto something again.

When they escape in the Palamecia, they're not running away anymore. They're both scared of what awaits them, but Sazh points out that they're more scared of dying and giving up now. He's scared of dying so much that he's pushing himself to live now, remembering his son's laughter rather than mourning his loss. It's "time to split. Not run. There's a difference."

I've reached my image limit for Tumblr! Will I reach the word limit? Is there such a thing?!

Basically, if you complete the first some 14 quests on Gran Pulse before pursuing the storyline, Vanille reveals in the Paddraean Archaeopolis that she's claiming to have been the one to have become Ragnarok, leaving Fang to think that she did nothing - when it's actually the opposite. (Also the characters point out that they should try following Dahaka since it lives near Oerba, so Taejin's Tower isn't the first time they can technically see it).

Vanille's still lying. She tries to tell the truth on the Palamecia, but she gets delayed. Then Barthandelus happens, and she gets delayed, thinking that perhaps telling Fang the truth will make her want to destroy Cocoon to fulfill their Focus.

Hope confides in Vanille that sometimes you do have to lie to keep yourself going. It wasn't unreasonable for any of them to use lies to survive, but what mattered is what happened afterwords. Vanille just kept lying and kept running. Hope used his lies to survive, confront Snow, and then he let go and faced his feelings in the end.

Meanwhile Sazh makes up with Fang when he finds the chocobos. He knows Fang's also responsible for Euride, but he doesn't blame either of them - at least, he's willing to forgive because he knows who they are as people. He's taking responsibility for letting Dajh out of his sight, but he's not facing his guilt alone. He's learned that facing everything alone is their downfall. Foreshadowing for Fang in the ending, taking on everything alone.

When Vanille faces her Eidolon, her last lie has been revealed. She's not alone anymore, she has a new family, and there will be no more running away.

Baby like 🫨

Quanyinweek2024 - day 1: kids -

Xie Lian steals Ming Yue from Quanyin lol

There are two sets - in white/silver and black/rainbow and yes I got one of both, they're amazing, LOOK AT THIS ART!!!

We are the Pride Knights, and this is our battle cry No enemy can shake us, as hard as they can try There’s a fire in our eyes that no hatred can kill A passion in our hearts that’s as strong as our will To our fellow queers who fight their battles on their own We promise to fight with you, you are never alone To our fellow queers who have fallen with the pain We thank you for your courage, your fight is not in vain We are defenders of the right to be proud of who you are To love who you love and to accept every scar We are your knights, protectors of our pride Together we stand, together we ride

LIMITED EDITION: The Pride Knights Playing Cards are now officially available for pre-order in our store until June 30, 2023!

prideknights.com ⚔️🌈