What I'm Most Curious About Is How They Handle Annabeth's Insecurities As A "dumb Blonde" Or If It Will

Okay but like Wen Kexing at least wanted redemption in doing good things to clear his name in the end; Xue Yang was evil and he knew it to the point that even when he found the life he could have had and a family he wanted, he couldn't help ruining it and never admitting that he did anything wrong. His "regret" manifested in doing even MORE insane stuff to try and maintain control and push the blame onto others.

I love both of these unhinged boys but at least my lovely Wen Kexing got his senses back with the power of true love and eyeliner-remover

Most Unhinged Round 3: Wen Kexing (Word of Honor) vs Xue Yang (The Untamed)

[Submitted Reasons Under Cut]

Wen Kexing: "that scene in episode 4 where he’s like frowning and upset that he got blood on his hands… babygirl YOU just stuck your hand through a man’s throat after single handedly massacring like 40 people in broad daylight. What did you think was going to happen…. And then next episode he’s like “oh poor little old me I can’t even kill a chicken. who is going to take care of me I’m just a humble little philanthropist who needs a big strong man to protect me.” babygirl you’ve led a bloody reign of terror for like 8 years now after skinning your predecessor alive and the people known as being the most cutthroat and evil in the whole martial arts world literally call you Lunatic Wen because you regularly gruesomely kill your subordinates to make examples of them…. He recognized a boy he met once as a child 20 years later by his shoulder blades and decided to marry him right then and there. He decided to not burn down the entire world because he wanted to become a housewife. If he was hinged once, he no longer is now."

Xue Yang: "Spoilers but this man had his pinky finger run over as a child and decided to murder literally everyone in retaliation. He thought ending many lives equated to his loss of the smallest and least useful appendage on one hand. He tricked a man into murdering the love of his life so that he could continue being with him (the man was blind and didn’t know who he was). When the man found out what he did he killed himself and xue yang tried to reanimate him. Sick. Twisted. Unhinged."

When you actually look at the lyrics to 红绝 | Hong Jue | Red Devastation

Those sneaky sneaks being geniuses!!! As if I needed anymore reason to love this song!

The Heaven Official's Blessing donghua is so good my gods ☺️🥰

Yes! A big portion of Laurent's character is that he uses the fact that his looks make him seem incompetent on purpose! He's trained in secret to become strong enough to kill Damianos, and I think it's "But Green for a Season" that reveals how Jord discovered Laurent had gotten very good with his discreet lessons.

Even though he loses against Damen during their fight in the third book, he still proves himself to be a challenge; what he lacks in raw power against an enemy, he makes up for with his tactics and dirty fighting. He'll use the environment to his advantage, upset and anger his opponent, and he's not above a knee to the groin if it'll give him an edge. When Laurent is fighting Kastor at the end, Damen even considers that if Laurent hadn't been both injured from Govart and his mind clouded with rage - if he were actually focusing with his greatest strength, his mind - he might have even beat Damen in that very fight! Laurent had been on the defensive and a victim for so long that it's often easy to forget that the guy has been training and pushing himself to make up for anything he lacks in order to escape his underdog position.

The only weakness Laurent has is that for most of the books, he thinks he has to do everything alone. The idea that Damen would ever want to help him, wouldn't betray him the instant Laurent didn't have something to reign him in, and that anyone would actively believe in him - it's almost too much for Laurent to fully wrap his head around. He can't compete with his uncle, that's what's been drilled into his head from the most vulnerable point of his life. He's younger, and he can't do anything about it. He's smart, but the Regent will ALWAYS have more experience, will always have the advantage, and Laurent has had every person who might support him and believe in him either abandon him or be killed with every tiny misstep.

The second book, Laurent would have never managed to beat his uncle in this ONE maneuver had Damen not been there to A: stop him from trying to go off on his own and "play along" with his uncle to the point that he basically admits defeat, and B: has a partner who is offensively able to teach him everything his uncle refused to teach him when it comes to being a leader. The only reason Laurent even brought him along was because, begrudgingly, Damen could be temporarily useful. He knows Damen is Damianos from the very beginning, and so he uses their nights going over strategy to learn both the limits of his own people and how Akielons think. Laurent needs to learn how to be a king, something the Regent wouldn't have been keen to actually teach him while trying to outst him from the Veretian throne.

At the end of that book and the beginning of the third, Laurent plays like he's fully prepared to work independently of Damen - or if he is going to work with him, he'll not be reliant upon Damen in any way. He knows Damen a little better now, but that can't instantly erase the confrontation six years in the making when Laurent wants to lash out and beat the shit out of Damen to prove that he didn't spend all this time trying his hardest and it still wasn't enough. It wasn't - Laurent had to painfully confess that he knew he could never beat Damen, and if Damen hadn't been such a good person, he would have lost.

The fact is, Laurent's greatest weakness is being in the mindset that he has to be strong enough and smart enough to do everything alone. Laurent became extremely self-sufficient, deadly in both body and mind, but being with Damen and even falling in love with him was doubly painful because not only is Damen a reminder that he isn't strong enough all on his own, but now his greatest asset is someone who he's spent all this time trying to overcome. It's a really awful struggle for him to accept that maybe someone can actually understand him and support him and be strong enough not to be hurt in the process.

A person? Being on his side?? Willingly??? Someone he doesn't have to protect 24/7???? But someone he WANTS to protect????? AND IT'S FUCKING DAMIANOS WHO HE HATES?????? BECAUSE HE'S A GOOD PERSON???????

In the third book, Laurent actively gives himself up to the Regent, and by Damen’s account, he fully believes no one was going to come for him. He didn't have a plan, he knew he could save Damen maybe but not himself. It's a bit of a weird final move for Laurent to have been saved by a plan that wasn't his own and barely Damen's, but it does showcase his weakness of giving up when he doesn't have a definitive plan in his uncle's domain - by contrast to Damen who never gives up hope even when things around him seem hopeless and he doesn't know what to do, YET.

And to the next point, Damen. We see everything (except one tiny chapter) from Damen's POV, and so by necessity, Damen has to be behind in most of Laurent's plans so that he can figure things out at the same time the readers do. In the first and especially the second book, Damen really is Laurent's slave. Laurent is in charge, Laurent calls the shots, Laurent's the one fighting this civil war with everything to both gain and lose. Laurent is the one to go somewhere, with Damen demanding to follow and help, and proving himself useful in the process. Damen really is just reacting to things happening around him, with the point of that book being him growing Laurent's trust to actually be allowed to do shit.

Damen's only "dumb" quality is that he simply recognizes things as facts, rather than hypothesize about what could be done in the future. He really is a reactive character, but it's entirely realistic if you think about how Akielons are compared to Veretians. Akielons think very straightforward; they take in what they know, work out something from it, and then conclude with a plan to execute - take in the new information gleaned, then rinse and repeat. Veretians think five steps ahead, ensure every action has at least two different purposes/meanings, make sure that even when they lose one thing, they can still gain another. Damen has the problem-solving and experience to react in the moment to Laurent's actions, but only when he sees the plan executing before his eyes.

Ever heard that symbolic thing about their culture designs? Akielons are very stripped down and simple with their clothing, Veretians have complex ties and strings that Damen complains are overly and unnecessarily extravagant? It's like that.

However Damen spends SO much time keeping up with Laurent's patterns that he actually starts to think like him. Damen is good at taking what he knows and making use of it. To be the King of Akielos, he had to know how war worked, how people worked, what customs and traditions and practices were common, what could be weapons and what could be problems. He simply adds Laurent's new perspective on life and the ways of the Veretians to his list of examples to pull from.

To be fair, Damen BEGINS the story slightly naive and spoiled. The whole reason Kastor shipped him off to Vere as a slave was because he refused to believe Kastor was anything more than the brother he had known. Before that instance, Damen didn't believe people could be more than they appeared on the surface. That's just how Akielon culture is. Heck, Damen even admits that he blindly followed his own father's perspective on life - he was the shining king, who could never do wrong, who fought and won battles with glory and grace, and always with honor. He beat back the slimy, conniving, distrustful snakes of Vere who could never be trusted to keep their word or worry about anyone other than themselves.

It's really good worldbuilding, because it's true that's how Veretians can be - not all of them, certainly, but it's also just a human thing, not exclusive to any culture. Some people are good, some are bad, and it's just normal for some people to have built a society where outsmarting others and building a reputation is the way you survive.

But after all his time actually getting to know Laurent and his people and their culture? Damen admits that though he would never speak ill of his father, he can't agree with the kind of king he was; Theomedes was a king who conquered, rather than tried to understand. Damen's father would have never tried to think like the enemy did, to differentiate one Veretian from another. Damen was only forced to see the differences when he saw Laurent and the Regent - Laurent was ultimately a good, kind person, but he was crushed under the weight and expectations and attacks from all sides, forced to become someone else entirely to play their game.

And it's ultimately Damen who has to convince Laurent that playing the game under his uncle's terms is always going to be how he loses. Laurent is thinking five moves ahead to try and keep up with his uncle who is six moves ahead. Instead, Laurent needs to forge his own path, not to be a piece on his uncle's board, but the king of his own. Where Damen is forced to learn Veretian cunning just to keep up (and he does so successfully, if not as good as Laurent who's been doing it much longer), Laurent is forced to learn Akielon straightforwardness and the simple fact that if he wants to win, he has to go into it believing he will - however delusional it seems to barge in, acting first, thinking later.

Veretians can be good people, use their cunning minds to do good things, to fight their enemies and maintain good and evil even within their own kingdom. Akielons can be loyal and headstrong, and if pointed in the right direction, they'll be paragons who'll fight for what they believe in even against all odds. Regardless of the kingdom, there are good and bad people inside it. Both princes need to learn it if they want to be kings, and though it takes a lot of pushing, they ARE willing to learn for their own survival.

Damen is a seriously strong warrior, that can't be argued, but he has EVERYTHING that makes him a born-leader. He recognizes strategies, opens his mind to new ideas, and in turn opens Laurent's mind as well. Laurent is cynical but extremely intelligent; he isn't lacking in any kingly quality beyond his own self-confidence, the belief that he can win after years of thinking all he could do was lose. The two of them really do work with one another, brains and brawn, as well as the potential to help the other recognize the benefits of their different ways of life.

TL;DR it's like this:

"My size," Laurent said, "is the usual. I am not made in miniature. It's a problem of scale, standing next to you."

What I feel the CaPri fandom sometimes fails to understand is that Damen only looks stupid compared to Laurent and Laurent only looks weak compared to Damen.

Damen is one of the few people who pick up on Laurent's schemes - sure, he picks up on things more slowly than Laurent, who has an insider's view of the situation and is actually the person in control of his schemes (in addition to his godlike intelligence), but Damen sees through what Laurent is doing more quickly than anyone else, even people who have known Laurent for years, and manages to keep up with his logic most of the time when no one else does. In book 1 he always manages to read a situation pretty accurately based on the knowledge he has - he can see what Laurent's options are and where the political lines are drawn, he just doesn't know how to mess with them as creatively as Laurent does.

Similarly, Laurent is one of the most competent fighters in the setting and only looks weak compared to Damen, the God of Warfare, who is like 2 meters tall and 2 meters wide. He's not some helpless uwu smol bean, he can hold his own, gives Damen a damn good fight even though he's been recently injured and fucks up several other people described as very strong fighters during the course of the series.

Yeeeeeesss look at that, gimme all the great quotes

I do think there is a balance in the message though. These people who ascend or fall are human, but how much of their humanity do they lose? Over hundreds of years, how much do they change, try to leave behind - or remember, or vow to never, ever forget, to never let go of?

Just the ability to choose to hold onto or let go of things, of beliefs or obsessions, that's so human of them - but humans aren't supposed to be eternal. Xie Lian has to suffer things that regular humans never do, to live through death (or fatal injuries), through generations of change, through the rise and fall of kingdoms, through his own strengths but also his very many weaknesses.

Jun Wu and Hua Cheng have held onto and lived consumed by their resentment and devotion respectively, having to actively fight off anything that would contradict these things. A single lifetime of living with betrayal and heartbreak can break a person, but Jun Wu's resentment is so powerful that it essentially reshapes the entire world because of how it grew and amassed and never stopped tormenting him. Hua Cheng's devotion was so powerful that he gained an actual foothold to reshape the world almost as effectively as Jun Wu - enough to oppose his reign. These kinds of devotion are impressive specifically because they lasted so long, enduring so much, enduring things that shouldn't be human.

Xie Lian, Hua Cheng, Jun Wu, and many of the other gods have held onto who they are without any desire to change - regardless of the right or wrongess of these beliefs they refuse to change. It takes a great deal of effort, but in the end Jun Wu is the one who has to stop, who has to change after 2000 years of obsession. Even after he remade the heavens and got revenge on everyone, he still went this far.

It's natural to want to stay a certain way out of habit, because staying the same is comforting, but even so the world moves on without you and you inevitably change despite your efforts. But these gods spend hundreds and thousands of years without change. Jun Wu got everything he wanted but he continued hating even when there was no one left to hate - in fact he seemed to foster another round of gods to continue hating, just now they're under his thumb.

These people are fundamentally human at heart, but how much of that humanity remains once they've lived lives that can't be called fully human anymore? They are human, but they also can't be, but they can choose to try to stay human, or they can choose to be warped into something else.

And when they find out they chose wrong, they can choose again - but only if they remember that they are human, and humans have the power to keep chosing and changing.

Totally random but, as much as I generally love the TGCF fandom, I’ve noticed that it always mildly annoys me when people refer to, say, Hua Cheng or Xie Lian as not being human, when it’s kind of a major thing that they are still human. Maybe I’m being annoying here but, there’s a reason one of my favourite quotes from TGCF is ‘When humans ascend, they are still human; when they fall, they are still human’. I kinda feel especially strongly about this in regard to some of the ghosts because, well, you wouldn’t look at a human corpse and say “No! That’s not a human! It’s a corpse!”, yeah, obviously it’s a corpse, but it doesn’t cease to be human just because it’s dead, it’s just a dead human.

I need more semi-prime Dion in my life. 🥰

I'm imagining him having the same Bahamut wings Clive has when he uses Bahamut's power.

Quick edit imagining a semi-prime Dion.

❗❗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.

💖Even for a moment💖

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

"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:

What kind of saber is baxia anyway?

I love my bloodthirsty princess of a cursed blade, and in my heart of hearts i am nothing but a sword nerd, so i've been extremely fascinated by Baxia and how we know frustratingly little about what she actually looks like!

I mean, look at bichen, right?

Bichen in the donghua:

Bichen in the drama:

They're clearly not exactly the same. The scabbards are different, and the guards have a different shape. But these are recognizably different iterations on one theme, right? Thin jian with a white grip silver guard, light blue tassel and silver mounting accents on the scabbard.

Now this is baxia in the donghua:

And baxia in the drama:

????????

THAT'S A COMPLTELY DIFFERENT WEAPON

it doesn't stop there either, the audio drama is kind enough to give us ANOTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BAXIA

pretty! But how is that he same sword??

And when we go back to the novel, we get very little information on her appearance other than the fact that her blade is tinted red with all the blood she's absorbed. Which none of these designs incorporate.

This is not a dig on the designs itself, they're all quite gorgeous in their own right and i'm going to spend a while discussing all of them! Because isn't it fascinating how, since we know little about novel baxia beyond "saber" all of these designs ended up so different? What kinds of sabers are these, anyway?

So, a chinese aber, aka a "dao" (刀) just means a sword that has only one cutting side. As opposed to a jian, which has two.

You can see how that leaves a LOT of room for variaton.

I've actually seen some people get confused because Huaisang's saber in the untsmed is thin and quite straight, making it superficially resemble the jian more than drama!baxia, but it is still clearly a saber!

See? only one cutting blade!

This, to me looks a lot like a tang dynasty hengdao

credit to this blog for providing his image and being a great source for all this going forward.

TANGENT: during all this I found out the english wikipedia page for dao is WRONG! Ths is what they about the tang hengdao!

So that sounds like the hengdao was called that during the sui dynasty, but then, after that, started being called a peidao, right?

WRONG

I LOOKED AT THE SOURCE THEY USED AND IT SAYS THIS:

IT WAS CALLED THE PEIDOU UNTIL THE SUI DYNASTY, AT WHICH POINT IT WAS CALLED A HENGDAO. Which would carry over to the Tang dynasty. This was the source wikipedia linked! and it says something else than they say it does!

Anyone know how to edit a wikipedia article?

ANYWAY

BACK TO BAXIA

Since we're already at the drama, let's look at drama baxia: She's also straight! the general term for straight-backed saber is Zhibeidao, but that's a modern collector's term, and doesn't really say anything about which historical kind of saber baxia could be based on. Another meta i found on the drama nie sabers already went on some detail here.

I'm gonna expand on that a little: The kinds of historical straight-backed sabers we see resemble the hengdao a lot more than they do baxia. They don't go to their point as harsly as she does (she's basically a cleaver!) and they're all way skinnier.

No, my personal theory is that instead of being based on any kind of historical sword, drama!baxia is based on a Nandao.

I mean, come on, look at it!

Baxia!

The Nandao... isn't actually a historical sword. It was invented for Wushu forms. There's a really fascinating article about its conception, but that's why the swords in the images look a little thin and flimsy. Wushu swords are very flexible and light, they're dance props, not weapons to fight with. There are actual steel versions of Nandao, but they're recreations of the prop, not the other way around.

So That's one way in which Baxia differes from the Nandao: she's actually a real weapon. The other is that, as you can see above, the nandao has an S-shaped guard. Baxia doesn't. She's also much more elaborately decorated, of course. Because she's a princess.

Now: audio drama baxia!

This is much easier. with that flare at the tip?

Oh baby that's a niuweidao, all the way!

There are more sabers with that kind of curved handle, but the broad tip is really charcteristic of the niuweidao. The Niuweidao is also incredibly poplar in modern media, often portrayed as a historical sword, but it originated i nthe 19th century! And it was actually never used by the military!

That's right, the Niuweidao was pretty much exclusively a civilian weapon! That makes its use here anachronistic, but so is the nandao, and considering that the origin story of the Nie is that they use Dao intead of Jian because their ancestors were butchers, portraying them with a weapon historically reserved for rebels and common people instead of the imperial military is actually very on theme!

Finally, Donghua/Manhua baxia. These two designs are so similar I'm going to treat them as one and the same for now.

Unlike both previous baxias, The long handle makes it clear this baxia is a two-handed weapon, though Nie Mingjue is absolutely strong enough to wield her with one hand anyway. Normal rules don't count for cultivators.

Now, this is where things get tricky, because there are a lot of words for long two-handed sabers. And a lot of them are interchangable! This youtube video about the zhanmadao, one of the possible sabers this baxia could be based on, goes a little into just how confusing this can get. This kind of blade WAS actually in military use for many centuries, making it the most historically accurate of all the baxias. But because of that it also has several names and all of those names can also refer to different kinds of blades depending on what century we're in.

So here's our options: i'm going to dismiss the wodao and miandao, because these were explicitly based on japanese sword design, and as we can see manhua baxia has that very broad tip, so that won't work

(Example of a wodao. According to my sources Miaodao is really just the modern common term for the wodao, and the changdao, and certain kinds of zhanmadao... do you see how quickly this gets confusing?)

Next option: Zhanmadao.

Zhanmadao stands for "horse chopping saber" so... yeah they were anti-cavalry weapons. meant to be able to cut the legs and/or necks of horses. That definitely sounds like a weapon Nie Mingjue would wield. But if you watched that youtube video i linked above, you'll know the standardized Qing dinasty Zhanmadao looked very different from earlier versions. It was inspired by the japanese odachi, and more resembles the miandao than its ealrier heftier counteprarts.

Earlier Ming dynasty Zhanmadao on the other hand were... basically polearms. the great ming military blog spot, another wonderful source, says these are essentially a kind of podao/pudao (朴刀) which looked like this

Now that blade looks a lot like baxia, but the handle is honestly too long. Donghua!baxia straddles the line between sword an polearm a little, but while zhanmadao have been used to refer to both long-handled swords and polerarms, this was undeniably a polearm, not a sword.

If you want to know what researching this was like, I found a picture of this blade on pinterest-- labeled as a "two-handed scimitar"-- and the comment section was filled with people arguing about whether this was a Pudao, Wudao, Zhanmadao, Dadao, Guandao, or a japanese Nagita.

So... that's how it was going. This has kept me up until 2 AM multiple times.

However! Thanks to this article on the great ming military blog I found out there have historically been pudao blades with shorter handles!

Specifically, Ming dynasty military writer Cheng Ziyi created a modified version of the pudao to work with the Dan Fao Fa Xuan technixues-- aka technqiues for a two-handed saber, which would alter heavily influence Miaodao swordmanship-- thereby, as the article points out, essentially merging the cleaver-polearm type Zhanmadao with the later two-handed japanese-inspired design.

This is the illustration for the Wu Bei Yao Lue (武備要略) a Ming dynasty military manual

This blade shape in the illustration doesn't match Baxia exactly, but since it's a lengthened Pudao-like blade and we've seen above that those can match Donghua Baxia's shape, i'm gonna say that calling Baxia a Zhanmadao with a two-handed grip isn't all that innacurate!

However, because all of these terms are so intertwined, there are a dozen other things you could call her that would be about equally correct.

To show that, here's a lightning round of other potential Baxia candidates:

Dadao (大刀)

Which are generally one-handed and too short. However!

Another youtube video i found of someone training with a Zhanmadao that resembles baxia a little also calls it a "shuangshoudai dao" (雙手带 刀) shuangshou means two-handed, and while 雙手带 seems to refer to a longer handled weapon, when looking for a shuangshou dao or shuangshou dadao (双手大刀) we find a lot more baxia-resembling blades like here and here

I also found that, while the cleaver-like Dadao is strictly a product of the 20th centuy, since dadao just means big sword or big knife, it has been used to refer to loads of different weapons! Some people could've called the zhanmadao and pudao "dadao" during the Ming dynasty as well.

Another potential baxia candidate that mandarin mansion classifies as similar to the later dadao (though longer, as seen in the illustration below) is the "Kuanren Piandao"

Which piqued my interest because this diagram classifying different tpye of Dao:

Claims that a Kuanrenbiandao (diferent spelling, same sword) is the same as a modern day Zhanmadao.

(So once again, all of these terms are interchangable)

Another opton Is the Chuanmeidao/Chuanweidao (船尾刀) below you can see a diagram, based on the Qing dynasty green standard army regulation, of blades all officially classified as types of "pudao"

The top middle is the Kuanren Piandao, and bottom left is the Chuanweidao.

Both of these have a lot of baxia-like qualities.

So there you go! live action baxia is based on a Nandao, audio drama baxia is based on a Niuweidao, and Manhua/donghua baxia is some kind of two-handed Zhanmadao/Pudao/Dadao depending on how you want to look at it.

I'm honestly surprised no one has made the creative decision to portray Baxia as a Jiuhuandao, aka 9 ringed broadsword yet.

I mean look at it! Incredibly imposing. Would make for a great Baxia imo. (@ upcoming mdzs manga and mobile game: take notes!)

I’m gonna be a complete nerd and say that the whole “Vincent Valentine doesn’t have a phone” thing in Advent Children is actually more than comedy.

Because why does he not have a phone? He thinks nobody would call him / he would not have to call anyone.

Because who is left? He spent thirty years in a coffin. The woman he loved, the guys he worked with – dead and gone, or moved on. Who would he need to call? Who would want to reach out to him in turn?

And then he goes “Where can I buy a phone?” (yes at the most impossible time ever but this is Vincent)

Because Marlene would have needed a phone, and he couldn’t provide one when she needed it.

Because Cloud couldn’t reach him to call for backup.

Because his allies couldn’t reach him when they needed him.

This is not Vincent realizing he’s behind on technology and now wants to catch up. This is not even really funny.

This is just Vincent realizing there’s still people who need to be able to reach him. People he wants to help when they need it.

So if he’s gonna have to buy a damn phone, he’s gonna buy a damn phone so that next time, he’s there to provide backup on time.