🥹😭🤧🥲

*Calls out, “Hey, king. Are you single?” to the vaguely humanoid creature lurking at the base of the stairs*

Person A: "I'll take you apart with my teeth."

Person B: "...In a sexy way or a cannibalistic way?"

Person A: *smiling* "One of those, yes."

Optional Person A responses:

"Why not both?"

"It's a surprise."

Just "Yes."

This is really cute tho

Finally here it is!

Yes I "Lionkinged" Dion and Terence.

Just imagine a moment in their later teen years on an excursion in the Greatwoods.

It's corny, yes, but seriously after everything they went through in the game? They -deserve to be silly normal dudes in love.

homura should have a gun

Buddy I've got some GREAT news for you

Can you imagine how terrifying it must have been to be Hope in Chapter 4? He’s following this chick because he rightfully acknowledges that she is a badass and can probably help him get stronger, but this chick also resents his presence the whole way. She almost abandons him completely.  

He was almost abandoned for real. 

In the most dangerous place still in Cocoon. 

He isn’t yet the Hope he is at the end of the game and nowhere close to the Hope of FFXIII-2 that could convince an entire Academy to follow his lead.  

His story almost ended there in the Hanging Edge.

It hurts my feelings that he begs Lightning to take him with her, that he says “I’ll try harder, I’ll get stronger…” Just don’t leave me. is the silent plea at the end. After all, what reason does he have to believe that she wouldn’t when he has already watched her walk away from Snow, who she is connected with through her sister, without even looking back and then left him once already? 

He knows that this time there is no Sazh and Vanille following after them. They parted ways. Hope knows that no one will find him if she does actually leave him behind. The stakes are so much higher.

So, when Lightning decides to allow him to keep following her, Hope’s relief is so potent and painful. “Oh, thank god, she likes me after all,” is the joke I made at seeing it this go-round but, in reality, he was likely thinking of how he could stay useful to her, how he could prove to her that he could toughen up. 

I don’t believe Lightning would have actually left him considering that Odin came because she was growing desperate. Lightning has already been established as a protector with Serah. She entered herself into the Purge and took on a Pulse fal’cie all for the sake of her sister. Odin targeted Hope the moment he appeared. The Datapad says that she moves without thinking to protect him. There are multiple times when Odin attacks Hope and you, as Lightning, have to heal him; in those moments, Odin’s bar goes up faster. (It takes a significant jump when you use magic. Just attacking him as Commando will not impress him.) 

Oh how wonderful, how terrifying, to be loved to destruction

The full quote can be found here

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.

Bhunivelze’s Double Deity, made from the power of (or honestly just straight up the bodies of) the gods Lindzei and Pulse. Just casually in the hands of a 14 (technically) year old who got psychologically tortured and possessed by Bhuni-boy into being his eyes and ears.

I GOT HOPE'S FR ABILITY AND MAN. WHAT THE FUCK. JUMPSCARE

Crisis Core (2008) | Platform: PlayStation Portable

Today’s episode was heartbreaking

We’ve seen so much of Xie Lian’s pain

So much of the fall of XianLe

But now

Will you tell me that it was all his fault?

The “consequence of his actions”?

So what should we blame him for?

For being a child against the most powerful and cruel ancient evil?

The one that lived 1000 years, destroyed all the gods and deceived the entire world?

Or was he too stubborn and not listened to other people?

Well let me tell you

XIE LIAN WAS NEVER WRONG FOR NOT LISTENING TO OTHERS.

Who should he have listened to?

That very evil that told him not to try and help his people?

His guoshi who knew everything and told him nothing but to sacrifice an innocent child in “penance” to that very evil?

Should he have crushed all youngans in one go, kill the poor starving people, led to desparation?

Should he have told his own desperate people that their cure was in murder and watch the inevitable massacre?

The only thing

The only thing that he should have seriously done differently

His biggest, most fatal mistake

He did

BY LISTENING TO SOMEONE WHO TOLD HIM HE WAS WRONG

ONE TIME.

He listened to his father.

The King of Xian Le.

When at the very beginning of it all they had an argument

Where Xie Lian insisted they should melt his golden statues and let the starving homeless people into his shrines

That’s EXACTLY what they should’ve done, but they did not

Because guess what the father said

We can’t. Because we did not build the shrines and the statues.

People of Xian Le did.

Do you want to disregard your people by doing that?

SAID THE KING

Knowing VERY WELL that he is talking about THE ROYALTY OF XIAN LE.

THE RITCH PEOPLE OF XIAN LE.

THE ONES WHO LET HIM RULE.

THE ONES WHO EASILY MIGHT TAKE HIS POWER

AND LIFE AWAY

IF HE DISPLEASES THEM.

But he knows how to PHRASE IT RIGHT to his son who CHERISHES HIS PEOPLE NO MATTER THE STATUS.

And who might very much not know the intricacies behind the ruler’s chambers.

Because Xie Lian

Was

Never

Meant

TO RULE.

He was raised to be a Martial God.

To fight demons and grant wishes.

NOT

TO RULE

A COUNTRY

BUT GUESS WHO

WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO RULE THE COUNTRY????

WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO MAKE SURE A HUGE PART OF IT WON’T STARVE TO DEATH?????

THE KING

And his son had to

ABANDON HEAVEN

To come deal with his mess

You can try blaming Xie Lian for not listening to the prayers from that part of Xian Le.

But he did not NOT listen.

He DID NOT HEAR.

Because the prayers system of “the ritcher - the louder” is inherently corrupt.

And growing up in a wealthy capital

Xie Lian must’ve not even SUSPECTED that there’ll be a part of his country so poor that no offerings would be enough for him to hear the prayers.

He did not know.

BUT THE KING

DID.

There’s no way he didn’t.

Yet does anyone

Does anyone in the book

And outside, anyone of the readers

Ever thought to blame him?

No.

Not even once have i seen this take.

Not even i realised it until recently. Thanks to my dear friend @3luecactuz

And why?

Because Xie Lian tells us the story.

And he himself

Completely believes

That it was all his fault.

When his only real fault was in not standing his ground

Agains the only person

Who held authority in his eyes.

Who was the authority in his life from the very beginning of it.

Who, no matter the future arguments, was the person he loved.

His father.

In the face of the greatest crisis he’s ever seen

Under the pressure to make the right choice for so many innocent lives

He gives in and listenes to a person who he not only inherently trusts

But who objectively had much more experience and knowledge than him

Who’s flaws he has not yet seen clearly enough. And never will.

Because this person raised him to be

Perfect.

And he failed.

Because no one is perfect.

And he believed in it in the wrong time and place. He gave in.

Decided to look for another solution.

And gave the evil orchestrating his demise just enough time to pull the first string.

Of many.

So tell me.

Really, tell me.

Did he deserve this?

Should he have listened more?

Should he have?

Or maybe

Just maybe

He needed someone

Who could have told him

To do what he thinks is right.