So excited to share a preview of my Serah piece for the show-stoppingly gorgeous @ffladieszine!!!

You can check it out at https://ffladieszine.bigcartel.com/

Ah XIII-2 ~ I love this game! One of my favourite Final Fantasy’s…

i don't mind seeing people interpret hope and lightning as having romantic connotations surrounding them in the lr lore, but i personally think claiming it to be proven as canon really undermines just how badly bhunivelze fucked with hope's head

"bhunivelze developed a romantic obsession with lightning because he absorbed hope's heart!" yes, but that's not all there is to it. you gotta keep in mind that bhunivelze used lightning to psychologically mess with hope for centuries, he used her image as a tool to get hope to obsess over the past and wish for nothing more than to be reunited with her (remember that the last time hope ever saw her was at the end of xiii, while everyone else aside from vanille and fang had come back at that point), and she had such a major hand in inspiring hope to become the person, the leader, he'd become since then

bhunivelze didn't inherit hope's emotions until after he had become obsessed with lightning as a symbol of the past. if you view hope's and lightning's relationship as platonic/familial (like i personally do) then bhunivelze becomes so much more sick, and it adds to the misogynistic undertones in his behavior toward mwynn and etro, his own family. he took something pure, the admiration a young boy had for an older woman who replaced his mom as his female role model, and twisted it into something dark, inappropriate and obsessive, something that would serve him. that's what he inherited. he was never able to love his mother or daughter, how could he possibly understand the familial love between hope and lightning?

bhunivelze's sudden feelings for lightning is, in my opinion, meant to disturb us because of how innocent hope's admiration for lightning actually is. turning hope back into a kid sells that even more, it specifically draws out lightning's maternal instincts toward him, just for her to be faced with what bhunivelze has twisted it into after centuries of torture. bhunivelze isn't representative of hope's and lightning's relationship, they're victims of his abuse of the human heart

again, interpreting them as romantic is fine and dandy if that's how you see them, but i feel like claiming it's all "proof that hope x lightning is canon" ignores a lot of important details surrounding them and bhunivelze, more specifically it downplays the absolutely devastating impact bhunivelze had on hope's state of mind, and subsequently, lightning's rage upon seeing it for herself

There's so many reasons to be sad that opera omnia ended, but the main thing I really wanted to see if it had kept going was if they were ever gonna add hilda 😭 there's so much potential with her but ff2 alone didn't do her enough justice and agh!! she could've been so cool!!!

HELLLOOO USER AKIMOJO!! first things first, I LOVE UR ART. wanted 2 put that out there hehe <3 also i wanted 2 ask u if u have clear references for serah, noel, and hope back n side designs? i wanna send them 2 someone in order to make habdmade figures and i would do them myself but i dont have any of the games anymore..... i just figured 2 ask u bc maybe u have em and u r like the Number 1 FF13 Artist in my head fr. hehe but yeah anyway have an amazing day, sorry 2 bother u

Oof I don't have access to the games right now either 😔 can't help you there

But if anyone who sees this is able/willing to help out, that would be super cool!

I love how Lightning falls in a cool way in this scene and then Noel:

The way he shakes his head is just so cute <3

how can i not be obsessed with lightning returns when it does cool shit like this

This whole chapter was an absolute gut punch oh my god, PSICOM sucks so incredibly bad

Leaving dajh alone with them was such a heartbreaking decision for sazh to make, but what other choice did he have 😭 he'd go to the ends of the earth even knowing he can't actually save his son, just to spare him from the worst of two evils

the in-game ark bgm is amazing, but it doesn't really capture that same hollow, gut-wrenching sense of foreboding that the unused version conveys so so well

thinking about this again because the direct parallel in these scenes makes me sick

chaos is pretty much always presented as this black mass that sorta oozes and accumulates into this cloud of fucked up-ness. it almost looks corrupting in a way, and that goes along so perfectly with bhunivelze's perception of it

chaos feels to me like sort of a narrative embodiment of bhunivelze's hatred for etro and mwynn. it comes from valhalla, where both of them reside(d) once. he doesn't understand it, he can't see it, but all humans are created with a piece of it within them. he views that chaos as impure, as if it defiles what would otherwise be a perfect creation, almost like how he would've cared more for etro if she hadn't shared mwynn's image. he became scared of what etro could be capable of; he murdered mwynn to gain control, and he's afraid of losing it. he feels disdain for humans' hearts and the chaos within them, because just like the women in his life that he cast aside, they're out of his control

but the thing is that chaos is more than that. it protects. the cluster of dead souls in luxerion's cathedral wasn't them being trapped by the chaos, they were being preserved, kept safe until they could be reincarnated along with the living. just like how lumina kept serah's soul safe within her, which just so happened to be the one thing bhunivelze was trying to keep lightning from getting back

the scene where serah is being strung up by the chaos (in this case, yeul's souls were mixed in, but they're so ingrained into the chaos i don't think it really matters) is terrifying, but really the chaos is what kept her safe. it's what let serah communicate with lightning in valhalla, and it's chaos, lumina, that took hold of her soul and kept it safe until the end. because of that, bhunivelze lost his only bargaining chip against lightning

then there's the hope scene, which is so similar but so incredibly different compared to serah's scene. they're both strung up, but bhunivelze holds hope so much more strictly than the chaos did serah, and the strings make him resemble a puppet more than anything. the light eminating from them makes it look so much more pristine and "presentable" in a way; it's a lot more controlled (and i'm just now realizing hope's pose is very reminiscent of depictions of jesus dying on the cross, goddammit the symbolism)

but despite hope's scene looking cleaner, and more ethereal because of the light, there's something much more sinister about it. serah's scene is messy, there's chaos swirling around all over the place, it's spilling out of her eyes, voices are overlapping in the creepiest way possible; but more than anything it's emotional, messy, and is meant to stir lightning

hope's scene is cold, it's calculated, it's purposeful, and it's all perpetuated by this one being who values control over all else. just like the ark, it represents bhunivelze's ideals. but this time it's not being shown to lightning to unsettle her, it's to persuade her. it's bhunivelze's way of telling her "look at how much i've sacrificed to make this perfect vessel, someone who is so free of impurity, someone who is worthy of god", and "you can be worthy too". but to lightning, it's an insult. all she sees is someone she cared for so deeply, who bhunivelze had ruined so he could use him as a puppet to manipulate her

what's even crazier to think about is that the main thing he had "extracted" out of hope, the chaos, the heart, that he deemed to be so impure and vile; made its way into bhunivelze himself. by his own standards, he was not pure anymore. and the moment when it becomes most clear that bhunivelze is experiencing emotion is when tears gush out of his eyes, and he lifts his head similarly to how serah's was tilted up when chaos was pouring out of her own

Lightning: if I had a gil for every time a loved one's lifeless body was strung up in front of me to taunt me I'd have 2 gil, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice

STOP UGH I CANT HANDLE HOW CUTE THIS IS WHEN I KNOW HOW HORRIBLY WRONG ITLL GO SOON

"She was no longer a child" HBNNBGGHHGBBB their mother's death really was the moment when "claire" died

Serah's dependency issues were already clear as day in xiii-2, but seeing it on paper like this is a whole different experience 😭

And the way she undermines her own concerns... ouughhh, neither her nor lightning want to actually tackle their trauma

Serah's dependency issues were already clear as day in xiii-2, but seeing it on paper like this is a whole different experience 😭

And the way she undermines her own concerns... ouughhh, neither her nor lightning want to actually tackle their trauma

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GUESS WHAT ARRIVED TODAY

I finally ordered the first ff13 book last week and it's gonna take another 1-2 weeks to arrive... dude i feel like a rabid animal, I'm dying of impatience rn