Out And About

💖Even for a moment💖

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

The entire series is about Shen Qiao’s growing affection for Yan Wushi, just expressed in ways that are very specific to him as a character, and it’s freaking adorable the whole time.

Shen Qiao is very aware that Yan Wushi is a little messed up from the moment they meet, but in the end he has to admit that Yan Wushi is a very smart and more knowledgeable person. Shen Qiao is drawn to him every time Yan Wushi makes a very reasonable and intelligent remark - especially in regards to predicting how human hearts work. While Yan Wushi thinks evil is the root of all hearts, he’s not in denial about love and sympathy EXISTING; he just believes these things are not strong enough or always end up the reason someone is corrupted one way or another.

Shen Qiao is undeniably attracted to a smart man, especially one who is still fundamentally teaching him things about the world that he never knew. Yan Wushi explains things in terms Shen Qiao understands - good things exist, they can both agree on this, but bad things also happen, and they agree on this. Now the two of them get to debate the overall takeaway from these two points. They disagree on the conclusion, but they agree on the evidence presented.

Shen Qiao gets so engaged in listening to Yan Wushi’s advice that Yan Wushi can play around with him like "There's a lesson to be learned, find it" even when he just wants to play chess and see Shen Qiao’s serious expression and over-trusting nature. Shen Qiao knows Yan Wushi teases him, but he also loves to learn from him, and so trusts him again and again.

Shen Qiao denies Yan Wushi’s advances in the same way that he does when others flirt with him - Yan Wushi never stops but also rarely goes too far. Yan Wushi starts teasing and parading him around as a kept man and Shen Qiao eventually gets used to it and shuts him down whenever possible, but he never gets angry about it because it’s just a little dumb fun after all. Yan Wushi calls him A-Qiao and "my" A-Qiao and Shen Qiao protests before giving up and letting him have his way because it's just a name, where’s the harm? Yan Wushi kissed him so hard he passed out from the rage and indignation but Shen Qiao can’t really say it was harmful in comparison to what other things Yan Wushi could have forced upon him.

In all instances, Shen Qiao never or very tamely loses his temper, but Yan Wushi is also never losing his temper at Shen Qiao’s stubbornness, and it makes for a solid basis for their relationship that I really love. Yan Wushi never forces Shen Qiao into a physical relationship and is even seemingly averse to physical and/or sexual relationships (note his feelings towards Hehuan Sect and indifference to pair cultivation), seeing a kiss as his limit to forcing anything from Shen Qiao - and something he doesn’t think is special beyond a way to tease.

In essence, Shen Qiao recognizes that Yan Wushi WANTS him to have some level of hope and agency in his life, rather than simply micromanaging Shen Qiao until he gets what he wants. He wants Shen Qiao to make the final choice, to admit he’s wrong by his own open admission. He confirms that though Yan Wushi finds him physically attractive like the rest, it’s not his appearance that Yan Wushi is attracted to - it’s his mind and his mentality. This means their relationship’s primary development is entire romantic in nature, a mental game between their equally stubborn and tolerant personalities and how their minds end up very compatible even when clashing in deep philosophical debates.

Compare this to almost every other villain we have. People who try to force Shen Qiao to be locked up without agency like Yu Ai, people who hold others hostage like Chen Gong, and pretty much everyone else who thinks killing Shen Qiao or crippling him or physically/psychological abusing him to force him into submission.

Yan Wushi does beat him up a few times, but what’s his primary method of "torturing" Shen Qiao? It’s letting others do the work. It’s dropping him into an impoverished area to see what it’s like to fend for himself. It’s letting others who covet the Zhuyang Strategy hunt him down. It’s letting Chen Gong befriend and betray him. It’s actively escorting Shen Qiao to Xuandu Mountain to be betrayed by Yu Ai up close and personal. It’s letting others belittle and spit on his name and reputation while Yan Wushi himself treats Shen Qiao like he’s special and precious and saving his life over and over. It’s trading Shen Qiao to Sang Jingxing but leaving him with his sword and a demonic core - a way out, a means of still fighting back, even if it breaks him to do so.

Even in the extras it’s stated that Yan Wushi likes watching misfortune befall someone, whether it’s their own fault or just bad luck. He doesn’t have any aspirations of being an emperor, doesn’t care whether most important figures live or die. Despite wanting to be and then being the top martial artist in the world, he mostly just likes to WATCH. He knows nothing is permanent, not good or bad; he’s entertained by causing mischief, but he’s far from tyrannical. He’s just a massively powerful troublemaker, like a trickster god, and Shen Qiao ends up finding it charming because Yan Wushi ends up doing nearly as much good as Shen Qiao - they can’s save everyone, they can’t make everything perfect or prosperous forever, but they do try. And they do sometimes even suceed.

Yan Wushi will watch in amusement as Shen Qiao struggles, but ultimately what he really wants is to win the argument - not necessarily to make Shen Qiao die but to make his morals break. He’s flippant but patient, he’s powerful but not overbearing. He thinks very little of Shen Qiao’s physical presence and only thinks his mind is a worthy opponent.

Shen Qiao being at Yan Wushi’s mercy at the beginning of their relationship gives him a glimpse into Yan Wushi’s motives and true levels of evil, and he’s intrigued. Yan Wushi is all too aware of the evil nature of humanity, but in a way he rebels against it just as much as he denies all that is generous and kind. In the end, Yan Wushi’s misanthropy is also a deep hatred for the corruption that he thinks exists in every human heart. Shen Qiao and Yan Wushi are equally adamant about uprooting evil, just with their own personalities being what truly clashes.

Shen Qiao himself doesn’t recognize his attraction for Yan Wushi for a long time, but as a reader you can absolutely see how he falls in love with Yan Wushi as a mental opponent as well - someone who makes Shen Qiao really THINK, who challenges him to be an even better version of himself, and whose misanthropy being in his life only further solidifies his own empathetic beliefs in ways he could have never managed on his own. Yan Wushi may love teasing Shen Qiao, but Shen Qiao very much loves arguing back against Yan Wushi.

I'm not going to make a fanfiction, I'm not going to make a fanfiction, I'm 300 pages in but I'm not making a fanfiction or anything -

Hey! I found the "cut it off so you have to click a button to see the whole rant" button! How many made it this far down? Be honest.

I notice people tend to only focus on Yan Wushi's affection towards Shen Qiao cause it's the more obvious one of the two Yan Wushi doesn't tend to feel any need to hide his emotions like. At all but I absolutely live for the little moments in the extras where Shen Qiao shows his fondness of Yan Wushi. The small, subtle smiles, moments where Shen Qiao laughs at something Yan Wushi says. He's a reserved person already, and while Shen Qiao does get flustered, he also doesn't generally startle easily when it comes to come ons (see his calm rejections of other people who have liked him) but since Yan Wushi does happen to be a uniquely infuriating person - it's quite sweet to see when Shen Qiao's affection does peak through, rare as it is.

Give me glimpses of the Shen Qiao that is so outwardly exasperated on the daily, but would go to the ends of the Earth for his partner. Give me glimpses of the Shen Qiao that can't help admiring the tenacious, stubborn, confident arrogant aspects of Yan Wushi, despite them believing in such diametrically opposed ideologies. Give me glimpses of the Shen Qiao that marvels in their similarities and differences. Give me glimpses of the Shen Qiao that's so exasperated by Yan Wushi's nonsense that he just has to laugh. Give me glimpses of the Shen Qiao that fell in love with Yan Wushi, against all odds.

I love it.

Truly the all time funniest writer thing is when you're doing edits and you think to yourself "omg I've got the PERFeCT sentence to add right here!" and then you stick it in all excited, only to find that literally three lines down you have virtually that exact same sentence in the draft already.

🥹😭🤧🥲

Tears of joy tho, they're so cute!

“I met him once when we were children. He was a chivalrous soul even then, and has served his empire indefatigably ever since.” - Joshua Rosfield 🥀

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

The full quote can be found here

"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:

Fang Xin Guoshi 🦋

He's still beautiful

So pretty, must reblog to save

Takes lots of time cuz things happen but alas Im done~

I love @poppingsoop.bsky.social Taihua n SHTB design 🥺💕💕💕 and got inspired. Also lol I'm bad at designing, nyeh dun care, just wanna have fun~ xD

Not to mention Jin Ling then trying to turn all of his hatred onto Wen Ning afterwards. He's a kid who's been reminded of his parents' deaths with every breath he takes, only having stories about them and being fed Jiang Cheng's unhinged hatred for all the love that was lost. If Wei Wuxian turned out to not be the monster he thought he was, then he...he has to hate someone else!

But then Wen Ning turns out to be even MORE gentle than Wei Wuxian, filled with guilt for what happened, flinging himself in front of Lan Sizhui and saying "I won't fight back, get your anger out on me if it'll put you at ease!"

That scene had me crying too yo. Everyone rallies behind Lan Sizhui and calls Jin Ling out for being too aggressive - no one takes his side, no one understands how much he's been affected by his life. Jiang Cheng's solution is to tell him to get angry, but now that's just turned all of his peers against him and calling him violent and unreasonable. So he just breaks down sobbing saying "Yes, I'm a horrible person!" even though NONE of what happened is his fault and he has a right to be angry and trying to find an outlet for his emotion. He just doesn't know HOW. No one ever taught him, everyone ridicules him for crying and distances themselves from his anger. People treat him delicately yet say he needs to toughen up.

I think the worst part is that Wei Wuxian's first scathing (accidental) comment, "Your mother never taught you any manners" is kinda really true. He never had a mother to teach him to express himself, to support him and be vulnerable with him. We joke about how many uncles Jin Ling has but I mean how many AUNTS does he have? How many mother figures does he have? Qin Su is basically traumatized by the death of Jin Rusong so is maybe not the motherly type. Nie Huisang, Lan Xichen, Jiang Cheng - unmarried, unmarried, unmarried.

Wei Wuxian is really the first one to A: tell Jin Ling to get over himself and doesn't treat him like some untouchable young master who no one has the right to lord over, B: openly admits when he's sorry and apologizes and teaches Jin Ling the concept of emotional vulnerability, C: stands by Jin Ling's side to teach him to be himself rather than scolding or threatening or guilting him to fit in better. The fact that Wei Wuxian is NOT a woman may even be better because Jin Ling is seeing that men don't have to fit into the unyielding mold of tough guys but can still have fun without being a pushover.

Jin Ling is such a tragedy because there really is no one left to blame. It's not that easy. Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning are responsible, but they're not maniacal villains laughing at the top of a mountain without a care in the world for the consequences. They cared, they had family who were lost, they suffered before and don't want anyone to suffer again - they hate themselves just as much for their part in what happened.

Even Jin Guangyao is such a complicated case for Jin Ling. It's the uncle who was always nice to him, who gave him his spirit dog, who was always putting on a smile. In comparison to Jiang Cheng, Jin Guangyao was a lifeline. And then Jin Guangyao turns out to be a villain who doesn't bat an eye at killing and threatening...but who also didn't WANT these bad things to be "necessary." He too was wronged by the world and lashed out at its unfairness.

This fifteen year old kid has gone through so much, simultaneously pampered into a spoiled brat and utterly isolated from his peers, filled with vengeance for his entire life but also trying to love and be loved. He learned from Jiang Cheng to pretend to be above it all, and he learned from Jin Guangyao to be kind and forgive, but all of it was lies and unhealthy coping. Jiang Cheng essentially taught him to argue with anyone who disagrees with him or looks down on him to assert his dominance, and Jin Guangyao taught him to suppress his desire to speak his mind and never start fights because of etiquette and self-preservation - to the point that he rejects who he is and wants to be.

At this age, Jin Ling's already having to learn the lesson that everyone's going to be throwing opinions around, no one is perfect, you can't easily sort people into categories. In the end, he can take advice from others, but it's up to him to make the choice of who he wants to be. And he's learned that unrelenting resentment makes for an easy path to walk in life, but it's not actually how life works. The cultivation world can turn on someone they worshipped unconditionally. That included Wei Wuxian, that included Jin Guangyao, and even to an extent Jin Ling himself.

He has to take over the Jin Clan after all these scandals and atrocities, but he's become the kind of kid who will answer an insignificant man's plea for help, who is making friends who won't judge him and will stand by him even when he makes mistakes, and by the end of the story he's matured, yet also finally learned to be a kid. Nothing's perfect, none of the tragedies of the past can be reversed (and Jiang Cheng's still gonna get into fights whenever he accidentally runs into Wen Ning), but at least now Jin Ling can choose how he decides to live, who he hates and who he forgives.

while reading the books, i remember wei wuxian’s relationship with jin ling hitting me especially hard. i was crying when the whole stabbing thing happened. but i truly adore what becomes of them and do you know why? because jin ling does something the others could never, something miraculous really––he actually unlearns the prejudice he’s been taught to hold against wei wuxian. he meets wwx, full of disdain, slowly learning about who wwx really is and it has nothing to do with wwx’s outward appearance. and when the truth is revealed, the internal warring for jin ling is plainly portrayed and even if he does give in to a hate intermingled with grief that he has internalised towards this one entity (wei wuxian was never a person in his mind, just the ‘killer’ of his parents, a phantom, before the events of the book happened), you can tell his heart has already turned, that it will keep turning and that’s what happens. you have jin ling, an orphaned child, who hated someone whom his mother loved dearly, because that man caused his parents’ death but it is such a commendable thing that wei wuxian was able to create a space in jin ling’s heart and jin ling was able to accept it. it’s the way both jin ling & jiang cheng blame the death of their parents on wwx but only the former was able to see wei wuxian clearly and actually forge a bond of love with him.

it’s the fact that if ANYONE in this story can actually rightfully hold a grudge against wei wuxian, it’s jin ling, but instead this teenager decides that wei wuxian is much too good and that having him as an uncle is lovely, after all.

❗❗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.