Bhunivelze’s Double Deity, Made From The Power Of (or Honestly Just Straight Up The Bodies Of) The

Let's talk about Caius and Yeul, shall we?

First, who in the world thinks it's a bad thing for Caius to be obsessed with protecting Yeul? Seriously. Is it the purple hair? Is it the fact that you fight Caius over a dozen times (counting Paradox Endings and DLCs)? What in the world is wrong with Caius loving Yeul to the point that he wants to destroy time itself?

Not to get too existential (but to get slightly existential), Caius is basically being told that his daughter is destined to die before she can reach 20 years old. He starts out as a Guardian, impressing the Goddess so much that she gifts him her immortal heart so that he can protect Yeul for eternity. His job has now become to eternally protect and care for Yeul, but he's also being told that Yeul will never be allowed to have a long and fulfilling free life. His job is to protect her, but the one thing he can't protect her from is her fate. If she sees a vision where she has to die, Caius is not allowed to stop it. He raised and protected this girl just so that she can die to keep the timeline stable or whatever. His job is to make sure that she dies the "correct" way for the sake of time. Can you blame him for being driven mad after being forced to escort Yeul to her destined death generation after generation?

Caius loves Yeul. He is not in love with Yeul (you creeps of the internet), but he loves her. He loves every version of Yeul that comes along like his daughter, no matter how different she is, no matter how she is destined to die. He remembers every one of them, he loves every one of them even with how many he meets and raises and loses each generation.

"Although they had the same soul, every one of them was unique! A Yeul who dreamed of travel! A Yeul who loved to sing! A Yeul who collected flowers. They all died. All of them, before my eyes!"

Serah collapses after he says this, even though she's just standing to the side. Why? Because she's horrified. In 400AF, a single Yeul had to die because of Serah and Noel's presence - for the first time, Serah realized that changing time is hurting someone. Serah is responsible for that Yeul dying. Every change in timeline, even if it's to fix it, is forcing an innocent girl to walk into the arms of the nearest monster so she can die and keep things from getting worse.

Serah was horrified that Yeul just walked to her death willingly, like Yeul sacrificed herself just to allow Serah and Noel to continue their journey, but Caius has seen Yeul accept her fate hundreds of times. He paid attention. He remembers every Yeul, their dreams, their preferences, their favorite activities and favorite experiences, and he's had to watch them die just like Serah watched 400AF Yeul die without being able to do anything.

Caius got so tired of being immortal, but the main reason was that his entire existence was to watch a girl grow up and then die - often in his arms because he has to protect her up until that point. It finally ended at 700AF, Yeul's cycle of reincarnation was likely at its end since there were no more humans, and the next Guardian was born who might finally be able to end Caius as well. He hoped the cycle would finally end, but Noel was too weak to kill him. Yeul believed in the future, and that was awful to Caius because it meant that this wasn't the end. Yeul would keep living and dying for others, never living for herself, and Caius would be forced to keep watching it and letting it happen forever.

"Her only purpose is to die over and over! Even though she can see the future, she's not allowed to escape her fate! She is born knowing that she will die before she has truly lived! Countless deaths, without a life to give them meaning."

Let's talk about Noel too, because his relationship amounts to only truly knowing one Yeul but overall valuing her just as much as Caius.

Now, remember that Noel is having memory problems for the entire game. His memories are in flux, sometimes leaving him, perhaps even changing without him knowing it. That's why, when he's killed in the Void Beyond and sent into an endless dream, his dreamworld sends him home. The end of the world is depressing, it's dark and sad and he's only holding into hope for Yeul's sake - to see her smile, to find more people so she won't have to be alone. Noel's dream is to see his Yeul again. Even if he has to go through losing his life again, this is the world that he knows and the world that he was slowly losing as a result of his memories vanishing.

Right after you wake him from his dream world and enter the lighted (real) 700AF (since you can eventually reach it from the Historia Crux, I believe the lightened version is the actual 700AF time period; they escape the Void Beyond by translating Noel's dream into a real time location at the end of the world by slaying the Gogmagog), Noel says that he "can't remember what happened to her", despite just remembering Yeul's fate dying young to her vision - this is the place we learn that visions eat away at a seeress' life and Serah is one too.

This is probably lost in the English translation, but I interpret this as Noel knows in concept that Yeul died because of her visions, but he can't remember details of the event itself. Right after Yeul dies in the dream, Noel pauses to give the narration of how he learned why Yeul died in his arms. How did he learn that Yeul's death was a result of her visions? As far as Noel was concerned, in the cutscene we viewed, Noel walked up to Yeul putting a prophecy in an Oracle Drive, she collapsed in his arms and told him they'd meet again, and then she died. Caius was already gone; no one could have told Noel that Yeul didn't just randomly keel over. Maybe he could have guessed that her vision was related to her death, but he could have very well just assumed she had a particularly terrible vision that killed her, not that each one takes a part of her life.

When confronting Caius in the final battle(s), Caius assumes that Serah doesn't know about visions killing her - he is proven wrong. When Caius declares that Yeul is bound by a curse, Noel asks "What curse?" I interpret this as Noel not thinking that Yeul's visions and rebirth are a curse. It's tragic and scary, certainly, but Serah's situation is what Noel is more worried about. Unlike Yeul, Serah won't be reborn; she gets one life's worth of visions and that's it. Yeul has to die over and over, but Noel only focuses on the fact that she gets to live over and over. Her lives are short, but even when she was at the end of the world with only two people left to accompany her, she kept smiling. Noel concludes that she must have made the most of every life, because even though her lives were short, she lived so many that she had more time than anyone could have lived in a single long lifespan. Noel does not see Yeul's endless death and rebirth as a curse.

When Serah is brought to her knees at Caius's words about Yeul's deaths, she is able to rise again because Noel declares that Yeul's deaths weren't a curse. "She knew we'd meet again. Think, Caius. Think. Was it really a curse? Was it forced on her by Etro? Do you really think that Yeul wanted to die, and not come back? Of course not. Yeul wanted to come back. Every time she died in your arms, she wanted to come back. She knew her next life would be short. She knew! Because she wanted to see you! Again and again, without end!"

The Eyes of Etro are a curse that take away a seeress' life with every vision, there's no denying that. When the timeline changes or is put at risk, someone has to bear the weight of the consequences. If Yeul hadn't been reborn, it's likely that a random candidate would have been chosen each time a seeress died, similar to how Serah gained her Eyes when her personal timeline was altered and her subsequent journey was the catalyst to the entire timeline being put in flux.

But Yeul choosing to live again and again must have been her own choice. She wanted to keep others from suffering, but she could also live what amounted to a long life, living in every era, seeing Caius again, having new experiences and new interests and new adventures as the world changed with each life she lived. She didn't need immortality; she wanted reality, no matter how cold and harsh it could be. The sad moments were worth the happy visions and happy futures.

Caius was the one consistent thing about each of Yeul's lives, the one thing that didn't change. She lived life after life in every time zone, probably missing large chunks of time and being disconnected from her reality because a seeress needs to be careful who she interacts with (see the fall of Paddra for an example of how her presence is dangerous). Of course she grew attached to Caius as an anchor, the one consistent thing about all the times she's lived.

Notice how there are scenes depicting both Noel and Caius alike crying over a Yeul who is smiling when she dies. Noel was the first Guardian who gave Caius hope that Noel could kill him; Noel was the first person that a Yeul valued besides Caius because she had a vision that she was going to see him again. Yeul likely lost everyone else in each of her lives; by the time she's reborn, all the people she might have become friends with are gone and she's isolated from everyone except for the Paddraen tribe and the Guardians. Caius and his immortality is the only one that she always knew she'd see again - until Noel happened. Yeul died in Noel's arms just like she had so many times in Caius's arms, but Noel chose to value the idea that he'd see her again, not dread it.

As revealed in Lightning Returns, the Unseen Chaos (a different type of Chaos from the regular one that makes up all souls; a more volatile version that destroys) is made up of Yeul's souls specifically. The Unseen Chaos protects, empowers, and even revives Caius because it is Yeul looking after her Guardian just as Caius was looking after her. Yeul is the Chaos that floods Caius after Noel's speech where he has to strike back as Caius doesn't believe his words, the Chaos that transforms Caius into the Jet Bahamut for the final boss of XIII-2. She was desperate to keep the one consistent thing about all of her lives with her. No matter what Caius did, how "I don't want to please her, I want to save her", and how he destroyed the world even when she just wanted to see visions of people living happily, she can't let him go.

Ever had to make a decision and kept going around in circles about the pros and cons, what you gain but what you have to sacrifice for one decision then the next? Imagine every thought you had existing as a separate entity - still fundamentally you, because you came to that conclusion at one point or another, but conflicting and arguing over which opinion mattered most. That's what Yeul is, hundreds of people all with different thoughts and opinions but who fundamentally start out as the same base person.

She hates Caius for some things, but that doesn't mean she doesn't also care about him and need him. For all he does, Caius cares about Yeul, telling Lightning that Yeul cannot go to the New World without destroying it with her Unseen Chaos, so he's fine accompanying her to make sure she isn't doomed to be alone forever.

Caius is very evil at times, driven to his goal with absolute focus. But his greatest flaw is being completely dedicated to Yeul. In Oerba 200AF, that Caius is not hell-bent on destroying the timeline yet. That Caius is the first one, living through all of the lives of Yeul, before 700AF happens and he declares he's going to slay the goddess. That Caius is dedicated to eliminating time-travelers because "To change history is a sin." He bows to Yeul and accepts her judgment when she declares that they can remold history as they desire. The only reason they go to Augusta Tower is likely because it is the sight of a massive Paradox; that 200 AF Caius is dedicated to stopping all Paradoxes to hopefully extend Yeul's time.

However, Yeul gives Serah and Noel the artifact that allows them to resolve the Paradox, killing Yeul with the vision in the process. Notice that Caius doesn't see Yeul happy at her vision where everyone's smiling. He just sees her dead. This is how Caius came to want the timeline destroyed; he tries to keep history in line to keep Yeul from having visions, but she's completely fine with dying if it means a happier future. Nothing he does can save her. Nothing except destroying time and fate itself.

In the end, he died in Valhalla to be with Yeul forever, he stopped her cycle of reincarnation, but it didn't save Yeul because her Chaos was too strong. She destroyed the world, not even on purpose because she can't control it. It's just her existences themselves that cause destruction. Time was destroyed, Yeul no longer was born into new lives and no longer had to suffer visions, but in return, the two of them live in an eternal half-dead, half-living state within Etro’s Temple. Yeul has Caius with her forever, Yeul no longer has to die, and yet it’s all still wrong.

So really, the main enemy of XIII-2 was Etro, who loved humanity so much that she broke the timeline, gave a man an immortal heart to the point that it drove him insane, allowed a girl to be reborn so many times that her souls became a living weapon, and who gave Serah the Eyes of Etro even though Noel can travel the timeline without needing them.

Final theory of the post: what if 700AF Caius deciding to use his power to change the timeline is what began Yeul's many deaths and rebirths in the first place? If he hadn't begun messing with the timeline to try and destroy it, what if Yeul rarely would have had visions without all those disturbances? She wouldn't have had a short life, she wouldn't have wanted to be reborn. Random people would have still been blessed/cursed with visions every now and then, but not to the point of always dying young. What if Caius created his own suffering with his vendetta? Caius is the eternal paradox, the one that started it all and who maintained the distortions so long as he lived.

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

the untamed if it was written by rick riordan

ep 1. I Accidentally Get Resurrected

ep 2. My Teenage Nephew Bullies Me

ep 3. The Teacher’s Pet Duels Me to the Death

ep 4. Lan Xichen Shoots His Shot

ep 5. Jiang Cheng Needs a Wingman

ep 6. We Speak With Lan Zhan’s Frozen Grandma

ep 7. Lan Zhan Smiles

ep 8. We Embark On an Epic Field Trip (Also Nie Huaisang is Here)

ep 9. I Throw Hands With a Bird

ep 10. We Meet Our Celebrity Crushes

ep 11. We Pull Up to Evil Summer Camp

ep 12. The Low-Budget Dog Animatronic Tries to Eat Me

ep 13. We Battle the Tortoise of Doom

ep 14. I Threaten to Strip

ep 15. My Stepmom Ships Us Off

ep 16. Pretty Much Everyone I Love is Dead Now

ep 17. I Find a Cure

ep 18. I Plummet To My Death

ep 19. I Come Back Wrong

ep 20. Lan Zhan Breaks Up With Me

ep 21. I Evade Non-Consensual Therapy Sessions

ep 22. My Evil Flute Solo Kills Everybody

ep 23. I Ditch the Dinner Party

ep 24. My Ex’s Brother Tries to Stage an Intervention

ep 25. Jin Zixuan Fumbles My Sister

ep 26. I Reanimate My Homie

ep 27. My Brother Questions My Interior Design

ep 28. Lan Zhan Discovers the Joys of Fatherhood

ep 29. I Get Major FOMO

ep 30. I Fulfill My Cottagecore Fantasies

ep 31. Everything Goes Downhill

ep 32. My Nephew Becomes an Orphan

ep 33. I Plummet to My Death (For Real This Time)

ep. 34 Jin Ling Gets Eaten By a Wall

ep 35. We Become Tomb Raiders

ep 36. Lan Zhan Steals a Chicken

ep 37. I Force Feed Radioactive Porridge to Teenagers

ep 38. Xiao Xingchen Breaks the Bro Code

ep 39. I Go On a Shopping Date

ep 40. I Crash a Conference for Free Food

ep 41. Nie Mingjue is an Unreliable Narrator

ep 42. Everyone Wants to Kill Me (Again)

ep 43. Lan Xichen Trauma Dumps

ep 44. We Visit the Ruins of My Cottagecore Fantasies

ep 45. I Do Group Conflict Resolution In My Underwear

ep 46. The Truth Comes Out

ep 47. I Become a Hostage

ep 48. Jin Guangyao Talks Too Much

ep 49. I Reunite With My Evil Flute

ep 50. My Boyfriend Abandons Me On a Mountain (Not Really)

Are you a writer working on an original story and are looking for your hype-people? Join our discord server!

Hey guys! My friend @fortuna-et-cataclysmos and I are setting up a server for writers that are developing a story/ working on drafts and would like a small community of friends to support each other along the way.

So, the basic idea is based some good experiences we had within our fandom server, where we hosted Nanowrimo last year and ended up with like, 14 people creating their own stories.

The idea is to just have a small community of friends that can hype you, motivate you, and bounce ideas off with.

In our Nanowrimo experiment, we all had channels to talk about our books, host Q&As, exchange resources (for example referring to larger writer servers or tips and tricks for querying and publishing) and other fun writing and development activities. We are sort of trying to emulate some of those dynamics here.

So anyway, if you're interested, hit us up with a dm and we can give you more info/answer any questions/ give you the server invite if it sounds like it's up your alley.

(Or if you are not but would like to support, please reblog! We would be super thankful if you help us spread the word out)

She be amazing, where the lazy?

Umm Fem Yan Wushi

Then got lazy 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.

We stand good princes trying to redeem bad empires!

Best puffy-sleeved imperial princes.

Middle one is better honestly, I don't need to see every individually rendered hair thank you, and like the fact that he's in the fire but his face is partly in shadows *chef's kiss*

1997- 2005 - 2024

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.) 

year of the snake