He says he likes it when she smiles in the game, and there is a time when he grabs her hand, Hope compliments Vanille admiring her strength and thinking she's stronger than he will ever be, and in the latter half of the game he is generally supportive of Vanille, trying to cheer her up and encouraging her to go on.
Yeah, it's teased at in the series, Hope wanting to see Vanille's smile again from the second game, Lightning asking Hope if he's happy because of seeing Vanille in the third game, Hope saying don't tease me Light, etc but it seems they kind of dropped it in making anything concrete and definite about it in light of the popularity of Lightning/Hope and Fang/Vanille.
From Final Fantasy Brigade there is also a card set of Vanille and Hope that also mentions young love and confession of love
that's an optional scene on gran pulse that you can miss, but vanille references it in her voice over at one point early on in the game (the scene is where this image comes from:
)
Upon hearing what sounded like a confession of love Vanille's heart flutters for an instant, but it immediately becomes clear that she was being teased. Although, if you consider the part saying 'even if it starts out as a lie, it's up to you if you make it true or not' that appeared directly before this, this lie is interesting in that it can also seem to imply the possibility of love developing between Vanille and Hope.
Thanks, Strangelove. Eh, I guess it's sorta cute. I don't ship them, though. I don't ship Fang x Vanille either. I'm all about Fang x me.
I wonder if they had a hard time deciding what pairings they wanted, too? And uh, Lightning and Hope is just... weird romantically, even when he gets older. Is that pairing really that popular, Selphie? D:
HopexLightning is probably the most popular het pairing in XIII, although it's got a sizeable hate base as well from people like, well like me I guess. I can't see them romantically, it just rubs me the wrong way. That or people who are trying to convince the fandom that it's canon rubs me the wrong way, I guess they aren't mutually exclusive.
NoelxSerah was hugely popular too, but it's got a rival ship in Snow/Serah. And while Noel/Serah has a lot more passionate fans from people who love it, Snow-Serah's got the quiet, silent majority fanbase from people who don't really ship them in the traditional sense, but who think they should be together because of canon. It also has a rival in the tiny, but gained more steam after LR- Noel/Yuel who kind of competes with Caius/Yuel.
Then there's FangxVanille, which is also pretty big in the fandom. That's canon of course shhhhh don't tell me otherwise you'll hurt me.
I also got the impression that Hope had a small crush on Vanille because of that confession scene, but it never went anywhere. And also Fang and Vanille pretty much eclipsed it. There is a very small following of Hope and Vanille, but it's been noticeably rarer in the sequels came out.
Actually XIII's got a thing for blurred relationships. Noel and Serah were extremely close despite Snow/Serah being canon to the point people were convinced that they really did love each other, and Yuel/Noel blindsided them. And Noel-Yuel had some hints that could have easily be written off as guardian-seeres devotion. I always saw Caius and Yuel as a father daughter thing, but there's a lot of questionable stuff in how intense that relationship was. Hope hints at having a crush on Vanille, but even that's murked up because he said it was a joke.
Even Snow and Lightning had some small shippers because their relationship has more moments than Snow-Serah. And it doesn't matter if you think Vanille and Fang are romantic or sisters, there's enough to whiplash from very suggestive moments to them calling each other sisters to make your head hurt.
so i finished reading the new novel. the leaked screencaps are kind of bad in places, like the ending of the noel/yuel chapter is missing and replaced with the first part of the fang/vanille one. i don't know why it was capped a few lines at a time rather than taking a larger screenshot each time. there were a bunch of lines that were missing or only partly visible. so now i have to wait for it to be uploaded/the next booklet to be scanned to read them properly
i also tried to find out what exactly made hope/lightning canon now, but all i found was that it was in the interview that doesn't seem to be available (and the use of the word 'implied canon' which is???? smthng???)
(i disagree with the name 'aoide/aoede' or whatever is being used, i think 'erde' ('earth' in german) is closer to エァーデ and fits in with the other names based on proper words)
stuff i liked:
- adding bits to the story like details about hope's disappearance
- linking it with other side stories? (erde)
- shout out to the unreleased lr novel 'chronicle of chaotic age'
- chocorinrin ♪
- i liked seeing old characters basically
stuff i didn't like:
- snow and serah's 700 year engagement what the hell is happening with that, do they live apart or what, what's happening. stop recapping the story of ffxiii-2 and tell me this
- repeating stuff i already know. don't talk about serah becoming a l'cie, i read that novel and listened to the drama cd this stuff is covered already
- still super vague about what's happening with lightning. she appears once and it's not much of an appearance. there's this whole 'i want to meet lightning' thing and all you get is 'hey, 'k, bye'. what's she up to, is she happy. tell me these things
- tbh i don't see why people would get shipping from this novel but then i didn't get that from lr either, it is hella dry on that front imo
As a journalist, I listen to lots of people's stories every day. Old and young, men and women, the people I interview run the gamut from people with the power to move nations to children I pass in the street. The stories they tell me are as varied as the people themselves, and every one of them is captivating. In some ways I enjoyed the work of covering a story like it were a hobby, and so I do fairly well as a female journalist.
In addition to my work, I'm also following a certain “mystery”. It's a strange phenomenon that defies explanation in the conventional sense. At first I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me, but when I started investigating it strange coincidences kept cropping up. I became obsessed with this riddle, and wanted to do whatever it took to unravel it myself. To do so, I had to speak to as many people as possible.
So I always asked the people I meet when covering a story the same set question. It's a bizarre question. Most people are taken aback and don't give a decent answer, but there's also a fair number to talk to me seriously. As I collected their testimonies this “mystery” took on more and more depth.
Tonight I'm heading to another story. A stuffy interview with an intellectual about the current state of social, politics and the economy. Once the serious work is out of the way, I'll try asking my “usual question” while making small talk. I wonder if he'll answer? No, I was secretly confident that he would definitely give me an answer.
The man I'm meeting is an independent researcher. He's not a household name, but he has a proven track record in wide-ranging fields relating to anthropology and sociology, which has put this young scholar in the limelight of the academic world. His name is Hope Estheim.
Hito, I love your translations because it actually reads really well. It sounds a lot more natural when I read that passage, from the summaries it looked entirely like exposition.
I'm two minds about Snow. In one case, I'm glad that he changed because characters are suppose to change.
But I find it a huge break from his character. One, him leaving Serah alone without a real reason. In XIII-2 he did it to find Lightning and he even felt guilty afterwards. And now he's riding a motorcycle somewhere else because.... Well I suppose ptsd is a good reason. But I don't think he would leave Serah.
And all of a sudden he's a fairly good at political maneuvers? It kind of reminded me of Ondore, pretending to be in line with the bad political forces to allow neutrality and eventually fight it at the end. This all can be explained by the fact he just matured and it's natural, but it's such a huge break in character. I like this Snow better... but at the same time I miss old Snow.
Also apparently this line pops up in Caius's story
Aoede is surprised; “But I’m dead, aren’t I?”
Caius: “The dead disappear in silence. No dead person is as long-winded as you are.”
Originally my favorite character was Hope, then it was Lightning after I got bored with Hope in XIII-2. But now I think it's just Caius. There are a lot of things about the story that was made weaker because of the sequels, but Caius is one thing that I will always be grateful for the expansion of the story.
Apparently it was that Daisuke Watanabe writer guy that said Hope completes Lightning/Lightning completes Hope, Lightning would have probably died without Hope (?), and that while he didn't want to make anything too official he wanted people to think who Lightning was meeting at the train station
Also Chapter 8, is Hope's second chapter, also known as the "Rose haired Phantom" people are calling it, where Hope has dreams and visions of Lightning, soon can't tell fantasy from reality and basically goes insane trying to catch the phantom who he thinks is really Lightning
Which is ... yeah I can understand why Vanille/Hope fans would be upset with that, especially with the confession of love in the Ultimania and all, and their cute little interactions in game and how Hope talks of Vanille in XIII-2, but Light/Hope and Fang/Vanille popularity ran away with it or something
Apparently it was that Daisuke Watanabe writer guy that said Hope completes Lightning/Lightning completes Hope, Lightning would have probably died without Hope (?), and that while he didn't want to make anything too official he wanted people to think who Lightning was meeting at the train station
Regarding pairings: Eh, I just don't like LightxHope. A lot. FangxVanille I see more in a family way, not in a lesbian way.
Anything about fal'Cie that's not scathing? Anything new about Bhunivelze? Yeah, I know my hopes are up for the first but... eh. I liked the fal'Cie more than I liked the humans, trying to kill everyone not withstanding. (Thanks in advance, too.)
Most I've been able to gather related to fal'Cie is that Pandemonium was part of Bhuni's plan/planted there by him to fashion a place for humans to live while they were still in the new Cocoon. The humans remained suspicious and for many years avoided this fal'Cie, the lands it created and the food factory it set up until they decided to venture out, knowing the new Cocoon probably would deteriorate anyway.
The next step in Bhuni's plan to make the people dependent on him was to take Hope away.
You know, the sequels had pretty frigging impressive turnovers, they released fast compared to most Squeenix titles. But the problem is that they feel kind of unfinished, probably because they were finished so quickly.
LR is great but it felt like there should have been more there. Especially enemies, the combat system is so great, why give us so little diversity? And we could have had more story related content.
in XIII-2 the ultimania showed so many unused concepts it was painful. Like a trigger/puzzle section for Hope, Archylte Steppe 500 AF, and apparently going to the thirteenth ark.
Hell we had to wait for the novels to find out what was with the people in Archylte Stepp ??? even though it was easily explainable in the game.
i forgot about the 13th arc thing and now i am pissed off
also for the arc they cut from ffxiii and didn't even release as dlc
pandemonium appeared (it would have to be at least 170+ years before lr because hope was still around), started building the foundations of luxerio and yusnaan, which looked like the fal'cie was trying to lure people back to being how it was before. so people didn't go for several years but chaos had started to damage the man made cocoon and it wouldn't have been able to support everyone. eventually hope was amongst the first to go down, where he ended up spending a lot of his time being political rather than scientific. it's funny to see how people went from not trusting the new fal'cie to you having that guy in yusnaan giving a little sermon about pandemonium and snow the last l'cie
this all made me want the novel that was originally planned more, that was the most interesting stuff
like the fal'cie were said to be in a dormant state after ffxiii, but what happened then? did they die off? you see the husk of atmos and titan in the dead dunes
and if bhunivelze did create pandemonium (which is never explicitly clear but likely), what did it look like? it wasn't going to be a pulse or linzei fal'cie if bhunivelze made it. what sort of design would it have? (i guess the closest you have to go on is the brief shots of pulse from ffxiii) why not have a little bit where we got to see pandemonium (even if it was just like the scenes of fal'cie carbuncle in ffxiii)
i like the fal'cie part of the world building of ffxiii but the sequels just went 'lololz forget that, we're all about gods now' (even though they were technically fal'cie as well but it's now quiet the same)
Dying off is one thing... not even getting to see the corpse is another.
Or at least some Ultimania concept art or something.
Seriously, some FFXIII concept art of Fenrir would've made me happy even a little. Unless that Dead Dunes "Grave of the Colossus" was a corpse of a Fal'Cie too...
But yeah, I'd like to know if LR had or is planning some expanded Ultimania stuff for sure.
I'm not sure how they would have shown us Fenrir's corpse in a recognizable fashion. When we see him in XIII-2, he has no definite shape as far as I can tell. He's just a big, cloudy thing.
Getting to see Atomos and Titan's remains was cool, though -- particularly Titan, since he is one of the biggest fal'Cie.
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