APPLICATION (melodies of life)

[verteidiger]

Player
Name: Sirea
Age: 24
Personal Journal: warbreaker
Contact: zombifiers : whole mad season @ AIM : wholemadseason@gmail.com
Other In-Game Characters: N/A

Character (Original Universe)
Name: Snow Villiers
Age: 524 (appears 24)
Gender: Male
Canon: Final Fantasy XIII series
Canon Point: Reminiscence -Tracer of Memories-
History: The Final Fantasy Wikia - Snow Villiers

▸ Personality

Snow has come a long, long way since his initial appearance in the series. Back in the beginning, he was an obnoxious loud-mouthed blowhard who thought he was the hero in an action movie and also everyone's best friend. He was cheerful and outgoing, motivated by doing what's right because it's right and stubborn to a fault about his ideals. He was also impulsive and hotheaded, quick to take charge and slow to notice if he's stepped on any toes. He made and believed in promises and spoke in absolutes; words like "always" and "forever" were things he was comfortable with saying, because he looked for the best in situations and believed in the people around him. Failure wasn't an option, and he had to keep moving forward -- he had to -- because, for him, there was no going back. Not a lot of that can really be said anymore. While remnants of this man still exist in him today, the Snow from the first game is gone.

In all fairness to him, there are a few things about Snow Villiers that will never, ever change -- a few immutable facts that withstand the test of time and form the core of who he really is. He will never stop being a kind, selfless behemoth of a man who would cut his still-beating heart out of his own chest if it meant saving someone else. He will never stop playing the role of the protector (and in some cases, the mother hen). He will never stop being driven by his emotions. He will never betray his surrogate family. He will never stop loving Serah Farron.

As for everything else, well... it's been a long 500 years for Snow. He's been through a lot, and he arguably has the most dynamic character arc and goes through the most drastic changes of anyone else in the series. While he was once considered to be the optimist of the group, come Lightning Returns, he's the one person who's completely lost all hope and fallen into the darkest parts of himself. Lumina describes him as being "dead inside."

To be honest, though, it's not unprecedented. Snow has always had a fairly low opinion of himself (which is where his whole hyper-masculine heroic power fantasy comes from in the first place) and put the needs and well-being of everyone else before his, and so when something goes wrong and someone gets hurt or killed, he immediately thinks that it's due to some failing of his own -- because he wasn't competent enough, and because of that, he couldn't protect them. He's always handled guilt poorly and shouldered responsibility for things far beyond the scope of his control.

For pretty much the entire series up until now, Snow's go-to defense mechanisms have been the outward denial of how bad things really are and a bullheaded determination to keep moving forward with his blinders on. Not anymore. By the time of Lightning Returns, Snow has been put through the ringer so many times, and all of his fears and insecurities have been stripped and laid bare before him (though those aren't the only things that have been "stripped" and "laid bare" before him... but we'll get there), that he can't pretend or lie to himself anymore. 500 years after Serah's death, Snow has fallen into severe depression. He's become jaded, cynical, and actively suicidal.

"I couldn't see a future... Every day was a nightmare."

At this point in his story, Snow has lost everything. He couldn't save Serah, couldn't find Lightning, couldn't save Fang and Vanille, couldn't help Sazh, couldn't protect Hope, and didn't have enough of a meaningful relationship with Noel to stay in touch with him. Even the NORA crew is assumed to be dead in this game. He suffers from an intense case of survivor's guilt on top of all of the other pressures he puts on himself. He resents that he's the last man standing while everyone else had to suffer and die -- when the fact of the matter is that he should have rightfully turned Cie'th the moment Serah's heart stopped beating and he failed the Focus that he begged Cactuar (his fal'Cie) to give him. Snow is cruel to himself; he's a lonely, broken, tortured man who can't see a way out.

The saddest part is that he's become so entrenched and self-indulgent in his grief and his guilt at this point that he can't see all of the good that he's done and is still doing. Snow is actually an exceptionally competent leader and brilliant politician, and several NPCs throughout Yusnaan (and Hope!) make mention that he's the only thing that's kept the world from breaking out into civil war over land ownership and food production. He keeps The Order at arm's length and contained in Luxerion, allowing Yusnaan to run as an independent city-state. And he's the only one who keeps the forces of Chaos at bay and the people of his city safe from harm.

In fact, one thing he's always been very good at has been taking care of people. In the first game, he takes care of the NORA kids, most of whom look up to him like a big brother. Between the first and second games, Snow is the one who rallies everyone in Bodhum, gets them safely to Gran Pulse, and oversees the construction and safety of the new town. He's also on 24/7 Serah support duty and is there for her unconditionally to help her through her depression during that first terrible year for her on Pulse (what a pair these two are, huh?). Now here he is in the third game, running the most powerful city-state left in the world. He does all these things and is all these things without a single word of complaint and with absolutely no expectations of getting anything in return -- except maybe an occasional "thank you" (which, unfortunately, he never gets). Snow is amazing at his job to the point where it's said that he's the only one in the world who could do it. Unfortunately, it seems like the only person he can't seem to be bothered to care for is himself.

Because he lacks the ability to deny reality on his own anymore, Snow has learned to cope by shutting it out and escaping through external means. Before the start of LR, Snow fought back the Chaos and monsters physically with the fighting force of an entire army, acting almost as a General under Hope's leadership. After Hope disappears, though, Snow gives up on all of that. Instead of fighting, he just takes in the Chaos on his own, absorbing it into his own body through some vaguely defined power he has as a l'Cie. In addition to being physically painful and slowly turning him Cie'th (which, in turn, results in some kind of fucked up body horror scenario), it makes his depressive emotional state a hundred times worse -- and yet he continues to do it anyway in lieu of taking up arms again. It's an uncomfortable form of self-harm that's not expressly discussed as such in canon (likely because of the game's T rating), but it's a definite precursor to his attempted suicide.

In addition, it's important to note that The Glittering City of Yusnaan has a few claims to fame: it's the agricultural hub of Nova Chrysalia, the economic capital of the world, and the sleepless city of sin and sleaze -- that last one, by the way, is all Snow's doing, according to Hope. As Patron, Snow made Yusnaan a place where people could go to forget about all of the horrors of the world they now live in, even if for only a few hours. Whatever your poison is -- food, sex, drugs, alcohol (maybe all four at once?) -- Yusnaan has it ready and in abundance.

While maybe it might have been nicer to think of Snow as living a life of quiet contemplation in the wake of Serah's death and trying his hardest to honor her memory, to think that he didn't indulge himself would be naïve. Squenix tried their damndest to convey what, exactly, Snow has been up to for the past few centuries while still maintaining the game's T rating, and it ends up pretty unambiguous. The game opens in Snow's palace, where girls dance on poles and liquor gets passed around freely. This happens every night, apparently, and it's made mention that Snow has all but abandoned his other responsibilities in favor of this sort of hedonistic escape and denial. Then later, when you get to Yusnaan proper, you find that the loading screen is titled "The Pleasure Palace." The only way Squenix could have been more explicit in their message would have been if they'd actually had a scene of him balls-deep in a stripper, snorting lines of coke off her back. Snow has reconciled (what he perceives to be) the fact that he'll never see Serah again, and he needs something to get him through these dark days. It's likely one of the many things that he feels he needs to atone for now -- just another thing to feel guilty for, and another thing to add to the long list of promises that he's broken over the years.

It's impossible to know just how long he'd wanted to "look for a nice place to die," but it's probably been at the back of his mind for more than a few years. He even built a cage for himself in preparation for the day he inevitably went Cie'th. He knew how his life was going to end. He just wasn't sure when. He looks to Lightning as his hope for release -- not because of God's saving (because fuck God. Snow is 800% done with God, that dick.), but because he trusts her to take care of Yusnaan and its citizens (and hell, the whole damn world, really) in his place. He knowingly and willingly takes in an enormous Chaos infusion and asks Lightning to destroy the Cie'th he becomes, because it's a way for him to end his life without feeling like he's giving up.

In the end, she pulls him back from the depths of his own darkness by telling him that his feelings are valid; that she needs him; that he's important; that he matters -- things he hasn't heard from anyone in hundreds of years, and things that mean so much coming from the woman he looks up to as a big sister. It just goes to show that, as much as Snow likes to put up a front that he's this fiercely independent hothead, he has some real dependency issues and he needs to be needed. It's his biggest flaw by far, and this is the moment he starts to realize it.

"Doesn't sound like the old me, right?
Even a fool learns a few things after living a few hundred years."

Though Snow was "saved" by Lightning, had his l'Cie brand removed, and was brought to the new world, he's still not in the best way mentally or emotionally. In Reminiscence -Tracer of Memories- (Snow's canonpoint), Serah tells Aoede, the narrator, that she's afraid that if people were to regain their memories of Nova Chrysalia, it might hinder them from living their lives out happily in the new world. In Snow's chapter, we learn that she was speaking in direct reference to him. We discover that Snow's become a vagabond in the new world, hitting the road on his own in search of himself and the things he lost when he was in Yusnaan. It's a journey that he knows he has to take alone, away from Serah, even though she's still undoubtedly the center of his universe. He has to learn to love himself, forgive himself, and accept the fact that sometimes some things are just out of his control -- and he can't do that if he's constantly leaning on Serah (or Lightning or even Hope, for that matter) for support.

The issue of Snow's apparent PTSD isn't explicitly expressed in the novella (and not a lot really was), so it's unclear just how far down the road of recovery he is and how much further he has left to go. When he tells Aoede his story, he trails off and clamps up when he reaches the part about Serah's death. The silence between them becomes uncomfortable, and Aoede posits that Snow might not actually be capable of talking about it at all due to some mental block. When she asks him about the "Days of Chaos," he gives her a very textbook history lesson on the rise of Yusnaan, the role of the fal'Cie Pandemonium, and the road that led him to being named Patron. He completely omits the details of what The Glittering City was really known for, as well as the details of him absorbing Chaos into his own body and turning Cie'th. Despite the fact that Aoede's goal was to gather everyone's personal stories, Snow purposefully keeps the "personal" details out of it. It seems that, wherever he's at now, he's still at a place where he can't talk about the worst parts of what happened.

That aside, we have no real reason to believe that Snow won't eventually find some sort of inner peace and come back to spend the rest of his days in a happy marriage with Serah (after she's done with college, of course! school is way more important!). The entire tone of his chapter in the novella is one of cautious hope and optimism. He doesn't seem to be harboring thoughts of suicide anymore, nor does he hold onto the demeanor of the distant, standoffish Patron of Yusnaan. His innate friendly and outgoing nature has returned, and he does resemble quite a bit of his former self -- a very tired, more serious, and noticeably older version of himself, that is. Even more than that, from what we know of Snow, he's exceedingly resilient (almost ridiculously so) and nearly impossible to kill. This is the man who somehow found the mental fortitude to break through the Chaos and actually come back from being a Cie'th (something that was previously considered to be irreversible). While he might never truly be "whole" again, and while he can never go back to being the same person he was on Cocoon, he will eventually come to terms with the crippling guilt that still gnaws at him even now, he will learn to like himself and the person he's become, and some day he'll have his happily ever after. Count on it.

▸ Third-Person Sample

No! Please don't leave me!

Snow sat up in bed and woke up screaming.

"Serah!"

He was greeted by a dark room and an empty bed, both heavy with silence in the stillness of the night. Sweat gathered along his hairline, causing his hair to cling uncomfortably to the back of his neck, and he couldn't seem to catch his breath. It wasn't the first time he'd had this dream, and it sure wouldn't be the last, but it never got any easier. Every single time, it left him feeling shaken and disoriented, and for a hot second, he didn't know where he was.

The lingering image of light streaming through the trees at Sunleth faded first. The sound of Serah's voice calling out to him always stayed the longest. Left in darkness, Snow licked his lips and turned his gaze towards the window, where street lights from outside shined insistently against the curtains.

Cheap curtains. Motel curtains.

It was only then that he could breathe easy. He wasn't in the palace at Yusnaan, and this wasn't the stiff bed in his cage. He was in that shitty dive of a motel at the only rest stop he'd seen off Highway 9 for hours. That was the real indication that the nightmare was over. If he was here, then Serah was alive. She might not have been with him, but that didn't matter.

Running a hand through his hair anxiously, Snow kicked the covers away from him and climbed out of bed. A short walk around the motel would do him some good. Fresh air, the sounds of the highway, and a view of the world around him would get his head on straight, even if the only sight for miles was the shitty neglected building he was in.

He stepped into his boots, but he didn't bother to lace them or even grab his shirt as he headed out the door. At this time of night, most people would be asleep unless they were up to something shady, and Snow didn't exactly have the kind of stature or demeanor that leant itself to making him an easy target for a mugging. He grabbed the handle of the door and headed outside, where the warm humid summer's air hit him full-force. Already, his nightmare was seeming more and more like what it was: a dream, and nothing else.

As he passed a window that had the curtains drawn back, he caught movement from the corner of his eye and heard a woman cry out. He paused once he was off to the side and out of sight, listening. At rest stop motels in the middle of nowhere like this, nearly every single person who spent the night was dangerous in some way, and he'd been witness to more violent crime in the last few months than he had in the past hundred years combined. Stepping in seemed like just another part of his regular routine now. However, it barely took another second before the woman, whoever she was, cried out again, and he realized that she hadn't done so in pain. He let himself relax, though he didn't immediately move away from the window.

While he knew it wasn't particularly polite, curiosity got the better of him. Snow stole a glance inside before turning around and heading back to his own room, a faint smirk on his lips. It seemed that no matter where he went, women who were professionals worked hard to put on a good show for the money they earned. It was actually kind of funny, how different and yet so similar things could be from the old world to the new one. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Maybe that applied to himself, too. Maybe he wasn't any different now than he was then -- or had ever been, for that matter -- but as he pushed his way back into his motel room, he realized that he damn sure wasn't the same, either. Now if only he could figure out what the hell that meant, maybe he could get those damn nightmares to stop once and for all.

▸ Mognet Sample

To: All
Subject: RE: weapons

Don't know if anyone's interested, but I found a place in Aerilon that might have what you guys were looking for. It's not the easiest to get to, and the city itself is a little dangerous, but it might just be worth the risk. Besides, it's nothing that the Heroes of Light can't handle, right? If it helps, I can send out Motts to guide the way if any of you decide to take the trip. Airship's the only way I know of to get to the city itself, but he can lead you through once you land.

Whatever you do, be safe, guys.

-Snow

Crystallis
Moogle Name: Motley (though Snow will alternate between his actual name and "Motts" for short)
Moogle Gender: Male
First Job: Monk
Second Job: Paladin
Limit Break: Sovereign Fist