Hope Estheim (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
escapedpandora) wrote2010-08-03 11:43 am
escapedpandora) wrote2010-08-03 11:43 am
Character Analysis
aka, the TL;DR post.
1. History
"Hope is a normal boy from a normal family whose childhood on Cocoon can best be described as uneventful. Inexperienced in the ways of the world, and wont to turn to his mother for protection, he is completely unprepared for the turmoil into which his life is thrown when he is unexpectedly caught up in the Sanctum's brutal Purge." (taken straight from the FFXIII booklet)
Hope was born to Bartholomew and Nora Estheim, the former a Sanctum employee and the latter a stay-at-home mother for all intents and purposes. While nothing is known on his early life, it's heavily implied that he was your run-of-the-mill average kid- normal in all aspects, with the exception of being extremely thoughtful.
Episode Zero provided a snippet of Hope's life when he was eight years old and left Palumpolum on a field trip with the rest of his school to see the Suneth Waterscapes. It was the first time the children of his class had stepped onto dirt before, as Cocoon was such a sheltered world that the only places they had dirt around major cities such as Palumpolum that was for the decorative purposes of putting potted plants around. The snippet provided a bit of background information on his family and friends as he spent a day out of his comfort zone and almost got into trouble helping his friend Kai look for his missing camera.
Fast forward to when Hope is 14, and a lot has changed since that field trip- his two friends moved away and his father was gone more than he was home. With Nora attempting to mend the distant relationship between her husband and son, she arranges a trip for their family to Bodhum, to see the fal'Cie and Eurides Gorge and the wishing fireworks. Bartholomew continues to call in and delay his trip with them, though, until he finally admits that he's too busy with work to go at all.
And the night after his call, the city of Bodhum is purged by the Sanctum in suspicion of hosting a Pulse l'Cie- enemy of Cocoon, whose purposes were only of mayhem and destruction. Hope and his mother are herded on the train like everyone else, with Nora begging the soldiers to let her son go, to no avail. Hope is terrified, as he had grown up being taught that "Pulse is Hell", and with the information that they were all being put on a one-way trip to Pulse... well, what child wouldn't be?
The train is halted, however, by a team of ragtag rebels who are working to save those being Purged, as the truth of the matter was that it wasn't so much moving people to Pulse as it was a behind the scenes execution of all the inhabitants. In order to protect her son, Nora offers her services to the rebels, and eventually saves Snow's life, but dies right after, her last words to Snow being "get him home."
Hope sees the entire fight from a distance, including his mother's death, and blames Snow for dragging her into the fight in the first place. Lost as to what he was to do, he follows Vanille when she convinces him that he has to confront Snow on his mother's death, but is too late as Snow flies off into the heart of the Pulse Vestige, where a Pulse fal'Cie is apparently sleeping. It was that Pulse Vestige that caused the Purge in the first place, and stories told about it stated that anyone who ventured too close would eventually become Cei'th: monsters made of crystals who retained no sense of humanity left at all, only attacking people at random in their pain and suffering. However, Vanille convinces him to chase after Snow and the two of them enter the Pulse Vestige, only to be caught up in the whirlwind of events that happen after.
Needless to say, the chapter ended with everyone who stepped into the Pulse Vestige being branded as Pulse l'Cie- the very same reason why the city of Bodhum was purged in the first place. Hope is absolutely devastated; first he's on a train headed to Hell, then his mother dies before his eyes, and now he's not even considered human anymore, but the enemy of everything he's grown up to believe?
Still, the group introduces themselves to each other as now there was no one else they could trust, and attempt to figure out their Focus- as they were all given the same Focus, and for l'Cie who complete their Focus in time, they were turned into crystal and supposedly given eternal life (which was just a better way of saying death), but for those who didn't complete their Focus in time... they were turned into Cie'th, the monsters who roamed in pain and suffering. A bit of a lose-lose situation, but being turned into crystal sure sounded better than being turned into a monster.
Hope can't seem to find the moment to talk to Snow about his mother, and when the man stays behind to try and protect Serah's crystal, Hope leaves with the rest of the group to escape the Sanctum soldiers hunting after them. Eventually the group splits up, and Sazh encourages Hope to go after Lightning before she leaves him behind. He does so, fumbling after her with every step until she finally snaps that she doesn't want a kid following her around and accidentally summons Odin, who attacks the two of them (but mostly Hope- it's kind of really stupid, you don't know how many times he died in that battle).
After the battle (which Hope does most of the work, because Lightning's a commando and Eidolons are more affected by ravager attacks), Lightning finally admits that she would help Hope toughen up and survive, and she starts to teach Hope the basics of how to defend himself, and how to fight.
They pass through the Gapra Whitewoods and finally into the underside of Palumpolum where Hope suggests that he take point for the first time, and Lightning agrees, giving him tips all the while. They bond through the chapters as Light slowly tells Hope about her past as she comes to realize that perhaps turning Hope into a soldier wasn't the best idea, and Hope reveals that he plans to take revenge on Snow for getting his mom killed. Eventually Lightning confronts Hope about that idea, telling him that it's more important for him to go home and talk to his dad about what happened than to hang onto revenge.
As they're found by the Sanctum soldiers in Palumpolum, though, Lightning puts Hope under Snow's care in order to go ahead and clear the way for them, trusting onto Hope to do the right thing.
As Hope tries to talk with Snow about the consequences of his actions, though, Snow just brushes him off, and Hope becomes more and more enraged by that; as Snow talks about the family he wants to have in the future and about how Hope shouldn't put too much thought on the people left behind or else he wouldn't be able to function, Hope finally snaps and reveals that Nora, the woman who saved Snow only to die herself, was his mother, and that it was Snow's fault that she was dead. He attempts to kill Snow with the knife that Lightning had given him, and is literally stopped with a missile to the back.
As Hope falls unconscious from the building, Snow jumps off after him, finally realizing who Nora had meant when she gave him her last request. He saves Hope with some serious injuries to himself, and attempts to carry the boy to safety despite his own injuries. Hope wakes after a while to realize that Snow had saved him, and he finally breaks down when Snow hands him back the knife, admitting that he had been wrong to ignore the consequences of his actions, and that in the end, should Hope decide that he hadn't made up for Nora's death, then his life would be in Hope's hands.
It was at the point that Hope finally admitted to himself that his mother's death hadn't been Snow's fault... that he had known that from the beginning, but he needed someone to blame in order to go on. When they're attacked again, and Snow is knocked unconscious trying to protect Hope, the boy decides that Snow can't die before he atones, and fights hard to protect the man.
As powerful as Hope is with his magic, though, he's really not made to be a solo fighter, and was going to lose the battle before Lightning and Fang jump in to help and defeat the enemy. Hope gives Light back her knife afterward, declaring that his mission to avenge his mother had failed, and Lightning hugs him and tells him that it's alright and she'd protect him (honestly, I just think she was extraordinarily proud that her trust in him paid off), where Hope makes his own promise that he'd try his best to protect her as well.
Hope goes home to his father and finally makes amends, the two of them grieving over Nora's death. When Hope decides that he has to leave because the Sanctum would continue to hunt after the Pulse l'Cie, Bartholomew, in a move that surprises his son, declares that it didn't matter if he was a Pulse l'Cie or not, he would always have a place at home. He keeps to his word even as their home is invaded by Sanctum soldiers, and Hope realizes he has to leave, but promises his father that he'd make his own way and keep safe.
Leaving his father in the safe custody of the Calvary, the group of l'Cie journey off to safe Sazh and Vanille, who had been captured by the Sanctum. They succeed, but also find out that the leader of Cocoon, Primarch Galenth Dysley, was actually a Cocoon fal'Cie working to ensure the demise of the entire planet. Apparently both Cocoon and Pulse fal'Cie were working together in one objective- to bring back their lost Maker, and in order to do that, they were going to sacrifice the lives of everyone on Cocoon as an offering.
After battling and escaping Barthandelus (Dysley's true form), the group is transported to an old Pulse Ark to train up their powers, and after that, deposited on the wilds of Gran Pulse. There, they look for a way to get rid of their brands and lose their status as l'Cie, as none of them wanted to by the ones who had a hand in Cocoon's demise. Through their journey, the discover that everyone on Gran Pulse seemed to be dead, either killed or turned to Cie'th as the war 500 years ago had sought the same end- to sacrifice a planet in order to call back the Maker.
Hope's brand progresses rapidly in Gran Pulse, and despite his optimism and determination to see things through, he despairs that he's the one holding the group back- he's the youngest and weakest of all of them, and he doesn't want to be the reason they get hurt or become Cie'th, just because they always had to wait for him or cater to him. Lightning reinforces her words that they were a team and would never leave him, but Hope's despair calls upon his Eidolon, Alexander, to the game. After Alexander's defeat, though, Hope comes to realize the the Eidolons aren't there to kill them, but to guide them when they lose their way, and for them to regain faith in themselves. They battle Barthandelus once more and when the fal'Cie is finally satisfied with their progress as l'Cie, deposits them back to Cocoon.
It's there that the group of them start to demonstrate the full extent of their powers and their development. Barthandelus has unleashed the full extent of all the dangerous creatures on the Pulse Ark onto the streets of Cocoon to create anarchy and chaos, and to bait the Cavalry into attacking Orphan, the power source of all the fal'Cie on Cocoon. The group of l'Cie chase after the Cavalry with the intent to stop them, only to arrive and find out that the fal'Cie have, in one fell sweep, turned everyone in the Cavalry into Cie'th (so much for Bartholomew being safe, huh?).
The group fight through them and realize that the fal'Cie can't be allowed to rule human lives like this anymore... doing something like this whenever they felt like it, destroying human lives and manipulating people like puppets... the fal'Cie had to be stopped. And the only way of stopping them was to take out Orphan (wow, geez, sounds a lot like what Barty wanted them to do, doesn't it?)- but Barthandelus is convinced that the only way the l'Cie can defeat Orphan is for one of them to cast off their humanity and become Ragnarok.
After he gives the group a beatdown and tortures Vanille, Fang agrees to be the one to turn, in order to save the other girl. The team tries to stop her, but apparently get turned into Cie'th for their troubles. In Fang's despair and guilt for that, she turns into Ragnarok and breaks open Orphan's shields... however, she can't keep her hate long enough, as she remembers all the promises everyone made to each other, and her hate turns back to despair and she turns back, only to be tortured by Barthandelus/Orphan for failing.
As everything looks bleak, the team return- apparently the Cie'th thing had only been an illusion cast by Barthandelus to break Fang and Vanille, except for some reason everyone else returned with their brands halted- in no danger now of becoming Cie'th. Hope heals Fang and together they bring down both Barthandelus and Orphan, thanks to Fang having broken the shield as Ragnarok.
But oops, defeating Orphan means that the power supply for Cocoon is gone, and seeing as Cocoon is a planet floating in the sky of Gran Pulse off the power of Orphan... well, the planet is crashing down now. So much for saving everyone. Luckily, Fang and Vanille have that covered as the others turn to crystal from fulfilling their Focus, and Cocoon never hits the ground- rather, it is encased and balanced on the crystals that powered the l'Cie, and the people on the planet safe and sound.
And now, with the entire team turned to crystal, this is usually where I choose to take Hope from.
2. Personality
If anything, Hope is more than a bit awkward around people. He’s a teenage boy who grew up in the background and never really had a direction for himself even though everyone else seemed to know who and what they wanted to be when they grew up. He was a child content with what he had and without the ambition to be better in any way, despite the fact that he had so much potential. He's a good child— doesn’t cuss, doesn’t cause trouble, doesn’t go out of his way to make a fuss, doesn’t hang out with the bad crowd, and does his work quietly and efficiently. Hope’s world as a kid revolved around his mother, whom he doted on and clung to with the fervor of a child who had a hard time making friends and had a hard time fitting in. He had two friends in elementary school, both of whom moved away and lost contact with him during middle school. He was an extremely sheltered child; an only child with a government worker as a father and a full time mom. What has to be understood is that Cocoon is an extremely sheltered world, and Hope was sheltered even in Cocoon standards. He's never so much as stepped in mud before he was eight years old (and that was only because of a school field trip that took the kids out of their comfort zones. The kids thought dirt and plants smelled funny because they had never encountered so much of it before, coming from the city). He was the type who preferred playing inside rather than outside; preferred staying with his mother and washing vegetables for her despite not understanding why she was so fascinated with grown food when the food created by the fal’Cie provided the sufficient nutrition. He was the child who once adored his father, but then grew up biting down on venomous comments regarding how his dad was never there so that he wouldn’t upset his mother, and then worked hard to distract her from her loneliness. (It didn't always work, since his sullen silence around his father worried her a lot as well.)
Hope is a bit shy and extremely polite (better illustrated in the Japanese version as he speaks keigo (the formal and polite manner) to everyone with the exception of one character) with a very blunt manner of speaking: he uses simple words and is able to twist them enough to get his point across in a rather eloquent manner when he’s serious, contrasted with stammers and general ducked head and slouching when he’s uncertain (which is a lot). Hope tends to take promises very seriously because of certain events in his childhood, and be very childish in his physical mannerisms: he reaches out and grabs onto someone’s hand or shirt if he wants their attention, and swings his arms rocking on his feet when he’s waiting for something to happen. He wrings his hands when he's nervous and covers his face when he laughs or cries. Most of those are generally physical quirks that would be seen in children much younger than he is, but then, Hope’s lack of friends and other teenage influences in his life, along with his dependence on his mother, would explain the lack of development there.
This gives a better understanding on just how lost he became after his mom's death— after being suddenly rounded up at gunpoint by soldiers while they were on vacation and herded on a train that would take them to “Hell”. That day was the first day Hope had ever been in any real danger, and spun his life around from being the same content child who was just waiting for his problems to pass without any insight to his future, to watching a massacre conducted by the very government that was supposed to protect him; and being stripped of his mother, home, past, future, freedom, and humanity when he was turned into a l’Cie: a monster straight from nightmares and horror stories. He lost everything that he had relied on in one day, and wasn't ready for that loss, not like the other characters of the game who had all known what they were getting into.
The events of the game is a giant ride of character development for Hope. He had to learn, and learn quick, in order to survive. The thing is, though: Hope is resourceful. He is quick-witted and sharp and so very brilliant that sometimes his deductions seem rather disconnected from the game because he manages to make connections from A to Z while skipping the rest of the alphabet. He’s logical and eventually becomes the team strategist, revealing the very beginning of what is an exceptional mind (which is taken much, much further in the second game) of a teenager who could potentially become... anything he wanted to be. He’s good with machines, good with deducing situations as well as people, charismatic when he’s self confident enough, and powerful. He’s got fantastic aim and learns very, very quickly.
But along with all of that... Hope isn’t self-confident. He may have all that potential and all that power, but he’s hesitant and uncertain in his own thoughts, never sure if he’s good enough to do something. Despite all his potential, Hope is still limited by his age and his inexperience as well as his mental and emotional trauma from the events of the game that needs time to heal. Hope’s the type who clings to people because despite his maturity and his understandings, he still has a child’s mentality and instinct to trust and depend. He tends to duck his head when he talks (a habit he never grows out of), and turn statements into questions if he’s in the slightest bit unsure of things. His mood is usually dependent on the mood of people around him as he’s very easily influenced— he draws his confidence from those around him and their approval.
Hope isn't your typical video game hero who has something tragic happen to them and suddenly they're willing to fight for what's right... he behaves much more like a normal, albeit broken, kid: he whines, he sulks, he grieves, he throws tantrums, and he struggles to learn and grow up. He can be a real brat. He can hold terrible grudges and feel like wanting to kill someone. He's very much a pushover, even. But at the core of it all, Hope is a very kind teen who doesn't like causing trouble or even drawing attention to himself. He oscillates between wanting to stay a child and not believing that he's good enough at... anything, really, since he compares himself to his (exceptional and experienced) teammates, and wanting so hard to be seen as grown up and believe that he really can take a stand and make a difference even when it looked like all was lost. He misses the security he once had, but is determined that he’s an adult now because he refuses to be left behind in the way children are left behind when people go off to fight.
For Hope, the duration of the game was a real eye-opener. Within the week (canon says the events of the game took a week. I propose closer to a month with the amount of things that happened), he's had his entire life re-written. He's not just some helpless child without a sense of direction anymore. All of a sudden, he's got real power and the realization that those in charge can be wrong. They can be the bad guys. He's had it revealed that the core of everything he had been told as a child (and that the rest of his world had been told) was a complete lie, and that the dangerous and feared monsters the government protected them from... was actually just what the government turned ordinary people into. He's been shot at, clawed, fallen from dangerous heights, poisoned, and so much more in that week. He's learned how to kill to survive.
But what makes him special, and a hero, is how he retained his heart and his belief in people. Hope honestly believes that people are good despite being chased out of his own home city by a mob who had probably watched him grow up, and the government announcing that they wanted to publicly execute him, and everything that happened to him. Despite the tragedies he's had to face (or perhaps because of), he's starting to learn to trust in himself, and starting to understand that people can be manipulated easily. That it's easy to believe in lies because people generally want the easier path. That he's not going to do that anymore, because he wants to judge things for himself rather than be told what to believe in. He may be naive and believe in others too much, but he has exceptionally clear insight in that no matter what he does, no matter what seems to blindsight him, he does understand his own motivations and what he needs to do in order to continue. Hope can lie to himself, but he'll always know that it's a lie.
In the beginning of the game, he actively scrambled away from things he was scared of— he clung to Vanille and hid behind Sazh when soldiers came. Along the way, though, he slowly learned and actually managed to convinced Lightning to teach him how to survive. By chapter seven, he was brave enough to confront Snow about his mother’s death. By chapter eleven, he choked back his own fears and asked his team to leave him behind if he slowed them down. By the end, he stood to defend Vanille despite barely being able to stand at all. Hope grew up in that aspect. He’s not the type to run from danger, not anymore, not when there’s a chance that he can protect someone else. He's not scared of monsters anymore, because he's had to face all the monsters his world (and the world he thought was Hell) could throw at him and because he knows that he has a worse monster inside himself. What he's scared of now is being left alone, but more than that is the fear that eventually he would be the demise of everyone he cares about.
And while he may be very mature mentally, he's still missing real life experiences. Some things need practice, after all, and Hope's only had a week of his new-found mentality.
3. Headcanon ie. Extended Personality Section
How does he react to people? For the most part, Hope is quiet and doesn't feel the need to reach out and talk to people unless they're already important to him or he has questions. The exception is those who are selfless, even if it's only an act. Show him the slightest bit of kindness and you've already gotten on his good side. Unless he has a good reason, he's not going to think negatively of you!
Good reasons include, of course, threatening to kill people or talking about how awesome you are by beating others up. He is Not Impressed by that. He won't reprimand someone for it... he would just make a mental note to never talk to them at all or avoid them altogether.
But if someone's talking about reaching out and helping someone else... doing a good deed... then he's more than likely to offer his help. He's got an independent streak to him now that he's gotten through most of the events that he's been through in-game, but he's still got some major self-confidence issues. He wants to measure up to everyone else, and doesn't take his own age into account... or the fact that the rest of his party were pretty exceptional. What Hope sees when he compares himself to other people is how much he's lacking, and not how much he's learned through the journey. He'd blinded to what he can do because he's constantly making a list of what he can't do.
In addition to that, he's got some serious abandonment issues going on. Without his castmates, he's fine. Because if they were never there with him in the first place, then they obviously didn't mean to abandon him, right? With his castmates, however, he will stick about them and there's a good chance that he wouldn't understand if they left... he's excuse it, write it off, justify it because people leave all the time. But at the same time, despite what he wants to feel, it would always feel like a personal betrayal when they leave (omg, not trying to guilt-trip anyone here, just saying that's what he's going to feel, doesn't matter how or why). It was the same with his mother, and with his father... Hope doesn't take well to the idea of being left behind, of people turning their back to him. His entire world turned his back to him and he never wants to deal with that again, even though he knows that the moment he gets home, he's going to have to continue to deal with that. He's determined to be strong for it, but... it still hurts.
He's not stupid. He knows what's been done (or what needs to be done), and also knows that there's barely a slim chance he'd ever be forgiven for it, much less get back to a normal life. And he liked normal. He never wanted to be anymore other than normal. Never even wanted to be exceptional. He's smart, but lacks the ambition, really. His motivations to do better had always been to make someone proud of him.
Whether it was his mom and dad before, or Lightning later on. What Hope wanted was people to be proud of him, to smile at him and assure him that they wouldn't leave him.
He's sweet, definitely, but nowhere near a saint. If anything, he's a kid just settling himself into adolescence. Uncomfortably.
4. Powers / Abilities
As glossed over in the personality section, Hope is brilliant. He’s a child strategist and an exceptionally quick learner. He’s inventive, thinks outside the box, and skips steps to come up with an answer. He’s good with machines in that he managed to hack a military weapon by accident (the first time it was funny, the second time you start to realize that yeah he’s really good at this), and I’m putting likeable in his abilities section because that’s honestly a part of how he survived. He’s persistent and determined, and has great intuition in that he usually manages to feel that something’s wrong before something bad happens. (Happened twice in canon: once could be explained as him being a child and having a higher hearing range, and the other... how in the world did he know that?)
He's not exactly the most sportsy person and doesn't play any musical instruments, but he has a knack for sciences and maths and can cook in the sense that he's watched his mother and helped her with it a thousand times (doesn't mean he can actually do it here until he learns the differences in appliances and technology, though), and isn't messy. Despite being more of an introvert, Hope is very good with people because he likes to put himself in their shoes (What would they do? How would they feel?) and tends to go along with what other people say.
In-game, Hope wields a boomerang that with a single toss can hit up to 8 targets (not sure if more because 8 was the max amount of enemies in one confrontation without further summoning), and he never misses— not even before he became a l’Cie when his senses weren’t sharpened by an supernatural force. That says a little about not only his aim, but the quick mental calculations before each throw.
He’s not strong, and he doesn’t have high endurance. In fact, Hope has the lowest health points in-game and the lowest strength stats as well. That means he can’t take a lot of hits, and can barely deal physical damage at all... but for what he lacks in strength and endurance, he makes for in spades with magic (and smarts. If there's a roundabout way to defeat enemies...). He has three starting roles with the ability to develop into all other roles as well, but let's just describe the three he gets when you first get to play his character after being turned into a l'Cie:
Hope is the only one on his team to have only one offensive class: ravager is the magic attack role, which uses elemental spells which increase in power each tier. Lower tiers include Fire (Fira), Blizzard (Blizzara), Water (Watera), Thunder (Thundarra), and Aero (Aerora). First spells are basic, second with the -ra is much more powerful. In the higher tiers, they become area-of-effect spells (Firaga, Blizzaga, Thunderga, Waterga, Aeroga). This means at the low levels, he'd be tossing a magical fireball at an enemy, and at the high level, it'd be a small firestorm. Singular to Hope was an ability called Last Resort, which was a purely magical and non elemental based large scale AoE attack that could cut through all defenses to deal high damage.
The synergist class is based on buffing characters: it’s a support class. The spells include Protect and Shell (shields against physical and magical damage respectively), and Bravery and Faith (spells to increase physical and magical damage done to enemies), along with Haste to speed up attacks or casting. The rest of the spells in this class are ones to create resistance to elemental attacks (Barfire, Barfrost, Barthunder, Barwater) and ones to give an additional elemental damage to an ally’s weapon (Enfire, Enthunder, Enfrost, Enwater). The last spell in that class is Veil, which is protection against enemy debuffs.
His last and most important class is medic. As the title would suggest, that’s the healing role, which Hope quite excels at. Those spells include the basic Cure and then Cura (which is area of effect) as well as Esuna (which negates poisons and debuffs). Curasa and Curaja are the more powerful versions of the cure spell, able to heal more the more injured a character is. Last and most powerful of them all is Raise, which is able to resurrect a recently dead character and heal a portion of their wounds as well. This, I gather, is a little like non-magical resurrection in that there is a very limited time for it to work. The fun thing with magic in this canon is that it seems to work on everything-- you can as easily Raise a machine or a person, it really doesn't matter.
What is perhaps the most powerful ability he has is to summon his Eidolon, Alexander, who in contrast to Hope uses physical attacks and acts as sentinel while in the battlefield to ensure that he draws the fire away from Hope. Alexander may have the highest stats of all the Eidolons, but he also moves very slowly and is the only character in the entire game with access to Holy spells. Eidolons are quite protective of their summoners (such as Alexander using sentinel abilities purely to draw fire and keep Hope safe), and make sure to leave the battlefield with their summoners (plus the rest of the team) in full health, no matter how bad it had been before they were summoned. Alexander is also the only Eidolon who can not just carry his summoner away to safety; instead, he transforms into a fortress to defend against enemies so can also potentially be a blockade to protect a group of persons or area.
On the same vein as the ability to summon Eidolons is his one earth-based spell: Quake. It creates a small, localized earthquake that doesn't so much damage enemies as it does stagger them, and is a spell he can't use very often unlike his other spells (it's connected on the same bar that needs to refill when summoning).
Last but not least, though, is Hope’s actual inability to control his magic fully. He is the only character in-game who loses control of his magic because of his emotions— not once, but twice, so this may be quite a problem. Once, his magic reacted almost as a shockwave when he was upset, blasting everything away from him violently enough that Snow (6’7 mass of muscle) was shoved hard enough he actually broke through the metal railing behind him. The second time was detrimental only to Hope, when his despair reacted with his magic and he ended up in a near coma for a day.
Thing is, Hope has the highest magic in both his world and the world below. Maxed out, his magic stats pass 4000 while others linger around 1000. In fact, even in the sequel game, maxing out magic stats for magic oriented characters would have them hit about 1000. (The closest to his is Vanille, who hits above 3000 when she's maxed out.) Magic is... really something that he wields well and an integral part of him right now. With it, he's managed to withstand all that another planet has to throw at him. Without it, well, considering the name of his home planet (Cocoon), Hope may be vulnerable to numerous pathogens that most people who have already built up an immune system to or be inoculated for.
"EXTRA" on abilities:
It might seem almost overkill with Hope's abilities, but I like to play them as I do on the game: per turn, I limit him to six ATB segments (which people who've played the game will understand). In fights, that means he can cast up to six spells per turn, but they would be weak spells. That's if his turn isn't a reaction to what happened in the previous turn, etc etc etc. I try to play him by the books (err, game), control-wise. He switches paradigms to get to different skills and all.
5. On Love?
LAST BUT NOT LEAST, THOUGH.
On the subject of "love". On the subject of a romantic relationship, there's very little chance of me putting Hope in one. I play him as a kid, a smart kid, who is a little oblivious (at the same time being all too aware) to the fact that he is growing up. Again, developmentally, he's the same as all the other kids his age, except he's got a huge amount of respect for the opposite sex and he's smarter about things.
One, there's just about no chance of me putting him in a sexual relationship (unless you have this amazing plot related idea, and then talk to me about it). Two, there's very little chance of him getting a girlfriend/boyfriend (again, talk with me). Yes, it's broadened to both- I'd say he likes girls primarily, but wouldn't be adverse to alternatives if he does happen to fall in love. But as I said, I play him as a kid- as such, he's only just starting to grow into himself and while I'm sure he'd have plenty of puppy crushes, he's smart enough to know the difference between a kid crush and something life changing.
Yes, I play him as having a crush on Vanille. No, he'd never act on it. She's a dear friend to him and precious to Fang and he knows better. Hope values familial relationships above all else at this stage in his life, and the entire team is like family to him- thus, he has never, and would never, even think about entering a romantic relationship with any of them. They already have the highest spots in his life, changing anything would be demeaning.
He is a teenage boy and will have the physical reactions of a teenage boy (except not nearly so bad as an older teen would have since he's just growing into that stage), so, say, if Vanille ever tried to cuddle him in her sleep, he'd be, derp, very uncomfortable about it (give him some credit- she's pretty, he already likes her, and she's scantily clad). Unless he's already asleep, in which it's just the waking up part which will freak him out.
Adults are a different matter, if only because psychologically, he still looks toward the adults to make things right- even if he keeps claiming that he's not a kid anymore. If he fell asleep next to Light, he'd just draw comfort from her presence and probably curl closer for warmth. Same with Snow, even.
Hope cares about and loves a lot of people, I mean, he's not really one to deny affection. So he'll invade people's personal bubbles a lot and if he feels that you care and wouldn't reject it, he'd probably cling to your shirt, your hand... from either insecurity or to get your attention. Hugs are very welcome, despite what he says.
Also! Lightning.
Um, so I covered Vanille a bit in the personality post, and Lightning a little bit as well. But. Other than Nora, Lightning is perhaps the most important person to Hope in-game. But I think there's barely a tiny chance he'd ever encounter Nora in RP, so I'll skip to Lightning~
First things first- he'll probably never say anything of the sort, but Hope loves Light dearly; she's his mentor and his guiding star for most of the game. He depends on her quite a bit for strength and guidance and, well, basically everything. She taught him how to fight, how to defend himself, and how to stand up against something greater and achieve the impossible. He attributes his survival to her.
She's basically everything he wants to be when he grows up. XD From his parents, Hope learned of compassion and sacrifice, but from Light he learned how to channel despair into determination- and that sacrifice doesn't have to mean the end.
She's not his mother- he loves Nora too much to ever be able to replace her, but she is his idol. He knows that she doesn't want him to follow in her footsteps and her mistakes, but more than anything, he wants Light to be proud of him. He wants to grow up and be able to protect her the same way she always shielded him. And he strives to be better and stronger all the time because of it.
If anything, she's... like the big sister he never had- someone to idolize and look up to and run to if he ever needed. To him, she's strong and brave and kind and she can do anything and he'd follow her to the ends of the earth if he could offer some help and relieve her burdens somehow.
Will I play them as a pair? Sure, if it somehow gets worked in or affects the plot. Anything's possible, and I won't discount anything. But as it stands from canon without outside influences, while she is one of the most important people in his life, it's not a romantic thing.
1. History
"Hope is a normal boy from a normal family whose childhood on Cocoon can best be described as uneventful. Inexperienced in the ways of the world, and wont to turn to his mother for protection, he is completely unprepared for the turmoil into which his life is thrown when he is unexpectedly caught up in the Sanctum's brutal Purge." (taken straight from the FFXIII booklet)
Hope was born to Bartholomew and Nora Estheim, the former a Sanctum employee and the latter a stay-at-home mother for all intents and purposes. While nothing is known on his early life, it's heavily implied that he was your run-of-the-mill average kid- normal in all aspects, with the exception of being extremely thoughtful.
Episode Zero provided a snippet of Hope's life when he was eight years old and left Palumpolum on a field trip with the rest of his school to see the Suneth Waterscapes. It was the first time the children of his class had stepped onto dirt before, as Cocoon was such a sheltered world that the only places they had dirt around major cities such as Palumpolum that was for the decorative purposes of putting potted plants around. The snippet provided a bit of background information on his family and friends as he spent a day out of his comfort zone and almost got into trouble helping his friend Kai look for his missing camera.
Fast forward to when Hope is 14, and a lot has changed since that field trip- his two friends moved away and his father was gone more than he was home. With Nora attempting to mend the distant relationship between her husband and son, she arranges a trip for their family to Bodhum, to see the fal'Cie and Eurides Gorge and the wishing fireworks. Bartholomew continues to call in and delay his trip with them, though, until he finally admits that he's too busy with work to go at all.
And the night after his call, the city of Bodhum is purged by the Sanctum in suspicion of hosting a Pulse l'Cie- enemy of Cocoon, whose purposes were only of mayhem and destruction. Hope and his mother are herded on the train like everyone else, with Nora begging the soldiers to let her son go, to no avail. Hope is terrified, as he had grown up being taught that "Pulse is Hell", and with the information that they were all being put on a one-way trip to Pulse... well, what child wouldn't be?
The train is halted, however, by a team of ragtag rebels who are working to save those being Purged, as the truth of the matter was that it wasn't so much moving people to Pulse as it was a behind the scenes execution of all the inhabitants. In order to protect her son, Nora offers her services to the rebels, and eventually saves Snow's life, but dies right after, her last words to Snow being "get him home."
Hope sees the entire fight from a distance, including his mother's death, and blames Snow for dragging her into the fight in the first place. Lost as to what he was to do, he follows Vanille when she convinces him that he has to confront Snow on his mother's death, but is too late as Snow flies off into the heart of the Pulse Vestige, where a Pulse fal'Cie is apparently sleeping. It was that Pulse Vestige that caused the Purge in the first place, and stories told about it stated that anyone who ventured too close would eventually become Cei'th: monsters made of crystals who retained no sense of humanity left at all, only attacking people at random in their pain and suffering. However, Vanille convinces him to chase after Snow and the two of them enter the Pulse Vestige, only to be caught up in the whirlwind of events that happen after.
Needless to say, the chapter ended with everyone who stepped into the Pulse Vestige being branded as Pulse l'Cie- the very same reason why the city of Bodhum was purged in the first place. Hope is absolutely devastated; first he's on a train headed to Hell, then his mother dies before his eyes, and now he's not even considered human anymore, but the enemy of everything he's grown up to believe?
Still, the group introduces themselves to each other as now there was no one else they could trust, and attempt to figure out their Focus- as they were all given the same Focus, and for l'Cie who complete their Focus in time, they were turned into crystal and supposedly given eternal life (which was just a better way of saying death), but for those who didn't complete their Focus in time... they were turned into Cie'th, the monsters who roamed in pain and suffering. A bit of a lose-lose situation, but being turned into crystal sure sounded better than being turned into a monster.
Hope can't seem to find the moment to talk to Snow about his mother, and when the man stays behind to try and protect Serah's crystal, Hope leaves with the rest of the group to escape the Sanctum soldiers hunting after them. Eventually the group splits up, and Sazh encourages Hope to go after Lightning before she leaves him behind. He does so, fumbling after her with every step until she finally snaps that she doesn't want a kid following her around and accidentally summons Odin, who attacks the two of them (but mostly Hope- it's kind of really stupid, you don't know how many times he died in that battle).
After the battle (which Hope does most of the work, because Lightning's a commando and Eidolons are more affected by ravager attacks), Lightning finally admits that she would help Hope toughen up and survive, and she starts to teach Hope the basics of how to defend himself, and how to fight.
They pass through the Gapra Whitewoods and finally into the underside of Palumpolum where Hope suggests that he take point for the first time, and Lightning agrees, giving him tips all the while. They bond through the chapters as Light slowly tells Hope about her past as she comes to realize that perhaps turning Hope into a soldier wasn't the best idea, and Hope reveals that he plans to take revenge on Snow for getting his mom killed. Eventually Lightning confronts Hope about that idea, telling him that it's more important for him to go home and talk to his dad about what happened than to hang onto revenge.
As they're found by the Sanctum soldiers in Palumpolum, though, Lightning puts Hope under Snow's care in order to go ahead and clear the way for them, trusting onto Hope to do the right thing.
As Hope tries to talk with Snow about the consequences of his actions, though, Snow just brushes him off, and Hope becomes more and more enraged by that; as Snow talks about the family he wants to have in the future and about how Hope shouldn't put too much thought on the people left behind or else he wouldn't be able to function, Hope finally snaps and reveals that Nora, the woman who saved Snow only to die herself, was his mother, and that it was Snow's fault that she was dead. He attempts to kill Snow with the knife that Lightning had given him, and is literally stopped with a missile to the back.
As Hope falls unconscious from the building, Snow jumps off after him, finally realizing who Nora had meant when she gave him her last request. He saves Hope with some serious injuries to himself, and attempts to carry the boy to safety despite his own injuries. Hope wakes after a while to realize that Snow had saved him, and he finally breaks down when Snow hands him back the knife, admitting that he had been wrong to ignore the consequences of his actions, and that in the end, should Hope decide that he hadn't made up for Nora's death, then his life would be in Hope's hands.
It was at the point that Hope finally admitted to himself that his mother's death hadn't been Snow's fault... that he had known that from the beginning, but he needed someone to blame in order to go on. When they're attacked again, and Snow is knocked unconscious trying to protect Hope, the boy decides that Snow can't die before he atones, and fights hard to protect the man.
As powerful as Hope is with his magic, though, he's really not made to be a solo fighter, and was going to lose the battle before Lightning and Fang jump in to help and defeat the enemy. Hope gives Light back her knife afterward, declaring that his mission to avenge his mother had failed, and Lightning hugs him and tells him that it's alright and she'd protect him (honestly, I just think she was extraordinarily proud that her trust in him paid off), where Hope makes his own promise that he'd try his best to protect her as well.
Hope goes home to his father and finally makes amends, the two of them grieving over Nora's death. When Hope decides that he has to leave because the Sanctum would continue to hunt after the Pulse l'Cie, Bartholomew, in a move that surprises his son, declares that it didn't matter if he was a Pulse l'Cie or not, he would always have a place at home. He keeps to his word even as their home is invaded by Sanctum soldiers, and Hope realizes he has to leave, but promises his father that he'd make his own way and keep safe.
Leaving his father in the safe custody of the Calvary, the group of l'Cie journey off to safe Sazh and Vanille, who had been captured by the Sanctum. They succeed, but also find out that the leader of Cocoon, Primarch Galenth Dysley, was actually a Cocoon fal'Cie working to ensure the demise of the entire planet. Apparently both Cocoon and Pulse fal'Cie were working together in one objective- to bring back their lost Maker, and in order to do that, they were going to sacrifice the lives of everyone on Cocoon as an offering.
After battling and escaping Barthandelus (Dysley's true form), the group is transported to an old Pulse Ark to train up their powers, and after that, deposited on the wilds of Gran Pulse. There, they look for a way to get rid of their brands and lose their status as l'Cie, as none of them wanted to by the ones who had a hand in Cocoon's demise. Through their journey, the discover that everyone on Gran Pulse seemed to be dead, either killed or turned to Cie'th as the war 500 years ago had sought the same end- to sacrifice a planet in order to call back the Maker.
Hope's brand progresses rapidly in Gran Pulse, and despite his optimism and determination to see things through, he despairs that he's the one holding the group back- he's the youngest and weakest of all of them, and he doesn't want to be the reason they get hurt or become Cie'th, just because they always had to wait for him or cater to him. Lightning reinforces her words that they were a team and would never leave him, but Hope's despair calls upon his Eidolon, Alexander, to the game. After Alexander's defeat, though, Hope comes to realize the the Eidolons aren't there to kill them, but to guide them when they lose their way, and for them to regain faith in themselves. They battle Barthandelus once more and when the fal'Cie is finally satisfied with their progress as l'Cie, deposits them back to Cocoon.
It's there that the group of them start to demonstrate the full extent of their powers and their development. Barthandelus has unleashed the full extent of all the dangerous creatures on the Pulse Ark onto the streets of Cocoon to create anarchy and chaos, and to bait the Cavalry into attacking Orphan, the power source of all the fal'Cie on Cocoon. The group of l'Cie chase after the Cavalry with the intent to stop them, only to arrive and find out that the fal'Cie have, in one fell sweep, turned everyone in the Cavalry into Cie'th (so much for Bartholomew being safe, huh?).
The group fight through them and realize that the fal'Cie can't be allowed to rule human lives like this anymore... doing something like this whenever they felt like it, destroying human lives and manipulating people like puppets... the fal'Cie had to be stopped. And the only way of stopping them was to take out Orphan (wow, geez, sounds a lot like what Barty wanted them to do, doesn't it?)- but Barthandelus is convinced that the only way the l'Cie can defeat Orphan is for one of them to cast off their humanity and become Ragnarok.
After he gives the group a beatdown and tortures Vanille, Fang agrees to be the one to turn, in order to save the other girl. The team tries to stop her, but apparently get turned into Cie'th for their troubles. In Fang's despair and guilt for that, she turns into Ragnarok and breaks open Orphan's shields... however, she can't keep her hate long enough, as she remembers all the promises everyone made to each other, and her hate turns back to despair and she turns back, only to be tortured by Barthandelus/Orphan for failing.
As everything looks bleak, the team return- apparently the Cie'th thing had only been an illusion cast by Barthandelus to break Fang and Vanille, except for some reason everyone else returned with their brands halted- in no danger now of becoming Cie'th. Hope heals Fang and together they bring down both Barthandelus and Orphan, thanks to Fang having broken the shield as Ragnarok.
But oops, defeating Orphan means that the power supply for Cocoon is gone, and seeing as Cocoon is a planet floating in the sky of Gran Pulse off the power of Orphan... well, the planet is crashing down now. So much for saving everyone. Luckily, Fang and Vanille have that covered as the others turn to crystal from fulfilling their Focus, and Cocoon never hits the ground- rather, it is encased and balanced on the crystals that powered the l'Cie, and the people on the planet safe and sound.
And now, with the entire team turned to crystal, this is usually where I choose to take Hope from.
2. Personality
If anything, Hope is more than a bit awkward around people. He’s a teenage boy who grew up in the background and never really had a direction for himself even though everyone else seemed to know who and what they wanted to be when they grew up. He was a child content with what he had and without the ambition to be better in any way, despite the fact that he had so much potential. He's a good child— doesn’t cuss, doesn’t cause trouble, doesn’t go out of his way to make a fuss, doesn’t hang out with the bad crowd, and does his work quietly and efficiently. Hope’s world as a kid revolved around his mother, whom he doted on and clung to with the fervor of a child who had a hard time making friends and had a hard time fitting in. He had two friends in elementary school, both of whom moved away and lost contact with him during middle school. He was an extremely sheltered child; an only child with a government worker as a father and a full time mom. What has to be understood is that Cocoon is an extremely sheltered world, and Hope was sheltered even in Cocoon standards. He's never so much as stepped in mud before he was eight years old (and that was only because of a school field trip that took the kids out of their comfort zones. The kids thought dirt and plants smelled funny because they had never encountered so much of it before, coming from the city). He was the type who preferred playing inside rather than outside; preferred staying with his mother and washing vegetables for her despite not understanding why she was so fascinated with grown food when the food created by the fal’Cie provided the sufficient nutrition. He was the child who once adored his father, but then grew up biting down on venomous comments regarding how his dad was never there so that he wouldn’t upset his mother, and then worked hard to distract her from her loneliness. (It didn't always work, since his sullen silence around his father worried her a lot as well.)
Hope is a bit shy and extremely polite (better illustrated in the Japanese version as he speaks keigo (the formal and polite manner) to everyone with the exception of one character) with a very blunt manner of speaking: he uses simple words and is able to twist them enough to get his point across in a rather eloquent manner when he’s serious, contrasted with stammers and general ducked head and slouching when he’s uncertain (which is a lot). Hope tends to take promises very seriously because of certain events in his childhood, and be very childish in his physical mannerisms: he reaches out and grabs onto someone’s hand or shirt if he wants their attention, and swings his arms rocking on his feet when he’s waiting for something to happen. He wrings his hands when he's nervous and covers his face when he laughs or cries. Most of those are generally physical quirks that would be seen in children much younger than he is, but then, Hope’s lack of friends and other teenage influences in his life, along with his dependence on his mother, would explain the lack of development there.
This gives a better understanding on just how lost he became after his mom's death— after being suddenly rounded up at gunpoint by soldiers while they were on vacation and herded on a train that would take them to “Hell”. That day was the first day Hope had ever been in any real danger, and spun his life around from being the same content child who was just waiting for his problems to pass without any insight to his future, to watching a massacre conducted by the very government that was supposed to protect him; and being stripped of his mother, home, past, future, freedom, and humanity when he was turned into a l’Cie: a monster straight from nightmares and horror stories. He lost everything that he had relied on in one day, and wasn't ready for that loss, not like the other characters of the game who had all known what they were getting into.
The events of the game is a giant ride of character development for Hope. He had to learn, and learn quick, in order to survive. The thing is, though: Hope is resourceful. He is quick-witted and sharp and so very brilliant that sometimes his deductions seem rather disconnected from the game because he manages to make connections from A to Z while skipping the rest of the alphabet. He’s logical and eventually becomes the team strategist, revealing the very beginning of what is an exceptional mind (which is taken much, much further in the second game) of a teenager who could potentially become... anything he wanted to be. He’s good with machines, good with deducing situations as well as people, charismatic when he’s self confident enough, and powerful. He’s got fantastic aim and learns very, very quickly.
But along with all of that... Hope isn’t self-confident. He may have all that potential and all that power, but he’s hesitant and uncertain in his own thoughts, never sure if he’s good enough to do something. Despite all his potential, Hope is still limited by his age and his inexperience as well as his mental and emotional trauma from the events of the game that needs time to heal. Hope’s the type who clings to people because despite his maturity and his understandings, he still has a child’s mentality and instinct to trust and depend. He tends to duck his head when he talks (a habit he never grows out of), and turn statements into questions if he’s in the slightest bit unsure of things. His mood is usually dependent on the mood of people around him as he’s very easily influenced— he draws his confidence from those around him and their approval.
Hope isn't your typical video game hero who has something tragic happen to them and suddenly they're willing to fight for what's right... he behaves much more like a normal, albeit broken, kid: he whines, he sulks, he grieves, he throws tantrums, and he struggles to learn and grow up. He can be a real brat. He can hold terrible grudges and feel like wanting to kill someone. He's very much a pushover, even. But at the core of it all, Hope is a very kind teen who doesn't like causing trouble or even drawing attention to himself. He oscillates between wanting to stay a child and not believing that he's good enough at... anything, really, since he compares himself to his (exceptional and experienced) teammates, and wanting so hard to be seen as grown up and believe that he really can take a stand and make a difference even when it looked like all was lost. He misses the security he once had, but is determined that he’s an adult now because he refuses to be left behind in the way children are left behind when people go off to fight.
For Hope, the duration of the game was a real eye-opener. Within the week (canon says the events of the game took a week. I propose closer to a month with the amount of things that happened), he's had his entire life re-written. He's not just some helpless child without a sense of direction anymore. All of a sudden, he's got real power and the realization that those in charge can be wrong. They can be the bad guys. He's had it revealed that the core of everything he had been told as a child (and that the rest of his world had been told) was a complete lie, and that the dangerous and feared monsters the government protected them from... was actually just what the government turned ordinary people into. He's been shot at, clawed, fallen from dangerous heights, poisoned, and so much more in that week. He's learned how to kill to survive.
But what makes him special, and a hero, is how he retained his heart and his belief in people. Hope honestly believes that people are good despite being chased out of his own home city by a mob who had probably watched him grow up, and the government announcing that they wanted to publicly execute him, and everything that happened to him. Despite the tragedies he's had to face (or perhaps because of), he's starting to learn to trust in himself, and starting to understand that people can be manipulated easily. That it's easy to believe in lies because people generally want the easier path. That he's not going to do that anymore, because he wants to judge things for himself rather than be told what to believe in. He may be naive and believe in others too much, but he has exceptionally clear insight in that no matter what he does, no matter what seems to blindsight him, he does understand his own motivations and what he needs to do in order to continue. Hope can lie to himself, but he'll always know that it's a lie.
In the beginning of the game, he actively scrambled away from things he was scared of— he clung to Vanille and hid behind Sazh when soldiers came. Along the way, though, he slowly learned and actually managed to convinced Lightning to teach him how to survive. By chapter seven, he was brave enough to confront Snow about his mother’s death. By chapter eleven, he choked back his own fears and asked his team to leave him behind if he slowed them down. By the end, he stood to defend Vanille despite barely being able to stand at all. Hope grew up in that aspect. He’s not the type to run from danger, not anymore, not when there’s a chance that he can protect someone else. He's not scared of monsters anymore, because he's had to face all the monsters his world (and the world he thought was Hell) could throw at him and because he knows that he has a worse monster inside himself. What he's scared of now is being left alone, but more than that is the fear that eventually he would be the demise of everyone he cares about.
And while he may be very mature mentally, he's still missing real life experiences. Some things need practice, after all, and Hope's only had a week of his new-found mentality.
3. Headcanon ie. Extended Personality Section
How does he react to people? For the most part, Hope is quiet and doesn't feel the need to reach out and talk to people unless they're already important to him or he has questions. The exception is those who are selfless, even if it's only an act. Show him the slightest bit of kindness and you've already gotten on his good side. Unless he has a good reason, he's not going to think negatively of you!
Good reasons include, of course, threatening to kill people or talking about how awesome you are by beating others up. He is Not Impressed by that. He won't reprimand someone for it... he would just make a mental note to never talk to them at all or avoid them altogether.
But if someone's talking about reaching out and helping someone else... doing a good deed... then he's more than likely to offer his help. He's got an independent streak to him now that he's gotten through most of the events that he's been through in-game, but he's still got some major self-confidence issues. He wants to measure up to everyone else, and doesn't take his own age into account... or the fact that the rest of his party were pretty exceptional. What Hope sees when he compares himself to other people is how much he's lacking, and not how much he's learned through the journey. He'd blinded to what he can do because he's constantly making a list of what he can't do.
In addition to that, he's got some serious abandonment issues going on. Without his castmates, he's fine. Because if they were never there with him in the first place, then they obviously didn't mean to abandon him, right? With his castmates, however, he will stick about them and there's a good chance that he wouldn't understand if they left... he's excuse it, write it off, justify it because people leave all the time. But at the same time, despite what he wants to feel, it would always feel like a personal betrayal when they leave (omg, not trying to guilt-trip anyone here, just saying that's what he's going to feel, doesn't matter how or why). It was the same with his mother, and with his father... Hope doesn't take well to the idea of being left behind, of people turning their back to him. His entire world turned his back to him and he never wants to deal with that again, even though he knows that the moment he gets home, he's going to have to continue to deal with that. He's determined to be strong for it, but... it still hurts.
He's not stupid. He knows what's been done (or what needs to be done), and also knows that there's barely a slim chance he'd ever be forgiven for it, much less get back to a normal life. And he liked normal. He never wanted to be anymore other than normal. Never even wanted to be exceptional. He's smart, but lacks the ambition, really. His motivations to do better had always been to make someone proud of him.
Whether it was his mom and dad before, or Lightning later on. What Hope wanted was people to be proud of him, to smile at him and assure him that they wouldn't leave him.
He's sweet, definitely, but nowhere near a saint. If anything, he's a kid just settling himself into adolescence. Uncomfortably.
4. Powers / Abilities
As glossed over in the personality section, Hope is brilliant. He’s a child strategist and an exceptionally quick learner. He’s inventive, thinks outside the box, and skips steps to come up with an answer. He’s good with machines in that he managed to hack a military weapon by accident (the first time it was funny, the second time you start to realize that yeah he’s really good at this), and I’m putting likeable in his abilities section because that’s honestly a part of how he survived. He’s persistent and determined, and has great intuition in that he usually manages to feel that something’s wrong before something bad happens. (Happened twice in canon: once could be explained as him being a child and having a higher hearing range, and the other... how in the world did he know that?)
He's not exactly the most sportsy person and doesn't play any musical instruments, but he has a knack for sciences and maths and can cook in the sense that he's watched his mother and helped her with it a thousand times (doesn't mean he can actually do it here until he learns the differences in appliances and technology, though), and isn't messy. Despite being more of an introvert, Hope is very good with people because he likes to put himself in their shoes (What would they do? How would they feel?) and tends to go along with what other people say.
In-game, Hope wields a boomerang that with a single toss can hit up to 8 targets (not sure if more because 8 was the max amount of enemies in one confrontation without further summoning), and he never misses— not even before he became a l’Cie when his senses weren’t sharpened by an supernatural force. That says a little about not only his aim, but the quick mental calculations before each throw.
He’s not strong, and he doesn’t have high endurance. In fact, Hope has the lowest health points in-game and the lowest strength stats as well. That means he can’t take a lot of hits, and can barely deal physical damage at all... but for what he lacks in strength and endurance, he makes for in spades with magic (and smarts. If there's a roundabout way to defeat enemies...). He has three starting roles with the ability to develop into all other roles as well, but let's just describe the three he gets when you first get to play his character after being turned into a l'Cie:
Hope is the only one on his team to have only one offensive class: ravager is the magic attack role, which uses elemental spells which increase in power each tier. Lower tiers include Fire (Fira), Blizzard (Blizzara), Water (Watera), Thunder (Thundarra), and Aero (Aerora). First spells are basic, second with the -ra is much more powerful. In the higher tiers, they become area-of-effect spells (Firaga, Blizzaga, Thunderga, Waterga, Aeroga). This means at the low levels, he'd be tossing a magical fireball at an enemy, and at the high level, it'd be a small firestorm. Singular to Hope was an ability called Last Resort, which was a purely magical and non elemental based large scale AoE attack that could cut through all defenses to deal high damage.
The synergist class is based on buffing characters: it’s a support class. The spells include Protect and Shell (shields against physical and magical damage respectively), and Bravery and Faith (spells to increase physical and magical damage done to enemies), along with Haste to speed up attacks or casting. The rest of the spells in this class are ones to create resistance to elemental attacks (Barfire, Barfrost, Barthunder, Barwater) and ones to give an additional elemental damage to an ally’s weapon (Enfire, Enthunder, Enfrost, Enwater). The last spell in that class is Veil, which is protection against enemy debuffs.
His last and most important class is medic. As the title would suggest, that’s the healing role, which Hope quite excels at. Those spells include the basic Cure and then Cura (which is area of effect) as well as Esuna (which negates poisons and debuffs). Curasa and Curaja are the more powerful versions of the cure spell, able to heal more the more injured a character is. Last and most powerful of them all is Raise, which is able to resurrect a recently dead character and heal a portion of their wounds as well. This, I gather, is a little like non-magical resurrection in that there is a very limited time for it to work. The fun thing with magic in this canon is that it seems to work on everything-- you can as easily Raise a machine or a person, it really doesn't matter.
What is perhaps the most powerful ability he has is to summon his Eidolon, Alexander, who in contrast to Hope uses physical attacks and acts as sentinel while in the battlefield to ensure that he draws the fire away from Hope. Alexander may have the highest stats of all the Eidolons, but he also moves very slowly and is the only character in the entire game with access to Holy spells. Eidolons are quite protective of their summoners (such as Alexander using sentinel abilities purely to draw fire and keep Hope safe), and make sure to leave the battlefield with their summoners (plus the rest of the team) in full health, no matter how bad it had been before they were summoned. Alexander is also the only Eidolon who can not just carry his summoner away to safety; instead, he transforms into a fortress to defend against enemies so can also potentially be a blockade to protect a group of persons or area.
On the same vein as the ability to summon Eidolons is his one earth-based spell: Quake. It creates a small, localized earthquake that doesn't so much damage enemies as it does stagger them, and is a spell he can't use very often unlike his other spells (it's connected on the same bar that needs to refill when summoning).
Last but not least, though, is Hope’s actual inability to control his magic fully. He is the only character in-game who loses control of his magic because of his emotions— not once, but twice, so this may be quite a problem. Once, his magic reacted almost as a shockwave when he was upset, blasting everything away from him violently enough that Snow (6’7 mass of muscle) was shoved hard enough he actually broke through the metal railing behind him. The second time was detrimental only to Hope, when his despair reacted with his magic and he ended up in a near coma for a day.
Thing is, Hope has the highest magic in both his world and the world below. Maxed out, his magic stats pass 4000 while others linger around 1000. In fact, even in the sequel game, maxing out magic stats for magic oriented characters would have them hit about 1000. (The closest to his is Vanille, who hits above 3000 when she's maxed out.) Magic is... really something that he wields well and an integral part of him right now. With it, he's managed to withstand all that another planet has to throw at him. Without it, well, considering the name of his home planet (Cocoon), Hope may be vulnerable to numerous pathogens that most people who have already built up an immune system to or be inoculated for.
"EXTRA" on abilities:
It might seem almost overkill with Hope's abilities, but I like to play them as I do on the game: per turn, I limit him to six ATB segments (which people who've played the game will understand). In fights, that means he can cast up to six spells per turn, but they would be weak spells. That's if his turn isn't a reaction to what happened in the previous turn, etc etc etc. I try to play him by the books (err, game), control-wise. He switches paradigms to get to different skills and all.
5. On Love?
LAST BUT NOT LEAST, THOUGH.
On the subject of "love". On the subject of a romantic relationship, there's very little chance of me putting Hope in one. I play him as a kid, a smart kid, who is a little oblivious (at the same time being all too aware) to the fact that he is growing up. Again, developmentally, he's the same as all the other kids his age, except he's got a huge amount of respect for the opposite sex and he's smarter about things.
One, there's just about no chance of me putting him in a sexual relationship (unless you have this amazing plot related idea, and then talk to me about it). Two, there's very little chance of him getting a girlfriend/boyfriend (again, talk with me). Yes, it's broadened to both- I'd say he likes girls primarily, but wouldn't be adverse to alternatives if he does happen to fall in love. But as I said, I play him as a kid- as such, he's only just starting to grow into himself and while I'm sure he'd have plenty of puppy crushes, he's smart enough to know the difference between a kid crush and something life changing.
Yes, I play him as having a crush on Vanille. No, he'd never act on it. She's a dear friend to him and precious to Fang and he knows better. Hope values familial relationships above all else at this stage in his life, and the entire team is like family to him- thus, he has never, and would never, even think about entering a romantic relationship with any of them. They already have the highest spots in his life, changing anything would be demeaning.
He is a teenage boy and will have the physical reactions of a teenage boy (except not nearly so bad as an older teen would have since he's just growing into that stage), so, say, if Vanille ever tried to cuddle him in her sleep, he'd be, derp, very uncomfortable about it (give him some credit- she's pretty, he already likes her, and she's scantily clad). Unless he's already asleep, in which it's just the waking up part which will freak him out.
Adults are a different matter, if only because psychologically, he still looks toward the adults to make things right- even if he keeps claiming that he's not a kid anymore. If he fell asleep next to Light, he'd just draw comfort from her presence and probably curl closer for warmth. Same with Snow, even.
Hope cares about and loves a lot of people, I mean, he's not really one to deny affection. So he'll invade people's personal bubbles a lot and if he feels that you care and wouldn't reject it, he'd probably cling to your shirt, your hand... from either insecurity or to get your attention. Hugs are very welcome, despite what he says.
Also! Lightning.
Um, so I covered Vanille a bit in the personality post, and Lightning a little bit as well. But. Other than Nora, Lightning is perhaps the most important person to Hope in-game. But I think there's barely a tiny chance he'd ever encounter Nora in RP, so I'll skip to Lightning~
First things first- he'll probably never say anything of the sort, but Hope loves Light dearly; she's his mentor and his guiding star for most of the game. He depends on her quite a bit for strength and guidance and, well, basically everything. She taught him how to fight, how to defend himself, and how to stand up against something greater and achieve the impossible. He attributes his survival to her.
She's basically everything he wants to be when he grows up. XD From his parents, Hope learned of compassion and sacrifice, but from Light he learned how to channel despair into determination- and that sacrifice doesn't have to mean the end.
She's not his mother- he loves Nora too much to ever be able to replace her, but she is his idol. He knows that she doesn't want him to follow in her footsteps and her mistakes, but more than anything, he wants Light to be proud of him. He wants to grow up and be able to protect her the same way she always shielded him. And he strives to be better and stronger all the time because of it.
If anything, she's... like the big sister he never had- someone to idolize and look up to and run to if he ever needed. To him, she's strong and brave and kind and she can do anything and he'd follow her to the ends of the earth if he could offer some help and relieve her burdens somehow.
Will I play them as a pair? Sure, if it somehow gets worked in or affects the plot. Anything's possible, and I won't discount anything. But as it stands from canon without outside influences, while she is one of the most important people in his life, it's not a romantic thing.