Sephiroth The Purpose Seeker

Skan

Skan

Pro Adventurer
AKA
dief
Bad diction on my part. I didn't mean to say he was getting fooled (or to even concern myself with "Does he know draining mako kills the Planet?"), since as I said, he was definitely aware of all the shadiness ShinRa had involved themselves in wrt Angeal and Genesis. But his utter lack of action (except on missions) leads me to believe that he didn't really know what to do, decided not to think about it too hard, and therefore just followed orders for lack of anything else to do and because he thought he was doing good (whether he was or wasn't is entirely besides the point).

He didn't even investigate like Sephiroth did after the whole mess started. And it's clear he didn't really have any real thoughts of leaving ShinRa (like Sephiroth did). It's almost like he decided, okay, I aligned myself with ShinRa, therefore I'm gonna stay with them until they do something so utterly bad to me that I can't.
 
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Y

Yuri Lowell

Pro Adventurer
Dief's posts are pretty godlike.

I don't however think his end point is necessarily impossible to write around, you could portray him as emotionally vulnerable and sensitive prior to being dumped in the lifestream and make the excuse that it disfigured his psyche so standard human reflection just doesn't happen.

See Theon Greyjoy in asoiaf/GoT. Psychologically susceptible people given hard choices like that tend to do awful things but aren't necessarily inhuman, even if they're completely wrong.
 
Skan

Skan

Pro Adventurer
AKA
dief
I actually think CC did try to portray him as sensitive prior to the Nibelheim affair, even if they did so poorly (this is like the story of CC, actually). The problem is that we were playing as Zack the entire time, so we'd have no access to Sephiroth's thoughts, and Sephiroth is, of course, not very outwardly expressive.

I do believe that Sephiroth was emotionally sensitive at that time, which made it easy for Jenova to get in his head, which led him to burn down Nibelheim. I could possibly(!!) be convinced that after he fell into the Lifestream, he came to, but then was so horrified by his own actions that he went even more bonkers (and, I mean, that's really stretching). But I've yet to be convinced by any no-reset-button sequels that don't portray Sephiroth as a Cloud-obsessed, insane villain. And that's really what people like to complain about, how Sephiroth is always on about Cloud, about how he's a one-note villain, but in reality, it's probable that nobody can do much better than what SE has already done with his character if they want to stay true to his portrayal in the OG.

(And thanks for the compliment! I'm just haunting some of these threads for character/theme discussion.)
 
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Obsidian Fire

Obsidian Fire

Ahk Morn!
AKA
The Engineer
dief said:
I actually think CC did try to portray him as sensitive prior to the Nibelheim affair, even if they did so poorly (this is like the story of CC, actually). The problem is that we were playing as Zack the entire time, so we'd have no access to Sephiroth's thoughts, and Sephiroth is, of course, not very outwardly expressive.

I do believe that Sephiroth was emotionally sensitive at that time, which made it easy for Jenova to get in his head, which led him to burn down Nibelheim.
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This is my take on CC Seprhiroth as well. If he really was a cold-hearted person to start with, finding out what Hojo did to Jenova, the last of the Cetra (and Sephiroth had no reason to think Jenova wasn't his mom at the time, or that she wasn't a Cetra) should not have bothered him as much as it did. The fact that it did really bother him indicates to me that he did have some sense of decency/morals pre-Nibelheim. Although having Jenova in the area probably didn't help his mental state either.

The ironic part of it all to me is that if Sephiroth had just gone crazy against Shin-Ra instead of Nibelheim/the World, we wouldn't have had that much of a problem with it.

What Sephiroth seems to need though, is to be right about everything. I think this is part of the reason why he is so obsessed with absorbing the World as well as making Cloud suffer. If he manages to do both those things, it will mean that he was right and the rest of the world was wrong.
 
Skan

Skan

Pro Adventurer
AKA
dief
This has been bothering me for a while, but when Sephiroth discovers the monsters in the Nibelheim reactor, he says, "I knew, ever since I was a child... I was not like the others. I knew mine was a special existence. But this...This was not what I meant. Am I...a human being?"

That begs the question, "What did he mean?" It sounds like he'd pieced together over the years a rather strong (if brittle) sense of personal identity, strong enough that the prospect of not being human had a huge effect on how he sees himself and those around him. Yeah, Jenova whispering in the back of his head couldn't have been helping, but I still think that his reaction to seeing the monsters in the reactor was ... oddly violent. (Perhaps they were trying to stay true to the original game's depiction of the scene? But by god, they added Genesis, so I find that a bit hard to handwave.)

On a related note, I wish the Compilation hadn't played so fast and loose with the entire question of what it means to be human. Lots of wasted potential there, even in the original game.

ETA: I am also a bit curious as to what sparked Sephiroth's decision to almost leave ShinRa. I haven't played BC (and probably won't), but I'm ... thinking it could've been the exchange with Elfe perhaps, when she asks about his purpose? But I am pulling things out of my ass from my very sketchy knowledge of BC, so if any of you guys have a better idea, I'd love to hear it.
 
jazzflower92

jazzflower92

Pro Adventurer
AKA
The Girl With A Strong Opinion
dief said:
This has been bothering me for a while, but when Sephiroth discovers the monsters in the Nibelheim reactor, he says, "I knew, ever since I was a child... I was not like the others. I knew mine was a special existence. But this...This was not what I meant. Am I...a human being?"

That begs the question, "What did he mean?" It sounds like he'd pieced together over the years a rather strong (if brittle) sense of personal identity, strong enough that the prospect of not being human had a huge effect on how he sees himself and those around him. Yeah, Jenova whispering in the back of his head couldn't have been helping, but I still think that his reaction to seeing the monsters in the reactor was ... oddly violent. (Perhaps they were trying to stay true to the original game's depiction of the scene? But by god, they added Genesis, so I find that a bit hard to handwave.)

On a related note, I wish the Compilation hadn't played so fast and loose with the entire question of what it means to be human. Lots of wasted potential there, even in the original game.

ETA: I am also a bit curious as to what sparked Sephiroth's decision to almost leave ShinRa. I haven't played BC (and probably won't), but I'm ... thinking it could've been the exchange with Elfe perhaps, when she asks about his purpose? But I am pulling things out of my ass from my very sketchy knowledge of BC, so if any of you guys have a better idea, I'd love to hear it.
Click to expand...

"What it means to be human" actually would have been a big theme to explore if they gave more focus on Sephiroth as a person instead of just him being the villain. Being raised by Shinra just to be their poster boy was not good on his mentality and emotional health.
 
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