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Hojo and lies

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
A woman is free to do these horrible unreversable things too her body, I'll nevertheleas also think less of the husband if he's the one advocating it to his wife without the slightest regard for her safety. The decision has something to do with him, he's the one trying to get a promotion out of it.

But no, Lucretia is no one's victim. Sephiroth is hers. They might be the greatest scientific minds on the Planet, they nevertheless didn't have a clue what they were doing. The aim was to produce an Ancient capable of leading them to the promised land so the plan was effect the fetuses mind or brain. Lucretia probably knew better then Vincent just how unlikely the success of the experiment was. It being her body did mean Sephiroth above all at Lucrecia's non-existent mercy. That was a situation Vincent was ill-equipped to stop.
He tried to talk her out of it, the procedure was done anyway and yeah after that they had crossed the Rubicon and Vincent missed his chance to help. He doesn't have the skillset to help Lucretia or Sephiroth, only kill those that might. A decision he took his time getting too. Doesn't mean he's the bad guy as opposed to Lucretia and Hojo
 

Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
Of course, and I understand that. The thing about montages or time jumps like that, though, is that, as a storytelling tool, what's shown is going to be seen as representative of the whole -- i.e. what is shown, as well as what isn't. Even if that isn't the intended effect.

Since they should, as storytellers, be aware of how what's shown will be unpacked and digested, there's really no reason to think what was shown isn't representative. Sure, there's room there for some great struggle to have been going on; we just don't have any reason to believe it did.

What about a scene showing Lucrecia being very antagonistic to Hojo and desperate to see her son leads you to think it was intended to be representative of a period where she was completely compliant and made no effort to get to see her son?

It's hard for me to see these things as unrelated, particularly in light of the possibility (I'd even say probability) that the bastard's physiology opened him up to being prodded into instability by the newly reawakened Jenova.

Possible, yes, but Sephiroth has gone through his entire life up to that point being remarkably stable in traumatic circumstances. Much of what happened to him seems to be triggered by his social rather than biological conditions, and if anything, he seems more resistant than usual to JENOVAs influence as he was able to keep his identity. On the face of it, all the effects of the experiment itself were beneficial.

You may be right that she couldn't have prompted Chaos into action without inciting a large flow of Lifestream, but from the looks of him raging inside that tube, he was about to go on a rampage anyway until the protomateria calmed him. Couldn't she have just taken it away again?

Based on what Chaos usually does, that would have made him kill whatever was nearest (her) and then go back to sleep.

I wasn't suggesting threatening Hojo, by the way. More like Hojo's boss. For that matter, negotiating would have made more sense before breaking out threats. Knowing what Chaos is, Lucrecia should have been able to convince President Shinra that this creature sensitive to the flow of the Lifestream may be able to fulfill the purpose Sephiroth had been intended for (finding the Promised Land).

Hojo has read her thesis, and is one of the few that understood it. He knows what Chaos is and what it isn't.

If he were convinced of that, and could be convinced that Lucrecia didn't intend to bounce, perhaps he could have been persuaded both to order that additional resources, if needed, be devoted to stabilizing Vincent (which Hojo apparently ended up doing on his own anyway) and to let this scientist who not only contributed a child to their goal but also then brought him such a prize as this be allowed to see her son if she continued cooperating with the mission.

Even though Lucrecia didn't want Vincent to die, she still left him in that lab, probably knowing Hojo would do something to him. It's simple fortune that Hojo didn't kill him.

I... think you might have that backwards? Hojo had already done his experimenting by then, it was Lucrecia that brought Vince back from his 'death like state' that Hojo's experiments had left him in. It would be rather difficult for Hojo to do anything to him given how tough he is now, the only reason he stayed in the coffin is because he chose to.

If she was willing to give up on Vincent and life itself by the time she left anyway, why not take some kind of shot at this?

She didn't give up on Vincent. But the effects of what she'd done to herself were catching up with her.

She never told him the truth about his father, even when he discovered she was involved with him in some way.

True, and wrong, but not an unforgiveable crime.

Obviously he does have an understanding that human experimentation is wrong, or he wouldn't care about it anymore about Lucretia being involved in it then all the other science stuff they'd done.

Unless he was concerned about the risk to her rather than the ethics of it in general.

Vincent didn't destroy Lucretia's mind and body by the sheer force of his inactivity alone. Hojo had a little something to do with it, both in seting it up and her not getting the help she needs afterwards. I really don't think this was the loving and respecting relationship between equal scientific minds you are hyping it up to be.

Not what I meant.

How? It's the same with the complaint about how he alone dropped the ball with Sephiroth. He's not a physician. Once she stopped having a baby in her belly and it started being a scientific experiment that nobody can as yet make heads or tails of, "getting involved", as in removing Lucretia from the lab or removingh Hojo and Gast from life does not help. Time to do something was before they did it. And Vincent wanted to but blinded by love though he could appeal to Lucretia's better judgement. There was no such thing to speak of however.

Taking the newborn out of the sole care of Hojo might have been a good idea. He's not a physician, but he probably knows a few that know how to take care of a baby.

All we know is that he was not normal and that he started getting Mako showers at a very young age. Cloud communicated with Zack in the Mako tanks before the breakout, it's waning him off the stuff that turned him comatose.

Yeah, but we also don't know that he needed those to live. He doesn't seem to have any special needs the way DG and Genesis did.

Vincent got an immortal body from Hojo not Lucretia, he was in deathlike state but she was not "keeping him alive". There was nothing that required her 'round the clock attending beyond turning him into the instrument of the Planet's destruction.

How about 'keeping him from deteriorating to the point where he couldn't return from said 'deathlike state'. Dirge gives every indication that this is the case. We have the same lack of knowledge about Sephiroth as we dob about Vincent, so why assume special care is necessary in one case but not the other?

But no, Lucretia is no one's victim. Sephiroth is hers. They might be the greatest scientific minds on the Planet, they nevertheless didn't have a clue what they were doing. The aim was to produce an Ancient capable of leading them to the promised land so the plan was effect the fetuses mind or brain. Lucretia probably knew better then Vincent just how unlikely the success of the experiment was. It being her body did mean Sephiroth above all at Lucrecia's non-existent mercy. That was a situation Vincent was ill-equipped to stop.

What makes you think they had no idea what they were doing? They probably know the risks better than anyone else on the Planet.
 
A woman is free to do these horrible unreversable things too her body, I'll nevertheleas also think less of the husband if he's the one advocating it to his wife without the slightest regard for her safety. The decision has something to do with him, he's the one trying to get a promotion out of it.

But no, Lucretia is no one's victim. Sephiroth is hers. They might be the greatest scientific minds on the Planet, they nevertheless didn't have a clue what they were doing. The aim was to produce an Ancient capable of leading them to the promised land so the plan was effect the fetuses mind or brain. Lucretia probably knew better then Vincent just how unlikely the success of the experiment was. It being her body did mean Sephiroth above all at Lucrecia's non-existent mercy. That was a situation Vincent was ill-equipped to stop.
He tried to talk her out of it, the procedure was done anyway and yeah after that they had crossed the Rubicon and Vincent missed his chance to help. He doesn't have the skillset to help Lucretia or Sephiroth, only kill those that might. A decision he took his time getting too. Doesn't mean he's the bad guy as opposed to Lucretia and Hojo

Is anybody trying to argue that Vincent is the bad guy? I think, inasmuch as we're trying to make a point about Vincent at all, the point is that all three of them made mistakes; Vincent and Lucrecia regretted their mistakes, but Hojo didn't. Instead, he ran with them. So the question is really why fandom loves Vincent so much you'd almost think he could do no wrong, yet hates so fiercely on Lucrecia.

And again I have to ask, is Sephiroth really her victim? If he had been raised to know his mother, if he had known a mother's love, would he had gone off the rails in Nibelheim? Maybe not.

I still don't see what it was about Sephiroth that made him a "success" when the other two were "failures". They didn't start degrading until they were adults. As babies they must have seemed no more or less successful than Sephiroth.
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
What makes you think they had no idea what they were doing?

Because creating a supersoldier was never the intention and was the result. Because it was an experiment, and that's that what experiments are, gaining understanding about stuff you don't know for certain yet? Only here it's their own son instead of labrats. Because Gast said he was wrong?

They probably know the risks better than anyone else on the Planet.

Yeah, they definitely knew the risks better then Vincent, and still cared even less. That's kinda my point. Vincent was just the bodyguard, he has (greater) ignorance as an excuse.

I still don't see what it was about Sephiroth that made him a "success" when the other two were "failures". They didn't start degrading until they were adults. As babies they must have seemed no more or less successful than Sephiroth.

Yet we know that was not the case. Crisis Core having Sephiroth say that from experiments a normal baby was born, and was thus considered a failure was an intentional irony and it follows that the opposite happened over at Project S. We dunno much but the idea that all that stood between Sephiroth and humanity was parental love can be safely crossed out.
 
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Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
Taking the newborn out of the sole care of Hojo might have been a good idea. He's not a physician, but he probably knows a few that know how to take care of a baby.

He wasn't in the sole care of Hojo. There's a reason not even Vincent, nor anyone else, realised that Hojo was Sephiroth's father. He did not raise him.

Yeah, but we also don't know that he needed those to live. He doesn't seem to have any special needs the way DG and Genesis did.

Neither does Cloud at the same age as Sephiroth. It took him a hell to get there though. Baby Sephiroth might have taken to the treatments like a trooper, maybe not.

How about 'keeping him from deteriorating to the point where he couldn't return from said 'deathlike state'. Dirge gives every indication that this is the case. We have the same lack of knowledge about Sephiroth as we dob about Vincent, so why assume special care is necessary in one case but not the other?

What makes you think they had no idea what they were doing? They probably know the risks better than anyone else on the Planet.

So, concerning the Jenova Project where we KNOW Hojo was wrong over and over again, we should still see him as a solid source. When it comes to Lucretia's experiment, which he was all kinds of right about in the end, we should disregard his statements on the matter entirely?
 
I still don't see what it was about Sephiroth that made him a "success" when the other two were "failures". They didn't start degrading until they were adults. As babies they must have seemed no more or less successful than Sephiroth.

Yet we know that was not the case. Crisis Core having Sephiroth say that from experiments a normal baby was born, and was thus considered a failure was an intentional irony and it follows that the opposite happened over at Project S. We dunno much but the idea that all that stood between Sephiroth and humanity was parental love can be safely crossed out.

I don't understand what you're driving at here. I know the games say that Sephiroth was somehow a success while Genesis and Angeal were failures, but my point is that it's difficult to see why. If A and G were deemed failures because they were normal babies and not Cetra, then why was Sephiroth deemed a success? How was he different? They all had the same super-powers, although Sephiroth was the strongest. To all intents and purposes Sephiroth was a normal human baby when he was born, so why was baby Sephiroth a success when the other two were failures?

Maybe mother love wasn't the only thing standing between Sephiroth and humanity, but it sure would have gone a long way towards bridging the gap.
 

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
Of course, and I understand that. The thing about montages or time jumps like that, though, is that, as a storytelling tool, what's shown is going to be seen as representative of the whole -- i.e. what is shown, as well as what isn't. Even if that isn't the intended effect.

Since they should, as storytellers, be aware of how what's shown will be unpacked and digested, there's really no reason to think what was shown isn't representative. Sure, there's room there for some great struggle to have been going on; we just don't have any reason to believe it did.

What about a scene showing Lucrecia being very antagonistic to Hojo and desperate to see her son leads you to think it was intended to be representative of a period where she was completely compliant and made no effort to get to see her son?
Well, I didn't say that, though, did I? Even in my mockery-filled paraphrasing, I didn't say she made no effort.

What I've said is that she didn't make every effort, caved too easily, and comes off looking pathetic. I don't see how any of that's even debatable, frankly, but to each their own.

Clem said:
It's hard for me to see these things as unrelated, particularly in light of the possibility (I'd even say probability) that the bastard's physiology opened him up to being prodded into instability by the newly reawakened Jenova.

Possible, yes, but Sephiroth has gone through his entire life up to that point being remarkably stable in traumatic circumstances. Much of what happened to him seems to be triggered by his social rather than biological conditions, and if anything, he seems more resistant than usual to JENOVAs influence as he was able to keep his identity. On the face of it, all the effects of the experiment itself were beneficial.

On the face of it, yes, but the only time Seph is known to have gotten near the awakened Jenova, he lost his mind. Sure, it may be that the stress of the personal problems he was dealing with at the time made him more susceptible to the alien's destructive influence, but he nonetheless would have never been susceptible to it in the first place had he not been used in that experiment.

Clem said:
You may be right that she couldn't have prompted Chaos into action without inciting a large flow of Lifestream, but from the looks of him raging inside that tube, he was about to go on a rampage anyway until the protomateria calmed him. Couldn't she have just taken it away again?
Based on what Chaos usually does, that would have made him kill whatever was nearest (her) and then go back to sleep.
Right, but we're also talking about a fatalistic last resort. Which, for someone willing to give up on everything anyway, shouldn't have been out of the question.

Clem said:
I wasn't suggesting threatening Hojo, by the way. More like Hojo's boss. For that matter, negotiating would have made more sense before breaking out threats. Knowing what Chaos is, Lucrecia should have been able to convince President Shinra that this creature sensitive to the flow of the Lifestream may be able to fulfill the purpose Sephiroth had been intended for (finding the Promised Land).
Hojo has read her thesis, and is one of the few that understood it. He knows what Chaos is and what it isn't.
He also doesn't believe it even exists until he sees Vincent transform during the events of the original game. Lucrecia had proof that it does exist.

Clem said:
If he were convinced of that, and could be convinced that Lucrecia didn't intend to bounce, perhaps he could have been persuaded both to order that additional resources, if needed, be devoted to stabilizing Vincent (which Hojo apparently ended up doing on his own anyway) and to let this scientist who not only contributed a child to their goal but also then brought him such a prize as this be allowed to see her son if she continued cooperating with the mission.

Even though Lucrecia didn't want Vincent to die, she still left him in that lab, probably knowing Hojo would do something to him. It's simple fortune that Hojo didn't kill him.
I... think you might have that backwards? Hojo had already done his experimenting by then, it was Lucrecia that brought Vince back from his 'death like state' that Hojo's experiments had left him in. It would be rather difficult for Hojo to do anything to him given how tough he is now, the only reason he stayed in the coffin is because he chose to.

Notice I said "additional resources, if needed." I know Hojo had already enhanced Vincent's body, which made it possible for Lucrecia to house the Chaos element within him in the first place. She also seemed to have difficulty fully resuscitating him, though, so either he eventually just woke up or Hojo did something else.

Either way, though, the key idea there is that she left him in that lab at Hojo's mercy, and we know for a fact that Hojo moved him out of the tube. Lucrecia left him in the tube, but he didn't wake up there; he woke up on a table. Hojo's notes in the Shinra Manor from the OG also say that he was the one to lock Vincent up.

Vince may have willingly got in the coffin, but Hojo turned the key to the room.

Clem said:
If she was willing to give up on Vincent and life itself by the time she left anyway, why not take some kind of shot at this?
She didn't give up on Vincent. But the effects of what she'd done to herself were catching up with her.
See above. She definitely gave up on both him and herself.

And again I have to ask, is Sephiroth really her victim? If he had been raised to know his mother, if he had known a mother's love, would he had gone off the rails in Nibelheim? Maybe not.

It's more that he would have never been in the position to go off the rails to begin with if she hadn't used him as she did.

Lic said:
I still don't see what it was about Sephiroth that made him a "success" when the other two were "failures". They didn't start degrading until they were adults. As babies they must have seemed no more or less successful than Sephiroth.
Yeah, it's very unclear what they would have been measuring at infancy. All I've ever seen is that the determination was made then.
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
I don't understand what you're driving at here. I know the games say that Sephiroth was somehow a success while Genesis and Angeal were failures, but my point is that it's difficult to see why. If A and G were deemed failures because they were normal babies and not Cetra, then why was Sephiroth deemed a success? How was he different? They all had the same super-powers, although Sephiroth was the strongest. To all intents and purposes Sephiroth was a normal human baby when he was born, so why was baby Sephiroth a success when the other two were failures?

Maybe mother love wasn't the only thing standing between Sephiroth and humanity, but it sure would have gone a long way towards bridging the gap.

The point that I am driving at is that Lucretia did NOT give birth to anything that was for all intents and purposes a human baby. I don't know why you are sure she did.
 
I'm not talking about what I think; obviously as a player of the game I am acquainted with Sephiroth's genetic make-up. What I'm saying is that to all appearances Sephiroth is no different from Genesis or Angeal, and yet, in-game, Project S was deemed a success and Project G a failure. The writers have offered us no reason or explanation for this. If the aim of the projects was to re-create a Cetra, then they clearly failed with Sephiroth as well as with the other two.
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
adult Genesis and Angeal after they had became superstrong, fast, learned to use magic, acquired glowing mako eyes and near unassisted flight, you mean. And in Genesis and Zack's case, it was all to catch with everything Sephiroth already was when they were still completely unremarkable countrybumpkins.
 
adult Genesis and Angeal after they had became superstrong, fast, learned to use magic, acquired glowing mako eyes and near unassisted flight, you mean. And in Genesis and Zack's case, it was all to catch with everything Sephiroth already was when they were still completely unremarkable countrybumpkins.

I know that's true of Zack, but Zack was just a normal human being, whereas Genesis and Angeal were the products of an experiment. Is it canon that Genesis, while living in Banora, aspired to be like Sephiroth? Or is that something we deduce backwards from his competitiveness with Sephiroth in Shinra?

Did Sephiroth come out of the womb superstrong, superfast, and wielding magic, a bit like the infant Hercules strangling snakes in his cradle? The records at Nibelheim say he was "a normal child". I'm not denying that in-game, Sephiroth was deemed the success and Angeal and Genesis the failures. I'm saying that we're given no explanation for why this was so, since the outcome of all three experiments seemed - until S and G began degrading - to be the same.
 

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
Is it canon that Genesis, while living in Banora, aspired to be like Sephiroth? Or is that something we deduce backwards from his competitiveness with Sephiroth in Shinra?
It seems to be canon, yeah. One of the fanclub e-mails says that Genesis joined SOLDIER because "The heroics of Sephiroth, who is the same age as Genesis, inspired him to work for the good of the world."

There's also this exchange from the CC Ultimania Scenario Q&A:

Q3-2: There are those called “G Series SOLDIERS,” are these other children created within Project G besides Genesis and Angeal? Were they all born in Banora, and were they monitored with the anticipation of them joining SOLDIER when they were older?

A3-2: Of the children born because of Project G, Genesis and Angeal were the only survivors.

It was Genesis’ foster parents duty to observe him, and to stay in communication with ShinRa. It is feasible that Genesis received an education from ShinRa because of his parents. However Genesis’ feelings had changed, and it can be surmised that they came to a point where they didn’t mind deceiving ShinRa for the sake of their son. On the other hand, since Gillian considered a relationship with ShinRa to be foolish, she completely refused to allow Angeal to go into SOLDIER’s special training. At any rate, they weren’t given the systematic specialized education for becoming a SOLDIER and their relation to ShinRa was still kept secret.

However, through ShinRa’s information management, public opinion came to be “ShinRa should undertake protecting our livelihood” and “SOLDIERs are the allies of the citizens, fighting to protect their peaceful way of life.” Particularly, Banora as a village closely connected to ShinRa had many supporters of the company. For that reason, not only Genesis and Angeal, but many of the villagers took jobs related to ShinRa, recognizing it as making them a success in life and a winner.

Following that trend, Genesis volunteered for SOLDIER and as his close friend, Angeal volunteered as well.

Lic said:
Did Sephiroth come out of the womb superstrong, superfast, and wielding magic, a bit like the infant Hercules strangling snakes in his cradle? The records at Nibelheim say he was "a normal child".

I'm not remembering where this was said. Can you refresh my memory?

That also seems to be at odds with what was said in the CC Ultimania Scenario Q&A about the kids displaying (or not displaying) attributes in infancy that led to Sephiroth being deemed superior:

Q2-1: What is the time difference between the start of Jenova Project S and Jenova Project G? And out of Genesis, Sephiroth and Angeal, is Genesis the eldest?

A2-1: Project S and Project G began at roughly the same time. They were lead by Hojo and Hollander respectively, and the department head Gast has little participation in either project.

The order of their births goes Angeal & Genesis > Sephiroth, but it’s fine to think of them as being around the same age. Angeal and Genesis were created at roughly the same time, and were deemed as failed projects when they were babies. Project S took the results from Project G and added further improvements, so Sephiroth’s birth was later than Angeal and Genesis’.

Q2-2: At what point in time was Project G deemed to be a failure?

A2-2: The verdict on the outcome of project had already been made when Angeal and Genesis were babies.

The Jenova Project was originally started with the aim of creating an Ancient. They didn’t get the data they had expected from Angeal and Genesis, and they were considered failures (although Hollander states in the game that Angeal was a success, at the time Project G was seen to be a complete failure). At the same time Project G was frozen, and abandoned.

On the other hand, Sephiroth showed the anticipated merit, and was deemed a success. Thanks to this Hojo seizes control of the science department, and Hollander loses his position within the department.

So, Seph was never seen as normal as far as I can tell, while Genesis and Angeal were for a while. It's implied here, though, that Genesis's foster parents deceived Shin-Ra about something -- possibly the kids showing superhuman ability as they grew?
 

Tashasaurous

Tash for Short
AKA
Sailor Moon, Mini Moon, Hotaru, Cardcaptor Sakura, Meilin, Xion, Kairi, Aqua, Tifa, Aerith, Yuffie, Elena, Misty, May, Dawn, Casey, Fiona, Ellie
It's implied here, though, that Genesis's foster parents deceived Shin-Ra about something -- possibly the kids showing superhuman ability as they grew?

I always thought that Hollander dumped Genesis at Banora when he was just an infant and that his foster parents adopted him, never having told him that he was indeed adopted.

As Gillian said to Zack despite not being that much better of mother herself(but she did commit suicide out of guilt) that Genesis used to be a good boy before joining ShinRa.
 
Tres, I can't remember where it was, but I do remember it - it must have been either in the OG or CC. Minato was the one who first raised that point. It wouldn't be the first time FFVII canon has contrdicted itself; it's pretty notorious for doing that. I seem to recall it being canon that Banora was either built or taken over by Shinra in order to provide a kind of "Truman Show" style normal upbringing for Angeal and Sephiroth, which hardly suggests that Shinra had washed their hands of these kids. And I would take everything the fanclubs say with a big grain of salt. It's all PR. I seriously doubt Genesis was ever motivated by a desire to do good in the world. Nothing in his actual characterisation supports this.
 

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
I agree, but I'd imagine just the "do good in the world" bit was the PR spin. Sephiroth's exploits being his inspiration, though, is well supported elsewhere (the Scenario Q&A, the newspaper clipping from when Genesis was a child, the "Your fame should have been mine" line).
 

Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
Because creating a supersoldier was never the intention and was the result. Because it was an experiment, and that's that what experiments are, gaining understanding about stuff you don't know for certain yet? Only here it's their own son instead of labrats. Because Gast said he was wrong?

There's a middle ground between 'can predict everything that's going to happen with 100pc certainty' and 'no idea what they were doing'. Experiments don't tend to be chosen randomly, they had to have some reason to believe that that was the result they would get.

There's a reason not even Vincent, nor anyone else, realised that Hojo was Sephiroth's father. He did not raise him.

Vincent didn't know that? Is that canon? I wasn't under that impression.

If A and G were deemed failures because they were normal babies and not Cetra, then why was Sephiroth deemed a success? How was he different? They all had the same super-powers, although Sephiroth was the strongest. To all intents and purposes Sephiroth was a normal human baby when he was born, so why was baby Sephiroth a success when the other two were failures?

Most likely his genes look different under a microscope.

So, concerning the Jenova Project where we KNOW Hojo was wrong over and over again, we should still see him as a solid source. When it comes to Lucretia's experiment, which he was all kinds of right about in the end, we should disregard his statements on the matter entirely?

In Dirge, we get shown Lucrecia frantically sciencing because if she doesn't 'his tissue will continue to decay'. We never see Sephiroth as a baby, so we don't know what care he needed or didn't need.

What I've said is that she didn't make every effort, caved too easily, and comes off looking pathetic. I don't see how any of that's even debatable, frankly, but to each their own.

Well, we were talking about how that scene is meant to indicative of other stuff that's happening. I don't see how you're interpreting that scene is literally the only effort she makes at all. It seems highly unlikely she just went into a screaming rage once for thirty seconds and then just gave up.

Either way, though, the key idea there is that she left him in that lab at Hojo's mercy, and we know for a fact that Hojo moved him out of the tube. Lucrecia left him in the tube, but he didn't wake up there; he woke up on a table. Hojo's notes in the Shinra Manor from the OG also say that he was the one to lock Vincent up.

Vince may have willingly got in the coffin, but Hojo turned the key to the room.

My impression was that whatever her sickness was got to be too much, and she had to leave before he woke up. We know she left a copy of her records for him explaining what had happened, (which he doesn't find until Dirge, likely through Hojo intervention), maybe she tried to hide him, who knows?

n the face of it, yes, but the only time Seph is known to have gotten near the awakened Jenova, he lost his mind.

Not quite. He has an episode in the reactor, but holds it together even with Genesis prodding and goes back to Nibelheim to investigate. His investigations and seven days of sleep deprivation finally push him over the edge. The whole thing could have went down very differently if he had been aware of Lucrecia's existence.

Right, but we're also talking about a fatalistic last resort. Which, for someone willing to give up on everything anyway, shouldn't have been out of the question.

She never wanted Sephiroth or Vincent dead, though, just herself.

He also doesn't believe it even exists until he sees Vincent transform during the events of the original game. Lucrecia had proof that it does exist.

But once he sees that proof, he instantly knows what it is and what it does. President Shinra is going to ask him if it comes up, whereupon he can say 'nope, that's nothing to do with the promised land'

See above. She definitely gave up on both him and herself.

She left him a note, so by the time she left, she knew he was going to wake up.

It's more that he would have never been in the position to go off the rails to begin with if she hadn't used him as she did.

Maybe so, but if she had been let raise him as she wanted, then it wouldn't have arisen. It's not even 'a mother's love' that's in question, just the knowledge that she existed would have muddied his 'take back the planet for mom' policy.

I've never been claiming that Lucrecia is blameless here, but compared to others involved in the project like Gast and Gillian she seems to take a lot of the fault, despite being more remorseful than any of them. Gast just walked out, and the only difference between her and Gillian is that she wasn't allowed to raise her kid and Gillian was.
 

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
On the face of it, yes, but the only time Seph is known to have gotten near the awakened Jenova, he lost his mind.
Not quite. He has an episode in the reactor, but holds it together even with Genesis prodding and goes back to Nibelheim to investigate. His investigations and seven days of sleep deprivation finally push him over the edge. The whole thing could have went down very differently if he had been aware of Lucrecia's existence.

...

It's more that he would have never been in the position to go off the rails to begin with if she hadn't used him as she did.

Maybe so, but if she had been let raise him as she wanted, then it wouldn't have arisen. It's not even 'a mother's love' that's in question, just the knowledge that she existed would have muddied his 'take back the planet for mom' policy.

I've never been claiming that Lucrecia is blameless here, but compared to others involved in the project like Gast and Gillian she seems to take a lot of the fault, despite being more remorseful than any of them. Gast just walked out, and the only difference between her and Gillian is that she wasn't allowed to raise her kid and Gillian was.

I'm responding to these parts first because I feel like it's the most important bit.

At least from a literary perspective, if not an in-universe vantage, I feel like Angeal serves to answer the question "What if Lucrecia had raised Sephiroth?" Angeal seems to have had a stable, ideal, normal childhood with loving parents, and at least one really close friend. He still goes off the rails when he finds out about his origin, and ultimately invites it to destroy him.

His story really is a mirror of Sephiroth's. His mother is even able to actually commit suicide where Lucrecia wasn't.

Obviously in a real-world scenario, there would still be room to emphasize that Sephiroth and Angeal aren't the same person, but the contrast between them strikes me as too deliberate from a literary perspective.

All of this is a long-winded way of me saying that I think Lucrecia's actions doomed Sephiroth no matter what.

Clem said:
What I've said is that she didn't make every effort, caved too easily, and comes off looking pathetic. I don't see how any of that's even debatable, frankly, but to each their own.
Well, we were talking about how that scene is meant to indicative of other stuff that's happening. I don't see how you're interpreting that scene is literally the only effort she makes at all. It seems highly unlikely she just went into a screaming rage once for thirty seconds and then just gave up.

I didn't say "that scene is literally the only effort she makes at all," though. :monster: I said "The thing about montages or time jumps like that ... is that, as a storytelling tool, what's shown is going to be seen as representative of the whole.

Since they should, as storytellers, be aware of how what's shown will be unpacked and digested, there's really no reason to think what was shown isn't representative."

"Representative," not "only."

Put another way, what is shown to us can reasonably be taken as most exemplary of what isn't shown as well. Obviously this wasn't Lucrecia's only effort to persuade Hojo to not be a jerk. But she never went beyond this either.

Clem said:
Either way, though, the key idea there is that she left him in that lab at Hojo's mercy, and we know for a fact that Hojo moved him out of the tube. Lucrecia left him in the tube, but he didn't wake up there; he woke up on a table. Hojo's notes in the Shinra Manor from the OG also say that he was the one to lock Vincent up.

Vince may have willingly got in the coffin, but Hojo turned the key to the room.
My impression was that whatever her sickness was got to be too much, and she had to leave before he woke up. We know she left a copy of her records for him explaining what had happened, (which he doesn't find until Dirge, likely through Hojo intervention), maybe she tried to hide him, who knows?

...

See above. She definitely gave up on both him and herself.

She left him a note, so by the time she left, she knew he was going to wake up.
We see Lucrecia when she leaves. I will grant you that the fact she left a record for Vincent would reasonably indicate that she expected him to survive and awaken -- but we also saw her leave with Vincent still in the tube. Yet he doesn't wake up right there -- not even in that room, neither in the original game nor in Dirge.

Clem said:
Right, but we're also talking about a fatalistic last resort. Which, for someone willing to give up on everything anyway, shouldn't have been out of the question.
She never wanted Sephiroth or Vincent dead, though, just herself.
While true, there's a reason I said "last resort." She had several other options I spoke of.

And who would have killed Vincent in that scenario? Shin-Ra wouldn't have had anything that could stop him except the protomateria -- which Lucrecia would have.

For that matter, she didn't even give the trying-to-die thing her all. =P She could have let Chaos kill her, and give the protomateria to someone else to put him back to sleep.

Clem said:
He also doesn't believe it even exists until he sees Vincent transform during the events of the original game. Lucrecia had proof that it does exist.
But once he sees that proof, he instantly knows what it is and what it does. President Shinra is going to ask him if it comes up, whereupon he can say 'nope, that's nothing to do with the promised land'
And why would Hojo do that? He would obviously want to study this creature, so why try convincing the President that it isn't significant?

For that matter, why wouldn't the President be interested in Chaos even if it didn't offer a lead to the Promised Land? Sephiroth ultimately didn't fulfill that purpose, but Shin-Ra most certainly still found a use for him. :monster:

Clem said:
Minato said:
There's a reason not even Vincent, nor anyone else, realised that Hojo was Sephiroth's father. He did not raise him.

Vincent didn't know that? Is that canon? I wasn't under that impression.
Can't say I was of that understanding either.
 
Sephiroth may not have gone off the rails the way Angeal did, since he wasn't degenerating. Even if he go the same way as Angeal, at least he wouldn't have burnt down Nibelheim and tried to take the whole world with him. Angeal committed suicide by Zack; he revealed the full extent of his monstrousness to Zack in order to force Zack to kill him, and he did this to awaken Zack to the truth about Shinra. In fact, I would say both his suicide and Gillian's were rational choices.
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
There's a middle ground between 'can predict everything that's going to happen with 100pc certainty' and 'no idea what they were doing'. Experiments don't tend to be chosen randomly, they had to have some reason to believe that that was the result they would get.

They were acting under the assumption that Jenova was an Ancient, not too long later Hojo and Gast both discovered they were wrong. So yeah, gambling their son's life happened during the early stages of their research when they were very much still working things out.

Vincent didn't know that? Is that canon? I wasn't under that impression.

He reacted to the revelation too didn't he? And didn't go "well duh" or "wait, we've been chasing Sephiroth's mother the whole time and you guys never wonder who the dad was?"

Most likely his genes look different under a microscope.

So did Genesis', even then. Kinda his whole deal. His genes were altered, which paved the way for Deepground's new experiments but Genesis himself appeared a normal human child and was thus written off, a condition Sephiroth was completely free of, which is why he was taken from his mother, not the other way around.

In Dirge, we get shown Lucrecia frantically sciencing because if she doesn't 'his tissue will continue to decay'. We never see Sephiroth as a baby, so we don't know what care he needed or didn't need.

Hojo assessed she was just using him to test her experiment about awaking the herald of the Planet's apocalypse and she does not deny this, ever. She only says doesn't know how it's going nor cares. But here Hojo's scientific opinions aren't worth anything it seems.

I've never been claiming that Lucrecia is blameless here, but compared to others involved in the project like Gast and Gillian she seems to take a lot of the fault, despite being more remorseful than any of them. Gast just walked out, and the only difference between her and Gillian is that she wasn't allowed to raise her kid and Gillian was.

If there was an entire game devoted to making us feel sorry for Gast, I'm sure there'd be a similiar backlash. And Hollander is not the quite the stonecold sociopath that has never felt the need to hide his nature that Hojo is. Hollander got embittered over a period of decades. Also Gillian didn't neccesarily marry him. That he is Angeal's father at all is ambigious. The guy that murdered Gast, shot Vincent and kept Lucretia from Sephiroth is basically the same person Lucretia fell in love with, acting same as always.

If Dirge had done anything at all to make Hojo seem a bit more benign in the flashbacks I could concur but it does not, at all.

As for remorse, her remorse over Grimoire did not stop her experimenting. Her remorse over the Jenova Project did not either, Hojo just gave her a relatively more justified outlet for her exploits at the next point in time. Then she put herself in mournful stasis. If she was allowed to do things after her mistakes were done she'd probably be a bit more liked character. But someone that is just there to screw people over and then feel sorry and be felt sorry for isn't very likable. Fancy that.
 

Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
At least from a literary perspective, if not an in-universe vantage, I feel like Angeal serves to answer the question "What if Lucrecia had raised Sephiroth?" Angeal seems to have had a stable, ideal, normal childhood with loving parents, and at least one really close friend. He still goes off the rails when he finds out about his origin, and ultimately invites it to destroy him.

His story really is a mirror of Sephiroth's. His mother is even able to actually commit suicide where Lucrecia wasn't.

Obviously in a real-world scenario, there would still be room to emphasize that Sephiroth and Angeal aren't the same person, but the contrast between them strikes me as too deliberate from a literary perspective.

All of this is a long-winded way of me saying that I think Lucrecia's actions doomed Sephiroth no matter what.

There's some differences with Angeal. Once he grows that wing, he has no real options, because he can be used to create monsters, and make monsters worse, and both Shinra and Hollander are going to want to use that. As long as he's alive, people are going to want his genes to build armies of stuff that kill things, and he doesn't want that blood on his hands, so he destroys himself along with the last examples of his copies (that he knows about), preventing Hollander from using him to make monsters. "Just one sample!"

Sephiroth: I'm an experiment. That sucks.

Angeal: I'm an experiment, an as long as I live, people will try to use me to create monsters that will kill at random. I can't let that happen, so I need to die.

I didn't say "that scene is literally the only effort she makes at all," though. I said "The thing about montages or time jumps like that ... is that, as a storytelling tool, what's shown is going to be seen as representative of the whole.

Since they should, as storytellers, be aware of how what's shown will be unpacked and digested, there's really no reason to think what was shown isn't representative."

"Representative," not "only."

Put another way, what is shown to us can reasonably be taken as most exemplary of what isn't shown as well. Obviously this wasn't Lucrecia's only effort to persuade Hojo to not be a jerk. But she never went beyond this either.

Certainly, but I find it an odd interpretation to think that this scene is not representative of Lucrecia trying hard to get access to Sephy, trying everything she can.

Your scenario of using Chaos relies on a few huge assumptions, like that she can contact President Shinra in the first place. There's a lot we don't know about what's happening in that period.

We see Lucrecia when she leaves. I will grant you that the fact she left a record for Vincent would reasonably indicate that she expected him to survive and awaken -- but we also saw her leave with Vincent still in the tube. Yet he doesn't wake up right there -- not even in that room, neither in the original game nor in Dirge.

So something went wrong. Given how hard she was working to try to keep Vincent alive/out of his death like state, I don't think there was ill intent towards him.

While true, there's a reason I said "last resort." She had several other options I spoke of.

And who would have killed Vincent in that scenario? Shin-Ra wouldn't have had anything that could stop him except the protomateria -- which Lucrecia would have.

For that matter, she didn't even give the trying-to-die thing her all. =P She could have let Chaos kill her, and give the protomateria to someone else to put him back to sleep.

Who could she give it to she could trust, who would also be powerful enough to get close to an active Chaos?

Chaos can be killed in FF7 and Dirge, and he's unreliable. Maybe she tried it, and he just writhed around a bit and changed back like he did in Nibelheim.

And why would Hojo do that? He would obviously want to study this creature, so why try convincing the President that it isn't significant?

For that matter, why wouldn't the President be interested in Chaos even if it didn't offer a lead to the Promised Land? Sephiroth ultimately didn't fulfill that purpose, but Shin-Ra most certainly still found a use for him.

Because it would undermine his own Project S?

President Shinra: So, my options are to let this thing rampage randomly, or leave it under the control of a pissed off ex Turk?

They were acting under the assumption that Jenova was an Ancient, not too long later Hojo and Gast both discovered they were wrong. So yeah, gambling their son's life happened during the early stages of their research when they were very much still working things out.

They found that out when Gast met a real one, not because of research.

He reacted to the revelation too didn't he? And didn't go "well duh" or "wait, we've been chasing Sephiroth's mother the whole time and you guys never wonder who the dad was?"

The reaction is "You-" which is so vague it could mean anything.

Hojo assessed she was just using him to test her experiment about awaking the herald of the Planet's apocalypse and she does not deny this, ever. She only says doesn't know how it's going nor cares. But here Hojo's scientific opinions aren't worth anything it seems.

The point of Dirge is that he was wrong. That's a deliberate red herring, it's why we get shown the same scene twice.

Lucrecia : No, you're wrong! This is no experiment!

If there was an entire game devoted to making us feel sorry for Gast, I'm sure there'd be a similiar backlash

True.
 
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