- AKA
- TresDias
That's true. I don't know if it was clear whether they were all sent together or separately in smaller groups, but there were apparently a lot of them (i.e. however many Genesis Copies there were) within the country at the same time.
Have Weiss cells-G or cells of Jenova?
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Starling
Pro Adventurer
They're basically a pair, so regardless of which was published first we don't know which was used to get the other. That's why I said it was more about the equation than the result and we have no way of being sure about it.
Either way, I've been combing through the timeline lately and I have good reason to believe the general rule with the approximations is that they're the latest those events can take place and leave open the possibility that those events happened at an earlier point, regardless of what events they're placed between. I'd previously demonstrated how the way Vincent's time in the coffin was simultaneously referred to as approximately 20 years, over 20 years in his profile and approximately 23 years in the timeline makes it obvious those approximations shouldn't be treated as definite dates, but rather what is probably the latest point in which it can happen.
As another example, the timeline says Weiss was born approximately 20 years before FF7, which would be around 1987. However, the timeline also says Nero was born in 1987. They're brothers and Nero's profile takes the time to note that they have the same mother. It takes about a month at minimum for a women to be able to get pregnant after giving birth so the only way for them to both be born that year would be if Weiss was born in January or February and Nero in November or December. On top of that you'd have to expect their mother to be able to handle the strain of going through two pregnancies in such quick succession without miscarrying. Since Weiss' date of birth is just an approximation, you don't actually need to bend over backwards to make the date work.
See above about why we shouldn't treat those approximations as definite dates. The profiles and timelines aren't always consistent with each other. Cait Sith's seems to be the only one that says the OG ended January 21, 0008 instead of just January, while the timeline seems to be the only one that says Zack died at the end of September instead of just September. The 23 approximation is on the timeline but not in Vincent's profile, but rather that he was in his 20s when he was sent to Nibelheim. For all we know, the 23 and 50 approximations were calculated as Vincent being 20-27 25-30 years before the OG, which would result in the minimal age of 20 30 years before the OG requiring that 2 years pass for him to get shot at 27.
I still feel that they're not as vague as you make them out to be. You may not consider my observations fully objective but I did point out some pretty straightforward stuff and observations that take into account what's shown elsewhere, as well as what the intention seems to be. This does matter in a discussion about canon, regardless of what you think. We're discussing the content of scenes in the games and what they mean, after all. See above about the dates in the Ultimanias.
See above. The show aspect of storytelling is important and needs to be taken into account on this kind of thing. I'd rather you didn't devalue its canonicity simply because you're not being told it, when both involve conveying things about the story and therefore canon.
And now it has, meaning it would appear to have been retconned.
See below about Lucrecia not being able to be around anyone. That Lucrecia's model looks perfectly normal, no mention is made about her being hideous to contradict her normal looking character model, that people can be unable to be around people for purely emotional or psychological reasons and that she also looks fine in DoC suggests that the whole she became physically deformed thing isn't canon. The effects of the experimentation don't seem to be visible besides stuff like collapsing.
Not being able to be around other people isn't strictly about physical appearance, so much as mental state. Considering the strain what happened to Vincent, the experiments she went through, having recently given birth, not being allowed to hold her son and effectively being stuck in an abusive relationship with Hojo until she leaves, that's quite a bit of strain. The later parts of the DoC flashbacks show it took quite a toll on her mental state by the time she decided she simply couldn't stay anymore and it makes sense she'd be driven to suicide from all that, before leaving after that doesn't work out. It seems that hiding away in the cave and sealing herself into the crystal was the closest she could manage.
It's a possibility I'm not just going to overlook.
I was being thorough.
A source full of inaccuracies and contradictions. See above.
See above.
Which is why it's one of those things that're easier to deal with in full detail after working through the consistency issues elsewhere in the timeline.
So I guess now it's a matter of whether or not that makes sense in relation to everything else.
I'm naturally inclined to be skeptical of something of this nature unless I can have a look at it myself, even if I'd need a translation for it. That I trust the translations you provide to be accurate should mean something.
I don't really see the point of going out of my way to get a copy of a book I can't read or translate when I can put the money I'd spend getting it on something I'd get more use out of. Even if I did own a copy, I'd still need a translation.
I don't get why you'd post such a long reply from a phone. It may be because I take my time making posts this long rather than type them up in one go but using a computer seems like it'd be a lot easier. The rest of what you said here is addressed below.
I'm pretty sure I was about to ask for a citation since you didn't seem to get that I was trying to find a translation of your source and couldn't find it. That last time I brought up the early material files wasn't because I still thought that was what you were referencing but rather that it was the closest thing I could find. That you thought otherwise was the misunderstanding.
Communication is a two-way thing so no single person is at fault on this. We could keep debating which one of us is more at fault than the other and we might never reach an agreement so we might as well just let it go and move on. Now that the misunderstanding's been cleared up, it should serve as an example of how to avoid similar problems in the future.
That's understandable.
If it's less demanding, then just a note of what's different and what's not would be fine too. I honestly don't mind if that kind of thing were to take a few years to finish so long as progress was happening, however slow it may be. As far as I'm concerned, anyone willing to take the time to do it can take as much time as they want or need. It's just a matter of maintaining interest and motivation the time it takes for it to get done.
It's not like I'd know if posting the Ultimania scans on a thread for anyone who wanted access to them but didn't own a copy to consult themselves was something that'd been done or even considered unless I asked. I definitely haven't seen such a thread around the forums so it didn't seem to be the case. If bringing it up came with the risk of coming across as lecturing someone on how they're doing their job, then at least I got to know whether or not it'd been done and why. It'd be a shame if ideas like that were never brought up just because someone would feel like they were being told how to do something that takes time and effort when the person's just trying to make a helpful suggestion.
I really do appreciate the hard work and effort put into translating and I did try to get that across even if I don't necessarily say much about it.
I feel like we're already discussing this in the other thread.
Informal debate has its fair share of flaws as well, so you could still end up focusing on the wrong concerns regardless.
Well, it's good to compare information both together and separately when verifying how information from multiple sources fit together.
So basically all the key words. Odd that mako cannon's the only one that doesn't seem to be worth the extra capitalization.
But we know he was injected with G cells, as were the other coloured Tsviets. While that may not count for the whole impurity because of Jenova's influence thing, it's still a variety of Jenova cells that has its abilities to some extent.Fair enough.Starling said:
At any rate, we know Weiss never had Jenova cells, so there's one.
The Omega we saw wasn't its true, uncorrupted state. Hojo attributes it to Nero but he has no way of knowing about that one guy who fell in the mako. Really, it's a bit unrealistic of Deepground to think they could avoid any and all impurities for that in the first place. Best they could hope for was pure enough to work.
Well, making a comment that Deepground is closer to what SOLDIER was originally like than present day SOLDIER is can't really be verified as true for the reasons I stated before. You may not have been trying to establish fact but it was still an estimate using insufficient information.
They were still Shinra works when Vincent got shot, meaning Sephiroth's birth is within the timeframe. Given the time the rocket was launched, it's not unreasonable to think they came up with the rocket engine as late as 1977 if they were efficient about their progress, which given how quickly they built various things like the plate and fake Nibelheim, would fit. Also, you forget that I wanted an additional source to confirm the part about SOLDIER, the way Cid's quote mentioned a war from further back. One thing I'm wondering though, is whether or not your date of 1992 for the start of the Wutai War is entirely based on the Timeline's approximation or if you have an additional source for it. It probably still wouldn't overlap but my time looking at the other approximations has made it clear they shouldn't be treated as exact dates.
And how would you know there isn't a contradiction unless you've checked every source? This is why research tends to require at least 2. That way, you can verify it's not just the one source claiming whatever the research is about.
Either way would still be referencing the version of the SOLDIER symbol on Cloud's OG artwork. It doesn't make much of a difference which one it is from a meta perspective so it's just a matter of in-universe perspective.
And now we can speculate on the implications that has for the children, though probably at a later time. Do you think Hojo injected himself with just Jenova or a combination of Jenova and mako?
I think he had Ravens before he even stole the SOLDIER data, if I recall. For all we know he had a stash of Jenova cells this whole time but yeah, he seems to have the knowledge and equipment to make his own variety of SOLDIERs somehow. The problem is that it has to have involved something other than mako since he did it to Essai and Sebastian, who were actual SOLDIERs.
That lineup of SOLDIERs Zack was giving a speech to looked like they were headed the same place. If we could work out the scaling issues to figure out how big SOLDIER is supposed to be compared to how big it would have to be to deal with the losses it's sustained, we'd be able to make a better estimate about how many SOLDIERs Shinra could be expected to deploy where it feels they're needed. Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal aren't exactly normal and we've only seen time periods where SOLDIER had sustained major losses so that probably skews things a bit concerning how we've seen SOLDIER used.
I had some severe computer problems a while back and still found a computer prone to crashing on a daily basis to be more convenient than using a phone for more than checking the one page or doing something quickly. Phones certainly don't do much for anything requiring a consistent internet connection or if you want to have more than one tab open as I usually do. It's also not that great for typing up long posts so I'm not sure why you apparently posted some of your replies on your phone, considering their length.
Plot-less spinoffs not expected to maintain continuity with anything are easier to put on a phone as well. The thing is, technology marches on and the consoles will always be able to do more than the phones of that time. I wouldn't say BC's graphics are much to look at, as you can only make out the basic details of a character's appearance like their hair and the colour of their clothes. Additionally, consoles have higher quality standards, which tend to promote better games on average.
- AKA
- TresDias
That's like calling Crisis Core and the original FFVII a pair, though, then saying we don't know which informed the other.
One very obviously came first, with a significant amount of time between them. It's not as though they were produced simultaneously.
Starling said:
There's several problems with what you've written here. First, you're talking about dates for two different things. One is how long ago Vincent was shot. The other is how long he slept in the coffin.
We were given an approximation of 23 years before FFVII that he was shot. We were given an approximation of 20 years, as well "over 20 years", for how long he slept. These are two very different events.
We don't know how much time passed between Vincent being shot and the beginning of his slumber. We don't even know how much time passed between him being shot and Lucrecia beginning her efforts to revive him (i.e. the length of time in which Hojo was using his body as a test subject).
Could have been weeks, could have been months, could have been a couple of years.
The second problem with the assessment you offer above is that going by that understanding (i.e. the dates given are the latest points in the timeline at which the events could happen), Vincent would still be shot long after Sephiroth had already been born:
-The timeframe for Sephiroth's birth is approximately 25-30 years ago, putting 25 years ago at the latest he could have been born
-A timeframe between 20 and 23 falls way under 25, and well outside the overall 25-30 approximation
The third -- and most significant -- problem is we aren't just going off vague dates on a timeline now. I showed you a passage that says outright that it was several years after Sephiroth's birth that Vincent was shot.
Weiss doesn't have a timeframe for birth listed in either of the timelines released after his introduction (neither 10th Anniversary Ultimania nor CC Ultimania). That's an example of the editorializing done with that article I spoke of earlier (editorializing that shouldn't have been done within the body of the translated material).Starling said:
This misunderstanding wasn't your fault. I'm tired of how that page was constructed causing that kind of thing to happen. I'm going to make a thread to suggest it be revised.
All we know about Weiss's age, by the way, is that he is older than Nero, who was 23 during Dirge. Weiss's age was left as "unknown" for some reason in the 10th Anniversary Ultimania.
By "vague" I simply mean "not explicit or definitive." The same way the transition at the end of the makonoid scene during Cloud's story in Kalm is vague enough to have left room for Genesis to appear there without actually creating discontinuity. (I've probably called it that at some point before, but that would have been my dislike for Genesis’s inclusion talking.)Starling said:
That's true, of course, and I'm not meaning to devalue it. I'm just pointing out that where we're left to fill in gaps, we might get it wrong -- if only because what they presented didn't do a good job of conveying what they intended.Starling said:
The fault can be entirely on the storyteller(s) failing to properly convey their intention.
And that isn't the same as the Ultimania being in error. Nor does a retcon of one or two details mean all those surrounding it are also void -- otherwise, the entirety of Vincent's participation in the original game would have to be discarded since all these events are on these two pages together.Starling said:
It's not canon now, no. Canon at one time, yes.Starling said:
As I mentioned, even before the Ultimania Omega said so, a lot of fans understood what Lucrecia said and did to mean that she had become hideous. The presentation successfully conveyed this to them.
Also, are you really going to use a low-polygon model whose face is of vague (yes, that word again) detail to argue this point? Come on.
That's a perfectly fine point. I'm simply making the equally fine point that a deformed appearance is compatible with what Lucrecia said.Starling said:
You have to stop doing that. A statement that is retconned years later is not an inaccuracy.Starling said:
That's why the change is a retcon and not a correction. You're smart enough to see the difference.
Would you like to point out anything in the Ultimania Omega that was an inaccuracy at the time of publication? And I mean a verifiable, deductive inaccuracy -- not "I interpreted it differently, so even though both of these ways of looking at it are equally compatible with the source material, I'm going to call this other one a continuity gaffe."
There aren't any. For a time, however brief, everything in the book (that I have seen at least) was compatible with the original game.
Well, that's what we'll hopefully work out in this thread.Starling said:
That's fair. You only needed to tell me so.Starling said:
And I do appreciate that.Starling said:
Of course, it would also be stupid of me to provide a scan and a transcription, then lie about the contents. =P
Well, that comes down to the individual. Some fans want them for the artwork, others are just happy to collect them.Starling said:
I assure you, it takes me plenty of time. And my phone is my primary Internet device because I work 12-hour shifts, which -- with transit time added in -- means I'm away from home for 14 hours a day, sometimes more.Starling said:
And when I am at home, I have a girlfriend and a child less than a year old there. His mom occasionally appreciates a break before I get something to eat and go to bed/get something to eat and go to work.
All this means that if I'm writing a reply to you, I'm probably doing it a little bit at a time on breaks at work.
So, yeah, while it's a hell of a lot easier to do this on the laptop, if I waited for when it was convenient to do it that way, it would probably never happen.
This is what I said:Starling said:
This is how you responded:
I'm quite certain that looks nothing like "I'm pretty sure I was about to ask for a citation." You clearly were doing no such thing, or you would have then and there.
I told you I wasn't citing the Early Material File section. You then quoted a paragraph we weren't discussing at me (from an article about a section of the book I had been explicit I wasn't referencing), with bolded sentences having absolutely nothing to do with what we were discussing (the intent there obviously being to tell me I didn't know what I was talking about), proceeded to "educate" me on what a fucking plot draft is -- and then didn't say anything else about the topic until you were accusing me of wasting your time because "You could've said that and quoted your source before I wasted all that time looking for it."
If you had wanted to ask me for a citation, you know how you could have done it? You could have asked "Can you please point me to a scan or translation of your source? I can't seem to find one."
I held up my end. You didn't.Starling said:
Because it does take me so long to type these posts out on my phone, know that as obviously pissed off as I'm coming across right now is more than 12 hours after I read what you said here, and have taken hours to get it done. I've calmed down a lot from where I was.Starling said:
So, I'm sorry, but letting go and moving on for me in this entails not letting you off the hook as long as you're trying to ascribe blame to me for "not naming my source" when I named it down to the page number. If you needed more information, it was your job to say so.
If you want to move on, drop it and stop trying to pin even part of your mistake on me. If you only have $20 and ask a sales associate at the store how much something costs, and they tell you $19.95, don't get pissy with them and say they wasted your time because you didn't ask them to tell you how much it costs with tax.
I'm not even going to ask you to be an adult about this and own up to the mistake being yours as a caveat for moving on. I don't care if you admit it to me, yourself or anyone else. Just let it go now and it's over.
Call that "immature" if you want, by the way, but I'm calling it the opposite. I've had enough of apologizing for someone else's crap to last me a lifetime. I fuck up enough myself without having to own somebody else's mistakes on top of it.
That's the last I'm saying about it. You know my position, and it isn't changing, so do with that what you will.
I do want to say, though, that I don't think you've deliberately set out to get me fucked off. I don't know why we rub each other the wrong way, but I don't believe you're trying to do it deliberately any more than I'm trying to do so to you.
And for whatever it's worth, I appreciate that we have had disagreements, because it has led me to do research and translations I should have done sooner. So, thank you.
Like I said before, it should be obvious (copyright issues) why we aren't hosting entire compositions like that.Starling said:
Alright.Starling said:
Sure, but I'd rather a concern for what's true be more of a concern than who got the best "Oh, snap!" moment.Starling said:
It is, sure. However, it's not good to attempt refuting something that way.Starling said:
Perhaps because it has a proper name in "Sister Ray." Of course, this only matters in so far as English is concerned. Japanese would as happily render "mako" and "cannon" with a capital "M" and "C," all caps or none.Starling said:
I used to be confused about this myself (still don't know specifics), but we don't know that they got the cells themselves. I'd say they didn't due to the Japanese sources (games, Ultimanias, etc.) referring to what was given to the Genesis Copies as his actual cells 細胞/"saibou" while the Tsviets were given his 因子/"inshi" ("element" or "factor"), this latter word being what is used to refer to mobile genetic elements (in English) and transposable genetic elements (in English) -- so, I believe it's referring to gene mapping, genetic modification, etc.Starling said:
The distinction seems to be there to indicate that rather than being given physical material from Genesis’s body, as the Genesis Copies were, they instead were the subjects of some sci-fi science in which some part of their own genetic code was finagled with to give them a genome sequence matching his. Perhaps this was related to Jenova's mimic ability and explains why each Tsviet is a specialist of sorts?
This is purely speculation on my part, but maybe altering them in this way made their bodies adaptable enough that they could "copy" or absorb a specific susbtance they were exposed to -- so stagnant Lifestream in Nero's case, pure mako in Weiss's case, Behemoth DNA for Azul, whatever allows Shelke to turn transparent, and ... whatever the Deepground scientists did to Rosso to bring her body "closer to immortality." Whatever that is supposed to mean.
It's more that the presentation of the story attributes it to Nero. Hojo doesn't know what's going on until Nero's ghost rises. The flashback is there to show us what's going on.Starling said:
I can see your point, but the point remains that the medical facility for old school SOLDIER became Deepground.Starling said:
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. The point I made is that Cid said Shin-Ra was still Shin-Ra Works when the "meaningless war" took place. That doesn't have anything to do with the timeframe of Vincent's death or Sephiroth's birth.Starling said:
The point is that they were an electric company during the Wutai War and a weapons development company during this other war.
If you've looked at the new thread I've linked you to, you can see that I've put extensive effort into trying to find an additional source. And I would argue that I have found it since we have verification that Deepground -- and therefore, SOLDIER -- already existed when Genesis was born.Starling said:
The CC Ultimania also says at least a couple of times that the Wutai War started about eight years before that game (i.e. 1992).Starling said:
The obvious implication there is that I'm speaking to known contradictions.Starling said:
During the battle, he references seeing what the effects of a "mako juice" are as well, so I'd say both.Starling said:
He did, yes, though he seems to be further enhancing them after stealing the data.Starling said:
How would he have gotten it? Not even Hollander knew where Jenova was kept.Starling said:
Yeah, there's certainly more at work there than just mako. It's a rather irritating loose end that we never learn what the Ravens were all about.Starling said:
Right, right, I forgot about that. What could they have been doing? The war with Wutai was over, both Genesis and Angeal were believed to be dead, and if Zack ever led such a force against the original AVALANCHE, it didn't come up in Before Crisis.Starling said:
I think I always thought it must be a training exercise. Feel anything jumping out at you?
In general, scale has been an ongoing problem for SE in dealing with world building in the Compilation. Deepground is probably the best example of this, but there are plenty.Starling said:
My phone handles both of those things fine.Starling said:
This I explained above.Starling said:
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