Did Hojo manipulate Lucrecia? [split from Repository of Debunked Rumors]

[The Twilight Mexican]

Just saying, there's quite a gulf between

- "Hojo was laying down that A-game -- scratch that: S-game -- mackin', so he had that broad eating out the palm of his hand like it was Thanksgiving from day one. Gobble gobble!"

and

- "Lucrecia stayed so fucking wet at Hojo's clinical description of coitus and could not keep any of her garments dry whenever she thought about his sexy AF hyper logical disregard for her (that he was totally honest about from day one, don'tcha know)"

but suggestion of anything more than the latter gets some ridiculous "call to reason" to not make her out to be a helpless victim caught up in a whirlwind of suave manueverings she stood no chance against.

Like, thanks, but I think all of us get that. She's one of FF's most hated for a (lot of) reason(s).

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

To be fair to myself, Tres, I wasn't suggesting either of those options. I feel I was suggesting something in between. This isn't about Lucrecia's horniness (or otherwise). It's about her emotions and reason and the long-term choices she made for her life. There's no reason to think she married Hojo a week after she met him, is there? She worked beside and lived in close quarters with him for months, at least. She must have had a pretty good idea what he was like. Hojo's not someone who can dissimulate.

Both of them are people with stunted moral compasses. During the course of the Sephiroth experiment, Lucrecia's moral compass grew, while Hojo's shrank even further.

I don't hate Lucrecia, not at all. I find her fascinating. I sometimes hate fan portrayals of certain characters, but I don't hate the headcanon of a deluded, manipulated Lucrecia. It just doesn't interest me as much as my own interpretation, which, I admit, is my own interpretation, though I believe the evidence can support it. Sketchy though she is, with limited development, she has the potential to be a really rounded, complex, interesting character. It would be disappointing to see her flattened.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I'm confused by your last paragraph. She's reviled precisely because all the crap she caused is the result of her own horrible decision-making, with or without a few lies to keep her on course when she may have started to back out.

EDIT: Also kind of illustrating my point from my previous post with the diminutive phrasing here ...

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I don't know what you mean by diminutive phrasing.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I mean ...

She wasn't some hapless victim. She wasn't kidnapped like Ifalna and forced into this against her will.

They chose to give greater agency and responsibility to Lucrecia because they wished to portray a more morally ambiguous and regrettable situation. Not one that simply paints Lucrecia as a hapless damsel in distress at the mercy of a mad scientist. She was also a mad scientist.

Where was Lucrecia raped? Or emotionally abused? Or any of this that somehow destroys her agency as a functioning adult.

The tragedy sorta falls apart if Lucrecia was actually just an unwilling victim and all fault rests with Hojo and some mind games.

Lucrecia was not some hapless fool that was somehow swooned by Hojo.

I can much more easily see that another ambitious, vainglorious scientist could be attracted to his mind than he could woo some doe-eyed chick.

When it comes to the nitty-gritty, there are two main ways this could have gone down. Hojo could have devised the S-SOLDIER experiment all by himself, then when he met Lucrecia, identified her as a suitable womb in which to grow his specimen, and set about tricking her into love and marriage so that he could use her.
Or
[description of scenario where Lucrecia has actual agency and responsibility for what happens]

I sometimes hate fan portrayals of certain characters, but I don't hate the headcanon of a deluded, manipulated Lucrecia. It just doesn't interest me as much as my own interpretation, which, I admit, is my own interpretation, though I believe the evidence can support it. Sketchy though she is, with limited development, she has the potential to be a really rounded, complex, interesting character. It would be disappointing to see her flattened.

There's more scarecrows abounding in this thread than in all of FFIX.

Granted, the majority of this is coming from Mako (to the surprise of no one =P), and granted that @Mr. Ite began the discussion by painting post-original game Lucrecia as "a demure victim of circumstance," but still, there's been this ongoing theme in this discussion of insisting on a false dichotomy instead of what @Obsidian Fire and later myself were actually saying. That's frustrating.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Now I understand. You're saying Mako and I are making strawmen out of your and Obsidian's arguments. IIRC, the argument is that Hojo abused, gaslit, and manipulated Lucrecia. Maybe we should define our terms.

Let's start with abuse. Now, in its broadest sense, that of doing harm or violence to another person, abuse is widespread in FFVII. Cloud abuses Aerith. Cid abuses Shera. Scarlet abuses Ottoman. Dyne abuses the people of Corel prison. Heidegger abuses his troopers. Hojo is certainly abusive in this sense. The list of his victims is well known. His work on the Jenova Project in Nibelheim is the furthest we go into his backstory; all we know of his life before Nibelheim is that he and Hollander were rivals. So the first specific example of an abusive action we see from Hojo is the decision he makes, together with Lucrecia, to perform biological experiments on an unborn baby. In the case of the "illusory crime against Sephiroth", both mother and father are equally guilty.

I don't know whether you're talking about abuse in this broadest sense or about abuse in the sense it's more often used in the media, as essentially a crime of the patriarchy. The Mayo Clinic categorises abuse as follows:

• Domestic abuse: A pattern of coercive tactics that are used to gain and maintain power and control in an ongoing, familiar relationship. Generally, several forms of abuse, such as psychological, emotional, physical, sexual and/or economic, are used in combination. Abusers believe they are entitled to control how their victims think, feel and behave. This control extends to the entire household, and the behavior and parenting tactics of the abuser may harm children in the home. Physical and sexual violence may be a component of the abuse but some victims are controlled through intimidation, threats, emotional and psychological abuse and isolation - no physical abuse is necessary. In an abusive relationship, one party fears the other and attempts to comply with the other's wishes to avoid harm.
• Emotional abuse: Use of coercion, threats, insults, and other measures which control the victim and result in loss of self-esteem and in the victim believing she/he deserves the abuse.
• Physical Abuse: Use of physical force, which can include pushing, slapping, hitting, strangling, biting, kicking, isolating, use of weapons, etc.
• Sexual Abuse: Any unwanted, coerced or inappropriate sexual contact.

At first glance, Lucrecia does appear to be acting like a classic victim of abuse. She starts to doubt herself and her choices. She believes she deserves to be locked up in a crystal. She believes she doesn't deserve forgiveness. The thing is, though, her doubt is the result of her conscience awakening; her guilt is justified, and a proportional response to her crime. She experimented on her unborn baby and as a result unleashed an eldritch horror that came this close to destroying the world. She hasn't been "gaslighted".

Gaslight: to attempt to make (someone) believe that he or she is going insane (as by subjecting that person to a series of experiences that have no rational explanation) (Merriam Webster). Gaslighting occurs when the abuses deliberately causes their victim to question the validity of their experience of reality in order to make them doubt their own sanity. Simply questioning someone's interpretation of events, or telling them they have misunderstood a situation and then providing them with additional evidence to show why they were mistaken, is not gaslighting. There has to be an end goal, and that end goal has to be to make a person believe they are crazy. I can't think of a single instance when Hojo does this. So we have no reason to think he gaslighted Lucrecia, either.

Manipulate: to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage. (Merriam Webster)
When does Hojo do this? He plans to torture Aerith, yes, but most people would not classify torture as manipulation, as that would feel like a bit of an understatement. He experiments on people without their consent, but most people would call that an atrocity, not manipulation.

And the thing about Lucrecia is, she gave her consent.

None of this is to say that Hojo isn't a bad person. He's obviously a failure as a human being. Still, that's no reason to think Lucrecia was anything but open-eyed when she decided to marry him and create an experimental baby.

It's pretty silly to loathe fictional characters for being what their creators made them. I only loathe characters who are badly developed, like Genesis.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I mean, these are pretty straightforward, just going by basic definitions of the terms.

For abuse: again, not allowing Lucrecia access to the child for the two-to-seven years (since we only ever get an approximation for Sephiroth's birth) following his birth and her exile. Even separating the matter from the monstrous atrocity of taking a baby from its (shitty) mother and the clear-to-anyone fact that this situation was emotionally tormenting for her over the course of those two-to-seven years, she was most certainly not being treated as an equal in the situation at that point, much less anything resembling a partner or even a respected colleague.

For manipulation: again, there's no plausible case that can be made that Lucrecia is okay with -- much less happy about -- being in a relationship with someone who does not care about her ... much less someone who regards her as lab supplies. Regardless of intellectual attraction and career gratification (which it doesn't look like she ended up getting either ...), she demonstrates far too much propensity for typical passion and romantic trappings (e.g. picnics, dancing to music, running into a man's arms -- all of which is initiated by her) for any of that to ever be believable. Ergo: dude has lied to her about caring about her; which means she was misled about what was best for her; which is an example of manipulation.

Gaslighting: I have no idea where this comes in. Did someone mention it?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

So I kind of forgot that the way I read the Junon Canon scene with Hojo is... massively informed by the Japanese script. Since the OG English Localization is... really bad (understatement)... and me and some other lore people have had a fair amount of success in finding Compilation ideas in the JP OG that doesn't seem to be in the ENG OG because of the janky English Localization.

Anyway, here's a re-translation of the Junon Canon scene with Hojo with some translator notes. It's not perfect, because it primarily *is* a machine translation, but since *no one* really wants to do an entire re-translation of the OG by hand... well, you work with what you can get (and machine translations have come a *long* way in the last few years). The differences in wording are very interesting though, and a lot less... grammatically mangled... than the OG is. So until someone more familiar with Japanese does it... it's at worse on par with the OG translation...

Cloud
「That's far enough, Hojo!!」

Hojo
「Aaa……The Failure.」

Cloud
「Quit forgetting my name, the name's Cloud！」

Hojo
「You know, seeing you has made me...」
「Has made me realize just how little scientific sense I have.」
「I had deemed you a failure...」
「However, you were the only Sephiroth Copy that actually functioned...」
「Heh heh heh... it sickens me even now.」

Cloud
「Whatever it is you're up to, its going to end now！」

Hojo
「What I'm up to...?」
「Aaa... you mean this?」
「Heh heh heh...」
「Sephiroth seems to be in need of some energy...」
「So I'm going to give him a little help.」

Cloud
「W-Why! Why would you even do that?!」

Hojo
「Why, oh why do you keep asking me-」
「Hmm... perhaps that makes you a good scientist.」
「Energy level is at... 83%? This is taking too long,」
「and my son needs more power.」
「...that's the only reason I need.」

Cloud
「... Son?」

Hojo
「Heh Heh Heh and the fool doesn't even know! 」
「Heh heh heh... HYAH HAH HAH」
「I wonder how THE GREAT Sephiroth would feel if he learned I was his father?」
「After all, he always did look down on me!」
「HYAH HAH HAH」
Note: I rendered "Aitsu" as fool due to the obvious derogatory tone Hojo is using, same goes for "Yatsu" as a sarcastic "THE GREAT" to achieve the same effect.

Cloud
「Sephiroth is your son!?」

Vincent
「.....!」

Hojo
「Heh Heh」
「I donated the woman impregnated with my child to Dr. Gast's Jenova Project-」
「Eheh heh and even injected Jenova Cells into him while he was still in his mother's womb!」
「HYAH HAH HAH」
Note: He's referring to offering Lucrecia to the Jenova Project the same way one talks about donating/ contributing/ supplying an inanimate object

Vincent
「Y-You Bastard!」

Cloud
「So the only reason you're doing this is....」
「To atone for your sins against Sephiroth?」
Note, Alternate Translation: "To gain Sephiroth's forgiveness for everything you've done?

Hojo
「HEEEEE HEE HEE HEE!!」
「Quite the contrary!」
「 IT'S MERELY MY PASSIONS AS A SCIENTIST!」
「HEEEEE HEE HEE HEE!!」

Vincent
「........」
「I was wrong. The one who should have slept....」
「 WAS YOU, HOJO!」

Hojo
「My -h-hic!!- My passions as a scientist got the better of me」
「and not that long ago... I gave in!」
「I decided to inject myself with Jenova Cells!!」
「HEEEEE HEE HEE HEE!!」
「And now I'll show you...」
「HEEEEE HEE HEE HEE!!」
「 THE RESULTS!!」

＜Battle：Hojo＞

Hojo
「HYAH HAH HAH!!」

＜Hojo Defeated＞

Hojo
「Kuh... now lets see how well this Mako Formula performs! 」
Lit: Mako Juice. Implication: he injected himself with some form of Mako to further the effects of the Jenova Cells in him, like one does with a SOLDIER.

＜Continue into next Battle：Heretic Hojo＞
＜Heretic Hojo Defeated＞
＜Hojo reveals his Final Form＞
＜Continue into next Battle：Ultimate Lifeform Hojo NA＞
＜Ultimate Lifeform Hojo NA Defeated＞
＜Battle Ends＞

Cloud
「....」

Vincent
「Now, sleep forever... Hojo」

Tifa
「I can't believe Sephiroth... was the son of Hojo.」

Here's the original JP OG script we're working off of if anyone wants to compare it...

クラウド
「宝条！　そこまでだ！！」

宝条
「ああ……失敗作か」

クラウド
「名前くらいおぼえろ！ 俺はクラウドだ！」

宝条
「おまえを見ると私は……」
「私は自分の科学的センスのなさを痛感させられる……」
「私はおまえを失敗作だと判断した」
「だが、セフィロス・コピーとして機能したのはおまえだけ……」
「クックックッ……自分がイヤになるよ」

クラウド
「なんでもいいからこんなことはやめろ！」

宝条
「……こんなこと？」
「おお、これか？」
「クックックッ……」
「セフィロスはエネルギーを必要としているようだからな」
「私が少しばかり力をかしてやるのだ」

クラウド
「なぜだ！ なぜそんなことを！」

宝条
「なぜなぜとうるさいやつだ」
「フム……科学者としてはむいているのかもしれないな」
「エネルギーレベルは……83％か。時間がかかりすぎだ」
「息子が力を必要としている。……理由はそれだけだ」

クラウド
「……息子？」

宝条
「クックックッ……あいつは知らないがな」
「クックックッ……クァックァックァッ！！」
「セフィロスのやつ 私が父親だと知ったらどう思うかな」
「あいつは私のことを見下していたからな」
「クァックァックァッ！！」

クラウド
「セフィロスがあんたの息子！？」

ヴィンセント
「……！」

宝条
「クックック……」
「私の子を身ごもった女をガストのジェノバ・プロジェクトに提供したのだ」
「クックッ……セフィロスがまだ母親の体内にいるころにジェノバ細胞を……」
「クァックァックァッ！！」

ヴィンセント
「き、きさま……！」

クラウド
「あんたがこんなことをしているのは……」
「セフィロスへの罪ほろぼし……」

宝条
「ヒーッヒッヒッヒッ！ ちがうちがう！」
「科学者としての欲望だ！ ヒーッヒッヒッヒッ！」

ヴィンセント
「……」
「私は……間違っていた。眠るべきだったのは……」
「きさまだ、宝条……！」

宝条
「私は…ヒッ、ヒック！ 科学者としての欲望に負けた」
「この間もな、負けてしまった」
「自分の身体にジェノバ細胞を注入してみたのだ！」
「ヒーッヒッヒッヒッ！」
「結果を……」
「ヒーッヒッヒッヒッ！」
「見せてやろう！！」

＜戦闘：宝条＞

宝条
「クァッ クァッ クァッ！！」

＜宝条を撃破＞

宝条
「クッ…では魔晄ジュースの効果はどうかな？」

＜そのまま戦闘：ヘレティック宝条＞
＜ヘレティック宝条を撃破＞
＜宝条、さらに最終形態へ…＞
＜そのまま戦闘：極限生命体宝条NA＞
＜極限生命体宝条NAを撃破＞
＜戦闘終了＞

クラウド
「……」

ヴィンセント
「宝条……永遠に眠れ……」

ティファ
「セフィロスが……宝条の息子だったなんて……」

The gist of it is... Cloud is *trying* to figure out if Hojo had... a more sympathetic reason for what he did to Sephiroth than just "for the science!"... and Hojo keeping on reiterating that "For the Science!" is *exactly* why he was doing what he was doing. The *most* emotion you really get out of Hojo in the OG is... *enjoyment* out of "For the Science!" How he manages to make that happen... he *really* does not care about how he does that.

And like... that's not my headcanon about Hojo. That's quite literally what the character himself has been saying about himself ever since the OG. It's hard to get more canon than that.

As for Lucrecia's OG text... the vibe of it is slightly different on re-translation... a lot more like how she sounds at the end of DoC in fact...

Vincent
「Lucrecia… you're alive…」

Lucrecia
「I wanted to disappear… I couldn't be with any of you… I just wanted to die……」
「However, the Jenova Cells within me won't let me die……」
「Recently, I've been dreaming about Sephiroth… my beautiful baby……」
「However, I never even held him since he was born……」
「I can never hold my child… I can't even tell him I'm his mother.…… that is my sin to bear………」

＜Vincent comes closer＞

Lucrecia
「No! Stay Away!!」
「Vincent… please tell me?」

Vincent
「What is it...?」

Lucrecia
「Sephiroth... is my baby still alive?」
「I've heard he died five years ago, but I've been having these dreams lately…」
「and my child's body is just like mine, and can't easily die……」
「Right, Vincent, is my child……」

＜Cloud is about to say something, but Vincent stops him.＞

Vincent
「Sephiroth is... He's dead, Lucrecia.」
Note: Lucrecia's speech is very familiar and sometimes even slangy with Vincent rather than being formal.

And here's the JP for those of you who want that...

ヴィンセント
「ルクレッツィア…生きていたのか…」

ルクレッツィア
「消えてしまいたかった… みんなのそばにいられなかった… 死にたかった……」
「でも、私の中のジェノバが 私を死なせてくれない……」
「最近、セフィロスの夢を見るの… 私のかわいい子供……」
「でも、あの子が生まれてから 私は一度も抱いてない……」
「子供も抱けない…、母親だと言う事もできない…… それが、私の罪………」

＜ヴィンセント、近寄る＞

ルクレッツィア
「ダメ！！ きちゃダメ！」
「ヴィンセント… 教えて？」

ヴィンセント
「なにを…」

ルクレッツィア
「セフィロス… あの子は生きているの？」
「５年前に死んだと聞いたわ でも、最近よく夢を見るの…」
「それに、あの子も私と同じ簡単に死ねない体……」
「ねぇ、ヴィンセント あの子は……」

＜クラウドが言おうとすると、ヴィンセントがそれを止める＞

ヴィンセント
「セフィロスは……死んでしまったよルクレッツィア…」

There's a bit more emphasis on what Lucrecia herself thinks of herself here rather than on some other external judgment of what she did ("you can't call me his mother" vs "I can't tell him [Sephiroth] I'm his mother"). She's naming what *she* thinks she is guilty of rather than what other people would say she's guilty of... which matches up with Lucrecia at the end of DoC all too well. Lucrecia is always portrayed as being the one comming up with her own faults and sins rather than having some outside perspective clue her into them.

The other thing that is interesting is that she is almost slangy with Vincent in Japanese. This isn't like early on in DoC where she talks down to Vincent for being too casual with her or wants to keep things professional. She is being causal with Vincent as soon as she can talk to him. So whatever you think their relationship was earlier... it's not formal *now*. And we know the one insisting it was more formal was Lucrecia back in DoC...

This kinda also brings up something else... which is Lucrecia's age. She's talking like she and Vincent are the same age. And while we don't have Lucrecia's age... we do have Vincent's and Hojo's ages. Hojo at the time of Project J would have been around 32. Vincent was 27. So... there's at a *least* a five year age gap between her and Hojo. Maybe even as many as ten years. And with Hojo being the Project Head... That's getting... really dicey... when it comes to stuff like oh... pressuring colleges to do things because you have more seniority/influence than they do...

I just get the feeling from this that NKN had already had Lucrecia's end-game figured out as of the OG in regards to how she felt about everything that happened with Sephiroth. Which was... (a) wanting to meet Sephiroth and Vincent as they're the two people whose names she keeps saying if you don't have Vincent in the party, (b) feeling really, really guilty about what happened with Sephiroth in particular and (c) thinking she needed to stay away from Sephiroth and Vincent out of her own initiative.

And the solution they settled on was... she got caught up in a relationship where she didn't have as much control over what would happen as she thought she had. Hojo takes Sephiroth away from her by force. Vincent gets killed by Hojo as well and ends up in a coma he might never wake up from. And Lucrecia... sees herself as wrecking both their lives by being involved with them.

Which... might not work as well... if it was anyone other than Hojo. Who we have a *very* good idea of what he *really* is interested in from the OG. And it's definetly not *Lucrecia* or *Sephiroth*. They're not even people to him.

Incidentally, Hojo *had* to have worked with Gast for years to be given such a huge roll in the Jenova Project. I have... a really hard time seeing Gast giving Hojo part of the Jenova Project if he had any idea what Hojo was really *like*. You kinda can get some sense of what Hojo was *probably* more like around Gast and Lucrecia at first in Crisis Core where he and Zack have some... honstly really snarky conversations... that don't set off any of Zack's "something is really wrong with this guy" warnings. Their interactions would almost be... legitimately funny... if it was anyone else other than Hojo saying the lines. But it is, and we all know what he really means when he says certain things to Zack. Which matches up with Zack being seen as just another specimen long before Hojo gets his hands on him at Nibelheim.

So like... yeah... I really don't have too much trouble seeing Hojo successfully put up a front for Lucrecia to get her to like him. At least, to like him enough to want to work with him on his "let's try de-extincting the Cetra" project.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I mean, one thing jumps out at me right there with that interesting translation of the Japanese script.

My passions as a scientist got the better of me.

That, kinda sums up what I've been saying about Hojo all along. Is it really "putting up a front," or is it the pervasive and warped worldview of experimentation that permeates Hojo's entire personality?

I don't think Hojo is capable of "putting up a front" like some sort of high functional sociopath that blends in with normal people. He wears his eccentricity on his sleeve. He's disturbingly straightforward as demonstrated through all of his scenes in FFVII; the problem here was Lucrecia met and fell for a Hojo that hadn't turned his toxic mad scientist curiosity towards her. Which gave her the false impression that he was more lucid and restrained than he actually was. She thought Hojo was someone he wasn't because from her perspective, Hojo's "passions as a scientist" weren't something so toxic that would move him to do something inhuman. Nevermind of course the other experiments Shinra did and etc etc. We can only assume they were either numb to such inhuman experimentation or just... Were built different.

Hojo's abuse seemingly ticked up when his "experiment" began, and when there was an outsider trying to interfere with said experiment. He removed the interference and then began mocking Lucrecia for her attachment to such an unimportant outside variable who incidentally, had a thing for his wife.

I think Hojo is capable of going through the motions of everyday life but if something captures his attention, he will do all he can to give into that toxic "passion of a scientist" regardless of consequence. And Lucrecia unfortunately bore the brunt of that impulse, all because they were in the Jenova Project together. Hojo has moments of lucidity and functioning. However just like Zack discovered when he first became a 1st Class, a normal interaction with Hojo can quickly become a bizarre life threatening experiment where you're trapped in a specimen tube and answering questions about yourself, all just on a whim. Because he just can't help himself.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Ok, I have an honest question. How do we know Hojo took Sephiroth away from her by force? Is it in DoC? I don't know. Did she want to be a proper mother to her baby and was denied that right by Hojo? Are we reading between the lines to assume this? Or did she feel that she wasn't fit to be Sephiroth's mother, and so denied herself the joy of holding him? Is that another possible interpretation? My Japanese is nowhere near good enough to tease out the nuances.

I thought she left Nibelheim immediately after experimenting on Vincent, tried to kill herself a few times, probably in different ways, and then encased herself in the crystal. I didn't realise she was hanging around for seven years. What was she doing during that time?

Why are you assuming Lucrecia was the same age as Vincent? She could have been the same age as Hojo. Or older. I totally agree that your version, in which an insecure younger woman is pressurised and manipulated into a relationship by a superior against her better judgement, is completely plausible. I just don't think it's the only possible interpretation.

Why would you think an intelligent, educated women is a less accurate judge of her own faults and sins than some hired Shinra muscle who happens to adore her? Why should she put more weight on other people's view of herself than on her own understanding of who she is and what she did? She knows what she did, and she's right.

Hojo has no idea how to dissemble. We never see him pretending to be someone he isn't. It's unthinkable that a group of highly intelligent people could have worked with him for years without seeing him for what he is. Gast is hardly without sin either.

I don't know what Lucrecia's casual language with Vincent is supposed to mean. That he's the one she always really loved? That she insisted on using formal language back in the day in order to deny that love? If he's the one she really love, then doesn't that make her actions even worse? And if she knew what true love felt like, wouldn't that armour her against Hojo's manipulations? If Vincent was the one she loved, that means she rejected true love and married Hojo in a calculated attempt to advance her career. Which would mean they were using each other.

As I said before, the way someone remembers the major events in a relationship thirty years after the fact cannot be taken as a true representation of what actually happened. Hojo has eliminated everyone who stood in his way. Lucrecia betrayed him. Of course he'd erase her role in the great Sephiroth experiment.

 

[Cae Lumis]

Hi, just wanna say I was the one who put in the work trying to retranslate the Japanese Script for the above scenes.

I mean, one thing jumps out at me right there with that interesting translation of the Japanese script.

That, kinda sums up what I've been saying about Hojo all along. Is it really "putting up a front," or is it the pervasive and warped worldview of experimentation that permeates Hojo's entire personality?

The word Hojo uses in Japan that I rendered as "Passion" is 欲望 (Yokubō), which can mean something along the lines of Greed, Lust, Craving, Desire... it's pretty much on its own an intense and selfish descriptor. Hojo comes across from beginning to end as self serving and only interested in continuing to push and explore whatever new thing catches his attention. For further reference, this is what the Ultimania Omega has to say on the good doctor (it was quite the experience looking for a translation of it):

***Vincent's anger*** (Page 198)
If Vincent is in the party when they go to the Mako Cannon's controls, during
the conversation with Hojo, Vincent will have a reaction. To Hojo, his wife
was nothing more than laboratory material to bear his son, Sephiroth, who --
as he says -- was something for him to study and satisfy his scientific
desires; [this brings on] Vincent's wrath. Additionally, after Hojo has been
killed, each party member express a line, including Vincent, who is noticably
deeply emotional.

Ok, I have an honest question. How do we know Hojo took Sephiroth away from her by force? Is it in DoC? I don't know. Did she want to be a proper mother to her baby and was denied that right by Hojo? Are we reading between the lines to assume this? Or did she feel that she wasn't fit to be Sephiroth's mother, and so denied herself the joy of holding him? Is that another possible interpretation? My Japanese is nowhere near good enough to tease out the nuances.

I don't know what Lucrecia's casual language with Vincent is supposed to mean. That he's the one she always really loved? That she insisted on using formal language back in the day in order to deny that love? If he's the one she really love, then doesn't that make her actions even worse? And if she knew what true love felt like, wouldn't that armour her against Hojo's manipulations? If Vincent was the one she loved, that means she rejected true love and married Hojo in a calculated attempt to advance her career. Which would mean they were using each other.

Both the OG and Dirge of Cerberus makes it quite clear that Lucrecia was denied the right to even hold Sephiroth, let alone see her child.

Give him back, give my son back!

Let me see him! Just once!

This... can't really be taken any other way when read with her statements translated properly.

As for the way she speaks, this is in allusion to what we see in Dirge of Cerberus and comparing them to the Original Game. When she first meets with Vincent, she becomes friendly and downright familiar and casual with Vincent. However, after a while the guilt of Grimoire's death weighs on her again and... she marries Hojo. After marrying Vincent, she switches to referring to Vincent in a more formal and distant manner, trying to push Vincent away... which makes sense when you take it together with her blaming herself for Grimoire's death. However, following Vincent's near fatal encounter with Hojo with a gun, Lucrecia switches back to how she used to talk to Vincent, which is evident in the Original Game when Vincent finally sees her again.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Ok, I have an honest question. How do we know Hojo took Sephiroth away from her by force? Is it in DoC? I don't know.

That's correct. She's seen in a flashback tearfully screaming at him to let her see her son. This takes place at some point after Vincent's almost-death, so Sephiroth is at least two years old by then.

I thought she left Nibelheim immediately after experimenting on Vincent, tried to kill herself a few times, probably in different ways, and then encased herself in the crystal. I didn't realise she was hanging around for seven years. What was she doing during that time?

The timelines put Vincent's almost-death at around 23 years before FFVII's main events while Sephiroth's birth is always placed 25-30 years prior.

My own conclusion is that Seph was born at least 27 years before the main events of FFVII because Gast left Shin-Ra in 1980 and Seph seems to have at least met the man. He seemingly held him in high regard while still a human, and seemed to feel a sense of betrayal that Gast didn't personally make known to him his "Cetra origins."

As to what Lucrecia was doing all that time, from what we see, just gradually becoming more twisted inside from the influence of Jenova, then working to keep Vincent alive until that effort had run its course and she finally wandered off into the wilderness to punish herself for all the hurt she caused.

Hojo has no idea how to dissemble. We never see him pretending to be someone he isn't.

I mean, he literally pretends to be a fangirl so that he can be the "chairwoman" of his son's fanclub.

If Vincent was the one she loved, that means she rejected true love and married Hojo in a calculated attempt to advance her career. Which would mean they were using each other.

The inciting event for her to reject his marriage proposal is that he found out she worked with his dad and then insisted on her telling him why she kept that from him. When she finally confesses that her ambition got Grimoire Valentine killed protecting her, she decides that she can never be with Vincent now and then literally runs into Hojo's arms, having "come to your senses and chosen me."

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Ok, thanks. That helps a lot. As I said, I'm not familiar with DoC.

Is the suggestion that she marries Hojo to somehow punish herself for Grimoire's death? If so, then she's still using him.

Pretending to be a fangirl on the Internet isn't the same thing as presenting a calculated false front to your closest colleagues for years on end. And Hojo isn't even very good at pretending to be a fangirl, since, IIRC, a rumour's going around that it's him.

I'm going to stray into fanfiction territory now and say that one can imagine a scenario in which Hojo is justified in keeping Sephiroth away from his mother. There's such a thing as post-partum psychosis. Mothers have been known to harm their children, and Lucrecia's behaviour is rather unhinged, to say the least. She brought a dead man back to life by putting a summons materia inside him and submerging him in a mako tank. When Hojo and Fuhito do things like that, we call them abusive, immoral, mad scientists.

Oh, but she did it for love, not for selfish reasons.

Right. Not to abate her crushing feelings of guilt, or anything like that.

Plus, Hojo knows that the Jenova inside Lucrecia is stirring. If he brought Sepiroth into close proximity with Lucrecia, who's to say Jenova might not overwhelm her, grab the baby, and smash its way out of the mansion? So if he thinks his little experiment isn't safe around its mother, he might be right.

 

[Cae Lumis]

Is the suggestion that she marries Hojo to somehow punish herself for Grimoire's death?

Yes, that is exactly the suggestion, with the implication being that Hojo hung the death of Grimoire over her to do so. While there is only circumstantial evidence to suggest the latter half... evidence within the OG JP script itself, Dirge of Cerberus and the Ultimania's make it clear Hojo didn't give a damn about her outside of basically being a walking incubator. Within Dirge of Cerberus itself, as Twilight Mexican mentioned, Hojo outright exclaims that she had "Finally [came] to [her] senses!", implying that the two of them had discussed this subject multiple times before that point, and that she outright told him no. The idea that Hojo used her guilt over Grimoire's death as leverage to get her to punish herself by marrying him instead of continuing her pursuit of Vincent is not only not outside the realm of possibility... its within the text... and would line up perfectly with what we see in FFVII Remake and the Early Materials... making her consent less than dubious.

That being said, watching Dirge of Cerberus and a careful reading of canonical material makes it painfully clear Lucrecia is trying to punish herself... its practically a repetitive habit of her's.

EDIT: I was wrong, there's more than circumstantial evidence.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I'm not sure that I see any indication Hojo actually knows what happened to Grimoire, but rewatching Lucrecia's scenes from Dirge that you linked, @Cae Lumis , I'm reminded just how intensely abusive that relationship really was ...

In addition to denying her access to her son for years, it looks like the asshole couldn't have a conversation with her after Sephiroth's birth without gleefully mocking her, insulting her outright, telling her to be silent, reminding her that he's in charge, etc.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I mean, he literally pretends to be a fangirl so that he can be the "chairwoman" of his son's fanclub.

Hojo is pretty much the mom that posts up her kid's baby videos on Facebook and never takes them down.... I'm not even joking. I really wish I was.

Congratulations.
You are now a chosen member of
the Silver Elite.
Oh? Looks like you got your first mail.
The Silver Elite is a prestigious fan club that was
established more than twenty years ago.
Only our chairwoman knows the details of its
long history.
She never shows herself in public, though.
We only know her by mail.
I wonder what she’s like in person...

Fan club members will soon be receiving
exclusive, rare photos of Sephiroth.
Isn’t it exciting?
I can’t want to see them!
It’s all thanks to the chairwoman.
She must be really close with Sephiroth.
✱sigh✱
I wish I could be that close to him...

Oh, we got new mail.
He threw his Masamune through an apple...
What a dangerous man...
That’s exactly what I love about him!

The e-mail in question is...

Subject: The memory of silver winds
From: Silver Elite
Sephiroth is known to value his private life, but there was
a time when he had two best friends. We’d like to share a
story of this threesome guaranteed to raise a smile.

The SOLDIER trio would use the training room exclusively as
their playground, but in order to retain their 1st Class
dignity, they would sneak in only after the 2nd Class
members had gone home. Then they would proceed to have one
of the three stand with a dumbapple on his head, while the
other two would throw their swords at the apple to pierce it!
Sephiroth always won, his Masamune always striking
every dumbapple dead center.

So yeah... for the last... twenty years as of Crisis Core (so from the time Sephiroth was like... a five-year-old kid)... Hojo has been posting updates about Sephiroth to his fan-girls... Including something that happend SOLDIER VR room... Which should be really secure... After admitting that Sephiroth likes his privacy.

Why no, I do *not* want to think about the kind of pictures/videos of five-year-old Sephiroth are saved to multiple people's hard-drives... or pics/videos of when he was a teenager. We *all* know far too well what fandoms are like... and Hojo made his kid the object of one *as* a kid.

On other topics... the one thing I'm not certain of exactly is the time-frame of when Lucrecia started working on Vincent compared to when she left. DoC still has her collapsin (Jenova Mimic Visions?) and shows her holding her stomach when Hojo comes to see her while she is working on Vincent. At least for the first couple of times. So it seems like they've left open the door for Lucrecia to find out about Vincent and try fixing him *while* pregnant with Sephiroth. Only for that to get interrupted by her giving birth and having Sephiroth taken away from her. And then she leaves later once she's run out of things to try fixing on Vincent and can't take Hojo's hounding anymore. So that potentially opens up the timeline a bit.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Yeah, there's no denying Hojo is creepy.

There's also no denying that he turned on Lucrecia and was nasty in the extreme to her, as only Hojo can be. As Mako said, she probably never dreamed he'd treat her the way she'd seen him treat other people.

I really don't see how Hojo using her guilt-trip over Grimoire and Vincent to manipulate her into marrying him makes any kind of psychological sense. Unless we are meant to believe that he threatened to tell Vincent about her actual-total-lack-of-responsibility-for-his-father's-death unless she agreed to marry him and violate all the rules of ethics by incubating his hybrid baby. Which is honestly just such inconsistent characterisation, I can't even. One moment she's writhing in guilt over Grimoire's accidental death, the next she's agreeing to turn her own baby into a mutant. How can she not see that confessing to Vincent is better than experimenting on a baby? Does she have a moral compass or not? The OG doesn't so much as hint at this version of events. It's a DoC retcon. They've forced Lucrecia into a series of psychological 108 degree turns simply in order to exonerate her, and they don't even manage to achieve that. If that's the canon now, then I can only throw up my hands in despair.

This is why I hate Dirge of Cerberus.

 

[Makoeyes987]

There's no connection between Hojo’s machinations and the mental anguish/issues Lucrecia has over Grimoire's death. She simply carries that guilt which serves as a wall that sours her relationship with Vincent. And also serves as the impetus to make her desperate to save him.

I dont see that having anything to do with the marriage. Like, Lucrecia has issues but Hojo isn't shown to be aware of that circumstance at all.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

The OG doesn't so much as hint at this version of events. It's a DoC retcon. They've forced Lucrecia into a series of psychological 108 degree turns simply in order to exonerate her, and they don't even manage to achieve that. If that's the canon now, then I can only throw up my hands in despair.

DoC isn't a retcon of the OG. Mainly because the OG is so broad when it comes to the events with Lucrecia that DoC could do almost anything it wanted and still be canon. Many of those scenes don't even have dialouge! Adding in new information the audience didn't have about certain events doesn't a retcon make unless it actually directly rewrites what happened. Which isn't what DoC does with Lucrecia.

The main things that are deliberately spelled out in the OG is how Lucrecia feels at the end of the Jenova Project, how Hojo felt about her in general and how Vincent saw the Jenova Project. Which essentially are...
1) Hojo views Lucrecia as an object to get what he wants out of the project
2) Lucreica is asking after Sephiroth and Vincent while Vincent is asking after Lucrecia and Sephiroth
3) Lucreica regrets what happened with Sephiroth
4) Lucrecia dreams of Sephiroth
3) Lucrecia tried killing herself, but the Jenova Cells in her won't let her die
4) Lucrecia is very comfortable talking with Vincent and vice-versa
5) Lucrecia has Vincent's Limit Break manual and Ultimate Weapon with her
6) Vincent wants Lucrecia to be happy doing whatever she wants to do
7) Vincent didn't want the Jenova Project to continue as it involved human experimentation
8) Hojo says he and Lucrecia both want this
9) Sephiroth really is Lucrecia and Hojo's son
10) Vincent thinks his monster transformations are his punishment for not stopping the experiment

All this stuff is based on what characters come out and actually say. So... whatever canon DoC comes up with has to fit with this.

The secondary stuff is what is shown as scenes in the OG, but without any dialogue. This is stuff involving a lot of character interaction before things went south as well as Vincent falling into Hojo's clutches. These are a lot more open to interpretation because of the lack of dialogue.
1) Vincent and the scientists come to Shinra manor
2) Vincent and Lucrecia are with each other as they walk around Nibelheim
3) Vincent and Lucrecia are holding hands and then she drops his hand and runs away from him
4) Lucrecia is hugging Hojo while Vincent watches. Vincent turns away and leaves (this is when we get Vincent's "if she's happy, it's okay" thought)
5) Lucrecia is pregnant with Sephiroth
6) Vincent, Lucrecia and Hojo are discussing the project (one of the *very* few scenes with actual dialogue)
7) Lucrecia collapses while pregnant
8) Vincent and Hojo get into an argument, Hojo shoots Vincent
9) Hojo experiments with Vincent at the Shinra Manor
10) Vincent gets up from the table and realizes he's been experimented on (this is when we get Vincent's "this is my punishment" thought)

This stuff is... a lot more nebulous and a lot more prone to spawning headcanon because we don't know the *actual* context for what is going on in most of these scenes. So we can kinda do with them what we want to. DoC would basically be doing the same thing too if it didn't want to retcon them.

And... that is what DoC is doing with Lucrecia. It is adding in dialogue to these scenes. It doesn't say these scenes don't happen anymore. Or even necessarily happened in a different way. It just adds in dialogue and gives the scenes more context. That new context is... not really retconing anything, it's just making a more detailed picture of what was very broad strokes in the OG.

But clarifying a story with new information doesn't make a retcon. All serial story-telling works that way. The Audience often starts out with a broad, general idea of something that happened in the past and then later gets new information that clarifies what really happened. And as long as that new information doesn't completely overhaul the general idea of what happened, then that isn't a retcon. It's like someone saying they were a doctor in the past when you first meet them and then later revealing they were actually a black-market surgeon who operated out of their garage.

The other thing is... the writers of DoC are the writers of pretty much all of Vincent's scenes. Chiba was the guy who made the vast majority of Vincent's cutscenes/dialogue in the OG and managed to get them all into the OG in the first place. That's *why* he was the writer for DoC. Vincent's story was largely something he and Nojima came up with and DoC is just him fleshing it out without the confines of the PS1 hardware.

It's just... a very consistent theme that the ideas of FFVII were a lot more developed in their creator's minds than they could make the PS1 pull off... and the Compilation is their chance to pull the FFVII they always envisioned off with way better hardware.

 

[Roundhouse]

I've never played Dirge or seen all the story stuff, so can't really add much here, but I did watch a few clips like this:

I must be missing context and all, but here (where she says she is going ahead with the experiment) she seems...upset? Angry? I found it interesting.

 

[ForceStealer]

I always interpreted her anger was at his question. The "if this only concerns me," line could refer to Hojo, or what I thought more likely more grandiose views of the project going to benefit the humanity and such. Like it's so obviously for the benefit of mankind that of course she's sure.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Ugh, that's one of the scenes that makes her so hard to have sympathy for. =\ To begin with, it doesn't concern only her from any angle; second, she's shrill and irrational AF because of her beyond-childish attempt to push away the reminder of her guilt.

Who happens to also be a human. With feelings. Some of which inexplicably include caring about this wacko (and her kid, less inexplicably).

Like, you can't watch that scene and not look forward to her facedown in the mud.

On other topics... the one thing I'm not certain of exactly is the time-frame of when Lucrecia started working on Vincent compared to when she left. DoC still has her collapsin (Jenova Mimic Visions?) and shows her holding her stomach when Hojo comes to see her while she is working on Vincent. At least for the first couple of times. So it seems like they've left open the door for Lucrecia to find out about Vincent and try fixing him *while* pregnant with Sephiroth. Only for that to get interrupted by her giving birth and having Sephiroth taken away from her.

For scenes in that period, Lucrecia's shown to be confused about why she's feeling weird and collapsing, and later comments on her mind and body degrading. This is presumably the Jenova side effects. Were she pregnant, it would be simple enough to conclude it was that.

Also, Ultimanias to come out after Dirge's release (and which cover its details) still cite the 23 years thing for Vincent's almost-death and 25-30 for Seph's birth.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I wondering what they were doing in the two years minimum between Sephiroth's birth and Vincent's death.
Arguing?
Just hanging around?
Getting on with their work?
Off on secondment somewhere else?

I don't know who else in this thread has been pregnant, but after you've been pregnant for a few months you do get used to what it feels like. If Lucrecia was pregnant during her collapsing and degrading phase, she wouldn't necessarily just assume that the odd sensations and experiences were due to her pregnancy. I mean, the fact that she didn't say, "Why do I feel so weird all the time? Must be because I'm pregnant," can't be taken as proof that she wasn't pregnant.

 

[Odysseus]

Has Chiba been involved in the remake yet at all? I'm wondering if he's going to write Vincent's scenes again.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I don't know who else in this thread has been pregnant, but after you've been pregnant for a few months you do get used to what it feels like. If Lucrecia was pregnant during her collapsing and degrading phase, she wouldn't necessarily just assume that the odd sensations and experiences were due to her pregnancy. I mean, the fact that she didn't say, "Why do I feel so weird all the time? Must be because I'm pregnant," can't be taken as proof that she wasn't pregnant.

While I certainly haven't been pregnant myself, I've heard plenty of anecdotes both ways, such as getting so used to it that you forget that you're pregnant, but also never getting used to it/constantly being uncomfortably aware of it. Looking at the matter from just an authorial standpoint, though, I'm assuming if they intended a contradiction of the establiahed (and later reiterated) timeline they would have drawn more direct attention to her being pregnant at the time, even if she wasn't thinking pregnancy was the cause of her issues -- e.g. "What's been wrong with me lately? I hope it's not affecting the baby."