Sephiroth said he had always thought he was different from the other children. That he knew it was a special existence. I wouldn't call coming to the conclusion that he was the Chosen One a 180 from that outlook. And later on when he discovered he wasn't really an Ancient either but rather spawned from an alien, he again embraced it as something that made him more worthy then the rest. He flipped out in the Mako Reactor when it seemed he was just a monster but he eventually arrived at mostly the same conclusions he always had. Except that this time what made him special also made him humankind's enemy.
Genesis almost killed the guy that he thought was able to save him and then turned around and saved him with his own cells. And may have done so earlier at Modeoheim if Zack hadn't rushed to Hollander's defense. Genesis doesn't cope any better.
I dunno why we should think Sephiroth previously didn't give two ****s about his own humanity. He thought he was special but human, perfectly understandable. If every really strong person in final Fantasy angsted over his own humanity we'd never hear the end of it.
See my comment above: "
who up until Nibelheim doesn't
seem to give two shits about his humanity..." Prior to Nibelheim, he never displays any sort of opinion about his own function or nature, until he's actually confronted with it (thinking about Elfe, I am astonished he has not thought of it before, but that's the impression I get from their meeting). Do I think he gives a shit? Of course I do, because he did actually go insane. But up until then he didn't display any sort of insecurities about it. CC got away with it because the later incident was already established, and so all they had to do was kinda sorta sketch around it, and people would try to fill in the gaps for them, no matter how little we actually get from Sephiroth in the game.
(On the same note, people actually still criticize FF8 for this very sort of turn-about concerning Squall and his relationship with Rinoa, when it was actually
far better displayed than Sephiroth's turn-about. Some of it is simply because of the characters -- Sephiroth fronts extraordinarily well (or so I have to believe to explain his behavior), and Squall is damned good at self-denial, right up until he decides to cross a transcontinental bridge. That doesn't really change the fact that it's still kind of bad writing, and CC gets away with just because it's a landmark event that was established in the OGC. Squall, on the other hand, doesn't nearly get enough slack for it.)
I would also add that a couple acts of anger do not a "mentally broken" man make, esp. given that (1) degradation has been confirmed to render its victims more prone to outbursts of anger, and (2) up until that moment, Genesis seems to have been pretty restrained with himself, considering the circumstances. Second of all, I actually found Genesis killing Hollander (or trying to) a pretty good call on his part. Whether or not it resulted in anything, it's clear Hollander hasn't been able to do anything worthwhile for
years (5+?), and thus, it was time to give him an extra incentive. Infecting him with G-cells would force him to focus on the cure for fear of his own life as opposed to stringing Genesis along for as long as possible to get revenge against ShinRa. Twisted? Yeah, sure. Effective? Not in this particular case, perhaps because Hollander's an incompetent moron, but you can't say it was a horrible decision. Maybe it started off as a simple fit of anger, but then Genesis realized halfway through that "curing" him with G-cells would fit "better" with his own plan, esp. since Hollander would no longer be holding the leash.
(ETA: Minato, I'd be glad to continue this discussion over PMs or over visitor messages or whatever you like, but I figure I should stop derailing this thread on a discussion about ~Everyone's Favorite Villain~.)
(ETA 2: Sorry, I will stop soon, but one last thing ... there are a lot of ways to read Genesis's character, and I'm not saying your interpretation of him is wrong.I can, however, put forth evidence of him being relatively sane -- as sane as he ever is, at least -- and I can say that I like to read him that way not because it makes him "mentally tougher" than his friends, but because I think it's harder on characters when they don't have the chance to make excuses for themselves. Otherwise, you get into that irritating territory where characters who've done bad things get a pass or
think they get a pass on their behavior because, "It was a tough time for me, I wasn't really myself." Just look at how Sephiroth is treated in fandom, for instance. It's the exact same reason why I don't like the idea that Seifer was possessed in FF8, because in some ways, it's way meaner to make them face the fact that they did bad things, and it is
all on them. Nobody was making them do these things, they wanted to do them, and dammit, they did.)
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@ Davos: I usually find the actual writing to be more emotionally impacting than situations. That said, I think there's more fodder in the second. Bonus points if they know that it's their parent they're trying to kill, since it makes for more character material.
. Can't wait to get back into it though. Got a lot more concepts to play with that I've been learning about from uni.
Unfortunately, I write him the best out of the three. I am, after all, a boring person.
