Have Weiss cells-G or cells of Jenova?

[The Twilight Mexican]

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.

 

[Starling]

It's more that they referenced the 23 year approximation before the 50 one as they have to exist together to have any consistency. You'd probably have to ask them directly to be absolutely sure which they decided on first since this is more about the equation than the result.

The point is that the 23-year thing was published two years before the 50-year thing, so it wasn't like they had to do the 23-year thing afterward to keep things consistent with a previously published rounded-downward approximation of 50 years. That's what you suggested earlier.

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.

Judging by the contradictions throughout the compilation, I think it's safe to say they don't have the forethought to avoid a discrepancy like that.

Again, it's not a matter of avoiding a discrepancy. The 23-year thing came first. What I said is "If they didn't want us to take the impression that Vincent was shot at least two years after Seph was born, they didn't have to use the 'approximately 23 years' timeframe in the same source that provided '25-30 years' for Sephiroth's birth."

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.

It's a simple matter of judging intent, and unlike some other stuff, there is no possible contradiction to be pointed to with this case. Your/our interpretation of a non-explicit scene transition doesn't trump an official publication. Not when we're discussing canon.

You can argue that our interpretation is more valuable by a different measure, but not by the measure of canon.

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.

More importantly, those transitions aren't as vague as you seem to think. The OG flashbacks aim to show events more than tell you what's happening, hence being sparing in what it tells you, instead letting you to see for yourself. There's little dialog in the flashbacks and quite frankly, dialog isn't really needed to understand what's being conveyed. Storytelling is a combination of show and tell, where too much show over tell is bad storytelling and conflicts in what's shown vs what's told can lead to inconsistencies the same way conflicting storytelling in different parts of the same continuity is why the compilation has so many consistency issues.

You are making insightful observations. I won't disagree in that much. However, this is much like what we talked about elsewhere recently -- canon isn't interested in whether you or I enjoy the canon or whether we think it's good or bad storytelling. It just is what it is.

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.

Lucrecia disappearing before Vincent was shot flies in the face of Lucrecia being shown to be around after he was shot.

At the time the Ultimania Omega was published, that had not been shown yet.

And now it has, meaning it would appear to have been retconned.

The OG and DoC give no indication that Lucrecia is in any way supposed to be seen as grotesque or deformed in any way. The most it gives is that Lucrecia didn't want to be around anyone which seems to be more about despairing over the whole thing with Sephiroth and not being able to die.

The original game isn't explicit about it, but there's no contradiction with it there. Lucrecia says "I couldn't be around anyone" and emphatically tells Vincent three times not to come any closer. Your interpretation of her meaning is that this statement "seems to be" more about something else, but I can remember before the Ultimania Omega had even come out seeing more than one person online post that they interpreted the things Lucrecia said as implying she had become hideous.

I don't remember whether I agreed with them before reading the Ultimania Omega details, but looking back on it now, it certainly strikes me as a legitimate reading. She won't let Vincent get close to her, she's confirmed that Jenova changed her physiology somehow (being unable to die) and she says she couldn't be around anyone.

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.

Lucrecia tells him that she didn't want to be with anyone ...

Small but valuable inaccuracy: she said she couldn't be with anyone. That speaks to ability rather than desire.

Japanese is less explicit than English about some things and more explicit than English about others. Whereas someone might say "I can't be around anyone" in English to mean they don't want to be, the Japanese wording here (みんなのそばにいられなかった) is conjugated in the pastindicative, speaking to what she was capable of -- and she says "I couldn't be near anyone."

For the sake of avoiding further misunderstanding, "near" here is そば/"soba," which refers to physical (not emotional) proximity.

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.

Aside from the dreams she mentions having of Sephiroth, she also says that she never got to hold Sephiroth, as if Vincent didn't necessarily know by that point, which he wouldn't if she disappeared after he was shot.

Do you think her mind was more on trying to avoid "redundant" (if that's possible after not seeing someone in over 20 years) information he may have already known or on her emotional declaration about why "You can't call me his mother... That... is my sin..." when she said that? =P

It's a possibility I'm not just going to overlook.

From the way the flashback is set up, there's good reason to think it all unfolds chronologically.

That was never the question. The disagreement stems from you calling the only official description we have a contradiction despite there being nothing explicit detailed in the game itself about the passage of time in those scene transitions.

I was being thorough.

Given that Vincent mentions Sephiroth being born between the part where he objects to the start of the experiment and the one where Lucrecia collapses, it would seem that her collapse is meant to be taken as having taken place either right before or at some point after Sephiroth was born. That Vincent was shown arguing with Hojo following the scene where she collapsed indicates that we are meant to infer that the unintended complications causing Lucrecia to collapse in that manner prompted Vincent to renew objections more insistently than before, which is when Hojo shot him. This would place Sephiroth's birth not long before Vincent got shot and experimented on.

I told you I interpreted the flow of events the same way you did. I'm still willing to accept that it didn't mean what we took it to mean when a source closer to the staff who created it tells us so.

A source full of inaccuracies and contradictions. See above.

To further support this, Vincent knew Lucrecia had a son named Sephiroth, which means either the name was brought up before Sephiroth was born or Lucrecia gave birth shortly before Vincent was shot.

Orrrrr she gave birth several years before he was shot, as an official source has told us. Knowing the name indicates nothing precise about the timeframe.

See above.

Considering the reports made them out to be obsessed about Genesis being what they strive to live up to and the whole Tsviets are the hellspawn of G thing makes it seem like Genesis himself was a key factor in what their experiments were trying to achieve. Sephiroth is basically the superior version of what Shinra was hoping to achieve with Genesis, so you'd think they would've used Sephiroth as the template for their experiments instead.

Why they keep going on about Genesis with little to no mention of Sephiroth shows a distinct preference for Genesis despite how little time passed between their conceptions. Basing their goals around the experiments involving Genesis is one thing but going so far as to gloss over the progress involving Sephiroth and to use Genesis specifically for the Tsviets is another.

It's an aspect of Deepground's history that simply doesn't match up.

It's odd. There's no disagreement to be made about that. Everything about Deepground is odd, though, including why the scientists down there responded to the Jenova Project by turning a hospital into a horror show in the first place. 

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.

I think this leaves room for Deepground to gain interest in Genesis or his project at a later point than his birth, even if they did so before he joined SOLDIER. After all, he was initially considered relatively normal so there wouldn't be much reason to be interested in the project until some noteworthy result drew their attention to it, in which case that Genesis exists would still be a way they'd likely reference it.

You've probably already seen it, but now we have a reference that refers explicitly to this shift in Deepground's focus happening as a response to Genesis being born.

So I guess now it's a matter of whether or not that makes sense in relation to everything else.

An Ultimania entry you haven't heard about before that apparently goes against something you understood to be canon isn't really something you take someone's word on, especially since the Ultimanias have been somewhat dubious in their clarifications on canon at times as game guides seem to do.

In the absence of us having a longstanding antagonistic relationship of some sort, I find this instantaneous refusal to believe odd, to be frank. Again, though, all you had to do is ask for clarification.

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.

Misunderstandings like this generally waste time for both sides involved so it's in everyone's best interest to avoid them. Like I said before, a page number doesn't mean much if I can't find the page.

For all I knew, you owned a copy of the book. You'd hardly be the only FFVII fan on this site who owns an Ultimania without knowing Japanese.

I cited my source. That was my only obligation, and particularly all I felt like doing since I was posting from my phone. If you needed or just wanted more details, you only had to ask.

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 made it pretty clear I wasn't finding your source and that the only thing I could find corresponding even partly to what you were going on about was the early material stuff.

You made it clear that you thought my source came from the Early Material File section of the book. I then made it clear that I was talking about a different section of the book entirely.

If another step was needed for the discussion to move forward, it was really on you to make sure I knew it.

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.

So was missing stuff like the page you referenced just because no one got around to it then?

Pretty much. There are a million things in a single day that could come between a translator and material they aren't being paid to do -- including, for that matter, translating something that seems more interesting.

That's understandable.

A note that a particular entry is the same as another save for some different or other would be ok too as an alternative to retranslating the same thing barring correcting an error in the previous one.

...

I kinda figured by the time someone got familiar enough with a language to translate it they'd be fluent enough to only really struggle with the culture specific stuff or at least assess whether or not new information is present in the untranslated text as they read through it.

For myself at least, establishing that much would still require doing some amount of work.

Even for someone more adept at this language than me, though (like hito or hian), these profiles all start to look the same at a glance. You know every profile ever for Cloud is going to say "An ex-SOLDIER of the Shin-Ra Company, blah blah blah, anti-Shin-Ra organization AVALANCHE, yak yak yak, childhood friend Tifa, blah-dee-dah, flower girl Aerith, yakkity yak, Sephiroth, something something something dark side, battle to save the planet."

Sephiroth's profiles follow a similar structure with almost identical descriptions each time.

I have wasted a lot of time translating something only to realize it was a slight rephrasing of three or four other passages.

And simply speaking for myself again, I simply don't have the time nor live in an environment to get skilled enough at the language to make that process any more efficient for myself than it is.

Are there a ton of words and phrases in Japanese that I know offhand? Sure. There's way more that I can't remember from lack of practice, though, and even beyond that, there are so many kanji I couldn't hope to remember even a quarter of them.

My main strength as a translator is in understanding the grammatical structure and remembering (some of) the standards of conjugation, so even if I have to take the time to look up meanings (which I almost certainly will), the main obstacle I'm facing is time. Deciding how to word something in English or how to convey a cultural nuance is one of the parts I actually consider fun rather than an annoyance.

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.

I'm not expecting anyone capable of doing it to have the time and motivation to do it, I was mostly wondering why it couldn't at least be noted down somewhere that anyone with the time and motivation to do it could choose to do it if they wanted to. Making translations something that multiple people could work together on if they want would probably help make it less of a burden, since it wouldn't be entirely dependent on a single person deciding one day to do it all themselves.

That team effort approach is what was taken with the 10th Anniversary Ultimania translations, I believe, and it did work out rather brilliantly. There just hasn't been such a perfect storm of motivation, skill, availability, and -- dare I say it -- interest since then.

By the way, before I go on, I want to say I know you mean well, and I hope I haven't come across as too antagonistic. I do get offended, though, about what comes across as lecturing someone who has a specific skill about how they're using it.

Even when being paid (perhaps especially when being paid), artists of all types -- writers, illustrators, sculptors, translators, etc. -- are underappreciated, told they don't work fast enough, told they charge too much if they charge, and so on and so forth. I've experienced it and I know a lot of people who have, so it's a tender issue for me.

I often liken it to working on a car. I try not to be too critical of my mechanic because I go to him in the first place because he has skills, tools or knowledge I don't have. I also go to him because I trust him and he's cut me deals before, but if we didn't start from a place of mutual respect, we wouldn't be where we are.

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 must've missed that definition. To be fair, what people consider nitpicking and unnecessary criticism is subjective. I often don't mind what's generally considered nitpicking so long as it's done politely or brings up something interesting, as it's good to examine every aspect of an argument if you're going to take it as fact. If an argument can hold up to scrutiny, then it should be able to handle it just fine.

Scrutiny is good. Scrutiny is healthy. What's problematic is separating things from their wider context and dismissing them on those terms.

If you say a war happened because of reasons a, b, c, d and e, then I say "tariffs alone aren't going to cause any wars" without addressing your description of how this factor may have influenced others or set events in motion -- you're going to get upset with me, and rightly so.

I feel like we're already discussing this in the other thread.

From what I've seen, the issues regarding formal debate seem to stem from imposing time limits, pressuring people to provide many quick and easy points rather than take the time to carefully think about the topic and come up with more detailed arguments. Even in regular discussion someone who knows what they're doing could easily use time limitations or the illusion thereof to force the other person to rush their points without putting as much thought into them or the first person's arguments, guiding the discussion in their favour. Of course, the same can be done if someone is allowed to bring up too much at once, so careful moderation is still needed. Still, when formal debate was touched upon in one of my classes, emphasis was placed on quality of arguments as well as objectivity in determining which points were made best and we were given a reasonable amount time to prepare our arguments, as well as the opportunity to research our subjects rather than put on the spot. Both classes of my year got the same topics, which were fairly even, as shown when we ended up with opposing results based on the quality of the arguments put forth. After all, it's hard to make a point if it isn't argued well, meaning quality of arguments will always be an important aspect of debate whether formal or informal. I'd say it was a very good learning experience.

I've no doubt it was. My experience with it was as well.

It can be fun, and it can certainly facilitate developing argumentation skills, but it's highly flawed due to encouraging too much focus on the wrong concerns.

Informal debate has its fair share of flaws as well, so you could still end up focusing on the wrong concerns regardless.

Arguing that SOLDIER originally didn't include Jenova cells based on Ultimania quotes not bringing it up assumes that Jenova cells weren't used because they weren't mentioned, which I believe qualifies. At best it means both are possible until sufficient evidence is given to prove or disprove one over the other.

It doesn't qualify, no. The point in making an observation like that is to establish an overall pattern or presentation of details.

Again, such things need to be responded to as they have been delivered -- as a synthesis, not as one-off scraps.

Well, it's good to compare information both together and separately when verifying how information from multiple sources fit together.

Neat. I guess that makes sense since proper names derived from english words seem to be used that way whenever they come up, though it's been a while since I watched anything like anime in Japanese with english subtitles to remind me of that tendency.

Yes, it's done pretty much constantly. "SOLDIER," "AVALANCHE," "Weapon," "mako cannon," "LOVELESS," "Chaos," "Jenova Project," "Sephiroth Copy," "Reunion" -- it goes on and on.

So basically all the key words. Odd that mako cannon's the only one that doesn't seem to be worth the extra capitalization.

I figure it's more likely they meant conventional as in the standard variety of SOLDIER by the time of the OG, since it's the main reference point for most of the information given. Of course, you'd think that would be an excellent opportunity for them to say something about what way they're supposed to be unconventional. It generally just gives the impression that they're different from the standard SOLDIERs and unique experiments are said to be conducted in Deepground, which is left as the first thing that would come to mind about why they're unconventional. It could also be that they're unwilling test subjects trapped in a secret facility rather than people who joined willingly like the SOLDIERs in Shinra HQ. Essentially, their status as unconventional isn't really indicative of whether or not they're anything like the original SOLDIERs and it makes you wonder if there was ever a time where they would've been considered conventional to begin with.

Fair enough.

At any rate, we know Weiss never had Jenova cells, so there's one.

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.

Oh, and whoever was in that Dragonfly Vincent sent crashing into Mako Reactor 0's mako stream. If they had carried Jenova, that would have ruined Omega right there.

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.

And the lack of certainty for how similar they are to what SOLDIER started out as means you can't say for sure what SOLDIER was originally like simply based on what's seen of Deepground.

That was never what I was doing, though. I simply made a comment in passing that Deepground SOLDIERs are, by and large, more similar to those original SOLDIERs than the conventional variety (e.g. Zack).

At no point was I using Deepground to establish anything about SOLDIER from the old days.

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.

What Cid says confirms a war but doesn't confirm SOLDIER's involvement in it, more than an approximated time range, or that SOLDIER didn't have Jenova cells unless the timerange is unquestionably, without a doubt before Jenova was found. Alone it just increases the probability that SOLDIER was involved unless something contradicts that.

What Cid said does do is solidify that Shin-Ra was still Shin-Ra Works at the time of that war, and not yet the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company it was known as during the Wutai War. He doesn't speak of SOLDIER, no, but, once again, things like this are to be analyzed together --

-The Ultimania Omega passages speak of a war when Shin-Ra was still a weapons development company
-Cid speaks of a war when Shin-Ra was still a weapons development company
-The Ultimania Omega speaks of SOLDIER being utilized in a war when Shin-Ra was still a weapons development company

Cid need not speak of SOLDIER directly for us to determine a reasonable connection between these wars (i.e. that they are the same war).

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.

Because the compilation is full of contradictions and so information provided from one part has to be compared to the rest, much like how researching requires the ability to find multiple credible sources supporting the information you're using. The Ultimanias are supplementary material rather than a true part of the compilation and so don't hold as much weight as the source material. In order to determine the best way to sort out contradictions concerning information on a particular subject all claiming to be canon, you have to compare what all the sources say, account for the quality of each source and figure out what information best matches up with everything else.

That's my point: When there isn't a contradiction, more than one source shouldn't be necessary.

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.

Ok. What are the chances of Deepground having always had a different emblem than standard SOLDIER? It'd make sense considering their status as something separate from regular SOLDIER and I don't think anything was said about the reasons behind the retcon.

It's certainly possible. I was talking about what struck me as a possible meta reason to attach that symbol to them, though.

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.

Bystanders endangered by the shadow creepers being able to easily escape would be inconvenient for the screenwriters, while having a bunch of children suddenly jump into Cloud's path to force him to crash and make himself vulnerable to attack, is. It's been admitted that the physics in ACC don't accurately reflect how things work in the setting, as they were focusing on the way things looked.

At any rate, we have confirmation now that Jenova cells alone provide physical enhancement.

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 ask because if mako is all it takes to make a SOLDIER, mako poisoning occurs with sufficient frequency for it to be known outside of Shinra and it's common knowledge that mako exposure is involved even though Jenova's use isn't, then anyone with the right equipment could basically get some mako, dunk people in them and get their own SOLDIERs on the same level, even though Jenova wouldn't be included. What difference then would Jenova make for the standard SOLDIER? What would make it worth including if only unique cases reap any benefit? What exactly would be stopping everyone with motive to try to make their own army of SOLDIERs that should turn out the same as the supposedly originally mako only SOLDIERs? Wouldn't Wutai have been able to try that if it was so easy?

Fuhito did that very thing in Before Crisis. His army of Ravens were based on stolen SOLDIER data. He didn't have access to Jenova, though, so while it's unclear exactly what he did, it's probably safe to say mako was somewhere in the mix.

Anyway, you know what would happen if someone else tried to do that: Shin-Ra would crush them. Added to that, practical concerns would stop most attempts long before it got to that point.

Just anyone with motive isn't going to have the resources (money, equipment, know-how, army of volunteers able to handle it, etc.) to start producing bootleg SOLDIERs. Fuhito is the only one we know of to have ever done it, so that kind of answers your question right there, as do the unique circumstances (i.e. he actually had the necessary resources) that allowed him to do it.

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.

If they really only mean 4 people for a SOLDIER unit, then apparent misuse of military terminology aside, I suppose this along with Zack being sent on his own or only accompanied by a few people could indicate that SOLDIER really is supposed to be small enough that it's only deployed as small specialized groups accompanied by regular infantry, Turks, etc depending on what they're being sent to do.

Right, they rarely seem to send more than three SOLDIERs for anything. I can't think of a time when they did. They sent Angeal, Zack and Sephiroth to Wutai at the beginning of Crisis Core, and sent Zack to the Icicle area to back up Essai and Sebastian in Before Crisis.

Beyond that, only occasions with one or two SOLDIERs and maybe a Turk come to mind.

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.

As time goes on and more people grow up with the current state of the internet, the people who spent their early internet years with those dated formats will make up a smaller and smaller fraction of the current day internet users. You may have a point about mobile but I don't see why anyone would want to look up such long FAQs on a tiny phone screen of all things. Phones aren't really meant for more than quick internet searches anyway.

Mobile is the only means of access to the Internet for a great many people in the U.S. and around the world, and is increasingly becoming the primary access device even for people with computers.

Growing up with this convenience and these access habits is going to have a bigger impact than flashy interfaces.

As for looking up long FAQs on phones, remember the search codes I mentioned in the one I linked you to? Longer FAQs are supposed to utilize those.

With nothing but text in the FAQ, even very large ones load pretty much instantly, and then it's a simple matter of scrolling down to the table of contents, finding the search code for the section you want, punching it in and reading the information you need.

That's far faster than turning on and waiting for a computer that's possibly in another part of your house/apartment, or possibly not even with you if you aren't at home.

I personally went more than a year without a computer, having only recently gotten a replacement, so I know it's very much possible to get by without one for the Internet. It makes a couple of things more difficult, sure, but they're not necessary.

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.

As I elaborated, making BC a phone game hurt its ability to be of adequate quality as a compilation entry. That at least part of it is no longer considered canon should be evidence of this. FF4 has the benefit of being made in a way current cellphone technology would have an easier time managing an adequate sequel to than they could manage with something meant to be part of the compilation. That other compilation entries suffer from poor writing just shows that the limitations of a phone game in no way helped the way it turned out, no matter how seriously Japan may take its phone games. It's not the weakest compilation entry for nothing.

For 2004, it was a really high-end product. Even now, it doesn't look that bad, though the gameplay would certainly no longer be up to standard.

FFVII G-Bike, which is more recent and looks great, shows that there's no reason they can't put games out for mobile that match or exceed the quality of PS1 and PSP games if they want to. Even PS2 quality isn't hard to imagine.

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.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

It's more that they referenced the 23 year approximation before the 50 one as they have to exist together to have any consistency. You'd probably have to ask them directly to be absolutely sure which they decided on first since this is more about the equation than the result.

The point is that the 23-year thing was published two years before the 50-year thing, so it wasn't like they had to do the 23-year thing afterward to keep things consistent with a previously published rounded-downward approximation of 50 years. That's what you suggested earlier.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

I still feel that they're not as vague as you make them out to be.

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.)

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.

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.

The fault can be entirely on the storyteller(s) failing to properly convey their intention.

Again, "approximately 23 years" was given long before the "approximately 50 years" thing, so it's not like they had already painted themselves into a corner.

[EDIT: Going back and looking more closely looking at pg. 46 and pg. 47 of the Ultimania Omega, I found this --

----
【約23年前】ルクレシィア失踪。宝条を責め、逆上した宝条に肉体を改造されるが、それも罰だと受け止め、棺のなかで眠りにつく（※2）

※2
セフィロスを産んで数年ルクレシィアの身体はしだいに変調をきたし、外見も醜く変化していった。人に見せられぬ姿となった己に絶望したルクレシィアのせい――憤ったヴィン セントは宝条に食ってかかるが、逆に銃で撃たれ、意識を失っているあいだに宝条の「科学的好奇心」のエジキとなってしまう。

[Approximately 23 years ago] Lucrecia disappears. Vincent blames the maniacal Hojo, but ends up with his body modified by him; perceiving this as a punishment, Vincent goes to sleep in a coffin. (※2)

(※2)
For several years after giving birth to Sephiroth, Lucrecia's body gradually became abnormal, and her appearance became grotesque. Vincent fell into his own despair over her no longer wanting to be seen by anyone -- filled with resentment, he confronted Hojo and blew up at him, but was shot and fell prey to Hojo's "scientific curiosity" after losing consciousness.
----

That's very clear with regard to the timeframe.]

Lucrecia disappearing before Vincent was shot flies in the face of Lucrecia being shown to be around after he was shot.

At the time the Ultimania Omega was published, that had not been shown yet.

And now it has, meaning it would appear to have been retconned.

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.

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.

It's not canon now, no. Canon at one time, yes.

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.

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.

That's a perfectly fine point. I'm simply making the equally fine point that a deformed appearance is compatible with what Lucrecia said.

I told you I interpreted the flow of events the same way you did. I'm still willing to accept that it didn't mean what we took it to mean when a source closer to the staff who created it tells us so.

A source full of inaccuracies and contradictions.

You have to stop doing that. A statement that is retconned years later is not an inaccuracy.

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.

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.

Well, that's what we'll hopefully work out in this thread.

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's fair. You only needed to tell me so.

That I trust the translations you provide to be accurate should mean something.

And I do appreciate that.

Of course, it would also be stupid of me to provide a scan and a transcription, then lie about the contents. =P

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.

Well, that comes down to the individual. Some fans want them for the artwork, others are just happy to collect them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is what I said:

That applies only to the Early Material File section of the Ultimania toward the back of the book, beginning at pg. 518. Though these details about Shin-Ra are repeated there, I'm referencing the company's profile from the front of the book (pg. 56). Several hundred pages before that, and right after the profiles of the main cast.

For what it's worth, though, that warning you speak of also mentions that many of the details mentioned in that section are in common with details from the finished product (this line is actually in the book). These about Shin-Ra are among them.

Again, just so we're clear, I'm not citing the Early Material File section at all for what we've been discussing. Only pg. 56.

This is how you responded:

The last segment of the FFVII Early Material Files has been translated by hitoshura, and this one by far, offers the best look into the possible world of FFVII had the creators gone a different route. Below is a collection of notes and definitions regarding the world scenario and plot points of the draft of FFVII. Many things here are different from the original, finalized game, so please keep that in mind and don’t let yourself actually think this has anything to do with the finalized story. With that, enjoy!

Drafts are like prototype versions of stories and give insight to the development process but only what's seen in the finalized product can be considered canon, nothing more. Just because you can recognize elements of the final concept in an earlier one doesn't mean anything not mentioned in the final product can be assumed to be true.

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."

Communication is a two-way thing so no single person is at fault on this.

I held up my end. You didn't.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Like I said before, it should be obvious (copyright issues) why we aren't hosting entire compositions like that.

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.

Alright.

Informal debate has its fair share of flaws as well, so you could still end up focusing on the wrong concerns regardless.

Sure, but I'd rather a concern for what's true be more of a concern than who got the best "Oh, snap!" moment.

Well, it's good to compare information both together and separately when verifying how information from multiple sources fit together.

It is, sure. However, it's not good to attempt refuting something that way.

So basically all the key words. Odd that mako cannon's the only one that doesn't seem to be worth the extra capitalization.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I can see your point, but the point remains that the medical facility for old school SOLDIER became Deepground.

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.

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.

The point is that they were an electric company during the Wutai War and a weapons development company during this other war.

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.

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.

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.

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).

That's my point: When there isn't a contradiction, more than one source shouldn't be necessary.

And how would you know there isn't a contradiction unless you've checked every source?

The obvious implication there is that I'm speaking to known contradictions.

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?

During the battle, he references seeing what the effects of a "mako juice" are as well, so I'd say both.

I think he had Ravens before he even stole the SOLDIER data, if I recall.

He did, yes, though he seems to be further enhancing them after stealing the data.

For all we know he had a stash of Jenova cells this whole time ...

How would he have gotten it? Not even Hollander knew where Jenova was kept.

... 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.

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.

That lineup of SOLDIERs Zack was giving a speech to looked like they were headed the same place.

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.

I think I always thought it must be a training exercise. Feel anything jumping out at you?

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.

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.

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.

My phone handles both of those things fine.

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.

This I explained above.