I've never really understood what it is about Vincent that makes him a "good guy", He's never seemed like a hero to me, more like a failure. For a start, he's a Turk. Turks are not good guys. Secondly, he has at least an inkling that Hojo and Lucretia are up to no good vis a vis their unborn baby, but he hems and haws and stands by, insufficiently certain of where he stands morally to actually interfere to any useful purpose, like shooting them both (and then when he does try to intervene he gets shot by Hojo and stuffed in a tank; can you even imagine any of the other Turks letting that happen to them?) and when he is set free he decides the best way to fix this mess is to lie in a coffin for twenty years Tifa recognizes this as bullshit the moment she hears it.
EDIT: Actually it would be interesting to see, pre Nibelheim, pre Lucrecia, Turk Vincent. In my headcanon...which I have just invented right now.... he got sent to Nibelheim as a 'break' an easy mission, maybe something bad happened prior? Like a mission went wrong and one of his fellow Turks got killed - though not Vincents fault it knocked his confidence somewhat, so they sent him to Nibelheim for a while rather than risk him going to pieces on another mission....something like that?
Tbh I never got the impression of him as a "good guy". At the most the original game may want us to think of him as a victim (which, when put under a microscope, it fails to do) and therefore think of him as a good guy who lost against the bad guy. But throughout the Compilation I don't see any attempts to make him come off as a hero. He seems...neutral "almost" to the point of indifference, but not quite there.
Saving the planet is pretty basic though. If the planet is destroyed, Vincent can't stay around to brood and wander. No matter if you are good, bad or neutral, you will want the planet to survive if your own survival is in interest as well.
I've never really understood what it is about Vincent that makes him a "good guy", He's never seemed like a hero to me, more like a failure. For a start, he's a Turk. Turks are not good guys. Secondly, he has at least an inkling that Hojo and Lucretia are up to no good vis a vis their unborn baby, but he hems and haws and stands by, insufficiently certain of where he stands morally to actually interfere to any useful purpose, like shooting them both (and then when he does try to intervene he gets shot by Hojo and stuffed in a tank; can you even imagine any of the other Turks letting that happen to them?) and when he is set free he decides the best way to fix this mess is to lie in a coffin for twenty years Tifa recognizes this as bullshit the moment she hears it.
Vincent's coffin decision is odd, but it's always seemed to me to be poetic justice? He stood by and watched all the human experimentation go on without raising a finger (and when he did, he got shot), and thus decided his punishment would be similar to his sin: he'd stand by (or rather, lie in a coffin) and watch the world burn/go on without him, even though he would rather help/live life again? A special agony for his own soul. It's not so much about fixing the mess as it is about punishing himself.
It's stupid, I know. But then again, I am constantly baffled by how incompetent and dumb Turk!Vincent is. I mean, yeah, BC!Turks weren't terribly competent either, but beside Vincent, they're practically Jason Bourne.
Crim himself actually calls it a reinterpretation. I disagree, as you know, but I'd never presume to confront him about it in public, in his own blog-space, unless specifically asked. So this thread got the brunt of my irritation, apparently.
I'm not really interested in Hojo or Lucrecia enough to investigate, but 'reinterpretation' to me would suggest there was something in the source material to suggest Hojo wasn't a 100% bad guy (or a even a Good or misunderstood guy) if that's what is being suggested - so I could see why that term would stick in your craw there Skan.
I don't really mind about AU's, I mean it sucks when they haven't been labelled as such, and you get 5 paragraphs in and it says "Bilbo checked his email" or some shit
Vincent is one of the characters I identify the most with in all of FFVII (the other one is Hojo, see here for why). I tend to be apathetic to a lot of stuff that's not directly affecting me unless it's something I'm emotionally invested in. Then I react if it doesn't go the way I wanted it to. If/when it the reaction blows up in my face all I want to do is go someplace I can be alone and just not think about it for a while. Whether I actually do anything about it... depends on how much it really matters to me.
If FFVII specializes in playing characters against their "obvious" character types, Vincinet is the guy who should be really angry (at least) about what happened to him, but instead just does nothing.
Actually, he's also a foil to Sphephiroth/Genesis/Angeal's reactions to finding out they were experimented on. All three of the SOLDIERs do something about it (destroy the world/suicide/take out a company), but Vincent just does nothing. At which point I'm kinda wondering what the "right" response to finding out you're an experiment is. Or maybe it's that there's no "right" response no matter what you do.
It feels so cool that somebody else noticed how Vincent is a foil to the "children of Jenova". I realized this a month or so ago while playing DC.
Angeal/Sephiroth/Genesis: "I'M A MONSTEEEER!"
Vincent: "Bitch pls."
Vincent transforms into various monsters and he is an extremely unnatural entity after Hojo's experiments. Yet he does not seem to mourn the loss of his "humanity". So in this respect Vincent is refreshing.
EDIT: I totally should have mentioned that in the stream. Completely forgot about this observation until now.
Is it ever explained - outside of game mechanic/limit breaks - what triggers Vincents transformations? Or how much if any control he has over which monster he changes into? Or if it causes him pain or anything?
I've never really understood what it is about Vincent that makes him a "good guy", He's never seemed like a hero to me, more like a failure. For a start, he's a Turk. Turks are not good guys. Secondly, he has at least an inkling that Hojo and Lucretia are up to no good vis a vis their unborn baby, but he hems and haws and stands by, insufficiently certain of where he stands morally to actually interfere to any useful purpose...
In terms of literary purpose, I see the character of Vincent as serving the role of conscience in the telling of Jenova Project events. Granted, he as the conscience is shot down (both figuratively and literally) and ignored by the characters, and ironically he ignores his own conscience, but that is a role of his character in the Jenova Project exposition nonetheless.
No, he is not "all" good, obviously. But I also don't think that Lucrecia is all bad. Vincent is somewhat weak of spirit, especially when he is young, but I feel that as the character grows he strives to do good. I don't see why he would give two fucks about what's happening to the other characters otherwise.
I read an essay about Severus Snape a few years ago that brought me to tears and I think it had something to do with
Snape attempting to atone for his past errors by looking after Harry, and his active role as protector of Harry was directly related to the guilt and responsibility he felt over what his past actions had caused to happen to Lily. His actions in the present were his attempt to atone for that. And there was some beautiful metaphor involving the scene with his doe patronus bringing Harry the sword that the writer of this essay was likening to Snape's deliberate, difficult journey to move toward goodness in the wake of having been an arguably horrible person in the past
. I see their journeys as being somewhat similar in that
both are taking active steps to try to make peace with their past mistakes by doing good in the present
.
So, while it's difficult to throw a label like "good" or "bad" at any character, and even more difficult to do so when you see that character change over decades, I'd say Vincent is overall a "good" person. But I use quotes because, really, no one is "good" or "bad," and good characters have aspects of both. Which I believe both Vincent and Lucrecia do. To be honest, I'm willing to think of most people as "generally good," so even if you gave me a character who was like 85% "bad" and 15% "good," I'd be like, "Ah but they're not really a bad person..."
Incidentally, I'd be a bigger fan of Hojo if Square had bothered giving him some "good" qualities, like many of us interpreted in him years ago, but unfortunately they seem pretty determined to solidify him as a one-dimensional evil character.
Actually it would be interesting to see, pre Nibelheim, pre Lucrecia, Turk Vincent. In my headcanon...which I have just invented right now.... he got sent to Nibelheim as a 'break' an easy mission, maybe something bad happened prior? Like a mission went wrong and one of his fellow Turks got killed - though not Vincents fault it knocked his confidence somewhat, so they sent him to Nibelheim for a while rather than risk him going to pieces on another mission....something like that?
In my headcanon, it was arranged by Grimoire shortly before he died, who also pulled strings to get Lucrecia on Gast's team for his "new project" that was coming up (which I think *might* have been canon, referenced in his documents?). Then he realized he may have gotten her into a potentially dangerous situation, pulled strings to also get Vincent there because he trusted Vincent to do the right thing, and then Grim died before anyone else knew about his influence on it. Explains the coincidence nicely, and also adds another layer of Vincent failing his father on top of everything else.
Oh, I really shouldn't do this...but at this rate this scene won't get drawn and posted for years, so here is the excerpt from my doujinshi (the premise of which is that Lucrecia decides to leave her crystal and goes on a little adventure in order to try to right some of her wrongs, Vincent serving as her travel companion/protector/friend/source of angst) script that goes into it:
- Lu "This is my battle. You shouldn't be fighting it for me."
- Vin "You said yourself [redacted spoiler]. So then what if [redacted spoiler=true]? Then it's my crime, too."
He looks away.
- Vin "And...even if [redacted spoiler=false], it's still my crime."
- Lu "Why?! Why do you think that?!"
Vincent looks away but Lucrecia is trying to get him to look at her.
- Lu "Vincent, WHY do you always blame yourself for what happened to me?? Don't you understand? I'M the one who did everything! I--"
He finally turns to her and she looks shocked.
- Vin "Because I was warned about the Jenova Project."
She still looks shocked.
- Lu "W-what...? But how-- You couldn't have known what Jenova was! WE didn't even know."
He looks away again in defeat.
- Vin "My father... He tried to warn me, but I didn't listen. I didn't understand what he was saying."
- Vin "One day he showed up out of the blue and said we needed to spend some father-son time together. I thought it was strange, but we didn't see much of each other anymore, and he was always busy with work when I was a child, so I thought he was feeling guilty about my childhood and indulged him."
- Vin "He kept telling me that things weren't always what they seemed, saying things like angels could be demons, too. I had no idea what he was talking about. I thought he was making excuses for his scarcity, but it didn't make sense in that context."
Vincent looks at Lucrecia.
- Vin "Maybe he was talking about Jenova. Maybe he was talking about you."
Lucrecia looks away guiltily.
- Vin "How much did my father know about Jenova?"
Lucrecia still looks down but Vincent is visible in the panel, listening.
- Lu "He wasn't part of the project, and all information regarding Jenova was confidential. But...he and Gast were old colleagues. It's how he got me on Gast's team to begin with."
Vincent nods thoughtfully.
- Vin "...So if he had been straightforward about what he was saying and I told anyone that he told me, it would have incriminated not only him, but Gast as well."
- Lu "Do you...think Gast knew? Do you think that's what he told your father?"
- Vin "Do YOU think Gast knew? You knew him better than I did."
Lucrecia closes her eyes though tears seep through and line her lashes.
- Lu "I like to think that he didn't."
- Vin "Then my father could have very well been coming to his own conclusions. We'll never know for sure."
- Vin "Shortly after that day, we received the message that he had been killed in an accident at work. It wasn't even a week."
- Vin "And a few months after that, I was sent to the Jenova Project."
- Vin "My father would have been well within a position to pull strings and arrange that on purpose. I didn't realize it until I learned the connection between you and him."
- Vin "Lucrecia, my father sent me to you."
Lucrecia looks pained and surprised. Vincent looks compassionate.
- Vin "He meant for me to protect you. You meant a lot to him... Maybe even more than I did."
Lucrecia closes her eyes and shakes her head.
- Lu "That's...not true, Vincent. You can't love anyone more than your own child."
—————
(...Bitch.)
Anyway, just another interpretation/possibility/crack theory/what-have-you. As they all are.
I don't really mind about AU's, I mean it sucks when they haven't been labelled as such, and you get 5 paragraphs in and it says "Bilbo checked his email" or some shit
I think you may have misunderstood what I meant. ALL fanfiction is technically AU. Even fanfiction that tries its hardest to be true to canon is technically AU, by virtue of it not being canon.
You could get ten fanfiction writers to try their very hardest to portray an "accurate" Vincent (or Lucrecia or Hojo or anyone else), and all eleven of those Vincents including the canon one are going to be different characters.
Moreover, when someone writes fanfiction at one point in (real-life) time that is very accurate, and then more canon material is released contradicting that fanfiction, then the fanfiction becomes retroactively AU in the conventional sense without the author's control over it. And that's always going to happen to everyone until the day SE takes a look at someone's fanfiction and goes, "Okay, yeah, we like this. Can we keep it?" And I don't see that ever happening.
Tangent time: Sometimes I browse the Help With Life forum on deviantART. And sometimes people ask questions along the lines of, "Is [insert issue here] against God?" And my perennial answer to them is generally, "That depends on your God, and your personal interpretation of God, and your congregation's interpretation of God, and how closely you follow your congregation's interpretation of God. Someone could answer your question here with 'yes' or 'no' but if they don't share your specific religion then their answer is moot." Granted, I am of the personal belief that God is also a fictional character, so being someone viewing religion as an outsider I might be a little more able to see its subjective nature. But you can't have a Catholic ask a Protestant if birth control is a sin and expect the Protestant to give the same answer as a Catholic priest (who the Catholic should probably be asking, since the question is really not "Is birth control a sin according to God?" but "Is birth control a sin according to MY/OUR God?"). Since believers in God tend to be unwilling to acknowledge that they all have their own different interpretations of who this character is and what he believes and wants, it's a difficult point to make.
I'd like to think it's an easier point to make to believers in Final Fantasy VII. I hope I'm not disrespecting anyone's Bible by suggesting we all have our own personal Lucrecias.
Is it ever explained - outside of game mechanic/limit breaks - what triggers Vincents transformations? Or how much if any control he has over which monster he changes into? Or if it causes him pain or anything?
I don't think so. But one thing that is interesting, that a fanfic brought to my attention yesterday, is that Vincent has considerably more control over Galian Beast in DoC than he does in FF7.
I mean, we can deduce from game mechanics that he transforms when hurt and/or angry enough, and that he has limited control over his actions when transformed. But in FF7, you can't control Galian Beast at all, and in DoC you can.
So I wonder if we can interpret this to mean that as Vincent learns to coexist with these beasts taking over his body, he learns to have more and more control over his actions while transformed.
Additionally, DoC introduces limit breakers as items that induce limit break. Whether or not this was strictly a mechanical choice, it's still something that has been introduced canonically and is no more or less mechanical than the way the mechanics worked in OGC. Back to my doujinshi, I made this a thing in pages 15–20 that is basically an injection that comes in a box: http://ravynnenevyrmore.deviantart.com/art/Redemption-p-15-93584494. But I wonder if it could be considered to be something a little more vague, like "Vincent discovers and picks up a limit breaker and adds it to his inventory" could be like Vincent comes across some object that makes him angry? Maybe he bludgeons himself in the face a bit with a blunt object in order to induce limit break via pain? I dunno.
Doesn't Cloud use a limit break in AC, too? How is his induced? It's been a while since I've watched it, but it's induced emotionally, isn't it?
Often in fanfiction, especially within FFVII fanfics, I find that the author has made better sense than the original creators did, like what you came up with there re: Grimoire arranging for Vincent to go to Nibelheim - that made sense. (bear in mind my knowledge of DoC is all thirdhand) Where SE just seem to pull crap out of their arses, and we're forced to do mindbending logic to accept it 'oh ok Tifa is giggling flirtatiously on the phone with Reno who murdered all of her Sector 7 friends and neighbours' *facepalm*
Thats one of the things I like about fanfiction, when the original creators do something fucking stupid, the fans can fix it.
I'd never argue any work of fanfic was 'canon' though, but some are more 'canon' than others - as in you don't have to do quite so much mental acrobatics to 'get' it.
Eg - there seems to be far too many Hobbit fanfics where Smaug can somehow turn into a human and seduce Bilbo and its like....someone could argue (afaik nobody does thank fuck) 'well PROVE that Smaug can't turn into Benedict Cumberbatch when Smaug and Bilbo are off screen'....I can't prove that it doesn't happen......but it doesn't make any sense in the context of the Hobbit/it's universe.
Yeah, fanworks are not canon, but there are always gonna be some works that are more consistent with canon than others. It comes down in part to the five levels of headcanon and how people present them:
1: Heavily implied by canon.
2: Mildly supported by canon.
3: Canon says nothing either way.
4: Mildly contradicted by canon.
5: Heavily contradicted by canon.
The farther down you go, the more context you should provide, if you're concerned about such things like OOCness or canon consistency.
There's also interpretation, and then there's lacking reading comprehension and being flat-out wrong. Some people don't mind, and more power to them. But I think others should be free to look at something and decide that it's bullshit. For instance, there was someone who tried to convince me that Cloud's a good-for-nothing glory hound in ACC, who's bitter that he missed his chance and thus is withholding his help, because he no longer has his shot at SOLDIER-fame; that's not interpretation, that's willful misreading.
Often in fanfiction, especially within FFVII fanfics, I find that the author has made better sense than the original creators did, like what you came up with there re: Grimoire arranging for Vincent to go to Nibelheim - that made sense. (bear in mind my knowledge of DoC is all thirdhand) Where SE just seem to pull crap out of their arses, and we're forced to do mindbending logic to accept it 'oh ok Tifa is giggling flirtatiously on the phone with Reno who murdered all of her Sector 7 friends and neighbours' *facepalm*
But yes, I agree with this and your overall point. Maybe especially because FF7 is an aging story that was so riddled with poor translation and bad graphics to begin with. It gives our imaginations just enough to work with while still leaving us something else to work with.
Keep in mind, I used to be a canon purist, and anyone who got it wrong made me angry. When I got it wrong, my life was turned upside down for at least a week! But at some point I just threw my hands up in the air and said, "Fuck this shit, Squeenix doesn't know what they're doing anyway," and embraced everyone else's interpretation of events so long as they were willing to indulge in mine. (Incidentally, not dissimilar to my history with religion. )
I'd never argue any work of fanfic was 'canon' though, but some are more 'canon' than others - as in you don't have to do quite so much mental acrobatics to 'get' it.
Eg - there seems to be far too many Hobbit fanfics where Smaug can somehow turn into a human and seduce Bilbo and its like....someone could argue (afaik nobody does thank fuck) 'well PROVE that Smaug can't turn into Benedict Cumberbatch when Smaug and Bilbo are off screen'....I can't prove that it doesn't happen......but it doesn't make any sense in the context of the Hobbit/it's universe.
Justifying most slash fiction is in its own category of mental acrobatics entirely. But there are plenty of people who will try to argue that Cid/Vincent isn't an AU fic if everything else jives with canon.
Yeah, fanworks are not canon, but there are always gonna be some works that are more consistent with canon than others. It comes down in part to the five levels of headcanon and how people present them:
1: Heavily implied by canon.
2: Mildly supported by canon.
3: Canon says nothing either way.
4: Mildly contradicted by canon.
5: Heavily contradicted by canon.
The farther down you go, the more context you should provide, if you're concerned about such things like OOCness or canon consistency.
There's also interpretation, and then there's lacking reading comprehension and being flat-out wrong. Some people don't mind, and more power to them. But I think others should be free to look at something and decide that it's bullshit. For instance, there was someone who tried to convince me that Cloud's a good-for-nothing glory hound in ACC, who's bitter that he missed his chance and thus is withholding his help, because he no longer has his shot at SOLDIER-fame; that's not interpretation, that's willful misreading.
Why does she have to be one or the other—sympathetic or evil? No one is black and/or white. My favorite thing about Lucrecia as a character is that she is very gray.
Have you never met a human who made some big fucking mistakes and was still deserving of love?
(Also, aesthetically/poetically, it's very interesting to me that they dress Lucrecia in white and make her very angel/goddess-like, whereas they dress Vincent in black and red and make him "part" demon, while Vincent was the "good" one and Lucrecia is the "bad" one.)
Keep excusing. Maybe if you extend your logic to our world, you can excuse away all the bad.
I agree. This is going to be touched upon in Redemption, also. Not answered, but brought up.
You seem to be missing the fact that Crim writes fan fiction and no one was pitching this as canon, or asking you to believe it as such.
I think pretty much every fan's "Hojo," "Lucrecia," and "Vincent" are inaccurate to some degree, or else they'd be Square employees and not fans. Let's enjoy it for what it is regardless.
Although on that note, enjoy my "Hojo," "Gast," and "Lucrecia": Hojo
It was written before Crisis Core, so we didn't know anything about Genesis and Angeal. (The "other experiments" Lucrecia refers to are the ones on the Tsviets.) So no, it's not going to jive 100% with canon. Because it's fanfiction.
The sexism thing is going to read a little heavy now, after bringing it up already in this thread, but it was actually in writing this that things came out that way and then I was like, "Oh, yeah, this is a very valid thing that could have happened and could have also been a factor." But whether you agree or not or whether or not it matches "your" characters and "your" events, it doesn't matter. All fanfiction takes place in an alternate universe.
For the same reason, you know, the answers to the question this thread asks are going to be different for every single person because we all have a different Lucrecia in our minds. I see no harm in suggesting things that could have been aspects of her to each other, but expecting any of us to have "truth" is ridiculous because the entire thing is subjective. If you want truth, stop getting into fiction and read a history book instead.
Whoawhoawhoa, when did I say anything about the real world? If your version of Lucrecia has to prove herself in a man's world that's fine, all I'm saying is that it's not necessary or inevitable that that was the case in canon. Generally I agree with what everyone's saying about interpretation.
The Honeybee Inn... where we meet four Honeybees... and like fifteen burly guys in pink leotards that get into the bath with Cloud? How about Big Bro's gym?
Cid eventually recants his treatment of Shera and the party certainly eyes it askance when they meet him.
Sure, it's possible, but not inevitable. I think it can be a mistake to assume a world with significant differences to ours is culturally the same -don't women normally have a higher magic stat that the guys? That would have an impact on gender equality. The deities we know of that have genders are female, and there's a fair degree of women in the staff of Shinra we see, including an executive, an engineer, and several black ops operatives. We don't see any of the staff of Reeve and Heidegger's departments, the only insight we get is Science (which has quite a few women) and Space exploration (Cid and Shera)
That's odd, because in game his dialogue indicates that Sephiroth has rendered science irrelevant and has lines like 'my son is in need of power and help'. That's the only reason.'
Except that unlike Hojo, she regrets her actions- her catchphrase is 'I'm so sorry!'. By the endgame, Vince accepts that she fucked up, and regretted it. I think it devalues Lucy to say that she didn't know what she was doing-her specialty is biotechnology, she would have read the literature and known the risks. If they really just needed an incubator, they'd have kidnapped someone at random, not wasted a top ranked scientist.
Also, yeah, Gast has a lot to answer for. Did he regret JENOVA at all, or just abscond with a Ifalna because he loved her?
Yeah, but the dialogue afterwards shows his true colors where he says he is doing this because his son is a scientific success. Which means that is not real fatherly love but superficial interest in someone who has shown to exceed all his expectations. If Sephiroth wasn't powerful or strong he would have left him to the die at birth. That is still in a way abusive parenting caring only about your offspring if they give results.
I literally started using Tumblr last week after much debate. But it's purely for archiving pretty FF15 gifs of Leviathan and Behemoth and other pics for fic inspiration.
Feel free to take the list if you want for Tumblr-posting. Though if you do take it, please don't link to my post here or otherwise identify me. (And I'll ask you to leave out the bit about/after interpretation for obvious reasons.)
1. Addressing Tres: Sephiroth didn't remember the view from his room. He felt it was familiar. His exact words are: "... This scenery........ I feel like I know this place." This might just seem like word-wrangling, but there's a huge difference between getting impressions of familiarity and remembering (or misremembering) conversations. Sephiroth was specifically speaking about what Gast had (and had not) told him ("Professor Gast... Why didn't you tell me anything? ...Why did you die?"), whereas when he's remarking upon the scenery, he's speaking of vague impressions.
Well, take this as one will, but this is what the Ultimania Omega remarked about it:
(translation by hito)
"A familiar sight for Sephiroth
The reason Sephiroth says that he recognises the view from the second floor window of the inn is because his birth mother Lucretia bore him in this room.
- [Image (Lucretia collapses at the inn)]
This fact is made clear in Lucretia's grotto"
But whether you agree or not or whether or not it matches "your" characters and "your" events, it doesn't matter. All fanfiction takes place in an alternate universe.
For the same reason, you know, the answers to the question this thread asks are going to be different for every single person because we all have a different Lucrecia in our minds. I see no harm in suggesting things that could have been aspects of her to each other, but expecting any of us to have "truth" is ridiculous because the entire thing is subjective. If you want truth, stop getting into fiction and read a history book instead.
A decent amount. We can start at the Honeybee Inn and work our way to Cid's treatment of Shera and make a pit stop in counting the male:female ratio in every in-game profession except for prostitution, or just take the direct route and say, "Gaia is not a gender equality utopia."
And so I maintain my original proposal: It is likely that Lucrecia faced some amount of sexism as a female scientist 30 years before game time.
The Honeybee Inn... where we meet four Honeybees... and like fifteen burly guys in pink leotards that get into the bath with Cloud? How about Big Bro's gym?
Cid eventually recants his treatment of Shera and the party certainly eyes it askance when they meet him.
If that's what you want, Skan. I won't claim credit for it because it isn't mine, but I won't connect you or anyone else to it either.
Like everyone else, I have some parts of canon I care about more than others. For example, I don't really mind what fanfic writers do with Aerith's personality, whereas I can't stand it if they turn Elena into a shy, simpering, delicate little flower. But since the whole point of fanfic is to be writing what makes you happy, if someone wants to write a story about an Elena who's never fired a gun before and can barely say boo to a goose, then I say go for it. I won't read it, but then, it's not being written for me.
Another thing that's niggling at me now, as I revisit the old Q&A.
Q2-1: What is the time difference between the start of Jenova Project S and Jenova Project G? And out of Genesis, Sephiroth and Angeal, is Genesis the eldest?
A2-1: Project S and Project G began at roughly the same time. They were lead by Hojo and Hollander respectively, and the department head Gast has little participation in either project.
The order of their births goes Angeal & Genesis > Sephiroth, but it’s fine to think of them as being around the same age. Angeal and Genesis were created at roughly the same time, and were deemed as failed projects when they were babies. Project S took the results from Project G and added further improvements, so Sephiroth’s birth was later than Angeal and Genesis’.
Does this imply that Hojo injected embryonic!Sephiroth with cells* only after Angeal and Genesis were born and the results from Project G started rolling in? Not sure what these "improvements" could be except the different methods of Jenova-cell delivery into their hosts, and tangible results from Project G -- results that would make Hojo think, "I can improve my own project by tweaking this or that!" -- wouldn't seem to start coming in until after Angeal and Genesis pop out, right? That might actually make Sephiroth anywhere from half a year to a year younger than Angeal and Genesis.
I had assumed earlier (a misreading of mine) that Project S and G starting at the same time meant that the kids were pretty much conceived around roughly the same time, give or take a few months. (This wasn't helped by the "think of them as the same age!" spiel that got repeated.) But the last sentence is making me rethink that assumption, and of course, Project S and Project G don't actually refer to the kids themselves but the surrounding projects ...
*Before the 10th week of pregnancy, since I think after week 9/10, you get a fetus.
To be fair, Vincent had 27 years of knowing that he is a human being before he was experimented on.
Gen/Ang/Seph were human experiments long before they were conceived, and in the case of Genesis and Angeal they had lived their whole entire life thinking that they were "normal" and joined SOLDIER and became 1st classes through their own hard work and effort, not because of them having experimented on by the very company they work for.
I guess the thing they have going on for both groups is that they got boned over super hard by ShinRa.
To be fair, Vincent had 27 years of knowing that he is a human being before he was experimented on.
Gen/Ang/Seph were human experiments long before they were conceived, and in the case of Genesis and Angeal they had lived their whole entire life thinking that they were "normal" and joined SOLDIER and became 1st classes through their own hard work and effort, not because of them having experimented on by the very company they work for.
I guess the thing they have going on for both groups is that they got boned over super hard by ShinRa.
The thing for me is that there wasn't anything that Gen/Ang/Seph did before finding out they were monsters that suggested they were anything other then completely human. It's only after they find out they were experimented on do they flip their lids and start doing "monstrous" stuff. Heck, if neither Angeal or Genesis had ever gone to Shin-Ra to start with, they might never have found out they were anything other then human.
Also... for all that Jenova isn't something out of the Lifestream, most of the ways she effects people aren't as extreme as the way the Lifestream effects people. While Gen/Ang/Seph do have the crazy things like wings, reunion etc. that's all they have. They don't have a barely controllable four-way shape-shift going on or have four other... things? mako contructs? WEAPONS?... that they have to mentally be keeping in check all the time or those things will kill people. Everything we've seen Gen/Ang/Seph do is because they wanted to do it, whether they were forced to or not. From everything we see it's not like something else takes control of them.
I just find it funny that the fandom thinks Gen/Ang/Seph shouldn't have reacted as much as they did to their experimentation while Vincent didn't react enough to his.
People always act like they're just having tantrums over being told a secret, but there's more to it than that. Genesis isn't just annoyed and could have gone on with his life. He's dying, rotting from the inside out, because of the experiments done on him without his will, knowledge, or consent. Angeal is being used to create monsters, he didn't grow that wing voluntarily.
And remember, in the gameworld, the word 'monster' doesn't mean something that hides under the bed and can't see you if you cover your head, they're very real things that regularly attack and kill people. They will know people that were killed by monsters, there's most likely a very strong culture of exterminating them every chance you get.
But at some point I just threw my hands up in the air and said, "Fuck this shit, Squeenix doesn't know what they're doing anyway," and embraced everyone else's interpretation of events so long as they were willing to indulge in mine. (Incidentally, not dissimilar to my history with religion. 
