How Insane Do You Think Lucrecia Was?

[Shademp]

I've never, in 17 years of being in this fandom, encountered a Hojo fan. I'm not saying they don't exist, but I don't know (or want to know) where they're lurking.

CrimsonSun is probably the biggest Hojo fan out there. Keep in mind though that Crim's headcanon (where Hojo isn't nearly as batshit insane as in the games) fills in for a lot.

 

[Octo]

Thats going to have to be a hell of a lot then.....like......99.99% of his character, because Hojo has zero redeeming features.

 

[Shademp]

Thats going to have to be a hell of a lot then.....like......99.99% of his character, because Hojo has zero redeeming features.

True. I hope more people will check out Crim's work anyway (both art and writing). The art draws you in and makes the re-interpretation of Hojo feel worth your time.

Really I wish now there was a "soft" side to Hojo, even if it was one he only showed to Lucrecia to manipulate her, just so that it could be made more believable that she ended up choosing Hojo over Vincent. Lucrecia would come off as less insane that way.

I brought this up in the DC stream. The closest thing we get to "not-just-cackling-mad-scientist" is that one line in the Japanese version of DC where Hojo's voice becomes soft and not at all recognizable. In the English game he sounds the same as always.

Oh well.

 

[Skan]

@ Ravynne: Hmmm. Actually, the timeline is pretty much in line with your observations of actual game content? The timeline says that Vincent got shot approximately 23 years before FF7. It places Jenova's discovery approximately 30 years before FF7 (quote you're referring to: "Must've been about 30 years ago, when he found the corpse of an Ancient. He was elated!"). And given what we know about science in FF7, I don't think it's impossible that as soon as ShinRa dug Jenova out of the ground and decided she was an Ancient, they immediately started the human experimentation.

I like your observation about memory, though.

---

Disclaimer: I don't have the print version of the Ultimania to check, so I'm pretty much going off the sources available on this site. If it's copied wrong, then so be it, but I recall Tres edited it last December.

Some more explanation about the timeline: One thing that is important to notice is that the approximate dates (and approximate date ranges) are bracketed by exact dates -- and these are mostly accurate (except for one example*) when you work out all the math. I won't list all the examples, but if you sit down and work it out, you'll notice that it's consistent.

The first exact date prior to the Jenova mess is 1977, the birth of Azul.

The next exact date is 1980, when Gast leaves ShinRa.

That cements the start of the project (and therefore the birthdates of ASG) between 1977 and 1980. There's room to wiggle around within there, and it's certainly open to interpretation. A few points, however:

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.

2. Placing their birthdate at 1977 has the distinct advantage of not making Sephiroth 11-12 when the Wutai War starts. I know ShinRa gives fuck-all about how young their soldiers are, and I know Squeenix has a thing for young protags (hello, Zack?), but I prefer to wiggle my way up so that he's 14-15 instead if I have the room.

(2b. It also has the advantage of making him 30 by the time of FF7. And 25 at the time of the Nibelheim incident.)

3. There are some inconsistencies in the ages from different sources. Genesis is said to be ~25 by the time of CC. If you put his birth at 1980 (which I think is pushing it), then he'd be 20. 1977 has the advantage of making him 23, which is close enough to be "~25."

I guess if you want to take the "approximately" part of "approximately 23 years before FF7" seriously, you can place Vincent's shooting anywhere between 1980 and 1985. I admit I take that one as exact, because it's not a round number.

*And that's because they didn't want to make a separate event for Rufus's birthdate. If you take into account the information from Case of ShinRa, Rufus was born in 1982 (making him 25 at the beginning of FF7). This would explain the 1977-1982 date range given in the timeline (when in reality, it should probably be 1977-1980, with a separate event made under 1982 for Rufus's birth).

---

Crim's art is great -- he actually drew my favorite Genesis art -- but I would not call it a "reinterpretation" of canon. He pretty much rewrites canon to make Hojo more sympathetic as a character and ... well, mischaracterizes Vincent in the process (in my humble opinion), but YMMV.

One of my friends says back in the olden days (before FF8 came out), she knew quite a few people who were Hojo fans. Apparently there were enough for her to call them "that crowd." I dunno where they've gone though. Onto better things?

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

I listed some in my post. Did you mean age-peer?

I meant "peer" as in "person who does the same work around the same time." "Contemporary" might have been a better word? Either way, women who came 20+ years after her aren't relevant. That's a generation later. If you're a doctor in 2014, it's somewhat less remarkable than your mother having been a doctor.

Why are you jumping to the conclusion that Gillian's primary contribution to science was having the baby? That's like saying Hollander's primary contribution was fathering the baby. We don't know what else she contributed to the project. She was left to rear the baby, after all. She might have been running experiments on him and Genesis and writing up lab reports the whole time.

Because that's what we know about her. She could have single handedly discovered the cure for Geostigma but if the only thing history has her down for is "had an important baby" then that's a pretty good indication of sexism in the industry at the time that she worked.

Well, that is true, but it's because the story-line is focused on the family relationships of the parents of the project's progeny. Nobody is mentioned who isn't either a father or a mother to either a Cetra or one of the Jenova project offspring.

Which seems to support the point that if they could get away with not acknowledging lady-scientists of Lucrecia's day at all, they would have. Hell, I suspect Lucrecia's name/existence/role was completely wiped from the documents that Sephiroth read in ShinRa Manor. It sure mentioned a lot about Hojo and Gast's contributions to the project, though. But why didn't Sephiroth know that Lucrecia existed?

In other parts of the Compilation female scientists are mentioned: Dr Rayleigh, Shalua Rui, and Shera to name but three.

Again, they all existed a generation after Lucrecia and Gillian and therefore are not relevant to discussions of how women in the science industry were treated by the industry in 1980–1984 game time.

Granted, Lucrecia facing sexism in the science industry is a big part of my headcanon, but I don't think it's such a foreign and crazy idea that it should warrant so much resistance. Truth is, FF7 came out in 1997, and if a woman had been trying to make a name in science "30 years ago" real time (i.e., 1967), she would have been facing a whole mountain of sexism. (Or even "30 years ago" from now.) Why are we so reluctant to believe something that was very real in our own world is farfetched in the game world, lol? Granted they have magic spells and airships, but I haven't seen anything about FF7 suggesting it takes place in some kind of gender equality utopia.

re: Hojo fans

deviantART, dude... They're hiding on deviantART. Or at least they used to. And before that it was individual fan sites. Crimson is one, and her girlfriend(?), and EK, who used to run the Hojo fansite, is another. Not to mention most of the "FF7 House" crew. I'm sure there are more than I'm forgetting. But believe me, I've been involved in the Vincent/Lucrecia fandom long enough and actively enough to know that Hojo has more fans than Lucrecia.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Crimsonsun is a guy. But I'm pretty sure he's used to be mistaken for a girl, and even quite enjoys it.

 

[Clement Rage]

We know nothing about the Science department in Lucrecia's day, there's no reason to believe she was the only scientist, or was looked down on. She assigned a personal bodyguard from the Turks, you don't do that to a nobody, and Dirge pegs her as a 'class A scientist' who wrote a thesis so complex that nobody else in the field could understand it, a thesis that was eventually proved completely correct.

I find 'Lucy was forced' makes her look worse. Can't a woman make a reprehensible decsion without being forced into it by a man? That's actually how I interpreted this piece of dialogue in Dirge:

Vince: Are you sure?

Lucrecia: If this only concerns me, then yes, I'm sure. (Excuse me? It's not your kid, my friend, and a Turk is in no position to lecture me on morality)

Actually, I think it's probably science department policy. You want to experiment on humans? You have to do it to yourself or you children first.

Basically every scientist is primarily a parent to someone important. Hollander, Gast, Grimoire, Lucrecia, Gillian , Hojo
Absolutely nobody I know of sympathises with Hojo, his only redeeming characteristic is that he appears to genuinely love his son.

What we know isn't what history in universe knows. What we know about her is 'had an important baby', because that baby is one of the villains of the game, her name could be on lots of documents that we never see, because the game is in Zack's perspective and he's not reading scientific journals. e met her as Angeal's mom, (Angeal is one of the most important people in his life, he doesn't know anything else about her, so neither do we.)

But why didn't Sephiroth know that Lucrecia existed?

Because that would utterly ruin the JENOVA revelation. Sepiroth didn't know Hojo created him, or that he was his father. He probably saw Lucrecia's name, but didn't know she was his mother, and never knew her personally so he'd have no reason to think of her as anything but another scientist involved in the project.

Why are we so reluctant to believe something that was very real in our own world is farfetched in the game world, lol? Granted they have magic spells and airships, but I haven't seen anything about FF7 suggesting it takes place in some kind of gender equality utopia.

Farfetched? No.

Fact? No.

Have you seen anything to suggest it does not take place in some gender equal utopia? We also have no reason to assume that the gameworld has exactly the same cultural values as our world, like how everyone assumes Wutai is an oppressive patriarchy when we see Yuffie have the full support of her citizens and father in her actions, and some of the pagoda bosses are women.


I think's it's doing all those women a disservice to automatically assume they had no scientific abilities and were couldn't have earned their positions on merit.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Actually I don't think even Crim sees Hojo as a "good guy" - more a kind of tragic figure along the lines of Macbeth or Richard III. It's a very subtle interpretation of the character. I mean, obvs it's not gospel canon but it's not contradictory either.

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

Crimsonsun is a guy. But I'm pretty sure he's used to be mistaken for a girl, and even quite enjoys it.

My bad. Are you sure he didn't undergo a gender change at some point?

Have you seen anything to suggest it does not take place in some gender equal utopia?

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.

 

[jazzflower92]

We know nothing about the Science department in Lucrecia's day, there's no reason to believe she was the only scientist, or was looked down on. She assigned a personal bodyguard from the Turks, you don't do that to a nobody, and Dirge pegs her as a 'class A scientist' who wrote a thesis so complex that nobody else in the field could understand it, a thesis that was eventually proved completely correct.

I find 'Lucy was forced' makes her look worse. Can't a woman make a reprehensible decsion without being forced into it by a man? That's actually how I interpreted this piece of dialogue in Dirge:



Actually, I think it's probably science department policy. You want to experiment on humans? You have to do it to yourself or you children first.

Basically every scientist is primarily a parent to someone important. Hollander, Gast, Grimoire, Lucrecia, Gillian , Hojo
Absolutely nobody I know of sympathises with Hojo, his only redeeming characteristic is that he appears to genuinely love his son.

What we know isn't what history in universe knows. What we know about her is 'had an important baby', because that baby is one of the villains of the game, her name could be on lots of documents that we never see, because the game is in Zack's perspective and he's not reading scientific journals. e met her as Angeal's mom, (Angeal is one of the most important people in his life, he doesn't know anything else about her, so neither do we.)



Because that would utterly ruin the JENOVA revelation. Sepiroth didn't know Hojo created him, or that he was his father. He probably saw Lucrecia's name, but didn't know she was his mother, and never knew her personally so he'd have no reason to think of her as anything but another scientist involved in the project.



Farfetched? No.

Fact? No.

Have you seen anything to suggest it does not take place in some gender equal utopia? We also have no reason to assume that the gameworld has exactly the same cultural values as our world, like how everyone assumes Wutai is an oppressive patriarchy when we see Yuffie have the full support of her citizens and father in her actions, and some of the pagoda bosses are women.


I think's it's doing all those women a disservice to automatically assume they had no scientific abilities and were couldn't have earned their positions on merit.

Huh, the genuinely love his son thing has been shown to be debunked because in one of the Ultimanias it blatantly says he sees his own son a tool for research. So, that just leaves Hojo with zero redeeming aspects.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

^^Just keep in mind that the only places we're shown in-game are the places that are necessary to tell the story. The same thing goes for the NPCs; we're only introduced to the ones necessary for the story.

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

^^Just keep in mind that the only places we're shown in-game are the places that are necessary to tell the story. The same thing goes for the NPCs; we're only introduced to the ones necessary for the story.

Statistially speaking, if the random sampling of characters we've met display that sexism probably is or was some degree of a thing on Gaia, then it's a good indication that sexism probably is or was some degree of a thing on Gaia.

 

[Shademp]

some degree of a thing on Gaia, then it's a good indication that sexism probably is or was some degree of a thing on Gaia.

- What is the name of FFVII's planet?

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

- What is the name of FFVII's planet?

Since when is a thing not officially a name unless it's also a name in the Japanese version? If I want to call Sailor Moon "Serena," I'll fucking call her Serena.

In case you haven't noticed, most other non-name words are also different in the Japanese and English versions. If official English miscellany states that the Planet's name is Gaia, then Gaia is the official English name of the Planet.

 

[Shademp]

Agree to disagree. To me the miscellaneous English sources are not enough to establish English FFVII canon, because of how the name isn't ever used in the official English Compilation games/movies/novels. The example is not equal to the re-naming of Sailor Moon in the localization for this reason

Spoiler

(random trivia: In Sweden she is called "Annie")

.

 

[Skan]

Actually I don't think even Crim sees Hojo as a "good guy" - more a kind of tragic figure along the lines of Macbeth or Richard III. It's a very subtle interpretation of the character. I mean, obvs it's not gospel canon but it's not contradictory either.

Whether or not he classifies Hojo as a "good guy" is completely irrelevant. I have seen better portrayals of Hojo that don't involve rewriting an important canonical scene in two canonical sources (both OGC and DoC). I would not mind if additions were made so that the scene moves in roughly the same direction as the canonical scene, but it just ... clearly doesn't.

Additionally, Crim's Vincent does not seem to be same Vincent who says, "However, if she is happy, then I don't mind." He doesn't even seem to be the same Vincent as the one who's haunted by the fact that he stood by and did (or could do) nothing while Hojo experimented upon Lucrecia and Sephiroth. Now, I'm usually someone who can accept a lot of seemingly OOC actions and call them IC with enough context. But you can't drop a short comic on me and expect me to equate canon!Vincent with a Vincent who would sleep with Lucrecia after she married Hojo, at least not without a ton of explaining. Possible? Yes, almost anything is possible with context and enough booze. But OOC unless you explain it (IMHO).

You're free to disagree, of course. I know my opinion is an unpopular one given Crim's popularity, but Crim's headcanon falls firmly into the "contradicted by actual canonical material" for me. FWIW, I don't have as much issue with his Hojo or his Lucrecia as I do with his Vincent and his rewriting of events (wherein Hojo ultimately devolves from homicidal mad scientist to homicidal mad husband).

 

[Octo]

I find 'Lucy was forced' makes her look worse. Can't a woman make a reprehensible decsion without being forced into it by a man? That's actually how I interpreted this piece of dialogue in Dirge:

Yes of course women can make reprehensible descisions, but my problem is if SE want me to sympathise or like a character (and a huge part of the plot of DoC hangs on this - otherwise its just Vincent moping about an evil woman, who is just as evil as Hojo - maybe more if shes not actually mad - just because he fancies her? That makes Vincent somewhat unsympathetic too) then It's just not going to happen if they've made them a willing participant.

And wanting to get ahead in a male dominated environment is not an excuse - nor does it actually make sense. If she wanted to prove herself as a scientist - incubating a baby wasn't going to do it was it? If anything it would just cement her position as a set of reproductive organs and nothing more. If she hadn't done it they probably would have just kidnapped someone or bribed some impoverished woman into doing it.


Off at a tangent here......but Gast is a fucking cunt really - it was after all his project, but he seems to get a free pass for some reason? Because he is Aeris father? Because he did a 180 after he fell in love with Ifalna. Yeah fuck Gast too

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I agree, Octo. Gast is the worst of the lot. He has no qualms about human experimentation, experimenting on unborn babies, or pitting his scientists against each other; and then, when he realizes what Jenova is and what he has unleashed on the world, he just buggers off into hiding like some Nazi fleeing to Argentina. It's quite the irony that he was willing to let Sephiroth, Genesis, Angeal and many others be experimented on in the womb, and then doted so much on his own baby. I expect Aerith had a few choice words for her father once she reached the Lifestream.

 

[Clement Rage]

My bad. Are you sure he didn't undergo a gender change at some point?




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.

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)

Huh, the genuinely love his son thing has been shown to be debunked because in one of the Ultimanias it blatantly says he sees his own son a tool for research. So, that just leaves Hojo with zero redeeming aspects.

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.'

otherwise its just Vincent moping about an evil woman, who is just as evil as Hojo - maybe more if shes not actually mad - just because he fancies her? That makes Vincent somewhat unsympathetic too) then It's just not going to happen if they've made them a willing participant.

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?

 

[Octo]

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.

Yeah, thats my problem with it all, she's either callous, evil, or stupid, they really did a number on her character. What would have made the most sense was if she was manipulated by Hojo - genuinely loved Vincent - and was forced into that position to protect Vincent - eg Hojo threatened to kill/experiment on Vincent if she didn't go along with the experiment- and then the events of the OG play out - Vincent tries to intervene and rescue her and Hojo shoots him, and then Lucrecia does the thing with the protomateria to keep Vinny alive. Thats how I would have written it anyway.

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?

IIRC I don't think it's ever mentioned how he felt about the JENOVA project. edit: in the OG he doesn't seem to get that bothered when Ifalna is telling him about how terrible Jenova is, he doesn't seem to have a 'my god what have I done' moment.

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

Yes of course women can make reprehensible descisions, but my problem is if SE want me to sympathise or like a character (and a huge part of the plot of DoC hangs on this - otherwise its just Vincent moping about an evil woman, who is just as evil as Hojo - maybe more if shes not actually mad - just because he fancies her? That makes Vincent somewhat unsympathetic too) then It's just not going to happen if they've made them a willing participant.

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.)

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.

Keep excusing. Maybe if you extend your logic to our world, you can excuse away all the bad.

re: Gast

I agree. This is going to be touched upon in Redemption, also. Not answered, but brought up.

Whether or not he classifies Hojo as a "good guy" is completely irrelevant. I have seen better portrayals of Hojo that don't involve rewriting an important canonical scene in two canonical sources (both OGC and DoC). I would not mind if additions were made so that the scene moves in roughly the same direction as the canonical scene, but it just ... clearly doesn't.

Additionally, Crim's Vincent does not seem to be same Vincent who says, "However, if she is happy, then I don't mind." He doesn't even seem to be the same Vincent as the one who's haunted by the fact that he stood by and did (or could do) nothing while Hojo experimented upon Lucrecia and Sephiroth. Now, I'm usually someone who can accept a lot of seemingly OOC actions and call them IC with enough context. But you can't drop a short comic on me and expect me to equate canon!Vincent with a Vincent who would sleep with Lucrecia after she married Hojo, at least not without a ton of explaining. Possible? Yes, almost anything is possible with context and enough booze. But OOC unless you explain it (IMHO).

You're free to disagree, of course. I know my opinion is an unpopular one given Crim's popularity, but Crim's headcanon falls firmly into the "contradicted by actual canonical material" for me. FWIW, I don't have as much issue with his Hojo or his Lucrecia as I do with his Vincent and his rewriting of events (wherein Hojo ultimately devolves from homicidal mad scientist to homicidal mad husband).

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.

 

[Octo]

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?

She doesn't have to be anything, I'm a Turks fan - I liked the Turks just fine when they were actually bad guys and not the Flanderised versions of the compilation. Plenty of people will excuse the Turks, but I would rather they were doing things of their own volition than simpering lapdogs who are afraid of being killed if they don't follow orders (which makes no sense to me as they're efficient, stealthy professional killers - they would be able to dissapear and many did) I'm not adverse to rooting for the bad guys

With Lucrecia, in the OG we are told that Vincent loves her, and shes meant to be a tragic/sympathetic character, she never got to hold her baby. We feel bad for Vincent because once he sees his lost love again, they can never be together.

Then in the compilation they do away with those sympathetic aspects and it just doesn't fit - it's not consistent. But thats why the compilation is shite throughout, they obviously hadn't paid enough attention and/or decided to ignore the original game.

And yes, I've met plenty of people who have made huge mistakes and I still love them. Not met anyone who did a genetic experiment on their own baby though - as far as I am aware

I'm not saying Lucrecia is undeserving of love though, but from a player/audience perspective she is very hard to love and that in turn makes it very hard to empathise with Vincent - you're meant to care about his cause y'know?

 

[Skan]

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.

? Shademp recommended Crim's work and called it a "reinterpretation." I said I don't consider it a reinterpretation but a rewriting of canonical events. Lic responded and said she doesn't think canon contradicts it. I responded with why I think canon does contradict it.

What, am I not allowed to respond to members on this forum with my honest-to-god opinion?

 

[Shademp]

In hindsight I should have called Crim's Hojo work a "re-imagining" or a "re-write". While not everything contradicts canon, there is for example the comic that rewrites/reimagines the scene up until when Vincent gets shot by Hojo. Many parts here are clear rewrites and do not align with canon.

You will find that other art pieces take liberties with the timeline, costumes etc. To be creative in this way is a mark of Crim's work and I quite enjoy it.

I hope people won't argue too much about the semantics of which parts count as reimaginings and which parts do not contradict the canon. Let our eyes consume the art instead, mkay?

 

[Skan]

If you'd said that at the beginning, I would've said nary a word. I have absolutely no problem with reimaginings, rewritings, all the AUs out the wazoo, and even OGC!fics that ignore the rest of the Compilation (I understand this, trust me), as long as they don't masquerade as something they're not. Sorry, huge pet peeve.

And apologies to Ravynne for pre-coffee morning testiness.

Here is one of my absolute favorite FF7 artworks by Crim. (Warning: Genesis.)