Just to ask, you think that Jenova is always manipulating the back of someone's mind (subconscious) and that they can't do anything about it? I'm not quite sure.
No, I think it's obvious that Jenova does both. The point is that your strength of will, in terms of real world psychology, is only relevant to explicit and overt, and since a large part of Jenova's manipulation also happens sub-consciously and indeed Cloud essentially heading to the Reunion was entirely done sub-consciously, and Jenova even sub-consciously making ex-soldiers don black robes makes it a case of special pleading when you then state that their strength of will supposedly stopped them from joining the reunion.
After all, it's not like Cloud was overtly forced, against his will, to walk all the way up to the North crater.
Sure he was forced to raise his blade to Aerith and to hand over the black materia, but him walking all the way to the renuion happened without him knowing he was even being manipulated, and what I am saying is that the excuse that the Junon shop-keeper didn't do the same is because of his "strength of will" doesn't cut it in that context.
Even if it's a subconscious level that she's affecting people on, a high strength of will could be reflected subconsciously as well to deflect that, I would think.
That's not how real psychology work.
Take the example of the demonstration technique for negative psychological suggestion -
I tell you not to think of black cat, and you will immediately do so to one degree or another. Your "strength of will" never comes into the picture.
The human psyche can be manipulated in many ways, and most of your psyche you have no conscious control of what so ever.
In either case though - it's not a real point to keep harping on about. I've already clarified that I consider it a relative non-issue because I don't expect a fantasy writer for a game to have extensive knowledge of human psychology and neuroscience.
Sephiroth said he was just like the makonoids because they were monsters. And he had determined that he was also a monster. That's what he says. What would Jenova have to do with it?
Don't get me wrong. I was not making an argument with the question, I just couldn't remember the scene exactly and was hoping someone could give me the exact context for it in the thread so I wouldn't have to waste time looking it up =P
Because Hojo's crazy, and not a very good scientist? Do I need to provide evidence for this? What is your question?
Except the times when he isn't. This is another argument that people like to apply all willy nilly. Clearly Hojo is sane enough to successfully complete certain experiments, and to think rationally most of the time.
Hojo was without scruples certainly - a completely deranged person doing random experiments without clear rationales on the other hand?
Yes, I'd need some sort of argument to support that view.
My question is which should be apparent if you can read -
Why would Hojo make a project injecting Zack with cells Zack was already supposed to have been injected with?
Cloud makes sense to a certain extent, because he would not have been exposed to Jenova cells (but why Hojo would use Sephiroth cells when he had Jenova cells at his disposal to create "Sephiroth clones" to prove a theory relating to the biological properties of Jenova is beyond me, but I guess we'll have to write that down to "Hojo's madness too, and not the writers lack of comprehension of basic biology and consistent writing)
I'm afraid I've rather lost the point of what you're trying to establish here. You say either SOLDIER receiving Jenova cells would be common knowledge and so Sephiroth's break down wouldn't make sense, or it is not common knowledge and Cloud somehow discovered it. It's obviously the latter, even if it is a plot hole in the sense that we were not shown how Cloud learned it.
I just established that there's a plot-hole, and that plot-hole being Cloud's magically knowing something he was never shown to have been privy to.
I'm not sure what this stuff has to do with it:
That stuff has nothing to do with that point. It's a separate issue altogether which would be patently obvious if you followed the entire exchange.
Okay. Yeah, the fact that Cloud nearly kills Aerith, and that he repeatedly hands over the Black Materia is evidence of why he was rejected from SOLDIER, his weak will/sense of self. That could still absolutely affect how susceptible you are to subconscious suggestion as well. The shop owner received the same suggestion, presumably, to travel to the Northern Crater, but he clearly had a firm enough grasp on his life and purpose that he didn't. But the more subtle cloak thing was a suggestion he responded to as it wasn't directly counter to anything else he wanted to accomplish.
And my point is that this is not how psychology works, which is why it's flimsy writing. I was simply pointing that out.
Well I don't know what a "regular" plot hole is, but I would wager that this one ("how did Cloud learn of SOLDIERs receiving Jenova cells?") is probably pretty low on the totem pole.
All plot holes are plot holes. I don't rank them on a scale of how much they break a plot alone, but on how often they occur. It becomes more and more obvious the more you look at FFVII's plot, that it's riddled with them like a Swiss Cheese is with regular holes.
It's something that I've pointed out before, which a lot of people here took issue with at the time.
So, what, you want just want a 'yes' or a 'no'? Why, are you writing a book on plot holes? Are you keeping score somewhere? You are likely going to run into plot holes in all kinds of works no matter how good the writing is. Especially when you apparently define it as "absolutely anything that was not 100% spelled out, no matter how inconsequential."
What's it to you? How is my motivation in any way relevant? I asked a question, and I expect, like most ordinary people, that people who address that question will address it with the intent of answering what is being asked - not by providing an answer to something that was never asked, which would be irrelevant.
Why answer at all if you don't intent to answer what is being asked?
And no, I'm not just being defensive of FF7's writing, I just don't understand your goal here.
My question does not require you to understand my reason for asking it. It merely requires someone answer it.
To clarify though - I am asking it simply because I wanted an accurate sense of what is explicitly stated throughout the plot of FFVII, so that my apprehension of it as it's written isn't based on assumption founded on what people have projected into the subject matter due to having filled in blanks based on their own particular sensibilities.
The fact of the matter is that if I asked you what happened here with Cloud suddenly knowing this information he's not supposed to know, and you answer "Well, he obviously picked it up in the tank during the experiments" you are not actually truthfully answering the question, because that never actually happened.
It's an assumption, good or bad, and I am not interested in that.
As I said, all I want to know is the factual series of events that are explicit to FFVII's narrative so I know exactly what has been said, and what hasn't.
But we don't want rationalizations, remember
Take your sarcastic condescension somewhere else Force - it is not called for in any way shape or form.
I am not talking on behalf of of anyone, and you are all free to speculate about how to head-canon away plot-hole to your heart's content.
However, is it really so unreasonable to expect you to do that with someone who actually cares about that amongst yourself, and not me while replying to a specific question only I asked?
You really think that's a productive way to have an exchange?
Cloud mentions the Jenova cells being used in SOLDIER members after being in the Lifestream, right?
Is it too much of a stretch to believe that he could've gotten that knowledge from the Lifestream after being inside of it and surviving? Just curious.
I think that's a bigger stretch than overhearing Hojo during the experiments.
Lifestream information is vast. That Cloud would just happen to stumble across pertinent information like that, be able to separate it from the mountains of other information, and make sense of it on top of it beggars belief to my mind.
Anyways, I think this conversation has overstayed its welcome.
It's been established that Cloud wasn't the only remaining person in the world with Jenova cells, and that's that.
I still found that direction in the writing less satisfactory than had Soldiers simply been people showered in Mako, and Cloud/Sephiroth/Zack/the other black robed experiments from that specific period in time being the only exceptions with the Jenova cells (seeing as that one wouldn't entail the plot-holes that follow from having Jenova cell processed Soldiers), but it is what it is though.
If Soldier predates Sephiroth, and Sephiroth was the first human experiment involving Jenova cells, all Soldiers predating Sephiroth would be non-Jenova soldiers.
If all Soldiers follow the creation of Sephiroth, then it would follow that all of them could be Jenova cell processed but that would mean that Soldier only began existing with Sephiroth and the Wutai war, which if I remember correctly, creates issues with the compilation time-line.
If they'd just said that all Soldiers were Mako processed, only Sephiroth and his clones were Jenova cell processed, the problems would all disappear.
That's why it would be a better option for the flow of the story to my mind, but alas, it isn't so I couldn't have rewritten AC based on that perception of the plot, which, as Force so was keen to know, was my initial motivation for asking the question ;
To ascertain what basic premises my rewrite of AC would have had to be based on to be consistent with the original.
This has now been ascertained, end of story.
). With the short timespan we have been given, every day added to the count feels like a victory.
