Lucrecia's characterization and depiction

[ForceStealer]

lol, why can't she have simply not liked him like that

Regardless, I love talking FF7 with you guys again

 

[Roger]

I agree, I was just entertaining the possibility. I don't see how Lucrecia looks particularly bad in that scene. Either Vincent thinks he's the father, and he chooses not to make a stand here, or he genuinely doesn't have an interest in any of this. You could say that he has a general moral stance, but his job involves kidnapping people for science, so that falls a bit flat. Hojo and Lucrecia genuinely do have a much better understanding of what's involved in the experiment than he does, and it actually doesn't do Sephiroth the child any harm. (he went wrong later due to other factors)

The present day Turks only kidnapped people for SOLDIER or cause they are Ancients. There were no known Ancients in Vincents day and their generation of SOLDIERs involved less science stuff. And even if it was the likes of Reno or Tseng making the objections, a baby is a baby, and it was experiment cause they weren't sure what it would do yet. The aim was trying to implant the knowledge of how to get to the Promised Land into baby Sephiroth. That's what they wanted Ancients for. Sephiroth was ultimately unharmed but also a failure, his increased physical abilities was just an unforeseen bonus. Baby Sephiroth dodged Genesis' bullet through blind luck.

The one that saved his life, you mean? And I got the impression Hojo put Sephy well out of her reach, it is very clear that if she had the ability to go to him she would.

No, Hojo's experiments made Vincent immortal, which made him a candidate for Lucretia's experiments in the first place. The Protomateria helps stabilise him, but Hojo is the one that saved his actual life. Also the Shinra Mansion is quite small and in the Compilation they were there for several years after Sephiroth was born. She had access to the main lab, where Vincent was kept I don't see how it is physically possible for her to never see her son even once. Let alone against her will.

 

[ForceStealer]

Did Sephiroth live in the Shinra Manor? I guess I assumed he was taken back to Junon or Midgar and Hojo just popped in from time to time. Sephiroth noted feeling a connection to Nibelheim, but he didn't have a tangible memory of it.

 

[Roger]

Did Sephiroth live in the Shinra Manor? I guess I assumed he was taken back to Junon or Midgar and Hojo just popped in from time to time. Sephiroth noted feeling a connection to Nibelheim, but he didn't have a tangible memory of it.

That interpretation only places more of the blame for Vincent's experiments on Lucretia if Hojo was barely around for them while Vincent was lying on a slab in a mansion only Lucretia had access to. Vincent's aging stopped 23 years before the game, 17 years before Sephiroth dies at Nibelheim, and only one year before Gast is already off having a baby with Ifalna in Icicle Inn. Hojo specifically says that Vincent could be Lucretia's Chaos cause of what was done to him beforehand. Sephiroth wasn't 17 when he died. That bullet Hojo put in Vincent didn't take years to extract.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I don't think Gast was holding Ifalna captive or experimenting on her. His finding her was what told him he was wrong about Jenova and then he fled Shinra. He continued interviewing her for his own research, but I think they just fell in love normally. Only once Hojo came, took her and killed Gast was she being held captive.

This is one area where canon is confusing, and possibly inconsistent.

In the original game, we hear from Elder Bugah that Gast made his way through Cosmo Canyon and "was mumbling something about Jenova not being an Ancient and that he'd done a terrible thing." We're left with the impression that Gast figured it out on his own, then left Shin-Ra, then met Ifalna at Icicle Inn while running from Shin-Ra/investigating Jenova (or both).

Then we have both Gast and Ifalna's entries from the CC Complete Guide's Keyword Collection that say Gast realized Jenova wasn't an Ancient while the Jenova Project was under way, and that he and Ifalna fled Shin-Ra together.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Did Sephiroth live in the Shinra Manor? I guess I assumed he was taken back to Junon or Midgar and Hojo just popped in from time to time. Sephiroth noted feeling a connection to Nibelheim, but he didn't have a tangible memory of it.

But maybe the place felt familiar to him because his Jenova cells were responding to her presence!!!!

 

[Clement Rage]

He says he feels like he's seen the landscape before.

Do you think the game-makers were trying to convey the idea that it mattered to Hojo that Sephiroth contained his DNA? In the scene on the Sister Ray he seems to be quite proud of the fact that Sephiroth is not only his experiment, but his son.

I'm not sure. He laughs at the thought that Sephiroth always held him in contempt, without knowing who he was to him.

But the entire scheme was because. "my son is in need of power and help. That's the only reason."
I can't ever remember Hojo actually lying to anyone (could be wrong), so that could be the truth.

The present day Turks only kidnapped people for SOLDIER or cause they are Ancients.

Or if they happened to live in a town where something needed to be covered up, or if the Science department wanted them brought in for any reason (Red.)

And even if it was the likes of Reno or Tseng making the objections, a baby is a baby, and it was experiment cause they weren't sure what it would do yet. The aim was trying to implant the knowledge of how to get to the Promised Land into baby Sephiroth. That's what they wanted Ancients for. Sephiroth was ultimately unharmed but also a failure, his increased physical abilities was just an unforeseen bonus. Baby Sephiroth dodged Genesis' bullet through blind luck.

But Vincent didn't make that objection, did he? All he said was 'are you sure'. He's never really shown to care about Sephiroth, only Lucrecia.

No, Hojo's experiments made Vincent immortal, which made him a candidate for Lucretia's experiments in the first place. The Protomateria helps stabilise him, but Hojo is the one that saved his actual life. Also the Shinra Mansion is quite small and in the Compilation they were there for several years after Sephiroth was born.

Wasn't that a deliberate red herring? We get that impression early in Dirge, and then later on we get the same scene with more context, where Lucrecia responds with the emphatic if childish "YOU'RE WRONG YOU'RE WRONG YOU'RE WRONG, and we find out that she's frantically sciencing because if she can't correct things "the tissue will continue to decay".

Wasn't that, almost the point of the game? "You were the reason I survived."

If Lucrecia had access to Sephiroth, the "Let me see him! Just once!" scene makes no sense.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Maybe what Minato meant was that baby Sephiroth therefore had to be somewhere other than Nibelheim, some secret location known to Hojo but not to Lucrecia.

 

[Channy]

I've got a question, and this might be deviating too far from topic but it made me think in these last few posts: Why does Shinra Manor exist? And in Nibelheim? Does it have to do with the Reactor? There are others, albeit, not in towns, but...

Why are these scientists, Lucrecia and Hojo included, doing big time experiments in this rickety old manor in the boonies when they've got a big ol' mansion of science in the heart of Midgar?

 

[Roger]

Wasn't that a deliberate red herring? We get that impression early in Dirge, and then later on we get the same scene with more context, where Lucrecia responds with the emphatic if childish "YOU'RE WRONG YOU'RE WRONG YOU'RE WRONG, and we find out that she's frantically sciencing because if she can't correct things "the tissue will continue to decay".

Hojo tells Vincent his science is the reason he can be Chaos at the end of the game. He can be in denial about Lucretia contributions I suppose.

If "nearly" means "other then that bulletwound you were still dying off, obviously" then I say he IS a liar, and Vincent might well be the father.

If Lucrecia had access to Sephiroth, the "Let me see him! Just once!" scene makes no sense.

Those lines were preempted by her asking herself what she was doing. like I said, she had fits of sanity that drew her away from her experimenting on Vincent, but never for too long.

Maybe what Minato meant was that baby Sephiroth therefore had to be somewhere other than Nibelheim, some secret location known to Hojo but not to Lucrecia.

Vincent goes to Hojo to talk about Lucretia, then he gets shot. He does this in the lab in the Shinra Manor. That's where we are shown Hojo worked after Sephiroth was born and before he had Vincent as a private test subject. Gast barely exists in Dirge. Clearly Sephiroth was at Nibelheim, clearly Lucretia had access to both the main lab and Dirg's new rooms, where we find her recording after all. Unless Sephiroth was locked in greenhouse of the Shinra Manor for the duration of their stay there. I really do not see how Lucretia can physically be kept from even seeing him. Not without some level of cooperation from her.

And it just doesn't make sense that they stowed away Sephiroth in favor of Vincent at all.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I've got a question, and this might be deviating too far from topic but it made me think in these last few posts: Why does Shinra Manor exist? And in Nibelheim? Does it have to do with the Reactor? There are others, albeit, not in towns, but...

Why are these scientists, Lucrecia and Hojo included, doing big time experiments in this rickety old manor in the boonies when they've got a big ol' mansion of science in the heart of Midgar?

I've been pondering this a lot recently and this is what I think:

1. Nobody knows where Shinra found Jenova, but I guess it's fair to assume they either found her at the Knowlespole or somewhere near Nibelheim. I reckon they put her behind the condensation chamber in the Nibelheim reactor because it's cold there:

Sephiroth: This is a system that condenses and freezes the mako energy.

It's cold, so it would keep her tissues from deteriorating.

2. In Nibelheim they could keep her out of the way until they knew what they were working with. Plus, they could keep the project as secret as even Shinra could wish. Wasn't the Manhattan project based somewhere really remote in New Mexico?

Hojo only moved her to Midgar after Sephiroth "died". His Reunion theory predicted that the presence of Jenova would bring Sephiroth to Midgar eventually, but in fact - to his surprise - the opposite happened, and anything with live Jenova cells in it started moving towards Sephiroth.**

3. They had a convenient mansion with a limitless supply of power in which to set up a lab. I bet it doesn't take that long to set up a lab.

4. Midgar wasn't built back then when Jenova was discovered. It was under construction.

** I remembered another question I had: what woke Sephiroth up and made him active at that particular time and no other? Cloud and Zack's escape from Nibelheim? Cloud coming into such close contact with Jenova in the Shinra Building?

 

[Roger]

Grimoire Valentine was studying the Darkness stuff in the Waterfall cave, Nibelheim was the closest place to set up shop. Then after he was taken care of Lucretia moved up in the world and worked directly under Gast, who needed a place to store Jenova.

 

[Starling]

I've got a question, and this might be deviating too far from topic but it made me think in these last few posts: Why does Shinra Manor exist? And in Nibelheim? Does it have to do with the Reactor? There are others, albeit, not in towns, but...

Why are these scientists, Lucrecia and Hojo included, doing big time experiments in this rickety old manor in the boonies when they've got a big ol' mansion of science in the heart of Midgar?

Since it's the Shinra mansion, the first mako reactor was in Nibelheim and Midgar wasn't fully built yet, it could be that it was the most suitable facility for their work. Additionally, Jenova was kept in the Nibelheim reactor most of that time and it makes sense that Shinra wouldn't do all its research in the same lab.

Maybe what Minato meant was that baby Sephiroth therefore had to be somewhere other than Nibelheim, some secret location known to Hojo but not to Lucrecia.

Vincent goes to Hojo to talk about Lucretia, then he gets shot. He does this in the lab in the Shinra Manor. That's where we are shown Hojo worked after Sephiroth was born and before he had Vincent as a private test subject. Gast barely exists in Dirge. Clearly Sephiroth was at Nibelheim, clearly Lucretia had access to both the main lab and Dirg's new rooms, where we find her recording after all. Unless Sephiroth was locked in greenhouse of the Shinra Manor for the duration of their stay there. I really do not see how Lucretia can physically be kept from even seeing him. Not without some level of cooperation from her.

And it just doesn't make sense that they stowed away Sephiroth in favor of Vincent at all.

Maybe Hojo hides him in a plothole when Lucrecia tries to see him.

** I remembered another question I had: what woke Sephiroth up and made him active at that particular time and no other? Cloud and Zack's escape from Nibelheim? Cloud coming into such close contact with Jenova in the Shinra Building?

The timing gave me the impression that Sephiroth hijacking Jenova in the Shinra building had something to do with Cloud taking a peek at it on the way up. He even said it moved.


I noticed that earlier in the thread, people were saying things around the lines of Vincent having no room to talk about his concern for Lucrecia because he's a Turk and I'd like to point out that even a professional assassin is capable of raising a valid point about the morality of human experimentation and that Vincent's profession isn't relevant to the validity of the concern he expresses. Second, we shouldn't assume that the Turks were the same back then as they are during the OG, seeing as Shinra wasn't quite as overtly corrupt back then. For all we know Turks back then mostly dealt with security, making bodyguard duty and escorting important individuals rather than kidnapping and assassination. Third, I don't really see where people are getting Vincent's lack of concern for Sephiroth. In early pregnancy, concern for the mother includes concern for potential miscarriage, birth complications and causing harm to the child that could've been avoided. I'd bring up the whole Sephiroth's dad issue but I feel that should be reserved for the other thread.

More on topic, while I'm of the opinion that DoC was rather poorly executed, I liked that the flashback scenes painted the picture of a fairly realistic case of an abusive relationship between Lucrecia and Hojo, which already seemed to be the case in the OG scenes. She gets more agency than she did in the OG scenes, though I'd appreciate more and some development beyond her relationships with Vincent and Hojo if the remake decides to expand on that. I have mixed feelings on the Chaos and Omega plot but like the idea of her having a thesis and expertise that demonstrates she has the qualifications to be part of the Jenova project. Also, I make a distinction between characters and bad writing they may have been subjected to, so to me most of the hate she gets should be directed at whoever caused all the melodrama and bad writing she's stuck with. A good rewrite preserving the core elements of her role in the plot could potentially make her far more sympathetic than people tend to treat her, and it's really a shame to see so many people overlook that potential just because of poor execution.

I'd also like to point out that the experiments on Sephiroth were originally just a matter of injecting Jenova cells to make a human/cetra hybrid back when Jenova was thought to be a cetra. That's a lot like real world genetic experiments where transgenic organisms are made by introducing genes from another species. If Jenova was an actual cetra instead of a parasitic alien, things would've likely turned out alright, so it's just a matter of moral standing on the actual act of tampering with the genetics of a human being, which is one of the reasons human cloning is illegal in various countries. It seems that none of them had realized Jenova wasn't what they thought it was at that point, so it makes Lucrecia's apparent confidence that things would be alright more understandable, not to mention the emotional aspect of having recently broken things off with Vincent and gotten with Hojo, which would create a bias against Vincent's judgement and in favor of Hojo's. Whatever happened in that regard clearly upset her and Hojo took advantage of it to get what he wanted out of it, judging by what he says, the way he says it and the questionable circumstances of the breakup in the DoC scene. I don't see people hating on Gast for approving the whole thing, since he's the head scientist for the Jenova project and had a hand in the whole thing as well.

 

[ForceStealer]

So what is your point about Lucrecia and Sephiroth, Minato? Are you intending to highlight a plothole or are you saying Sephiroth was someone else or not?

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I've got a question, and this might be deviating too far from topic but it made me think in these last few posts: Why does Shinra Manor exist? And in Nibelheim? Does it have to do with the Reactor? There are others, albeit, not in towns, but...

Perhaps the Shinra family came from Nibelheim. Cloud mentions during his story in Kalm that "Long ago, people from Shinra used to live in that mansion..." -- but whether he's referring to the Jenova Project scientists or the Shinra family is unclear.

If the family came from Nibelheim, it may explain why the company chose to put the first mako reactor just outside that town.

Hojo tells Vincent his science is the reason he can be Chaos at the end of the game. He can be in denial about Lucretia contributions I suppose.

I don't think it's that so much. He doesn't take credit for implanting Chaos into his body, after all; just his experiments making Vincent's body capable of being a host for Chaos.

That -- and his original body's inability to handle what he did to himself in the original game -- are what led Hojo to conclude he needed Weiss's body to contain Omega.

I've got a question, and this might be deviating too far from topic but it made me think in these last few posts: Why does Shinra Manor exist? And in Nibelheim? Does it have to do with the Reactor? There are others, albeit, not in towns, but...

Why are these scientists, Lucrecia and Hojo included, doing big time experiments in this rickety old manor in the boonies when they've got a big ol' mansion of science in the heart of Midgar?

I've been pondering this a lot recently and this is what I think:

1. Nobody knows where Shinra found Jenova, but I guess it's fair to assume they either found her at the Knowlespole or somewhere near Nibelheim.

That has been specified, actually. Gast found her at the Northern Crater.

And apparently never mentioned all the mako since Shin-Ra had no idea where their Promised Land was.

Maybe Hojo hides him in a plothole when Lucrecia tries to see him.

I laughed out loud at this.

 

[Roger]

So what is your point about Lucrecia and Sephiroth, Minato? Are you intending to highlight a plothole or are you saying Sephiroth was someone else or not?

I don't see why it needs to be plothole. Lucretia was very busy with her experiments on Vincent at the time, just like her monologue and the dialogue between her and Hojo suggests. And if Hojo is the guy that always tell the unfiltered truth, then Vincent's survival was already ensured by his own experiments. Lucretia might have helped, but given that he barely moved for 23 years it's very hard to say.

My point is that I agree with the topic creator. Dirge isn't where you go for a likable portrayal of Lucretia.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

A good rewrite preserving the core elements of her role in the plot could potentially make her far more sympathetic than people tend to treat her, and it's really a shame to see so many people overlook that potential just because of poor execution.

You're right, of course, and if it's SE's intention to make her a sympathetic character then they need to do a better job of it. But I don't see why she has to be one. Because she's Sephiroth's mum? Because she's a woman? Hojo is completely unapologetic and he's a great character. I actually like him better for it. I'd rather Lucrecia was unapologetic than that she became yet another wishy-washy woman manipulated by an abusive man. Give me Scarlet any day!!

I don't see people hating on Gast for approving the whole thing, since he's the head scientist for the Jenova project and had a hand in the whole thing as well.

Well, quite. It's the old double standard thing. It's a problem with the fans' reaction to the characters rather than with the characters themselves.

One of the things I really hope they don't do with the remake is lose the moral ambiguity of the original. There's a percentage of fans who will always be pushing towards oversimplification: moral black and white. You see it a lot in fanfiction, where the goodness of favourites and the badness of unpopular characters is constantly exaggerated. I think it's one of the reasons why the "Sephiroth was a poor abused baby" fanon is so popular: it transforms a very popular character from evil perp to innocent victim and excuses his subsequent actions ("It wasn't his fault! It's all Hojo's fault!").

What I love about the OG is that nobody is all good or all bad. Even Rufus (who incidentally wasn't in charge when Shinra committed most of its atrocities) is acknowledged, by Barret of all people, to have his good qualities. Yuffie is an unreformed thief. Cid really is abusive towards Shera, despite being a member of the party. He's not a good man, although he makes headway with that during the course of the game. Motherly Tifa has committed mass murder.

All the characters in this game are like real life men and women, a mix of good and bad, strengths and weaknesses, struggling to cope with the greatest crisis their world has ever known. I really, really hope SE doesn't sacrifice that realism for the sake of "clarifying" which characters are problematic and which are not. They are ALL problematic (except Red XIII, maybe). And that's what makes this game so amazing.

 

[Starling]

A good rewrite preserving the core elements of her role in the plot could potentially make her far more sympathetic than people tend to treat her, and it's really a shame to see so many people overlook that potential just because of poor execution.

You're right, of course, and if it's SE's intention to make her a sympathetic character then they need to do a better job of it. But I don't see why she has to be one. Because she's Sephiroth's mum? Because she's a woman? Hojo is completely unapologetic and he's a great character. I actually like him better for it. I'd rather Lucrecia was unapologetic than that she became yet another wishy-washy woman manipulated by an abusive man. Give me Scarlet any day!!

Just because it works for Hojo and Scarlet doesn't mean it would work for Lucrecia. She's intended to be sympathetic, so a rewrite intending to preserve the OG's intent and characterization would have to stick to that and do a better job showing her as sympathetic. Personal preference and wanting to hate her wouldn't mean it's the best course of action either. By showing the abusive aspect of her relationship with Hojo for what it is, some sympathy is a given, even if people choose to ignore that aspect to focus on their moral objections to experimenting on an unborn child, which is a case of values dissonance and applies to all participants of the Jenova project, not just Lucrecia. To consider her less sympathetic than those characters based solely on that would be a double standard, as you pointed out. Depending on who you ask, it seems that Lucrecia's status as an unsympathetic character is cause by a combination of bias in favour of Vincent, Lucrecia being a woman, dislike for the melodrama and bad writing her scenes contain and people not understanding what abusive relationships entail or that she's in one. I get that people would be annoyed by the bad writing and what they see as an unacceptable lapse of reasoning from their perspective but the sympathetic perspective rarely seem to be brought up and the sheer quantity of dislike and outright hatred for her seems rather disproportionate given that reasons to sympathize with her are already present in canon and other characters complicit in the things she's hated for don't get nearly as much of it.

I don't see people hating on Gast for approving the whole thing, since he's the head scientist for the Jenova project and had a hand in the whole thing as well.

Well, quite. It's the old double standard thing. It's a problem with the fans' reaction to the characters rather than with the characters themselves.

One of the things I really hope they don't do with the remake is lose the moral ambiguity of the original. There's a percentage of fans who will always be pushing towards oversimplification: moral black and white. You see it a lot in fanfiction, where the goodness of favourites and the badness of unpopular characters is constantly exaggerated. I think it's one of the reasons why the "Sephiroth was a poor abused baby" fanon is so popular: it transforms a very popular character from evil perp to innocent victim and excuses his subsequent actions ("It wasn't his fault! It's all Hojo's fault!").

What you're describing here is some classic draco in leather pants, ron the death eater and a bit of protagonist centered morality. The thing is, Sephiroth was a decent person who got screwed over throughout his life, so pre-insanity Sephiroth is at the very least deserving of sympathy in that regard. The problem comes when people use that to excuse post-insanity Sephiroth's behaviour and actions just because outside influences made him that way. It's like when people verbally harass someone and refuse to own up to it when someone calls them out simply because they're stressed or were bullied before. That's not how culpability works. Now, the lines can get blurred somewhat in maters of following orders vs giving orders but that's a whole other discussion.

People have an innate bias towards what they sympathize with and against things they don't, which is an issue of empathy and the capacity to understand people based on similarities and differences from what you're familiar with and understand. IRL, that bias can lead to discrimination and double standards that can cause real harm to people, especially when they fail to become aware of it and take measures to address the problem they're contributing to. In fandoms and depictions of fictional characters, this takes the form of exaggerating desirable characteristics and downplaying undesirable ones, leading to unreasonable sympathy for preferred characters and lack thereof for disliked characters, which is compounded by amateur writing in the case of fanfiction. In fandoms and discussions of valid interpretations of canon, this can be seen in refusal to acknowledge observations of canon that don't conform to your interpretation simply out of disagreement, even if it's about possibility rather than fact. Due to the nature of fictional works, observations that can be made using real life comparisons to what corresponds to it.

Anything related to the thoughts and emotions of a characters will have basis in real life as people write what they know and understanding is required for empathy. As such, a fictional character's thoughts and emotions will follow a pattern present in real life, as that realism is necessary to create a relatable character that would be considered well written. Failure to satisfy standards of realism in that regard tends to be why something is considered bad characterization. An often unwritten rule of writing is that fiction tends to conform to reality until it doesn't for the purpose of the story. Then, it becomes a matter of remaining consistent with the internal logic of the setting so that such deviation makes sense within the setting of the story.

Another thing I feel factors into it is the way vitriol towards another person is so often mistaken for love that some people end up losing their grasp on acceptable and unacceptable ways to treat other people and how to differentiate abusive behaviour from genuinely caring for another person. Relationship-wise, you see it with the notion that characters who hate each other must be secretly in love, completely disregarding how unhealthy such a relationship would be.

What I love about the OG is that nobody is all good or all bad. Even Rufus (who incidentally wasn't in charge when Shinra committed most of its atrocities) is acknowledged, by Barret of all people, to have his good qualities. Yuffie is an unreformed thief. Cid really is abusive towards Shera, despite being a member of the party. He's not a good man, although he makes headway with that during the course of the game. Motherly Tifa has committed mass murder.

All the characters in this game are like real life men and women, a mix of good and bad, strengths and weaknesses, struggling to cope with the greatest crisis their world has ever known. I really, really hope SE doesn't sacrifice that realism for the sake of "clarifying" which characters are problematic and which are not. They are ALL problematic (except Red XIII, maybe). And that's what makes this game so amazing.

The thing is, the OG actually does point out some of those moral issues, such as Cait calling out Barret and Tifa for disregarding the innocent lives that died as collateral from the reactor bombings and reminding them that pro-shinra people are people too with lives and families, same as them. While the issues with Cid's verbal abuse aren't addressed as directly, he still comes to realize that he was wrong to treat her that way, apologize and cease the abusive behaviour. Yuffie has to apologize for her theft of the party's materia and doesn't seem to do it again, much as she may joke about it or borrow without asking. In ACC and DoC, Rufus appears to want to make up for all the stuff Shinra did before he was in charge of it, as well as whatever he did prior to that point. In the end, FF7 allows characters from all sides to do bad things and doesn't make excuses for it. Whether they're bad people for doing it or good in spite of it depends on who you ask and how they feel about those acts. The characters grow to learn that those things were wrong and to make amends for it, with the exception of characters who are completely unrepentant about their actions and refuse to learn or change. As such, the remake can't sacrifice the moral ambiguity since it's such an integral part of the story and characters. They don't even need to make clarifications on much as it's just a matter of carrying over what's already there and people actually seeing it for what it is.

 

[Clement Rage]

Wasn't that a deliberate red herring? We get that impression early in Dirge, and then later on we get the same scene with more context, where Lucrecia responds with the emphatic if childish "YOU'RE WRONG YOU'RE WRONG YOU'RE WRONG, and we find out that she's frantically sciencing because if she can't correct things "the tissue will continue to decay".

Hojo tells Vincent his science is the reason he can be Chaos at the end of the game. He can be in denial about Lucretia contributions I suppose.

If "nearly" means "other then that bulletwound you were still dying off, obviously" then I say he IS a liar, and Vincent might well be the father.

I know about that. But most of the (non-SOLDIER) ways people are made more resilient in the world of FF7 come with some horrible side effect, like losing your mind, randomly sprouting a wing, degradation, being super dependent on Mako like Deepground, or having Genesis face imprinted on you and being suborned to his will. It could have made him physically tougher, but still have something like that. I presume Lucrecia isn't talking about tissue decay for no reason.

If Lucrecia had access to Sephiroth, the "Let me see him! Just once!" scene makes no sense.

Those lines were preempted by her asking herself what she was doing. like I said, she had fits of sanity that drew her away from her experimenting on Vincent, but never for too long.

Maybe what Minato meant was that baby Sephiroth therefore had to be somewhere other than Nibelheim, some secret location known to Hojo but not to Lucrecia.

Vincent goes to Hojo to talk about Lucretia, then he gets shot. He does this in the lab in the Shinra Manor. That's where we are shown Hojo worked after Sephiroth was born and before he had Vincent as a private test subject. Gast barely exists in Dirge. Clearly Sephiroth was at Nibelheim, clearly Lucretia had access to both the main lab and Dirg's new rooms, where we find her recording after all. Unless Sephiroth was locked in greenhouse of the Shinra Manor for the duration of their stay there. I really do not see how Lucretia can physically be kept from even seeing him. Not without some level of cooperation from her.

Why can't Hojo lock a door somewhere else in the manor?

Vincent having no room to talk about his concern for Lucrecia because he's a Turk and I'd like to point out that even a professional assassin is capable of raising a valid point about the morality of human experimentation and that Vincent's profession isn't relevant to the validity of the concern he expresses. Second, we shouldn't assume that the Turks were the same back then as they are during the OG, seeing as Shinra wasn't quite as overtly corrupt back then. For all we know Turks back then mostly dealt with security, making bodyguard duty and escorting important individuals rather than kidnapping and assassination.

We don't know what they do in that era, so you can't assume that they don't do anything like that either. We just don't know. And if Vincent's day job includes kidnapping other random people for human experiments (we can't rule it in, but we can't rule it out), his stance on this specific experiment just because his one true love is involved becomes extremely hypocritical. It's just one interpretation of many, but it's not an impossible one.

hird, I don't really see where people are getting Vincent's lack of concern for Sephiroth. In early pregnancy, concern for the mother includes concern for potential miscarriage, birth complications and causing harm to the child that could've been avoided.

Well, he never mentions him at all, and 'if this only concerns me' is a perfect chance to argue for his welfare. I took Vincent's lack of argument as an admission that his concern was for Lucrecia alone.

I don't see people hating on Gast for approving the whole thing, since he's the head scientist for the Jenova project and had a hand in the whole thing as well.

That would be because we know almost nothing about him and what he did about the project, so there's no direct evidence to argue with. People don't argue about how evil Gellert Grindelwald is due to the atrocities he committed, because we see none of them and know nothing about them.

ot to mention the emotional aspect of having recently broken things off with Vincent and gotten with Hojo, which would create a bias against Vincent's judgement and in favor of Hojo's.

How recent? Some assumptions there.

Perhaps the Shinra family came from Nibelheim.

I find that a bit unlikely, because then there'd be tourists to come and see Shinra's humble beginnings and such, it wouldn't be the place for secret shady research.

Even Rufus (who incidentally wasn't in charge when Shinra committed most of its atrocities) is acknowledged

He did commit some of his own, though.

Dirge brought Lucrecia from a character that registered with me about as much as Priscilla to a character I actually liked. And that didn't hinge on whether she was in an abusive relationship or not.

 

[Starling]

In the future, you might want to be clearer about who's post you're quoting, as it's not immediately obvious who and which post you're quoting past the ones labelled as Minato's.

We don't know what they do in that era, so you can't assume that they don't do anything like that either. We just don't know. And if Vincent's day job includes kidnapping other random people for human experiments (we can't rule it in, but we can't rule it out), his stance on this specific experiment just because his one true love is involved becomes extremely hypocritical. It's just one interpretation of many, but it's not an impossible one.

I'm pretty sure I already addressed this. In the event that Vincent did regularly kidnap people for experiments, no matter how hypocritical you might find it, it has no bearing on the validity of the point he's making. Like you said though, the lack of certainty means you can't be certain if your interpretation of Vincent as a hypocrite actually applies to canon, as it's only one of multiple possibilities.

Well, he never mentions him at all, and 'if this only concerns me' is a perfect chance to argue for his welfare. I took Vincent's lack of argument as an admission that his concern was for Lucrecia alone.

My interpretation of what Lucrecia meant in that scene was around the lines of "Yes, I'm certain. I know what I'm doing, the experiment shouldn't cause any harm and I'm capable of making my own decisions." In that scene, she seems like she thought Vincent was questioning her understanding of the experiment and ability to make decisions for herself, not to mention wanting some space between them after the falling out they had. Trust was likely an issue as well, given that she thought he'd been snooping around in her lab. Again, father or not, Vincent wouldn't really be given any say in the matter, so there wasn't much more he could do after his concerns were brushed aside. That and as was said earlier, he actually did bring up the issue of Lucrecia experimenting on her own child when he was asking if she was sure she wanted to go through with it. There isn't really much else you can say about concern for an unborn child that probably isn't even past first term.

That would be because we know almost nothing about him and what he did about the project, so there's no direct evidence to argue with. People don't argue about how evil Gellert Grindelwald is due to the atrocities he committed, because we see none of them and know nothing about them.

In the OG, Vincent mentions Gast was involved in the experiment that led to Sephiroth, people just assume Lucrecia went with it out of ambition despite no indication of such in canon, no one does that to Gast despite the possibility and his guilt over the matter is treated with more sympathy than Lucrecia's. If open possibilities are fair game with her and Vincent, then why doesn't Gast get any of that instead of assuming he was devoid of flaws? Do you not see a double standard here?

How recent? Some assumptions there.

Recent enough to matter. Rebound applies for multiple years, which pretty much encompasses the entire window of possible duration for the Jenova project. It didn't exactly span a decade, you know so no, that observation isn't just an assumption. On top of that, it's observable in how they interact, with Lucrecia wanting space between herself and Vincent and the scene with their falling out always preceding her pregnancy and decision to be injected with Jenova cells within the chronological ordering as opposed to events being placed between them.

Perhaps the Shinra family came from Nibelheim.

I find that a bit unlikely, because then there'd be tourists to come and see Shinra's humble beginnings and such, it wouldn't be the place for secret shady research.

Not necessarily. It'd have to be publicly known, Nibelheim would have to be a sufficiently well known and desirable place to visit, people would have to both know that Shinra came from there and care enough to make it worth visiting despite being a small town in the middle of nowhere, people would have to be willing to risk all the monsters (including dragons) that live in the surrounding area and Nibelheim would have to be equipped to deal with all the tourists. It's not really a given that Shinra coming from Nibelheim would require people to give a damn and visit the place.

Even Rufus (who incidentally wasn't in charge when Shinra committed most of its atrocities) is acknowledged

He did commit some of his own, though.

I wasn't claiming he didn't do anything wrong himself. His and his father's actions generally get filed under all the things Shinra screwed up and needs to own up to, which is what he seems to be working on post-OG. My point was that even he learned from his and his father's mistakes and is at least trying to fix some of it.

Dirge brought Lucrecia from a character that registered with me about as much as Priscilla to a character I actually liked. And that didn't hinge on whether she was in an abusive relationship or not.

Just because it's not like that for you doesn't mean it's isn't for others. It's inevitable that some people simply don't care about certain characters no matter how interesting they may be. It's like how some people will never be fans of a show no matter how good it could be or how well it fits their interests. That doesn't mean that the character is objectively uninteresting, just that the specific person who thinks that can't find it in themselves to care about the character the way others do. Sometimes people change their minds about that once they see a way in which a character can be more sympathetic than they once thought and such.

 

[Roger]

I know about that. But most of the (non-SOLDIER) ways people are made more resilient in the world of FF7 come with some horrible side effect, like losing your mind, randomly sprouting a wing, degradation, being super dependent on Mako like Deepground, or having Genesis face imprinted on you and being suborned to his will. It could have made him physically tougher, but still have something like that. I presume Lucrecia isn't talking about tissue decay for no reason.

Sure, but we are talking about saving his life. Not made him normal or functional again. And anyway, Lucretia didn't make him even close to normal and since he spent the next 23 years sleeping he didn't neccesarily come away from it functional either.

Why can't Hojo lock a door somewhere else in the manor?

Because Hojo is the head scientist and not one to bullied around. He's not scurry away to hide his experiments in a little locked room for years while Lucretia roams the big labs and corridors working on her thesis.

 

[Clement Rage]

Lucrecia had to sneak into the lab to work on him that time
"I thought I heard a rat down here", she was only left alone because Hojo misinterpreted what she was trying to do and found it funny.

The experiments didn't make him seal himself away, he's fine about the monsters until he loses the Protomateria. It's guilt re Lucrecia that makes him stay in the coffin. Genesis had a very resilient body, but he was also slowly rotting alive and would eventually have died. An indestructable body with faults isn't necessarily incompatible, like how the imperfect Titan formula in Arkham Asylum made its subjects very physically tough but also prone to cardiac arrest. There are several other examples of that in FF7 and the compilation, where an enhancement makes you physically tough but vulnerable to something else.

Re: Starling

I'm pretty sure I already addressed this. In the event that Vincent did regularly kidnap people for experiments, no matter how hypocritical you might find it, it has no bearing on the validity of the point he's making. Like you said though, the lack of certainty means you can't be certain if your interpretation of Vincent as a hypocrite actually applies to canon, as it's only one of multiple possibilities.

Everyone in this thread is making the same kind of assumptions, though, putting their own interpretations on scenes that may or may not mean something different based on context we don't have. Hojo may have been an abusive partner, or he may not have, we don't have complete information on their relationship so we can't state it as a fact. Vincent may have been overly obsessive for all we know, there's evidence to support that too.

He's certainly not the most hinged person later on, was he more restrained early on? We do not know. You counter my assumptions that the old Turks had similarities with the modern incarnation with assumptions that they were not. I brought that up to counter the idea that that scene necessarily makes Lucrecia significantly less sympathetic. We do not know the context. Maybe she had a real genuine connection with Hojo until the fate of the project got between them. Maybe Hojo had a start of darkness somewhere we didn't see.

With so little information available, what it comes down to largely is preference. Hojo as an abuser is a presumption you are bringing in because it allows you to arrive at the characterisation you want. Other people are making different presumptions to fit their preferred interpretation.

In the OG, Vincent mentions Gast was involved in the experiment that led to Sephiroth, people just assume Lucrecia went with it out of ambition despite no indication of such in canon, no one does that to Gast despite the possibility and his guilt over the matter is treated with more sympathy than Lucrecia's. If open possibilities are fair game with her and Vincent, then why doesn't Gast get any of that instead of assuming he was devoid of flaws?

Gast does in fact get some questions as to his morals, as has been discussed quite recently on these forums. But he's a much more minor character, you can play all of Dirge and not know he ever existed, and we find few indications of what he's done and how he's done it. So there's less talk about him because there isn't as much information on what he does, we get no flashbacks of him in a lab, we get little or no information about what he directly did, so there's nothing to argue with. Beatrix got away with participation in genocide, so it's not just the men that are easily forgiven. The Turks have huge fanbases, despite including mass murderers and always putting their own interests ahead of anything and everything else.

OG Lucrecia can be interpreted pretty much any way you want to, her history is given in a series of short, mostly silent flashbacks.

His and his father's actions generally get filed under all the things Shinra screwed up and needs to own up to, which is what he seems to be working on post-OG. My point was that even he learned from his and his father's mistakes and is at least trying to fix some of it

Debateable. Everything he does post game doesn't take much squinting to interpret as a play for power.

I think some of the pushback against the interpretation of Hojo as an abuser is because it's a very commonly used trope to try to justify someone's actions due to being a victim. It's done a lot because it is easy for an audience to sympathise with, but it can also often be seen as cheap drama because of that (obviously, this applies only in fictional cases). Good writing can make Lucrecia sympathetic without the need for something likely to be dismissed as a cheap trope. Is it a possibility? Yes. Is it necessary?. No. And if you play with something like that, it is very important that it is done well. Given the amount of time likely to be devoted to Lucrecia in the remake, is it likely that the issue will be properly dealt with?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

This discussion is clarifying a lot of meta stuff for me regarding talking about characters. It seems that when we talk about fictional characters -i.e. the creation of a human imagination - whether from this game or anywhere, there are many different things we could potentially be talking about:


a) The character the author intended to convey.
b) Whether we think the author did a good job of conveying the character they intended to convey – is the character a “good character” in this sense
c) Possible interpretations of that character, both those which can be accommodated within what we canonically know of them, and those which break canon
d) Is the character a “good” character in the sense of contributing effectively to the story, or are they ineffective, counter-productive or surplus to requirements?
e) Is the character a “good” character in the sense of being someone we’d like to know IRL

It can sometimes be impossible to separate a) from c), possibly due to a failure of b), but also due to confirmation bias and the other things Starling mentions.

As Starling pointed out, we all tend to interpret a character in a way that makes sense in the context of our own life experiences.

Aw damn, I went off to look up deconstructionism and forgot the rest of what I was going to say.

Of course people will want confirmation of their biases in the remake, but I hope SE doesn't give it to them/us, is all.

 

[Octo]

d) I don't think Lucrecia actually contributes anything to the story. Sephiroth never gives a solitary shit about her, nor does Hojo, all she is is backstory for Vincent - who was originally an optional character (and Hojo I suppose) Ultimately it doesn't matter who Sephiroths human mother was.

I doubt they'll do away with her entirely though.

 

[Starling]

Re: Starling

I'm pretty sure I already addressed this. In the event that Vincent did regularly kidnap people for experiments, no matter how hypocritical you might find it, it has no bearing on the validity of the point he's making. Like you said though, the lack of certainty means you can't be certain if your interpretation of Vincent as a hypocrite actually applies to canon, as it's only one of multiple possibilities.

Everyone in this thread is making the same kind of assumptions, though, putting their own interpretations on scenes that may or may not mean something different based on context we don't have. Hojo may have been an abusive partner, or he may not have, we don't have complete information on their relationship so we can't state it as a fact. Vincent may have been overly obsessive for all we know, there's evidence to support that too.

Actually, what's canonically shown of Lucrecia and Hojo's relationship is sufficient to qualify it as unambiguously abusive. The constant mocking and verbal abuse when she's trying to revive Vincent, preventing her from going anywhere near Sephiroth, shooting Vincent for having a problem with the way the experiment was affecting her, that's abusive behaviour. It's literally stuff defined as abusive when consulting resources on abusive relationships, which can be seen among the sources I linked.

He's certainly not the most hinged person later on, was he more restrained early on? We do not know. You counter my assumptions that the old Turks had similarities with the modern incarnation with assumptions that they were not. I brought that up to counter the idea that that scene necessarily makes Lucrecia significantly less sympathetic. We do not know the context. Maybe she had a real genuine connection with Hojo until the fate of the project got between them. Maybe Hojo had a start of darkness somewhere we didn't see.

I was pointing out that the assumption that Hojo's craziness, lack of morals and how much of a danger he posed to everyone around him was blatantly obvious the way it is in the OG is based on things that hadn't happened yet back then, which is what people keep citing when expressing dislike for Lucrecia. I also pointed out that the disproportionate amount of dislike directed at Lucrecia about it compared to how people treat Vincent and Gast in that regard suggest a double standard, seeing as all three of them failed to notice the danger before it was too late. That all three of them did that is tangible evidence that Hojo wasn't as obvious as he is later on, along with all the stuff Hojo did going from then onward. I'm not pulling this out of nowhere, nor am I denying the lack of certainty.

Regarding the Turks, I pointed out the lack of certainty in what the Turks were like in the past due to lack of information beyond Vincent being assigned as a bodyguard, then gave an example of what Turk duties could be at the time without claiming said example as fact. My main point there was dealing with the assumption that Vincent had no room to talk when expressing concern and that even the least flattering interpretation has no bearing on the validity of said concern. I'd like to add that this doesn't mean Hojo and Lucrecia would think that, especially given that they ended up rebuffing him. It just doesn't mean they were right in doing so, as tends to happen in real life discussions.

With so little information available, what it comes down to largely is preference. Hojo as an abuser is a presumption you are bringing in because it allows you to arrive at the characterisation you want. Other people are making different presumptions to fit their preferred interpretation.

No, Hojo as an abuser is something I bring up because canon has actually shown us abusive behaviour, yet few people ever seem to talk about that aspect of the relationship.

In the OG, Vincent mentions Gast was involved in the experiment that led to Sephiroth, people just assume Lucrecia went with it out of ambition despite no indication of such in canon, no one does that to Gast despite the possibility and his guilt over the matter is treated with more sympathy than Lucrecia's. If open possibilities are fair game with her and Vincent, then why doesn't Gast get any of that instead of assuming he was devoid of flaws?

Gast does in fact get some questions as to his morals, as has been discussed quite recently on these forums. But he's a much more minor character, you can play all of Dirge and not know he ever existed, and we find few indications of what he's done and how he's done it. So there's less talk about him because there isn't as much information on what he does, we get no flashbacks of him in a lab, we get little or no information about what he directly did, so there's nothing to argue with. Beatrix got away with participation in genocide, so it's not just the men that are easily forgiven. The Turks have huge fanbases, despite including mass murderers and always putting their own interests ahead of anything and everything else.

OG Lucrecia can be interpreted pretty much any way you want to, her history is given in a series of short, mostly silent flashbacks.

OG Lucrecia expresses regrets same as Gast, we know for a fact that Gast approved the experiment and yet Gast still gets more sympathy than Lucrecia about it. That a female character in another game got away with something doesn't mean there isn't a double standard between how characters in the same game and involved in the same thing are treated based on that. It doesn't even need to be about sexism, though it's been proven that people can have an unconscious bias in that regard. The point is that Lucrecia is blamed more and treated as less sympathetic that other characters involved in the same things people take issue with her about, regardless of why that is.

His and his father's actions generally get filed under all the things Shinra screwed up and needs to own up to, which is what he seems to be working on post-OG. My point was that even he learned from his and his father's mistakes and is at least trying to fix some of it

Debateable. Everything he does post game doesn't take much squinting to interpret as a play for power.

I'm not entirely sure about the extent of his reform either but he's definitely learned something and assisted in fixing things he's directly or indirectly responsible for, so he's at least trying.

I think some of the pushback against the interpretation of Hojo as an abuser is because it's a very commonly used trope to try to justify someone's actions due to being a victim. It's done a lot because it is easy for an audience to sympathise with, but it can also often be seen as cheap drama because of that (obviously, this applies only in fictional cases). Good writing can make Lucrecia sympathetic without the need for something likely to be dismissed as a cheap trope. Is it a possibility? Yes. Is it necessary?. No. And if you play with something like that, it is very important that it is done well. Given the amount of time likely to be devoted to Lucrecia in the remake, is it likely that the issue will be properly dealt with?

There are plenty of characters who were wronged by someone and end up doing wrong in turn. Most bullies were once victims of bullying. Acknowledging that doesn't forbid you from taking issue with anything they did, it just means you recognize that it happened, that it was wrong, how it affected them and hopefully have some sympathy about it. Understanding that Lucrecia was abused and how that affected her doesn't mean you have to like how she dealt with it or that she was involved in human experimentation, it just means you understand her circumstances and how she was affected by it.

How often such a thing happens doesn't have any bearing on whether or not it happened either. People still look at abusive or generally unhealthy relationships and gloss over that element without a second thought. People may see unhealthy behaviour and think of it as just relationship troubles they'll get over after some make up sex or see abuse and don't realize or acknowledge that's what it is. Harley and Joker would be a well known example of an abusive relationship, yet some people still don't see the abuse just because they take it for granted that bad guys are bad. There's very much still a problem in how people treat abusive and unhealthy relationships, especially in regards to treating depictions of it as cheap or like it somehow tarnishes a story/character to have it present.