Regarding The Lifestream And Afterlife

[LicoriceAllsorts]

FWIW, it seems to me that the basic idea was meant to be that no one's consciousness survived death. An individual's spirit energy, the thing that animated them, returned to the Lifestream and their body... dissolved? Or decayed in the usual manner? So after the individual dies, all that is left of them is their effect of their actions on the world and people's memories of them. Zack and Angeal's post-mortem appearances in ACC and Crisis Core could be dismissed as near-death hallucinations on the parts of Cloud and Zack respectively, but Aerith is clearly still acting on the planet after her death and canonically she is IN the Lifestream. That leaves it open to believe whatever one wants. It all depends on whether one thinks she's a unique exception or not.

Maybe human beings (and Nanaki's species too) have souls as well as spirit energy, and enjoy an afterlife somewhere off-planet or on another plane of existence that transects with the plane of the living. In His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman's characters had bodies, and souls (their daemons), and also consciousnesses which survived death but were imprisoned in some sort of dreary underworld afterlife.

 

[Kieron_ODuibhir]

Well, also remember that the 'Ancient's memories' are a resource Aerith and (according to him) Sephiroth can access to get guidance. Cloud can access it (via the glowy pools in the seashell-city) but he can't process it; Aerith runs all over the place in the Temple working on channeling such old ghost-voices to get useful information out of them.

And there's that cute little bouncing pointy-hat ghost in the Temple who's probably been dead a good two thousand years but can still magically heal you and sell you stuff, so...I really doubt ghosts are an affront to the spiritual energy cycle.

I suspect you can split the difference--most of a dead person's energy goes back into the cycle pretty quickly and becomes a plant or whatever, but their consciousness lingers indefinitely to varying degrees depending on determination and self-knowledge and probably magical power levels or something. Angeal needed to hold together long enough to watch over Zack. Zack needs to support Cloud. Aerith is the strongest Cetra ghost, so she needs to protect the world from the Lifestream as much as she can, which is apparently a lot considering the deus ex machina super-Esuna rain/fountain she created. Aerith OP.

Also note that when Aerith told Elmyra about her husband's death Elmyra asked something along the lines of 'do you mean going to become a star in the sky...?' So however the Lifestream actually works, it's not the standard eschatology in-setting.

 

[hleV]

when it comes to interacting with mako, a strong will is necessary otherwise all the other minds in the Lifestream erode a person's sense of self. This is part of what happens to Cloud in the years he's with Hojo and a major part of the reason he didn't make it into SOLDIER in the first place. And that's when a person is in their body... it's probably worse in the Lifestrem itself.

Is it confirmed that it's Mako and not some Jenova cells effect (or hell, the combination of Mako and J cells?) that need to be resisted in order to be accepted to SOLDIER?

 

[demonwolf]

It's just mako infusion to be in SOLDIER I think. Anyone who has Jenova cells would be subjected to Hojo's reunion theory.

I just realized that by the assumption of strong will being needed to be in SOLDIER, Sephiroth is unfit to be in the program. His psyche broke just from realizing what he knew about himself was a lie. Same way Cloud broke from learning his memories were Zack's instead.

 

[hleV]

I suppose that makes sense, you can shower one in Mako and pull them out if it goes bad, but if you inject them with J cells, how do you extract them xD They'd just become another Sephiroth flunky.

Makes me wonder just how much and what kind of separate effects Mako and J cells have on SOLDIERs. Does their strength come from one or another or both? Wish it was specified somewhere.

Probably not worth its own thread as there's little information about it.

 

[Roger]

Regular SOLDIERs did get injected with Jenova cells after Shin-Ra witnessed the success in the field of physical enhancements Sephiroth was. That's why the Reunion Theory experiment didn't really mean any change for Zack, already overcame the full treatment and why eventually the ex-SOLDIER in Junon start wearing a black cape, feels the call of Sephiroth. And Sephiroth's psyche didn't break, he reconstituted himself and decided these revelations meant he was the Chosen One and he ought to rule the planet. And he found out about Jenova not being an Ancient at all he took that in his stride too, and decided that he and Jenova ought to be like Gods. He's hardly what you can consider well but he has a powerful sense of self.
He's not really capable of the kind of self-loathing that Cloud is, leading him to construct a false persona based on Zack.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

The difference between Sephiroth and the regular SOLDIERs is the different between having measles DNA inserted into your DNA while you're still a bunch of cells dividing ina petrie dish, and getting a measles vaccination. That might be a bad analogy because I don't know if the measles virus is a dead virus when injected.

 

[Tashasaurous]

Not to mention that Lucrecia had Jenova Cells placed inside her as well as the womb Sephiroth was in during the former's pregnecy, so Sephiroth already had Jenova cells inside him because he was born with it, making him a Hybrid.

Everyone else just had Jenova Cells injected into them long after they were born.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

But just having foreign DNA sloshing around in your womb won't put any of that DNA into the baby. I mean if it were that simple, gene therapy would be a cinch. The DNA has to be put inside the baby's cells when it's still a blastocyte or whatever they're called - when it's still only four or eight cells big and you can splice the DNA into every cell. Injecting Lucrecia with Jenova DNA before she conceives Sephiroth won't give him Jenova DNA either, since all her eggs were fully formed before she was even born.

Lex will correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure the ONLY way to genetically modify a human baby is to do it in a petrie dish.

 

[Ryuman]

Lex will correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure the ONLY way to genetically modify a human baby is to do it in a petrie dish.

Meh, Hojo would find a way. Dude thought he could breed a fire dog and a Cetra.

More seriously, I could believe that Jenova‘s alien cells might have deliberately merged with Sephiroth‘s foetus. Sounds pretty Sci-fi.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Welll.... Jenova has that whole copying thing in CC where she can stick parts of herself into something else's DNA... it could just as easily not be anything Hojo did...

 

[ChipNoir]

But just having foreign DNA sloshing around in your womb won't put any of that DNA into the baby. I mean if it were that simple, gene therapy would be a cinch. The DNA has to be put inside the baby's cells when it's still a blastocyte or whatever they're called - when it's still only four or eight cells big and you can splice the DNA into every cell. Injecting Lucrecia with Jenova DNA before she conceives Sephiroth won't give him Jenova DNA either, since all her eggs were fully formed before she was even born.

Lex will correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure the ONLY way to genetically modify a human baby is to do it in a petrie dish.

Problem is JENOVA is active on a celular level, if nothing else. It acts right down to the level of the soul, so it's not surprising if it could quickly co-opt the cells of a mother's eggs even before they're fertilized.

Basically, whatever JENOVA can get her tentacles on, she can corrupt, and it's just a matter of how much exposure. She's fully capable of warping fully formed human beings.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Welll.... Jenova has that whole copying thing in CC where she can stick parts of herself into something else's DNA... it could just as easily not be anything Hojo did...

I don't think she can do this, though I am ready to be corrected. It seems Genesis, Angeal, and Sephiroth's cells can do this, but not Jenova's directly. I can't remember any instance when she has directly colonised someone and turned them into something else. She can mimic them, and read and mimic their memories.

 

[Tashasaurous]

Welll.... Jenova has that whole copying thing in CC where she can stick parts of herself into something else's DNA... it could just as easily not be anything Hojo did...

I don't think she can do this, though I am ready to be corrected. It seems Genesis, Angeal, and Sephiroth's cells can do this, but not Jenova's directly. I can't remember any instance when she has directly colonised someone and turned them into something else. She can mimic them, and read and mimic their memories.

Jenova's an Alien. Of course she can do that. She once disguised herself as a Cetra and is the main reason why Cetra's are extinct, and if she can do that, she can do almost anything. Her cells are extremely different and more alive compared to that of humans.

 

[Roger]

It seems Genesis, Angeal, and Sephiroth's cells can do this, but not Jenova's directly. I can't remember any instance when she has directly colonised someone and turned them into something else. She can mimic them, and read and mimic their memories.

This is kinda what happened to Hojo himself in the end actually.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I don't know why I'm trying to make sense of this, but.... Hojo injected the Jenova cells into his body. There's nothing to imply that Jenova can infect you with her own DNA just by touching you. Skin is a powerful barrier. AFAIK the Genesis and Angeal clones all had to be made in test-tubes. I mean it's true we never see an Angeal clone in a test tube, but we also never see him just touching a sahagin or a fly-eye and instantly turning it into a clone.

 

[Roger]

Whether it was fetus Sephiroth or Lucretia who was injected, one was connected to the other through their umbilical cord so it wasn't just skincontact that those Jenova cells had on them.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Yes, it is true that foreign pathogens can enter a developing fetus through the mother's umbilical cord, but they can't insert themselves into the fetus' DNA, they can only provoke an immune reaction and make the fetus sick. Now, I'm not capable of understanding the highly scientific articles on this topic, but I seem to remember that the cord and/or the cord blood can act as a kind screen; it's not perfect, but it does keep some harmful shit out.

 

[Roger]

Yes, it is true that foreign pathogens can enter a developing fetus through the mother's umbilical cord, but they can't insert themselves into the fetus' DNA, they can only provoke an immune reaction and make the fetus sick. Now, I'm not capable of understanding the highly scientific articles on this topic, but I seem to remember that the cord and/or the cord blood can act as a kind screen; it's not perfect, but it does keep some harmful shit out.

Hence the Hojo example, it got into his system and instead of making him sick it transformed every part of his body. There's precedent that Jenova cells get to work once they enter the body beyond just helping you cope with exposure to Mako better.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

But Zack was injected with Jenova and he couldn't do those things. Then again, how does Hojo keep Zack and Cloud from drowning in the mako tubes? He seems to be able to bend the laws of biology and physics whenever it's convenient for the writers to do so. It's possible that Hojo is the exception that proves the rule. And he'd obviously been planning that whole confrontation for a long time. You can't download your consciousness into the Internet on a sudden whim. It just doesn't make any sense that Jenova is like an infectious disease you can catch, otherwise the Cetra would have all gone down with it, given how virulent it is.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

What Jenova did to the Cetra was literally described as giving them a virus that turned them into monsters. She obviously did this -- and destroyed their civilization -- suddenly and fiercely, rather than slowly messing with pregnant women in a lab to turn their babies into monsters.

You've seen John Carpenter's "The Thing," right? That's basically what Jenova is and does.
---

As for what happens to a consciousness in the Lifestream, that's explicitly and unambiguously made clear: they dissolve. I used to find that a tad sad myself, but now I can appreciate the notion that the characters we love contributed their verse while the song goes on, building off what they contributed.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

But they don't all dissolve, because some of them hang around. Unless that's just Cloud's hallucination, which it could be. Aeris/Aerith definitely doesn't dissolve.

Jenova gave the Cetra a virus that destroyed their civilisation. She didn't turn them into clones of herself. She presented as a clone of their loved ones. I always thought the virus-monster thing was meant to be part of some larger explanation of where monsters come from, but most of the explanation got cut from the script. Although if the monsters are Cetra or the descendants of Cetra infected by Jenova, that would explain... no, actually, you know, it wouldn't explain anything. The story has no internal consistency, and I'm fine with that.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

She may not have turned them into clones of herself (we don't really know), but she definitely turned them into monsters. That's an established part of the setting, not an old idea that didn't make it into the final script.


As for folks dissolving or not, Aerith didn't because she was a Cetra. It was said she had the choice to let herself go if she wanted, but she sensed it was too early to do so. She also found a few familiar, mostly dissolved consciousnesses (e.g. Zack) that she reconstituted to assist her.

 

[Roger]

She didn't turn Hojo into a copy of herself either, just a monster. Hojo and Hollander were able to come close to copies of Jemova through closely monitored experiments starting from the womb, which obviously wasn't what befel the Ancients in any case then consequently Sephiroth, Angeal and Genesis' modified strains were able to do it with others. I don't think it can pass scientific muster with Lex but I do think there's some internal consistency.

Though it does end up looking like with normal SOLDIER Mako and Jenova cells cancel out each other adverse effects.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Though it does end up looking like with normal SOLDIER Mako and Jenova cells cancel out each other adverse effects.

Interesting question. This is one of those times where both substances seem able to do whatever the plot calls for.

Either can turn people and animals into monsters, and either can provide physical enhancements. It also seems they can interact to produce various results. Even with Hojo, who injected himself with Jenova cells, he seems to reference having also consumed some "mako juice" before he transforms into something wholly inhuman?