So something to note regarding the Whispers, that I might finally be getting around to tackling next. The Whispers are the
"Arbiters of Fate" and I hadn't thought too much about it before writing the big Sefirot article, but Sephiroth has had his theme song blasting out full-volume Latin lyrics about how fucking pissed off he is and how awful and meaningless fate is in the original game – and then all over again but with a tinge of broken sorrowful awareness of Fate as an absolute horror to everyone in
Advent Children.
One-Winged Angel said:
Estuans interius Ira vehementi.
Burning inside with violent anger.
Sors immanis- Et inanis.
Fate- monstrous & empty.
Veni, veni, venias, Ne me mori facias.
Come, come, oh come, Do not let me die.
Gloriosa Generosa.
Glorious and Noble.
Advent One-Winged Angel said:
Noli manere, manere in memoria
Do not remain, remain in memory
Saevam iram, iram et dolorem
Raging anger, anger and sorrow
Ferum terribile, terribile fatum
Brutal, terrible, terrible fate
Veni, mi fili. Veni, mi fili. Hic veni, da mihi mortem iterum
Come, my son. Come my son. Come here, give me death once more
Tu qui mortem invitavit
He, who invited death,
poena funesta natus es,
[was] born with an ill-fated punishment.
Noli nomen vocare!
Don't call [his] name!
Ille iterum veniet.
He will come again.
- FF7 Sephiroth starts out burning inside with violent anger, and feels that Fate is monstrous & empty.
- AC Sephiroth comes back with raging anger & sorrow, and feels that Fate is brutal & terrible, and he was born with an ill-fated punishment.
Oh boy, does that ever match up with the progression of decreasing external violent expression, slowly wrapping into personal examination & self-hatred, suddenly interested in a mutual destruction of Fate and escaping tragedy that
Remake's new Sephiroth is all about. If there was ever any reason to wonder about why Fate itself is being exposed & attacked in
Remake, I think that it is overwhelmingly clear why, and that the focus on the Unknown "Ore"-personal-pronoun-using Sephiroth is set squarely in on obliterating it for good.
It's a really damned good evolution of his character arc as a pseudo-deity who's getting this sort of incredible cosmic power & awareness, given that
some of the lyrics of the original "One-Winged Angel" were pulled from
"O Fortuna" – which is literally a poem about the inexorable fate that rules both gods & mortals.
So, that's what I'm gonna be using to sort of kickstart the idea of looking into the Whispers as a facet of
Final Fantasy VII's in-world setting, since we know that the surrounding messaging from the original and into
Advent Children have Sephiroth focused on his own fate, and we've got the David Bowie tragic villain connection all established there that'll make it easy to present all of this as sort of an opening framework to looking at Fate itself inside the context of
Final Fantasy VII's world, and what things that it's connected to.
So, that's gonna bring us to Project G. We know that we've gotta cover the idea of Cetran scriptures in general, since we know that
Remake is using them. Additionally, Genesis also being the book of Genesis where the Sefirot comes from means that if you're looking at a sort of book of prophesy that our current NG+ Sephiroth is using as a way to ensure that those things don't happen, that definitely gives us the possibility that Loveless might still be working as a sort of playbook that Sephiroth is trying to use to avoid what's happening.
That would get us to the Project G looking for the Gift of the Goddess & the Planet's powers as a connection to the idea that Fate is a sort of passive "emotional Sefirot" defense system the same way that the Weapons are an active "intellect Sefirot" defense system sort of splitting up the parts of the Planet that they each tend to be focused on.
That gets enough of the Project G connections from a structural standpoint that we can focus on the Design overlaps with
Genesis' Sankosho Vajra-looking Wing Claws, which is likely gonna mean that we get to do some light poking around at the Buddhism-based perspective to
Final Fantasy VII with
the Three Vajras (thanks to
Asura's Wrath for giving me a massive head start on recognizing that). This matches with Angeal (mind), Sephiroth (body), & Genesis (voice), since those are the traits common in
Tendai &
Shingon Buddhism in Japan known as "the Three Mysteries" that would match up with those three aspects of Jenova. This also gets us the reason that we've got another triplet pair with "Rubrum, Viridic, & Croceo" as those three aspects of the Whisper Harbinger, matching the same thing that we see with "Kadaj, Yazoo, & Loz" as those three aspects of Sephiroth himself. Shingon Buddhism also focuses on
the three divisions of the Outer Tantras. This gets you a first step of ritual actions (Sephiroth in the original game), a second step that achieves liberation through meditations where the other buddhas are an emanation of the primary deity (Sephiroth in
Advent Children), and the third which is most focused on internal practices (Sephiroth in
Remake with his changed self pronouns and such).
How overtly any of that will come up... not clear, but it's good to know that there's a solid framework for looking at those relationships, since I think that more than likely that's a path that's being used, so that they can align the concepts of those characters to the three paths in the Sefirot, so that they each represent a collective trinity of a combined whole, and put a little bit more Japanese-specific perspective to align the spiritual concepts in the game to things that both a Japanese & a Western audience can equally align to when looking at the struggles of Sephiroth trying to achieve his own version of enlightenment, and having those being intrinsically interconnected to the patterns that repeat over time in the games.
So, with the trio of trios, we've at least got a good way to get in to the idea that those are a fundamental part of
Final Fantasy VII Remake's world, and we can start poking around at the connections that exist between the Planet's Reunion & Jenova's Reunion, how they mirror each other, why Sephiroth hates them, and what all of the mad science that Hojo has been getting up to beneath Midgar & in The Drum that gets hinted at.
We're getting more of a focus on Wutai, so the G-type SOLDIER are high up on the list to look at design-wise, since I think that it makes sense to cover all of the new mad science shit before wrapping back into the more regular-looking Whispers, and then draw the connection and things back to Sephiroth from the Jenova-experiment perspective.
Anyhow – those are my current ramblings on whereabouts I'm thinking of jumping around once I start getting into breaking down and analyzing the Whispers.
Then once they're out of the way, I can do an article more focused on the Drum & Shinra's crazy science experiments and get back to my REAL passion – the Shock Troopers.
X 
