SPOILERS What does Sephiroth actually want from Cloud? (*Open Spoilers*)

[Roundhouse]

This is all really simple. GoodRoth has travelled back in time to stop EvilRoth from wrecking havoc. Meanwhile, AntiHeroRoth has come through a portal from Kingdom Hearts with Mickey, and they are trying to destroy Biggs. (Biggs being alive is a temporal anomaly and they predict that it will have a disastrous butterfly effect.)

 

[Odysseus]

Where does Itadaki Street fit in to this Sephiroth tapestry?

Spoiler

the most dominant Sephiroth

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

This is all really simple. GoodRoth has travelled back in time to stop EvilRoth from wrecking havoc. Meanwhile, AntiHeroRoth has come through a portal from Kingdom Hearts with Mickey, and they are trying to destroy Biggs. (Biggs being alive is a temporal anomaly and they predict that it will have a disastrous butterfly effect.)

But where does EliRoth fit in?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

In the OG, Cloud v Sephiroth was a one-time only battle in which the Planet ultimately decided who had won, and we were left with an ambiguous result. Sephiroth was a man who aspired to godhood and failed. Aerith was a normal human girl with some special powers who died and returned to the Lifestream.

The rise of Compilation has given Sephiroth exactly what he wanted. He has effectively become a god. You can't kill him or get rid of him, all you can do is kill the corporeal body he currently occupies, and he can just help himself to another, or manifest one. Aerith has become a goddess, the living incarnation of the Will of the Planet. You can't kill her either. She and Sephiroth are locked in a battle of wills and Cloud is their battleground.

 

[Wol]

I see Sephiroth returning like a Caius situation. Caius cannot die because Chaos summons him back (there's a reason for this which is tied to the concept of memories and will of a certain someone). As long as there is a memory, a person isn't truly dead because the Lifestream and Chaos can still shape them (LRXIII is all about this).

So as long as Cloud remembers about Sephiroth (because of his trauma, because he was a model for him etc), he'll come back. That's why Seph doesn't want Clad to end, he needs him as fuel.

 

[Odysseus]

Aerith was a normal human girl

I get what you mean by this, but I mean, she's a Cetra. Some mythical race with vague magical powers.
No, ignore me, Licorice was right.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

In the OG Cetra were just humans who hadn't lost their ability to commune with the planet. To put it another way, humans are just descendants of Cetra who chose to give up the nomadic way of life and settle down. It's the old Cain v Abel story: God favours the nomads, and turns his back on the settled agriculturalists.

Given that every living thing is animated by lifestream, there's a sense in which every living thing is simply an extension of the planet; that the planet is a single organism and the lifeforms are its cells. Cetra, I assume, had the ability to hear the lifestream within them, and so were able to live cooperatively with the planet. When humans lost this ability they became 'rogue' cells, like a cancer. Shinra is sucking the life out of the planet, like a cancer, but when the planet-organism dies, so will the cancer, so Shinra is digging its own grave.

Anybody can hear the Planet if they know how to listen to the lifestream within them.

Dead Cetra don't normally live on as distinct consciousnesses and wills in the Lifestream. Aerith is unique.

 

[looneymoon]

Sephiroth in OG wasn't exactly a super humanized character. He was more like an imposing force, looming over the horizon. His motivation, even in OG, never really made emotional sens. His character is more reliant on pacing and the threat of looming doom.

OG Sephiroth is the characterized embodiment of the meteor summon. With remake, something tells me that the stakes for remake Sephiroth are going to be more broad, and more in line with his characterization with the AC/C.

He wants to destroy alternate timeline Cloud of his memories.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

It's true I never really cared that much about what Sephiroth wanted. He was just an evil thing that needed to be destroyed.

 

[Master Bates]

So we're really running with alternate timelines now, aren't we? I'm still in denial over this, tbh. My mind is having a difficult time accepting the notion that Sephiroth and Aerith had become gods post-OG despite the presence of evidence, and that their incarnation in the Remake is different from their OG versions.

Which raises the question: If the Aerith and Sephiroth in the Remake are different entities that have 'memories' of the OG timeline, what happened to the 'true' Aerith and Sephiroth versions pertaining to the Remake timeline? This seriously makes my head hurt.

 

[Odysseus]

In the original game he's much more a force of nature than he is a complex character. Every time he appears is a game changing event, so despite his limited screen time, the player is able to feel how powerful and threatening he is. His presence looms over the entire game, despite him not actually appearing very often.

I like exploring the narcissism of his character though; people treat it like Advent Children is when he was first characterised as being obsessed with Cloud, but I feel like that was always the case. His pursuit of Godhood was in part to reclaim the security in his own power that Cloud had taken from him. This isn't so spelled out as later FF7 material would make it, though.

 

[Glaurung]

The other archetype is Genesis himself. Western media doesn't have a lot of... really powerful fighters that are interested in things like... old literature and are still portrayed as being really awesome fighters. Traits like "expert on old english lit" are usually seen as things that make people weaker and don't contribute to them being good fighters. So they're things to hide rather then show off to war buddies and see them laughing with the person about it. Where you do see that kind of character archetype is in... historical JP anime/manga. There's a number of samurai -type characters where "really good at all that poetry stuff" is part of their character archtype and no one gives them any grief over it. There's also a lot of samurai characters where being obsesed about their honor is really important to them to. And Genesis (and Angeal) would feel right at home in those types of anime/manga. They're pretty much varriations on samurai archetypes that genre-hopped.

The "warrior poet" and "cultured badass" are very old tropes, and very present in old Europe and Arab countries, where many warriors were expected to be literate and versed in music and/or poetry. There are many real life examples of that.

But the thing is (and please, Americans in the forum, excuse me for saying this), that modern Western media is mostly Hollywood. We all know that, according to modern american media (and, by extension, western) stereotypes, that you are either a strong, big macho, alpha male who only uses books for lifting, or a feeble, efeminate nerd who reads books and writes poetry and never sees the sun. They hardly ever mingle the two for reasons I can only guess.

<Insert rant about how westerners are becoming more and more stupid with each year>

 

[Odysseus]

As an American, I completely agree with you. I'd flee to the other end of the earth if I were able.

 

[oty]

I'd say that for the last 10-20 years, that conception has been changing more and more. I mean yeah, back in the day you had your Stallones and your Willis(ess?) all day, but as of now? It, fortunately, has changed quite a bit already.

The problem with Genesis lines, of course, in the execution. It is...painful. Like, seriously. "How to show he is literate? Just make him quote this poem every single time he appears, people will pick up". Small rant sorry

So we're really running with alternate timelines now, aren't we? I'm still in denial over this, tbh. My mind is having a difficult time accepting the notion that Sephiroth and Aerith had become gods post-OG despite the presence of evidence, and that their incarnation in the Remake is different from their OG versions.

Which raises the question: If the Aerith and Sephiroth in the Remake are different entities that have 'memories' of the OG timeline, what happened to the 'true' Aerith and Sephiroth versions pertaining to the Remake timeline? This seriously makes my head hurt.

I think that's why the notion that they "acquired future knowledge" seems more concise. I dont think this Aerith is 100% the more mature, endgame Aerith we imagine. She's like a mixture of both.

You can also argue that the Remake continuity only exists because of these "external" events. So, in the "what if" world of "what if Seph and Aerith didnt go back", Aerith would still be there. But that doesnt exist, because they did come back. Or passed on some future knowledge. Or maybe some other SE thing.

 

[Odysseus]

With Sephiroth, I have no idea, but Aerith I don't believe to be from the future. Her knwledge seems incomplete, and it seems like she learns more as she goes. Like Oty said, she "acquired future knowledge." When she says she's losing herself, I think that means she's losing her present self to the future version she's coming to know. That's my take, anyway.