#but if it was decided sephiroth would just be a human nuke when he was a kid then all things fighting would be a priority

[mariyekos]

I don't mean to burst your bubble, but that's probably just what the game says for enemies that can't be Assessed!

Ex, one of the ending enemies in the Remake that can be partially read):

Ex. 2: An enemy that can be fully read:

And Sephiroth himself (Remake):

SHUT UP

SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!!!

SEPHIROTH CANT READ!!! I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY ABOUT THIS OMFG!!!

shinra/hojo probably just never thought it was necessary to teach him to read, or probably teach him anything really, other than how to fight and be the perfect soldier, because he was conceived and born as nothing more than a test subject… and why would the lab rat weapon need to learn basic things like how to read…

this also just makes me think, since he canonically has to be able to read, at least enough to have been able to read all the stuff in the shinra manor basement, that he probably learned to read through simply watching others and needing to put the pieces together to figure it out for himself and through relying on other people (like his friends) teaching him at least the basics, though he still was never properly taught so he’s not very good at reading

plus this is such a wild place for them to actually just straight up state that sephiroth cant read? like its in the boss details segment in the event which i feel like is so easy to miss for most people? plus its not like it’s actually battle stats or anything… just the confirmation he cant read…

[rottenpumpkin13]

Sometimes I think about how Sephiroth reacted to the lies that Hojo planted, and people always be like “oh, what if there was a fix-it where he found out the truth first? That would make him better!” But I’m like, IDK! I sort of think this is a situation where the truth would make you WORSE! Like, imagine all your life you were raised in a lab. Then, one day you find out the man who tortured you and the woman who created you, your mother and father, people who should have had some biological instinct to care for, nurture, and protect you decided before you were even born “what if we made an experiment with our unborn child and tried to bring back an extinct alien race?” And your mom died for her experiment (basically) and it’s nice to imagine maybe she would have been better than Hojo. Like, she died giving him life, right? But she also quite possibly died because she INJECTED HERSELF WITH AN ANCIENT ALIEN’S CELLS FOR SCIENCE! If she loved him, couldn’t she have, I don’t know, not used him as a lab rat? Would she have continued to do so if she survived? If she was willing to risk her own body during pregnancy, there is a chance she might have continued to do more screwed up things than even Hojo after he was born to push more ethical boundaries. And then him being owned by an entire corporation that is destroying the planet, just like the ancient alien wanted to do that he is genetically spliced with. If people like his parents, and Shinra, and so many of the terrible people he dealt with during the war existed… maybe Jenova wasn’t too far off. Humans are a blight to the universe. And if killing the planet is what he has to do to stop this sickness from spreading, maybe his existence was created by the hubris of man flying too close sun and getting melted from existence. Starting with his father. And whatever is left that he can find of his mother. And anyone he ever cared for. They are too good for the world. He will grant them a quick death so they don’t have to see what he will do.

(Idk. My rant of, “I could make him better” “no, I’d make him worse”)

The way he found out contributed significantly to his decline and the breakdown in Nibelheim, but the information itself was so damning that it would have been a shock regardless of when or how he learned it. And then keep in mind that the information he found in the library wasn't even "the truth" per se, since it was reports/research by Gast and Hojo about Jenova, who he was told was his mother, and then he assumed he himself was a Cetra just like her. It's unclear if he read about Lucrecia and the details of his conception, but even if he did, by then his mind was so broken that the overload of information twisted what he knew even further.

I think if Sephiroth had been told the exact truth about his origins, he still would have revolted, but it wouldn't have been as catastrophic as Nibelheim and the subsequent dip into nuking the planet. He would have been angry and disillusioned, and the truth about his conception would have rewired his beliefs about his existence, but the extent of his destruction might have been less severe.

The thing is Sephiroth was doomed from the moment his parents chose to experiment on him to try to produce a Cetra. I don't know if Lucrecia would have continued Hojo's experiments and the project had she survived, and I don't think she would have (unless Hojo's manipulation came into play) because of the guilt she felt while she was still alive. She attempted to kill herself because she was overcome with guilt, but the Jenova cells prevented her from dying, leading her to seal herself in that crystal. She might have tried to flee or opposed Hojo's plans for Sephiroth, but either way, it would have ended catastrophically for her.

In the end I think the only true way to save Sephiroth would be to prevent him from ever being part of the Jenova Project and never receive the Jenova cells in the first place. This would have spared him from Shinra's involvement and the ensuing tragedies that were promised the moment they got a little too greedy and tried to capitalize on alien remains.

[freelanceexorcist]

Minor Rebirth spoilers under the cut.

I just realized something (I told you all it takes me a few tries for things to sink in).

Here's a screen grab of the Gast journal Sephiroth is reading out loud from right before he loses it:

Now this is probably just a stylistic choice to show the audience how top secret the Jenova Project was, but why are parts of it redacted? And at what time were the redactions made?

It just seems like an odd choice. If a document contains information that's sensitive enough that redaction is required for parts of it, why leave it in the basement of an abandoned mansion that anyone can access (difficult as it is to do so)? Why not move all of them and store them in a secure facility that can only be accessed by those with the proper clearance?

Yeah, I know we're talking about scientists that suck so bad at recording data that they didn't even document the date of birth and the blood type of the project's only successful result, but still.

This leads me to think that the redactions aren't of anything top secret, but for the purpose of spreading disinformation. I can't help but wonder if my suspicions about Hojo having a hand in engineering Sephiroth's breakdown are correct and that he wanted him to have disinformation for that reason. The blacked out parts may have led him away from the conclusion that Hojo wanted him to come to.

So what has been blacked out? Lucrecia's name? That she's Sephiroth's mother and Hojo is his father? References to pregnancy and birth that would inform Sephiroth that yes, he was born and not manufactured so therefore, yes, he was a human being that was fucked with in the womb? Mentions of Vincent? Anything that would justify or explain why his childhood was so awful and why he was kept isolated?

And as far as who did the redacting and when, you know Hojo did that shit. And he did it right after he decided that it would be great for science to drop Shinra's live nuke into a small town then slowly drive him to a breakdown with disinformation. I wonder how many entire books were removed before Sephiroth and the gang showed up.

I wonder if this will come up at all in part 3. If not, I'm just overthinking it as usual. But if it does...hmm.

[saanphoenix]

“Why do so many old-school FFVII fans think that Cloud took Zack’s memories?”

Alright, so first things first. We gotta start from the beginning. We gotta start with Jenova.

Jenova is the name given to the alien entity known as the Calamity. “Heaven’s dark harbinger.” This being, assumed to be female because of the body she was in at the Crater, was basically godlike in her natural abilities. Historically, she was able to shapeshift. She was telepathic. She had a nigh indomitable will. And she used her abilities to infect the race of human(oid)s that happened upon her crash site--the Cetra.

Now, Ifalna, within the English translation of the OG, states that Jenova turned the Cetra into monsters, nearly wiping them all out, and that the wee few that remained basically had to be sacrificed to seal Jenova away before she could do anymore damage to all life on the planet. The notes Sephiroth finds within the Shinra Mansion seem to corroborate this version of events, as he tells Zack that the Cetra chose to fight the Calamity while the other humans “hid”, thus being spared Jenova’s shenanigans, allowing them to become the dominant race on the planet, but ultimately being cowards unworthy to be the shepherds of any star, to quote Emet-Selch from FFXIV. Stay with me now.

We also know that the notes Sephiroth reads within the Shinra Mansion do not, in any way, call Jenova the Calamity. They still refer to her as a Cetra. Meaning that those notes are outdated, before the discovery of a living Cetra, a Cetra who is 2000 years removed from her own people’s history. Right? So.

(’Ah, but what about Genesis point-blank telling Sephiroth the truth? He knew what was up!’ Yes, because Hollander and Hojo found out from Gast’s recordings, and Ifalna herself, what Jenova actually was, and then Hollander told Genesis, who then said some stupid ass shit to trigger Sephiroth into looking into the wrong information, and now Nibelheim is not Nibelheim anymore and Cloud is missing one more family member than he was when he joined Shinra. Also, fuck Genesis. Anyway.)

HOJO, yeah? Hojo, in two separate novels written by Nojima himself, states to Aerith and Tseng separately that Jenova 1) will inevitably infect all life on the planet with her “cells” because of the very nature of the Lifestream and 2) turned the Cetra against each other via subtle manipulation and illusions of their loved ones, dead or alive, conceived from their own memories. She didn’t show up looking like the Eldritch horror with the eyeball nipple, she showed up looking like a run-of-the-mill Cetra. And she would further disguise herself as people a Cetra knew in order to gain their trust. And then, after she had gained that trust, she would say shit like, “Hey. Your friend over there hates you,” or, “Hey. Your friend over there wants to kill you.” And thus the Cetra, at the very least morally but probably also physically, became monsters and tore themselves apart.

You ever wonder why everything the Cetra had was booby-trapped and hidden behind riddles and self-sacrificial bullshit like their Temple? My guess is because Jenova made it so they couldn’t trust anyone, even themselves.

“Why did I read all that? What does that have to do with Cloud voring Zack’s memories?”

Because we gotta understand the mechanics of this bitch first so that we know what to look out for.

Now, we have an alien in stasis--presumed dead but definitely not--and a buncha scientists who really want a coveted spot sucking President Shinra’s dick as head of the Science Dept. who all think that taking the genetic material of a Cetra and splicing it into a modern-day human’s DNA will give them a Geiger counter to the Promised Land. Which they want to use as fuel because only some of them really understand what mako is and the others are just fucking stupid. Anyway, my guess is that they archeology their way to Jenova’s still-kinda-alive corpse and do some DNA testing and go, “Ah! We’ve found a Cetra. It has to be one! She’s by the crater, after all, and that’s where some of them were nuked by a Meteor! :) We’re geniuses!” And Jenova, in the Lifestream, went, “GOTCHA, BITCH!”

And through the power of dino DNA, out pops a lot of nonviable lifeforms, some monsters, and, eventually, a relatively normal kid with a flare for the dramatic who will become wholly obsessed with apples and very boring literature that he will insist on repeating every five goddamn seconds. As he was no Geiger counter to the Promised Land, out pops another relatively normal kid who will grow up to have dreams, and honor, and steal food from his neighbors because he was so damn honorable that he just could not ask for a handout.

With Hollander and Gillian’s experiments not producing anything of note other than children that need love and support, Hojo and Lucrecia decide to take a slightly different sample of Jenova’s cells and just start sticking them everywhere. They’re in Lucrecia. They’re in Lucrecia’s fetus. And...something strange starts to happen.

Lucrecia starts to feel the effects of Jenova. Lucrecia’s mind and body start to kind of deteriorate. Not the way that Genesis’ and Angeal’s do later on, but she is plagued by shit like severe depression and fatigue. She falls out on the floor multiple times. Her bodyguard is a little late on pulling the trigger of the gun aimed at her husband and, instead of doing anything productive about her husband proving he’s an amoral murderous fuckhead, she just decides to play doll with her kinda undead bodyguard, get even sicker, and then, finally, pops out a very strange looking baby. In fact, he looks a little alien.

“No, seriously, what does this have to do with anything?”

Genetics. How Jenova cells work. Whatever clump of cells they injected into Lucrecia, clearly different from those used in Project G, seemed to focus more on the mental fuckery aspect of Jenova than the physical, shapeshifting aspect of Jenova. I would also argue that one of the reasons Lucrecia was so adversely affected by the cells and Gillian was not is their mental well-being. Gillian, even when we meet her, seems very upbeat and doing pretty okay despite her husband having died from exhaustion a coupla years back. Lucrecia was depressed and very subservient even before she married Hojo. Losing her mentor--Vincent’s father--probably exacerbated that. And, later in Advent Children, that sort of mentality--hopelessness and despair--is what Sephiroth’s Geostigma feeds off of. That and thoughts of death/dying. But that is more speculation than anything.

So, Sephiroth’s cells are different from Genesis’ and Angeal’s, and they were all three bred differently, but they’re all kinda chimeras of Jenova’s. And once Genesis learns about his origins, it’s like the lightbulb goes off. This guy’s creating clones by infecting his 2nd and 3rd Class SOLDIERs with his own cells. And when he does that, their physical appearance becomes his own. As does their will. Whatever Genesis wants, the clones also want. And then he just grows a wing for shits and giggles. Once he tells his BFF Angeal the sitch, behold! He’s got monster clones--maybe because he realizes how fucked up overwriting a human being with yourself is--and wings, too. ...Why?

The power to do all of this shit was always there. It was genetically always there. They just had to be made aware of it, to have the puzzle piece put into place. When Sephiroth dies, that puzzle piece is put into place. And then he starts fuckin’ with shit. And turns into monstrous angels. And then dies again. And then comes back and finally grows himself his own wing. He did it, fellas. He’s a big boy now.

But we’re not here to talk about Sephiroth--ignore how much I talked about Sephiroth and his mommies previously--we’re here to talk about ZACK and CLOUD.

“What’s up with Zack and Cloud?”

First, what we must realize is that even though Hojo says that both Zack and Cloud are failed clones because they 1) didn’t take on any physical characteristics of Sephiroth, 2) didn’t seem controlled by Jenova (or Sephiroth) and, 3) didn’t exhibit the other signs of a Reunion impulse like the other clones in Nibelheim that does not mean that Sephiroth’s cells, Jenova’s cells, are not working on them.

As we’ve observed in other 1sts, abilities do not always manifest immediately or even noticeably. Clearly, Sephiroth’s physical appearance is a bit of a hint, but Genesis and Angeal look pretty damn normal and, if it weren’t for their mako injections, they probably wouldn’t be showing that much of an increase in physical capabilities. Theoretically. Maybe 10-year-old Angeal had biceps the size of a man’s head. I mean. Pff.

Zack’s tolerance to Jenova was strong due to his previous exposure in the SOLDIER program. Cloud’s mind broke pretty early on. Neither of these results matter to the fact that they both now have Sephiroth’s cells within them--just as Genesis’ and Angeal’s clones had theirs--and that their very wills are now going to be affected by Sephiroth’s. But they are also going to be a little bit like him in terms of power.

Zack’s hair, when ingested by a Genesis clone, a clone of a Type-G SOLDIER, transforms that clone into a monster. Zack doesn’t even have to do anything. The Jenova/Sephiroth cells within his body can just Do That, cause that change in another life form, of their own accord. I’m honestly shocked that, whenever they gave Zack these S-cells, HE didn’t turn into a monster. But that’s neither here nor there. I wanna talk about Cloud.

Cloud has mako poisoning, which the Remake describes as his spirit/soul being stuck between his body and the Lifestream. Weird. Anyway, he’s not fully aware of his surroundings at all times, and he clearly can’t control his body that much. He somehow has the ability to kinda get his feet shuffling, and I’m going to go on a limb and say he can chew whatever food Zack gives him, but most of the time, he’s a puppet with cut strings.

But he is also still recovering from a mind break caused by Jenova cells. The same cells that are just chilling in his body, like they are in Zack’s. And all the months Zack is dragging his ass across a continent, an ocean, and another continent, they and Cloud are listening to whatever the fuck Zack is saying. Cloud is also constantly in physical contact with Zack.

In The Kids Are Alright: A Turks Side Story, Kadaj has the power to not only read surface thoughts and memories just by being near someone, but he can also read deeper ones by making physical contact with someone. Because Jenova. And Sephiroth, whose cells Cloud and Zack have, in the OG demonstrates that he, too, can glean thoughts and memories from others. Because Jenova.

If this power is a genetic trait, as it is with Genesis and Angeal, then, sitting pretty underneath their skin, Zack and Cloud have this ability. Dormant. Snoozing. Kinda like the 1st Class Trio’s wings.

But Zack has a high tolerance and a high ignorance to Jenova and just what he might be capable of. Cloud���s mind is floating in and out at best. He’s not in control of himself. And when you have a situation like that, it is very, very easy to come to the conclusion that Cloud’s Jenova cells are passively absorbing the memories of Zack’s time in Nibelheim. That they are knitting these memories together with what little remain in Cloud’s head. That when Tifa comes across Cloud at the train station and calls him by name and remembers who he is that Cloud’s Jenova cells latch onto those memories in Tifa--as Sephiroth tells them they did--and they knit those memories with Zack’s and Cloud’s and the end result is the man we get at the beginning of the OG.

Because Cloud has visual memory of shit he never saw. It’s not just a visual medium telling a visual story. You wanna know how I know that for a fact? Because, in the Remake, Cloud remembers Sephiroth walking up to Jenova’s tank in the reactor from Sephiroth’s perspective. He is looking through Sephiroth’s eyes, through his memory, up at “Mother.” In that moment in the Remake, Cloud is Sephiroth. He’s not Cloud anymore.

Cloud sees Sephiroth delivering the speech of being an Ancient. Cloud wasn’t there. Cloud didn’t see that. Zack did. That is Zack’s memory.

The man writing the Remake is the same man who’s been at the head of MOST FFVII writing. He was on the OG, he wrote Advent Children, he wrote the novels, he wrote Crisis Core, he’s writing the Remake. He knows what these cells can do because he’s crafted this world-building for decades.

Cloud didn’t take all of Zack’s memories. He didn’t need to. Kadaj, in the novel, doesn’t glean everything from someone right off the bat. Because he doesn’t need to. Only when he needs to learn something else does he go digging. The same is probably true for what Cloud’s cells most likely did to be able to know what he knows. Hell! Kadaj gets punched in the novel and he ACCIDENTALLY picks up the emotions and memories of the guy who punched him. He didn’t want ‘em but he got ‘em!”

There is evidence within the OG, and even more within the Compilation, that lend weight to the theory that Cloud unintentionally read Zack’s mind when it came to the events of Nibelheim.

For years, people have wondered, “How the hell does Cloud know that if he wasn’t there?” For years, people have wondered, “How can he use the Buster Sword if he was just a little grunt that used a gun all the time?” The logical answer is, “Because of his Jenova cells. They can just do that shit.”

[tinfoil-king]

Nier Automata - Thoughts as playing through

This is just a fun activity I like doing.  Instant theorizing of something while it is going on. 😃  This time Nier Automata.  Spoilers below the break.

 The idea is I’ll break the game up into chunks by what seem to be natural plot break points.  Just to see how my perception of the story evolves as I play along.

 The rules:

·         Playing spoiler free

·         Very rough understanding of the previous games and backstory

Noob Dungeon/Tutorial Area till regaining control on the space station

 Things of note:

·         The five ships and a white one reminds me a bit of stuff I heard about Drakengard 3. Never played it, so it might be superficial.

·         Speaking of a game about characters with crimson eyes, the protagonists have their eyes covered.

·         Fodder enemies are robots who look like Emil

·         The whole zone is a mechemil  factory

·         Giant boss dudes look like possessed machines.

·         2B reminds me of Yonah.

·         9S makes me think of that Japanese version of Nier’s protagonist due to the similar look. Well, if Nier was brainwashed and forced to cleanup into a preschool look.

·         They can back themselves up.  Trailers say you can even fight your old dead body.

·         In the end they tap black boxes (local saved selves) to nuke the area

·         The history cutscene is giving a propaganda vibe

·         The cutscene makes it seem like the aliens brought the mechemils to Earth?  What.

·         Memories may not be complete, as seen by 9S losing some of his due to not saving

·         Glory to human kind, more queasy propaganda sounding stuff.  Not what it sounds like, but the way it is said.

 Thoughts so far:

·         The Automatas may be partially based on the crimson eye thing in Drakengard and in Nier’s backstory (all in the manual, crimson eyed person who can come back the dead leading a legion of zombified mindless mutated humans).

·         I don’t buy that the Mechemils are the aliens.  Maybe the aliens have possessed them somehow, but they didn’t bring them. Unless… they came from the Drakengard world instead of through space.  Emil was created due to things set in motion that came through from that world to “our” Earth.

·         2B is probably going to rebel.

Space Station to Resistance Fetch Quests

 Things of note:

·         Yorha reminds me of Yonah.  Just swap the last two letters and have part of the lowercase n fade away so it looks like an r if you want to believe they are going for some “CaLiMa” or V’ger level justification here.

·         The integrating setting saving to the character is a nice touch.

·         The leader of the group isn’t blind folded.  So, there is a purpose to those who are blindfolded.  

·         Resistance Leader “You are 2…”.  Not “a” and we don’t get a letter.

·         Resistance person wearing a Mechemil head mysteriously.

·         Game is making a big deal about plants returning and growing large

·         Chit-chat with eye in the sky really makes it seem clear only 2B is emotionally blank. Or tries to be.  Yet she said emotions are forbidden in the first game segment.

·         Supply Trader raises the “Ship of Theseus” argument regarding the one leg he won’t replace.

·         Weapon Trade raises the arms race escalation just making things worse than better question.

 So my thoughts are:

·         We’re going to meet a 2A who has gone rogue or the Resistance Leader knew 2B before she had an 9S moment.  Maybe in a Tinman scenario from the original story where after the Tinman in Oz replace his entire body with tin someone went and put his fleshy body back together as a different person.

o   Accidentally had this maybe confirmed when I stopped playing.  I saw I was given an A2 card.

·         Mechemil head wearing Resistance Person is non-0% chance of being Kaina in disguise.

  The Desert

 Things of note:

·         The robots are noted, again, to be talking.  So until now they have been quiet.

·         They seem to only be anti-android

o   Note: robots near the resistance base seemed peaceful

o   Note: They are saying they are scared and want to kill the androids

·         The robots in the desert have seem to have gone “native” almost

·         The “Glory to mankind” speech is described as always “stiff”

·         Stumbled upon “Apologetic Machine”.  Text scrolled by super quick so it was hard to read what was being said.  Something about being apologetic that we found “this place”, that we will learn the truth, and that the truth will fill us with rage.  Also it blew itself up to help us with its scrap?

·         It was guarding a locked door

·         I’m really being reminded of the alleged post-Nier timeline where the Replicants became fully human even if they didn’t merge with their shades.  

·         In the pit:

o   One seemed to think it had a baby in a cradle

o   Another sounded like it thought it was a baby

o   A third was either a crawling baby or a dog

o   A few looked like they may have been trying to have sex

·         The robots want to kill the scary androids that never give up

·         Massive mechemil orgy leads to Sephiroth’s birth.  I feel like I missed a pacifist option here.

·         Get back to the Resistance Camp.  Nothing. Leave to get told all units must go save some units who have gone quiet, but look to still be alive.

Thoughts so far:

·         Robots are the “shades” of this Nier.  They’re humans or what are left of humans or a new species that is benign.  

·         Androids… could they be the invaders?  Replicants who look human vs “humans” who look like robots?

·         Countdown until I, 2B, is sentenced to death.

·         The one shop keep mentioned having replaced everything but his leg.  So that would make him entirely machine, entirely an Android.

·         The whole “Glory for mankind” stiffness might mean the speeches are recordings.  There may not be any natural humans left.

  Operation Rescue

 Things noted:

·         9S: Yo, we were made to look like humans.  That thing the robots made looked like us.  Why?

·         The robots in the amusement park all seem fine.  Even talkative.  They have shop keepers and warn that a section up ahead are broken an dangerous.

·         Tank was skippable.  

·         The Yorhas are now evil.  Hacked?

·         Beat the Opera Singer.  All the Androids had fried circuits.  Despite Nines saying he’d hack her, the death is sudden POD-mehameha to the torso.  Did I miss another pacifist branch?

·         Meet a robot thanking us.  It is waving a white flag.  Given a choice.

 The game is very much pushing the robots are good and it might be the androids are bad thing.  So I decided to trust the peace claiming robot. I figure either I’m doing what devs hope we’d do in the NG+ as the correct action or they’re hoping we go this route to trick us.  Either way it should be fun.

 So my thoughts after my first day playing this game:

·         2B, 9S and A2 will be the main characters in some way.

·         Humans are dead, save for possibly Emil.  All the machines look like him so I suspect he had a hand in creating them, and wasn’t he even stupidly long lived before becoming an animated skeleton?

·         Knowing the creator of this series and how the game seems to be setting up a forever war due to confusion I suspect the aliens, if they ever existed, are also dead.

·         Question is how engrained is this info.  Is 2B and 9S in danger of a triggering a wrathful response from a conspiracy if they discover this or is it hidden from near everyone?

 Post Script:          

At the end of this play session I’m very tempted to just give up on trying to remain spoiler free here.  After writing this, but before posting, YouTube threw at me a “Secret Ending (Letter) – TRUE EMIL FIGHT”.  It was a higher letter ending, Y I think?, so it isn’t a canon ending.  I’ve heard those are limited to A through E.  

Still, this means Emil is in the game.  Or something claiming to be him.  Like the A2 card it confirms some of my suspicions before I was probably meant to have them confirmed in-game.  So I think I might be on the right track here.  

[saanphoenix]

oops I meant do you think if sephiroth were still around would hojo try to get sephiroth and aerith to mate ( thats an embarrassing mistake

I knew there was something up with the wording just not exactly which part.

But, yeah. Like, had Aerith not gotten away from Shinra there is no doubt in my mind that Hojo would've tried to groom those two to make babies. Because that's just the most logical next step for him.

He used to think, like Gast, that Jenova was a Cetra. It wasn't until Ifalna that Gast learned their entire Jenova project was completely off base. Every little Cetra baby wasn't a Cetra baby but an alien baby. And then Hojo also learned this by hunting down Gast, Ifalna, and those tapes of theirs.

All that shit went down when Sephiroth was around 7, in the OG, btw. It's easy to forget a good chunk of Sephiroth's childhood was actually Gast heading the project with Hojo cackling like an idiot behind him...and Hollander wearing socks with sandals while drinking apple juice.

Anyway, once Hojo realizes his son isn't of the master race and is, in fact, the prodigy of an intergalactic parasite that wiped out the master race...we've got a bit of a problem, don't we? Sephiroth isn't perfect anymore, is he? He's a damn good specimen, and physically superior to all the other alien whoopsies they've made, but he's not a Cetra.

So we decide to train him to be a child soldier, in SOLDIER, and focus our efforts on Ifalna and Aerith and their built in mako radar.

But we ain't here to talk about that.

The what-if scenario is if 7-year-old Aerith DIDN'T get found by Elmyra and got dragged back to Shinra. And Hojo's logic would still lead him to the conclusion he comes to in the Remake--breed the half-Cetra with the best Jenova baby. Because what would their children be like?

I wanna know. I wanna know what would happen if you took Jenova's power and Cetra power and slammed them together into a tyke that has the most amazing hair and facial structure in the cosmos. I mean, I got theories. Lotsa people got theories. I imagine, especially if the kid was raised by Shinra, you'd end up with the antichrist. Or God.

Whereas I have an ethical bone in my body, Hojo does not. So I imagine that 14-year-old Sephiroth's life now becomes causing mass casualties in the Wutai war because he's a nuke in human clothing only to come home and have dinner dates with this 7-year-old Aerith girl he doesn't know and probably doesn't care for because she's SEVEN. She plays hide-and-seek for fun and he plays a much deadlier version for a living.

.......

But, like I said, Hojo doesn't have an ethical bone in his body, so best case scenario is that, over the course of a wee bit more than a decade, Sephiroth and Aerith become besties and the lovers they originally were in the rough drafts of VII's conception and then Hojo gets his God baby...and then Sephiroth stabs a bitch when he tries to claim the kid is now his property because like hell would Sephiroth be down with that.

Worst case scenario is just labeled "Trigger Warning".