#like idk guys. to me the locket thing doesn't feel like a dubious retcon at all

[sailing-ever-west]

I've seen several posts be like "lol uhh how did Sephiroth think Jenova was his mom when he literally had a picture of her and knows what she actually looked like, man I guess he was just really that sleep deprived haha" and like. Aside from the fact that this could easily be explained away with "he just discovered Hojo lied to him his entire life, obviously he wouldn't trust the picture he was given," I think we really need to talk about what Sephiroth believes is happening there, because it actually makes a lot of sense and I don't feel like it's a plot hole at all. Obviously his head is being messed with at that point so his blind faith in Jenova is probably not something he'd have in his right mind, but...let's just start with some images.

This is the picture of Lucrecia he was given as a child and told was "Jenova."

This is what Jenova looks like when he finds her.

I really don't understand how people are saying they look nothing alike just because Jenova has grey skin and a weird alien body or whatever. She clearly changed her appearance to imitate Lucrecia's facial features. And given Sephiroth knows she's some sort of otherworldly creature, the idea that she could've existed in a more human-looking form at one point is really not that far fetched. So although "he thinks Hojo was just lying before" is an easy explanation, the similarity in appearance probably confirmed for Sephiroth that the picture was real. This looks like it could've once been the woman in the photo.

So knowing his mother once looked like that (and if she did, it means she probably once lived a human-like life with a personality and free will, something like what he sees in his dreams), consider his thought process at discovering her looking like this.

Trapped in a tank partially conscious, attached to tubes and equipment, her arms ending in stumps past the shoulders as if she once had them and now doesn't. Some of the differences like the skin color and external strange body parts can be explained by non-human biology, but what I'm saying is...she looks like a mutilated victim of Hojo's experiments. And Sephiroth, knowing all too personally what Hojo is capable of, had every reason to believe that.

So while he was clearly "under the influence" when he found Jenova and then proceeded to go downright crazy, his belief that this really was his mother was honestly not illogical at all, and the emotions that would come with finally meeting her along with her being in this state would make him very ripe to reasonably snap.