#my mind is absolutely blown

[erandraws]

I still haven’t recovered from Imogen getting advantage on an animal handling check for riding Gloamglut because she is a FUCKING HORSEGIRL

[getvalentined]

Content warnings on this post: Pregnancy and its associated biological weirdness, premature birth, seizures, fleeting mention of suicide, and my favorite character in the entire world getting shot. Discretion is advised.

So I've been trying to figure out a way to calculate roughly what point in Lucrecia's pregnancy her big seizure occurred, leading to Vincent confronting Hojo and getting shot. We know it was in 1977, and I've always assumed it was fairly late (because Sephiroth was probably born on Christmas, see link above for justification), but there's not actually much of anything in canon to confirm or refute this assumption.

Only, actually, it turns out that there is. It's so far off the path of things that are common knowledge that it's fallen off the edge of the continent, but it's there.

This is...very long, but please bear with me, because this is the best example of the timeline of this series being staggeringly internally consistent that I've ever seen.

Lucrecia's seizure was caused by Jenova, because it's super similar to the seizures Cloud has in Advent Children. This is weird, because while not stated in the games, there is a very specifically phrased blurb in the Crisis Core Complete Guide stating that Lucrecia was never personally exposed to Jenova cells while carrying Sephiroth:

[Description in alt text. Credit to jeange1231 and Shinra Archaeology on the bird app.]

Given that we don't have in-series canon that contradicts this, I have no issue with accepting it's canonicity. (This is what meta is for. Filling in gaps. Not contradicting the actual games.)

So the zygote/fetus that eventually became Sephiroth was treated in utero, with the assumption that it wouldn't spread to Lucrecia. I won't go into detail on the science here, but it makes sense that Gast and Co. made this assumption, given the existence of the placental barrier and the fact that Project S took place in the late 1970s, when we didn't understand these things as well as we do now. (We still do not understand them very well but that's neither here nor there.)

Cell migration between mother and child is a known phenomenon that isn't well understood, but occurs in a staggering number of pregnancies—it may occur in all pregnancies and simply not persist, but in humans it's been shown to persist for decades. (Basically everything I say about this is going to come from the paper linked above.) In humans it's known to occur no earlier than 10 weeks into a pregnancy. The paper doesn't seem to indicate the latest point it's known to occur in humans, which is interesting, but even if it only takes place for a very limited amount of time, that doesn't throw this off in the slightest.

According to the blurb above, Lucrecia canonically experienced cell migration, essentially being infected with Jenova by the unborn Sephiroth, but not in such a way that anyone caught it—or at least not until it was too late. If the cell migration itself was the event responsible for the seizure that pushed Vincent to confronting Hojo, that means that Sephiroth absolutely couldn't have been born in 1977, much less on Christmas. Vincent was shot no earlier than October 13th, and cell migration occurs around 10-12 weeks.

But the seizure didn't happen at 10-12 weeks. It couldn't have—Sephiroth's strain of Jenova is unique in that it responds to his will specifically. Without his will, it's not really active, which we see all throughout the Compilation. Cloud only wakes up at the end of Crisis Core around the time that Sephiroth starts calling for Reunion, and he's not cognizant until that call is loud enough to start drawing other Clones out of hiding; likewise, he appears to be in remission between Meteorfall and the events of Advent Children, at which point he starts having seizures of his own in response to Sephiroth gathering enough power to pull at his strings for the first time in years.

Fetal brain development kicks into high gear at the onset of the third trimester, roughly 28 weeks into a traditional 40 week pregnancy. (Interestingly, in mice, cell migration only seems to occur 2 weeks into a pregnancy, which is the equivalent of the onset of the third trimester because lab mice have a total gestational period of about 3 weeks.)

The third trimester is the point when Sephiroth began to have a will with which to pull at the unique strain of Jenova cells that had migrated from him to Lucrecia. With that in mind, we can say with a decent level of confidence that Lucrecia's seizure took place in the third trimester, around 26-28 weeks in.

And here's where it all comes together.

Assuming that Sephiroth was born on Christmas of 1977, at or close to full term (38-40 weeks), this would put his conception around the end of March. If he was conceived at the end of March, do you know when the third trimester starts?

The first or second week of October.

The earliest date that Vincent could have been shot is October 13th, 1977, because he was 27 years old at the time, and he was born in 1950. Hojo shot Vincent when he confronted him about Lucrecia's seizure.

I'd always had the headcanon that Sephiroth was premature, but taking actual human gestation into account—combined with the nature of Lucrecia's seizure and the confirmation that her strain of Jenova comes from Sephiroth specifically via cell migration—makes this line up so perfectly that I have to admit that this headcanon is directly refuted by actual canon. Sephiroth may have been a week or two early, but not enough to worry. He was a perfectly healthy baby, born at a perfectly acceptable term.

And he was born on Christmas, because he was conceived in late March, because Lucrecia's seizure happened around the onset of the third trimester, which occurred in early to mid-October, which is the earliest possible timeframe that Vincent could have been shot for confronting Hojo about it.

This is so internally consistent that the real world facts and features of human gestation line up without causing a single wave. I'm losing my fucking mind.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

[wheredidthe80sgo]

I just found out that sid vicious and robert smith both played with siouxsie and the banshees at some point

[moldspace]

when i was brainstorming this fundraiser my absolute most optimistic, pie-in-the-sky dream was to break a thousand dollars raised. i thought probably i'd manage to raise five or six hundred bucks. but i just donated almost TWO THOUSAND dollars to trans continental pipeline!!! i honestly can't believe it! thank you ALL for the sticker purchases, likes, and reblogs - this is all YOU GUYS!!! i know the future is uncertain and scary, but hopefully we've just helped to make it a little less scary and a little less difficult for someone (or many someones) who need the help that TCP offers.

there's also still time to buy a sticker if you want to help break that $2k mark!! i'll still be donating all money made off the remaining sticker stock to TCP as they sell <3

[imperatorrrrr]

oh my god. Luke Hughes is grown up Ben.

oh my god.

OH MY GOD.

i don't really go here yet & so have no place to speak my truth and be heard so here i am to spread the word. idk where you're from so a tiny bit of research may be necessary to understand this but. To Me. jack hughes is karen from outnumbered in her final form. they are one soul. pls understand how pressing the need to share this knowl is to me

anon I so dearly wish i understood the reference but i don't. booting up bbc iplayer as we speak and i Will circle back to this but in the meantime i hope someone else is able to appreciate this piece of knowledge

[aquareegia]

THE FUCKING GOOSEBUMPS I JUST GOT HEARING THIS, HOLY SHIT!!! (source)

[hellonearthtoday]

Made up version of Curly Shepard I've created in my head

(its just a bunch of headcanons)

- He has traces of New York in his accent. I can NOT explain and I won't because I don't know man, they're from New York to me and idk why they came to mf Oklahoma but they did

- Curly isn't very brave. Most of the things he does that come off as "brave" are just acts of stupidity that he plays off as him being really brave and cool (He didn't think about the consequences of his actions beforehand and now he's malding about them)

- Wouldn't recognize his own emotions if he was forced to write a 10 page paper on them and also because he'd bribe Ponyboy to write the essay for him. And then he'd skim the essay and go "this is wrong 🤨"

- Growing undiagnosed BPD just trust me bro and maybbeee autism too

- Worst case of resting bitch face in the entire world. While Ponyboy just kinda looks 😐 all the time, Curly just has this untreatable tension line in his eyebrows and he looks angry all the time. But his eyes are 90% always wide open he just cannooot fix his damn eyebrows. It plagues him in his sleep too and he has to manually relax his face and he's always like Damn almost forgot 😌

- He really loves the feeling of getting money. He loves money so much. Someone tell this guy what a job is

- He's not really too interested in learning, or at least he THINKS he's not, but that's because nothing they ever teach at school is interesting to him so he's come to the conclusion that learning is stupid and he'll stick to doing sick wheelies in his car

- On this note. If Curly was introduced to forensic science he would absolutely eat that shit up. He would love everything to do with more morbid topics, because it's just intrinsically not boring. Like stages of decomposition? Fire. he has dreams of stumbling across a dead body and being able to identify the stage of decomposition it's in.

- He would definitely like the grosser side of forensic science, like the biological aspects. Morbid teenage boy with hidden potential locked away because they don't typically teach forensic science in the basic curriculim 😓

- His voice is pretty smooth but to counteract it he talks really harshly, and also just isn't a wordsmith. He's really straightforward and he's not really good at clever jokes or teasing and he kind of talks like he's a background villain grunt in a pokemon game

[micaiahsdawn]

FEH CONFIRMED ELIHEC CANON?????

[hairtusk]

vinted love recommending me absolutely insane items but ... a copy of the hobbit in CORNISH ????

[heeambi]

LOL found out a 12 year old was reading my fics like WHY?

WHATT?? that's so insane 😭😭

[bluhbleeblah]

okay, if they JUST got married, how long have Shayne and Courtney been together with NO ONE realizing????

they way they've kept this so private is so impressive 😭

[exxiion]

Casually beautiful scene from my apartment window on Floor 15

Gee I hope nothing happens to this TWHL Tower Source

[burdock-root]

This is the previously unreleased track that Animal Collective made for Red Dead Redemption in 2010, but it was never used.

[tsuchinokoroyale]

Was soooooo happy with this phase 1 which is what made it so much funnier that I was immediately clapped by his phase 2 😂

[bogos-bint3d]

Post that has rerouted my brain

[fellowfights]

I don't have many fears, but a big one for me is the fear that a large streamer or youtuber plays Disco Elysium and introduces it to people with no reading comprehension skills.