My hot take: Genesis Rhapsodos isn't a theater kid. He's an insecure literary scholar and a scientist.
I think a lot of people equate LOVELESS with Shakespeare, when it would be far more accurate to equate it to something like The Iliad, which is also an ancient epic poem. Much like real life scholars, Genesis has likely studied that poem in its original language and spent years mulling over correct translations and the writer's intended meanings. When he acts the poem out as if it's real, he's doing the same thing many Greek literature scholars do when they try to parse through the Iliad to find the potential historical truths behind the myth.
When Genesis quotes from LOVELESS, he's comparing himself to the hero, which would be the same as a real life defected soldier quoting the Iliad to compare themselves to Achilles. Genesis comparing Sephiroth and Angeal to the two friends in LOVELESS is the equivalent of that soldier comparing their comrades to Agamemnon and Odysseus.
Genesis' apparent flare for the dramatic is just how you deliver lines from epic poems about war. We're only given a few lines from LOVELESS and not an entire epic, but The Iliad has somewhere around 15,000 lines and in reality LOVELESS would be comparable. There would be great battles and tragic losses, and extremely memorable quotes meant to convey the emotions of those events. When Genesis quotes LOVELESS he's not just saying words, he's evoking the emotions a native of his world would feel upon hearing what are likely very familiar quotes many of them read in high school.
This is especially relevant to Zack, Angeal, and Sephiroth. Like the Iliad, LOVELESS is about three friends and their battles. It's a war epic, and its story would be especially poignant to warriors like the four First Class SOLDIERs.
Genesis quotes LOVELESS throughout Crisis Core to convey to Angeal and Zack his feelings and intentions because Angeal and Zack would be familiar with the themes of the epic. Everyone would, it's popular enough to have a Golden Saucer version and have Loveless Avenue named after it in Midgar. I think there's a spot in one of the Ultimanias that describes Genesis as keeping to himself and not really enjoying the company of anyone besides Sephiroth and Angeal, which means communication is probably NOT his strong point. If it was, he would have been able to communicate long before Crisis Core that he sees Sephiroth as a good friend and doesn't personally blame him for his own insurmountable envy. So he would communicate the best way he knows: through quotes from a story whose meanings Zack and Angeal SHOULD understand, a story that Genesis has spent most of his life studying and is comfortable pulling from.
Being able to convey the feelings of this war epic would also contribute greatly to his ability to inspire so many SOLDIERs to defect with him. He has studied his world's oldest and most prominent story of war and victory front to back for years, he has well-known heroes to pull inspiration from.
It's also entirely possible that LOVELESS is the only reason Genesis idolized Sephiroth in the first place. By all accounts, he was consumed with studying the epic from a young age, which would have molded his view of The Warrior(tm) as being the ultimate masculine archetype. During this time, nobody would embody that archetype more than Shinra's emerging hero. I'd argue Genesis isn't even trying to be or beat Sephiroth, he's just chasing the Warrior archetype and is unaware he's achieved it because he cannot see himself from an outside perspective, and so Sephiroth simply embodies it more in his eyes.
Genesis is also credited with creating a process for offering Banora White juice for worldwide distribution, even though the so-called Dumbapples grow sporadically with no way to predict when a crop will be available. This means he pioneered the means to contain and seal a perishable food product, while keeping it safe to disperse for consumption even throughout times when there isn't a fresh harvest to pull from. When Zack finds the scrapbook that has this agricultural award noted in it, there are also multiple trophies and certificates in the background, meaning this wasn't a one-off achievement. If we assume Genesis joined SOLDIER to be a hero like Sephiroth while he was a teenager, that means he earned these achievements as a CHILD.
While the initial lack of healing was what allowed Hollander to manipulate Genesis into defecting--and remember, Genesis was only in his early twenties at most while Hollander had years of experience in manipulation for Shinra--degradation very likely began affecting him on every level including mental. As Genesis' perception of the world began to break away, he undoubtedly had a "come to Jesus" type moment where the existence of a goddess who could save him gave him hope while he was actively dying. Every road he went down was a dead end, he was rotting from the inside out and there was nothing he could do. So he fixated on the story he was so familiar with in an almost religious sense, convincing himself that the epic tale of heroes had to be true and that if he could just follow its blueprint he might have a chance at life.
So no, Genesis Rhapsodos isn't a "theater kid." He's a highly educated scholar of the human condition in times of war. He's a scared young man who is dying through no fault of his own, desperate to bring order out of chaos and give some meaning to what's happening to him because "this just happens" can't be all there is to it. He is mentally degrading and praying that a goddess who can help him does exist, acting out the only script he knows where a deity happens to give a shit about a mortal.
vaporwave
germansingergirl
prguitarman
andulkaphoto
theartofmadeline
dededos
baratheonpilled
