#dcff7

Behold, the Dirge of Cerberus relationship chart from the 10th Anniversary Ultimania! And a zoom in on the connection between Hojo and Lucrecia. What's that word connecting them? Oh, that's 夫婦! I wonder what that means?

This isn't exclusive to the Compilation, either, because the only direct interaction between them that we see in the OG is this:

Dirge actually made their relationship worse than was implied in the OG by giving Lucrecia some internal conflict. She still literally fell into his arms, and when Vincent even implied that she should second guess her decision with the project by asking if she was sure, Lucrecia blew up at him.

Hojo is extremely fucked up, I'm not saying otherwise, but Lucrecia was an explicitly willing participant here. They're married. Stockholm Syndrome isn't real. Do I think she felt pressured? Absolutely! Who wouldn't, in her position? However, I don't think the pressure came expressly from Hojo. I think the majority of it came from academia.

We're talking about a woman whose mentor died in a lab accident directly related to her thesis—a thesis for which she was ridiculed, which included research conclusions that remained unproven, unclear, and even fantastical until decades later when Omega was awoken early. Lucrecia needed to be part of something that would cast off the shadow hanging over her after Grimoire's death. I can't imagine anyone in her position not jumping at the chance to work with Shinra's top researcher on something as big as the Jenova Project. Add in the fact that success on Project S would prove her work was better than that of two other scientists who were no doubt much more respected than her—the team on Project G, whose efforts had already resulted in failure—and there was literally no way she could pass up the chance.

If we really want to shift the blame for Lucrecia's decisions to someone else, it was actually Gast that headed up the project. He's the one that took Sephiroth as a baby, we know this because Sephiroth was born in 1977 and Hojo and Lucrecia both went on to work on Project 0 in the same year, so they must have been moved immediately after he was born.

Gast was the lead on the project, with Hojo and Lucrecia working below him as assistants, but I never see anyone implying that he may have pressured her into agreeing to serve as the incubator for Project S, even though that kind of thing literally happens all the time. (Check out the Hwang affair for a real-world incident from 2004 in which a top biotech scientist pressured female researchers on his team into using their reproductive potential in his scientific research.)

The issue with insisting that Hojo and Lucrecia weren't actually together is that it creates a cascading effect on interpretations of Lucrecia's character that simply don't do her justice. If Hojo—the other junior researcher on the project, not even her supervisor—forced her into everything, then she has literally no agency. She had no aspirations, because Hojo is the one that forced her to participate in the project. She had no expertise, because she wasn't brought onto the project to actually work on the research aspect. In fact, she had no part in the project at all aside from her term as an incubator. She's done nothing and is capable of nothing. Hojo forced her into everything, he must have, because she didn't want anything to do with him but still wound up doing whatever he told her to do. I've seen people going so far as to claim that she was sexually assaulted to produce Sephiroth, which is both offensive and ludicrous when you actually look at the source material.

In actuality, these two were married. They met through the project, they had similar goals, and strove to reach them together. And even years later, Hojo does have respect for her work! Against all odds, he respects her work as a scientist.

He didn't agree with her thesis, but he didn't strike it from the record when he got control of the department. Most importantly, he accepted her theories immediately when he realized what had actually happened to Vincent. No rejection, no denial, only shock—but he accepted that Lucrecia was right. According to Dirge, he trusted her work so much once it was proven that he decided to try a variation of her process on himself.

Before this, Hojo still had a photo of Lucrecia. Even after what happened in Nibelheim, even after she disappeared, he kept this lovely photo of his lovely wife, the only person who ever matched his intellect—even if he was correct in that she was overly emotional, often to her detriment—and he gave that photo to Sephiroth so that he'd have a photo of his real mother.

This is not at all how anyone, particularly someone as self-important as Hojo, would treat the memory of someone they manipulated and coerced and forced into helping them.

Lucrecia is complex. She's brilliant, she's got the same moral compass as all her coworkers, but she seems to be really self-aware of that fact: consider her line "you can't call me his mother" when talking about Sephiroth in the OG, the way she blew up at Vincent for questioning her decisions, the lengths she was willing to go to make up for her mistakes. She is utterly fascinating.

And she married Hojo for her own reasons, which I've discussed at length in the past. This was an intentional decision on her part. He didn't force her into anything. They were actually, 100 percent, together.

But, as usual, god forbid women do anything.

Terrible luck on stamps for this one (1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 2), particularly considering I didn't even need it at all. I just wanted to have it. Oh well.

Very funny is that this outfit literally doesn't fit Cloud, though.

The pantlegs are visibly too big. On Nero, the lower half of this bodysuit is extremely tight, formfitting enough to show muscle definition, because he's got massive legs due to the straitjacket forcing him to use them for everything. Cloud's legs are less impressive, so the pantlegs are loose.

The upper portion is almost completely formfitting, except for the sleeves. The sleeves are too big around the elbows, not the upper arms. It's like this was originally worn and broken in by someone whose frame was similar to Cloud's in overall breadth, but with noticeably longer arms. (Almost like, I dunno, Nero?)

Hot take, but I think this is what Vincent would wear as a Tsviet.

It's obviously modeled off Rebirth Galian—down to the pattern on his chest being modified from the metal embedded into Galian's—but it's just got major DeepGround vibes, particularly Nero and postcanon Genesis.

Although I gotta add that his little field model looks staggeringly like Grimoire from behind. Vincent why do you look like your dad.

Happy 20th Anniversary to Dirge of Cerberus!

12. What they do for their anniversary:

It takes them a while to figure out what the date of their anniversary even is, given that the process of them getting together was a bit complicated and it's hard to say exactly when it segued from platonic to romantic to polyamorous between the three of them. Once they all agree on a date, their anniversary is usually a small affair wherein they all take a day off and go do something together, often away from the public. They go sightseeing, hiking, spelunking, swimming—activities centric on experiencing things together, making memories rather than focusing on gifts or anything material. In the end, memories are all at least one of them is going to have, so this is really important.

13. Who makes a bigger deal of birthdays:

Genesis. Cloud is terrible at remembering dates and doesn't have strong feelings about birthdays either way, so he doesn't really care. Vincent would avoid acknowledging them altogether if he could; other people's birthdays are like a running tally until those people outgrow him or die, and celebrating his own is a bad joke considering he's always going to be twenty-seven.

For Genesis, birthdays are a chance to express to the people he loves how glad he is that they exist. He doesn't celebrate landmark ages—although in the far future he's the one that actually remembers Vincent's exact age, and knows what Cloud's would be if he were still alive—but rather the very fact that they were born in the first place. That's a mindset that even Vincent can eventually accept, although it doesn't help Cloud remember dates any better.

14. What nicknames they call each other:

Vincent doesn't really use nicknames. He'll use diminutive forms of a person's actual name, but that's different. Genesis is "Gen" a portion of the time, and "Rhapsodos" when he's being insufferable. In the far future as they both cycle through a rather excessive number of fake names to keep from drawing attention, Vincent will sometimes use any of the names he remembers to refer to Genesis, who responds in kind. (They tend to lean into the more ridiculous ones, leading Vincent to occasionally refer to Genesis affectionately as "Dr. Rothosis," to which Genesis will respond by calling him "Professor Ventfort" in a bad Old Junonese accent.)

Cloud is much the same as Vincent, although he takes even longer to do it. Vincent has been "Vince" since about halfway through the Crisis, sure, but Genesis isn't "Gen" until they've been living together for two years. He does eventually refer to Genesis on rare occasions as just "bird" or "feathers," much to Genesis' absolute delight. (He also sometimes calls him "wingding" but that's less appreciated.)

Genesis, though. Hoo-boy. "Love" is a big one, and he uses it indiscriminately for both Cloud and Vincent, alongside "darling." Cloud is also "pretty savior," "little wolf," and occasionally "my sunlit hurricane." Vincent is "blackbird," "heartsong" and (much more rarely) "my eternal midnight companion." He'll also use long one-off poetic titles here and there, less nicknames or petnames so much as dramatic descriptions that suit the situation in one way or another. He occasionally refers to Cloud and Vincent together as "the champion and the apocalypse," but in a very tongue-in-cheek way as if teasing someone by using their middle name. (Example: "If the champion and the apocalypse would condescend to bless me with their presence, dinner will be ready in less than ten minutes and no one has set the table." Vincent is the only one of them with a middle name, so this is a fair alternative.)

15. What they would change about each other:

If they could change anything, they would all unanimously make each other match with regard to lifespan, aging and mutation.

Cloud is mortal, ages at an extremely slow rate but does still age, may experience further mutation later in life but thankfully only in a way that will absolutely be concealable (if Cloud ever gets a wing he will be able to put it away the same as Genesis) and destructible. He'll live a long time, may change a little bit but will still have the capacity to look human, but he can be killed and someday he's going to die.

Genesis is immortal, doesn't age, will not experience any further mutations over time, but is probably still as destructible as his predecessors in the Planet's service—the first generation of Weapons that Avalanche fought during the Crisis. He'll live forever, he'll be more or less the same (physically) that entire time, but he can probably be killed in the right circumstances.

Vincent is immortal*, doesn't age, will experience further mutations over time as his human characteristics are overtaken and overwritten by the Weapon Lucrecia turned him into, and he's indestructible. He'll live forever, look less and less human as ages pass until no one would ever mistake him as such, and he can't be killed no matter how anyone or anything might try.

(*Vincent is still in possession of the immortality and powers afforded to him by Chaos even post-Dirge; it's Chaos' consciousness that returned to the Lifestream, relinquishing control of Vincent's body for good. We know this because Vincent was indicated to have been all but atomized stopping Omega from leaving, possibly even burning up on reentry like space debris, but eventually whatever was left of him recombined and remanifested in the cave where Chaos once slept, whole and complete and himself. Further, the OG ends with Nanaki making his way to Midgar 500 years post-Meteorfall, which we know is something he does yearly for the express purpose of meeting up with Vincent.)

If the three of them could change anything, it would be to make it so they were all the same in this capacity—whatever that might look like—so they wouldn't be inevitably separated. Unfortunately, that's never been in the cards.