#sephcanons

THIS GOES SO FUCKING HARD THOUGH

Hojo did horrific things to Aerith, Cloud, and Zack. There is no argument there. Vincent, Nanaki, Lucrecia, Gast, and Ifalna were also his victims, and every single one of them is justified in hating him.

But they were not his child. Sephiroth was. And that distinction matters.

Sephiroth was in Hojo’s custody from before birth and remained under his control longer than any other victim. He was experimented on in utero, then subjected for years to extreme physical and psychological torture to test the limits of SOLDIER endurance: pain inflicted deliberately and repeatedly, not as collateral damage, but as the point. Because Sephiroth was biologically different, those experiments were harsher and more invasive, driven by Hojo’s sadistic curiosity.

That’s not even touching the lifelong emotional abuse: lying to him about his mother, denying him any real family, leaking his private information to the media, and ensuring he could never leave Shinra or exist as anything other than a weapon. Sephiroth’s entire identity was engineered and controlled. People who make those comparisons about Aerith, Cloud, etc, often failed to take in account what Sephiroth REALLY went through and only look at his surface traits.

Yes. Hojo harmed many people. Sephiroth was the endgame and the answer to the Reunion Theory, even there Sephiroth was used. Sephiroth is the final product of Hojo’s ambition. The one who never escaped and ultimately never got a chance at a life outside exploitation.

You can acknowledge all of Hojo’s victims without flattening the reality that Sephiroth was his greatest one. Hojo may have loved his son in a twisted, self-serving way, and may even have protected him at times, but that doesn’t negate the fact that he was also Sephiroth’s primary abuser, and the architect of who Sephiroth ultimately became.

Recognizing that doesn’t excuse Sephiroth’s actions. It explains them once you look beyond the 'cool villain' trope.

@nightmateria lol this is not the fanart I was talking about in my post but it is certainly one of the Seph wips I decided to finish 😅

I may have an obsession with those time travel fics where AC Cloud tries to murk CC Sephiroth, but is dismayed to find that his nemesis pre-nibelheim was basically a wet cat with clinical depression. And then Cloud's like Oh No He's Pathetic. I Cannot Kill Him.

(And then they make out- whaaat, who said that)

Note: I put him in a sweatshirt cause I wanted him to be comfy

I think it's one thing to recognise the fact that he is a tragic character and, before Nibelheim, was as 'nice' as he could've turned out considering his circumstances (especially when compared to someone with a similar background like Homelander). But it's a whole other topic when I see people referring to him as an actively good person, let alone a hero.

Remember- he was a WEAPON. Yes, he looked out for his comrades, yes, he absolutely has a lot of vulnerable layers to him and was a victim of Shinra groomed into becoming what he did. But he's also someone who was killing innocent people long before Nibelheim, even a key player in genocide (Rhadore) and colonialism (Wutai). He killed children without mercy, because that was what he had been trained to do. I think part of the tragedy is that Sephiroth never had the chance to be a good person- the potential was there, that's without a doubt, but he never actually was one.

He's effectively a biological weapon raised by and leashed to Shinra. He never really had a choice in what he was going to be. Regardless, no truly good person kills innocent people, or takes part in fucking GENOCIDE- I think that is a very basic thing we can all agree on. Especially since he wasn't killing for some greater good, or even because he was convinced Shinra was right- it was simply because that was how he was raised.

I consider this one of my pet peeves because it almost feels like a woobification of the character. The tragedy of Sephiroth is NOT that he was a real hero who fell from grace, it's that he was never given a chance to be anything more than a killing machine or a tool for Shinra. It's just that, instead of killing the innocents that Shinra orders him to attack, Sephiroth has grown more obedient to his rage than the company that created him. The 'personality shift' in Nibelheim was not a shift at all. He was simply doing what he'd been raised to do, because how else was a living weapon like him going to express his rage if not acting like a living weapon?

Note 1: And no, 'he was just following orders' is not an excuse, just an explanation. Nor does it suddenly turn him into a good person. Vash the Stampede is one of the best examples of a fictional character that tries to encompass what it means to be good imo, someone who refrains from taking life wherever possible. Sephiroth was raised to take it and never managed to overcome or defy that.

Dissidia Duellum Seph in modern wear! He looks so chill.