propertyofcobra said:
Dectilon said:
"His reasoning (as far as I could tell) goes something like this: "Mommy is an alien. I have an oedipus complex. Therefore I must destroy earth with a meteor." That does not compute because Sephiroth is not portrayed as completely and utterly insane, he's portrayed as...a prettyboy with an oedipus complex who wants to destroy earth. That's his entire character."
Hah! You skipped a lot of text, didn't you? : D
My wife said something extremely similar, only sans the ": D". And while telling me how I was wrong and he did not in fact make a total 180 from "normal if slightly cold soldier" to "goddamned mamma's boy who wants to destroy the world and somehow become a god while doing so by sitting in the world's center" (because apparently you automatically harness life-force when you come in contact with it, I guess? Maybe that's why you level up in FF7...)
I'd love to be proven very wrong in that he's a very thin villain who really wasn't much more than a momma's boy who wanted to destroy the world because that's what final fantasy villains are supposed to do. I just haven't seen anything to really make me think otherwise.
Sidenote: Also, no, I didn't skip any of the text. I just found Sephiroth to be a shallow villain on the level of Ultimecia in FF8 (ANOTHER Final Fantasy endboss who's entire personality was "I'll become god by killing everyone ever. Cause that makes sense." At least she wasn't proving Freud right in that every powerhungry madman/woman wants to do his/her mom, unlike Sephiroth). Nothing against FF7, Great game and all. But Sephy was sucky and boring whenever he didn't nail garguntian snakes up on trees just to show how badass he is.
This is just my analysis of the character (I'll try to make it short so I don't hijack the thread, which is a great thread so far btw ^^): He was quite unstable from the beginning, mostly because he wasn't quite sure why he was so much stronger than anyone else. When he "finds out" that Jenova (which he has been led to believe is his mother's name) is in fact more of a beastie than anything else he completely loses his sense of self. To fill the gap he starts looking for his own origin in the library in the Shinra mansion and finds out about the Cetra, a race of... I dunno, zen buddhists that travel the vastness of space to find true enlightment. They came to Earth (or wherever they are in FF7) and stayed there for a while, but quite a few of the Cetra were weary from travelling and gave up the hopes of finding the Promised Land (which they are supposed to find once their pilgrimage ends... whenever that is) and settled down. They are the humans as they exist on that world. Sephy, having now filled the blanks in his own personality with illusions of being the only true Cetra left along with Jenova brands all humans traitors and goes off to find the means to:
- Punish the traitors.
- Find enough power that he and his mom can resume the pilgrimage through space.
...and to do that he decides to destroy the planet with Meteor, because when a planet is wounded it will try to heal itself, and apparently, with the help of Jenova whom is some sort of intergalactic parasite in reality, he can absorb the power by loitering at the planets core. With destroying the entire world he hopes to absorb all of it at once.
In "reality", his real mother was a a human and his dad the mad scientist Hojo. He WAS infused with Jenova cells however (whatever that means ~~) which is suggested to be the reason as to why it can speak to him and no-one else.
As for Ultimecia... Uh, she/it's even more complicated really. Once again, this is my take on her/it: Ultimecia is a creature split throughout time, and it doesn't like that one bit. By manipulating events in the past it hopes to compress time and thus reunite itself with... itself : P It possesses witches from all time periods, because just being a witch means having a part of Ultimecia in you. The Ultimecia you fight in the form of Edea is no less Ultimecia than the one you fight in the form of Rinoa at the end of the game, they are simply from different periods of time. GFs seem to stem from the will of Ultimecia as well, although involuntarily (because Riona's memory of Squall's lion ring Griever creates a for-real GF in the final battle). In it's final form it is sort of revealed that Ultimecia isn't an individual, but rather a sort of collected (and split) conciousness. That is my own interpretation from the fact that Ultimecia lacks a face while having her host body, Rinoa hanging from it's main body, using it simply as a power source to draw-cast her ultimate spell. After its defeat Squall is transported back to his childhood where he meets the young Edea and Rinoa/Ultimecia transfers her powers to her, making it possible for Future Ultimecia to control Edea in the present (that's how I interpereted it anyways). Why it was Rinoa/Ultimecia that tried the time compression trick and not some other incarnation I attribute to two things:
1: Rinoa was the strongest witch ever, in raw potential.
2: Being the strongest she was not 100% under Ultimecia's control and she tried to call out to Squall. This had the inadvertable effect that Ultimecia tried to draw the time periods together. Mostly because it wanting to become one with itself, but also because its Rinoa-part wanted to be reunited with Squall.
I read somewhere that the world originated when Ultimecia and some other creature created the world together in the dawn of time, but that they disagreed on some issues which eventually caused them to battle. Ultimecia killed the other guy, but she/it got smashed into pieces and sent across time. I haven't read this in the game anywhere though. I just saw this on some forum from someone who claimed to had read it somewhere. : P
Btw, isn't Heidegger from FF7 veeeeeeeery similar to Kefka? ~~
