Of Zack Fair, Genesis Rhapsodos And The Strange Narrative POV Of FFVII-Crisis Core (Part Va)

Of Zack Fair, Genesis Rhapsodos and the strange narrative POV of FFVII-Crisis Core (Part Va)

Part I: https://buffaloborgine.tumblr.com/post/650462647672766464/of-zack-fair-genesis-rhapsodos-and-the-strange 

Part IV conclusion: https://buffaloborgine.tumblr.com/post/658109128619802624/of-zack-fair-genesis-rhapsodos-and-the-strange 

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Warning: As always, I copy paste this warning over and over just in case you ignore it and keep reading down. “This series is very controversial, it may not fit with what you know or remember about Crisis Core. So please, read the former parts (I did put the link to Part I in case you are new reader) before putting your foot further down below.”  P/s: I welcome all kind of discussion. I love discussion. But this subject is an OBJECTIVE subject, please make sure to keep your bias and prejudice out of discussion, also, I don’t welcome character dissing or using fallacies in arguments, thank you.  ______________________________________

Do you sometimes find that when you are focusing on a scene in a movie, suddenly the screen goes black, and then you couldn’t remember all the details that appear on the screen just several seconds before it? 

Or when you focus your sight too much on an object in front of you, you cannot see clearly what is going around the two sides of your face? Or when you focus too much on an event happening, you lose your attention on the other events happening in the background?

These are normal phenomena happen with your brain when you force it to focus on something, either it’s your temporal memory or your peripheral senses, they all cause you to lose grasp on the events or details happening in the background of a scenario. 

And believe it or not, the writers/directors of FFVII, especially Crisis Core, know that you love Zack so much, that you will simply focus on him, without paying attention to what’s going on in the background. I did say this in the other parts, but I have to repeat it here, in case you forget about it.

So, in this part, we will talk about another problem in the narrative of Crisis Core. Since I don’t have a proper definition for it, I will simply call it… 

Desyncing Information. 

Do you feel like there are some certain information that you should have seen/read at a certain scene in the game, but instead, you get it a lot sooner, or a lot later than it should be given to you?  Well, that’s exactly the problem here. 

The first detail I want to point out is the “four years” information that was given to you through Aerith’s letter at the end of Crisis Core. It gave you the knowledge that Zack and Cloud has been stuck in the underground laboratory for approximately four years since the event of Nibelheim. 

So, what’s the matter to it? 

While focusing on Zack, you didn’t realize that Genesis’ degradation didn’t even change at all through out all four years, you can see clearly that in Nibelheim, Genesis was greyed from his head to his chest, and during the scene on the bridge, it stayed the same.  According to the 10th Anniversary Ultimania, the time that the incident in the training room was midsummer [ μ ] - εγλ 0000. We see Genesis started to get greyed by the degradation was on April 2nd, [ ν ] - εγλ 0001, during the event of Modeioheim, less than one year since he got the injury. 

And after that, we see him changed from half greyed to fully greyed, if we count from the time Zack met him after breaking out of the laboratory, December 19th  [ ν ] - εγλ 0006, then the time we see him fully greyed, is on September  [ ν ] - εγλ 0007, in Banora Underground.  

Without the “four years” information, you would normally think that his degradation is not weird, because you assume that it only took Zack less than one year to break out of the laboratory. But now you realize that huge time gap of 4 years, and Genesis just stayed the same.  Don’t you find it weird that those four years that Genesis’s degradation stayed the same is also the four years that Zack is stuck in the laboratory?  Could there be any relation between Zack and Genesis’ degradation?  Welp, at first, we literally see nothing relating between them, but if you consider one factor, that Zack is the only one chasing and killing Genesis’ copies, then there may be something.  Remember that to create those copies, Genesis literally cuts off his cells and give them to his followers. My theory is that, if the connection between Genesis and his copies are kind of similar to the connection between Angeal and the A-copies, then Genesis would have a part of him inside each of the G-copies. Therefore, it works like the hocruxes in Harry Potter, each copy carries one part of Genesis, so when they die, Genesis get weakened. And without anyone going around killing the copies during those 4 years, Genesis doesn’t degrade more. 

So… that’s it, for the first section of part V.  I will see you in the next section. 

(do you remember what Genesis was holding in his hand during the first time Zack encountered him in Banora?)  _____________________________________ Part Vb: 

AeriSeph Week Day 1 Prompt: Conflict/Connection 💞

Aerith x Sephiroth - Separate Ways (Conflict x Connection)

My submission for AeriSeph Week 2021 Event for Day 1 Prompt's theme which is Conflict / Connection.

"And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." ~ Kahlil Gibran

This is inspired by a fanfic I read where Aerith and Sephiroth are lovers but due to the circumstance when Sephiroth learned about Project S and Jenova, he began to change. He became fixated on his desire to become god which leads to their separate ways.

Despite of that, Aerith knows deep in her heart that the real Sephiroth is not like that. Through all the times they've been together, she holds deep inside that no matter what, she will never give up for the both of them and of course for the Planet.

Before Sephiroth's crisis began, she already heard voices from the Planet about the "sleepless nights" he had. It made her worry about the premonitions she has been seeing in her dreams about him that she would always pray to the Planet to give her the guidance she needs to prevent it from happening.

So the main theme of this head canon of mine is that despite the conflict they had due to external circumstances, their connection with each other still remains. They both know that they love each other, only that, Sephiroth forgets because of his "crisis".

Aerith keeps on telling him that "Love will find him and will break the chains that bind him" because she has faith for the both of them.

And she keeps on telling him too that, "You know I still love you though we touched and went our separate ways."

And in the end, Love Wins 💖

📩 I uploaded this video in my YouTube Channel.

💌 Please check it out!

💐 Thank You! 💐

#AeriSephWeek2021 #AeriSephWeek #aerisephweek2021 #aerisephweek

Nice! 👏👏👏

Of Zack Fair, Genesis Rhapsodos and the strange narrative POV of FFVII-Crisis Core (Part IIIa)

Part I: https://buffaloborgine.tumblr.com/post/650462647672766464/of-zack-fair-genesis-rhapsodos-and-the-strange

Part II conclusion: https://buffaloborgine.tumblr.com/post/653809930861674496/of-zack-fair-genesis-rhapsodos-and-the-strange 

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Warning: Sincerely, this part takes on a very controversial route. Please read the previous parts first before reading further on this part. (I did have the link to part I in case you are new reader)

Also, please keep an open mind when you read this. I appreciate any kind of discussion about theories, but please, try to keep your bias out when we discuss on an objective subject. Thank you. 

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Before we get to the main problem of this part, let me introduce you to a term that maybe you have heard somewhere before: the Rashoumon effect. 

The Rashomon effect is a term related to the notorious unreliability of eyewitnesses. It describes a situation in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved. 

This is a kind of effect that is used very frequently in detective stuffs, as a way to fool the audiences, driving them away from the main problem, the objective truth.

Why am I telling you about this? Well, in many Japanese stuffs, ranging from movies, books to games, no matter what the genre is, the Rashoumon effect is utilized to create plot twists. And of course Rashoumon effect is also used in FFVII as well. 

Take one example, the Deepground incident in Dirge of Cerberus. While Vincent and the WRO believed that Weiss is the one leading Deepground at that time, and we don’t even get to know the truth that Nero is the real leader of Deepground until Vincent and Yuffie finally barged in the throne hall in Reactor 0. It’s just one of the clearest example of the Rashoumon effect in FFVII. And if you have read the other parts of this theory series, you may see the pattern of Rashoumon effect in both events that I have pointed out: the Genesis’s parents’ grave and the Seven Wonders. 

So, let’s move onto our main problem this time. 

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The Mails. 

One of the strangest systems that occurred in Crisis Core, is the mail system, 

Zack can access the mails through his phone, along with many other systems like Materia Fusion, Equipment, Shop, DMW, Mission and some others. 

Problem with the Mails is that, reading one mail from one person may give you a contradictive information to the info you took from the mail of another person, and it even contradicts with the details you discovered in places around the game. Because mails are written according to the view point of the writers, will get confused with many info that the mails provide. 

However the worst problem with the mails is that Zack only receives the mails, he never answers them. We never see Zack point of view in this, which in turn, forcing us to use our own point of view to examine the information given by the mails. 

Here, I want to discuss the reliability of one of the most well-known CC mails: the 1sts’ fanclubs’ mails. 

Keepers of Honor 

Fanclub of Angeal, the group releases mails that provide “unauthorized” info about Angeal’s profile. While there is not much to take from the mails of Keeper of Honor, there is one particular mail we have to look into. 

“Angeal Fan Club Newsletter 313

Today’s update features a conversation between Angeal and Genesis.

G: You’d better do something about those plants in your room.

A: Those plants represent nature. Some of us converse with nature to hone our spirit and honor.

G: And some of us are getting bugs in our rooms because of those blasted things.

A: Come on. Don’t you remember? We used to have bugs in our rooms all the time when we were kids.

G: That’s why I hate them. And the past? It can stay there. We’re in Midgar. We’re not supposed to have nature here.

City-born Genesis, and nature-lover Angeal: so completely different, yet friends all the same.” 

Just when Zack came to Fort Tamblin with Angeal, Angeal told Zack about the dumbapple. And one those lines is: 

Angeal confirmed that Genesis, his childhood friend grew up with him in Banora. But in the mail above, the Keeper of Honor believes that Genesis is “city-born”. Although the word itself can be understood in two ways, one is “born in the city” and the other is “having city life style”, if you first read into it, you will immediately think that they mean Genesis is born in the city, which is not true, the other meaning may fit with the situation more, perhaps? So we could agree with them that Angeal loves nature and Genesis has a city lifestyle, thus, Genesis gets annoyed with nature, right? 

Guess what? When Zack found out Genesis’s diary, the info may get contradictive. 

Consider the fact that Genesis won an award for inventing the Banora White Apple juice, it means that he has to have a great love for nature, especially the apple trees and the fruit to actually spend time to invent a the juice. 

This info and Angeal’s confirmation contradicts with the info given by the mail from Keeper of Honor. This means the fanclubs’ mails themselves are just sources with medium liability, especially when the fanclub of one person wrote about a different person in the trio. Besides, the event described in the fanclubs’ mails may not even exist, because in Keeper of Honor’s mails, those are “unauthorized” Angeal’s profile. 

In conclusion, by not showing Zack’s replies to the mails to the players, Crisis Core forced the players to check the reliability of the mails given to Zack through their own perception, not everything written in the mails are true because they are affected by the POV and biases of the ones giving them out. 

I think that’s enough for the beginning of this part, we will continue on the other ambiguous mails in the next parts. Thanks for coming to my Ted-Talk and have a nice day. 

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Part IIIb: 

Of Zack Fair, Genesis Rhapsodos and the strange narrative POV of FFVII-Crisis Core (Part IVa)

Part I: https://buffaloborgine.tumblr.com/post/650462647672766464/of-zack-fair-genesis-rhapsodos-and-the-strange 

Part IV preface: https://buffaloborgine.tumblr.com/post/656609254197936128/of-zack-fair-genesis-rhapsodos-and-the-strange  ___________________________________ 

Warning: As always, I copy paste this warning over and over just in case you ignore it and keep reading down.  “This series is very controversial, it may not fit with what you know or remember about Crisis Core. So please, read the former parts (I did put the link to Part I in case you are new reader) before putting your foot further down below.” P/s: I welcome all kind of discussion. I love discussion. But this subject is an OBJECTIVE subject, please make sure to keep your bias and prejudice out of discussion. Thank you.  ___________________________________

A 1st class SOLDIER deserted, taking a handful of 2nd and 3rd class SOLDIERs with him, the mass desertion was so devastating that it crippled the SOLDIER department. But… 

A young man strives forwards with all he can, hoping one day he would be recognized as the “Hero” only to realize that… 

An ambiguous email from the leader of the department, talking with encrypted words… 

The “Hero” who has the privilege to veto orders… 

When everything falls apart, just comfortably throws the blame on someone you has prejudices about, no matter if that is right or wrong. 

What you see may just be the tip of the iceberg.  The question is…  Who is the one that should take the blame? 

1. Zack sees life through rose colored glasses 

Zack’s POV in the beginning of the game gives you an important perspective to examine. It’s his naivete.  Shinra is good.  Sephiroth is his hero.  Angeal is his honorable mentor, who can do no wrong.  Genesis is… an asshole deserter who took a bunch of 2nds and 3rds with him, crippling the department, in other word, Genesis is a traitor in Zack’s eyes.  At the start, to Zack, the world is just white and black, the good and the bad. He has no concept of the in between, the grey zone. 

When Zack first started to join SOLDIER, his goal is to become the “Hero” as he was inspired by the heroic figure, Sephiroth. At the end of Crisis Core, before you fought Genesis in Banora Underground, you also realized that Genesis used to be like Zack, inspired by the “heroic Sephiroth”.

Then what about the other SOLDIERs in the department? How many of them are like that? Inspired by this one “heroic” Sephiroth to join in SOLDIER?

Do you start to feel like this is is similar to fishing with a bait? 

And I know you guys reading up to this point may think that “Yeah, we all know Shinra is evil, what’s the problem with them using Sephiroth as a bait to lure in young men to join SOLDIER?”  Well, congratulation, you hit the right spot. That’s exactly what I want to speak about.  Why do you feel comfortable with that information? 

While you think you are not under the effect of Zack’s POV, the sad news is, you are. Because, you didn’t realize that you too, are being comfortable with just knowing about it but doing nothing.  You see Zack at the protagonist of the story, he is on the right side, which in this case, is on Shinra’s side. So then anything that opposes Zack, or opposes Shinra, must be wrong, no?  No matter how you deny it, saying that you know Shinra is evil, when you start playing Crisis Core, you subconsciously adapt to Zack’s POV, thus, you start brushing off minor, complex and ambiguous details that could rival your belief.

This leads to the next problem that we have to discuss. 

2. Unfairness and Inequality in SOLDIER

So according to Genesis’s diary in Crisis Core and Tifa’s memory in Trace of Two Past, we get the information about Sephiroth has been famous as the “Hero” since he was very young. 

We don’t know the exact date in the diary that Genesis wrote that line “the hero Sephiroth” but we know for sure that he and Angeal joined SOLDIER from when they are still in their teenage years, because Crisis Core began in [ μ ] - εγλ 0000, at that point, Genesis, Angeal and Sephiroth are just 20 years old. So they have to be working in SOLDIER for years before that, for Angeal and Genesis to reach 1st class rank. Therefore we can assume that Genesis and Angeal must have joined SOLDIER in their teenage years.  

The Trace of Two Pasts novel gives us the info that when Tifa was 6 or 7 years old, her mother compared Cloud to Sephiroth, saying that Cloud could be even more beautiful than Sephiroth. Tifa is born in  [ μ ] - εγλ 1987 and Sephiroth is born in  [ μ ] - εγλ 1980, according to the FFVII Timeline on the wikia (if you found any source stating differently from this, please let me know), so we can tell that Sephiroth was just 13-14 years old when he was already hailed as the “hero”, for he was well-known amongst people not in Midgar. 

Even if Sephiroth is truly strong that he can solo defeat many Wutai soldiers at once, but since war is never a solo effort, if Sephiroth fought in one battlefield, there has to be other SOLDIER group fighting on different battlefields during Wutai War, right? 

Then, where are they?  You can say that Sephiroth is a “hero” of one battlefield, but you can’t say that he is the “hero” of a whole war. Even in a possibly mythical war like the Trojan war, there can’t just be one hero. 

We know for sure that it’s not “Sephiroth soloing the whole Wutaian army” because in Dirge of Cerberus online section, we know that Shinra has like 13 SOLDIER Units working during the Wutai war, with the exception of 14th SOLDIER Unit, the Lost Force.   So… if Sephiroth can really solo the whole battle out on his own, according to Shinra hailing him as he only “Hero”, then why do Shinra have to enlist more SOLDIER participants, 13 Units is not a small number of people.  And if they all work together in Wutai War, where are they? Why don’t they get recoginition for their work? 

And then we witness ourselves that Zack works on his own, with Angeal’s guidance, to subdue Fort Tamblin, Sephiroth did nothing there. Still, Sephiroth got the glory of winning Fort Tamblin, Zack’s name was never once mentioned. 

And when Zack got frustrated…

… all Kunsel told him is 

The way Kunsel speaks this sentence shows that this situation has been repeated over and over, it has become a normal custom.  The company’s media decide who will be “hero”, that’s just how it is. 

If we can see this with our own eyes, then what else flowing below the surface can’t we see?  If just like we see Zack being lured in joining SOLDIER by the “heroic figure” of Sephiroth and then Zack himself realizing that he would never become the “hero” because the company “chooses” heroes, then, isn’t it the same case for all the other SOLDIERs in the department, those that stayed/accepted (like Angeal) and those that deserted/refused (like Genesis) alike, and the only exception is Sephiroth, because he is the chosen “hero”?

Isn’t “Heroic figure Sephiroth” just a imaginary title crafted by the propaganda of an evil company?  _________________________________ 

That’s the end for part IVa, thanks for coming to my Ted-Talk.  We will continue this problem in the next part. 

Part IVb: 

Look who just moseyed on in…

Examination into the naming of FFVII - Before Crisis’s Zirconiade

Yeah, I mean, why don’t we look a bit more into why this thing below has a weird name? 

Despite having a structure similar to the WEAPON, this thing is considered as a Summon, as its title in Before Crisis is “Ultimate Weapon” and “World Burner”.  Besides, it doesn’t have the word “WEAPON” when we call it so, let’s just agree that this thing is a Summon. 

What I want to point out here is the name. “Zirconiade” is a non-existing word, it is totally fabricated by the writer.  Nonetheless, even made-up things come from things that really exist, as a base, or reference.  So let’s see where this “Zirconiade” thing comes from. 

First of all, we have the prefix “zircon”. Zirconium (Zr) is the 40th element in the periodic table. The name zirconium is taken from the name of the mineral zircon (the word is related to Persian zargun (zircon; zar-gun, “gold-like” or “as gold”)), the most important source of zirconium. Then we have the suffix “iade”, which is close to “iad”, in Greek, it means “relate to”. Therefore, we can translate the name “Zirconiade” into “Something relates to zircon”.  So the first thing you think of when talking about a metal is probably its crystal form, right?  Here is a crystal of zircon:

See the similarity in color theme yet? So crystallize zirconium has a range of color from yellow, orange to red, and the Zirconiade has a theme color of mainly red with gold blades.  So, there you go, you got a reference for what the thing is based on.  The point is, that crystal does have a name. It’s called as “Hyacinth” or “Jacinth”.  In religious aspect, jacinth has been supposed to designate the same stone as the ligure (Hebrew leshem) mentioned in Exodus 28:19 as the first stone of the third row in the breastplate (Hoshen/choshen) of the tunic (ephod) of the High Priest of Israel. In Revelation 9:17, the word is simply descriptive of colour. In Revelation 21:19–20, it is mentioned as one of the foundational stones of the New Jerusalem. This leads my research a bit further into reading about the “breastplate of the Israeli High Priest”. So here is what I found: 

“The priestly breastplate (Hebrew: חֹשֶׁן‎ ẖošen) was a sacred breastplate worn by the High Priest of the Israelites, according to the Book of Exodus. In the biblical account, the breastplate is sometimes termed the breastplate of judgment, because the Urim and Thummim were placed within it. These stones were, at times, used to determine God’s will in a particular situation (Exodus 28:30). Using these stones did not always determine God’s will (Samuel 28:6)“. “Whether there is any pattern to the choice of gemstones depends on their identity. Taking the majority view of scholars in regard to the identity of the gems, and including the implication from the Book of Revelation that the onyx at the end of the fourth row was a sardonyx, there are four colours – red, green, yellow, and blue – each represented by a clear gem (red – carbuncle, green – heliodor, yellow – chrysolite, blue – amethyst), an opaque gem (red – carnelian/red jasper, green – green jasper, yellow – yellow jasper/yellow serpentine, blue – lapis lazuli), and a striped gem (red – sardonyx, green – malachite, yellow – pale golden agate, blue – sky-blue agate). The four colours of red, green, yellow, and blue, are the first four colours (apart from black and white) distinguished by languages, and are distinguished in all cultures with at least six colour distinctions (the other two being black and white). These colours roughly correspond to the sensitivities of the retinal ganglion cells. (The retinal ganglia process colour by positioning it within a blue to yellow range, and separately positioning it within a red to green range.)“ What we can take out from this is that the stones on the High Priest’s breastplate were “at times, used to determine God’s will” but not always “determine God’s will” and that those stones have a pattern of four colors: red, green, yellow and blue. So, does this has any connection to FFVII anyway? Well, yes. If you look at how Fuhito wanted to use Zirconiade, you can see the reference of “determine God’s will”. Fuhito is a student of Bubenhagen while idolizing Hojo at the same, he believes that the Planet needs to heal and deems humanity as the source of harm, so humanity needs to return to the Planet so the Planet could heal. Fuhito thinks he himself acted on behalf of the Planet’s will, so, yeah, you see where this is going. Besides, the pattern of four colors is also seen in Before Crisis, because the Zirconiade needs to be empowered by four support materias, which have the exact colors according to the pattern described above: red, green, yellow and blue.  In conclusion, we can see that the Zirconiade literally represents a force that serves the will of the Planet. Although, by the time Fuhito summoned it, it’s not really representing the will of the Planet, is it?  Let’s get back to the other name, “Hyacinth”. So hyacinth comes from “hyacinthus”, a flower with the name of Greek origin.  

If you are familiar with Greek Mythology, then you may have heard about Apollo’s affair with Hyacinthus. It ended up in tragedy but we won’t talk about it here. The flower itself in Greek culture, is associated with springs and rebirth, while in Roman Catholic tradition, it represents prudence, constancy, desire of heaven and peace of mind.  The problem here is that Zirconiade is meant to be “World Burner”, the destruction of the whole world while “Hyacinth” represents “rebirth”, “desire of heaven”. If we combine these two very opposite meanings, we can get something hideous, like Zirconiade brings about rebirth from the ashes or it shows desire for heaven achieved by destruction. Overall, it fits with Fuhito’s mindset of burning the world, so that the Planet can heal. 

Thanks for coming to my Ted-Talk. I’m glad this doesn’t become a series of writing :’).