While watching a few Dirge of Cerberus cutscenes (yes, I'm too lazy/busy with school to actually go out and get the game), it irked me how one-dimensional of a character Hojo was and Lucretia to some degree as well. Comparing the two main villains of the Final Fantasy VII series, Sephiroth and Hojo, they tend to be treated very differently in terms of the fanfiction that I see on this site. On the one hand, I've seen authors bend over backwards in order to make Sephiroth seem less outright evil and more of a result of the circumstances he was raised in. Don't get me wrong, a lot of these stories are awesome and they do bring up good points. But I have yet to see anyone do the same for Hojo. No one wakes up one day and says "You know what? I feel like being an evil motherer from now on." Not even Hojo. There is always some kind of reasoning behind it. The following is my version of it. As you can see from the title, it's loosely inspired by the song "The Diary of Jane" by Breaking Benjamin. This is just the introduction and a few opening entries. I'll put more up as soon as I can. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. I bet you knew that already, but I thought I'd put it out there just to be on the safe side.
Diary of Jane
Insanity slipped in like water through the cracks in a roof. Dripping innocently, they fell with a barely audible "plop!" in the recesses of Sephiroth's mind. Word by word, drop by drop, he poured through book after book in the basement of the Shinra Mansion in Nibelhiem. Who knew that the simple question "Who am I?" could have such a complicated answer?
The water poured in faster now, not hitting the floor but instead meeting puddles of its likeness.
Specimen. Experiment. Critical success.
A squirming feeling akin to his soul trying to escape from his body told Sephiroth that he was getting closer to an answer, though an answer wouldn't necessarily mean the one that he wanted. He felt dizzy, somehow deprived of air.
"Must be the dust," he thought, opening the drawer to a desk that looked like it hadn't been touched in years. A two inch thick coating of grayish snow hid most of its surface from sight. A single pitch black book lay on a tan wooden background. Glowing green eyes widened as Sephiroth picked it up and opened it to the first page, a date occurring 27 years earlier. The compulsively perfected handwriting was immediately recognizable as that of a man who he had come to despise more than any other in the world, even his sworn enemy, Lord Godo. Hojo.
Ready to toss it aside in disgust, Sephiroth paused as he noticed a distinct lack of scientific terminology as opposed to the lab reports that he had sifted through before. Even the sentence structure relaxed a bi into something more personal and informal.
This was Hojo's diary.
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09/01/10071
I swear I'm going to kill that good for nothing lab assistant one of these days. He wouldn't know water from sulfuric acid if I poured the damn thing down his throat. Come to think of it, that doesn't sound like a bad idea. I could certainly get more work done if Palmer was patching up the acidic holes in the back of his throat instead of breaking my lab equipment. I swear, Shinra is getting so lazy about hiring around here.
Gast's trying to read over my shoulder while denying trying to read over my shoulder again. Back to work
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09/03/10071
Fortune smiles on me! Palmer has done it for the last time! Gave himself third degree burns while standing in front of the microwave…….where he had a bowl still wrapped in aluminum foil in an oscillating electric field cooking on high. In my day, they told us not to do that in kindergarten!!! The fire was tremendous for something of such a small size. The bastard set off the sprinkler system and lost me an entire two days worth of work while the mess was cleaned up. Plus it will take me upwards of a week to replace all of the reports that were drenched beyond legibility. Insolent moron. Gast noticed my displeasure at the situation and said that it was my payback for taking pleasure in Palmer's pain. That's an exaggeration though. I didn't so much take pleasure in his pain as I jumped for joy at the prospect of having a competent lab tech, which Shinra has promised this time. Unfortunately this decision comes not from the desire for scientific progress, but because Palmer's little fire drills were getting to expensive. Gast says that there's not much of a difference. "Deep seated psychological issues" my foot. Psychology is a pseudoscience and he can stick his advice where the sun doesn't shine. On the plus side, the cloning experiments have been progressing nicely. They were one of the few things spared from the microwave, thank gods.
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09/15/10071
Shinra deserves to be shot. If he survives, he deserves to be shot again. Palmer was promoted to the head of the space program. He came up with some garbage about it while in the hospital and convinced Shinra to fund his little escapade, much to my disapproval…..I want to strangle that man sometimes.
In other news, the new lab tech is hot. Didn't catch her name though.
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