Author's Notes
First off, just an opinion: Never fall for excuses. Saying "well, this is my first fanfic…" as an excuse for a bad piece of work is hereby proven wrong: "Devotion" was my first serious fanfic. Prior to this I'd only written comedy screenplays as far as fanfiction went. Just a thought. ;)
I've always wondered, when watching or reading Vincent's flashback, "What the HELL was Lucrecia thinking?!" I've read a few fics that have tried to explain what in the heck was going on, and while they were great otherwise, they never had the ring of truth for me about Lucrecia's reasoning. So I thought I'd take a guess at it. And as it went on it gained momentum and took on a life of its own, as these things often do.
Things that are made up / changed / questionable in the story, and assorted notes and trivia and other such things:
1. Hojo's given name is never said to be ANYTHING other than "Hojo". Why did I make it up? Because "Hojo" is a pretty weird name, compared to most of the others in the game. I figured there had to be SOME explanation. I later heard that the name is real, its etymological meaning tracing back to "power" in Japanese. This fits, in an ironic way; power is what Hojo seeks, although by most counts he doesn't have much of it.
2. Lucrecia is never said to be related to anyone (except Sephiroth, of course.) First off, I couldn't think of a last name for Lucrecia. I batted around the idea of naming her the catchy-sounding "Lucrecia Loire", setting up a kind of FF7/FF8 genealogy connection, but decided that would be too complicated. So I debated a little bit-names, weird genealogy connections. I also thought of the odd connection: Gast was the father of Aeris and a kind of accomplice in the creation of Sephiroth. And I'd heard of the fake conspiracy theory linking Sephiroth and Aeris as brother and sister, though at the time I didn't realize it was fake. So…I thought… perhaps Lucrecia was related to Aeris—or to her adopted mother, Elmyra. I also needed a kind of confessor for Lucrecia, and a little bit of background into her competitiveness, so the spirited young Elmyra came about. The rest is in the story.
3. There was never said to be a fourth scientist, or a second or third Turk, in Nibelheim during the JENOVA Project. Shelan's character started off as a vague idea, a small group of Lucrecia's fellow students, also working on the Project. This was where we would get the kind of ground-level view of Hojo and the Shinra Research system. Eventually, for the sake of simplicity and plot (it was a super-secret project, after all), the "small group" was distilled down to one—Shelan. The idea of his being a test subject and a relative of Cloud's just somehow grew from the early notes and scenes of the story. As for the Turks, I didn't want Lucrecia to run into Vincent too early in the story—and besides, it seemed unlikely they'd take along only one bodyguard for at least three scientists.
4. Actually, there is only one room in the Nibelheim inn. Even if all the Turks shared a room, after counting all the possible lodging space in the Shinra Mansion and the inn, I still fell short by one room. They must have remodeled, somehow…? Heh.
5. The equipment in the lab doesn't match the equipment shown in the flashback. Give me a break, the stuff in the game looks like an old horror movie. :p And also, the "cabinet" thing that Lucrecia works with a lot in chapters 1-3 and 1-7 is based on what's called a cell-culture hood, but I knew no one would know the terminology; so I just called it a cabinet. It worked. Also, some of the science in the story is real and some is fake-just to be MORE confusing… We see glimpses of real cell culture and genetics practices applied to nonexistent cells and viruses, basically. The practices are loosely based on my training in college, although that is where any resemblance to reality ends. (And no, Hojo wasn't based on anyone! Eesh. He's a conglomerate of fears / archetypes and a product of his own attitude. See the characterization/inspiration notes at my page for more on where this very strange characterization came from…)
6. The names of the trees on the Mansion grounds are made up, because I know next to nothing about botany. And besides, it's safe to assume that the FFVII world doesn't have all the same species as this one.
7. Yes, Shelan's last name is Strife. Shelan's little brother Stratus-named in chapter 3-7-is Cloud's father. He is only in his teens during this story. Cloud's relatives are never said to be connected to Shinra. Heck, Cloud's relatives are barely mentioned at all. (His mother appears in two short scenes, and his father is said to have died when Cloud was young.) Why this weird little addition? It was fun, basically, and added some more twists to the conspiracy theory. It sets up yet another parallel between the present and the past, and casts a kind of blood-feud dimension on the already complicated Cloud/Sephiroth animosity. Read on for its connection to Shinra's experimentation…
8. Mt. Nibel is much prettier in this story than it is in the game, where it is an alien, gnarled, gray mass of spikes. This is an indirect reference to the effect that the new-during-the-story Nibelheim Reactor, over the course of the next thirty years, drained the land of its energy and warped it into the ugly and very dangerous place it is in Cloud's time.
9. About the Crystal Room, and the present-day Vincent in general. Reviewing the original script, I felt compelled to explain what seemed to be a major unexplained point: why did Lucrecia / Lucrecia's spirit appear where it did, in a nearly inaccessible cavern in the middle of nowhere? Since I'm more likely to believe it's Lucrecia's spirit (more on that later), I figured that it had to be a place to which she and Vincent had strong emotional attachments, perhaps the site of an important event in their lives. My first idea was to make it a concert hall (alluded to in 1-6), but the idea of a Shinra party seemed more interesting. So, I concocted the Nibarel (Nibelheim + Corel, the two cities nearby) Crystal Room, a banquet hall co-owned by Shinra and Dio, "an up-and-coming entertainment mogul". (In my original notes I mentioned that the Gold Saucer had just been built, much smaller than its present form. The mention, like many other details-such as the presence at the party of President Shinra's wife, Rufus' mother-never made it into the final draft.) The attack by the rebels served a few functions: first, to follow up the Turk shooting in Corel (1-6); second, to explain why Nibelheim had a reactor so much earlier than Corel (which got one during Barret's lifetime, twenty-five or so years later); third, to cement the place in Lucrecia's memory (if you'll notice, she meets him in the entryway, where he'd told her to meet him thirty years ago-I know it's copped from FFVIII, but did anyone notice? No. ;) ) …and lastly, to explain why it's no longer in use when Cloud & Co. arrive.
I also felt compelled to explain the present-day Vincent, in general. I liked the idea that the details of the character had some basis in the past. This came into play in two sections of the story. First, during the party, I set up most of his present taste in clothes. Apart from the metal shoes (what are those, anyway?) and the straps holding the cloak together, his clothes are traced to two sources in the party: most of his outfit is black dress clothes, like the ones Vincent wore to the ball; the red cloak, believe it or not, is Lucrecia's. The hood was shot apart by one of the rebels, and though it was big enough to wrap her up completely, on Vincent it would probably look smaller. I realize that this approaches the psychotic, but given Vincent's near-obsession with his lost love, it seemed to make some kind of sense.
The other part of the story that alludes to Vincent's future form is the business of the ring, in 2-9 and afterward. Vincent wore Lucrecia's engagement ring on his left hand, which may or may not have led to Hojo's amputating his left arm. At the very least, it explains what happened to the ring… (One way or another, it would make sense that Vincent would keep it, but it never shows up again in the flashback or on his personage.)
10. In chapter 2-4, Lucrecia runs some genetic tests to tell whether her mutated cells are closer to Cetra than human, and it alludes that there is a genetic difference between human and Ancient. Actually, I'm more inclined to believe that this isn't true; after all, Aeris was both human and Cetra. If two creatures can interbreed successfully, by definition they are the same species: therefore, Cetra can at most be only a subspecies of humans. So it's the unofficial explanation that Shinra's reasoning, and the reasoning behind Lucrecia's earlier experiments, was wrong. (On the other hand, if Aeris were sterile, as happens with some interspecies hybrids—like mules—all bets are off. But I guess we'll never know. …My apologies to Aeris fans for that mule analogy…)
11. It's never said that Hojo experimented on adults or even animals before trying to create Sephiroth, as far as I know. It just seemed to follow: Hojo was trying to make a Cetra. He would probably have started on adults, and when that didn't work, decided to use an unborn child (fetal cells are much more changeable, so in the story it's likely they would adapt to Jenova cells more readily than an adult's cells.) Shelan started out on the SOLDIER protocol, injected with Jenova cells and Mako. Hojo would remember the process in case it ever became useful...which, as it turns out, it did. Shelan is in a sense a proto-clone, in the sense that "clone" is used in the game. The process toward the end is even more involved; read the notes on chapter 3-8 for that explanation.
12. The war. This bothered me for a while; it was basically a mistake. In chapter 1-8, a "war" is mentioned, although the war between Wutai and Shinra (the one that killed Elmyra's husband) has not yet happened. My theory, after realizing this, is that the two powers have had some skirmishes, which they called a war, but the bigger war is yet to come. This is also alluded to in Elmyra and Lucrecia's last phone call, when Elmyra tells of her husband's fear of being sent off to war, and in 3-4 during the reception. (I also assumed that SOLDIER did not yet exist, although the Turks do…*sighs*) The REAL Wutai/Shinra war takes place just after the events of the story, or possibly parallel to the end of the story; it is because of this war that Elmyra and Reece's wedding was rushed, so that they might be married before he could be shipped away. (This was only briefly mentioned during 3-4, if anyone noticed.)
13. The full roll call of Hojo's sneaky deeds, for those of you who were paying attention: Listened in on Lucrecia and Shelan in the lab (1-3). Kidnapped Shelan and treated him with Mako and Jenova cells (somewhere after 1-4). Destroyed note from Midgar, reporting Shelan missing (1-7). Falsified Lucrecia's test results (2-4) - if you'll notice, the samples are in tracks 1, 3, 5, and 7 when Lucrecia starts the test, but on the results Hojo gives her they appear in 1, 2, 3, and 4. Issued falsified or changed assignment to Dr. Gast and the Turks, getting rid of Vincent for the week in which Lucrecia makes the fatal deal (2-5). Subjected Lucrecia to Mako and J-cell overdose, falsifying his original plan (2-5; 3-1 and following). Subjected Shelan to Mako and Jenova overdose, as well as channeling raw Mako through him in the Nibelheim reactor (1-5 and onward, most notably in 3-8).
14. Just in case you may have noticed, Lucrecia's thought in 2-5, "Dr. Gast…the Project is dead…", was in fact modeled after the line in the game when Vincent tells Lucrecia about Sephiroth. No real reason, except some parallel.
15. What does Lucrecia's Cetra dream (2-7) mean? I'm not completely sure myself. It's definitely a sign of misgiving about the pregnancy, and a foreshadowing of her son's murder of the last Ancient. It also foreshadows the present-day Vincent, as he appears in her dream with long hair, red eyes, and a red cloak. There is also a common thread between Lucrecia and the Cetra woman in that both fell in love with socially unacceptable men (the Cetra with an unrespected adventurer and Lucrecia with a Turk).
16. Lucrecia and Hojo. It's assumed they actually were making out in the flashback. I just couldn't go through with that, given Hojo's portrayal in this story. I tried at first to figure out reasons why Lucrecia would fall for that weasel…and although I thought of a few more or less acceptable reasons, I couldn't get enough to build my story on, and eventually gave up. Hence the case of mistaken identity at the gate, and the artificial creation of Sephiroth.
Having said this, I'm still curious about the whole thing; although I made Hojo out to be irredeemably mean in this fic, I enjoy other takes on the story. (Such flights of fancy aren't strictly non-canon, since the canon is very vague on this topic.) A short fanfic I wrote, "The Logic of Grief", takes the triangle from one such a take, in which an enigmatic Lucrecia and a misguided but not yet evil Hojo were married; the piece turned out to be one of my favorites out of my own stories. A few gamers even think that Vincent's affection wasn't returned-which would also be an interesting case, given his thirty-year adherence to the idea.
Did Hojo love Lucrecia? I'm not completely sure, actually. As portrayed in this story, Hojo is too far removed from any notion of real human affection to love her in any honest way. He says he's sealed off most of his emotions ("Everything else died, more or less"), and although in some subconscious way he may have some feelings for her, they are buried under heaps of maliciousness, callousness and misanthropy. He seems to admire her intelligence and potential-perhaps he fears them, for at the start she does intend to replace him. But he only openly finds her attractive when she is vulnerable, weakened or unguarded; this seemed to be a likely pattern, given his predatory/exploitative behavior in general, and his tendency toward inferiority complexes (a weak woman won't be able to overshadow him). Some undercurrent of sexual menace does run through some of his scenes (most notably in 2-8/9 and the second part of 3-3 - one of my favorite scenes in this story, for varying reasons.) If you noticed it, bravo; this is intentional. Beyond giving some more depth of a sort to the character, it racked up the tension between Hojo and Lucrecia considerably-and, let's not forget, made those scenes a lot more creepy…
17. Who is Sephiroth's father? I don't know. I really don't. Since Lucrecia slept with Vincent the night before she was artificially inseminated by Hojo (yeeee…eesss, it's true, though it's not in the story proper), it could be either. The story is deliberately ambiguous on this endlessly debated point… Vincent says he's not Sephiroth's father in the epilogue, but this is an assumption on Vincent's part. (Technically, he says that he thinks he's not Seph's father.) NOW do you know why I don't like Seph/Vin yaoi, people? And speaking of Vincentric yaoi, the official stance of "Devotion" on the Hojo/Vin slash is a negative. There is ample tension between the two, but it wasn't intended to imply buried attraction. You'll have to go to "The Logic of Grief" for that, which is intentionally ambiguous on that endlessly debated point.
18. Hojo's lab. The treatments could easily have been done in the main lab, where Hojo experimented on Vincent in the flashback, but it fit into the story to have some hidden experiments going on. The room is the same as the room where Vincent is entombed years later, although by that time it has been completely destroyed—probably to destroy evidence of his unethical testing.
19. While we're on the subject of labs and unethical testing, the specialties of Gast and Hojo were never actually mentioned in canon. In "Devotion" Gast is an anthropologist (the study of cultures and humanity) and Hojo a physiologist (chemical/biochemical processes, hormones, and other nonanatomical workings of biology). These are basically made up to fit their roles in the story, though they also give the Project a bit of interesting variety—adding Lucrecia (genetics and cell biology) and Shelan (chemistry/biochemistry), they had quite a range of researchers. This also means that Hojo was probably operating out of his sphere with most of his experiments, which is not altogether surprising.
20. The Ancients and the "real" story of Jenova, narrated by Shelan in Interlude 2. This is drawn from what I remember from the game (discounting Hojo's records in Nibelheim, which in the game are said to be falsified) and from the "Jenova is Lucrecia" theory I read online, dreamed up by Mad Tinkerer, formerly of the Final Fantasy: Worlds Apart message board. The idea always intrigued me, and I incorporated one part of it into the story: that the "crisis from the sky" was not the Jenova that Cloud fights, but an interplanetary virus.
21. The voice in Lucrecia's head. This was drawn from one of the (unofficial?) powers of Jenova cells, as seen in the game: telepathy between Jenova carriers. Sephiroth controlled the clones and Cloud through this psychic connection, and similarly, Lucrecia and Shelan, the only two human Jenova carriers at the time, became able to hear each other's thoughts. All of the odd or interjected thoughts throughout section 3, as well as her sensations of drowning and nightmares (except the Cetra dream in 2-7) actually belong to the Ancients or to Shelan; her recurrent dreams of drowning are due to Shelan's imprisonment in a tank of liquid Mako. If you'll notice, she tends to hear these things in the labs, which are closer to where Shelan is imprisoned; during the trip to Midgar (3-5) she hears nothing at all.
22. During 3-3, when Lucrecia falls asleep during the treatments and she and Hojo have that odd half-argument about why she loves Vincent, Hojo's most crucial sentence fragment goes like this: "And he's hardly…" The voice trailed off into nothing, leaving the sentence forever unspoken.
The rest of the thought is "…worthy of you." Just to clarify. This is the closest Hojo ever gets to expressing some sort of honest emotion. (See point 16.) This exchange is one reason why the second half of 3-3 ranks as one of my favorite scenes in the story. (That's the part when Lucrecia, exhausted from working on her reports, gets her last Mako treatment before the trip to Midgar, and as she lies in a half-hallucinatory daze, she and Hojo argue about her love for Vincent.) I think wrote that scene under severe sleep deprivation, and it probably shows, but I do like how it came out.
23. Cetra Etymology: Sephirisena / Jenova / Sephiroth / Sephiaera. This is made up, I'll admit. I tried to make it look real, but it's mine. ;) "Sephirisena" is a pseudo-Cetra word for "crisis from the sky". It was made to sound like "Sephiroth" for a reason, as explained later in the story. I know that "Sephiroth" actually means "word of God", and comes from the Kabbalah originally. However, it seemed like an anachronism to me to have this meaning used in the story; the story-world doesn't have the same history or cultures as Earth, and so would never have heard of the original meaning; the Kabbalah never existed in this fictional world. What's more, it seemed odd to trace a Hebrew etymology into a fictional culture (Cetra) with its own language. So, with many apologies, I made up a more in-character origin for the name.
"Jenova", on the other hand, retained its literal meaning: "New God". This was done for two reasons. First, it fit well with the Shinra's misguided view of Jenova; since it wouldn't make sense that the Cetra would name their destroyer something as positive as "New God" (unless they thought at first that it was benevolent - but that's another story), it was said that the Shinra (or modern society, by extension) renamed the creature. The name still has Earth (Latin?) etymology, but this seems to make more sense; the language the Shinra and the rest of the world speaks is for all intents and purposes an Earth language. In a way, half-accidentally, it also underscores the feeling that their society is more like Earth's; it is the Cetra who seem alien or fantastic.
As if that weren't enough, the Cetra-influenced prayers in Elmyra's wedding include the word Sephiaera, which translates as "heaven's love": sephii = sky, or heaven in a Christianity-like religion; aera = love. And yes, that is reverse-engineered from Aeris' name, which would translate from Cetra as something like "beloved". It seemed fitting to slip something like this in, setting up Dr. Gast's naming of his only daughter. (Even during the story, Gast is a scholar of Cetra language and lore.)
At the end of the meeting with the Shinra in 3-5, Gast recites a fragment of Cetra poetry, also entirely made up: "Alei, tsekine dhelar, sete a'masii maci-en." - "Thus, faced with madness, died all the world's glory." It's reverse-translated into Cetra only loosely, allowing for an undefined syntax in the language, but the words align something like: dhelar - insanity (literally "dhel" - "insane" and a noun-making suffix similar to "-ness"); a'masii - "of the world", from masii, earth and/or life and/or soul (all related words); and maci-en, "lifeless", from a word related to masii (life) and a negating prefix. (Cetra in this story has no word for "dead" proper, just "lifeless". This seemed to fit with their philosophy/religion.)
Sephiroth's name is slightly mangled pseudo-Cetra, as explained in the story; the etymology follows thus: sephii, seen in sephiaera, loosely means "from or of heaven"; the word for "silver" is rossa. Thus, if Sephiroth were a girl he would be named Sephirossa; "Sephiroth" was a masculinization of the word on Lucrecia's part.
The crafting of Sephiroth's name takes on a little bittersweetness when you consider that it's really a beautiful name in that explanation; he was named "heaven's silver" by his mother for his hair color as well as his unearthly aura and, honestly, how much he meant to her at that moment. Yet, it became a symbol of dread later in his life…
More fake Cetra, which hasn't been sorted into the narrative, includes a pseudo etymology of "Mako", which is a Shinra shortening of the Cetra word for Lifestream, masikoura, literally "river of souls". (That also lines up with the alternate spelling "Makou". Ta-dah.) The word was borrowed somewhat to name Cloud's grandmother and Shelan's mother, Koura Strife.
24. Elmyra's wedding. The overwhelming amount of green in the décor is intentional. Green is the color of Lifestream and would no doubt be seen as holy to the Cetra. The story-world's present-day religion is vaguely Judeo-Christian but retains many facets of Cetra beliefs, including terminology and, as seen here, the common use of green.
25. Vincent's past! I couldn't help the slightest reference to it in 3-4. I'm trying to keep it minimal, to keep from derailing this story, and so that I could possibly develop it into a small fic someday. ;) But basically, in this version (for there are countless fics about Vincent's past, all speculative) he is originally from Wutai, from a modestly well-off family. During a trip to Midgar to visit his father's family, when Vincent was around five, his mother fell or was pushed into the path of an oncoming train and killed. His father never left Midgar after that, and squandered the family's small fortune trying to assuage his grief by tracking down someone "responsible". This alienated young Vincent, leading to his comments to the effect that all the love he knew as a child was gone, and leading also to his intense desire to rebuild some semblance of domestic tranquility—which he missed in childhood.
26. Most of the members of the Shinra council in 3-5 are just crafted to fill spaces in the Shinra heirarchy. There are traces, however, of a continuum between Conrad Shinra Jr., Conrad Shinra III (the canon President Shinra), and Rufus Shinra's respective cabinets. (Incidentally, the name "Conrad Shinra" is made-up. The President's first name is never given.) Most of the names were adapted from suggestions given to me by an online acquaintance, Davey Boy. Davidson Sith's name has a different source: in writing the quick scene between the receptionist and the average harried Shinra worker, the first names that jumped to mind were "Dave" and "Steve". Hoping to avoid an accidental Kevin Smith reference ("Tell 'em, Steve-Dave!" ^_^; ), I changed "Steve" to "Clark". Dave, however, remained. In a bid to make the name more strange and FFVII-ey, I made it a short form of "Davidson". His original last name was "Sithe", with a long I, but that looked so similar to "Sith" that I just changed it anyway. Cait Sith is named after a Celtic myth, but in-character, who knows if he may have been inspired by another member of Shinra?
The story's most alarming glitch struck in the first draft of this chapter when I realized that I'd left out one of the departments: Manufacturing. This led to a reshuffling of the heirarchy, assigning Manufacturing and Weapons to one department. The story goes that after this point, control of one of the branches was taken from the unfavored department chairman and split off into its own department. (Whew.)
27. Cloud's family: This was set up to preface Shelan's discovery a little while later and to bridge Shelan and Cloud, basically. A while before writing this I polled a FF message board I went to for names for Cloud's father and grandparents, but I lost all record of the names they suggested and had to wing it. Ouch.
28. Just a question: Did anyone catch the Jenova-cell overdose before it was explained? In the treatment scenes, try watching the Mako drip (if I did it correctly). The solution is almost transparently green at the start, but at the end it's "opaque" - more and more Jenova cells are being added (Mako, as seen in the game, is actually translucent). The devil's in the details, ladies and gentlemen… ;) Other "Hugely Observant Reader" points go to tracing exactly what the heck the Jenova doses earlier in the story referred to (they DID refer to specific things, for the most part), what humans the mice corresponded to as far as dosage and behavior, and the precognition Lucrecia has of Vincent's future form and her son's fate. No, I won't ask you to find Waldo next. ^_~
29. Shelan's fate. Just in case you were wondering, yes, that's the tank where Cloud was held during the game. And his hands were clawlike for a reason: if anyone noticed, one of the nightmares Lucrecia has in 3-9 while awaiting Sephiroth's birth is about being trapped in some sort of Mako-filled machine. This is intended to be one of the containment pods in the Nibelheim reactor, where Hojo, as seen in the Nibelheim flashback, transformed people into monsters by heavily overdosing them on Mako and Jenova cells. I took a little liberty with the idea by going the further step that the Reactor is sucking Lifestream straight through the test subjects' bodies, which would be a debilitating process. So… unfortunately… Shelan ultimately would end up as one of those unfortunate monsters that Sephiroth breaks out of the pods as he toured the Reactor with Zack (Cloud, in the flashback, but that's another story).
30. Does Lucrecia die or become Jenova as we know it?… I left this open intentionally, too. The scientists were studying Jenova cells, not the Jenova body, but since Lucrecia (and we) never know what happens after the end, it could go either way.
31. Yes, the entire epilogue is conjecture. Actually, it was written at the same time as Interlude 1, with only a few changes afterward.
Well, that's it. Thanks to the readers of FF.N, www.ffwa.org, and the other sites which hosted this story during its writing, as well as everyone who gave comments and criticism - it really does help. Thanks for reading. (And I really mean that. ;) )
