#grimoire valentine

[garrandia]

lets all pretend that i've posted this in june? ok? ok

[getvalentined]

I've talked about the Nibelheim Doom Triangle many times, but I'm not sure I've ever actually put into words why I believe Lucrecia made the choice she did, at least not in a public forum. Given that Vincent has reentered the public consciousness with Rebirth, it's probably a good time.

We are not going to subscribe to the statement in the Ultimania that Lucrecia married Hojo out of pity because nobody in the company respected his work the same way nobody respected her thesis, because that's not only entirely out of character, but goes directly against what actually happened. Hojo was the lead assistant on Project S, like Gillian was on Project G; Gast selected him, his ideas, his theories, as being the best option after Project G failed. No one else was given this opportunity. After Sephiroth was born, Hojo was then moved (with Lucrecia and Hollander, but not Gillian, who had left the company) to work on Project 0—Shinra's single most important attempt at forcing humanity to progress as a species. Hojo was respected, and Lucrecia may be callow but she's never been the kind of woman who would marry someone out of pity. With that out of the way, we can get into my take on her decision.

I want to be explicitly clear: I don't believe it has anything to do with how attractive Vincent is versus Hojo, and I don't believe that it should. Asserting that Vincent's level of attractiveness should have been the key deciding factor in Lucrecia's decision does a disservice to her depth of character. Period. That isn't even addressing the fact that we're comparing a man who is eternally twenty-seven years old and was in peak physical condition at the time of his death to a man who is in his early sixties and has clearly not taken particularly good care of himself. We've never actually seen what Hojo looked like when he was young, since SE only ever uses one model for him in all modern iterations, so this is a moot point.

That said, Vincent's appearance was a mitigating factor in Lucrecia's decision—and it worked in Hojo's favor, not Vincent's.

We're almost twenty years out since the release of Dirge of Cerberus, so I feel like I can confidently state that Lucrecia was almost certainly in love with Grimoire Valentine. It was unspoken, unrequited, and doomed from the start, but the affection she had for that man was every bit as intense as the affection Vincent had for her—in fact, on the official relationship chart, Lucrecia's feelings for Grimoire are described using the same word as Vincent's feelings for Lucrecia. This is a repeating pattern, and that's part of the tragedy. Lucrecia adored Grimoire for his intellect, his drive, his passion; Vincent adored Lucrecia for the same reasons. Vincent refers to her as "the beautiful Lucrecia," yes, but he also describes her as the woman he respected most.

Knowing that Lucrecia loved Grimoire makes sense of how she was so torn between Vincent and Hojo.

Vincent looked like his father, he had his eyes, his nose, his brow. He probably had a fair number of his mannerisms, body language inherited and learned via his upbringing. They probably spoke almost the same way, their voices were similar, they had the same stories and the same sense of humor and the same idiosyncracies. But Vincent wasn't his father—he wasn't even a scientist, he didn't have that academic drive that drew Lucrecia to Grimoire in the first place. He was younger than Lucrecia by a few months, he couldn't be her guide or her teacher, and while he'd been assigned to be her protector, it wasn't the same. It could never be the same.

Hojo, meanwhile, looked nothing like Grimoire. His dark eyes and wide mouth and narrow shoulders were nothing like the man Lucrecia loved and lost through her own mistakes. But his drive, his passion, his determination—my god, it was just like him. Hojo's single-minded certainty, his confidence in his own comprehension, his intellectual unquenchable thirst to understand those things beyond his reach, it was all the same. His body language was different, his speech patterns were different, his research itself was different—but not, it turns out, too different, as Grimoire is indicated to be the first Shinra scientist to propose using foreign material on a child in utero in an attempt to produce something in-between man and god that could be communicated with on a human level. This theory, found amongst Grimoire's body of research after his death, may have actually inspired the direction of the Jenova Project (after working on adults in the Howling Fang failed to produce a functional result), and is directly responsible for the creation of Nero.

Vincent would never do that. Grimoire wrote it down, so we can assume that he would have, if he'd had the chance. Hojo did.

Lucrecia may have seen Grimoire in Vincent with her eyes, but she saw him in Hojo with her mind, and that's the part of him that she loved. That's the kind of man that she loved. That's the part of Hojo that she loved.

Before long, I can't imagine she was seeing him as an echo of Grimoire. Hojo was so different, but he was exactly what she wanted, exactly the kind of man—she thought—with whom she could spend the rest of her life. Working side by side as equals, two scientific minds ready to change the world together in ways that they never could alone.

Vincent, though? Vincent looks so much like his father, Lucrecia never stopped seeing his ghost. Every time she looked Vincent in the eye, she saw his father. Every time he spoke, every time he moved, every time he laughed or grimaced or sighed, she saw his father. Even at the very end, when she believed she'd failed to save him and left him in that tank for Hojo to find, she didn't see Vincent, she didn't see Chaos. She saw Grimoire.

"Did you know your eyes are just like your father's?"

Lucrecia chose Hojo because she had so much love left in her, and the echoes of Grimoire she saw physically in Vincent weren't enough for that love to find a home in him.

Lucrecia chose Hojo because he was alive, and she was tired of loving a ghost.

[stygiovictoria]

and if i doodled

[altocat]

would Sephiroth have been better off with his grandparents (on either side)

Sephiroth would not have liked his maternal grandparents (or in this case, his maternal grandma) at all. Lucrecia never had a good relationship with her mother and Sephiroth would have easily picked up on the ugly, resentful feelings permeating around the room just in being around the older woman. He would have been very bitter towards her, and probably would have blamed her for Lucrecia's flaws as a person (despite Lucrecia's flaws being her own).

As for Hojo's parents, Sephiroth would have liked them. Hojo cut them out so there was really no way for them to have ever met. But Sephiroth would have taken to them very well, especially since they would be preferable to living with Hojo.

BONUS: Sephiroth would have ADORED Grimoire and would have hung around him constantly. And maybe would have even followed in Grimoire's footsteps to study properties of Chaos and Omega.

[xenetes]

My piece for @vinvalenzine

This was my 1st time in a zine and it was a great experience! And of course it wouldn't be Chaos Theory without Nero and Grimoire!

bonus without effects~

[nierielfaegir]

Runs in the family, I guess...

[spacepiratecaptainsexy]

Broden looks very much like a Valentine... Hmmm... Vincent's 3rd cousin perhaps?

[halfmaskshadow]

God isn’t ready for my new Video Game Conspiracy™ (and neither is my friend group, unfortunately) but maybe y’all are

(btw this is like a full essay so I’m adding a break)

Okay so Kingdom Hearts characters are often based on established Final Fantasy characters, right?

This is really obvious is some cases, like with Wakka, Tidus, and Selphie basically being directly ripped from their respective games and given island kid reskins

Or with Leon/Squall, Yuffie, Aerith, Cid, Cloud, and Sephiroth all being given reworked backstories and put in

But sometimes the inspiration is more subtle

Like with Larxene/Elrena being inspired by Elena

(Note the tie on Elrena and the EXTREMELY similar names)

Or with Axel presumably being based off of Reno, even being given a similar personality

And how they’re all part of shady organizations with a set uniform, vaguely spy inspired tactics, and unique weapons

(Also the orgs while “finding hearts and changing names because they feel like they changed too much kind of ties into some of ff7’s overall themes of identity and the way your allies/friends/family change the way you perceive yourself but that isn’t super important to this discussion)

What is important is this:

Look at Grimoire. Note Grimoire’s center part, long-ish hair, and the way his chin juts out a little. Puzzle over the fact that he’s a scientist adjacent. Let it stew in your brain for a bit

Now look at young Vincent. Look at the way his hair lays on his face. Look at his silhouette

These two remind you of anyone?

BOOM

Now any viewer hearing this might say “man they’re reaching. The evidence seems pretty superficial,” too which I say…. You know what that is totally fair. But rationally only stops me a quarter of the time and this is not that

Now we all know KH is Nomura’s baby, so he presumably did most of not all of the character designs. He’s also well known for doing the big character designs in Final Fantasy 7, so it doesn’t seem implausible for him to have taken some inspirations

Additionally, Re:Chain of Memories came out around a year after Dirge of Cerberus

(Original CoM came out like 2 years before, but it was in pixel art, and it isn’t crazy to claim they were in development/early concept at the same time. And who know, maybe Grimoire was based in Vexen/Even and not the other way around)

(The rest of this post is just extra info so you can skip it if you want)

I omitted adult Ienzo because he’s only in Unreal, and the switch had some pretty big facial structure changes for the org, as exemplified by Luxord

Also it might just be that older men were just Modeled Like That™ but it doesn’t really apply to the other org members so who knows

Anyway here’s a gallery of images that were omitted because they are either in totally different engines or just not relevant bcuz of time period

Anyway all this is to say there’s a decent chance Ienzo will look like THIS

in a future game

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

[burnyourpagoda]

Now I'm not complaining about the attractive goth men. I'm just gonna need a lot more of this backstory. Also why is he sorry? What did he do? I’m so fucking intrigued by this entire, glorious hot mess.

[phantasmacabre]

@getvalentined showed me art she did of Grimoire Valentine a few days ago and I think it changed something in my DNA because I have not stopped thinking about it since

[cur10uscr0w]

Grimoire Valentine bought his name at Spencers

[mobiusstripper]

13. Daughter

Four. She has no father. It doesn’t bother her.

Five. She has no father. It does.

Six. Her father has no name. Mom and Grandma whisper about “him.” Lucrecia presses her ear to the door.

Ten. Her father has brown eyes, like her. She’s learning about genes. Mom’s eyes are blue.

Sixteen. Her father has a name and address. He calls another brown-eyed girl his daughter. He doesn’t call Lucrecia anything; he asks her to leave.

Nineteen. She has Grim. No man’s ever cared like he does. Not without wanting something.

Twenty-three. He has a son. She’ll always come second.

[getvalentined]

Apropos of nothing at all, I present:

The Nibelheim Doom Triangle Playlist

Big Houses by Squalloscope (Lucrecia and Hojo and Shinra)

I Come With Knives by IAMX (Hojo to Lucrecia)

Labour by Paris Paloma (Lucrecia to Hojo)

Superman by Ivory Layne (Lucrecia to Grimoire Vincent no it's Grimoire)

Between by Vienna Teng (Hojo and Lucrecia)

9 Crimes by Damien Rice (Hojo and Lucrecia and Vincent)

Die Tonight Live Forever by InnerPartySystem (Hojo to Vincent)

Up In The Air by Thirty Seconds to Mars (Hojo to Sephiroth)

Black Eyes by Radical Face (Vincent to Hojo post experiments)

Castles by Of Verona (Vincent to Lucrecia postcanon)

Veins by Charlotte Martin (Vincent and Hojo and Chaos)

BONUS: Song Unsung by Eden White (Veld to Vincent post death)

All's fair in love and science!

[stygiovictoria]

me when i have an extremely dangerous job but im also a pathetic loser and i like my dad or whatever

[altocat]

any hcs on Lucrecia?

Lucrecia was born in a poor town not too far away from Nibelheim. She was an only child and her relationship with her parents was strained. Her mother was a harsh woman, beaten down from the painful realities of life. Her father was kinder and gentler, but prone to fits of intense nervousness and depression. Money was scarce, only adding to the strain. And it's made all the worse when Lucrecia's father one day leaves for the mountains and never returns.

Lucrecia's mother turns on her own daughter in her grief, blaming Lucrecia for eating up all their resources. If not for her being here, her husband would have never felt the need to run. Money would be easier to spread around. And now there's nothing. Lucrecia is traumatized from this experience, the first early seeds of her guilt complex beginning to form. She is given to an aunt to raise and, once she reaches young adulthood, leaves the place of her birth and never looks back.

Arriving at Shinra, Lucrecia is ambitious and eager to prove herself. She is hungry for knowledge but extremely sensitive to criticism, working herself to the bone just to prove everyone wrong. A certain Grimoire Valentine takes an interest to her and, recognizing her drive and enthusiasm, takes her under his wing as his assistant. Lucrecia comes to love him dearly, viewing him as a pseudo father figure and unabashedly projecting her abandonment issues onto him in order to fill the void. So when he ends up...well, disappearing as well, Lucrecia finds it harder and harder to keep it together. The association is sickening, her mind reeling, constantly accusing her, constantly harassing her. Long before the Jenova Project even begins, Lucrecia is a complete mess, haunted by the past, desperate to do anything just to bring a bit of good in the world.

Neither of her affairs with Vincent or Hojo bring her any peace. There's guilt on both levels there, and for various reasons. She blames herself for both. In her eagerness to pursue the Jenova Project, she tells herself that this will truly begin to make things right, that the creation of a Cetra is the one true atonement she can give to this world. From the ashes of her unhappy family tree, she will make something beautiful, something the world needs, something that will finally save her, justify her existence. Redemption. Salvation. Peace. Things she's never known. Things she's always wanted.

She recites this all to the unborn child growing inside her, gently stroking the rounded swell of her skin. He will be magnificent. Pure and perfect. The one good thing she has ever brought into this world. The one thing that truly makes a difference. A savior. A light in darkness. And the road there will be harsh and complicated, full of pain and uncertainty. This is a new experiment after all. It's only natural. But she knows that this is the right thing. It has to be. And she will be there to guide him every step of the way, to give him the strength he needs to succeed. He will show them all. He will shake the very stars out of the sky. He will be her light. Her son.

Her baby.

Her Sephiroth.

[thecreativecasseroles]

New chapter is up!!