@nativehueofresolution I'm just gonna tag you as a form of reply because the Reply feature ain't gonna give me enough word count :p.
How I approach Sephiroth is by trying to forget everything I ever picked up about him through fandom osmosis and just look at the source materials, including left out dialogue from JPN scripts, and combine that with what I know about human behavior. That probably sounds high and mighty, but I assure you, that's not what I'm trying to say.
As I mentioned in previous replies, timeline and Sephiroth's own dialogue lend credence to the idea that he idealized Gast when he was a child, not unlike a son would a father, and that, given Shinra's original goal of using Cetra to find the Promised Land, Sephiroth probably spent his early years living a pretty cozy life for a Shinra lab rat. Though Gast has not told him anything about his heritage other than the Company story, or probably Hojo's story, Sephiroth has picked up on the fact that he's Special and not like the other kids. Since he's so shocked and appalled that he might be one of the little monsters Shinra cooked up, I'd assume Sephiroth thought being Special was a good thing. Even after Hojo took over the science department and began to treat him as Hojo treats all of his SOLDIERs and experiments, I suspect Sephiroth held onto how Gast "raised" him and thus developed the burning animosity we know he has towards Hojo. Especially when it's hinted at that he knows Hojo is his biological father with the way he laughs at the father question in Nibelheim and then shuts it down real quick.
Anyhoo, fast forward a bit and now we have a Sephiroth who--and now I must shove CC lore into my brain like an expansion pack--has recently been forced to face the fact that Shinra's brand of ruthlessness also extends to not just nameless infantrymen but also his friends and himself. And that his friends, too, will turn on him over the most petty shit. Or shit that Sephiroth perceives is petty. Though Sephiroth appears to enjoy being Special, again judging by his extreme reaction to his harsh reality but also by his little sassy quips he gives people when they think they can keep up with him, he DOESN'T enjoy being in the limelight and the wedge it created between him and, more than anyone, Genesis.
Sephiroth is constantly losing the people he cares about, whether they are taken from him by untimely deaths or because they've turned their backs on Shinra and actively made themselves his enemies. Even if he doesn't want to fight them, he knows exactly what position he is in. What position they've put him in. And there's some resentment there from his side. "How dare you do this to me. WHY are you doing this to me?"
So along comes the final nail in the coffin and that's Genesis being an absolute asswipe who, more than any previous transgression against Sephiroth, doesn't just tell him his mother is a MONSTER but he attacks one of Sephiroth's coping mechanisms. He insults the imagined pure mother Sephiroth wished he had. Someone I'm sure he wished had survived so someone woulda taken him out of the position he was in as a child.
Because now...now you've got this guy obsessing over not just his origins but his mother. And so he goes to the one place he knows there's bound to be information about fucked up experiments and discovers some Gross Ass Shit.
And this information is old. Older than what Hollander has told Genesis. But it's by Gast. A scientist Sephiroth respects. So he eats up all this outdated info, believing that GAST would never lie to him. Genesis would. Genesis has betrayed and insulted him (and his mother). But not Gast. Never Gast. And these documents mention an Ancient found in that rock layer, not a monster. They mention the history of the Ancients, how they cared for the Planet, how they sacrificed themselves to stop its destruction. And I'm sure they explained in horrific detail just what they did to Jenova's body in order to produce him (and the others).
Remake talks about what Hojo did to Ifalna after they found her. We've seen what Jenova looked like after they got done with her. (Only they still weren't done with her, were they?) Now imagine how Sephiroth would handle that information?
His mother was an Ancient. His mother was of a race that saved the Planet, while the company that made him is destroying it. With their poor decisions, their desire to look the other way while they ruin lives, the human race proves itself inferior and, honestly, the Planet would be better off without it. They only achieved dominion on a technicality anyway. To hell with them. To hell with them all. He and Mother are going to take the Planet back.
Like you, I also think Sephiroth dislikes folks based on a sense of morality. ...I just extend that beyond Hojo and say that his sense of morality said, "Humanity is vile and unworthy, and I'll see to it that they get what's coming to them."
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