eveleech replied to your photoset “Two caps from the FFVII timeline that I laugh at each time I think...”
@leonawriter I actually was shocked that Sephiroth got by without killing anyone in a few instances. I mean, Choco Bill, the bikini girl at Costa Del Sol, and Dio weren't injured one bit when Sephiroth was RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM!
Well... I have to admit, I was probably just as surprised back when I was watching through, because - this guy killed a lot of people in Shinra, right? He made easy work of a Zolom!
And yet... having seen through Crisis Core, I find myself entirely unsurprised. Because. This is his base personality here at play! He’s used to the mindset of ‘here is the mission. You travel there, you do whatever you have to do, and you complete the mission.’ Sephiroth... has always set himself apart from people, and his actions after making his first appearance in the Shinra Building are really very in line with how his emotions would be directly after the Nibelheim Incident.
Which is, at first, his only real hatred is for Shinra itself. He turns first on the President, who was the one who enabled everything, and doesn’t care who gets in his way.
But afterwards, he’s just out in the world. The people he encounters mean nothing to him. He burned Nibelheim in a fit of rage, because Nibelheim encapsulated everything that he hated. It was where he’d been created, and, well... they were there. And Sephiroth had been stewing away his anger and feelings of being unable to do anything (not about Genesis, or Angeal, or even Zack, depending on your read of his character), as well as feelings of betrayal and broken trust, for so long, unable to show any of it because a weapon of Shinra just does what Shinra wants and feels what Shinra wants them to feel... he burst open like a powder keg set alight. Literally.
But like... without that immediate rage, what’s left? Either you accept that vengeance just leaves you hollow, or you move on to something else. And Sephiroth moved on to something else, but because he’s still Sephiroth, he’s got a very clever mind, and a) sticks to the mission/plan, and b) knows when not to draw attention to himself.
(with something recent in mind, I wonder if that’s why he was so in control, especially at first? His rage just overtook anything else that might’ve tried getting into his head. Would also be why it’s only later, when his rage has started running out of direction, that the Jenova influence is more obvious, and potentially stronger - in AC, he wants what she wants (to find a new world and rule as god) at the same time when his mind has been weakened by the lifestream, and one of the main major things he clung onto was hatred of Cloud, which... again, what’s he gonna do once Cloud’s gone? Jenova probably latched onto that opportunity, sinking her fangs in. ‘hey, I’ve got a great idea...’)
