The more that's revealed about Sephiroth's story...and the more I look back on my edgy journal writings from childhood to adulthood, the more vindicated I feel about how right I was about us being "the same."
We were both sad, lonely, maladjusted kids aged by traumas. Only, I had friends and family who kept me grounded. And that's the major difference between us.
I had my mother (who I love more than my father at that...not that I hate my dad), but he did not. I had my friends, but his were gone.
And the fact that Lucrecia was just out there wallowing in her own guilt made the lack of having his human mother in his life all the more painful for the tragedy that was his character.
"He never should have been evil. He should have been an antihero"--that sentiment comes from anguish over Sephiroth's fate rather than something that would have been best for the game. (Though I do think anti-hero Seph would have been more interesting since he could have challenged Cloud and the others more over "fighting for the planet" and what that really meant in the grand scheme of life's harsh reality, but I digress).
It hurts to watch...because being in that much silent emotional anguish is like a black hole you don't escape unless you have others giving you hope for better, and he just didn't because, for Sephiroth, hope did not exist anymore after his discoveries in Nibelheim.
And once a person loses sight of hope, there's no helping or saving them.
"I know exactly how he felt, and it hurts that he suffered and had to die for a reality he never asked for. God...do I know how that feels. If only we could have been friends. If only we had been friends...because not being alone might have saved him."
(Note: This is before Angeal and Genesis ever existed. And even after they came into the picture, it never shook me of the feeling that "Sephiroth needed better friends.")