11 - SephGen for the ship asks 🥹🖤

What their first impression was of each other?

You know, it's funny, I've definitely done first impressions from Angeal and Genesis's perspective but I'm not sure I ever have when it comes to Sephiroth.

I think Genesis's is multilayered because I think the very first time he heard Sephiroth - and I do think he heard him speak before he ever saw him, just a few words that were likely stumbled off script that he probably assumed was designed to be awkwardly charming until he realised Sephiroth is just the epitome of an awkward turtle - that he was in disbelief. It was a challenge to his own mind, like no way, this one person cannot be doing what they say, so when he finally got a chance to see news footage (I like to think it was on one of these old sets so colour distorted and grainy), obsession set in. Because his skill is undeniable. It's captivating to watch.

Then we run into the very real issue that Sephiroth is not what it says on the tin if you get up close. This is a post-First Soldier Sephiroth that has likely learned what can happen if you get attached to the people you work with: they die or they disappear, and the man is a poster child for abandonment issues. I think he's trying to keep his distance at that point and Genesis is perceptive, I think he can pick up on some of that and the mix of the two....well.

If we go by my personal canon for these two? Genesis got floored by his enhancements way more than Angeal did (there's something up with Genesis's DNA that isn't in the others so I think it stands to reason) so Angeal had already met Sephiroth by the time Genesis did. As such, I think he was already on the defensive, picked up on Sephiroth's vibe of trying to keep everything at an arms length and together with Sephiroth's awkward way of treating SOLDIERs in training at that point more like dogs or weapons (GEE I WONDER WHERE HE PICKED THAT UP), they did not mesh well.

As such, I think Genesis got upset - this wasn't the Sephiroth he built up in his head, this was someone detached, withdrawn, someone who did not recognise and foster such talent as he knew he had but rather just corrected it without a social word at all.

The kicker is I think Sephiroth actually did notice he was different - how many baby Third's come in with that kind of magical skill? How many SOLDIERs in general at that point have a specialty with magic? It's used in a utilitarian way and Genesis doesn't function that way at all and I think Sephiroth just doesn't - understand it? I think he's curious about it but he doesn't really know what to do about it. Has no idea Genesis is operating under the idea they're now mortal enemies fallen from the grace of potential friendship. Honestly, he's really only processing every other sentence - he doesn't know that he's ever known anyone who talks that much.

I think it's only on the third meeting, the ones where they're seeing each other on their first missions together, that they come to an understanding of each other. Genesis starts to process who Sephiroth actually is as opposed to who he thought he was, sorting him into categories of what is propaganda and what is actually him peeking through the presses clutches, and there are a couple of moments that I think highlight it for him that actually, this is the real him and he's actually far more interested in this version than any theatrics. If there's to be theatrics in a relationship, it's coming from him ta very much.

From Sephiroth's perspective, Genesis just makes absolutely no sense - he should not be that chatty, that much of a show off, that headstrong and independent and still be effective as a SOLDIER. He brings this effusive fancy to everything he does and it should be a hindrance but somehow, it's not. There is so much beneath the surface that Sephiroth has no real grasp of - he can't grasp his own nuances, let alone anyone elses - but he's curious, then fascinated. He's inefficient, but he's fast and distracting.

I HC that in fact he did manage to distract him long enough to result Genesis himself giving him a good yank out of the way in a fight because he just is trying to put it all together in his mind and he doesn't know how. How can someone be so wild yet so precise? So fast yet saunter about? So emotional and it not a crippling vulnability but somehow, a strength? WHAT IS THIS CREATURE.

It feels a little funny to me that what Genesis is eventually truly fascinated by is Sephiroth being more awkward teenager trying to figure out how to person - in other words, more mortal and human than he appears - while Sephiroth is trying to figure out how some teenager from a little southern village where they make apple juice is somehow fire and chaos incarnate and why he likes that so much.

I have a question. If Sephiroth is autistic, wouldn't his breakdown be like some stigma for autistic people? Like "autistic people are dangerous"? I know there's a negative stereotype where mentally ill characters are "all crazy and violent", for example, even though that's not really the case. Since autism is a disorder, however, I'm not sure if this sort of thing applies, but I'm only wondering.

Oh, no. I’m pretty sure it definitely applies. And thank you for asking.

There has always been a negative stereotype of autistic people being ‘weird’. Creepy. It’s the way that in movies with ‘unnatural’ children they tend to stare unblinking (difficulty maintaining eye contact, tendency to not do eye contact ‘properly’), obsessions with strange things (special interests, not always on ‘acceptable’ things), strange social behaviour...

That’s just off the top of my head, how we’re portrayed in media as ‘other’ and ‘wrong’. And it’s important to note that none of these characters are ever called autistic, because they tend to be monsters or other sorts of creatures that just coincidentally have traits that are considered creepy, yet... are also autistic traits.

It’s hammered into peoples’ heads that if someone doesn’t fit in, if they do something that’s ‘weird’, then they’re Wrong.

You might also have seen posts along the lines of how when people bully the weird kid at school, it’s usually for similar reasons - that they talk weird, act weird, dress strangely, and have weird interests. Many times out of ten, that’s an autistic kid (I should know - I was that autistic kid).

Back on the subject of ‘is there a stigma of ‘autistic people are dangerous’ in his breakdown, I’d also point at how Genesis is shown to have similar traits - the way that he focuses single-mindedly on LOVELESS, and is very performative with many of his interactions. Explosive emotions can also occur, especially under great stress, which he is under; again, showing the idea that if you act weird, you're going to be more dangerous.

In fact, putting it that way, I’m reminded of how in Japan there’s the thing of ‘don’t be the nail that sticks up, or you’re going to be hammered down’. Autistic people by nature are the nail that sticks up. I’m just going out on a limb here and saying that I imagine that it’s probably an acceptable thing over there to encourage people to think that weird behaviour is bad, and that people who have those traits should do what they can to not present them too much. So that’s likely where some of this attitude in these games comes from.

(I say ‘these’ because I’m pretty sure it happens in other games too, I just can’t think of it off the top of my head.)

The fact that I see Sephiroth as autistic is pretty much the reason I don’t just get sad at his breakdown, but actively upset and angry at the story for letting this happen to him; there are plenty of times story might have gone differently, but things didn’t happen like that. They don’t let him have an understanding support network. They don't let him be angry without there being dire consequences. 

And like... that’s not even all of it, because Sephiroth was never given a choice as to what he was to become. He was a child soldier - literally, a child SOLDIER. No matter what timeline you go by, he’d still be a kid when he started fighting in wars. We don’t see him having hobbies or interests outside of perhaps reading further into the science that he was expected to know.

He’s a lot like Kuja in that respect, where the games - and the creators, and the fanbase - treat them like they’re the main villain of their franchise, when actually in Kuja’s case it’s Garland (and beyond him, the Terrans who’d created him) and for Sephiroth it’s Shinra as a company, and Hojo for treating him like an experiment more than a person, and Jenova, either for forcing her own thoughts and ideas onto him or for enabling him to do far worse than he would have on his own.

The blame gets put onto the kids who were essentially lashing out at the authority figures who had abused them, kids who were clearly neurodivergent (Sephiroth being autistic, Kuja potentially so and definitely in-game unable to use Trance without help), rather than put the blame where it belonged - on the companies, and on the people, who put them in that situation in the first place.

So... yeah, there really is a stigma against autistic and neurodivergent people in general. Though, if you just act out in ‘harmless’ ways (so, Zack being ADHD would be a ‘harmless’ thing, with the way he just wants to help people and he  has charisma enough to cover up any social inadequacies) you’re deemed as ‘okay’ - in other words, it’s a form of passing privilege. 

My Thoughts and Feelings About Sephiroth (Part 3)

Well I did say I would make a third part if I had more in mind about Sephiroth. And much to my surprise, there is more! So here it is! Parts 1 and 2 can be found here so you can keep up just in case I mention anything from those posts:

My Thoughts and Feelings About Sephiroth (Part 1)

My Thoughts and Feelings About Sephiroth (Part 2)

Now this one will be a little different because I will include more about the portrayals I've seen throughout the Internet, my own opinions about them, and my own portrayal. Plus I will include the essay I wrote about him for one of my college courses and I might say random things about Sephiroth that I will discuss. 

First will be the portrayals of Sephiroth I have noticed throughout the Internet. I will not attack any of these or offend anyone who has these headcanons. I respect everybody's headcanons, and it's a good thing too because being a jerk to anyone who has portrayals that are different from yours is stupid and a waste of time. I have friends whose portrayals are varied, and we don't fight over how Sephiroth should act. Love them, hate them, be neutral to them, just as long as you handle this in a mature manner. 

Now I have mentioned the portrayal of Sephiroth where he's unnaturally hypersexual in part 1, so I will not go into detail about it anymore. It's already been done. Another one I will not discuss again is the mindless killing machine portrayal (mentioned in part 2). To those who do or like these portrayals, I dislike them but I will respect your choice.

Now for the portrayals. The ones I really enjoy are the ones for his Crisis Core self (or pre-Nibelheim if you want to put it that way). As I have stated before, I can relate to his past personality, so I really like a lot of the headcanons. Picturing him, say, struggling to socialize, not knowing much of certain things (i.e. video games), spending time with friends, basically being human is heartwarming for me. I take it a lot of people like CC Sephiroth, and who wouldn't? There was this one story where Sephiroth took a liking to lemon drops, which is one thing I added to my own headcanon page on my blog. I found it rather sweet and cute. That's like me but with chocolate. I love chocolate. And then there's one where he has no idea what a sitcom is due to his sheltered upbringing, and it was pretty amusing to picture Genesis and Angeal trying to explain it to him as they watched TV. There are many others that I don't think I can list since there are so many of them, and for a lot of them, I like them. There's some that I don't, but that's just my personal opinion.

Now for the Sephiroth we all know after the Nibelheim Incident. Man, I'm beginning to remember what I've read. It's hard for me to find some portrayals that I like because the ones I've seen so far were unsettling. Sephiroth being a sadistic rapist is one of the worst ones I've seen so far. Not as in the stories are poorly written or something like that but for me, it's one of my least favorite portrayals. I get that he lost his mind, but I believe he wouldn't go that far. I wouldn't go that far with my own portrayal because it just makes me feel uncomfortable. Just thinking about it makes me uneasy.

I confess that I don't know my limits when it comes to portraying Sephiroth. For a long time, I've been trying to grasp his evil demeanor and I still hesitate to go further and struggle to get inside his head sometimes. So I don't know how far I can go with dark, twisted, cruel scenarios, but rape is one of my limits. I won't reveal the user, but I was recently asked if I could do necrophilia. When I got the question, I was speechless. That's another one of my limits. I really can't imagine Sephiroth being...intimate with a corpse. Much to my relief, they respected my opinion. And I like that. People should respect others because everyone has limits and if I have to force myself to write Sephiroth doing rape, acting all creepily intimate around Jenova, asphyxiation (as in the kink), or something that I don't see him doing, I won't enjoy the roleplays at all. I used to wish I could please everybody, but that's an impossible goal and I should keep in mind about what I want and don't want to do. Again, I don't know my limits too well, so if anyone wants to RP with me on my Sephiroth blog and it involves something that you're not sure if I accept or not, please message me. I'll try to get out of my comfort zone, but please respect my limits. If I don't do certain things, there are other Sephiroth blogs out there. It's simple and it will prevent pointless drama.

My portrayal for Sephiroth is close to his canon self but mixed with his CC side and my own headcanons. I try to stay close to canon as I write, and I silently read what I wrote and then read it out loud while picturing Sephiroth saying it. If what I wrote doesn't work, I revise them until they sound like Sephiroth. It's still not easy because I'm still struggling with his dark, insane, cruel self, the villain everyone knows and loves. One thing is certain is I do try my best to make him more human but still maintaining his character. I can't make him too human or else that ruins his cold and distant qualities, like making him fall madly in love with someone or bawling his eyes out. Now I haven't seen these examples anywhere, so I'm just throwing in random hypothetical headcanons here. The point is I do try my best not to make him too kind, soft, patient, you know, real nice or else that's not really Sephiroth. Lol But I also don't make him relentlessly cruel to the max 24/7. Both extremes aren't portrayals I like, so I am tackling middle ground. It's possible, and if others don't like my portrayal, that's fine, but they shouldn't judge me for it.

Since I'm discussing my own portrayal, I might as well explain other things about it. Let's see, he has interests outside of trying to destroy/conquer the world and messing with Cloud. My character is a loyal follower. Her profile isn't on my blog but her name is Maybelle Rose, and she's Sephiroth's love interest. Speaking of this, I make Sephiroth a bit of a Tsundere towards others, not necessarily involving romance like with Maybelle. He doesn't act like a stereotypical Tsundere, but he's a very, very subtle version. 

Romance. Now this is something that might piss off so many, but I can picture him in a relationship. No, I'm not talking about Crisis Core Sephiroth. I mean post-CC. Say what you want, but I can see it. If done well, it can work. I don't like following the stereotype that villains are incapable of love. Some villains can truly be incapable of love, but not ALL villains. It's not mandatory. A friend of mine claims that Sephiroth is bland. Now I completely disagree with his opinion, but it did give me confidence in pursing romance regarding Sephiroth. Heroes are written as human beings, why not do the same for villains? That's what makes characters compelling, it makes them real. That's what I'm basically trying to do with Sephiroth, and as challenging as it may be at times and despite people probably going against this idea as they read this, I'll do it. My blog now allows shippings. Yes, I now accept shippings. I used to not accept them, but I changed my mind. My reasons are shown in my rant here:

Sephiroth Fandom Rant

Okay I know I said I wouldn't mention the hypersexual Sephiroth portrayal, but I might as well. If he were in a romantic relationship, he wouldn't be like that. Sephiroth doesn't get horny around everyone. Seriously, he's not a sex-obsessed maniac. Sephiroth is a private man with dignity and he would never act extremely sexual, let alone sexual in general. He would be intimate with his significant other, but it would be in a normal level and he would be intimate in private. And I must add that my portrayal does involve Sephiroth having kinks, but he's not sex-obsessed like I said. He has self-control and he keeps things private. 

Now for the next thing. I wrote this essay over two years ago, and apparently I kept it after all this time. Lol Yes I wrote an essay about Sephiroth, back when I was still somewhat of a new fan. The assignment was to do a paper on a criminal, real or fictional, and diagnose them with specific personality disorders. However, it didn't mean that they HAD to have any of these disorders. We just had to show the instructor that we understood the material we have learned during class. Take a look at my essay here:

Essay on Sephiroth

Fun fact: My other choice for this assignment was Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. XD But Sephiroth was a better candidate and I was able to write more about him than I could have ever done about Gaston. Schizoid Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder were two of the ten types of personality disorders that came close to Sephiroth's behavior. I don't consider either of these disorders as my personal headcanons for him. I honestly never did despite Schizoid PD being pretty close. And much to my shock, my instructor liked my paper and I wound up getting an A! I never got an A on any papers, so it felt amazing to finally get a grade that was higher than a C.

Speaking of psychology, one headcanon that's somewhere online is that Sephiroth has autism. Well, it is possible because I have a friend who is autistic, but during my research on this condition, I don't see Sephiroth as autistic. Sure some of his traits do seem to resemble signs and symptoms, but speculation isn't considered a confirmation that he has autism. He might have it but I would rather have Square Enix confirm it if he really is autistic. On another note, I do understand why they headcanon him as autistic. They relate to Sephiroth because some of his traits remind them of themselves. I get that and if they think he's autistic, that's okay with me. This headcanon is also given to Papyrus from Undertale and Pearl and Peridot from Steven Universe, so I'm familiar with this. Even L from Death Note is believed to be autistic. To be honest, I kind of believe it regarding L. That's just my opinion, though.

Tangent aside, courtesy of a friend, I am more intrigued by Sephiroth in a new level. Aside from his appearance and personality, his intelligence, the way he thinks has me curious. Yes I have been trying to get into his head to improve my portrayal, and I think I found a strategy. If I want to portray and act like Sephiroth, I have to think like him...in less destructive ways, might I add. Lol I may not be an expert as Sephiroth yet, but I'll get there. I've come this far on my blog, and I'm not throwing it all away. 

Speaking of my Sephiroth blog, besides that it would be fun and such, I created my own blog because I wanted to express my passion for him. He's one of my role models that made me stronger and I just really admire him. And like I said, I knew I could connect with other fans. Sure, there's a toxic side of the fandom, but that won't stop me. I did feel offended several days ago, as mentioned in my rant, but I'm fine now. In addition to my reasons, I didn't start the blog for fame. Popularity isn't really a big deal for me, I just want to show everyone how much of a Sephiroth fan I am in creative ways. Besides, I found the thought of portraying Sephiroth a fun challenge considering he's my opposite, and he pretty much started my fascination for villains. I also made friends thanks to the blog, one of them being my best friend here on Tumblr. :)

Now to finish this post with one more thing. When I was still a new Sephiroth fan, I confess that I tried to redeem him. Of course it was a difficult task to do for a story, and I admit I was determined to do it. However, as I kept going, I slowly realized doing this implied I didn't like him the way he is, the villain he is widely known as instead of what he used to be before discovering his origins. So I drifted away from redemption and focused on Sephiroth on who he is without changing him. Today, I love Sephiroth for who he is, cruel, cold, calculating, everything. Why change a character you're supposed to love? You wouldn't do that to a real-life partner, or anyone in general. Sephiroth wouldn't have liked me for trying to make him turn a new leaf. Lol So I never pursued redemption for him again. It was too hard anyway. It's like trying to redeem the Joker! That's how hard it was for me. So screw that mind-numbing task, Sephiroth should remain as the badass villain I have grown to love.

Well, this is it. For real this time! Lol This is my final part of the "My Thoughts and Feelings About Sephiroth" posts. I said everything I had to say about Sephiroth as I included all my thoughts, feelings, etcetera. I'm out of things to say about him, so no fourth post! XD If I ever have more Sephiroth-related comments that comes to mind, I'll just make small posts. Will I make more long posts like these? Perhaps. I had fun writing these posts. Maybe I can tackle other topics, or maybe talk about another character in detail. Well, see ya!

I don't know how interesting this is going to be but I started to answer a comment on the latest JBSWM from @zanahoriabaila and realised I actually kind of want to talk more depth about the subject so I'm going to post it up here. Between talking a little about Genesis especially on twitter and briefly talking a couple of chapters ago about Sephiroth, it's kind of all been ruminating into something meta that borders on a directors commentary.

Again, how come your Genesis always spews all the stuff I think?

This is absolutely something I do with my version of Genesis on the regular and there's a few different reasons why he’s my character of choice for uncomfortable examinations of stuff.

 Cut for discussion of fic, canon, trauma and interrelationships with everyone!

The first reason is the Eve symbolism that comes with Genesis as a character. There's a decent bit of it with Genesis (much like Aerith) when you consider his name, his limit break, his carrying around of the forbidden fruit and the look of the Goddess statue and in CC canon, he is the first person to tell Sephiroth about what Jenova is. As such, giving a lot of the harder hitting commentary to Genesis feels natural because he is good at weaponising knowledge.

It also makes more sense out of AGS to give it to him because of each of their interactions with how knowledge effects them. The revelation of the Jenova Project in general (I hope!) illustrated this pretty well in that Angeal takes in knowledge and then thinks about what he should say or do or feel about it and it impacts it greatly. Sephiroth takes in the knowledge and tries to analyse and categorise because exploring how he feels emotionally about something is really difficult for him and unless it's pertinent, he just doesn't address it in terms of how to feel about it. Genesis in contrast to both goes instantly to what he is feeling in the moment and it fuels his decisions and choices.

Angeal's issue comes when what he should feel and what he does feel are so at odds that he can't reasonably justify how he feels and he's been going through a lot of that since he doesn't want to think ill of his mother, he does not want to consider that his father might have lied to him and he absolutely does not want to think about Hollander at all. His sense of honour is wrapped up in family, in the idea that he pulled himself up to get where he is with hard work and determination and that he does make a positive difference and he's just...completely lost right now emotionally because he can't reconcile his feelings with what he thinks he should feel.

Sephiroth's comes when something is emotive and he can't pick it apart and make sense of it through physical and observable changes. I think this probably comes from spending his childhood as a lab specimen so he knows how to report things that are observable and that emotions are too subjective so he doesn't include them. Then getting thrust into war, he also learns to describe himself by a physical status report. Zack gives him one based on how he is physically because he knows this is how Sephiroth is. The problem for him and the reason he is as noted by the same comment so detached is because he just doesn't really process anything emotional in any significant way, which is why as noted in one of my much earlier chapters, he struggles with saying 'I love you' because it's pure emotion and he tries to show it in his own way instead.  

Then you have Genesis who runs on his emotions and experiences like they're fuel. There's a throwaway line in Don't You Know My Name about how Genesis doesn't so much like or dislike things as he dismisses or obsesses over them and because of that, he has the nastiest tunnel vision and comes across as self centred. He likes to write his own narrative in a way that makes sense to him based on what information he has and how he feels about it. There's a line in the song from JBSWM's title song that says 'judgment made can never bend' and I think this is part of Genesis struggling more with Zack's inclusion into their relationship with Cloud because he formed his own opinions on Cloud and Zack is Angeal's little puppy he's been hearing about for years. It's hard to shift perspectives for him.

Zack and Cloud have their own relationships with truth and feelings but Gast is history for AGS. So onto Gast, because that the subject being discussed in the chapter. It's not something new, if I go by my own timeline, Genesis and Angeal have known since they were 15 about a decent chunk of what happened as Sephiroth's background and Angeal comes down hard on the 'respect what Sephiroth feels even if it's not entirely accurate because it's important to him' side and Genesis comes down on the 'This was bullshit and Sephiroth needs to know it was bullshit regardless of how attached he is to the memory of Gast because he needs to deal with it'.

Zack and Cloud are just forming their opinions and it'll happen over a few chapters, but Zack is far more emotion based but he also has rose coloured glasses and if there is an upside, he will find it. Cloud, growing up feeling angry and isolated and idolising Sephiroth, kind of has a similar way of coping as him in that he has this idea he can't be openly emotional or vulnerable because he'll get hurt but he also isn't about to pull any punches either. It should make for interesting interaction hopefully.

I think Sephiroth is more knowledgeable than he realises in that he quickly guesses from Genesis being willing to share that they are in the 'experimented on parents' club that this is colouring some of his interaction here. He backs down earlier when the subject comes up, not because he thinks he's wrong but he's not pushing that hard because as much as it comes from a place where he's sad and angry that this terrible thing happened to someone he loves, he can rationalise backing down because his feelings are second hand. Except now they're not. While Angeal and Sephiroth can look at their parents to some degree and assign some kind of blame (and Cloud can from being victimised), he can't because he doesn't know who his parents are or what the circumstances were but Gast was the head of the department when this crap went down so he is a prime target for someone to be furious at.  

These guys spent their teenage years building coping mechanisms based on battlefield experience, it's probably not a surprise Sephiroth is practical and tries to funnel it into something productive, Angeal tries to find the honourable method of dealing with it in the way he's supposed to and Genesis just wants someone, anyone appropriate to unleash all of that emotion on. I'd also argue that Zack tries to apply it to being the best hero he can be even though he was doing a lot of pretty unhero-like things and Cloud was cannon fodder, it's no surprise his sense of worth is in the toilet and he can't really grasp the idea of being special.

Someone described JBSWM as five broken people trying to make each other whole and I don't think it's exactly right, but it is close. It's five people trying to figure out a way to live with a shit ton of trauma and a lot of it is trauma they're complicit in which is really difficult to work through given all time and resources let alone trying to deal with Shinra at the same time. 

This kind of brings me back to why Genesis is often the pushing person in the relationship and why he's not always right to do it.

As horrible as the Project G revelations are, it's not the same as growing up in the way Sephiroth (and in some ways, Aerith) did and he has the coping mechanisms he has for good reasons. He needs to have this idea of Gast as this good person who tried to be good to him but died because the alternative is Gast wandered off the moment he wasn't as interesting anymore and left him (in JBSWM's timeline at around the age of 4) to try and survive it by himself. He's already lost this perfect idea of a mother by having the 'L' put there and all SOLDIERs having JENOVA on their files and he's kind of desperately clinging onto something good because he hasn't really thought about what a lot of it would look like to someone coming in now until Cloud started to ask about it and had enough first hand experience to know it was really messed up. He can justify it as Gast was the better scientist, the better man, the better influence for him but if you start taking that away, it puts him in the position of being victimised and abused and that's all there is and I don't think he knows how to even begin to process that. As @aimeelouart pointed out, if he thinks about it or talks about it with any perspective, he would have to acknowledge he is traumatised and a large part of his identity has been built on his own invincibility. How can he be traumatised if that’s so?

The flipside of it being that I don't think any of them understood fully in a conscious way what happened with Sephiroth’s childhood until they saw it up close and personal with Cloud and even if it's coming from Genesis (dude is loud), Angeal is also pissed off and furious that it's just as bad as they thought it might be but could never be sure because they've only ever seen the aftermath and he does not talk about it. Zack got it all in one, he heard about it and saw it and is trying to deal with that but for Genesis and Angeal, it's festered for a decade and since no one save for maybe Zack has ever met a single healthy coping mechanism, it goes out as Angeal being cautious and letting Sephiroth set his own pace and Genesis going no, this is important, you have to confront this because if it hurts them from just caring about him and realising how bad it was, if Sephiroth some day realises how awful it was, he's going to just...shatter or explode and they'll lose him and even if he struggles to express it sometimes, he does love him dearly and like with Cloud, he wants him to figure out what will make him happy and it doesn’t seem like he’ll feel happy until he can stop blocking out what he’s feeling on instinct as some leftover coping mechanism. Cloud having to deal with his own lab trauma just brings it to the forefront and Genesis is not wasting the opportunity.

The thing is I don't think he's wrong about it because I think Alien Demi-god Sephiroth and Sane Sephiroth are two sides of the exact same person. There's hints of it here and there, but I think one of the biggest ones is he's very possessive and it took Hojo crossing the line and almost killing Cloud when he was beginning to grow attached to him to get him to move out of his holding pattern. In a way, this can also be traced all the way back to Gast and the idea of his mother because it's this almost childlike view that when he's attached to someone, they leave and it hurts so the obvious answer is make it so they can't leave or in the case of canon, try to push them to come back. I genuinely do not think Jenova knew what they were getting themselves into with him because they were like 'hey I could be your mom' and got absolutely swallowed by someone who was hurting, desperate for connection and just So Fucking Done with all of it until his will overrode theirs and he was never, ever going to be alone again because the entire planet would be reborn as part of him. 

Not the direction I'm going with JBSWM, they have some things they need to work on with each other but they are together and leaving Shinra was as close to a statement of commitment as you can get. With Midgar behind them and a chunk of their identity and dreams left with it, trying to face those uncomfortable truths will be hard for everyone and as much as Genesis puts it out there, he’ll struggle with his own too because if they have to deal with their shit, so does he.