gold glove [ffvii: ogc, hojo/vincent, pg]

[intradependency]

Title: Gold Glove
Author: ellnyx (once was logistika_nyx)
Rating: PG
Word count: ~1200
Prompt: Final Fantasy VII, Hojo/Vincent: Restraints - The price of freedom
Spoilers: Vincent backstory
Warnings: Tentacles.  Hojo.

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Comments

[seta_suzume]

Oh! Creepy and awesome! The story of his metal arm!

[intradependency]

Thanks for feedback! Vincent is his own worst enemy.

[tipsybluetips]

This is like a punch to the gut in the best of ways. The first part is alarming and soft at the same time - Vincent's denial swirling around him like a veil waiting to be ripped apart, the horror being held back at arms lenght.

And then the horror comes. Your Hojo creeps me out in ways not even canon managed to when I was an impressionable and excessively imaginative 10-year-old.

You amaze me every time. ♥

[intradependency]

Hee hee, at arms length indeed. :D Glad you enjoyed it! I wish, so very much, that they hadn't given Hojo the voice they did in Dirge of Cerberus. His speech/dialogue in FFVII gave him so much potential beyond the cackling mad stereotype...

[threewalls]

Oh, yes, vanity, what other reason could Vincent have? Hojo seems less inhuman than Jenova in this, but he is a sociopath.

[intradependency]

I play with Hojo as a sociopath by choice, rather than nature. Hojo seemed strangely regretful in FFVII, while totally unrepentant...aware of lost opportunities and all that, where Vincent was angry and stupid (ie, totally unaware/still juvenile). I think of Hojo like a surgeon who just gets so used to pain and blood and butchery, and things dying, that he just can't let himself relate to people as anything but meat and mechanisms.

[threewalls]

Oh, he's kind enough to Lucretia here, not Bergan's unthinking sadism, say, but a meticulous narrowing of his point of view, never questioning himself, only others. Hojo does not consider himself subject for study?

[intradependency]

Not at this stage, though I imagine a total breakdown of scientist-subject boundaries would be what leads him to infect himself with Jenova. Also, I can't help remembering Hojo's plan to breed Nanaki with Aeris in the effort to allow two rare species to reproduce...Hojo *definitely* doesn't think of himself as a subject for study for a good while yet. Outside the mechanism, not quite an impartial observer.

[frozen_paradigm]

I have nothing but <3! to contribute.

What hit me most is how... nondramatic all the conversation about pseudopodia and mutation is. Hojo and Lucrecia are just scientists going about their daily routine. And 'I'll take better care of him'...Vincent's more pet, more 'precious specimen' than human now.

You're great!

[intradependency]

Thanks! ^^

People are very good at making horrible situations seem normal...

[wei_jiangling]

Funny, I'm sure we had a conversation about this a while back... XD

Very, very nicely done. I love the point that if he had simply run, rather than try to fix the tentacliness (totally a word) of his arm, he would have easily escaped any further testing. And, as is typical in your fics, little details make it. The note about metal and arguing with blacksmiths--well placed.

(...what does it say about me that I am going to bed after this with no apparent issue, and that it in fact calmed my brain to the point where I could sleep?)

[intradependency]

Vincent and his vanity, it always gets him in trouble. Glad it tickled your fancy! (Maybe tentacles are easier to dream about than...erm...other...things?)

[wei_jiangling]

I love how this becomes "vanity" as if most people wouldn't react that way to their arm being taken over by alien tentacles. (I think it more has to do with the tone of a piece and the fact that this was not the kind to make me hyper and/or laugh hysterically, which would not facilitate sleeping. I did not dream about tentacles, thankfully. I did, however, dream about a friend of mine painting her nails. Maybe my brain got stuck on "vanity"? Hahaha.)