Professor Hojo | Final Fantasy 7 | Re-app

[denigrator]

Player Information

Name: Fox
Personal Journal: foxysquid
Age: over 18
Contact Info: journal PM; plurk: teacuppity
Other Characters Played: Kariya Matou

Character Information

Character Name: Professor Hojo [His full name is unknown in canon, and it's not entirely clear whether Hojo is his last or first name, so just Hojo will do.]
Character Series: Final Fantasy VII
Character Age: exact age unknown, 50s
Character Gender: male
Original Canon
Canon Point: At the time of his death in the original game. I would also like him to retain his memories of his previous stay in Animus.
Background Link: Hojo's wiki page, Original Game wiki

Personality: Hojo is a loathsome human being. There is no way around that fact. For much of his life, he has been engaged in unethical experiments on human beings, more often than not against their wills. He has been a party to and approved of grossly cruel experiments on adults and children alike, even his own son. He is, in many ways, your typical "mad scientist". For him, his research always comes first. It is of paramount importance to him. Family, affection, common decency, even wealth and political clout: all these things pale in comparison to his mastering obsession with his work. He will stop at nothing when it comes to exploring an avenue of research or attempting to prove his theory, eventually even experimenting on himself. He never considers questions of ethics or humane treatment. Living creatures' pain and suffering fail to make any noticeable impact on him, emotionally or otherwise. He tends to see the world in terms of data and theories.

Other people matter little to him, and almost not at all on a personal level. His fellow scientists he usually labels hacks or talentless, deriding them for their lack of vision. One of the few "colleagues" he expresses interest in is Fuhito, who happens to be a terrorist intent on bringing down the company Hojo works for, then eliminating all life on the Planet. Fuhito destroys the minds of the men in Hojo's own SOLDIER program to make them vicious, mindless killers. This doesn't concern Hojo, who calls Fuhito "an interesting man". Interesting could be said to be one of the highest compliments Hojo can pay another person. Although Hojo works for ShinRa and owes his power, influence, and wealth to his position there, science itself, as always, comes first, even above those crucial factors. He finds Fuhito intriguing enough that he doesn't seem to mind being "kidnapped" by him so that they might work on unethical experiments together, though he was "rescued" before this could happen. Putting science above wealth and fame could have been a positive trait, especially when paired with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and an unusual, but undeniable work ethic. Curiosity, problem solving, innovativeness: all excellent qualities. The problem with Hojo, as with Fuhito, is that these positives are weighed down and rendered harmful by an absolute lack of compassion.

This seeming inability to empathize was not present in Professor Gast, in spite of the fact that the man made mistakes. Hojo has a special dislike for Gast, his former superior, perhaps because Gast truly was a better scientist, and on some level Hojo was aware of this fact. This may also be part of the reason he is so bitterly critical when it comes to his colleagues, some buried feelings of anxiety that may also fuel his desire to pursue his scientific goals at any cost. With this in mind, Gast made a crucial error in leaving the project when he learned the true nature of Jenova, largely because by so doing, he was leaving Hojo behind to do as he wished, with all his bitterness and determination. Not checking Hojo in some way was a mistake many people made, underestimating his drive and his ruthlessness, or misunderstanding his ultimate goals. Hojo later hunted down Gast, killed him, and took his research as well as his wife and daughter--and experimented on them.

Hojo might be research obsessed, but he's not straight-laced and tied to his laboratory. He likes to enjoy himself. He does have quite an active interest in the opposite sex, shown surrounded by them on the beach in Costa del Sol. He takes pleasure in the companionship of beautiful women. Most of them he sees as objects, like his experiments--it's simply that they serve a different kind of purpose. Most, but not all. Lucrecia Crescent is the woman in his life he found most interesting (there's that compliment again), so much so that he actually did become romantically involved with and eventually married her. She was beautiful and intelligent, superior both physically and mentally, and would obviously contribute excellent genes to the superior child he wanted to create. Some might say he took advantage of her guilt complex to get closer to her, and that could be true, but Hojo is far too arrogant to see the situation that way. He did have a certain fondness for Lucrecia, and he was quite attracted to her. Though he had a tendency to belittle her theories, this may again be partly blamed on hidden feelings of inadequacy and his competitiveness. He does admire her mind, especially when she's willing to go along with his theories and support his experiments.

As for those who aren't scientists worthy of his regard or beautiful women (or both), some people do strike him as useful socially or politically. He is capable of being more sociable with those who fall into this category. He didn't become the head of ShinRa's Science Research Division by accident. He thinks the game of politics is foolish, almost laughable, but he doesn't hesitate to use it to his own ends. He knows President ShinRa wants nothing more than to find the fabled Promised Land with it's so-called "promise" of limitless energy, and so he dangles it in front of him and by doing so more or less attains carte blanche for his experiments. He has a kind of charm that he can exercise sometimes, though there are certainly those who are immune to it. There are others who find his drive and his mind appealing. The most cold-blooded, ambitious of men will have their admirers (see: Lucrecia and Fuhito and even President ShinRa).

There is final category of people Hojo finds "interesting", and those are the ones he decides might make worthy experiments. People he can alter, test, and learn something from. Many characters in the the Compilation of FFVII have found themselves part of Hojo's cruel and unusual experiments, notably Cloud Strife, Zack Fair, Sephiroth, Vincent Valentine, Lucrecia Crescent, Aerith, Ifalna, Nanaki, and Veld's daughter Felicia. Those of them deemed "failures" did not fare well. Felicia, for instance, he ordered should be disposed of when he didn't achieve the results he wanted. She was left to die, though she survived. He quickly loses interest once a person is no longer a viable test subject. The experimental subjects of other scientists he is even quicker to dismiss. He refers to Angeal and Genesis as "Hollander's freakshow". However, he admits more than once that Angeal and Genesis could be useful or interesting in some way, so his quickness to dismiss them on other occasions is likely due to his rivalry with Hollander.

His opinions are often colored by emotion, for Hojo may be a scientist and someone who often sees the world as a series of figures and experiments, but he's not unemotional and logical. Hojo is decidedly unwell and unbalanced. His lack of empathy, shallow emotions, penchant for lying and manipulation, nonexistent remorse, and grandiosity smack of full-blown psychopathy. He is given to strange fits of laughter and is known to talk to himself or rant on a subject whenever the whim takes him. He has his own private jokes that he likes to chuckle at publicly, and he doesn't feel that it's wrong to voice his inner monologue if he feels like it. In his speech, he often repeats himself. He likes to make veiled, or not-so-veiled, references to his intentions, and includes jibes within his observations. He insults those he doesn't like quite openly, when he can get away with it. It might easy for people to laugh him off as a "walking mass of complexes", as Sephiroth names him, but he is, in fact, a very dangerous man, as evidenced by what he achieves and the number of people he harms or outright kills. ShinRa personnel are said to fear him, and an uneasy atmosphere follows him wherever he goes.

He is a cold man, never truly warm, yet he is possessed of a certain bizarre whimsy. He makes jokes at inappropriate moments, and sometimes acts in ways that seem to be purely absurd. For instance, when discussing creating a hybrid between the Cetra and Nanaki's species, it's clear from his earlier experiments that he would do this through molecular cloning or gene targeting, yet he nonetheless decides to put them in an enclosure together, as if to simply see what would happen when he did. He sometimes makes puzzling pronouncements, such as when he claimed Cloud might be cut out to be a scientist, moments after calling him a moron. He enjoys playing games and laughing at others' expense, yet in some ways he is humorless. He doesn't find things funny that are meant to be. He has a rather brilliant (if warped) scientific mind, yet he is dull and unimaginative where more artistic or aesthetic matters are concerned. He considers the poem LOVELESS to be drivel--not as literary criticism, but because it couldn't further his research in any way.

Is there something to like in Hojo, for those who don't fall for the gifted lunatic type? As previously stated, his perseverance, his scientific curiosity, his intelligence, his ability to move things forward and get results, might have been laudable, if expressed differently. He is a man with a sense of equality, ignoring gender and age, experimenting on men and women and children even his own son without putting any person before another. But it's a chilling kind of equality, that makes everyone equal in their expendability, becoming superior only in their usefulness, which has little to do with who they are as people. Did he love his son? Probably not, though he did prize him as his greatest experiment, his finest accomplishment, even as he resented him for looking down on him. Some speculate that Vincent might be Sephiroth's actual biological father, but it seems obvious that Hojo would know his own subject's genetic makeup, and he claimed Sephiroth directly as his own, if in a bizarre and even deranged way. His family, too, became his experiments, and it seems he can only express himself through science, taking in the things he admires or desires and making them truly his, things he can possess and change. He isn't a very lovable man, but whether or not there's something to like in him, Hojo doesn't care. After all, why should be worry about being liked when there are far more important matters to focus on?

It should be noted that the ultimate aim of Hojo's research was never to attain the Promised Land, or to create a new Cetra, as President ShinRa believed. It was to push science to its ultimate limit, finally by transforming Sephiroth. Hojo wanted him to become a "god" and absorb all the energy of the Planet, effectively killing all life as that energy would become part of Sephiroth. He believes so strongly in his goal that after his death, instead of joining the Lifestream along with most other souls, he will become part of Sephiroth, whose malevolent spirit is still planning to destroy the world at that time. He will also, through the copy of his consciousness he uploads on the Worldwide Network, try to destroy the world again and make himself into something greater. His hubris and disregard for human life and life as a whole are monstrous in scope.

He is also monstrously arrogant. However, that arrogance has recently suffered a few blows, largely because Hojo was so wrong about Cloud Strife, marking him as a failed experiment when he was, in fact, that particular cloning project's one true success. Yet he proves, even after death, that he does not for a moment express remorse or regret the experiments, the atrocities he's committed. He is mainly sorry that he was wrong about something, because it hurts his vanity. He hates to think of himself being a failure like Hollander, and so he displays some self-pity when talking to Cloud, stating that he's even beginning to hate himself, such is his intolerance for failure. This is what he's feared all along, why he's been so critical of others and pursued his scientific triumph so mercilessly. It's not the fact that he transformed his son into a monster that upsets him, but his downfall as a scientist. After Hojo fights the party and dies in doing so, they stand stunned and sickened by the knowledge of what he did.

The character of Professor Hojo symbolizes the danger of science and progress without conscience. He is quite possibly more of a monster than Sephiroth himself, especially because, unlike Sephiroth, his every choice was at least partly informed and entirely deliberate.

During his previous stay in Animus, Hojo made some friends and performed some experiments and was looked at with suspicion by those who knew him from home. He mostly preferred to keep a low profile (while not hesitating to irritate people if it amused him), calling himself a scientist and claiming to want to use his knowledge to help, if not very convincingly. He ran tests on all available floors, gathering data.

Abilities: For all his madness and oddities, Hojo is a genius, as well as a man capable of manipulating others in his own way. He has also recently injected himself with Jenova cells, making him not entirely human at this point.

Sample Entry:

Sample thread
Sample thread 2
Sample post

Prose Sample:

Hojo flashed his keycard and the doors parted before him. He hardly registered the large number 67 on the wall or the gray paneling that greeted all visitors to the Science Research floor. He was walking in his usual way, leaning ahead, hunched forward as if hurrying, without actually adding any additional speed to his pace. He was focused on what was ahead, but he was in no rush to get there.

"Where is the child?" he asked the first research assistant he saw, a woman dressed in the requisite white lab coat. "Where is it?" He didn't need to clarify, and even though he'd repeated himself, there had been no need, as no sooner had he uttered the word where than she was already gesturing and leading him in the proper direction, polite and prompt. He muttered something under his breath, but he wasn't talking to her, his fingers tapping out a rhythm on thin air as he worked through various formulae and calculations, mapping out compounds and plotting proportions. Measuring, weighing possibilities. Devising new equations.

The assistant wisely said nothing to disturb his thoughts, and it was only when he arrived at his destination that his murmuring stopped and he smiled, if to himself rather than at the child who was sitting before him, gazing up at him blankly. He waved the white-coated woman off. "That will be all! Enough." With barely a pause, he turned to the child. "Sephiroth. Well. Look at you. We'll run a few tests. It will only take a few minutes." He paused, and the child remained silent. "Hmm, can you speak, or have you forgotten how?"

"I can speak."

"Very good! Then speak when you're spoken to." He couldn't let him be surly, or unsocial, or withdrawn. No, that wouldn't be good at all. Hojo knew what the child was capable of--oh, he knew too well, but he'd been careful in his training, most careful to condition the thought of harming him out of the child's mind. He wouldn't see it as a solution, no matter how frustrated or angry he became. "You're polite, aren't you?"

As to the other researchers who he hadn't been so careful to safeguard--that was in the past! Sacrifices had to be made, for any great work to be accomplished, and this was his greatest work, gazing up at him in silent resentment, and the thought made Hojo chuckle, lightly.

"Yes," said Sephiroth. "I'll be polite."

"Better, better." They were simple tests, collecting samples, as he did regularly to monitor development as well as watch for any changes. Needles, syringes, vials: it was all done quick and neatly. Other researchers could have done the task for him easily, but he liked to have some interaction with the boy. It had its uses. "Have you noticed anything strange, anything worth mentioning?" He didn't need to explain that he was talking about things Sephiroth had noticed about himself. The child knew he was the focus of the research. He was very intelligent, for all his taciturnity.

"No," said the child, and anyone could see the intelligence in those eyes of his. Not even Hojo could deny it.

"You know you should tell me about any change, no matter how small."

"Yes." A pause, and then he added, "I will."

"Good, good." Hojo smiled again. He could all but feel the anger in the air now, muted and youthful as it was. It was powerful, and with time, it would be even more powerful, and that was what he wanted. Someday, someday, all his plans would come to fruition. Unlike most people, his vision stretched far ahead, his schemes and experiments laid down years beforehand, his plans and backup plans set. "You don't know what you can do, do you? You don't even know who you are," he whispered, speaking to himself now, though the child was capable of overhearing. He was capable of so many things. "But I do."

Sephiroth's eyes were cold and green. Fixed on him like that. Hojo did know what Sephiroth could do, but he wasn't afraid.

***

It was years later that he found himself at the top of the tower, leaning back--all the way--gazing up above the Sister Ray, staring at the sky. He was dying, he knew that. If there was one thing he was sure of knowing, as a scientist, it was the physiology of death. How many had he killed? How many... It didn't matter. Only one thing mattered.

"My results," he murmured, and laughed to himself, not without some irony in the sound as the life drained out of him with his blood. Cloud and the others faded away to nothing, dwindling and insignificant points (Cloud, at last, had proved interesting, that doesn't concern him any more).

The sky had a green cast, and was that the Lifestream or Sephiroth's eyes? Whichever it was, there was an anger in the air, surrounding him, such a great will to do harm, it was almost palpable. He knew that anger. Sephiroth had hated him so much, but it was Sephiroth's enemies that had killed him. How funny. He could even laugh at failure now. Anything was funny if you looked at it in the right way. A scientist must know how to look at things differently.

Yet he wasn't truly dying. He'd seen to that. Science had seen to that. He'd seen far enough ahead to save himself, and someday he would return. Maybe that was why he was laughing. Gazing off into the distance, toward the north, his last words were laughter, and he wasn't afraid.