A masterpiece!
You say so much with so little - not a line of dialogue, but as loud and audible as a million voices. The tension here is absolutely tangible - you could almost grab it.
Your use of small in-game details to expand on the universe and characters is inspiring - truly what fan fiction was meant for. This was so vivid, so enthralling... I am just dumbfounded that you only have a handful of reviews for this. You deserve better, and the Final Fantasy VII world and story deserve exactly this treatment, this meticulously detailed character insight.
I just can't get over this. This short tale shows the mind everything it knows about Hojo at once, simultaneously providing a clear visual narrative. It was like a five course meal for the brain. I've been gorging myself on the buffet of junk that is the FF7 fandom. I was starving for something remotely good. Your story has made me full.

Heh, interesting idea to base the plot so seemingly around the red tie.

Christ, why does this only have five reviews? I'm quite certain it's included on every author's Favourites list IN this bloody section, and only five reviews? Come on, people.

Wonderful, the king-daddy of awesome fics based on obscure in-game references. Your language flows beautifully, you've got Hojo down, dare I say it, to a science (the carcass line is f'ing perfect), and just ... YES. Beautiful job, the kind of thing I wish I could roll off as easily.

Remember me?

Terrific. Wonderful. Amazing how you can make an ordinary object like a tie into the subject of a story, and link it so beautifully to the storyline and back to Hojo. Just picturing the faces of the rest of Shinra! Oh, delicious story! Into the faves it goes.

This was absolutely awesome. You've described Hojo so vividly and using such an unusual and original centrepiece to remark on how he views things. Excellent job.

First of all, I think you deserve the medal for Most Knowledgeable Final Fantasy VII Fan of All Time. Hojo's tie? How the hell did you notice that his outfit changed a tiny bit in one scene? I can't even remember what Cloud and Sephiroth are wearing half the time.

That said, the story is great. I love both Hojo fics and creative and totally random ideas for fanfics. Your story has this whole sense of dread to it, between the panic that all the Shinra employees felt on that day when Weapon attacked, and the minor change in Hojo's outfit that hints that something is different about him and foreshadows his tranformation into a monster...wow, and that was such a run-on sentence.

You're a really talented writer; you say everything well, but you don't overdo it with too much flowery language. I think my favourite part is the whole paragraph about the wedding ring, especially: "It didn’t sparkle with happiness, pride and the promise of a future, didn’t possess the metaphoric glow of the seeming-reflection of a pair of smiles, of two voices laughing together. None of that. It was dull, dead metal bound on a gaunt finger," because the imagery you used shows that Hojo's marriage with Lucrecia wasn't based on a passionate romance. (Totally off-topic, but I've never understood what Lucrecia saw in him. Hmm.) The whole twist at the end with the tie being a tourniquet was also clever.

...Yeah, and sorry if this review is really useless and pointless. I suck at writing them. Anyway, great job. You should write more stories!

I can only marvel at how well this story was written. This one sentence for example: "...a talent for obscuring the obvious." I love it! And the fact that it is based on an actual in-game fact makes it even better. Thank you, I immensely enjoyed reading it.

That was one of the coolest Hojo stories I've ever read. Appropriately dark, mysterious, disturbing and creepy. A simple red tie. Not so innocent apparently. That you notice a little thing like a red tie makes you a hardcore FF7 indeed. Thanks for sharing this awesome piece.