FF7 and the real world context. Strife Delivery Service
It’s been 20 years since the release of Advent children that told us a bit about what happened after the end of the game, what our team does after saving the world. That’s where we learn that our main character has his own business of which he is the only employee, both the boss and the worker but not the secretary since he never answers the phone ^_~ And the business is delivery service. Nojima’s books tell us a bit more how that came to be, but still, that’s what we learn Cloud does 2 years after averting the apocalypse.
In these past 20 years since the release of the movie, the delivery services in our real world have become waaaaay more wide-spread than before in big cities. There’s lots of delivery services in big cities now, you can get pretty much anything from any shop/restaurant delivered to your door, and the job of a deliveryman is associated with a very exhausting physical low-paying entry-level job, qualified as “unskilled labour”.
Well, it wasn’t like that 20 years ago. Except for pizza delivery (which was a thing in itself, offered by your local pizzeria if you have one near you), most of the stuff wouldn’t be delivered to your door unless it was sent by post (super expensive post, as normal post most probably would deliver to the post office rather than to your door). So in 2005 a deliveryman sounds like something a lot more rare and expensive and important. You wouldn’t hire a courier to deliver you lunch, you would only do that for something really expensive and/or unique.
I haven’t been active in the fandom before, so I don’t know how it was discussed on forums back when the movie was released, but I’ve been reading a lot of fanfiction lately and I’ve noticed an interesting shift in perception of Cloud’s new job.
The older the story is, the more Cloud’s delivery service is perceived as important and expensive, and while unexpected and a step down from saving the world, it is usually still presented as worthy of a hero.
The newer the story is, especially once we get into 2020s, the more often Cloud’s job is presented as something low. A sign of his depression, or a sign of him losing his way and not knowing what to do, and generally a huge fall from being a hero who saved the world.
(This is just a trend that I’m noticing, I have definitely not read all the fics in existence, and I am in no way saying that each author from the corresponding time has such views and perceptions, there are always exceptions on all sides of this! I'm also not saying anything about either of the interpretations being wrong! I'm talking about interesting differences from the authorial intentions of the original GG7 compilation world, not about correct/incorrect. Exploring ideas and reflecting the views and feelings of the author and the real world is an important part of any story, including fanfiction. I'm merely observing the trend and discussing it as an interesting development in our perception of delivery jobs)
Now that I’ve read Nojima’s On the Way To A Smile, and thought about it some more, I think I get what Nojima actually meant when he gave Cloud that job.
The analogy is definitely not the 2020s low-paid doordashers, but it’s also not exactly the 2005 expensive personal couriers (even though that’s closer). The better analogy, I believe, is the pilots in the early days of airmail. These brave and reckless people who daily risked their lives flying planes (still new and only just developed, and very much not safe yet) in order to safely deliver mail.
There’s a scene in The Kids Are All Right where Tifa shows Evan a map of Gaia, which she proudly claims is the most accurate current map (the terrain has changed a lot across Gaia after the lifestream burst out): “But there aren’t any accurate maps yet, because nobody’s investigated it properly. This map has actually been plotted, so it’s quite valuable.” - she says, showing that map. She says it wasn’t her who plotted the map, but Evan notes that she sounds proud. She doesn’t really say that it was Cloud, it could totally be someone with an airship (Cid) or it could be a team effort, but the map is in 7th Heaven which implies that Cloud (who might or might not have made it himself) is definitely the primary user of it.
And we learn from the books that there is an energy crisis on Gaia, and there’s a shortage of fuel as it’s barely being produced right now. Cid is researching ways to refine gasoline (he wants to adapt jet fuel to be used as fuel for cars), and Barrett is starting an oil rig, so looks like they will have fuel in a few years, but currently there’s still shortage, not many people even have cars/bikes and those few who have, have to get fuel from Shinra or WRO reserves.
And then there’s the usual danger of the FF7 world: monsters. Yeah, without the mako reactors there’re no new mutated monsters gathering around, but there’s still plenty of naturally occurring ones out in the wilds.
On The Way to a Smile also tells us how Cloud came up with his delivery service. Originally he was just helping Tifa with bringing in ingredients and wine for 7th Heaven from Kalm. And then he saw how many people also wanted something delivered, but there’s no fuel, no infrastructure, the terrain is different so old routes don’t work anymore and there’s monsters and wild beasts outside of cities.
So yeah, Cloud is in a super unique position, where he has access to the very rare resource of fuel, he is brave enough to travel, and he’s strong enough to fight any monsters along the way, and he has already made a map of the new world (maybe with some help from his friends). He’s also by nature a very caring person, so he genuinely wants to help people deliver stuff from one to another in this new and difficult post-apocalyptic world.
His delivery service is not a symptom of his depression, it’s not a minimum-wage survivor job, it’s actually a job really worthy of a hero in this post-apocaliptic world.
So yeah, it’s sad how in our world the profession of a deliveryman has gone from something heroic to something looked down upon.
Cloud’s business was definitely meant as something heroic and romantic and very caring.
