#og cloud strife

[protemporescitor]

Wrath of Fenrir - "Payback"

"The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard… but I will better the instruction."

[xdevilrushx]

Seiji vibes

[protemporescitor]

Fatal Mistake

[protemporescitor]

The Real Protagonist

=== SPOILERS AHEAD ===

"Cloud shouldn't have been the protagonist, it should have been someone like Zack, Cid, or Vincent."

Something about this line of argument irks me, even when it's said with good intentions. For one, it too closely resembles the bizarre "stolen valour" narrative that began to take root after the retcon rave that was Crisis Core.

No, Cloud Strife is, and should be, the protagonist of FFVII. Without him, the story doesn't work.

I'm not talking about the "hero beats bad guy" aspect of it. Anyone could fill in for him on that account, and it would consequently be rote and pointless. The real story isn't simply about stock heroics. It's about peering deeper, looking past people's superficial appearances. Not just Cloud's, but everyone else's, as well. Aerith, Barret, even the story's antagonist. There's a divide between the public face that they present and the person underneath.

And for Cloud especially, FFVII provides an extraordinarily deep dive into the psychology of someone who wished to become a hero but was left with the belief that he simply wasn't worthy, wasn't good enough. It breaks down his egotistic false persona, then builds him up again and endows him with the realization that he was capable of genuine heroism all along, without requiring someone else's blessing. No other character would have worked as the protagonist for this story. Not Zack, or Vincent, or whoever else you care to mention. They may be iconic characters in their own right, but they're not Cloud Strife.

Then there's the appellation of "unreliable narrator". In literary circles, this is mainly regarded as a first-person device, i.e. for stories where the narrator's word is our only means of perceiving the story. It can be deployed in film or other mediums where the story is viewed partly from outside the main character, so long as the story is still being related to us directly by the protagonist (see "Fight Club", "American Psycho"…), but FFVII isn't being related to us in the first person by Cloud. We perceive the story from the outside, as neutral observers. Moreover, some unreliable narrators are self-aware, and intentionally censor information regarding the story from the observer. This doesn't hold true for FFVII. When people say Cloud lied about being in SOLDIER, they're wrong, and it's clear that they have misunderstood the story. Cloud never lied about being in SOLDIER, as he himself was unaware of the truth.

Fans are still trying to find the right words to encapsulate the ideas behind FFVII's narrative, which I think sometimes misleads them into making easy generalizations like these. Using the term "unreliable narrator" isn't completely wrong, per se, but I can't help but think that there must be a better, more nuanced way to phrase it.

I may expand on this in a later essay. For now, I'd just like to get my thoughts out quickly. That's all for the time being.

[protemporescitor]

Thousand-Yard Stare

"That guy has seen some shit, and he's looking right through you."

Art by Fumezu

[protemporescitor]

[protemporescitor]

Inferno

[protemporescitor]

Time to remind everyone yet again that Cloud's animal motif is wolves, specifically Fenrir. Never understood why people insist on the whole "chocobo hair" moniker, since it's neither funny nor thematically resonant. Fenrir, with its themes of betrayal and revenge, on the other hand, matches his story perfectly (read up on Norse mythology if you don't know why).

Furthermore, his hair might share the same color with yellow chocobos, but otherwise looks nothing like them when it comes to shape (feathers are oblate, for one, not tapered). In terms of appearance, it's got far more in common with an unruly, rust-colored wolf coat.

"But in Rebirth he has that shirt with the chocobo pattern!" I hear you say. We're not accepting Rebirth as canon as far as his characterization is concerned. Modern Square also think the Nibelheim Singing Lady is an improvement on the original. At this point, I'd take anything they have to say with a grain of salt.