⏾ 006: Cloud Strife Is Mentally Ill <3
Feb. 10th, 2025 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
visualjyushiSometimes I think about a FFVII essay I read a few months ago by an author who grew up in the fandom. There's a part where they described the discontent some fans felt toward Advent Children when it released. This stuck with me I guess because I was a literal child when it released lol, so I wouldn't have known what the consensus was back then. But, this has been very thought-provoking to me so I have some word soup about it.
The original game shows Cloud getting over his identity crisis, and he starts to actually ask others for help towards the end of the game. But in Advent Children, set only two years after the game's events, Cloud is seemingly back to his edgy self and isolating from everyone. In a way, I can understand how the continuation being presented the way it was would be annoying for long-time fans. However, I personally can't say I had the same reaction during my introduction to the series. (Thankfully, I somehow never ran into any spoilers for this infamous series, aside from The Event around the halfway mark).
Not that there's any correct way to feel about it, but I think it was not upseting/surprising to me because I just had a realistic approach to interpreting the situation. Cloud obviously has trauma for a laundry list of reasons, so it just feels normal to me that he would not have linear progress to getting "better" or "back to his old self" or however you want to put it. Trauma isn't something that just goes away when things have been normal again for a while. This is also more in headcanon territory I suppose, but it wouldn't surprise me if he developed depression, or other mental illness symptoms, post-original game's events. Speaking from personal experience, it's quite surprising how hard mental illness can snatch up your brain even after chaos (no pun intended) has long since subsided.
I also happened to enjoy how they wrote Cloud to feel a sense of (survivor's) guilt. It seems like he's had a thing about wanting to feel accepted/accomplished/recognized in some way, if his childhood fascination with being a "hero" is anything to go by. So, for Cloud to have experienced such traumatizing events, it makes sense to me that he would want to take fault for how the events played out. Even if he was being controlled and really didn't have the ability to prevent anything terrible from happening. Because he just holds himself to such a high standard.
With Cloud being the main character, I think the intention was always for him to feel relatable to the player. Seeing him continue to struggle, despite canon trying to tie up that part of his story, is just part of that in my opinion. Mental health has its ups and downs for everyone.
Something that's maybe a whole other topic to consider is when the game was made, because Cloud being a voiceless polygon arguably made him more open to fanon interpretation. Giving him a voice, distinct mannerisms, and more dialogue takes him futher away from that. Cloud may have been written with the intention of staying a somewhat stoic man, albeit less aloof, like in Advent Children, but fans may have wanted him to break out of his shell and become more outgoing. This is just me guessing based off of some old fanfiction I've read. The older the fic, the more fanon Cloud seems open in comparison to how Remake-verse fics portray him. Fascinating stuff to me, nonetheless.
The original game shows Cloud getting over his identity crisis, and he starts to actually ask others for help towards the end of the game. But in Advent Children, set only two years after the game's events, Cloud is seemingly back to his edgy self and isolating from everyone. In a way, I can understand how the continuation being presented the way it was would be annoying for long-time fans. However, I personally can't say I had the same reaction during my introduction to the series. (Thankfully, I somehow never ran into any spoilers for this infamous series, aside from The Event around the halfway mark).
Not that there's any correct way to feel about it, but I think it was not upseting/surprising to me because I just had a realistic approach to interpreting the situation. Cloud obviously has trauma for a laundry list of reasons, so it just feels normal to me that he would not have linear progress to getting "better" or "back to his old self" or however you want to put it. Trauma isn't something that just goes away when things have been normal again for a while. This is also more in headcanon territory I suppose, but it wouldn't surprise me if he developed depression, or other mental illness symptoms, post-original game's events. Speaking from personal experience, it's quite surprising how hard mental illness can snatch up your brain even after chaos (no pun intended) has long since subsided.
I also happened to enjoy how they wrote Cloud to feel a sense of (survivor's) guilt. It seems like he's had a thing about wanting to feel accepted/accomplished/recognized in some way, if his childhood fascination with being a "hero" is anything to go by. So, for Cloud to have experienced such traumatizing events, it makes sense to me that he would want to take fault for how the events played out. Even if he was being controlled and really didn't have the ability to prevent anything terrible from happening. Because he just holds himself to such a high standard.
With Cloud being the main character, I think the intention was always for him to feel relatable to the player. Seeing him continue to struggle, despite canon trying to tie up that part of his story, is just part of that in my opinion. Mental health has its ups and downs for everyone.
Something that's maybe a whole other topic to consider is when the game was made, because Cloud being a voiceless polygon arguably made him more open to fanon interpretation. Giving him a voice, distinct mannerisms, and more dialogue takes him futher away from that. Cloud may have been written with the intention of staying a somewhat stoic man, albeit less aloof, like in Advent Children, but fans may have wanted him to break out of his shell and become more outgoing. This is just me guessing based off of some old fanfiction I've read. The older the fic, the more fanon Cloud seems open in comparison to how Remake-verse fics portray him. Fascinating stuff to me, nonetheless.
