Do you think Cloud is Emo

[Elly]

it is explained to a degree, in "On the Way to a Smile" the 3 part short story compilation that takes place between Meteorfall and AC... it's written by Nojima so it is canon not not some lame fan-fic... Smile clearly illustrates how Cloud started feeling more down about his past failures and didn't feel he was worth having someone as loving as Tifa and Marlene around to take care of, and it got worse after he found Denzil nearly dead from hunger & exhaustion from living in the derelect ruins of Midgar and bringing him home thinking Aerith led him to the boy, it was just a downward spiral from there, then everyone gets Geostigma and he feels his failure is complete... so he does what Cloud does naturaly and runs away to die in solitude... after all if he can't save himself or the life of one little boy who could he save?..

[Darkswordofchaos]

it is explained to a degree, in "On the Way to a Smile" the 3 part short story compilation that takes place between Meteorfall and AC... it's written by Nojima so it is canon not not some lame fan-fic... Smile clearly illustrates how Cloud started feeling more down about his past failures and didn't feel he was worth having someone as loving as Tifa and Marlene around to take care of, and it got worse after he found Denzil nearly dead from hunger & exhaustion from living in the derelect ruins of Midgar and bringing him home thinking Aerith led him to the boy, it was just a downward spiral from there, then everyone gets Geostigma and he feels his failure is complete... so he does what Cloud does naturaly and runs away to die in solitude... after all if he can't save himself or the life of one little boy who could he save?..

oooh. I always had one question though why was marleane living with cloud if barrett is her father i thought mabey they were looking after her but in AC she treats cloud like hes her care giver. but mabey barret lives with cloud and tifa too IDK

[Elly]

cause Barret left Marlene to "take care of Tifa & Cloud" as she put it while he was out looking for alternate sources of fuel... that's why he's all excited about finding oil in the intro to AC...

[Darkswordofchaos]

ohh ok. Somthing i thought was kinda funny he fought mako energy cause it killed the planet then in ac he finds oil and i can only figure he wants to but that kills the planet to just slower

[Wolf Kanno]

After further study, I have concluded that Cloud is not evil but rather an "Angsty Sue" or in his case, "Angsty Stu".

He certainly fits the criteria.

[RedPouch]

Let's not throw terms like that around so lightly, because I think branding something with a term ruins its credibility. You can pretty much brand almost any main FF character a type of "Sue" at this rate. I was talking with Roogle last night for quite a while about "Mary Sue" archetypes, and we decided to take the infamous "Mary Sue Litmus Test", to which I found out that an alarming number of characters in the FF series [and basically most any RPG out there] fall into this "Mary Sue" category. Still, I think that while most of these characters do indeed possess many of the "Mary Sue" qualities, it doesn't necessarily make them a "Sue" character. At the time FF VII came out, I believe that Cloud's char type had not been overly done yet in terms of RPG's [I'm saying it wasn't prevalent or common back then, I'm not saying it was brand new]. It's only now that everyone's come to spit on his character because he's "emo" [here's another bastardized word that I'm sick to death of hearing]. Of course he picks up qualities from Zack and adapts them, but in the end he still emerges his own person and nobody can ever be an exact duplicate of someone else.

PS. Before any of you get any funny ideas, I'm not a Cloud fanboy and he's definitely not my favourite male character ever. I just liked his character is all.

I believe it's all a case of not what you do, but how you do it.

[Wolf Kanno]

To be honest, I feel Cloud is only emo in the context that had VII been released today, that's what he would be labeled as. In reality, he's not emo cause emo wasn't really around then so its unfair to call him by that term, he's just angsty .

As for the "Angsty" Stu thing, this is something I feel the Cloud from KH and the Compilation represent. Cloud isn't delved into better to understand him more, he is instead transformed into an overly melodramatic characture(sp?) of himself from the original game.

AC easily could have gone into Cloud coming to terms with his terminal illness but instead he dwells on a topic that for all intents and purposes was already resolved. I feel since this is a gross misinterpretation of his character it may be fair to say Compilation Cloud is an "Angsty" Sue cause all he has for character development is overcoming emotional pain that is hardly his fault and has technically been resolved but he forgets it every
time a new title is released.

Cloud from VII is not like this, he's gloomy and self defeating but at least he's a bit more focused than his Compilation/Spin-off self. To be honest, I feel Sephiroth has also gone through a drastic change in his many incarnations as well. He went from a arrogant lunatic to a more sadistic and generally flawless* villainous mastermind whose intentions are just to make Cloud cry. Once again, he went from being a somewhat human character to a generic "I R EVIL" type of villain.

*By this I mean he's perfect. He's an evil genius, he's got the power of Super Saiyan lv. 5 and that's before he draws his sword, and he's virtually an unstoppable force despite getting his ass handed to him 3 times now. The mass difference in power he shows in VII in comparison to AC or CC is HUGE.*

We could easily go into the issue of labeling characters by certain terminology. We don't like it cause most feel it has a negative connotation to it. Its easy to say an older character like Terra or Barret are cliches but in reality they were the originals. As for Mary Sue, the wikipedia entry gives off the impression that its such a broad statement that it would be harder to name characters from anything that are not Mary Sues. Even legendary myth figures like King Arthur or Hercules could easily fall into the term. Sometimes we need the mythological though and its better to escape the reality in which we live in if we are following a rather flawless character that can inspire to better ourselves. I feel conflict only arises when we try to justify the human aspect of these type of characters and we see they are more mythic than reality.

[RedPouch]

Another reason why I do hate Sephiroth with a passion. I really didn't see much characterization for him at all. He just seemed like some crazy villain guy. I didn't really find him to be particularly "badass" at all to be honest. I find Hojo to be more of a true villain than anything else. He was easily the most devious and twisted mind in the entire game.

[Spawn of Sephiroth]

Of course he is. What, do you honestly think the drank potions to heal himself. Pshh. Try Emo Thirst!!

[Elly]

sorry but i have to point out that Emo has been around since the mid 80s, when it was just a different version of punk infused with a touch of goth, now the word has been twisted and warped by "scene kids" and they think it is something entirely different and new when it's actualy older than most of the "scene kids" out there... people just didn't make a big deal out of it back then like they do now, now it's popular to hate on Emo when back in the day it was just ignored by the majority and often knocked only by "hardcore" punks and jock types...

[Marky Tee]

he was a mit moody and depressed but i wouldnt say emo
too much of a good fighter for one thing

[musashius]

Yeah, he's pretty "emo" if you mean he's the type to post high contrast bathroom mirror pictures on MySpace and listens to... (uh, what is it these days?)... Underoath all day.

After their first mission and him and Tifa are just chillin' in the bar... she would've been totally down for a cuddle but he was all "not interested". Everybody knows any non-emo dude would tap that so fast.

In all seriousness I kinda just wish he lightened up a bit. Apart from being the cool hero with a big sword, I felt that he was one of the more boring characters in the game in terms of personality.

[RedPouch]

sorry but i have to point out that Emo has been around since the mid 80s, when it was just a different version of punk infused with a touch of goth

I think you're referring to the genre of "Emotive Hardcore" which actually came from the group Rites Of Spring. Although the term "emo" sprung from this, it was never coined and used in the manner it is nowadays until later 90's, since back then it wasn't really used for anything else beyond referring to people that liked Rites of Spring.

now the word has been twisted and warped by "scene kids" and they think it is something entirely different and new when it's actualy older than most of the "scene kids" out there... people just didn't make a big deal out of it back then like they do now, now it's popular to hate on Emo when back in the day it was just ignored by the majority and often knocked only by "hardcore" punks and jock types...

And this sums it all up right here. It's just some bastardized word used by crappy scene 15 year-olds that just throw the term around ridiculously since they don't really have a very good vocabulary.

he was a mit moody and depressed but i wouldnt say emo
too much of a good fighter for one thing

And that's exactly what I'm saying. Sure he's pretty down, but he continues to fight on. Ultimately, he ends up coming to terms with his guilt and accepts things for what they are.

I'm so sick of hearing the bastardized term "emo" that I'm about ready to strangle a kitty cat. Honestly, the fact that this is the only word that people can find to describe his personality only highlights their lack of vocabulary as well as lack of character insight/ability to analyze.

Now if Cloud locked himself in his dark room writing lame poetry all day, playing poor-quality acoustics and singing about how he's going to kill himself and how the life sucks and nobody's worth enough to even live before he goes to dye his hair pitch black and get an eating disorder, that would be different.