While my good chap is musing over philosophical matters like conflict and conflict’s positive impact on the human race whilst the people of our age turn their noses up at suffering and aim towards world peace, I have decided to write a little essay myself. But alas, my friends. I’m not writing about the fate of our race or the merit of the apocalypse or the reason why fathers violate their daughters. I’m here to talk about Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy. *cue banjo music*

From the sight of him in his original game of FFVII spanning to his appearance in Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus (not considering Crisis Core because he was only sixteen), Cloud has changed. I wanted to write a journal about this because I was thinking about this little -issue- as of late. Traversing across the huge FFVII fandom, one finds a plethora of angry comments about Cloud and his emo angst and his tears of sorrow and his sighs of grief and his wrists of blood slit. Sadly this is an image projected directly only from VII projects made in the past decade, and those without knowledge of his original game -or those that have simply forgotten - believe that this is all Cloud really is. I think I’m going to stick up for that lovely little man and say that you, you misguided peons, are all quite. wrong.

A little history lesson, perhaps, will bring those unenlightened folk into the light that is Sir Strife. The premise of VII is a cocky little mercenary bombs a city for $$$. Said mercenary accidentally gets caught up in a tale of running from evil people towards evil people all while having a weird little whisper in his ear and a tingle in his spine telling his brain that he should find the great SOLDIER Sephiroth. Throughout the game, the cocky mercenary cross dresses, has sex with a well-endowed chick, goes through the well-endowed chick’s underwear drawer and holds onto the bra, participates in a romance play at an amusement park, and does all the above with a coolness and cockiness that cannot be topped, although Dio, Mukki, and Don Corneo would like to beg otherwise. Of course, this mercenary is unspokenly Cloud Strife in the flesh and blood. This is a man of charm and awesome, charm and awesome, charm and awesome. (Tifa: Did you sleep well, Cloud? Cloud: Next to you, who wouldn't?) This is NOT emo angst.

Now, once he has his climactic head-banging breaking point of realizing that he is NOT Zack Fair, 1st class SOLDIER and 1st class God, he changes into, again, not a woobie angst machine but a dorky little fragile-minded idiot. (Cloud Strife: Can't go through here... That flame would make crispy critters of us in an instant.) He’s really pretty dumb. However, he’s happy, and unfortunately Square Enix has decided to make him instead absolutely miserable in later games. Most people don’t know of the beautiful gems of lines he had in VII because they’re too busy mocking the way he said “dilly dally shilly shally” in Advent Children.

Because I feel it’s necessary and because I just.. want to, I’m gonna post some of said beautiful gems just to further my point:
Aeris: You remember me? Cloud: Yeah, you're the slum drunk.

Tifa: You see that, Cloud? Cloud: The girl in the bikini?

Cloud: (to Barret) You looked like a bear wearing a marshmallow.

Cloud: People tell me that my personality is divided. I don't think so, but maybe it is.

Cloud: I'm... Cloud. The master of my own illusionary world.

Preach it, Cloud. Now that I’ve proved my point, I can say heartily that he is a beautifully simple man. I wish the fandom would understand that he is his FFVII self and that his AC or DoC or even KH personalities are hardly canon because the writers are being incompetent assholes about his demeanor. It saddens me to see him being put next to Squall as being the one of the two most solemn, angsty, dark protagonists in the entire FF series, when in fact he should be put next to Bartz or Tidus in the dumb, pleasant category. (Squall is a different discussion, rant, and essay.) So fandom: my commands are for you to become more educated in the ways of Cloud Strife’s mind. That is all.