The Love Triangle Debate thread of KNEEL BEFORE ZOD OR SUFFER HIS WRATH (ignore the opening posts at your peril) (Round 6)

[Alessa Gillespie]

He strikes up a friendship with Zack, a SOLDIER 1st Class; what influence will he have on Cloud, that would lead to Cloud imitating Zack’s personality…

he does one shit job then

unless he really thought happy!bubbly!zack made any sort of sense with cold!rude!soldier!cloud

 

[OneWingedDemon]

we're consulting official material only when checking what SE labels a date (even though it's a shit job of one), but not when it says SEVERAL TIMES OVER that Cloud adopted his best friend's personality?

Ok, carry on.

 

[Octo]

It is a bit weird actually, cos even in the OG it shows Zack as a happy clubbable fellow, so it doesn't really correlate with how Cloud behaves.

I'm not saying that Cloud wasn't emulating Zack here, just that Square dropped a bollock

 

[Alessa Gillespie]

we're consulting official material only when checking what SE labels a date (even though it's a shit job of one), but not when it says SEVERAL TIMES OVER that Cloud adopted his best friend's personality?

Ok, carry on.

it says he adopts a persona in several of his quotes (i would agree there! that is definitely a persona he is putting on) and only one says he directly takes zack's personality

his characteristics? yeah, he becomes a cocksure soldier. his personality? they're like fucking night and day

 

[OneWingedDemon]

That's because it's that PLUS a shitload of other things: Jenova's influence, what Cloud himself thinks a badass SOLDIER would act like, which is in turn influenced by Zack's personality and deeds.

@ SS: Maybe we should settle on a # then, at which point we believe official sources? a seperate personality is created, Cloud mimics Zack's personality, you want to play count the numbers it's mentioned go ahead, my point remains: extraordinary claim - extraordinary proof. If you're in direct contradiction with established facts, you give me an explanation. That's all I ask.

PS: I don't believe Cloud was a carbon copy of Zack. He creates a separate and distinct personality with enough adopted personality traits from Zack and all that other crap I mentioned earlier. Point: He didn't just copy a few movements, achievements and dream and call it a day, as has been largely claimed here. A persona is, by definition, separate from his inner self, so we can't really keep harping on about Cloud being Cloud, only confused. I hope this is clearer.

 

[Alessa Gillespie]

That's because it's that PLUS a shitload of other things: Jenova's influence, what Cloud himself thinks a badass SOLDIER would act like, which is in turn influenced by Zack's personality and deeds.

being influenced by is miles away from adopting the personality of

it's the difference between copyright infringement and homage

 

[Zee]

even aeris specifically states cloud has his mannerisms down pat but is still very different personality wise and um i think she would know

also:

quote that shows se counts cloud and aeris' park scene as a date not one page ago
LOL CLOUD AND AERIS ARE DATING NOW SINCE WHEN??? OH U SILLY CLERIS


if the ltd was a movie it would be 50 first dates

it's only the most plot relevant if you consider it a response to Aeris' original date payment plan. If not, then no.

and that stuff where aeris talks about cloud's mental state and his relation with zack which is a huge focus is that game just

doesn't count for anything i guess

 

[null]

he does one shit job then

unless he really thought happy!bubbly!zack made any sort of sense with cold!rude!soldier!cloud

I fucking hate it when the source material gets sloppy. Cloud isn't acting like Zack and he isn't taking Aerith on a date, he's dropping her off at Sector 7. If I could read Japanese I'm sure I'd find "water is dry" in there somewhere.

 

[OneWingedDemon]

Your blatant misquoting and oversimplification will be ignored because I'm just used to it by now, but I consider it to be the plot relevant date precisely because the date payment is it's set-up. If you take it away, it becomes detached from the narrative and only a potential outcome out of 4.

Cloud's issues are made aware well before the fucking date. The only thing it truly addresses is Aeris' own feelings and her willingness to start liking Cloud for Cloud. If you didn't get Cloud/Zack issues before the date, you're clearly doing something wrong.

@ null: I don't think anyone is saying he's a carbon copy of Zack.

 

[Zee]

yeah i mean it's only a resolution to aeris' issues with zack and giving her some closure before she dies

while bringing more clarity to the cloudzack!persona

nothing important really nbd

but I consider it to be the plot relevant date precisely because the date payment is it's set-up.

ok but relevance is still relevance and the game purposely makes it easiest to get her because of that, with the other dates added just for shits and giggles (aside from maybe tifa's since she's the only other legit love interest)

 

[null]

@ null: I don't think anyone is saying he's a carbon copy of Zack.

I think the source you posted says he's imitating Zack's personality.

And he's not. Whatever else he may be copying.

 

[Marle]

I feel like, it adds more impact to get Aerith's date.

Yeah okay whatever it isn't written in stone and there's three other options.

But I mean, to me, Square has always said how they wanted Aerith to have a big impact on the players and the only way you really get that is if you get her date and participate in all those 'optional' moments.

Yes, they're optional. But to me, they fit better with the story. And you can still get the HAHW scene so.

Aerith's date makes the most sense. And also because reasons Zee talked about.

Also, never said Cloud didn't have any Zack traits. Yes, he did. Yes, he was messed up. No, he did not act like him 24/7.

Cloud was cold. He didn't care about Barret's cause. He wanted his money and he wanted out. Zack is cocky, sure. But he would have gone about it differently. He'd take on more missions just to prove to everyone how good he is.

 

[Celes Chere]

I did not say that Cloud had Amnesia. I said he is confused. His mind shattered. I understand that because I have been arguing that in this debate for like, ever. But that doesn't make him a fake. His memories are jumbled and he created a persona that contains a lot of Zack... but it doesn't mean he isn't the real Cloud, either. He's still in there, like Ava said. And parts of him still feel and make connections with others, including Aerith. Cloud struggled with finding himself throughout the entire first disc but his real self was not completely erased and incapable of feeling. Therefore I refuse to call him a fake.

edit: also I will take it up with Square, i'm phoning Nomura right now because that's how much I care

 

[Vendel]

>tifa gets jealous of aerith=doesn't mean anything is going on
>aerith gets jealous of tifa=means that aerith understands cloud and tifa are dating

im sorry im going to need some time away from this thread to let myself stop snortgiggling every time vendel uses an argument he hates the other side using

Let's pull this one from the way back machine.

The conversation should not have been a difficult one to follow. I said the first thing Cloud does is bring up Tifa. Tres said it was the bar. To which I reminded him that Aerith makes the connection to Tifa and not the bar. Which causes her to ask if Tifa is his girlfriend. To which he can either say yes or give a She is not my Girlfriend response.

Do you wish to offer a retraction to your snortgiggle?

 

[JayM]

Warning, huge dollops of interpretation ahead.

I think part of the thing with Cloud is, he's imitating what he thinks a hero is SUPPOSED to be, not necessarily accurate to how Zack was. IMO he comes off more like Sephiroth than Zack, which to me says a lot about his subconscious--that maybe even though Sephiroth betrayed him he still views Sephiroth as the thing to be emulated, because Sephiroth was strong, because Sephiroth wouldn't have gotten gunned down in the mud. And Sephiroth's much more like Cloud, personality-wise. Easier to be him. The Zack bits are the physical, shallow things, like the style of movement; things he couldn't have picked up from Sephiroth because he just wasn't around him enough.

And yeah, I'm purposely describing this as a somewhat-deliberate process. Yes, I think Cloud's a jillion kinds of messed up at the beginning of the game, but I also think he's receptive to being rebuilt, as it were. He's unhappy with the person that he is. I actually think his conscious participation in the farce is what allows him to hold onto that "real" bit of himself--because he's not entirely being "controlled" or "manipulated," he is controlling and manipulating. On some level he does know what he's doing.

Which is to say, I'm on the side that says separating fake!Cloud from real!Cloud doesn't really make sense. One is a construction of the other (that is later appropriated by Sephiroth for his own ends, but that's even less connected to the LTD than this post and oh my god look at the time).

 

[Zee]

And yeah, I'm deliberately describing this as a somewhat-deliberate process. Yes, I think Cloud's a jillion kinds of messed up at the beginning of the game, but I also think he's receptive to being rebuilt, as it were. He's unhappy with the person that he is. I actually think his conscious participation in the farce is what allows him to hold onto that "real" bit of himself--because he's not entirely being "controlled" or "manipulated," he is controlling and manipulating. On some level he does know what he's doing.

THIS, entirely

Cloud's persona is constructed based on his own insecurities. Cloud never really liked who he was, he was always trying to be whatever he thought would make him loved and respected. The Jenova cells helped him swallow his own bullshit, but overall it was Cloud who was trying to escape being him. He decided being a cold hardass was just the kind of suave dude that would get him affection, which brings us back to how much Cloud knows about women: less than nothing.

But we still see real Cloud come out on disk one. We still see that he cares about Tifa's promise, he cares about saving Aeris, he does give a shit about people other than himself. We get to see Cloud outside of that persona poking out in these actions, in the hints his subconscious gives him, to the point when he's literally screaming to break out when he attacks himself in the Honey Bee in, or when his childhood self tries to stop him from hurting Aeris. We get these moments because Cloud is there, under all that crap, and he is reacting and being shaped by the things that are happening to him. He just needed to get the hell out of his own way.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I realize I owe a couple of you thorough responses -- and I will get to that -- but I need to comment on a few things while I have time.

1) Re: the Green Park date
-The CC Complete Guide does call this a date. The FF Art Museum trading card set (published by Square) on the other hand calls the Gold Saucer date their "first and last date." We have a contradiction in the official materials.

Reasonable compromise: the Green Park date is a date in the simplest sense of speaking (interested guy and gal sitting down and learning about each other), but neither of them considered it one. Aerith still talks about it like something unfulfilled in the Shin-Ra HQ, asks him if he's ever been on one during their Gold Saucer date, and isn't surprised to learn that he hasn't if Cloud replies to that effect.

2) Re: Cloud mimicking Zack
-He does to an extent, but, no, it's not a perfect imitation. As has been pointed out, his false persona was a product of more than just that. He still copied him in part, though. That's been spelled out a lot in the official metatext. Aerith herself even says they spoke similarly.

3) Re: the real Cloud having romantic feelings for Aerith
-Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. No one's really trying to prove that, so I'm not sure why evidence of it continues to be asked for.

The most several of us have said is that some form of Cloud (specifically Cloud as he is on Disc 1) had romantic feelings for her at some point. This is proven easily by Kitase's statement that Cloud wavered between the two women. That's it.

Might be true of the real deal, might not. Doesn't matter. Can't even be proven either way. Also isn't what needs to be proven.

The real Cloud had a more complicated light to consider Aerith in, what with her being dead and the girlfriend of the guy who saved his life at the cost of his own before asking that Cloud live out both their lives.

 

[Master Bates]

Re: Separation of 'FakeCloud!' and 'RealCloud!'

I dunno. While it may be necessary to make a distinction between them, it's also quite difficult because in the end, they are part of each other and make up the current Cloud. A part of the 'RealCloud' that comes around after the LS sequence is this 'FakeCloud', the one most prevalent on the first disk and a good chunk of the second disk. The fact that this 'CurrentCloud!' still has a deep pull towards Aerith just make it seem that he indeed had genuine deep feelings for her during his fucked up season that has been transferred to the 'RealCloud!'. For whatever reasons those were made, it's irrelevant. Those feelings may or may not be romantic. The fact remains that the feelings were there and they were strong and real.

But does this affect 'RealCloud!'s feelings for Tifa? No, it doesn't.

The real Cloud had a more complicated light to consider Aerith in, what with her being dead and the girlfriend of the guy who saved his life at the cost of his own before asking that Cloud live out both their lives.

Verily, verily, verily. I honestly believe that we have no way of finding this out with absolute certainty. And this just adds fuel to my 'Aerith is a mystery and forever will be a mystery to Cloud' belief.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Agreement with every word of your post here.

 

[Roger]

I did not say that Cloud had Amnesia. I said he is confused. His mind shattered. I understand that because I have been arguing that in this debate for like, ever. But that doesn't make him a fake.

No. The fact that real Cloud is an entirely seperate conciousness actively talking to him in his head, trying to prod him on to talk to Tifa about what happened at Nibelheim, is why he's most certainly a fake.

He's still in there, like Ava said. And parts of him still feel and make connections with others, including Aerith. Cloud struggled with finding himself throughout the entire first disc but his real self was not completely erased and incapable of feeling. Therefore I refuse to call him a fake.

This is the thing I have problem with. Disc 1 Cloud was never the real Cloud in any serious capacity. But he was still a nice guy that feels empathy and all that. He's the main character too and the hero of the story. I don't know why it's neccesary to think that any emotion always needs to be from Real Cloud. I don't really care concerning Tifa, since the Cloud inside Cloud's head was still trying to reach out to her. But the bond between Aerith and Cloud, that was clearly established between the fake!Cloud and Aerith, yeah it was absorbed into the post-Lifestream!Cloud, as have his fake memories of being in SOLDIER, that doesn't make Fake!Cloud the real thing in the first place.
Saying it was always Cloud IS entirely detracting from the plot. Aerith wanted to met the real!Cloud but thanks to her dying she never ever did, that was the point.

 

[Danseru-kun]

I'm using FakeCloud because it's convenient, it seems that a lot of people have a problem with that so I won't use it anymore. It's fake to him because he had always thought that he was a SOLDIER. He had false memories. Yeah the RealCloud is still present in Disc 1, but he wasn't aware that the identity he thinks he has is false and tells everyone his false identity. It's like I know I was the cheerleader in highschool but it turned out that it was just a fantasy and I was the mascot and I had taken the identity of my best friend whom I loved so much but died.

So I'm going to stop using FakeCloud but I don't think I was unfair. So what's the proper term then? Confused Cloud? False Cloud? Disc 1 Cloud?

 

[looneymoon]

fakeCloud is basically Cloud's deviantart RP character.

I mean it's essentially still him, just except gary-stuified (at least in his head he is). RealCloud is to FakeCloud as Tavros is to Pupa Pan.

Cloud's flirtatious relationship with Aeris is just shameless larping of bad 21 Jump Street fanfic he wrote in middle school. He just really wants to be as lovable a rogue as Johnny Depp is. I mean don't we all, really? But really he's just a big asshole, and most people just take his dickishness at face value, but not Aeris! She has good taste in books and stuff so she can easily see past his bullshit.

...I bet Aeris has an RP alter-ego too in fact. I bet it's a furry.

I bet Cloud's whole alter-ego obsession spands all the way back to childhood. I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote bad self-insert fanfic-esque novel ideas where he's this bad ass cop who manages to woo the local cowgirl hottie.

 

[Alessa Gillespie]

Let's pull this one from the way back machine.

The conversation should not have been a difficult one to follow. I said the first thing Cloud does is bring up Tifa. Tres said it was the bar. To which I reminded him that Aerith makes the connection to Tifa and not the bar. Which causes her to ask if Tifa is his girlfriend. To which he can either say yes or give a She is not my Girlfriend response.

Do you wish to offer a retraction to your snortgiggle?

>you can get a 'She is not my Girlfriend' response from aerith when referring to tifa
>clearly not the same as tifa getting jealous over cloud and aerith 'building their own world' according to ultis, which proves nothing!

nope i am going to continue snortgiggling over here <3

also good post dany, we can all see how ff7 is some sort of larp experiment gone wrong

 

[Wolfmania]

What I meant with 'cheapening his character' is that people are cheapening his character by introducing the notion that he wasn't really lost or his personality didn't change, ergo implying that real!Cloud and fake!Cloud aren't very different in-order to introduce some actions of fake!Cloud into real!Cloud, when the whole purpose of Cloud's character is the opposite to that.

I'm sorry, you just can't do that. Real!Cloud does have knowledge of all his past memories and feelings because he interacted with them just as fake!Cloud did, remember he was in the back-seat watching everything, only did he respond the same way? Did he feel the same way? Would he have acted the same? Thats what's being discussed here.

Cloud says his very own personality is divided. He says one was an illusion of a pupppet created by multiple factors, there's just no way around that. Did puppet!Cloud feel romantic inclinations towards Aerith's? Yea, that's likely. Did real!Cloud? No, I don't think so, and that has yet to be evidentiated.

People are, with all due respect, seriously underplaying just how fucked-up Cloud's mind was, the real!Cloud was a completly different, self-aware personality.

 

[Alessa Gillespie]

What I meant with 'cheapening his character' is that people are cheapening his character by introducing the notion that he wasn't really lost or his personality didn't change, ergo implying that real!Cloud and fake!Cloud aren't very different in-order to introduce some actions of fake!Cloud into real!Cloud, when the whole purpose of Cloud's character is the opposite to that.

cloud wasn't exactly lost, per se? he was there, and he did try to get himself to interact with tifa in a way that would allow him to finally remember who he was. so somewhere inside of himself he knew that something was wrong and that tifa could fix it.

I'm sorry, you just can't do that. Real!Cloud does have knowledge of all his past memories and feelings because he interacted with them just as fake!Cloud did, remember he was in the back-seat watching everything, only did he respond the same way? Did he feel the same way? Would he have acted the same? Thats what's being discussed here.

i'm sorry, but this... well, it seems similar to 'well what if aerith had been alive during the highwind scene? would it have ended the same way?' we just don't know. we can assume, yes, things would have been at least a little different, but we can't honestly predict what could have been. it's a what-if situation.

Cloud says his very own personality is divided. He says one was an illusion of a pupppet created by multiple factors, there's just no way around that. Did puppet!Cloud feel romantic inclinations towards Aerith's? Yea, that's likely. Did real!Cloud? No, I don't think so, and that has yet to be evidentiated.

EVIDENTIATED IS NOT A FUCKING WORD PLEASE STOP USING IT

okay im sorry that was rude of me. but going back to things i have said prior: we can't really say 'oh yes, he did feel romantic feelings for aerith' or 'oh, no he didn't' becuase someone, somewhere will feel that a line he said here or there can be interpreted more broadly (such as the "i will take it on from here" then tifa saying, "no, WE will take it on from here", or the "i remember aerith" when bugenhagen asks if they remembered what they were searching for.) can these be seen with a romantic twinge? yes. can they be seen without it? yes, that's true as well.

but does it really matter? if he felt something deep for aerith, it didn't stop him from getting with tifa in the end. even if he did have romantic feelings for her, he's happy with tifa.