Ff7 - Blog Posts
Hi, it's me. I've been busy. Socials took a back seat for a bit. Here's what new in the Nerdvana shop! Reblogs welcome!
this is what half of the cutscenes in crisis core look like
that one furry image
wanted to bahamut'fy the bahamut cloud skin cuz yay dragon
sephiroth pride edits. use wisely.
what if All Riku in FF7 AC
Cid Highwind from Final Fantasy VII ! I love this guy :3
Warmth In A Red Cloak
A/N: A very quick and simple story, I just made for Vincent, been a while since I written anything so, it's kind of like practice writing this story is to get me back into writing again
Vincent Valentine x Reader
You have the heating on in your home but you were still very cold, you wrapped yourself in many blankets that you have and you still feel a bit of a shiver down your spine.
You heard a faint knock on your window, you got up from your bed and have seen it was Vincent tapping at your window to get in, "you know there is the door" you mumbled before shivering again and clench the blanket tighter around you,
"You cold?" You nodded as you began to shiver from the cold, Vincent followed you near your bed
You quickly got to bed and wrapped yourself tightly, trying to warm yourself up. Vincent walked and sat beside you on the bed, you immediately latched yourself around Vincent and instantly was warm you wrap Vincent red Cloak around you and felt extra cosy,
Vincent looked at you and couldn't help but smile, he found her quite adorable all wrapped up in his Cloak with him, as she finally drifted into a cosy sleep.
God the wild idea to draw Sephiroth as a frog in Clip Studio Paint I also used the paint brush to do the background
Some WIPs of fanart I'm making for Tifa!
No offense bro, but why are you always so protective of Cloud? No disrespect to you or anything but I've heard quite a bit of different opinions and theories on Cloud myself and I do agree with the people who say that he takes Tifa for granted. Going through trauma in the past is not really an excuse for his behavior. He also does act like he's the only one who has suffered in his life. Do you have other reason to defend him other than the fact that you "relate" to him? Just wondering.
Sorry for the late reply, my life has basically left no room for hobbies these past months. Your question is hard to reply to because I am not sure what you mean when you say I am protective of him. I guess you mean I defend his actions? Specifically in ACC? Firstly let me state that there is a difference between being a good character and being a nice character, there is also a difference between agreeing with someones actions, or just understanding them. Personally, I never really liked Cloud, especially not when I was younger. A lot of my defense of Cloud doesn't come from me personally liking him, but from me thinking he's a good character. I also think Snape is a good character, but I don't like his actions, and I don't defend them, although I still understand them to a certain degree. I should also say that as I started to understand Clouds character more, I also started liking HIM a bit more, although I still don't like the things he did, and would very likely not be friends with him. But I do understand why he did what he did and cannot be too critical of him because of that. You've probably heard that before you judge someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That's great advice, if you want to judge someone, you should imagine what it would be like to be them, however, I've noticed that too often when people try to walk a mile in someone elses shoes, they refuse to take their own shoes off first. They don't think "what would it be like to be him", they think "what would I do in that position". But Cloud is not you, and you cannot judge him by how you would act, you've not gone through the same things he has, your thought patterns aren't the same etc. This matters because too often I see people judging Clouds actions in ACC, and establishing his motivations by saying things that boil down to "If I were in his position, I would only do those actions if I loved Aerith/didn't love Tifa/whatever". But they're not Cloud, and they're not understanding how Cloud thinks, and that it's different from how THEY think. But like you said, I do see some recognizable elements of myself in Cloud, which is why I do understand his actions, and why I feel relatively certain in defending them, because I see them coming from a good place. It's common for me to react to things in a way that others find counter-intuitive. Let me give you an example, my brother once was mad at me because I had not told him my girlfriend of several years and I had broken up while I did tell a random stranger at the pub. He said that he felt like he wasn't important to me if I told a random stranger but not him. The truth was the exact opposite, I love my brother, and could not bear to face him for some reason, as I told him: "if not caring enough was the problem, then I wouldn't have told a random stranger". I see people exhibit that same lack of understanding when discussing Clouds actions, where they feel like his actions must be the sign of him just being a bad person, or not caring. But ask yourself what is more likely, that Square-enix wants their hero to be a bad person, or that you simply are misunderstanding the character? I understand why people don't get Cloud, Cloud suffers from obvious mental health issues, and mental health issues simply are not something that the general public understands, even today. Not only that, but Cloud went through the most insane series of traumatic events anyone could ever imagine. He had an alien parasite in him, saw his entire town murdered before his eyes, then saw Zack murdered in front of his eyes, then saw Aerith murdered in front of his eyes, and just when he started living a peaceful life he is forced to watch his child succumb to sickness in front of his eyes, and then he finds he himself is dying. All this on the psyche of a man who had had a fear of failure ever since he was a child, spent most of his life essentially in war, and had a severe identity crisis as well. Do you think you can honestly judge him by going "that's not what I would have done"? Would that not be incredibly
presumptuous? Have you suffered from depression as a result of severe post-war PTSD and a lifelong feeling of inadequacy combined with a fear of failure and the belief that many of your loved once died because you failed and were inadequate? Because that's the context in which you have to view Cloud when watching Advent Children. Saying "Going through trauma in the past is not really an excuse for his behavior" is just incredibly short-sighted, your behavior is determined by who you are, and who you are is determined by what you go through in the past. You can't expect a broken child to became a well-adjusted adult when being a well-adjusted adult is the result of having a normal childhood.
I also don't want to cause offense, but this really is a mindset you should change, because this mindset is one of the most pervasive and damaging ones in our society, it's the one that probably bothers me most when I hear it because it makes zero sense. It's like breaking a robots self-repair unit, and then being angry at it on the grounds that the self-repair unit should have fixed it. It's also very insensitive in general, it's the equivalent of saying "why are you depressed, just stop being depressed", people don't choose to be depressed, people don't choose to have a fear of failure. People don't choose their emotions, they're just there. They can be influenced by behavior over time, sure, but behavior is equally influenced by who you are and your emotions, which, as mentioned before, is determined for a large part by your past. People don't just "snap out of it". They fight and fight and fight, and sometimes they win and break out of the spiral, and sometimes they lose and it breaks them.
FFVII, and especially Advent children, is all about that struggle, and during those struggles you will have high-points, and low-points. FFVII shows all of those. It shows Cloud trying, it shows Cloud wanting, it shows Cloud failing, but it also, ultimately, shows Cloud prevailing. Judging Cloud for not breaking out of the spiral by the time of Advent children, when he was mentally only barely 18 years old, and when he started at the worst place anyone could ever imagine, is just not reasonable. It's the modern day equivalent of "let them eat cake", something that can only be said from the place of privilege of not knowing what the struggles of the people you're critiquing are actually like. So having that out of the way, lets look at Clouds actions from the perspective of Cloud. Cloud is a young boy, and he's in love with the girl next door, he wants to get her to notice him. One day said girl walks up a mountain and he follows, she falls off a bridge and ends in a coma. Cloud followed her because he's in love with her, and he gets the blame from the adults. Cloud internalizes this, and its important to imagine what this must be like for a child, to have the adults all tell him it's his fault that the person he loves ended up hurt. "your fault", "your fault". Afterwards Cloud starts thinking Tifa hates him and starts acting out. I think this is a good moment to point out btw that this child has no father figure. This is the start of his feelings of failure and inadequacy, he blames himself for not being able to protect Tifa, failure number 1, he thinks that if he were strong, he'd be able to protect her, he thinks that if he were like Sephiroth, then even Tifa would have to notice him. Now until this time Cloud is not an asshole, he's a bit of a rebellious kid yes, but notice that he's not a bad kid as much as he's a kid who wants to protect someone, has no direction, and is acting out. So Cloud thinks he's not good enough, but he leaves town confident that he'll become good enough, and even makes a promise to Tifa. All this follows logically from what we know about Cloud, and tells us a lot about how deeply seated these feelings are. Becoming Soldier wasn't a small thing, not some small passion project that he just came up with one day, it's the result of the things that happened in his childhood and he left everything behind make it so. He told the girl he loved, he promised, he boasted. And then he failed. Failure number 2. He comes back to Nibleheim and can't bear to look Tifa in the eye and admit that he couldn't do it, that he's a failure. His entire life so far has revolved around this and he wasn't good enough. So here we have Cloud, not in a great mindset, thinking he's a failure, and what happens? His entire town is murdered by the person he admired, someone he worked with. His Mother is killed, and Tifa, the girl he PROMISED to protect, gets slashed open so badly that apparently she needed to have her ribcage reinforced with metal. I think we can all agree that this by itself would be enough to potentially scar a person for life. (Cloud, not Tifa XD) So what's next for the boy who left town in order to become a hero? Well, he gets captured and experimented on for 4 years, during which his mind and sense of identity is bombarded with memories and knowledge of the lifestream in the form of mako, muddying up his thoughts. Cloud already had a weak sense of self as a result of his childhood, it's why he failed to enter Soldier and now this distaste for who he is makes him extra susceptible to Jenovas influence. The next thing Cloud sees, (he didn't consciously experience the 4 years of mind-fuckery) is his best friend getting killed trying to protect him, because Cloud wasn't strong enough. Failure #3. At this point, in Clouds mind the list of people dead because he could not protect them, because he's a failure, include his mother, his entire town, his best friend, and as far as he knows, the girl he loves. This is his life. His mind is broken, he hates himself, he doesn't want to be himself,
he has a mind-altering parasite inside of him trying to adjust his identity and Clouds just goes "I reject this reality and constitute my own". And why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he want to live in a fantasy world where he wasn't a failure, where he made it into soldier, where he was cool and successful and not a disappointing failure? Zack tells him to be his living legacy and Cloud goes with it, then he runs into Tifa, Jenova adjusts Cloud further based on Tifas memories of them and rejoined with the girl for whom he joined Soldier Cloud is unconsciously all too willing to play the part. FFVII starts and it doesn't take long for the cracks in his fake persona to show, he meets Aerith, and becomes her bodyguard. He gets to be the hero he always wanted to be. But then, even as "Cloud strife, soldier first class", Cloud is still a failure, the plate still drops, killing thousands, he gives Sephiroth the black materia, he beats up Aerith, and ultimately, fails to save her as well. Tifa was the First Failure, and Aerith was the Final Failure. Even as a soldier, Cloud still couldn't save anyone, he loses even more faith in himself, he doesn't know who he is, he doesn't trust himself, and then when he also loses Tifas trust in who he is, he just breaks and gives over to Jenova/Sephiroth. Even Hojo calls him a failure. Cloud feels like a nobody. Now mentally weakened, under the influence of jenova cells, he gives Sephiroth the black materia AGAIN, and meteor is summoned. Another entry on the long list of moments Cloud can look back on in shame later on in life. He falls into the lifestream and again his psyche is under attack. We know what happens afterwards, Tifa finds him, cares for him, and saves him through his feelings for her. Cloud realizes who he is, realizes he's weak, and goes after Sephiroth without lying to himself. In the end he defeats Sephiroth mentally and is supposedly rid of his direct influence.
But that doesn't mean that this mentally 17 year old is now fine, we should remember these events when analyzing ACC. Cloud has been in constant fighting/war/peril ever since he left home as a child, and is now a traumatized 17 year old in a 21 year olds body. Novels and other materials give us an insight into how Cloud thinks during these times, and how he thinks about himself. We hear him say that he's going to live because that's the only way he can atone for his sins. He talks about wanting to change, and about believing he can change because he now has Tifa. He's a man (boy) who just exited war, and wants to be positive, but is still clearly blaming himself. We see that this initially goes well, we are told that Cloud experiences peace and happiness that he's never experienced before. We're also told about the things that make it go badly, when he has to deliver flowers to the ancient city for instance. While Cloud regained the sense of who he was the belief that he wasn't good enough, that he was a failure, was never solved, if anything it was put on hold until he got his memories back, and now he is forced to deal with it.
While he is no longer directly manipulated by Sephiroth he's still suffering from PTSD and, most notably, survivors guilt. He blames himself for the deaths of Zack and Aerith in particular, and starts visiting the church. Now most people might think it's natural to avoid places that make you feel bad about yourself, but that's not how a depressed person thinks, Cloud thinks he deserves to feel badly he WANTS to punish himself, he WANTS to feel bad. He's ashamed of the moments where he's carefree and laughing with Tifa. Why should he get to be happy when Aerith and Zack are dead because of him? He shouldn't be happy, he should be in pain, he should remember them, not doing so would be an insult to their memories, he must never forget how he failed them! That's how Cloud is thinking. We know of course that this is non-sense, Aerith and Zack wouldn't want this, if anything it's this mindset that is tarnishing the memories of Aerith and Zack, but that's not how a mentally unwell person thinks. Cloud wants to atone, and thinks he finds salvation in Denzel, whom he finds at Aeriths church. He thinks that by saving this life, he can, in some way, make up for all the death he caused. Tifa has a similar belief when she finds out Denzels parents died in the plate crash. And when Denzel joins the family, and Cloud has path towards redemption in his mind, things start getting better again. Because this is the cause of the problems Cloud is having in ACC. When Nojima says:
first off, there’s the premise that things won’t go well between Tifa and Cloud, and that even without Geostigma or Sephiroth this might be the same
This is the conflict he's talking about, he's not saying "Tifa and Cloud are incompatible, it has nothing to do with Sephiroth", he's saying "if Sephiroth didn't show up during Advent children, Cloud and Tifa would still be having problems because Cloud is going through survivors guilt."
But the good times don't last, Denzel has Geostigma and Cloud cannot find a cure, Denzel....is going to die. Cloud, has failed again. Not only that, but Cloud catches Geostigma....Cloud is going to die. And THIS is why Cloud leaves in Advent children. And you have to look at this as Cloud. Cloud said he was going to live to atone for his sins, but instead he's going to die. He won't atone for his sins, even worse, he's going to leave Tifa and Marlene behind. He failed again. He couldn't protect Denzel, he potentially brought an infectious disease into their house as well. Literally all Cloud can think about is that literally everything he's ever tried has ended in failure, everyone he's ever tried to protect, he's failed at. Do you understand how easy it would be for a person like this to fall into the trap of thinking "I deserve to die", "I don't want Tifa and Marlene to see me die", "Tifa and Marlene are better off without me anyway", "they'd be happier if I weren't here". Etc. Now we know this is nonsense, but come on, how many instances have you heard of depressed people genuinely believing that their loved ones would be happier and better off if they just didn't exist? However, throughout the movie, Zack, Tifa, and Aerith, all confront Cloud, and urge him to not give up. Cloud eventually does try again, and ultimately finds redemption not by being stuck in the past, but by letting the past rest and be beautiful (a lesson Cleriths unfortunately never learned). "I never blamed you you know, not once" "I want to be forgiven. By who?" "Isn't it about time you did the forgiving?" In the end, Cloud moves on, and therefore, so do Zack and Aerith. Aerith and Zack walk into the light, Cloud plants flowers on Zacks grave, and lets Zacks buster sword rest in Aeriths church, now no longer rusting, but shining. Instead of the past being a negative reminder, Cloud lets the past be beautiful. Cloud was doing Aerith and Zack a disservice by remembering them the way he did, because it was ruining his life, it wasn't a good thing, but it did come from a good place, from a good man whose ashamed of not being good enough. Yes, it harmed Tifa, people going through these things often do hurt those around them, but it's not because they're bad people, or even weak, but because people are imperfect and Cloud has gone through hell, both internally, and externally. Are his actions really that weird or deplorable? "He didn't even go save the kids!" Yes, he's hesitant about saving the kids, why shouldn't he be? Everyone Cloud tried to protect or save, ended up maimed or worse, or as Cloud puts it: "I can't even save myself". "He left Tifa alone!" Yes, he thinks he's going to waste away and die, can you blame him for not wanting to put Tifa through that and for thinking she'd be better off without him? "He drinks!" Wouldn't you?! Who wouldn't want to forget that stuff? But in the end, He's only gone for about a week, he never intended to harm Tifa, he never physically harmed Tifa or cheated on her, his entire life revolved around wanting to be better for Tifa and blaming himself when he wasn't good enough, how is it reasonable to say this man takes Tifa for granted when the fact that he thinks he has to BE BETTER in order to be worthy of being with her has been a constant throughout his entire life and story? He DOESN'T take Tifa for granted, that's why he's beating himself up, that's why he leaves, not because he thinks he's better than her, or that he'll always have her, or that she'll follow him like a dog, or something like that. But because of the opposite, because he thinks HE is not good enough, that SHE would be better of without him. Saying Cloud takes Tifa for granted, is honestly, simply, wrong. It's 180 degrees the opposite of what is happening in FFVII, the biggest constant in Clouds life, is that he doesn't take Tifa for granted, and I don't understand how anyone could argue otherwise.
SOLDIER-Cloud VS Real-Cloud
Why Tifa is the only person, living or dead, who can resolve Cloud’s crisis
Alternate title: “What really happened in the Lifestream”
Of course the Lifestream scene has been discussed to death within the fandom. While some consider it one of the greatest triumphs of the Cloud/Tifa relationship and the game in general, others are quick to diminish its events and Tifa’s role. “Oh, any other childhood friend character who knew Cloud could do the job.” “Oh, Cloud only needed Tifa as moral support, he could have figured everything out himself.” “Oh, Aerith (maybe +Zack) could have done it by accessing her Cetra/time machine/empath/Planet powers.”
The Lifestream sequence is extraordinarily dense with many subtle visual cues, so there’s a lot to untangle and interpret. But no matter how you slice it, any take which downplays or eliminates Tifa is fundamentally missing the point of this scene, both for the plot and for Cloud’s character arc.
A lot of the confusion stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually needs to happen in the Lifestream and why. Thus, using specific details from the sequence, I’d like to present my take on the following:
Part 1: What Cloud needs to accomplish in the Lifestream to advance the plot
Part 2: Why Tifa is the only person, living or dead, who can resolve Cloud’s crisis, where we will discuss fun things such as:
Why Tifa is the the focus of his greatest flaw
What Tifa’s presence in the Lifestream accomplishes
Part 3: Why those “Tifa-less” fan theories just can’t work
This is a very long ride so let’s get to it!
Continua a leggere
Talk about a coincidence!
(Previous post here)
Aerith's key art
Since the release of the original FF7 each main character's had a dedicated key art.
They mostly remained unaltered in the Remake because their symbolism applies to both entries, while Aerith and Yuffie's changed in order to fit the themes of this new installment.
In the first picture Aerith was looking at the Highwind, but in the new one the airship's disappeared...why?
In the OG she wished she could fly on the Highwind one day. Probably this key art was meant to give to the player the illusion she could fulfill her dream and continue the adventure with her companions, in order to make more painful and unexpected her destiny.
I think her Remake key art has a totally different meaning. The central point of this picture is not the absence of the airship but the fact that she's staring at the blue sky:
The last line of the Remake makes more sense in Japanese
The sky, I hate it.
It links up better with the scene of Crisis Core where she perceived Zack's death while it started raining.
But maybe this time there's a chance...
This new picture has also a parallel with Tifa's key art: both staring at the sky, both relating it to a special person❤️
What a nice coincidence!
I can't get this out of my mind
@zerith-week