Entry tags:
abraxas application;
OOC INFORMATION
Player Name: Gen
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact: plurk: blackjupiter
Other Characters in Game: None!
IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Cloud Strife
Canon: FFVII Remake
Canon Point: End of remake, approaching Kalm.
Background: here!
Suitability: I have to be honest. I think that initially Cloud will be reluctant to engage with Abraxas as a whole because he's someone who is severely averse to entering situations where he must rely on others and others must rely on him to achieve a shared objective. For him, it's reminiscent of serving within Shinra's army and although he doesn't yet understand (yet) just how badly that went, he does understand that Really Bad Things Happened, he deserted and thus styles himself a gruff, surly, Done With Everything freelancer who is reluctant to engage with anything and anyone beyond getting a payday for his efforts as a mercenary... and honestly? Going into this all 'yeah, he'll be fine!' feels disingenuous and I'll spare you that.
But don't decline me for unsuitability yet! Cloud may believe he's too cool for school, may act like a jerk that simply doesn't care and may openly bitch about engaging when he's forced into it, this is a wall he's erected and nothing more. Deep down he's very much someone that really, really gives a damn. In canon, while his work with AVALANCHE (an eco-terrorist cell) was only spurred by concern for a childhood friend who found herself trapped within it, the atrocities he witnessed while working for them spurred him into action- his own action- and to him, a job's a job. He's loyal and steadfast even when he's not engaged. Until he's engaged, he'll play ball even if he'll complain about it.
For Abraxas though, I don't want him to be humming away in the background. I intend for engagement to happen.
I imagine it happening via smaller things on a more personal level- leading up to the more grandiose plots as he works out more and more about what's going on, and how it'll affect the little people (citizenry) which have no choice to suffer through each nation's attempt at getting access to the Singularity. He'll be concerned to hear about the disease in Fomalhaut for instance. I'd also like him to be a character that asks questions- about the Singularity, about each nation's aims, about why war's the option of choice anyway- and I very much hope for him to work alongside other characters in order to find his own reasoning for participation in the little things.
Powers: Genetic Reinforcement: Cloud possesses above human strength, speed, and stamina. His magic capability is better than average, and he tends to have physical and magical strength as his favored stats. His resilience is far above average as well. In various media, he's shown himself capable of feats such as standing upright on a moving train (imagine the core strength required. Imagine.) surviving falls of hundreds of feet without injury (despite a lengthy KO time), and honestly, it's a running joke in the fandom about how he can get stabbed through vital parts and somehow live. On a more serious (general) note- Cloud isn't invincible by any means. He has around the same sort of strengths as a First Class SOLDIER- but he can tire, he can be hurt, and he can be killed... but it's just harder for him to get there and he can do a lot of damage while someone's plugging away at him.
Limit Break: People from Gaia, warrior-types or not, tend to have "limit breaks" which are powerful personal abilities. Said abilities have a caveat of which they are only accessible after a said person has taken a certain amount of punishment. Imagine real-life stories of people, in life-or-death situations somehow managing to do the impossible? That's a limit break, essentially.
Most people have a single-limit ability- though more can be learned with training. Cloud's personal limit breaks are the following.
Cross Slash (chance of inflicting temporary paralysis)
Ascension (...Lots and lots of hits.)
Swordsmanship: Brash and aggressive, Cloud relies on overpowering opponents with ferocity and brute strength. Cloud is proficient in two-handed swords and emulates Zack Fair's style of both slicing and crushing in his Punisher Mode, as well as a more surgical, tactical approach in his Operator Mode. It is shown in the supplementary material (Crisis Core and Before Crisis respectively) that he can also use single-handed swords and rifles at a pinch. He's said to be pretty good at using a single-handed sword too.
PERSONALITY QUESTIONS
Describe an important event in your character's life and how it impacted them.
Human experimentation, the desertion of Shinra, and subsequently, the death of Zack Fair. (Yes they're all the same thing.)
After the Nibelheim Incident, something interesting happens to Cloud. Shinra retrieves both him and his friend, a SOLDIER First Class known as Zack Fair, and use them both as lab experiments (in an attempt to recoup their losses from Sephiroth being killed in Nibelheim presumably) to no success. Both men are held in an underground facility and experimented on for over 4 years- Cloud developing extensive Mako poisoning during this time.
Zack escapes, hauls Cloud across the world to Midgar with the hope of keeping his head down, hiding out at his girlfriend's place, and scoring some mercenary work to pay the bills, but unfortunately is gunned down just outside the city's borders. The interesting part of this is what happens to Cloud.
Cloud changes from a quiet, isolated individual which had a few minor mental health issues (low self-worth and anxiety) into a full-blown disassociative personality. Cloud out-and-out copies his picture of Zack (cool, flashy) and slots it alongside his mental picture of himself as a SOLDIER (stoic), and takes Zack's (vague) dying words of 'being his living legacy' as fact. His memories are entirely and utterly warped as disassociation protects him from the pain of Zack's death by putting himself in his place. Cloud genuinely believes that Zack never existed, and in his mind, he takes his role.
All-in-all, Cloud's an extremely mentally unwell man. It's combined trauma that causes his disassociation. The Nibelheim Incident and Zack's death serve as a traumatic incident his mind wishes to protect him from, Mako poisoning (and by extension a near-death state) and prior induction of Jenova cells unto his body (which have a single function- imitation) serve as a catalyst to the disassociation- but his sense of shame can't be discounted. Some part of him is willing to wipe the slate clean and accept he's someone else because it removes all of the weakness of which he's struggled against. Later in FF7, he accepts his weakness... but right now he doesn't have the character development to. So he's still railing against it.
Does your character have a moral code or other set of standards they try to live by?
Cloud operates by his own rules and has a pretty loose (but serviceable!) grasp on what's right and wrong.
He'll never turn his nose up at more unsavory things (breaking into commercial, governmental, and private property, theft, and murder are things he's certainly done in FF7, and done a lot of) but he does have a basic idea of what's right and wrong. He can and does care about people as well- even if he can be pretty standoffish when it comes to implementing them to maintain his Cool Guy Done With This image he clings so much to.
A good example is the Sector 5 sidequests, where he acts like a dick to a small child in order to encourage him to keep in with the pretty daunting task of collecting as many Moogle Medals as he can. It's the child's wish to collect all of the medals in the world in order to make everyone happy. (dumb kid logic formed via fairytales of moogles) Cloud pretty much acts like a grump around the child to encourage him in this task. To the child, "fixing" Cloud by making him happy requires a whole lot of medals.
On the same day, he outright refuses to complete a job tasked to him- giving an old man a key to the graveyard to visit his dead wife, simply because he's concerned that the old man will wind up dead by actually visiting the grave- by inflating his price for the job to a gil sum that the old man (or anyone really) simply can't afford. Mid-job, by the way. The old man's sentiment toward him at this is pretty terrible as he feels like he's been deceived and his grief is being taken advantage of, but it's really not that. It's the fact that in getting the key, Cloud saw that the graveyard was dangerous and teeming with monsters, and he doesn't want the old man to wind up dead as well. But he doesn't tell him this. He's happy to have the old man believe that he's an ass in order to do what's right- and it applies to a lot of Cloud's morals as a person.
What quality or qualities do they admire most?
Cloud admires strength, but he admires mentor-type characters most of all. His attachment to Zack Fair, a mentor, a walking army, a source of camaraderie, and his first actual friend simply can't be overstated- and he has a history of valuing cooler, powerful types- such as his long history (pre-Nibelheim Incident) of fanboying over Sephiroth who, to Cloud, was the whole package- inhumanly strong, and marketed by Shinra as a Great Hero- was something Cloud found inspiring enough to be the guiding factor for the direction his life was to take.
In more recent times, this bias hasn't gone away. Cloud is drawn to characters such as Tifa which have an older sister personality- she's strong, calm, collected, and is a stable and reassuring source of balance to him. Conversely, he finds himself disliking characters of the opposite persuasion.
Do they have a part of themselves they dislike?
His weakness, for sure. It even leads into full blown disassociation pre-FF7.
To summarise, Cloud was a child that dreamed of becoming a SOLDIER First Class- and emulating a personal hero, Sephiroth. Cloud grew up with a lot of insecurities (See the last question) and believed that being an outsider meant that he was special. SOLDIER operatives are people which are venerated for their strength and their power- but they're also feared and known as inhuman. Cloud approximated in his head that his differences, and his outsider complex meant that he was destined to become a SOLDIER First Class, and at the first chance he got, he left Nibelheim to travel to Midgar in order to realize his dream and finally belong somewhere.
Unfortunately, despite being about as weird as any SOLDIER, Cloud's strength isn't observed as being any better than any other village yokel with big dreams and a mediocre constitution. Subsequently, Cloud didn't make the cut. He took employment within Shinra Inc. as an infantryman and essentially served as a grunt within their private army as... well, something- but an operation leads him to Nibelheim- the village of which he left with his middle fingers (figuratively) in the air.
And obviously, he never made SOLDIER. He's a grunt- and he conceals his identity from each and every townsperson within the village as well as, most importantly, Tifa. He chooses to appear to her as an anonymous grunt soldier accompanying Sephiroth and Zack Fair on their mission to investigate Nibelheim's malfunctioning mako reactor, rather than admit that being "different" from all of the other kids in Nibelheim didn't mean that he was special at all.
What is their sign, and why?
The Hanged Man.
I'd like to play to the element of Cloud which is an outsider, and explaining its source brings us to his childhood. Underneath everything? Cloud's a very weak man and it's something ingrained in him for a very long time. Cloud was a child of a certain backwater town who did not fit in. He was younger than the majority of the town's kids and wasn't part of their friend group, and as such, was hurt by his exclusion. This hurt developed into a superiority complex. He made himself feel better about it by convincing himself that the other children were "childish" (go figure. They're children) and stupid- and that he was better than them anyway.
Unfortunately, when one child, in particular, Tifa's, mother died suddenly- she was told that her mother had simply passed over a nearby mountain and all who did would not return. Tifa took it upon herself to join her mother- thinking that she'd be lonely all by herself- and attempted to cross the mountain to join her. Cloud, unlike the village children that all ran away- knew that the attempt to cross the mountain was dangerous and he went after her. As he was nearing her, the rope bridge that they were both stood on snapped, and Cloud and Tifa plummetted into a canyon.
He found himself conscious, and (miraculously) with only a pair of skinned knees as an injury- but Tifa herself was unconscious and in a much worse way. Two adults (coincidentally, Tifa's father was among them) found the pair, and Cloud found himself blamed for the entire situation, and he's blamed hard. At 9 years old. The adults, and therefore the entire village believed that Cloud brought Tifa to the mountain for nefarious purposes. Cloud even states in his flashback about the situation that "even my mom gave up on me." and honestly? It's not a stretch to think that the fact Cloud was blamed for this gave him even more insecurity. It turned his feelings of "I'm different" to "There's something wrong with me".
This speculation is confirmed when FF7 mentions that after that time, he began getting into fights. Cloud changed from a quiet outsider into a kid that really was just as bad as the rumors about him were, and it is mentioned during the Cloud's subconscious memory sequence that he beat up all of Tifa's friends among other means of lashing out. I believe a lot of it is- obviously- that if you tell a child (at such a young age) they are something, they're going to prove you right. Cloud, pretty much, was a terror from that point on, and his outsider complex follows him throughout his character development as an adult.
SAMPLES & ARRIVAL
Samples: here!
Arrival Scenario: Cadens!
Player Name: Gen
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact: plurk: blackjupiter
Other Characters in Game: None!
IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Cloud Strife
Canon: FFVII Remake
Canon Point: End of remake, approaching Kalm.
Background: here!
Suitability: I have to be honest. I think that initially Cloud will be reluctant to engage with Abraxas as a whole because he's someone who is severely averse to entering situations where he must rely on others and others must rely on him to achieve a shared objective. For him, it's reminiscent of serving within Shinra's army and although he doesn't yet understand (yet) just how badly that went, he does understand that Really Bad Things Happened, he deserted and thus styles himself a gruff, surly, Done With Everything freelancer who is reluctant to engage with anything and anyone beyond getting a payday for his efforts as a mercenary... and honestly? Going into this all 'yeah, he'll be fine!' feels disingenuous and I'll spare you that.
But don't decline me for unsuitability yet! Cloud may believe he's too cool for school, may act like a jerk that simply doesn't care and may openly bitch about engaging when he's forced into it, this is a wall he's erected and nothing more. Deep down he's very much someone that really, really gives a damn. In canon, while his work with AVALANCHE (an eco-terrorist cell) was only spurred by concern for a childhood friend who found herself trapped within it, the atrocities he witnessed while working for them spurred him into action- his own action- and to him, a job's a job. He's loyal and steadfast even when he's not engaged. Until he's engaged, he'll play ball even if he'll complain about it.
For Abraxas though, I don't want him to be humming away in the background. I intend for engagement to happen.
I imagine it happening via smaller things on a more personal level- leading up to the more grandiose plots as he works out more and more about what's going on, and how it'll affect the little people (citizenry) which have no choice to suffer through each nation's attempt at getting access to the Singularity. He'll be concerned to hear about the disease in Fomalhaut for instance. I'd also like him to be a character that asks questions- about the Singularity, about each nation's aims, about why war's the option of choice anyway- and I very much hope for him to work alongside other characters in order to find his own reasoning for participation in the little things.
Powers: Genetic Reinforcement: Cloud possesses above human strength, speed, and stamina. His magic capability is better than average, and he tends to have physical and magical strength as his favored stats. His resilience is far above average as well. In various media, he's shown himself capable of feats such as standing upright on a moving train (imagine the core strength required. Imagine.) surviving falls of hundreds of feet without injury (despite a lengthy KO time), and honestly, it's a running joke in the fandom about how he can get stabbed through vital parts and somehow live. On a more serious (general) note- Cloud isn't invincible by any means. He has around the same sort of strengths as a First Class SOLDIER- but he can tire, he can be hurt, and he can be killed... but it's just harder for him to get there and he can do a lot of damage while someone's plugging away at him.
Limit Break: People from Gaia, warrior-types or not, tend to have "limit breaks" which are powerful personal abilities. Said abilities have a caveat of which they are only accessible after a said person has taken a certain amount of punishment. Imagine real-life stories of people, in life-or-death situations somehow managing to do the impossible? That's a limit break, essentially.
Most people have a single-limit ability- though more can be learned with training. Cloud's personal limit breaks are the following.
Cross Slash (chance of inflicting temporary paralysis)
Ascension (...Lots and lots of hits.)
Swordsmanship: Brash and aggressive, Cloud relies on overpowering opponents with ferocity and brute strength. Cloud is proficient in two-handed swords and emulates Zack Fair's style of both slicing and crushing in his Punisher Mode, as well as a more surgical, tactical approach in his Operator Mode. It is shown in the supplementary material (Crisis Core and Before Crisis respectively) that he can also use single-handed swords and rifles at a pinch. He's said to be pretty good at using a single-handed sword too.
PERSONALITY QUESTIONS
Describe an important event in your character's life and how it impacted them.
Human experimentation, the desertion of Shinra, and subsequently, the death of Zack Fair. (Yes they're all the same thing.)
After the Nibelheim Incident, something interesting happens to Cloud. Shinra retrieves both him and his friend, a SOLDIER First Class known as Zack Fair, and use them both as lab experiments (in an attempt to recoup their losses from Sephiroth being killed in Nibelheim presumably) to no success. Both men are held in an underground facility and experimented on for over 4 years- Cloud developing extensive Mako poisoning during this time.
Zack escapes, hauls Cloud across the world to Midgar with the hope of keeping his head down, hiding out at his girlfriend's place, and scoring some mercenary work to pay the bills, but unfortunately is gunned down just outside the city's borders. The interesting part of this is what happens to Cloud.
Cloud changes from a quiet, isolated individual which had a few minor mental health issues (low self-worth and anxiety) into a full-blown disassociative personality. Cloud out-and-out copies his picture of Zack (cool, flashy) and slots it alongside his mental picture of himself as a SOLDIER (stoic), and takes Zack's (vague) dying words of 'being his living legacy' as fact. His memories are entirely and utterly warped as disassociation protects him from the pain of Zack's death by putting himself in his place. Cloud genuinely believes that Zack never existed, and in his mind, he takes his role.
All-in-all, Cloud's an extremely mentally unwell man. It's combined trauma that causes his disassociation. The Nibelheim Incident and Zack's death serve as a traumatic incident his mind wishes to protect him from, Mako poisoning (and by extension a near-death state) and prior induction of Jenova cells unto his body (which have a single function- imitation) serve as a catalyst to the disassociation- but his sense of shame can't be discounted. Some part of him is willing to wipe the slate clean and accept he's someone else because it removes all of the weakness of which he's struggled against. Later in FF7, he accepts his weakness... but right now he doesn't have the character development to. So he's still railing against it.
Does your character have a moral code or other set of standards they try to live by?
Cloud operates by his own rules and has a pretty loose (but serviceable!) grasp on what's right and wrong.
He'll never turn his nose up at more unsavory things (breaking into commercial, governmental, and private property, theft, and murder are things he's certainly done in FF7, and done a lot of) but he does have a basic idea of what's right and wrong. He can and does care about people as well- even if he can be pretty standoffish when it comes to implementing them to maintain his Cool Guy Done With This image he clings so much to.
A good example is the Sector 5 sidequests, where he acts like a dick to a small child in order to encourage him to keep in with the pretty daunting task of collecting as many Moogle Medals as he can. It's the child's wish to collect all of the medals in the world in order to make everyone happy. (dumb kid logic formed via fairytales of moogles) Cloud pretty much acts like a grump around the child to encourage him in this task. To the child, "fixing" Cloud by making him happy requires a whole lot of medals.
On the same day, he outright refuses to complete a job tasked to him- giving an old man a key to the graveyard to visit his dead wife, simply because he's concerned that the old man will wind up dead by actually visiting the grave- by inflating his price for the job to a gil sum that the old man (or anyone really) simply can't afford. Mid-job, by the way. The old man's sentiment toward him at this is pretty terrible as he feels like he's been deceived and his grief is being taken advantage of, but it's really not that. It's the fact that in getting the key, Cloud saw that the graveyard was dangerous and teeming with monsters, and he doesn't want the old man to wind up dead as well. But he doesn't tell him this. He's happy to have the old man believe that he's an ass in order to do what's right- and it applies to a lot of Cloud's morals as a person.
What quality or qualities do they admire most?
Cloud admires strength, but he admires mentor-type characters most of all. His attachment to Zack Fair, a mentor, a walking army, a source of camaraderie, and his first actual friend simply can't be overstated- and he has a history of valuing cooler, powerful types- such as his long history (pre-Nibelheim Incident) of fanboying over Sephiroth who, to Cloud, was the whole package- inhumanly strong, and marketed by Shinra as a Great Hero- was something Cloud found inspiring enough to be the guiding factor for the direction his life was to take.
In more recent times, this bias hasn't gone away. Cloud is drawn to characters such as Tifa which have an older sister personality- she's strong, calm, collected, and is a stable and reassuring source of balance to him. Conversely, he finds himself disliking characters of the opposite persuasion.
Do they have a part of themselves they dislike?
His weakness, for sure. It even leads into full blown disassociation pre-FF7.
To summarise, Cloud was a child that dreamed of becoming a SOLDIER First Class- and emulating a personal hero, Sephiroth. Cloud grew up with a lot of insecurities (See the last question) and believed that being an outsider meant that he was special. SOLDIER operatives are people which are venerated for their strength and their power- but they're also feared and known as inhuman. Cloud approximated in his head that his differences, and his outsider complex meant that he was destined to become a SOLDIER First Class, and at the first chance he got, he left Nibelheim to travel to Midgar in order to realize his dream and finally belong somewhere.
Unfortunately, despite being about as weird as any SOLDIER, Cloud's strength isn't observed as being any better than any other village yokel with big dreams and a mediocre constitution. Subsequently, Cloud didn't make the cut. He took employment within Shinra Inc. as an infantryman and essentially served as a grunt within their private army as... well, something- but an operation leads him to Nibelheim- the village of which he left with his middle fingers (figuratively) in the air.
And obviously, he never made SOLDIER. He's a grunt- and he conceals his identity from each and every townsperson within the village as well as, most importantly, Tifa. He chooses to appear to her as an anonymous grunt soldier accompanying Sephiroth and Zack Fair on their mission to investigate Nibelheim's malfunctioning mako reactor, rather than admit that being "different" from all of the other kids in Nibelheim didn't mean that he was special at all.
What is their sign, and why?
The Hanged Man.
I'd like to play to the element of Cloud which is an outsider, and explaining its source brings us to his childhood. Underneath everything? Cloud's a very weak man and it's something ingrained in him for a very long time. Cloud was a child of a certain backwater town who did not fit in. He was younger than the majority of the town's kids and wasn't part of their friend group, and as such, was hurt by his exclusion. This hurt developed into a superiority complex. He made himself feel better about it by convincing himself that the other children were "childish" (go figure. They're children) and stupid- and that he was better than them anyway.
Unfortunately, when one child, in particular, Tifa's, mother died suddenly- she was told that her mother had simply passed over a nearby mountain and all who did would not return. Tifa took it upon herself to join her mother- thinking that she'd be lonely all by herself- and attempted to cross the mountain to join her. Cloud, unlike the village children that all ran away- knew that the attempt to cross the mountain was dangerous and he went after her. As he was nearing her, the rope bridge that they were both stood on snapped, and Cloud and Tifa plummetted into a canyon.
He found himself conscious, and (miraculously) with only a pair of skinned knees as an injury- but Tifa herself was unconscious and in a much worse way. Two adults (coincidentally, Tifa's father was among them) found the pair, and Cloud found himself blamed for the entire situation, and he's blamed hard. At 9 years old. The adults, and therefore the entire village believed that Cloud brought Tifa to the mountain for nefarious purposes. Cloud even states in his flashback about the situation that "even my mom gave up on me." and honestly? It's not a stretch to think that the fact Cloud was blamed for this gave him even more insecurity. It turned his feelings of "I'm different" to "There's something wrong with me".
This speculation is confirmed when FF7 mentions that after that time, he began getting into fights. Cloud changed from a quiet outsider into a kid that really was just as bad as the rumors about him were, and it is mentioned during the Cloud's subconscious memory sequence that he beat up all of Tifa's friends among other means of lashing out. I believe a lot of it is- obviously- that if you tell a child (at such a young age) they are something, they're going to prove you right. Cloud, pretty much, was a terror from that point on, and his outsider complex follows him throughout his character development as an adult.
SAMPLES & ARRIVAL
Samples: here!
Arrival Scenario: Cadens!
revised app: databurst
[Unknown site tag]
Cloud's most prominent character trait is the fact that he's highly introverted and tends to do his best to keep himself to himself as much as he can under the circumstances he's given. Around unfamiliar people, Cloud can be called a closed book. Cloud tends to be standoffish from the off, and, in the cases of people around him being irritating, even abrasive. He's a straight shooter- if someone irritates him, he'll deliver them a snide remark or tell someone point-blank that he wants nothing to do with them. He'll speak his mind with no reservations.
It's completely understandable to think Cloud an asshole. Most do! Cloud doesn't give characters much opportunity to think anything different about him, but an interesting fact is Cloud's standoffishness isn't really that. Cloud tends to act out in order to work around people's shortcomings and have them act in their own best interests when they can't see it. (Example: charging an old man a large amount of currency to buy a key to the graveyard his dead wife is buried in. Cloud knows the man can't afford it, and only offers it him for that much so the old guy doesn't get killed while visiting.)
Most of the time, Cloud's standoffish nature works and characters either call him a dick or get upset enough to pull back. However, this isn't what always happens. In cases of a character clapping back (Particularly characters that beat Cloud out in terms of wit, such as Barret) Cloud... doesn't know what to do. He gets awkward, and he clams up because he simply doesn't know how to retort when someone fires back.
Cloud's attitude is how his mind tells him he should be as an ex-SOLDIER First Class rather than how he is, as a person. In Cloud's mind, coming from a military background and being the best of the best means you have to act a certain way. You have to be confident, you have to be cool, and essentially, you have to know you're better than everyone else around you. The twist (which is briefly alluded to rather than covered in 7r as, obviously, Cloud has a massive plot arc throughout OG which isn't touched on in the parts of the story 7r covers) is that it's not arrogance. Cloud actually genuinely believes that he's a grizzled, world-weary and apathetic ex-SOLDIER First Class, but 7r, to its credit, does vary from OG in showing off some parts of Cloud in the Midgar section which make him far more rounded than he is in OG at this point.
Cloud's real personality is awkward. He doesn't pick up on social cues well and tends to miss things, not for lack of trying. He's an outsider, pretty much- but he's not a misanthrope. Cloud doesn't hate people- he just simply doesn't get them all that well. An excellent example is Aerith- a series of Working Together events lead to her attempting to highfive him. He doesn't realize what she's trying to do and leaves her hanging, but he senses he did something wrong. At the end of a few more cooperative sequences, he attempts to highfive her, for her to be very confused, and him to be embarrassed to the point of avoidance when she realizes what he was trying to do. When Jessie dies in 7r, Cloud's last words to her, tragically, are "You owe me a pizza." This isn't because he is actually holding her to it. It's because he can't process anything better to tell her she can't die.
Cloud very clearly Gives A Damn about people he knows. Example: dealing with Tifa's landlady, Marle. Cloud knows that this woman means a great deal to Tifa, and he holds his tongue when she shows her distrust of him. Interestingly, this side of Cloud comes into conflict with his facade in further remake scenes. When Tifa tells Cloud they need to shut Johnny up, Cloud takes it as a go-ahead to kill him. Horrified, Tifa stops Cloud, and remarks on how he's changed, mentioning that his eyes scare her. Cloud takes it obtusely, assuming she means the shade of his eyes, even if it's clear that Tifa meant the look in them frightens her.
Early-game Cloud originally starts with an unfeeling and uncaring front, but softens significantly as he starts to know people. It must be stated that his front is still not gone. He still takes himself far too seriously and he's still very messed up besides, but he's a little more honest with his feelings and a little more approachable. Of the point of which I'm taking him, he does care for other people but just has a terrible way of showing it due to his poor social skills.
Cloud's most prominent character trait is the fact that he's highly introverted and tends to do his best to keep himself to himself as much as he can under the circumstances he's given. Around unfamiliar people, Cloud can be called a closed book. Cloud tends to be standoffish from the off, and, in the cases of people around him being irritating, even abrasive. He's a straight shooter- if someone irritates him, he'll deliver them a snide remark or tell someone point-blank that he wants nothing to do with them. He'll speak his mind with no reservations.
It's completely understandable to think Cloud an asshole. Most do! Cloud doesn't give characters much opportunity to think anything different about him, but an interesting fact is Cloud's standoffishness isn't really that. Cloud tends to act out in order to work around people's shortcomings and have them act in their own best interests when they can't see it. (Example: charging an old man a large amount of currency to buy a key to the graveyard his dead wife is buried in. Cloud knows the man can't afford it, and only offers it him for that much so the old guy doesn't get killed while visiting.)
Most of the time, Cloud's standoffish nature works and characters either call him a dick or get upset enough to pull back. However, this isn't what always happens. In cases of a character clapping back (Particularly characters that beat Cloud out in terms of wit, such as Barret) Cloud... doesn't know what to do. He gets awkward, and he clams up because he simply doesn't know how to retort when someone fires back.
Cloud's attitude is how his mind tells him he should be as an ex-SOLDIER First Class rather than how he is, as a person. In Cloud's mind, coming from a military background and being the best of the best means you have to act a certain way. You have to be confident, you have to be cool, and essentially, you have to know you're better than everyone else around you. The twist (which is briefly alluded to rather than covered in 7r as, obviously, Cloud has a massive plot arc throughout OG which isn't touched on in the parts of the story 7r covers) is that it's not arrogance. Cloud actually genuinely believes that he's a grizzled, world-weary and apathetic ex-SOLDIER First Class, but 7r, to its credit, does vary from OG in showing off some parts of Cloud in the Midgar section which make him far more rounded than he is in OG at this point.
Cloud's real personality is awkward. He doesn't pick up on social cues well and tends to miss things, not for lack of trying. He's an outsider, pretty much- but he's not a misanthrope. Cloud doesn't hate people- he just simply doesn't get them all that well. An excellent example is Aerith- a series of Working Together events lead to her attempting to highfive him. He doesn't realize what she's trying to do and leaves her hanging, but he senses he did something wrong. At the end of a few more cooperative sequences, he attempts to highfive her, for her to be very confused, and him to be embarrassed to the point of avoidance when she realizes what he was trying to do. When Jessie dies in 7r, Cloud's last words to her, tragically, are "You owe me a pizza." This isn't because he is actually holding her to it. It's because he can't process anything better to tell her she can't die.
Cloud very clearly Gives A Damn about people he knows. Example: dealing with Tifa's landlady, Marle. Cloud knows that this woman means a great deal to Tifa, and he holds his tongue when she shows her distrust of him. Interestingly, this side of Cloud comes into conflict with his facade in further remake scenes. When Tifa tells Cloud they need to shut Johnny up, Cloud takes it as a go-ahead to kill him. Horrified, Tifa stops Cloud, and remarks on how he's changed, mentioning that his eyes scare her. Cloud takes it obtusely, assuming she means the shade of his eyes, even if it's clear that Tifa meant the look in them frightens her.
Early-game Cloud originally starts with an unfeeling and uncaring front, but softens significantly as he starts to know people. It must be stated that his front is still not gone. He still takes himself far too seriously and he's still very messed up besides, but he's a little more honest with his feelings and a little more approachable. Of the point of which I'm taking him, he does care for other people but just has a terrible way of showing it due to his poor social skills.
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kinks
| KINKS | |||
☆ FAVOURITE affection praise |
✓ YES females males anal sex (giving/recieving) biting clit play clothed sex cock warming cum cunnilingus fellatio (giving/recieving) fingering foreplay frotting handjobs intercrural kissing licking scratching sexual exhaustion sexual frustration teasing underwear vaginal sex (giving) vanilla |
◦ MAYBE age differences anal training aphro blindfolds chastity discipline enemas gags gangbangs handcuffs hand massages facials heat/rut ice bondage orgasm denial pleasure denial sensory deprivation sex toys somno | ✕ NO medical prolapse abuse branding burning crying mutilation bloodplay sissification twinks watersports scat vore |
| ( code by whambam ) | |||
Entry tags:
info
| CHARACTER INFORMATION | |||
⇉ APPEARANCE HAIR: bright blonde, spiked. EYES: glowing bright blue. HEIGHT: 5'7 AGE: 21. BEARING: self-assured, brisk. |
⇉ INFO PHYSICAL HEALTH; cell augmentation. mako poisoning. healthy, though gaunt. MENTAL HEALTH; dissociative identity. |
⇉ PERMISSIONS FOURTH-WALLING. no. PHYSICAL CONTACT. yes* ROMANCE/SEX. yes** THREADJACKING. yes. BACKTAGGING. yes. TELEPATHY. PM me first. POSSESSION. PM me first. INJURE/KILL. PM me first. * He'll be uncomfortable, don't let that stop you. ** It can happen. Not easily, though. | ⇉ OPT-OUT Opt-out subjects: human experimentation, personality disorders, mental health issues. Please comment below for any subjects you'd like to me to not reference. Comments screened for privacy. |
| ( code by whambam ) | |||
