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bofoddityI remember finding the first Casino Royale-trailer just a little underwhelming, but the second one had me totally excited. I believe we have next Goldeneye here.
I've been working on my stories for 50_darkfics and 30screams, but getting started with both stories was a little difficult for me because I claimed Cloud in both communities, and if any character in FFVII, it's him whose characterization is easiest to screw up. Best example of that is actually Advent Children: He had this share of issues (note the understatement) in the original game, but it was after AC when he really became Emo Superior.
In BTVS-fandom, there's a site called Campfire Tales that has a focus on dark fic, and it has essays that guide writers to write their characters right. I thought that this was a good idea, so I wrote a little Cloud-guide for myself, using the essay structure from CT.
Canon: To say that Cloud has experienced some bad things in his life is a major understatement. As a child he was an outcast, rejected by the children and seen as trouble by the adults, which lead him to idolize Sephiroth and dream of a future as a SOLDIER, which ends in a failure. But it isn't enough: He loses his family and hometown to his former idol, after which he gets imprisoned and experimented on, his best friend and the woman he possibly loves are murdered before his eyes, and his own identity and sense of reality get torn and twisted around to the point he begins to doubt his own existence. Personality-wise he suffers from major inferiority complex, rooted in his childhood insecurities and fueled further by enemies who question his very humanity ("Because you are.. a puppet", as Jenova put it), not to mention that he adapts his best friend's identity instead of facing his own failures and dealing with them. He's also emotionally distant and withdrawn, with a tendency to keep his problems to himself rather than turning to his friends for help, a personality trait that carries on all the way to Advent Children.
However, Cloud has always, always been able to overcome his misery. His failures and losses didn't stop him from attacking and defeating Sephiroth back in Nibelheim, nor from pulling himself back together after the shattering of his false identity and his Mako-poisoning, nor from finally accepting himself and choosing to live without pretending. Even in Advent Children he eventually regains his strength and courage after all the angst. It's part of his personality, and it shouldn't be ignored.
How can we make it so? Canon offers a lot of source material for Cloud as a victim, such as his time as as experiment subject and Sephiroth's manipulation, but every trait that can turn him to a victim can also be used to turn him into the antagonist. His insecurities have proved themselves dangerous in the game itself, why not in fic? His admiration of Tifa can be considered stalkerish, his idolization of Sephiroth can be seen as an obsession. The fact that he adapted Zack's identity as his own indicates that he views Zack as an ideal person, which also makes Zack a kind of person to be jealous of, somebody to resent. Or maybe the true ideal is the cold, unfeeling mercenary persona that Cloud sports in the beginning of the game, the one who doesn't really care about anything. How close is he to being that for real?
It's also important to remember that Sephiroth and Cloud are often represented as mirrors to each other. They have a lot in common: Unhappy childhoods, feeling that they were different (and it's Cloud who specifically states that he felt he was better) than the other children, identity crisis that leads to breakdown. Of course Sephiroth's case was much more extreme, but the fact remains that Sephiroth reflects the worst within Cloud. Pre-Nibelheim Cloud wanted to be like Sephiroth, post-Nibelheim Cloud could become Sephiroth. That's something worth exploring.
Creepy onscreen moments to draw from: Cloud handing the Black Materia over to Sephiroth and the subsequent beating of Aeris, Cloud almost killing Aeris in the Forgotten City, Jenova's Puppet-statement, breaking of the illusion in the Northern Crater, Mako-poisoned Cloud in Mideel. All confrontations he has with Hojo, Sephiroth and Jenova count as well, not to mention the conversations he has with himself during the first half of the game. In Advent Children we have his confrontations with Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo, who are very insistent on calling him a "brother".
Warnings: The best way to go wrong with dark Cloud is to overdo it. This is especially true with victim-Cloud who tends to function without any sort of spine at all, when both in the game and in Advent Children it takes extremes to break him down, so the idea of him breaking down weeping when somebody dares to be mean to him feels simply unrealistic. Being insecure doesn't mean pushover, either, and his behavior in the game shows that he tends to hide behind bravado instead of cowering before people. On the other hand, no matter how much he pretends, Cloud is never completely hard and uncaring, so making him completely ignorant of the feelings and thoughts of his friends or lacking empathy in general isn't plausible.
Lets see if I can follow these myself..
I've been working on my stories for 50_darkfics and 30screams, but getting started with both stories was a little difficult for me because I claimed Cloud in both communities, and if any character in FFVII, it's him whose characterization is easiest to screw up. Best example of that is actually Advent Children: He had this share of issues (note the understatement) in the original game, but it was after AC when he really became Emo Superior.
In BTVS-fandom, there's a site called Campfire Tales that has a focus on dark fic, and it has essays that guide writers to write their characters right. I thought that this was a good idea, so I wrote a little Cloud-guide for myself, using the essay structure from CT.
Canon: To say that Cloud has experienced some bad things in his life is a major understatement. As a child he was an outcast, rejected by the children and seen as trouble by the adults, which lead him to idolize Sephiroth and dream of a future as a SOLDIER, which ends in a failure. But it isn't enough: He loses his family and hometown to his former idol, after which he gets imprisoned and experimented on, his best friend and the woman he possibly loves are murdered before his eyes, and his own identity and sense of reality get torn and twisted around to the point he begins to doubt his own existence. Personality-wise he suffers from major inferiority complex, rooted in his childhood insecurities and fueled further by enemies who question his very humanity ("Because you are.. a puppet", as Jenova put it), not to mention that he adapts his best friend's identity instead of facing his own failures and dealing with them. He's also emotionally distant and withdrawn, with a tendency to keep his problems to himself rather than turning to his friends for help, a personality trait that carries on all the way to Advent Children.
However, Cloud has always, always been able to overcome his misery. His failures and losses didn't stop him from attacking and defeating Sephiroth back in Nibelheim, nor from pulling himself back together after the shattering of his false identity and his Mako-poisoning, nor from finally accepting himself and choosing to live without pretending. Even in Advent Children he eventually regains his strength and courage after all the angst. It's part of his personality, and it shouldn't be ignored.
How can we make it so? Canon offers a lot of source material for Cloud as a victim, such as his time as as experiment subject and Sephiroth's manipulation, but every trait that can turn him to a victim can also be used to turn him into the antagonist. His insecurities have proved themselves dangerous in the game itself, why not in fic? His admiration of Tifa can be considered stalkerish, his idolization of Sephiroth can be seen as an obsession. The fact that he adapted Zack's identity as his own indicates that he views Zack as an ideal person, which also makes Zack a kind of person to be jealous of, somebody to resent. Or maybe the true ideal is the cold, unfeeling mercenary persona that Cloud sports in the beginning of the game, the one who doesn't really care about anything. How close is he to being that for real?
It's also important to remember that Sephiroth and Cloud are often represented as mirrors to each other. They have a lot in common: Unhappy childhoods, feeling that they were different (and it's Cloud who specifically states that he felt he was better) than the other children, identity crisis that leads to breakdown. Of course Sephiroth's case was much more extreme, but the fact remains that Sephiroth reflects the worst within Cloud. Pre-Nibelheim Cloud wanted to be like Sephiroth, post-Nibelheim Cloud could become Sephiroth. That's something worth exploring.
Creepy onscreen moments to draw from: Cloud handing the Black Materia over to Sephiroth and the subsequent beating of Aeris, Cloud almost killing Aeris in the Forgotten City, Jenova's Puppet-statement, breaking of the illusion in the Northern Crater, Mako-poisoned Cloud in Mideel. All confrontations he has with Hojo, Sephiroth and Jenova count as well, not to mention the conversations he has with himself during the first half of the game. In Advent Children we have his confrontations with Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo, who are very insistent on calling him a "brother".
Warnings: The best way to go wrong with dark Cloud is to overdo it. This is especially true with victim-Cloud who tends to function without any sort of spine at all, when both in the game and in Advent Children it takes extremes to break him down, so the idea of him breaking down weeping when somebody dares to be mean to him feels simply unrealistic. Being insecure doesn't mean pushover, either, and his behavior in the game shows that he tends to hide behind bravado instead of cowering before people. On the other hand, no matter how much he pretends, Cloud is never completely hard and uncaring, so making him completely ignorant of the feelings and thoughts of his friends or lacking empathy in general isn't plausible.
Lets see if I can follow these myself..
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Date: 2006-11-27 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
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