(no subject)
Player’s Name: Hane
Player’s Age: 24
Personal Journal: hane@lj
AIM: haneshinohara
Date of last character application/character #: Duplicate Tseng, back sometime in March.
Character’s Name: Cloud Strife
Character’s Fandom: Final Fantasy VII Advent Children
Biography link: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Cloud_Strife
Character's History:
In chronological order.
Wallflower.
Science project.
Headcase.
Jerk.
Puppet.
Trauma bucket.
Hero.
Delivery boy/emo kid movie star.
Hero movie star.
Character’s Personality:
Hoo. Cloud is quiet, determined, reserved, justice-minded, ridiculously self-deprecating, and oddly hapless for someone who's such a Big Damn Hero and worthy of being called one of the world's strongest warriors. By the time of Advent Children he's finally begun to move on from a lot of his early trauma and his desperate use of Zack's personality as a mask (although these influences will never disappear entirely), and has more or less come into his own personality after twenty-some years of being a wallflower and then a headcase. He's still inwardly hesitant and insecure, especially about the pressures and expectations that other people have of him. At his core he believes that he has not really led a heroic life, no matter his physical deeds, that some day people are going to figure out that he isn't the grand figure they've built up in their minds, and that every day he is still striving to make up for something. Being called a hero will never go down easy with him but he's moved past the point where he would actively disagree. Cloud does feel obligated to respond to emergencies, often completely without thinking, which is a double edged sword that lets him act decisively and with great competence when he doesn't have time to question himself but also means he rushes into situations blindly.
His drive to be a hero isn't really his anymore. When he was young his motivation was to impress Tifa, to emulate his personal idols and simply to Be Good; nowadays he's more driven by the expectations of others and what he thinks are the expectations of others. 'What would Zack do' or 'what would Aerith think' are the kinds of thoughts that zip through his brain constantly, or even 'what would Sephiroth do,' since for better or worse he's become Sephiroth's successor in the eyes of a public that desperately needs a new heroic symbol to have faith in.
Guilt is still a huge motivator for Cloud, no matter how well he hides it, and he judges himself more harshly than he judges other people. He is kind but can be thoughtless and even selfish when he gets too caught up in his own head, and despite presenting himself as such a closemouthed loner is actually the sort of person who needs other people around him just to keep him in check and on the right track with everything from proper reactions to remembering to eat. This being said, he does have a tendency to prefer his own company when left to his own devices. His friends and allies are one category to him, people that he respects and owes courtesies to, but the general public is still something he's not entirely comfortable with 24/7. Part of it is the shyness of his childhood, part of it is the weight of his completely weird ass experiences making him feel isolated. There is nothing that makes him so discomfited as to hear his name being put in the kind of sentences that were once used to praise Sephiroth, especially when people don't seem to realize that they're doing it.
On the other hand, Cloud at 24 is a much calmer and more balanced individual than Cloud at 21. The trauma over his past is now balanced out by his having saved the world twice, a physical solid fact that even his doubts can't change or do much to tarnish. No matter how hypocritical he feels about it, he's a Big Damn Hero and has the skillset and the network of powerful connections to back it up, and would never dream of actually refusing a situation where he was needed (unless Rufus was the one soliciting him, anyway). In some ways he feels that it's only justified that he takes Sephiroth's place as a public symbol. Aerith and Zack's last messages to him are of forgiveness. The world in general seems to be moving in a more positive direction, his friends are all alive, he doesn't have to live with a fugitive mentality anymore, etc etc. His new mostly civilian life is a little disorienting but tolerable-to-enjoyable, even during the periods where he has to take off on Fenrir and get away from people or go stir crazy.
The distinction would probably be that he regrets things now instead of grieving uncontrollably for them. The past has started to feel more like a memory that can be pushed back into its proper place instead of horrible, awful bleeding events that demand instant attention and trauma every time he thinks of them. Nightmares and panic attacks don't plague him as they used to. Now his problems are the much scarier and more confusing mundane type of things, like whether he's ready (or willing) to be a father figure to Denzel instead of an older brother, and whether Tifa's long suffering patience over him is about to snap like so much harpwire, and whether it's okay for him to even think about those sorts of things after having been such an emo wreck. Cloud isn't sure that he's meant for that kind of conventional life and, despite any outward reluctance (or even bitching about being retired), he still jumps at every opportunity to go off and do hero stuff that's easy to understand as the Right Thing. It's very important to him to do the Right Thing, at least until his temper snaps and he decides that the Right Thing is getting shelved in favor of the expedient thing. Cloud can be infinitely patient over some things, sometimes stupid things, and woefully impatient and bullheaded over others.
He is inept with relationships. Seriously. And is still pretty damn easy to manipulate, and wishes sometimes that the Planet or fate or whatever had picked out someone else to be her Big Damn Hero, but when it comes down to it he'd rather be doing that than even touching the issue of whether he should be looking at engagement rings.
Sample RP Log:
The worst was when Tifa would ask him if he was happy. He found that more difficult than the occasional awkward silences that fell between them, when their hands touched accidentally and she looked at him and he looked at her and he knew that, if he were someone else, he would know what to do. Those moments could be passed over. Tifa didn’t push. It was probably wrong of him to be grateful but it was wrong of him to feel a lot of the things he did, and that knowledge never stopped him.
When she asked directly, though, that was when he had to lie.
“Twenty seconds.” The WRO soldier stole a glance at him again from under the edge of his bangs. Young, under the silly red hat and the gruff, forced monotone voice he thought made him sound older and professional. Young enough to have heard all the wrong rumors and joined up with Reeve’s boys for all the wrong reasons. Cloud kept pretending not to notice the awestruck sidelong looks he was being given.
Cloud Strife had no official rank in the WRO. He was not a soldier, or a legitimately contracted mercenary being paid for the time he put in killing monsters or escorting VIPs, or even the kind of business associate that Barrett and Rufus Shinra were. He’d specifically asked it be kept that way, even when his voicemail box these days was filled more with troop movements and alternative energy experiments being brought to his attention than courier jobs. He hadn’t asked for any of that. He’d only told Reeve that he would help any way he could. Any way that was needed.
“General.”
Cloud’s gaze jerked up, gloved hand spasming on his sword’s hilt as the boy flinched away with wide eyes. “What did you say?” Cloud demanded, shaken. Surely he hadn’t just heard…
“Sir,” the boy repeated, chin nearly lost in his collar as he avoided Cloud’s eyes. “Twelve seconds until contact. Are you… are you ready?”
“Oh.” Now he felt stupid, scaring the poor kid. He’d been hearing things. No one would call him that. They called him ‘sir’ or ‘mister Strife sir’ or ‘Commander Strife’ or other things that sounded just as awkward and ridiculous, but they didn’t call him General. No one would ever call him that to his face. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat, unconsciously straightening his back. “Yes.”
“They think it’s a Zolom,” the boy said quietly, apparently not so cowed by having the Savior of the World glaring hot mako at him only seconds earlier. “Are you really going in by yourself?”
Cloud didn’t sigh. He remembered this conversation, except he hadn’t been the one having it. He’d been a trooper fading into the background, glad of the Shinra helmet that hid his eyes, watching intently every motion of the great General Sephiroth who without a trace of smile had answered yes, after all, there was only one Zolom.
“There’s only one Zolom,” Cloud heard himself say, and then cursed inwardly.
Hero worship could make a man go blind, staring at it directly without sunglasses. Cloud ducked his head and fixed that. Stupid. Stupid to have said anything. He was no good with words that didn’t belong to someone else and even worse for borrowing what didn’t belong here and now.
Tifa asked him if he was happy. Happy living as she thought he lived, traveling and coming home to Denzel and Marlene and the others and helping her out around the bar and doing conventional things. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. He simply hadn’t meant for things to go so far, accepting these little side quests that Reeve swore up and down needed to be done. Reeve was a good man. He never asked too much, even when he needed to, so Cloud never refused, and the list of favors got longer and longer. Deal with a monster here. Investigate a former Shinra depot there. I hate to ask this of you, Cloud, and take you away from Tifa and the kids, but we’ve got no one else to spare and if you have some time…
It did make him happy, to be needed. To accomplish things with his own hands and watch the gratitude on the faces of the people who were his comrades. It made him happy and ashamed both to have something to fall back on that wasn’t the strange civilian life he’d built, the girl who loved him who wasn’t his wife and the two children that weren’t his blood and he the vagabond patriarch that wasn’t, who was never home to be anything like a family head or a father, who was never comfortable staying at home for too long. He was the shiftless, mostly irresponsible older brother right now and even though Tifa never said anything, he wondered. Maybe she thought he was still too fragile to be depended on like that. Maybe she thought he was already overburdened. Maybe she thought he was just too different, that no one should expect anything normal of him, that he was only good for riding to the rescue when the world was threatened. Maybe.
“Two seconds.”
The explosives detonated. The back end of the abandoned Shinra bunker collapsed, and the roar of a wounded monster shook the earth. It came rampaging out of the wreckage, its nest destroyed, its coils bloody and furious and its jaws gaping wide.
“One second.” The boy’s voice trembled ever so slightly, though to his credit he didn’t budge an inch from where he stood.
Cloud drew his blade. In the moment, nothing mattered but the weight of his weapon and the enemy in front of him. In the moment, it was easy to live.
“Good luck, General.”
Cloud nodded absently, as he had seen Sephiroth do, and stepped out to battle.
Sample Journal:
...a plate? This can't possibly be...
...
Impossible. That's impossible.
Midgar..?
...
This is Cloud Strife of AVALA--of the World Regenesis Organization. If anyone can hear me, please respond. What the hell is going on here?
Your Sin:
Envy forever.