the convo in remake where barret talks about hearing the Planet crying out in pain; like that is just as easily a passion thing and I'm pretty sure that's how they intended it
I feel like a lot of people should have a touch of it, they only went extinct recently as a pure species. we know wutai is directly descended from them, so that's 'pretty much every wutaian' too...
I MEAN we could look at all the party and come up with "just a little cetra" traits and have fun with it and i will do just that now that I'm talking about it
barret, obvs, can hear the voice of the Planet; not as clear or often as aerith by a long shot, but when or where it's loud (ie the suffering of midgar with its 1000000000 reactors)
for tifa, when she thought she should go beyond mt nibel to find her mom, that's because she can kind of feel the flow of the lifestream verrry vaguely and instead just thought her mom was going past the mountain like the local legends say
cloud, he's a little cetra bc he's so SENSITIVE to the lifestream's effects; that's why he's more or less allergic to mako but why getting mako poisoning 1 billion times still hasn't killed him
yuffie, that's why she's so obsessed with materia; sure yes wealth and power and all her canonical reasons, but maybe it just also feels right/correct to use it in a way she thinks is normal
vincent, that's why those experiments didn't just straight up kill his ass lol. "twisted beyond recognition" sounds very similar to what jenova did to some of the cetra AND what hojo did to him
zack, that's why he's so RESILIENT to both mako treatments and jenova cells. he just built different (with a tolerance and natural balance/cellular elegance very cetra-like)
me: i love when art and fics mention that cloud is a little runty and very pretty game: does it me: HELL yea that's the SHIT fic: and he was just SO delicate and small, you know just SO tiny, and his waist is itty bitty, and he's just a small fragile little- me: ok cool it that's more than enough
fic: and you know even though he's strong he likes to feel SMALL and DOMINATED by [love interest, always male] me: /orders airstrike on fic and backs out
fics where zack lives and cloud drags him back to midgar are especially egregious with this which is SO DISAPPOINTING bc those are the ones i want to read the most
and these fics also tend to TRY and do the "antisocial cantankerous asshole" bit but make him come off more like a "bitchy girlfriend" stereotype which is insulting in MULTIPLE ways
moreso to women in general than just cloud. bc like. i don't know why the "small and pretty" one has to behave in a way the author clearly thinks a mad girlfriend would behave
ok now we are going to talk about what i think cloud's take regarding his own identity in relation to his gender, ff7-world gender roles, and his own perception of himself
so in the ff7 world in general, societal gender roles are somewhat more rigid than today USA. yes this is because the game was originally made in 1997 in Japan intended for wide audience consumption; they put elements of this strict binary structure in the game because of that
would it be fun to ignore that for fics or art? sure, for a lot of people. i have more fun going off assuming the rules are in place and bending/breaking them as story elements personally (a character challenging their own sexuality/gender identity/gender roles) rather than just ignoring them, but that's my choice
have i transed the gender of a character? yup, but i tend to view these as AU since the trans experience vastly changes how a character will experience their world, depending on the rules of that world, and if we are changing the rules of the world then that's an AU
so, ff7 rules tend to loosely follow present day, but more strict with that binary and enforcement of gender roles. that's also bc of writing/directing choices, some of which i find stupid or cringe (the forced "girl power" FF does to prove its not even a little sexist comes to mind. like. maybe just don't be misogynist to begin with guys),
in ff7 world, dialogue and circumstances have made the following clear: -its common for boys of small villages to leave very young to find work or even enlist in the military. male children having to be 'men' at young ages is very patriarchal -women are still by and large treated as sexual property (OG: all of sector 6 lmao, remake: honeybee specifically)
you might say "no the honeybee in remake has boys!!!" yeah in full tuxes while the female dancers all wear these teensy stupid getups. "that's what ppl who like men want men to wear!!!" you fool, even IF that was true, that is also the patriarchy. why no women in tuxes. because u know why
but this isn't about what i personally find morally correct or ethical; its about establishing the rules of the society these characters live in. and from what i can tell in playing these games, they live in a society that is is still patriarchal and misogynist
not intentionally and not maliciously, but i think the way he looks at himself, what he wants, and what he DOESN'T want, through that slightly warped lens
for example: cloud hates to be perceived as weak, even when he is. a misogynist society will show the image of a damsel in distress as an example of "weak." does cloud share any other traits with this image? his face is pretty in an androgynous way, almost like a girl. pretty is to girl is to weak
cloud doesn't like to look like a girl, not necessarily because HE thinks it actually makes him weak, but because he's scared that OTHER PEOPLE will think he's weak bc he looks like a girl
i personally don't think he's made any of these connections consciously, nor has he come to the conclusion that he should be angry that "pretty" is synonymous with "weak" rather than be angry at being called pretty, but let's be real he has some more serious issues to focus on first LMAO
"but adults are small!!" what kind of adults "all kinds!!!" in this ff7 universe, what kinds of adults are generally shorter/thinner/smaller ".....sometimes guys!!!" see there you go, we can't even say it
as a gay dude suffering through the constant stereotyping of submissive smaller fem partner and rugged manly dom partner is constantly infuriating. and of course it's relentless with cloud.
andrea is a man, a very RESPECTED man, who is very CLEARLY a man but does not act in the way cloud thought men did NOR does he say the same things cloud thought men would
𝗟𝘂𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗲
: EVERY TIME IT HAPPENS I HAVE SO MUCH FUN. I'm enjoying untangling that snarl in his head and sharon is simultaneously patient and persistent about not letting him squirm out of that hard thinking. also will you kill me if i finally tag into the wedding log bc I've had that liked but then had depression for 2 months ig
as if i would ever!! it’s not like i’m not slow as balls myself rn you can tag whenever you’re able (or not at all if you’re not feeling it, i’m open to handwaving).
runedwriting
: honestly as much as i cringed at the dance number (that's just bc impromptu dance numbers/singing with NO rehearsal in anything not a musical makes me cringe) the rest of sector 6 was surprisingly tasteful
honestly i like that we sort of defaulted to cloud topping in the sex bc it feels like stickin it to everyone who writes cloud as the mewling tiny submissive with all his partners lmfao
I hate the dance sequence with a neurotic passion and it isn't about the dance it's about how if I want to actually see the dance I have to watch someone else's playthrough of it.
inadequate tits
: ON GOD THO???? but i think cloud could work up to bottoming for zack just bc i think he'd want to at least try it out, but he gotta work on his hangups more for that to happen (which i am doing)(bc i am interested)
im just glad zack is the chill sort of guy to not kick up a fuss about it, like hey it feels good everybodys havin fun if this is cloud's comfort zone, cool
also zack deserves to get topped and railed. why would this fandom look at everything he's suffered and not allow him to be a pillow princess at least once in a while
zack fair exhausted and world weary goin why is everything forced on me, gettin to lay there and let someone else do most of the work and spoil him rotten in bed? fuckin sign him up
LMAO YEAH zack might fuss and be like "r u SURE i can't do anything- oh ok" for a while but then he's like actually........ this being spoiled rotten shit is kinda dope......
so basically, cloud has made erroneous connections between being small and delicate-looking/pretty to being weak, with the root of those connections in misogyny
for example, gideon is a girl but she is VERY cool and he kind of looks up to her as a fellow badass sword connoisseur. he is befuddled by this but has accepted "oh ok. girls can be tough and badass in the same way i want to be also" and has gotten more comfortable. adjusting his worldview inch by inch
rue is another one; huge and strong, BUT dresses "like a girl", AND ANOTHER BUT!!! says they AREN'T a girl, they are nonbinary
cloud don't even know what the fuck that is but just uses "they" bc everybody else does and that's what rue wants and he's not gonna be an asshole abt this
(and that's something i am careful of; cloud's hangups about gender and such are usually focused on HIM. if he doesn't understand someone else's gender expression he might be ???? over it, but he's not the type who feels like the gender rules he's familiar with need to be enforced by HIM)
but with respect to himself, uncoupling the views he has of himself (weak, pathetic) from traits that society has used in conjunction with femininity (pretty, small/delicate) is......VERY fun to write
would it be good for cloud to uncouple those traits with how he views women as a whole? yes. and he's working on that. it's why he's started getting SLIGHTLY!!!! A LITTLE!!!! more comfortable with those traits in himself
(things like sharon putting a beard on him and not making fun of how emotional he got, and zack enjoying being mega dommed by his chihuahua of a bf, both help considerably)
if he lived in a society where being pretty and small was always associated with being very cool, very capable, and very powerful, then he'd be JUST fine with how he looks
game: does it
me: HELL yea that's the SHIT
fic: and he was just SO delicate and small, you know just SO tiny, and his waist is itty bitty, and he's just a small fragile little-
me:
me: /orders airstrike on fic and backs out
-its common for boys of small villages to leave very young to find work or even enlist in the military. male children having to be 'men' at young ages is very patriarchal
-women are still by and large treated as sexual property (OG: all of sector 6 lmao, remake: honeybee specifically)
cloud don't even know what the fuck that is but just uses "they" bc everybody else does and that's what rue wants and he's not gonna be an asshole abt this