#basically: i was unhinged by tshirt's proposal and am still shoving things back into the box
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CLOUD STRIFE and the YAOI IDENTITY
[note: this is my slightly-edited submission to yaoi zine vol. 1: what was the yaoi that changed your life? organised by our beloved @tshirt3000. itâs 81 pages of nostalgia, poignancy, and really fucking amazing creativity, all about yaoi. i wrote about FF7, and the zine ranges from arthurian legend to currently-publishing webtoons and all the way back. itâs a real labour of love! and it kicks ass! please check it out here!]
whatâs gayer than absorbing the identity of another man? doing it twice. iâm talking about cloud strife from FFVII, a yaoi icon who has carried fujoshi gamers on his shoulders for nearly three decades. i owe everything to him, and iâm sure my highschool friends wish his pointy polygon form hadnât plagued my mind for all these years. sorry girls.
pretty much everything about cloud is yaoi, from his design to his character to his story. did you know the designers deliberately made him âless masculineâ so that he could better rival sephiroth? direct quote. until this week, i didnât â he was meant to have smooth black hair, but was given his defining blond spikes instead. sephiroth, with his long hair and his long sword, exists in deliberate, calculated comparison. itâs easy pickings for people looking for yaoi in a classic contrasting uke/seme dynamic.
but the previous design of smooth black hair and less ambiguous masculinity, now a contrast to cloud, still exists. it went to zack fair, who is notable as the first man that cloud absorbs. heâs the origin of it all in the truest sense: letâs begin with him.Â
ZACK FAIR
the most important thing about zack is that heâs dead. it gets weird from here, because every time we see cloud, we see zack â in this sense, he is entirely defined by his connection to cloud, and by how cloud keeps makes space for him even when he really, really shouldnât.
see, cloud believes he is zack. this is psychological and somatic: for a long time, cloud thinks that he is a soldier working for the megacorporation that runs the planet. but he isnât. this identity actually belongs to zack fair, who truly was a soldier, and who died protecting cloud from that megacorporation.Â
zack died for cloud. cloud becomes zack. this confusion of identity is borne both as a trauma defence and a grief response: cloud believes he is zack so thoroughly that he forgets zack exists, thereby removing that horrific memory from his mind while paradoxically ensuring that his friend is not lost forever. zack is safe within cloud. here he cannot be hurt.Â
and cloudâs absorption of zack is total, taking on his mannerisms, his sword, even his skills and relationships. his style of fighting, his attitude to the world â everything. in doing so, zack fair lives on; itâs not zack who died, not if he is standing right here in a different skin.
i struggle to think of something more yaoi than subsuming another man into your being, other than gay sex. nothing says that zack and cloud donât have gay sex, but itâs unlikely, as cloud is catatonic for a long time â itâs the reason why zack dies, protecting his vulnerable friend. the lack of physicality between zack and cloud works nicely though. thereâs a desperation around cloudâs actions here, an unreasonable response to grief/loss/love that speaks of unfulfillment. zack and cloudâs relationship is all about uncrossable distances, and reaching across anyway. there is little response between the two: they can never reply to each other, only assume permission and act in the way they think the other would want. the otherâs existence becomes cerebral, established in thought-space rather than physical-space. and the result is a loneliness so desperate it destroys. zack was as lonely as cloud; zack mythologised cloud too, dreaming of delivering him to safety so intensely that he gave his life to this fantasy.
cloud feels immense shame about his inability to save zack, and later on when he realises what he has done, shame about how he has treated zackâs memory. but i think thereâs something here about cloudâs respect and love for someone who took care of him. zack is physically and emotionally stronger, openly affectionate and protective. by taking zack on as a mantle, cloud stays safe. by becoming his own protector, cloud embodies zack more truly than zack himself could manage. he understands what it is that zack truly dreamed of, and gives him another chance to be a hero.Â
what iâm saying is: cloud did what zack wanted, though maybe in a more extreme form than he had imagined. i donât even need the authorial stamp of approval, but i have it anyway â in the movie sequel ADVENT CHILDREN, zack appears in ghost form to support a struggling cloud. and his support is simply to ask cloud to repeat the final words that zack ever said to him, knowing that cloud will understand: âyouâll be my living legacyâ.Â
these words are imprinted on cloudâs yaoi identity. zack totally meant it as a wish for cloud to survive, but i love the weight of burden here: it sounds like something an overbearing parent would say. cloud subconsciously shapes himself around it. and i canât ignore how it calls to trauma theory of living legacies, too, though iâm sure square enix didnât mean to express the theory so textually. here trauma is not solely marked by scars, but by the emotions and behaviours that a person experiences afterwards, which grow and take life of their own. itâs about carrying your trauma around with you, and having it change you physically. as janina fisher tells us, trauma manifests in a personâs life beyond the event as âfear, shame, anger ⌠startling, impulses to run or hide or fight, even against oneâs own bodyâ. zack had carried cloudâs body around with him, and the weight of it encouraged him onward to his death; cloud truly was his living legacy in that sense. but zack positions himself as cloudâs living legacy, which cloudâs body must carry not as a physical weight, but as emotion and behaviour that cloud cannot help but follow through. this kind of intense doubling-back and doubling-down is the kind of stuff that makes fujoshis crazy, by the way.
this fucked me up for years. i have always loved stories where important characters are already dead: itâs a style of writing that really impresses me, and i enjoy what it does to the remaining characters who have to live with that hole, or in cloudâs case, in that hole. the fact that cloud fills his hole with zack, and also himself, is so twisty and fun. forgetting and becoming a dead guy is fucked up â absorbing the man who died for you is fucked up. but i think zack would have been ok with it. and whatâs better than two guys aligning in their fucked up views?
this brings us to sephiroth.
SEPHIROTH
if sephiroth had his way, cloud would also be his living legacy. heâs the most famous villain in FFVII, driven crazy by his mommy trauma and god complex, and cloud becomes his enemy because he keeps thwarting his plan to destroy the planet. heâs also the other half of sefikura, one of the most enduring and epic ships in the yaoi world. cloud has earned his place as a yaoi icon, and sephiroth is on the podium with him.
during FFVII, cloud pursues sephiroth. this is more than just plot â square enix built this dynamic into the game itself, and it was a resounding success within the industry and the genre. this pursuit mechanic involves looping back around the world map to find this villain in previously-explored locations. by updating the map with sephirothâs presence, we get to feel his omni-presence in cloudâs mind. the pressure that sephiroth exerts upon cloud to think of him becomes more discernible, and more complex, in sephirothâs response to being hunted by the protagonist: which is to remove any thoughts that are not of him. he turns cloud into his puppet â he forces his way into cloudâs mind on a psychic level, and imposes his own will onto him. chasing sephiroth makes cloud vulnerable; but he must keep chasing the bad guy. he must knowingly open himself to sephiroth because that is his role in the game; and we as the gamer behind him are pushing him onwards, making him dance on those strings again and again so that we reach the ending. becoming implicit in the roles of martyr and murderer is a heady rush that speaks to the success of sefikura in FFVII. we yaoify cloud. how fun is that?
hereâs a quote from cloud: âi wasn't pursuing sephiroth... i was being summoned by sephirothâ. heâs being literal here. sephiroth is deliberately drawing cloud closer, forcing him to follow and find him, because he wants to, um, âform reunionâ with him. this is also literal. sephiroth wants cloud to be with him, but more importantly, he wants cloud to be him â to obey his commands, to align with his views, to be in total sync with what sephiroth thinks and feels. this part of their relationship is all about sephiroth: narcissistic to the bone, sephirothâs obsession with cloud is rooted in how cloud continually pulls away from his call and rejects him.
cloud is meant to be sephirothâs vessel, by the way. not immediately obvious, especially with the care that the designers took to make their visual appearances contrast. but itâs a really fun plot twist, and one that puts cloudâs identity crises into sharp focus. sephirothâs identity has been forced onto cloud through medical trauma, with his dna inserted physically into cloudâs body, which turns his mental and verbal objections into something of a painful joke. he doesnât want to be sephiroth. sephiroth sucks, and keeps killing his friends. but cloudâs body betrays itself, betrays him and keeps him from feeling secure in his own identity. thereâs no part of him that he can cut out to get rid of sephiroth; and even after sephiroth is dead, cloud feels him. sephiroth is still in him. whose body is it, anyway?
iâve made sefikura sound fucked up, and it is, kinda. but itâs easy to understand the hold that itâs had on fujoshi gamers. cloud doesnât go quietly. sephirothâs oppressive manipulation is what ignites cloudâs will to fight back.Â
sephirothâs insistence that he is the original, and cloud a copy who must submit, is the kind of crazy that appeals to me more now that iâve come to terms with my leo sun star sign. i suppose itâs visually similar to how zack and cloud had existed, but in practice it is a more dynamic and charged relationship. like his mother before him, sephiroth is a virus: iterative, defined through the suppression of others and the subsequent displacement with himself. he exists only in this state of violence â is made real through it â and he doesnât want to live in any other way. as derrida puts it, âas soon as there is the One, there is murder, wounding, traumatism. LâUn se garde de lâautre. The One guards against/keeps some of the Other. It protects itself from the Other⌠The One makes itself violence.â
sorry for putting french in front of you. this aptly describes and complicates sefikura, because actually, itâs cloud finding himself in that abjection of sephiroth. who is he? not sephirothâs copy; not sephiroth. he is as much a One as he is an Other, and makes himself more of both as he rejects sephiroth. in that rejection he provokes sephiroth again, who must respond. itâs an equal relationship only through its dynamism, in the constant flux and flow of violence that they put each other through. thereâs no real hope of reconciliation between them â they are on guard, always conscious of the power they hold over each other. itâs sustainable only if the two of them live forever, and cloud is the protagonist. eventually sephiroth loses.
sephiroth is measurably more yaoi than zack, by the way. zack has a girlfriend, for all that his character is defined by his homoerotic death scene. sephiroth has an obsession with cloud that follows him into the grave and beyond. in ADVENT CHILDREN, sephiroth somehow manifests into physical fragments in an attempt to resurrect himself â and when he does, he runs to fight cloud. (cloud fights alongside his friends, but always ends his fights with sephiroth alone: their relationship is unique.) itâs here that we get sephirothâs yaoi line: âi will never be a memoryâ. once again, itâs the final words that cloud hears before sephiroth dies (again, and hopefully more permanently this time).Â
i kinda like it more than âyouâll be my living legacyâ. i think itâs more comically connected to living trauma theory: yes, sephiroth is in his nightmares, but he does keep physically appearing to haunt him. it ties in well with sephirothâs narcissism, but also his place in the wider story as a lapsed war hero that cloud had, at one point, idolised. as a young boy, cloud had looked up to sephiroth and tried to emulate him; cloud had joined the army to be like sephiroth. in a way, sephiroth is more of the origin to cloudâs story than zack is. sephirothâs fall from grace is something a lot of sefikura fans tap into, recognising the toxicity of that connection. all yaoi should have a healthy dose of painful, hilarious irony.Â
i also like how in plain text it seems⌠relatively mundane? not normal, and definitely terrifying to a man recovering from his protagonist status. but also a little bit like sephiroth is cloudâs crazy ex who just canât accept the breakup. that does trump zackâs parenting line for me.Â
anyway, with sephiroth in place, cloud moves from a fujoshiâs delight to a fujoshiâs icon. itâs in sefikura that we see cloud at his most fierce and dynamic, which is hugely appealing. i think the stakes add rather than detract here, and the pain of finding yourself in/with a man who keeps killing your friends is very thrilling. as true rivals, sephiroth gets to transgress some of the barriers that kept zack from cloud through sheer force of villainy, and the intense mirroring between them is revitalising for cloud. sephiroth gives cloud purpose, defining him as an individual again â a One. thatâs yaoi.
CLOUD STRIFE AGAIN
the thing is, iâm not sure cloud wants to be a One. not in the sense that sephiroth means it, anyway. cloudâs identity is a fractured thing, broken up by amnesia and survivorâs guilt and the burden of being a protagonist, but itâs deliberate. itâs a defence mechanism, as fredric jameson puts it, against the eroding currents of life that cloud must continue to run through. a poignant image for a broken midgar, and a textual experience, rather than theoretical, for cloud. yet his healing is not to discard parts that do not resemble cloud-before-the-game, but to try and make amends with whatâs left â or rather, whatâs there. the final third of the game is cathartic for cloudâs identity, when he reconciles the two truths of being neither zack fair or sephiroth. so, what happened to cloud? is he still there; if so, how does he find that part of himself again? or does he throw it all away and start again? no; cloud refuses to live in rejection any longer. he cannot exist parcelled away in the spaces between people, butting up against their edges. instead he starts to acknowledge and appreciate how they touch him. he is made through the interactions of their identities against, and with, his. cloud has always been there.Â
in this way, i think he is yaoi. writing from the perspective of his ship halves makes him appear reflective rather than transformative, but in truth he absorbs. he is a space for other characters to go through (i am calling him a hole) and in doing so, those characters are different. itâs in that type of connection that cloud finds his identity, and i find that really beautiful. deleuze and guattari talk about how a fragmented identity shows an unfettered desire that is rooted in the current of life, and who craves life more than someone who keeps being denied it? refusing to cohere to a single, impenetrable ego is a choice, and itâs one that shows a determination to experience the present whilst not letting go of the past. itâs too hard to be done accidentally, and especially to do it twice. cloudâs showing us something here.Â
heâs my favourite kind of protagonist, really. cloud resists the archetype of a lone(ly) soldier trudging on, because he keeps seeking out connection, be it for love or security or purpose. it is only in experiencing relationships that cloud can begin to make sense of his life. he canât exist on his own. he needs to know someone, and they need to know him.Â
and that, to me, is yaoi.
[now read yaoi zine!!!!]
#đ¸#FFVII#this is so long and yet there's loads more i wanted to say#i wanted to think about yaoi in an ecological sense: what does it mean for cloud to hold onto other identities (and other men) in midgar#i.e. a world that is being eaten by hypercapitalism#and i wanted to do a lacanian reading of cloud's psychosexual identity. there's nobody who embodies the a#nal stage more than cloud but i really like the concept of the mirror and how it fits into ffvii#basically: i was unhinged by tshirt's proposal and am still shoving things back into the box#if you cut me open like a stick of rock you would just see cloud strife's face#yaoi zine#zakkura#sefikura#cloud strife
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