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iaintyourbro · 4 years ago

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What’s your take on Cloud’s depression during AC? People on twitter are suddenly talking about this, again. This matter was brought up by those antis saying that we Clotis should accept the fact that Tifa wasn’t the one who “healed” Cloud and that she was also being mean and not considerate whatsoever. The funny thing is that, they also accused us of denying his depression and not understanding it. TF. Let’s be real, Tifa played a major part, in fact she gave him morale thx to her “scolding” lol

Hey anon..

Yeah, Twitter has me depressed today. I think it started last night. I was enjoying it for a bit, but the last week or two have been so bad over there with bullshit that I’m about to just take a break from the entire fandom.

My Take on AC Cloud:

I watched AC when it first came out, and I barely remember it. I remember I didn’t like what they did. Why was Cloud so depressed and brooding? Oh Aerith is in this? Interesting. I felt like it was disjointed and removed a lot of the great progress Cloud made in OG. They kept this depressed, brooding guy in KH as well... It just didn’t seem right to me. I was young, too.

At this point we also didn’t have On the Way to a Smile, Crisis Core, or anything else, really.. None of the Ultimanias were in English at this point. I also was not interested enough in going online. It was a weird time when I was playing other things and was meh on FF7 for a while. I was always a FF8 fangirl, so was jealous of FF7 at times hahaha. It got so much more attention and love.

It took me a long time to watch it again. I remember my husband watching it before Remake came out and I felt mad or sad. It was like an emotion from memory, and I didn’t know why. I can’t describe it. I saw it on the TV and was like why is this on here...

After playing Remake, I bit the bullet and ordered AC Complete, which had things tweaked and added. I also am now in my 30′s and have a lot more life experience.

Antis like to say Cloud is depressed solely because Aerith is dead and he wants to be with her. This may be one of the reasons I didn’t like AC, because when I did happen to come across some FF7 thing online, I’d see this shit and be like whatever, that makes no sense.

I enjoyed ACC. My heart was actually pounding and I was nervous/intrigued by what was going on even though I knew the story. I haven’t read all of CoT yet, but I’ve seen the excerpts online, so I know the general gist of things.

Based strictly on ACC:

Cloud is really upset that Denzel is sick. He’s obsessively looking up medical stuff to figure out how to cure it - this is shown with everything all over his desk. He’s closed in on himself to do this. I did the same shit when my dad had cancer. I did it for three fucking years while he was alive - from the time he got diagnosed to the day he was dying. Every damn day I looked up articles, research, and theories. It’s not healthy. It’s depressing and I closed myself off from the world half the time and didn’t realize it. Thank God my husband is a patient saint.

Cloud does care a lot about Tifa. His reaction alone at seeing her knocked out in the church is heart wrenching. When they’re brought back to Seventh Heaven, Cloud pops right up when he sees Tifa there. He then stays with her until she wakes up. This is a pretty good amount of time. The sun is up when he’s looking over her, and when she wakes up, it’s dark outside. He could have slipped out again without her noticing if he really wanted to. I’m sure he may have contemplated it.

She calls his ass out on how he’s acting. She knows he’s sick at this point. This was huge for Tifa who’s not confrontational. He clearly doesn’t want to completely disconnect, or he would have gotten rid of his cell phone voluntarily. He doesn’t. They actually show him checking his messages.

Ultimately Cloud leaves because he ends up with Geostigma. That’s the last straw. He can’t face the fact that he’s going to die and what it’ll do to his family, so he leaves. Listen, I think the only reason my dad didn’t try to leave when he was diagnosed was because he had nowhere to go and by time he started verbalizing wanting to leave, he was physically unable to. Yes, I remember him being angry because he was hospitalized again and he told my mom he was going to get an apartment by himself so she didn’t know when he was getting bad. It’s very hurtful to even think it, and even worse when you know they don’t actually mean it... They do it because they don’t want to see their family hurt.

The setup he has at the church as his “living” area is super depressing. It looks like something a homeless person sets up. He legit was going to wait to die. He had a lot of knowledge about this, so he figured there was nothing he could do.

Marlene calls Cloud out on his bullshit too. Cloud admits to her he doesn’t think he can take care of anybody. Marlene Barrret quotes him and it’s cute. I think Cloud appreciated it and I think it made him think.

In ACC, Cloud has a short conversation with Aerith. Aerith seems almost annoyed with him like “wtf is your deal, dude” kind of attitude. Zack shows up when he’s bloody and half dead fighting Sephiroth to encourage him. There are scenes with him talking at Zack’s grave and saying he couldn’t keep his promise to him. He flat out tells Aerith he wants to be forgiven. He doesn’t say I miss you, I want to be with you, none of that happens. In fact, it’s mainly her telling him HE needs to start doing some forgiving - ultimately to himself.

When Cloud is in limbo - between living and dying - Cloud says “Mom.” Very romantic, I know. Then Zack and Aerith have a conversation very similar to a couple that’s going to adopt a child and they tell Cloud he’s too big for them. This is the “I see the light” and the person on the other side is like “nah bro go back, not your time yet.”

He wakes up, Tifa and crew is there, he smiles at Tifa... and it’s a happy ending. He sees both Zack AND Aerith at the end, and they walk off in to the light together all cute and shit.

Adding in Things from the Novels/Interviews/Thoughts:

The devs have said Cloud was happy with his family and that scared him. The happier he got, the more scared he got. We know he cherishes everything. He especially cherishes the family he has.

Cloud’s depression spiral started from the high anxiety of having a happy life and Elmyra asking him to deliver flowers to Aerith’s grave. Now, I have my feelings about this, but when I look at it logically, I don’t think Elmyra ultimately does this out of spite. I actually don’t think Elmyra thinks Cloud and Aerith were a thing - so it wasn’t that either. I think she knew Cloud was friends with her and maybe he’d want to deliver some flowers - to give him some business.

This flower delivery reminds Cloud of what he thinks is his failure to protect somebody else. At this point he has his memories of what happened to Nibelheim, his mother, Tifa, and Zack. The Sector 7 plate drop and Aerith are the most recent “failures”. So this brings up Aerith.

Then Denzel comes along and he’s an orphan because his parents were... yeah... killed during the Sector 7 plate collapse. Double ouch. But Cloud and Tifa are going to take care of him.

Tifa herself has a lot of guilt because of the same reasons, she just deals with it very differently. Tifa tells Cloud to bring Denzel right home. She can make amends by adopting him in to her family and caring for him. Cloud thinks Aerith brought Denzel to him (Tifa corrects him). This is a Cloud thing, it’s not romantic. Cloud doesn’t know the guilt Tifa feels. He legit thinks all of this is his fault. Tifa’s guilt stems from the fact that Shinra drops the plate because Avalanche was in Sector 7 - she was in Avalanche. She feels guilty about Aerith because she thinks its her fault Aerith followed them to Don Corneo’s mansion. The thing is, Aerith doesn’t blame EITHER of them - I just wish they’d cover a Tifa/Aerith conversation about this as well...

Cloud and Tifa do have fights in the novels from what I understand, but it’s because he’s acting weird. He feels bad hiding the fact that he’s been going to the church a lot, and I think that does turn in to a whole LTD debate. So you can take this as Tifa is jealous that he’s going to the church all the time or she’s upset that he is hiding from her.

In the novels, Tifa has a breakdown when they go see the church after they defeat Sephiroth. This is where you get to see how badly Aerith’s death impacted her. So my thought is... Cloud thinks bringing her to the church hurts her because of her feelings, not because she’s jealous. I think Cloud is oblivious to the jealousy thing, honestly. Don’t think it’s a thought in his mind.

I honestly don’t know the real reason why he goes to the church to hide. I think this is another point of fight with both sides. My personal take is there was nowhere else he could go and be alone. Most of the stuff had been destroyed. It was still close by, so he could still do his work and keep an eye on things/be nearby.

There is a quote that is taken to be literal, but I think it’s just a way to say it wouldn’t have mattered who Cloud was “with.” Yes, Tifa and Cloud have issues, and I believe the quote goes “Perhaps it would have gone better with Aerith, but I think her responsibility is too great. Maybe the children will help them with their issues.” This isn’t exact, but it’s the jist of what they said. The children do help them - that’s the point of the scenes with Marlene, to slap him silly with reality.

“Oh but he sees Aerith when the building is falling.” Yes, you know why? Because he thinks that’s going to happen to Tifa. This is a “NO I’M NOT LETTING THIS HAPPEN.” moment. On top of it, I don’t think anybody would be right again if they saw this happen. If my neighbor was impaled by a large sword in their back, I’d be messed up from it. I don’t really know my neighbors. He’s not replaying this death scene in his head cuz he misses Aerith, he’s playing it in his head because it’s traumatic and he doesn't want to see this happen to Tifa. Especially Tifa.

It’s been put in Ultimanias time and time again that Cloud’s feelings are for Tifa. I went through my Ultimania - which only covers OG - and it doesn’t say anything about Cloud’s side of the CA argument. It does say how he feels about Tifa in the Lifestream, though.

The “He wants to die for her, see, that’s why he’s going to the church and waiting.” No, he doesn’t want to die or else he wouldn’t be so depressed. Just thinking this is fucked up on so many levels. If he really wanted to die and be with her, he’d be happy he got an incurable illness, I’d think... Cloud leaves Tifa and them because he doesn’t want to hurt him with him dying and not being able to stop it.

The other thing that would be... weird... Zack is in the Lifestream with Aerith. They walk off together for a reason. I don’t think she’s going to just drop Zack for Cloud since the whole reason she was initially interested in Cloud was because of the similarities to Zack. He had the same sword, the same clothes, and in OG had some of the same mannerisms. I noticed the dropped the squatting in Remake - the random squatting.

The ending of ACC implies that now that Geostigma is cured and Sephiroth is (hopefully) gone for good, Cloud can be happy. I’m not saying that his smile fixes everything. I’m sure that him and Tifa had to work on things, but you can see in DoC that things seem to be much better - he’s more upbeat and happy. He’s more dorky, like he should be.

Sorry this is long. I have a lot of feelings about all this stuff today. I’ve been seeing the fights over on Twitter about it and.. yeah. Cloud is depressed because of the fact he’s dying, his kid is dying, and he can’t seem to do anything right in his mind.

Thanks for the ask.

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