★ Character Information ★

Character Name: Cloud Strife
Character Age: 21
Character Species: Human (altered/enhanced with mako, which increases physical attributes; makes eyes glow green/blue; causes memory loss, mental/emotional disorders, coma, etc)
Current Health: Somewhat injured; will appear with just some bruises/mild sprains
Outfit: His usual SOLDIER getup; dark navy/purple knit tank/turtleneck with dark navy/purple canvas pants. Thick black military boots, spiked pauldron on his left shoulder. Black leather gloves, metal braces on left arm. Brown leather belts and harness for magnetic sword plate/sheath on his back.

Character Canon:
Link to History: This is the most accurate synopsis of the original game without the story changes from the remake.
Canon Point: Endgame, after defeating Sephiroth and escaping aboard the Highwind
Canon Iteration: Original canon
Canon Iteration Explanation: n/a

★ Folkmore Roles & Attributes ★

Skills: Sword fighting, vehicle operation, chocobo racing, getting BODIED by his past
Canon Abilities: Enhanced strength, speed, and durability due to mako enhancements.
Role: Familiar
Role Qualities/Attributes: Animal Shapeshift; may retain traits later. He will not want to shapeshift often. Options for shifting are: raven, serpent (viper), bobcat
Role Reasoning: Cloud only ends up leader in the game by default; he tends to be more of a follower, for good or ill. By the end of the game he's also become very familiar with the gray area of morality. Cloud's main drive was revenge, which he's settled; while he's not exactly emotionally stable, that's only in reference to him being a mess, and not due to any outside forces or any struggles with right vs. wrong, or selfishness vs. selflessness. If particular castmates come into the game he may align himself with those who are Legend/Myth types, but otherwise he'll likely keep to himself (unless he really connects with someone else)

★ Personality ★

Please choose one of the follow options for your personality section. Please clarify which option you have picked and, if option 2, which questions you are answering:

Option 2.

What is the most important and defining relationship(s) in your character's life and why?

Not a great relationship, but probably his relationship to his idol and then enemy, Sephiroth. It started with just Cloud admiring Sephiroth for his strength and capabilities. He was a war hero at a young age, unflappable, and so very powerful. Young Cloud wanted fame and power, and set his sights on Sephiroth as his highest goal.

This changed when Sephiroth snapped and burned his hometown of Nibelheim to the ground, murdering his mother and almost all of the other villagers. Cloud confronted Sephiroth (who was basically like who tf are you, runt) and, miraculously, managed to overpower him and throw him seemingly to his death. Sephiroth lived on encased in mako due to the experiments performed on him in the womb and throughout his life, exerting his force on the poor test subjects who had Sephiroth's and Jenova's cells injected into them. The more susceptible ones (dubbed Sephiroth clones) lost themselves entirely and became nearly worthless living dolls. Cloud retained his sense of self mostly, but could still be manipulated. At that point, the relationship became a power struggle. Cloud wanted to kill Sephiroth for good for what he did, and Sephiroth just wanted to use Cloud to get what he wanted, which was the mortal wounding of the Planet.

To put it simply, Sephiroth was one of the main sources of Cloud's suffering, and also his insurmountable goal. Killing him put an end to that immediate suffering and also concluded Cloud's journey for strength. Sephiroth's influence over Cloud as a person was monumental.

What does your character feel like they struggle with still? Where could they improve? This could be physically, mentally, emotionally, or otherwise.

Cloud's got a lot of problems, but as for the ones he would identify himself...he would probably call himself an incomplete person. Most of his teenage years were lost to agony and illness, he adopted another man's history and personality as his own, and he was used as a puppet for so long by multiple people that he can't really identify what's truly him at this point. He would say he needs to improve his mental and emotional fortitude, so he can't ever be manipulated again. After that, he'll need guidance and direction to determine how else he needs to heal.

Speaking not from Cloud's POV, he needs to learn how to trust and like himself and others again. He has no idea where to go to find actual happiness, let alone contentment. He can't even begin to think of personal improvement without first reflecting on who he really, truly is, something he'd only started to do at the very end of the game.

Is your character capable of forgiveness or will they hold a grudge until they die? Would anything ever make them change their mind?

Cloud is...CAPABLE of it, but he's not likely to do it. Cloud already doesn't trust very easily; part of that is entirely warranted given his history, but he's always been kind of a guarded, cynical kid. Even when he was a child he ended up bitter and self-absorbed when the other kids left him out of playtime, rather than just being sad. He turned his loneliness into defensiveness and that's his go-to in order to avoid being hurt. Cloud protects his heart with spikes.

If it was someone he cared about though, he could forgive them. It would depend on the circumstances, but there's not a lot his friends could do to him that he couldn't forgive them for. He'd also recognize that to not forgive them would be extremely hypocritical, given the history of his own monumental fuck-ups.

If your character could change one thing about their past, what would it be and why? Or why not?

He would have grabbed his mom, Tifa, and Zack, and gotten the FUCK out of Nibelheim the second he came back. Instead of thinking what he could do to alter the course of history or try to thwart Sephiroth somehow, Cloud would've just clutched at what he cherishes and run. He's not strategic or intellectual enough to parse out the particulars of changing the past. He just knows that some of the people he loved the most endured awful pain and despair before ultimately dying (though luckily Tifa didn't die, barely). His gut reaction, and probably the next one after that, would be to protect what few people he can hold in his arms.

What is a time where your character failed drastically at something and how did it impact them, what did they do about it?

Oh my god like which time??? Seriously, it probably comes down to two. The first would be Aerith's death. Cloud almost hurt her with his own two hands, again, but even though he snapped himself out of Sephiroth's mind control he still stood there while Aerith was murdered and did nothing to stop it. Her death both impressed upon him just how severely fucked he is regarding Sephiroth being able to control him, and also what a danger he is to the people around him. Even after that he begged the party to continue on with him, because he knew his strength alone was worthless. That's when he opened his heart a little more and learned to lean on others, just a bit.

The second would be when, despite knowing he was easily controlled and even taking measures to keep something bad from happening because of that, giving in and allowing Sephiroth to break him. It resulted in Cloud handing the Black Materia to Sephiroth, which was basically a WMD in FF7-land, and put all of his friends in terrible danger. They almost died. Cloud was consumed by guilt and then fell into the Lifestream, so he immediately fell into a coma. Tifa saved him, but when he was himself again he expressed his deep remorse to his friends and told them that no matter what, he had to fix the mess he helped create. He picked himself back up, basically.