But despite those features, he still had the hallmark of any good hero: a big fucking sword. Short too, with spikey blonde hair and baggy trousers that look like they’re too big for him. He wasn’t burly or gassed to the gills like your usual game hero in fact, he looked downright soft with his pointed chin, big eyes, and defined-but-average size build. To 7-year old me, Cloud Strife, the player character in the seminal RPG classic Final Fantasy VII, was so…odd.
#CLOUD STRIFE ORIGINAL CHARACTER FULL#
But even as a lot of the pimply-faced teens who played those older games grow to adulthood and yearn to correct what they now see as youthful ignorance, the landscape is still full of competent, brave, strong protagonists, who now are just a little more introspective and vulnerable, dare I say meta in their subversion.īut what about the male protagonists who are not competent, and the bravery and strength so often valued as characteristics of heroes are totally, utterly fake? Whichever side you fall on, it’s hard not to notice that the days of dual-wielding giga-Chads smiting hordes and landing babes unironically are long gone. Hell, just go on Twitter and make a post about “Sad Dad” games, games featuring men struggling to soften into fatherhood from a grim life spent slaying, and marvel at the extremely polarized responses you’ll get. Killing, fucking, and ruling – these are the bread and butter of many a video game plot, and the details descend from there big muscles, hot girls, sick weapons, and nasties to conquer.īut this is 2021, and to say there has been subversions of those stale tropes would be the understatement of the century. Play as a hero with a big weapon whose goal is to smash all the baddies in front of him, charm the pants off (sometimes literally) of any women along the way, and lay claim to your newfound title as eternal champion of the universe or king or whatever your fancy. One of the iciest takes around is how video games, similar to other genres of art, often take the form of an explicitly male power fantasy.
Oh, wait, this was supposed to be about Final Fantasy VII, right? I was an unserious person playing make-believe, recycling hack material I had ingested as wisdom from teachers in the past, just so I could appear smarter in front of a child, who had zero time for my horseshit. The credentials around my neck, the tie I was wearing, my nearly-complete semester calendar for graduation, none of that meant shit. I’m already not tall, but I felt even smaller as I sheepishly gave some excuse. I had lied right to his face, knowingly, and he saw right through me. So I did what I thought a savvy, pedagogy-focused instructor would do: I took charge as an authority and subtly shut him down by acknowledging he raised his hand, promising to get back to him later, and then never answering his question.Įxcept it wasn’t subtle at all, and about the third time I did this in as many days he mentioned it, laser accurate: “Why do you call on me but I never get a chance to talk? You’re just shutting me out.” I didn’t really have a problem with this, but I wanted to keep the discussion current. Unfortunately, he had a habit of reading ahead and wanting to discuss where he was, rather than where most of his classmates were. He was a nice boy a bit odd in the way kids are, but I enjoyed the quirk he brought to my classroom. The classes were reading a book together, and one of the more precocious students had read quite a bit ahead. I was finishing up my student teaching in winter of 2016, a pretty turbulent semester at a middle school with a thankfully tolerant group of kids. There’s a moment in my life that I think about almost every day. WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR FINAL FANTASY VII and REMAKE.
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