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dannydehek · 2 years

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Is HyperNation a Scam or Legit? - Afrik Lad (Guest) Danny de Hek (Host) on the WHAT : DE HEK Podcast

Transcribed using Descript DANNY : DE HEK: I've got this opportunity of a lifetime and I think it would be really good for you and your family. It's an investment opportunity and I don't want you to miss out. It's called HyperNation. It says Afrik Lad: Scam, Scam, Scam. For anyone watching these videos, people out there, there is no easy way to be coming a millionaire. There's not easy to make money, so please don't get yourself thought off with people who come and tell you, you'll make you becoming a in six months or a year or two years time. It is certainly, I can assure you a hundred percent that it is not that easy. So please do not do that and carefully before you get into any kind of business like that, somebody gonna to police or anything. In fact, I would suggest if somebody promise you, they cannot just say no. DANNY : DE HEK: Welcome to the What the Heck podcast. I'm your host. I'm Danny de Hek, and today I've got a special guest called the Afric Lad, who's a budding YouTuber, and he's gonna tell us about himself and why he's sticking his neck out, trying to help people from not investing in Ponzi schemes. But I thought, I haven't done a YouTube and a podcast for a while, and I thought I'd bring back the old 12 questions with what to hit. So welcome along to the Podcast and also YouTube channel. How you doing? Afrik Lad: Yes, I'm very well. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me here, Mr. Danny de Hek. Listen man, I'm, I'm, I'm just excited for this one. I think it's DANNY : DE HEK: gonna be great. Ah, good stuff. Now what, whereabouts in the world are you? I'm in New Zealand. You're, you're at Sunday? I'm in quarter past 10 and I'm, no, you're a Saturday at quarter past 10 at night, and I'm Sunday morning at quarter past 10. We're 12 hours apart. Afrik Lad: Yeah. Well I'm, yeah, I'm actually here Saturday. Yeah, in the uk. So yeah, it's, the world is interesting. Isn't in it . It's late here. People are there where some people are still up with London. People don't sleep here anyway, but you know what I mean. It's late. You are early. There you go. . DANNY : DE HEK: I'll tell you about that one other day. Interesting enough because I live in the future, I can tell you the lotto ticket numbers. Would you like to know? Afrik Lad: Listen, man, this is a great one. This one, this is how people should winning the monies, million DANNY : DE HEK: more chances winning the lottery than winning money on Ponzi schemes. I'll tell you exactly. All right. Before people get to know you, I've got, I've got 12 random questions. I don't even know what they are. The first question I just hit my microphone. That was not good. Aside from necessities, what's one thing you could never go? You, Oh, sorry. Here we go. What's one thing you could not go a day without? One thing that Afrik Lad: could not go a day without? Yep. Wow. That's a very serious question, I think. Hmm. I think what I would say is meditation. Meditation. Good man. Yeah. And what I mean by that, I don't mean sitting still on meditation. I know what people who think meditation means. You see, you haven't got, you're DANNY : DE HEK: not sitting on a yoga mat. Afrik Lad: No, I haven't. I haven't got that. No. Right. My meditation is either when I'm just about to go to bed, lay in bed, or sometimes when I'm riding my bicycle around, I could be riding my bicycle to somewhere, maybe to work in the morning. I'm going through stuff, thinking about stuff, processing things, you know, giving myself some positive vibe for the day. That is one thing that I certainly love to do almost every day. I have to do one, one of those mornings and evenings, or sometimes just in the evenings. DANNY : DE HEK: That's good. I think that's pretty entrepreneurial in a way, because you are always thinking of a way to find a solution to a problem analyzing everything continuously. You've got, you've got our spot on. Yeah, I think we've both, we've both probably got adhd. That could be the other technical name for it, but well, let's not go there today. All right. Question number two. Where do you see businesses, Oh, this is goody. Where do you see businesses of the future? Are we gonna beis, What do you think? Afrik Lad: But it looks like I've just been reading the other guy, creating a robot in, what's his name? The rich dude. Oh, looking like all human, whatever. But yeah. I think for sure there's gonna be a lot of technology going, even more technology, more improving. So that's one area of business. But I have a feeling that businesses are diversifying as well. And it could be from any angle, but also it comes down to where you live. Yeah. What technology you have, how you use it, what's, how you've been trained. If you have the, the skills. So for example, in the West where I live, you see that a lot of things have been technology ties. That's what I would use. It's in technology. But also by coming from Africa. You can find, you find that quickly that a lot of people are still far behind in terms of technology. So we are still using the traditional methods for businesses running, but again, that comes down to infrastructure where you live. Sector sector. For me personally, I I, I'm going with both as in the traditional business side of things, without technology, hence on doing farming upcountry, but also, Obviously I work in it as well, so I go with the technological side of things as well, because that's where it looks that we're heading. Yeah. We, we've been getting electronics, vehicle driverless vehicles, All sorts is happening. So people have to be tuned up, be educated, and be smart to get into that world sooner than later. So you can control it or well, maybe not control it, but you, you know how to handle it basically. DANNY : DE HEK: Yeah. Interesting enough, when you said diversification, I built a house oh, 14 years ago, and they brought in a guy to do the foundations. Then they brought in a guy just to do the framing, and then they brought in, you know, a window guy, you know, every, the jer, the painter, everyone was outsourced and that, like the olden days used to have one tra doing the whole lot from start to finish. Yeah. And is it like that in Africa? Yeah. Afrik Lad: Yeah, In Africa you get like, again, If you go to my mom's village, for example, in my hometown, yes, you have one dude who build the house up. You know, I mean they, they, they, in fact, we, that's what I mean by the technology is different there. They use like mode bricks or those mode that puts more and puts frames, put more around there. Somebody who does build the whole thing, him or his and his wife, or him and his son, or just him doing it. They don't have to bring special people. But of course in the city and most especially the advanced African countries, they develop the ones that are, are more advanced than the others. In terms of development, they do simulating like this as well. They have a contractor where then contractor, they have somebody who builds the tile in somebody who does the windows and somebody who does the bricks and somebody who does whatever, the plastic, the painting sector, all those kind of different things there. But that's for mainly cities up country is completely different. Yeah. DANNY : DE HEK: So you reckon Elon Musk might have a bit of a trouble cause AI building houses. Afrik Lad: Listen, that guy looks like he's taking over the world. He's doing everything. He's in to the moon now or whatever he call he's going to space. DANNY : DE HEK: Yeah, no, he's going to Mars. I think that's where the ecosystem is heading. I was wondering. He is not into that. Thank goodness he hasn't started his own metaverse. Be okay. What what do you most regret not having done? What would you most regret not having done by the end of your life? That could be a bit morbid. I know you're in good health. I hope you're in good health. I Afrik Lad: am in good, good health so far. You know, touch would, and thank God for that. What if I have not done that before I go to my grave? What would I mostly regrets? Huh? That's a tough one because for me, I, I don't bother, I don't worry much about regrets. I don't see that, if anything that I haven't done, that's it, It wasn't meant to be and I haven't done it. I, that's why I try now, I try to do everything in my power that's I can. Anything that I know I can do, I try to do it. If I can't do it, Or I made a mistake, I didn't do it. I don't see that as a lesson and learn, but if we are gonna talk about something that might regret that I didn't do, I go to my degree without doing it. It's probably taking my family to my hometown. That's probably one thing. Regret if I, if I don't, if I could not take my kids to my hometown, then certainly I'll regret that one. Cause I want them to go there, especially with all what I'm doing there. I want 'em to go, I want 'em to connect. I want them to, even when I'm gone to be there, feel like they're part of their as well. Because obviously they are, they, they from there. Yeah. DANNY : DE HEK: I I was hoping you weren't gonna say by yourself a membership with HyperNation, but I'm glad you didn't . Sorry, had to Afrik Lad: say that. Maybe that's, maybe that's one thing I'll definitely regret not buying . Yeah. DANNY : DE HEK: Now this, this. This next question's a bit basic for Kiwis which is New Zealanders. But for you, I'd be quite interesting to know. How many languages do you speak? Afrik Lad: I speak up to three right now. Up to three? Yeah. Yeah, So it's not much. Well basically, obviously speak English. I speak Creole. Creole is what we spoke, what we speak in Israel, mainly well over the country, but mainly in Free Town. Then I speak my mom's language, which is Limbal as well. So those three I speak. DANNY : DE HEK: Yeah. Is your mom got a different language? Afrik Lad: My mom's got a different language. Yes, I am. I'm a mixed person as well, by the way. So my mom definitely speaks a different language. Yeah, that different language from different ethnicity. Cause we have multiple, like it's a mixture. DANNY : DE HEK: Yeah. We don't get that so much over here, so that's pretty cool. Yeah. Okay. Here, here's a similar question, but as I said, they're all random. Where do you see yourself in five years time? Five Afrik Lad: years time. I, My goal is , That's a tricky one. Where the world is going. Probably join HyperNation . DANNY : DE HEK: You'll be with Mr. H. Afrik Lad: Yeah, probably me, Mr. H in five years time. Yeah. You have your mouth. Yeah. No, but in five years time, what I want to be able to do, or where I wanna be five years time, is I want to for, I mean, I probably told you or not, I'm doing, I started real estate business back home, so five years from now, I want to be able to have two more properties built. And then I want to be able to have the rice, the farm extended to, like I mentioned to you, that I want to have the beans, I want to have peanuts. I want, basically, I want to make sure my farmers expanded to three or four more different crops. I wanna have two more properties built, and then I'm able to, I want to also spend longer back home. I in six months there and six months here. That's, that's the balance I want to have in five years DANNY : DE HEK: time. That sounds really cool, man. Well I did have another question that come to mind when you're talking. How old are you mate? . Afrik Lad: I am definitely the very old. Are you? DANNY : DE HEK: You dunno how old I am then. You must think of granddad. Granddad. I am. Afrik Lad: I I started to let you guess that, but I, I will say to you for sure that I am above DANNY : DE HEK: 30. Oh, about 30. I am above that. Oh, you are? Oh, right. Yeah. I was going 29, so yeah, I'm, I'll go 33. That's my heart. Afrik Lad: It's still not correct. I think you need to go slightly up. Oh right. DANNY : DE HEK: Okay. 31 . Afrik Lad: 31. You said 33. I said go up. You went down. DANNY : DE HEK: Oh, right. I'm no good. See, I told you no good numbers. It's usually words. No no. 34 then. Sorry, Afrik Lad: 34. No, I'm all than I'm, I'm 40. DANNY : DE HEK: Hey. Oh, you're ancient mate. It's just, say again. I'm 53. No, I'm 52. I forget. I think I'm, you know, you age and I'm, I'm 52. Well, funny enough, don't, I was brought up in a religious cult and I used to be a Jehovah's Witness, and we never celebrated birthdays, so, Right. I, I don't keep track of my birthdays really? I literally have to think. I was born in 1970 and then I think, what year is it? And it's 2022. Then I work it out that way. like that. All right, here we go. Another question. What form of public transport do you prefer? And I've got a few options here. We've got ear, boat, train, bus, car. But you might have a took talk. I don't know. Do you have took talks? What? Do you have G Gs you? No, Never Africa. Afrik Lad: Oh, well, well, in Sierra Leon, my country, we have talk talks here as we call them. KK. We have bikes, the ocas, they call them Okada, and of course we have taxis. And so now when you talk of the by preferred form of transportation there, it now comes down to what time of the day, what you know, I mean, and the traffic. So the best form of transportation around, usually it's the Took talks the kk, right? Yeah. For me anyway, the reason being is airy because it's not locked. Everywhere's airy. Oh. And it's kind little protected compared to the bike. If you drive ride a bike, you're like exposed. And I think that's are reckless when the ride around as well. But there's traffic because the traffic, the bike is probably a good form to travel because then you get past the traffic DANNY : DE HEK: interest enough, I was in Bangladesh and they had cgs and I didn't know why they called them cgs, but then I realized that was, well they told me it was cause the guests that they run on, so. So why are they called kk? Kk, KK. Yeah. What's that stand for? ? Afrik Lad: I have no idea. Cause I don't even think that name originated from Sierra Leon. And I think you originally from somewhere in Nigeria or somewhere. I don't know, but it's called Okay. I dunno. I was in there when it started, when this form DANNY : DE HEK: of, Oh you need to, you need to research that my friend. You need to figure that out. That's Afrik Lad: a good idea actually. But when I travel back to Leon each time, that's when it became popular. KK and then the bikes, Okada, that's that name definitely originated from Nigeria or that's how the In Nigeria. Yeah. Cause in DANNY : DE HEK: Thailand they have took Afrik Lad: talks. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't have a clue what Okada means, but again, when that whole KK oat thing started, I wasn't in anymore. I left long time ago, but I do go every year, so, and twice a year sometimes. So I get to use them, but hey, that's how they travel there. They cars. Of course. I prefer the vehicles at night. Late nights when I want to go places, of course I use the car. But during when you took a block of traffic, KK is quicker or bike is quicker. DANNY : DE HEK: Yeah, I'm trying to think what I like. I mean air. I think airplanes are been an airplane anywhere time, but I mean that's pretty luxury and a very expensive hold up and doesn't stop my dog. Dogs biting a cable in your bed. the light. Look boys naughty. Chew on the cable. Don't chew on the cables. All right, I think we've had that conversation now. All right, so is your glass half full or half empty? The answer there, I'll let you answer . Afrik Lad: I think my glass, I will say, if I'm honest with you, this glass half will half empty thing. It's not, I don't worry about it. It's not my thing for me. I just carry on. So I don't honestly know what the difference I've notice sat and say, Okay, what's the difference between half full, half empty? What's that? What does that mean? Even I don't even have, All I know is some people, I think when they say half full, does that mean they still go somewhere to go? Something like that. And then half empty. What does it mean? I don't have a clue. DANNY : DE HEK: Oh, it just means, are you positive or a negative? Ancy. , Yeah. I see. Well, I tell, tell you what though. Sorry mate. You go. Afrik Lad: No, I like to consider myself as very positive. I always have a, I have positive mindsets in life and yeah, it just, with how I do things, I like to be very positive. That doesn't mean of course I don't stop and check and critique certain things, but I like to have a go at things and do them and go for DANNY : DE HEK: them. Really? No, that's good. I had a young girl come along to my, one of my meetings on Thursday. Yeah. And she basically had been reading a lot of, Help books. And she said she was she, You need to know your why. And I'm going, Yeah, I'm 53. I've read a lot of self books. I've gone to a lot of courses and she was only, I think she was 29, but I think at that age you need to go through, you know, they repeat a lot of the stuff you've heard from Rich Dad, Poor Dad stuff and and a lot of that, that half glass full thing and all that. I'm sort of, yeah, I've sort of heard it all before , like, I get the positive, how to keep the mindset and blah, blah, blah. But that's what I think of when I hear some of those sometimes. Yeah. Afrik Lad: But sometimes that's how they get, you know, they try to ask you these stupid questions. So no way to just try to basically try to read you and you see something they know. Okay, that's the one we can go for for that person. You know, something like that. DANNY : DE HEK: You've got it. All right. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? I think it's gonna be home with your Afrik Lad: mum. I'm guessing it's gonna be absolutely home. That's exactly my, where we are living home. It's, it's warmer. Yeah, it's much more, yeah, it's warmer. People are more friendly. You know, I, I don't live too far from the beach. DANNY : DE HEK: So whereabouts are you at the moment? Are you in the uk? I am in Afrik Lad: the uk. Yeah. DANNY : DE HEK: Yeah, I'm right now. Read the full article

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yangzhouman · 1 year

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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. it’s 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. it’s a real labour of love! and it kicks ass! please check it out here!]

what’s gayer than absorbing the identity of another man? doing it twice. i’m 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 i’m sure my highschool friends wish his pointy polygon form hadn’t 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 “less masculine” so that he could better rival sephiroth? direct quote. until this week, i didn’t — 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. it’s 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. he’s the origin of it all in the truest sense: let’s begin with him.

ZACK FAIR

the most important thing about zack is that he’s dead. it gets weird from here, because every time we see cloud, we see zack — 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 shouldn’t.

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 isn’t. this identity actually belongs to zack fair, who truly was a soldier, and who died protecting cloud from that megacorporation.

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.

and cloud’s 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 — everything. in doing so, zack fair lives on; it’s 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 don’t have gay sex, but it’s unlikely, as cloud is catatonic for a long time — it’s the reason why zack dies, protecting his vulnerable friend. the lack of physicality between zack and cloud works nicely though. there’s a desperation around cloud’s actions here, an unreasonable response to grief/loss/love that speaks of unfulfillment. zack and cloud’s 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 other’s 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 zack’s memory. but i think there’s something here about cloud’s 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.

what i’m saying is: cloud did what zack wanted, though maybe in a more extreme form than he had imagined. i don’t even need the authorial stamp of approval, but i have it anyway — 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: “you’ll be my living legacy”.

these words are imprinted on cloud’s 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 can’t ignore how it calls to trauma theory of living legacies, too, though i’m sure square enix didn’t 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. it’s about carrying your trauma around with you, and having it change you physically. as janina fisher tells us, trauma manifests in a person’s life beyond the event as “fear, shame, anger … startling, impulses to run or hide or fight, even against one’s own body”. zack had carried cloud’s 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 cloud’s living legacy, which cloud’s 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: it’s 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 cloud’s 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 — absorbing the man who died for you is fucked up. but i think zack would have been ok with it. and what’s 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. he’s 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. he’s 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 — 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 sephiroth’s presence, we get to feel his omni-presence in cloud’s mind. the pressure that sephiroth exerts upon cloud to think of him becomes more discernible, and more complex, in sephiroth’s response to being hunted by the protagonist: which is to remove any thoughts that are not of him. he turns cloud into his puppet — he forces his way into cloud’s 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?

here’s a quote from cloud: “i wasn't pursuing sephiroth... i was being summoned by sephiroth”. he’s being literal here. sephiroth is deliberately drawing cloud closer, forcing him to follow and find him, because he wants to, um, ‘form reunion’ with him. this is also literal. sephiroth wants cloud to be with him, but more importantly, he wants cloud to be him — 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, sephiroth’s obsession with cloud is rooted in how cloud continually pulls away from his call and rejects him.

cloud is meant to be sephiroth’s vessel, by the way. not immediately obvious, especially with the care that the designers took to make their visual appearances contrast. but it’s a really fun plot twist, and one that puts cloud’s identity crises into sharp focus. sephiroth’s identity has been forced onto cloud through medical trauma, with his dna inserted physically into cloud’s body, which turns his mental and verbal objections into something of a painful joke. he doesn’t want to be sephiroth. sephiroth sucks, and keeps killing his friends. but cloud’s body betrays itself, betrays him and keeps him from feeling secure in his own identity. there’s 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?

i’ve made sefikura sound fucked up, and it is, kinda. but it’s easy to understand the hold that it’s had on fujoshi gamers. cloud doesn’t go quietly. sephiroth’s oppressive manipulation is what ignites cloud’s will to fight back.

sephiroth’s 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 i’ve come to terms with my leo sun star sign. i suppose it’s 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 — is made real through it — and he doesn’t want to live in any other way. as derrida puts it, “as soon as there is the One, there is murder, wounding, traumatism. L’Un se garde de l’autre. The One guards against/keeps some of the Other. It protects itself from the Other… The One makes itself violence.”

sorry for putting french in front of you. this aptly describes and complicates sefikura, because actually, it’s cloud finding himself in that abjection of sephiroth. who is he? not sephiroth’s 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. it’s an equal relationship only through its dynamism, in the constant flux and flow of violence that they put each other through. there’s no real hope of reconciliation between them — they are on guard, always conscious of the power they hold over each other. it’s 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 — 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.) it’s here that we get sephiroth’s yaoi line: “i will never be a memory”. once again, it’s the final words that cloud hears before sephiroth dies (again, and hopefully more permanently this time).

i kinda like it more than “you’ll be my living legacy”. i think it’s 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 sephiroth’s 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 cloud’s story than zack is. sephiroth’s 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.

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 cloud’s crazy ex who just can’t accept the breakup. that does trump zack’s parenting line for me.

anyway, with sephiroth in place, cloud moves from a fujoshi’s delight to a fujoshi’s icon. it’s 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 — a One. that’s yaoi.

CLOUD STRIFE AGAIN

the thing is, i’m not sure cloud wants to be a One. not in the sense that sephiroth means it, anyway. cloud’s identity is a fractured thing, broken up by amnesia and survivor’s guilt and the burden of being a protagonist, but it’s deliberate. it’s 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 what’s left — or rather, what’s there. the final third of the game is cathartic for cloud’s 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.

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. it’s 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 it’s one that shows a determination to experience the present whilst not letting go of the past. it’s too hard to be done accidentally, and especially to do it twice. cloud’s showing us something here.

he’s 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 can’t exist on his own. he needs to know someone, and they need to know him.

and that, to me, is yaoi.

[now read yaoi zine!!!!]

#🐸#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

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