Heavy Hero or Digital Dummy: multimodal player-avatar relations in FINAL FANTASY 7

many respects, of the formulaic character-types of Propp’s well-known analysis of
folktale narratives (Propp, 1970).

As the folktale analogy suggests, a character like Cloud does not spring out of
nowhere to fulfil the needs of commodified mass entertainment in the 20^th century,
but draws deeply on popular forms in folk culture, oral narrative, and the fantasies of
popular romance which have offered consolation, polemic, and psychic testing-
grounds, through elaborate allegories, for the rites of passage and tribulations of
everyday life since the mediaeval period and earlier. Eri Izawa (2000) describes how
the characters of manga and anime, and of Final Fantasy 3, draw on epic themes in
Japanese folklore, on hero-legends based on historic warlords, and on supernatural
narratives informed by Shinto and Buddhism. Though the historical origins of the
character of Cloud may be obscure for players, a recognition of the legendary quality
of the narrative and its characters is evident in fan writing, as in this fan
reconstruction of Cloud’s backstory:

Sephiroth had a power unseen and unrivalled by anyone at that time. To the
people of Nibelheim, he was a living legend. All the children had dreams of
becoming as powerful as the Great Sephiroth, but Cloud was the only one with
the motivation to join SOLDIER. (Innocente, 2002)

Janet Murray makes a suggestive link between computer game characters and
Homeric heroes (Murray, 1997), citing the early 20^th century scholars who revealed
the structures of the oral formulaic tradition, and pointing out that a game character
might be formulaically constructed in similar ways to the Homeric poet’s formulaic
construction of Achilles, a comparison which at least radically shifts the ground on
which conventional aesthetic objections to game texts are ritually made.

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