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Here's why [Squall] is my homie:
Firstly, I love his personality, his intense struggle with expressing feelings, his total refusal to react at all to most things.
He maintains his stoic, blank expression regardless of his friends' attempts to get closer to him, because he finds immense comfort and safety in this closed-off nature.
Through the story, he learns how to express real gratitude to the people in his life, and he learns to let himself value people, ultimately realising that living in a shell, blocked off from other people, doesn't prevent pain.
He is also misjudged because of how hard it is to penetrate his steely exterior, so when players write him off as a whiny, mean buffoon, I find it ironic that they too take this surface level approach to Squall.
He is the archetypical misunderstood, black-clad man. Like Mr Darcy, his perceived arrogance creates problems for him. Like Onegin, assumptions and social mis-steps cause him to remain isolated. But in the end, his growth reflects the endless possibility of hope, and the great gift that is the perserverance of community.
The people around Squall, through their willingness to support and love him despite his social shortcomings and weird, dismissive, goth energy, eventually convince him that life can be good - with other people.
And I just think that's neat.
