Okay...I was thinking if I rant about Cloud and Tifa, and Cloud and Aerith. Well...here it goes. I was googling over Tifa/Cloud/Aerith...actually, I was chekin out Asperity, yeah, its a great Cloud Shrine although it was made by a Cloti that made me sad...then I googled all over again until I find that Cloud Shrine who supports Clerith...well most of it didn't care about love that much, but Tetsuya Nomura did say that the answer to Cloud and Aerith's relationship is at the near ending of Kingdom Hearts. Well, it answers a lot, although it wasn't connected to FFVII, so I still haven't got a clue about it yet. It's been very interesting, knowing what people think about the Love Triangle...there are always PROS and CONS for the couplings, but I guess that's what people think, some even hurt my feelings, but I guess it's what they opted. Here for example from...uh...some site i guess, but anyway, here's his/her opinions:
The Aerith-Cloud-Tifa triangle is cause for some of the internet's stupidest and most immature flame wars. Please note that when I generalize about Tifa or Aerith fans, I'm talking about the radical fringe (Lord, it sounds stupid using these terms in reference to games... "The anti-Rinoa intifada...") not the majority of fans. I'm well aware that there are people who like both Tifa and Aerith, or who merely prefer one without disliking the other. I'm not sure why these people don't make webpages, but I suppose they have better things to do.
That said, I think Tifa's fanatics are more to blame, if only because their habit of calling Aerith a slut bugs me. First and foremost, QUIT. In this day and age, shouldn't we be well past impugning a woman's character based on her sexual behavior? I will only consider "slut" a valid insult when a parallel term for men ends up in widespread use. Second of all, even if you believe that promiscuity makes a woman a bad person (as opposed to making her a "playa," I guess,) there's no evidence that Aerith is promiscuous. Anti-Aerith pages tend to criticize her for "throwing herself" at Cloud, but again I must erupt in feminist outrage. Since when is it wrong for a woman to take the lead in a relationship? Apparently my calendar is wrong, and it is actually 1952. Even if you assume that Cloud isn't interested in her at ALL, which depends on how you play the game, would you say that a guy "throws himself" at a woman when he tries to hit on her and gets shot down? Probably not, because it's assumed that men should take the lead. If they get rejected, it sucks to be them, but they aren't automatically assumed to be pathetic like a girl who "throws herself" at a guy.
Ahem. Sorry. I've yet to find an anti-Aerith site that DOESN'T engage in at least one of these charming samples of the sexual double standard - er, I mean "reasons for hating her." Someone PLEASE buy these kids an Intro to Women's Studies course, please? Pretty please? The world and the internet will be better. I'll chip in.
By the same token, I won't criticize Tifa on slut grounds. She has every right to dress however she wants, even if it is designed far more for attention-seeking than for fighting. And I'm also going to say that Cloud ends up with her. Mainly because it's realistic. He had a crush on her when he was younger, and although she was a little beeyotch to him and didn't deserve his affections at the time, that doesn't change that he liked her and now he remembers that her did. Working together in the second half of the game could only make them grow closer, and whether or not he feels ready to launch into a relationship as soon as things settle down, the odds are good that eventually he'll want to. Who's he going to choose, some random bikini-girl from Costa del Sol, or his childhood crushbunny with whom he's shared several traumatic experiences and who is now decidedly interested in him? And besides, I think Tifa has earned her happy ending. She's matured from a shallow little Quinn Morgendorffer clone to a mature and devoted woman, and while I may wish for her to be more independent and assertive, her happiness apparently lies with Cloud, not in owning her own business or hitting stuff really hard. But I think you miss a significant aspect of Tifa's character development if you insist that Cloud never cared about Aerith. Tifa has to watch him from a distance, feeling that she doesn't matter to him, just as *he* did back when they were both adolescents in Nibelheim. The tables have been turned, and it's only AFTER she's suffered the same crush-related angst he did that they can find a chance at happiness together. As someone who spent years on the wrong end of popularity and interpreted Tifa as the town's head cheerleader, I think that this is only right and fair... let her see how it feels, and she'll come out of it a better person. And I would say that she did, in the end.
So, to conclude... Aerith is not a bad person even if she sleeps with everyone she meets, which she doesn't. Tifa's not a bad person either, even though I don't like her clothes. Cloud is, as I see it, falling in love with Aerith through the first disc. It's perhaps not the world's closest relationship, but that's why they call it falling in love - it's a process, and they're still in the early stages of it, still getting to know each other, when the relationship is cut short by Aerith's death. After Cloud's pre-existing mental problems are resolved, he grows closer to Tifa and finds that his feelings for her are reawakening, probably as a result of recovering and clarifying his memories. I DON'T think that he's fully over Aerith's death, or fully ready to commit to Tifa, at the end of the game. He saw his first real love killed right in front of him by the man who's also responsible for his mother's death and the destruction of his hometown, and with the exception of a severe mental breakdown he spent all the time after that focusing on killing Sephiroth/saving the planet. He's never really had time to mourn. I'm sure that, in the end, he *will* turn to Tifa... whether this is a blessed-but-overdue event or entirely nauseating depends on your point of view. But I also think we should bloody well give him time.
Cloud x Aerith - Pros
She actually flirts with him - I mean, SOMEONE has to make the first move
Even though I knew her death was coming, Cloud's words right after it got to me - obviously *he* loved *her*
She's willing to give him grief when he deserves it - go Aerith go!
Understanding and accepting of him, even though she knows he has serious problems
Cloud x Aerith - Cons
She's dead
She didn't ACTUALLY get to meet the real Cloud - maybe they wouldn't have gotten along after all
He is distressingly blank when it comes to relationships - eventually she'd get sick of having to make the first move. Of course, she died before that could happen...
If they had a kid, the child would be genetically programmed to have really horrible bangs.
Conclusion: It could have worked out really well if she'd lived. I wish she had.
Cloud x Tifa - Pros
They have a history together
She was willing to stand by him despite his creepy, possibly-false memories AND his love for someone else
She's been inside his soul, literally - I mean, that's a pretty hefty degree of closeness
Now that he remembers he liked her, he will probably start acting more like he does
Cloud x Tifa - Cons
Shared memories aren't of close friendship or anything really approaching it
Neglected to give him her insights regarding his spooky flashbacks; also neglected to suggest to him that he might be a danger to himself and others
He still loves Aerith as of the end of the game
Their mutual shyness regarding emotions is likely to be a problem, too
Conclusion: Give Cloud some time to grieve (I bet Tifa would wait for him) and it should work out just fine. Unless, of course, you despise Tifa.
Well, I guess she clearly states that Cloud can't be together with a dead person, physically, but in spirit, Aerith will always be there and also states that Tifa's a nagger, but you can always learn how to love people...but for me, my opinion, when Tetsuya Nomura, the director and Kitase a producer said:
In the May 2003 issue of the United Kingdom video game magazine known as EDGE (quite possibly the most professional, best organized, and all around greatest video game magazine around), there is a six-page "Making of..." feature on Final Fantasy VII (there's a six-page "Making of..." feature in the back of every issue they release), in which Yoshinori Kitase (Co-Scenario Writer and Director of Final Fantasy VII) and Tetsuya Nomura (Character Designer of Final Fantasy VII) are interviewed.During the course of the interview, Nomura speaks about what he intended in coming up with Aerith's death, and Kitase speaks on the fans' responses to her death.
Here follows that part of the interview, along with picture proof that this issue of the magazine exists, and that the interview and dialogue I speak of is present within the issue.Nomura, concerning Aerith's death:
Back at the time we were designing the game, I was frustrated with the perennial cliche where the protagonist loves someone very much and so has to sacrifice himself and die in a dramatic fashion to express that love. We found this was the case in both games and movies, both easter and western. But I wanted to say something different, something realistic. I mean, is it right to set such an example to people?
Kitase follows that up with this:
Quote:: In the real world, things are very different. You just need to look around you. Nobody wants to die that way. People die of disease and accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad attached to it. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling, but a feeling of emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think 'If I had known this was coming I would have done things differently.' These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith's death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not
LOVE?! So Cloud loves Aerith!!!
Kitase, concerning the fans' responses to Aerith's death:
Quote:: The world was expecting us to bring her back to life, as this is the classic convention. But we did not. We had decided this from the beginning. There was a lot of reaction from Japanese users. Some of them were very sad about it, while others were angry. We even received a lengthy petition addressed to our scenario writer asking for Aerith's revival. But there are many meanings in Aerith's death and that could never happen.
Well, this is such a good news to me!!!! All thanks to This topic of Aerith and Cloud!!!!
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Name: Chel H. :P
