SPOILERS LTD Remake — It's like New Coke except ... no, it's exactly like New Coke

[Stiggie]

Ugh, "people are allowed to move on after their first love" has got to be one of the dumbest straw man arguments in LTD. Just a way for CAs to feel like they have the more mature take over CT, honestly. It's not that people en masse can't appreciate a "moving on" theme, it's that clearly, FFVII ain't that story.

I mean damn, millions of people were tuned in for The Mother when HIMYM was at its peak, and that's because the story had set her up for years as the ultimate Last Girl Wins trope. But then the writers bamboozled everyone by making Ted go back to Robin, one of the biggest fumbles in TV history.

FFVII, by contrast, has never set up Aerith as the Last Girls Wins. If anything, it did everything it could to set up Tifa as the First Girl Wins.

Perfect analogy, thank you, I'm stealing it...wait, i actually think i may have made the same comparison in the past, its so accurate.

Thing is, I actually thought the HIMYM twist was quite clever in concept. The problem is that reality got in the way of it. If the show had been SEVERAL seasons shorter and had properly focused on Ted and Robin as being this perfect star-crossed couple where everyone feels like they should be together and is upset that they're not, then I totally believe the twist could work.

But the story became too popular, too many seasons were forced through, Robin and Ted were too deeply explored and shown to just be friends, her relationship with barney was too set-up and likable, the identity of the mother became too much of an investment and when she was introduced the chemistry was too good. And as a result, no, Ted and Robin are not allowed to move on and end up with each other, because while it's a clever twist that momentary spark of "oeh clever" is overshadowed by the sensation of everything we've seen the past 6 seasons being essentially a meaningless waste of time.


It's scarily similar to ffvii.

 

[Someonesbunny]

To get around that connection with Tifa, however, CA needs to assert that ultimately it doesn't matter. The Lifestream sequence, under the Highwind, supplementary material, ACC and DOC, these are all dismissed at the stroke of a pen because they directly discredit the ship.

To add to this point, I think it's also quite apt to go back to this "optional" argument since the claim that "it doesn't change anything narratively" is being used as evidence optional scenes mean nothing, despite the fact that "not changing anything narratively" actually only goes to prove that all of the dates fit the story regardless of which one is chosen. Tifa getting a kiss fits just as much as Aerith not getting one and being emotionally confused.

 

[GamerSkull]

Just saw a take that said that CT fans don’t actually care for their ship and are just self-inserting as either Cloud or Tifa.

The projection.

 

[Hellenic]

To add: in Gongaga after C/T/A talking about Zack it only seemed to me that Cloud, when leaving, looked more towards Tifa? I mean the camera made me think this.

I assumed this was him attempting to have the one on one talk with her that they talked about in Under Junon before, but he decides against it. We then do get it after the story happenings in there anyway after Tifas Lifestream experience.

 

[liuliuliu]

So, i pulled this comment off of a C/A vid.​

Insane point of view, I dont know where to begin.


thoughts?

Don’t know where to start…did they not see Sephiroth acting like a high school gossip girl the entire game just to wedge between Cloud and Tifa?

 

[AncientGrimoire]

That fair but ultimately, if they can twist it now then they will definitely twist it again once the Ultimania is out.

But like you said, at that point we would have developer confirmation so it would be hard to refute.

Hopefully, the western release of the Ultimania won’t take a billion years.

I’m already preemptively exhausted from when the Ultimania’s come out, and we get Rebirth’s era of mistranslations, cherry picked contexts, and outright omissions or fabrications.

I can already tell the usual bad faith actors are getting warmed up ready for Round 2 of

“Suddenly Everybody Is An Expert On The Japanese Language And It’s Culture”

 

[Ryushikaze]

Is this real? Did they just take a metaphor for coming together for a kiss and use it to argue tsunagi supremacy? Was their takeaway that Romeo thinks touching palms is more romantic than kissing? Do they know YouTube is free with ads?

Is this officially the funniest LTD spray and pray? Has koi_bito been dethroned after nearly 2 decades as the champ?

Not for nothing, but there's also a fair few folks who are pretty sure Willy S was making a masturbation joke at the same time. Shakespeare is thick of perverted jokes, even in his tragedies.

There are already Aerith fans who are mad about "the things SE keeps taking away from her": selling flowers, pink, Holy, personality, Cloud's love interest, etc. And then ironically, they call Tifa a minor character who should get back into the kitchen after helping Cloud regain his sense of self -- I mean, who should find agency and self-actualisation as something other than Cloud's Love Interest. But again, she's a character. In a story. So if her role is Cloud's Love Interest, the girl who stays by his side till the end, then? Write fan fics where it isn't so? Instead of getting mad at SE and the story?

I think Aerith's memorial speech (can't remember what it's actually called), NPTK, and her character overall tell us that she feels stuck. She wants to move on -- especially when you consider how she must feel stuck in a limbo -- but she can't. So "gotta look forward, not back" is something she probably keeps repeating to herself as a way of convincing herself to do exactly that -- and then she latches onto a guy who is basically a copy of her boyfriend, lol.

It's funny how so money of those things were "taken" from Aerith by them being contextualized as signs of her wanting to reunite with Zack. None of it was taken away from HER, it was taken away from CLERITH.

Ugh, "people are allowed to move on after their first love" has got to be one of the dumbest straw man arguments in LTD. Just a way for CAs to feel like they have the more mature take over CT, honestly. It's not that people en masse can't appreciate a "moving on" theme, it's that clearly, FFVII ain't that story.

I mean damn, millions of people were tuned in for The Mother when HIMYM was at its peak, and that's because the story had set her up for years as the ultimate Last Girl Wins trope. But then the writers bamboozled everyone by making Ted go back to Robin, one of the biggest fumbles in TV history.

FFVII, by contrast, has never set up Aerith as the Last Girls Wins. If anything, it did everything it could to set up Tifa as the First Girl Wins.

The real trick is to be the first and the last girl. The first that he meets and the last one by his side.

 

[Eerie]

Why does it make Tifa a heart broken side character and Zack a loser though? I don't really get the Tifa can't exist without being a love interest thing because she went a whole six years without Cloud, she made new friends, became part of a family of friends.

The writers sticking the one thing I get, but I also have faith in writers being able to write something different without leaving characters in a bad place.

I don't want to dogpile on you, I just think it's a damn good question so I want to add my perspective since I haven't seen it.

Because what I want to talk about is the author's intent - and Nojima has plenty, as Nomura himself stated recently.

The thing is, if CA was meant to be, I think there would be no need for a Tifa. When they decided to kill Aerith, they created Tifa so she'd stay by the hero's side until the end - that was told in an older interview; however, this being a Final Fantasy game, if the devs had wanted to portray a love beyond death with CA, they wouldn't need a Tifa. They could come up with every excuse out there so that Aerith would fill both the roles of the internal and external plot, this wouldn't be a first. They'd have made something very bittersweet, with them reuniting in the Lifestream after her death, at the end, him sensing her etc.

But they chose not to. Because that was not the story they wanted to tell. What they wanted to tell was a story of death, how you'd feel when that character died, and how to accept death, so you can live.

So they created Tifa and woven her story with Cloud's, so much that many thought she didn't even have a story. But she did, for the most part she had the same memories, the same past, the same trauma. And thus was born a character with the role of helping Cloud, and discovering his love for her in the Lifestream scene. This is why I say that the story does not work if Cloud falls in love with Aerith; because it's not her role. In the OG we can clearly see that Aerith chose the Planet over Cloud when the time to chose had come; when Tifa had to make the same decision, she chose Cloud. And it makes sense because these are the decisions that, as heroines of the external and internal plot, they're always going to make. Aerith cannot have what Tifa has, and Tifa cannot have what Aerith has.

And Tifa not only has the key to repair Cloud's psyche, but she also has his love, and loves him as deeply in return. REMAKE told us they were thirsty for each other, but REBIRTH tells us what kind of couple they're about to become - domestic talks, intimate talks, supporting each other when their PTSD hits, being very aware of each other's need. This is what Aerith is envious of, because she wants it. The church scene boldly asks "but does she want it with Cloud?" in a very meta way. The lovers beyond death theme may exist, but not with CA. That is Zerith coded, and the game took its sweet time to tell us about it, to give us the biggest cue towards the end.

Once again, Aerith chose to pray for the Planet. And I'm betting that once again in part 3 we'll see Tifa chosing Cloud and staying in Mideel with him. This is the authors' intent, to show Aerith's death as a loss, someone who loved life and was unfairly murdered, cut off from this life she loved. And Cloud and Tifa fill the theme of life, they're both survivors, both in love with each other - another "life" theme, starting a life together after the game. Because life is also about accepting death - a theme AC/C does come back on so that Cloud can finally put that guilt away.

 

[GamerSkull]

I don't want to dogpile on you, I just think it's a damn good question so I want to add my perspective since I haven't seen it.

Because what I want to talk about is the author's intent - and Nojima has plenty, as Nomura himself stated recently.

The thing is, if CA was meant to be, I think there would be no need for a Tifa. When they decided to kill Aerith, they created Tifa so she'd stay by the hero's side until the end - that was told in an older interview; however, this being a Final Fantasy game, if the devs had wanted to portray a love beyond death with CA, they wouldn't need a Tifa. They could come up with every excuse out there so that Aerith would fill both the roles of the internal and external plot, this wouldn't be a first. They'd have made something very bittersweet, with them reuniting in the Lifestream after her death, at the end, him sensing her etc.

But they chose not to. Because that was not the story they wanted to tell. What they wanted to tell was a story of death, how you'd feel when that character died, and how to accept death, so you can live.

So they created Tifa and woven her story with Cloud's, so much that many thought she didn't even have a story. But she did, for the most part she had the same memories, the same past, the same trauma. And thus was born a character with the role of helping Cloud, and discovering his love for her in the Lifestream scene. This is why I say that the story does not work if Cloud falls in love with Aerith; because it's not her role. In the OG we can clearly see that Aerith chose the Planet over Cloud when the time to chose had come; when Tifa had to make the same decision, she chose Cloud. And it makes sense because these are the decisions that, as heroines of the external and internal plot, they're always going to make. Aerith cannot have what Tifa has, and Tifa cannot have what Aerith has.

And Tifa not only has the key to repair Cloud's psyche, but she also has his love, and loves him as deeply in return. REMAKE told us they were thirsty for each other, but REBIRTH tells us what kind of couple they're about to become - domestic talks, intimate talks, supporting each other when their PTSD hits, being very aware of each other's need. This is what Aerith is envious of, because she wants it. The church scene boldly asks "but does she want it with Cloud?" in a very meta way. The lovers beyond death theme may exist, but not with CA. That is Zerith coded, and the game took its sweet time to tell us about it, to give us the biggest cue towards the end.

Once again, Aerith chose to pray for the Planet. And I'm betting that once again in part 3 we'll see Tifa chosing Cloud and staying in Mideel with him. This is the authors' intent, to show Aerith's death as a loss, someone who loved life and was unfairly murdered, cut off from this life she loved. And Cloud and Tifa fill the theme of life, they're both survivors, both in love with each other - another "life" theme, starting a life together after the game. Because life is also about accepting death - a theme AC/C does come back on so that Cloud can finally put that guilt away.

Beautifully said. I agree with every word.

 

[Eerie]

I forgot to add, but a lot of people treat these characters as if they were real people and made their own decisions; they're not. They've been created to fulfill a role in a story, and what it is depends only of the devs. We can like or dislike what we see onscreen, but everything we see has a raison d'être.

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

For the record, Aerith isn't even the Last Girl in this troperific equation. That'd be Yuffie

 

[Jane Fane]

But the story became too popular, too many seasons were forced through, Robin and Ted were too deeply explored and shown to just be friends, her relationship with barney was too set-up and likable, the identity of the mother became too much of an investment and when she was introduced the chemistry was too good.

Agree, the story and characters had clearly outgrown a Ted and Robin endgame. But I was actually using HIMYM as an example of when many, many people wanted the moving on theme and didn't get it -- a true rug pull, in contrast to FFVII. So it's more like, here's how you set up first love well (FFVII) and here's how you set it up horribly (HIMYM).

Links to the tropes I'm referring to btw, just so people aren't like wtf is she talking about:
First Girl Wins
Last Girl Wins

 

[liuliuliu]

I forgot to add, but a lot of people treat these characters as if they were real people and made their own decisions; they're not. They've been created to fulfill a role in a story, and what it is depends only of the devs. We can like or dislike what we see onscreen, but everything we see has a raison d'être.

lol I agree so much. People keep saying they allowed to move on but that will not be the story for FF7…you sure can have another beautifully wrote story with characters named Cloud Tifa Aerith and Zack to all move on from their past and dead love, but that would be FF7 AU not the FF7 we know.

Aslo I feel the same every time when I see the claim that Aerith is sexual harassment Cloud and her act is creepy if gender reversed. Surely that is true in real life, but this is a fantasy game with so much content that they struggled to put in 3 discs. They can’t have Aerith and Cloud took 3 months to warm up and finally can speak with each other without apologizing first…the game will go nowhere if they do that.

 

[liuliuliu]

Agree, the story and characters had clearly outgrown a Ted and Robin endgame. But I was actually using HIMYM as an example of when many, many people wanted the moving on theme and didn't get it -- a true rug pull, in contrast to FFVII. So it's more like, here's how you set up first love well (FFVII) and here's how you set it up horribly (HIMYM).

Links to the tropes I'm referring to btw, just so people aren't like wtf is she talking about:
First Girl Wins
Last Girl Wins

hYMYM ending ruined the show for me.

 

[Eerie]

Aslo I feel the same every time when I see the claim that Aerith is sexual harassment Cloud and her act is creepy if gender reversed. Surely that is true in real life, but this is a fantasy game with so much content that they struggled to put in 3 discs. They can’t have Aerith and Cloud took 3 months to warm up and finally can speak with each other without apologizing first…the game will go nowhere if they do that.

As I said you cannot help people's life experience. I saw someone with PTSD saying how uncomfortable they were when Aerith is all touchy like that with Cloud because his face makes it clear he doesn't want to. And they relate Cloud's PTSD to their own, understand the character through that lense. I'm not going to tell them they're wrong, it's a valid take.

 

[Ryushikaze]

lol I agree so much. People keep saying they allowed to move on but that will not be the story for FF7…you sure can have another beautifully wrote story with characters named Cloud Tifa Aerith and Zack to all move on from their past and dead love, but that would be FF7 AU not the FF7 we know.

We do have a story where a man named Cloud moves on from his past. It's called Advent Children. The problem for shippers is that "they past" is Zack and Aerith and the love isn't romantic.
Also, Aerith textually, explicitly, has not moved on from her first love. She wants to. But she just can't. She's stuck.

Aslo I feel the same every time when I see the claim that Aerith is sexual harassment Cloud and her act is creepy if gender reversed. Surely that is true in real life, but this is a fantasy game with so much content that they struggled to put in 3 discs. They can’t have Aerith and Cloud took 3 months to warm up and finally can speak with each other without apologizing first…the game will go nowhere if they do that.

Even if not sex flipped, her behavior would be way too strong if this was real life.

hYMYM ending ruined the show for me.

Not to pick on you, but this typo amuses me. "So kids, here's the story of how you met your mother. It was 11:30 on a thursday. Your mother had just gone into labor..."

 

[Ryeleigh]

I forgot to add, but a lot of people treat these characters as if they were real people and made their own decisions; they're not. They've been created to fulfill a role in a story, and what it is depends only of the devs. We can like or dislike what we see onscreen, but everything we see has a raison d'être.

This is honestly what I find the most frustrating in these ship war discussions, lol.

 

[Empyrea]

lol I agree so much. People keep saying they allowed to move on but that will not be the story for FF7…you sure can have another beautifully wrote story with characters named Cloud Tifa Aerith and Zack to all move on from their past and dead love, but that would be FF7 AU not the FF7 we know.

Aslo I feel the same every time when I see the claim that Aerith is sexual harassment Cloud and her act is creepy if gender reversed. Surely that is true in real life, but this is a fantasy game with so much content that they struggled to put in 3 discs. They can’t have Aerith and Cloud took 3 months to warm up and finally can speak with each other without apologizing first…the game will go nowhere if they do that.

I'll pitch in that while both the moving on part and Aerith being stuck are true in real life, they're not necessarily equal. While it's realistic to move on from a lover when they're gone, the same is true the other way around. I've known people who, while living a perfectly normal life years after the fact, never really sought a romantic partner again: one of them being my relative. So, yeah, there's basis for Aerith being stuck in real life, too.

Contrast that with Aerith's behavior in Sector 5 when she and Cloud first met in Remake. There is no case in real life where that would ever be okay, imo. And personally, if the girls were swapped, I'd levy Tifa the same judgement. I hate when media tries to make that kind of thing romantic and cute -- the same goes for FF7. The difference is, I think there was an interview where the devs said they're aware Aerith's behavior can come across badly? I have no sources for this, sorry >.< I just heard of it at some point. Either way, the solution there was simply...find a way to do it without doing it the way they did, I think.

 

[GamerSkull]

I'll pitch in that while both the moving on part and Aerith being stuck are true in real life, they're not necessarily equal. While it's realistic to move on from a lover when they're gone, the same is true the other way around. I've known people who, while living a perfectly normal life years after the fact, never really sought a romantic partner again: one of them being my relative. So, yeah, there's basis for Aerith being stuck in real life, too.

Contrast that with Aerith's behavior in Sector 5 when she and Cloud first met in Remake. There is no case in real life where that would ever be okay, imo. And personally, if the girls were swapped, I'd levy Tifa the same judgement. I hate when media tries to make that kind of thing romantic and cute -- the same goes for FF7. The difference is, I think there was an interview where the devs said they're aware Aerith's behavior can come across badly? I have no sources for this, sorry >.< I just heard of it at some point. Either way, the solution there was simply...find a way to do it without doing it the way they did, I think.

I think Remake tried to mitigate this. I feel like they gave Jessie some of OG Aerith’s more forward tendencies.

 

[AncientGrimoire]

I don't want to dogpile on you, I just think it's a damn good question so I want to add my perspective since I haven't seen it.

Because what I want to talk about is the author's intent - and Nojima has plenty, as Nomura himself stated recently.

The thing is, if CA was meant to be, I think there would be no need for a Tifa. When they decided to kill Aerith, they created Tifa so she'd stay by the hero's side until the end - that was told in an older interview; however, this being a Final Fantasy game, if the devs had wanted to portray a love beyond death with CA, they wouldn't need a Tifa. They could come up with every excuse out there so that Aerith would fill both the roles of the internal and external plot, this wouldn't be a first. They'd have made something very bittersweet, with them reuniting in the Lifestream after her death, at the end, him sensing her etc.

But they chose not to. Because that was not the story they wanted to tell. What they wanted to tell was a story of death, how you'd feel when that character died, and how to accept death, so you can live.

So they created Tifa and woven her story with Cloud's, so much that many thought she didn't even have a story. But she did, for the most part she had the same memories, the same past, the same trauma. And thus was born a character with the role of helping Cloud, and discovering his love for her in the Lifestream scene. This is why I say that the story does not work if Cloud falls in love with Aerith; because it's not her role. In the OG we can clearly see that Aerith chose the Planet over Cloud when the time to chose had come; when Tifa had to make the same decision, she chose Cloud. And it makes sense because these are the decisions that, as heroines of the external and internal plot, they're always going to make. Aerith cannot have what Tifa has, and Tifa cannot have what Aerith has.

And Tifa not only has the key to repair Cloud's psyche, but she also has his love, and loves him as deeply in return. REMAKE told us they were thirsty for each other, but REBIRTH tells us what kind of couple they're about to become - domestic talks, intimate talks, supporting each other when their PTSD hits, being very aware of each other's need. This is what Aerith is envious of, because she wants it. The church scene boldly asks "but does she want it with Cloud?" in a very meta way. The lovers beyond death theme may exist, but not with CA. That is Zerith coded, and the game took its sweet time to tell us about it, to give us the biggest cue towards the end.

Once again, Aerith chose to pray for the Planet. And I'm betting that once again in part 3 we'll see Tifa chosing Cloud and staying in Mideel with him. This is the authors' intent, to show Aerith's death as a loss, someone who loved life and was unfairly murdered, cut off from this life she loved. And Cloud and Tifa fill the theme of life, they're both survivors, both in love with each other - another "life" theme, starting a life together after the game. Because life is also about accepting death - a theme AC/C does come back on so that Cloud can finally put that guilt away.

This post beautifully, beautifully illustrates the qualities both Aerith and Tifa have as heroines of the Final Fantasy VII story. It actually made me come to appreciate and love these characters more.

Excellently written.

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

I liken broken Cloud to a stray cat, especially in the high five buildup. Being too grabby and forward makes his back go up, his ears lie flat. If this were literal we'd see Aerith covered in bandaids at some point after he started yowling and explained his position with claws It's when she starts waiting (not necessarily on purpose) for him to reach out that they actually get their high five right.

Tifa is waiting for Cloud to reach out while making it clear she wants him to do so. Aerith is the kid who just yells "Kitty!" and tries to grab.

 

[Empyrea]

I think Remake tried to mitigate this. I feel like they gave Jessie some of OG Aerith’s more forward tendencies.

I noticed that, yeah. It wasn't as bad on Aerith's part, imo. But I'm coming from the side of "I can see why that argument is around" and I think it's unfair to just dismiss it ^^;

That said, even in Rebirth, Aerith doesn't do anything that goes to that level. So that just becomes a weird one-off thing. I'd like it if they addressed that, but as it stands, I'm perfectly fine with the fact that it just never happened again.

 

[Maidenofwar]

Sorry for quiet all, I appreciate everyone for real, thanks for all the replies, I just spent over six hours trying to beat the end of FFVII Rebirth, I am sick, hungry and tired, all I want now is some Netflix and chill I need to go back and like some posts I haven't yet. Aaww I'm okay, if that was a dog pile I feel adorably puppy piled

 

[Eerie]

Tifa is waiting for Cloud to reach out while making it clear she wants him to do so. Aerith is the kid who just yells "Kitty!" and tries to grab.

It's also depicted through the quests, as I have said: Tifa's quests being hidden behind others' quests feel very much like Cloud wanting to do the extra effort to close that gap between them, while Aerith's quests being easily available represent her wanting to close that gap. Her being all over Cloud, I think, is also a representation of that - which is ironic since I noted CT don't touch that much in this game, but when they do it's always great.

 

[Stiggie]

It's also depicted through the quests, as I have said: Tifa's quests being hidden behind others' quests feel very much like Cloud wanting to do the extra effort to close that gap between them, while Aerith's quests being easily available represent her wanting to close that gap. Her being all over Cloud, I think, is also a representation of that - which is ironic since I noted CT don't touch that much in this game, but when they do it's always great.

While I like that notion that feels like reaching to me. Not that it feels that way per se, that's personal ofcourse, but I doubt the developers did it with that intention in mind.
I'm quite annoyed myself about them locking certain quests behind other characters.