I dislike when people chalk up that kind of behavior as repressed romantic feelings rather than genuinely being mad at someone, even if they do end up being friendlier and in some cases, dating at a later point. It makes me feel like the non-romantic feelings are being devalued or treated as masking underlying romantic feelings that may or may not actually be present.
Excuse urself, if you would like to argue with my post you may address me specifically, and allow me to defend myself.
You are painting me directly into a stereotype that I do not want to be a part of.
I actually have a pretty long-standing distaste for shipping and fanfiction and the like, because I think it's a pretty bad attitude to have about people, real or fictional, to act like you understand them. I think it's very important sometimes to just take a backseat and let people tell you about themselves. (Something you have failed to do here and I'm definitely not bitter about it.)
I remember being frustrated with fanfiction as a younger person because I didn't like the fact that all these massively different, fascinating, complex kinds of relationships I was seeing in fiction were being steamrolled into this one very commonly depicted and imo kinda boring and overdone type of relationship. It annoyed me that people were reducing a complex thing into a simple, boring thing, not seeing it how I did, not appreciating it for what it was, but trying to make it something it likely was not. It bothered me that that was more satisfying to them than just
listening.
I understand that me making the assumption that maybe just maybe Barret's super in love with Cloud, might not look that different from shipping to someone who doesn't exist in my brain, but you're going to have to trust me on this.
The thing is, the way Barret acts, is something that feels very identifiable and relatable to me. I'm not saying that Barret has never been geniunely mad at Cloud. But sometimes anger is the result of caring a whole hell of a lot. (And we have plenty of evidence that Barret feels quite strongly about things.) It's a lot easier to get mad at a poor addition to a franchise you like than a poor movie you didn't expect to like, u feel me? We're more critical of things we have high expectations for. I have never ever gotten the impression that Barret genuinely hated Cloud, he's just frustrated with him for bein a lil shit all the time, when he knows on some level that he's not a bad guy. It's like Barret's Cloud's mad dad, who just wants what he thinks is best for this lil' idiot. In the romantic court, there's even an element of, the fact that he might have feelings for this cocky brat is probably something he would work quite hard to repress and deny. Maybe because he's struggling with his sexuality, maybe because he's frustrated with himself for his terrible taste, LOL.
Maybe the tsundere attitude doesn't translate as easily to someone who hasn't felt similar ways about people in their own life, but to me it's quite easily identifiable. It doesn't have to be romantic, but it's for sure present here.
Anyway, it's not uncommon for video games (and other story telling media) to resort to gay subtext to avoid controversy. So it can get difficult to tell, is this a depiction of two characters actually into each other sexually and/or romantically? Is it two characters that have a complex relationship that defies lables? Or are we just avoiding particular labels so homophobes don't get mad? Does Barret like Cloud but he know Cloud wouldn't feel the same way, so he's struggling with it? There's like, there's a million things that could be happening here and without Barret outright admitting to anything, we can't know for sure.
When I was younger, I was much more quick to deny outright claims of shippers, but at the age I'm at now, I like to remain open about things. If they decided this time around to outright state that Barret is a lil in love with Cloud, it wouldn't really surprise me. He acts all tough, but he's actually a big squishy teddy bear that acts like he don't like being stuffed in a marshmallow, but secretly he loves it.
Okay, my point is, if you think the complexity of Cloud and Barret's interactions is lost on me, you're super wrong.
But it's hard to ignore that they go on date together.
(TBH I think it's kinda exceedingly heteronormative to assume that the three women cloud goes on a date with were romantically interested him, but the one dude he goes on a date with, they were just hanging out.)
