How do you think Tifa and Barret met?

[Odysseus]

Yo, I'm conceptualizing a little FF7 prequel thing I've wanted to make for a while now, and this question is pretty relevant to it. How Tifa met Barret is one of the bits of FF7 lore that has been strangely glossed over up to now. Do you think it was after he formed AVALANCHE? Before? Seventh heaven was seemingly always the base of operation, but going by crisis core some random guy is the the who actually built it, so Tifa may not have always been the owner. Should I just wait and see if the remake addresses this at all? Probably.

 

[jazzflower92]

Yeah, they never really told us how these two met. Probably met by chance when she moved to Midgar to find work and ran into him.

 

[Odysseus]

My personal thought is that she found one of his flyers and decided to join due to her grudge with Shinra. Barret and pals could have taken up shop in the abandoned 7th heaven, but after Tifa joins it becomes a proper establishment. I'm interested in getting a consensus though.

 

[Ite]

Yeah my headcanon (and subsequent flashback in the ol’ novel) has them going to 7th Heaven to recruit, with Tifa the only taker — waiting for after hours to approach them, as to not risk putting a target on her back. The reasons are the same, driven by hate and despair, feeling alone and helpless, she joins because having nothing to lose is a great place for a revolutionary to start.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Why would 7th Heaven have been abandoned? When Zack named it in Crisis Core, the guy who intended to build it was still in the planning stages, so it seems unlikely he would have built it and then abandoned it so quickly. For me another big question is "what happened to him?" I mean you can do a hand wave and say "he just decided to leave Midgar and gave the bar to Tifa", but here's my headcanon:

Zangan took her to Midgar and left her with Johnny's family. Tifa recovered and needed a job. She has all the qualifications for a good barmaid (huge hooters and a powerful right hook) so the local bar owner hires her. Tifa feels she's really come down in the world - from mayor's daughter to slum bar wench - but she has to eat, right? She can't sponge off Johnny's parents forever. And it's exhausting having to lie to them all the time. Anyway, the bar owner - let's call him Jim - realises she can cook up a storm and promotes her. She's starting to feel a bit better about herself.

Jim is the one who introduces Tifa to Barret. Barret's already living at 7th Heaven with Marlene; he does all the heavy lifting in the bar and odd jobs round the neighbourhood. He seems like a helpful guy and a doting father, with some anger management issues. The bar has a bunch of regulars including Biggs and Wedge and some other OCs. (A bar is the perfect HQ for a terrorist cell: nobody needs to justify their frequent visits to a bar, and every bar has its regulars who are usually a pretty rag-tag bunch anyway; think of "Cheers".) Gradually the knowledge grows on Tifa that they're an anti-Shinra group. The prospect of getting revenge is incredibly revitalising for her. She wants in. And Jim and Barret knows she'd be an asset.

Anyway, Jim gets killed, maybe when an Avalanche mission backfires, maybe in a reactor accident, maybe he's an innocent bystander who gets caught in the crossfire from a Turks shootout, maybe by Don Corneo's extortionists; that's yet to be decided. Tifa and Barret (and their Avalanche cell) have nowhere else to go, so they carry on living at 7th Heaven and running the shop, waiting for an heir to show up and claim the inheritance, but nobody ever does show up, and after a while everybody in the neighbourhood starts thinking of it as Tifa's bar. There's a rumour going round that Jim left the bar to her in his will, that he and Tifa were lovers, but he didn't and they weren't.

Hey, maybe his name is Jim Texas. Or maybe his first name is Texas. Texas McGilray.

That's my headcanon.

 

[Odysseus]

I forgot there were multiple people on this site making novelizations of the game. My only issue with that approach is the none of the slum dwellers seem to be aware that Barret runs Avalanche after the attack.

 

[Odysseus]

Whoops you sent that right before I did @LicoriceAllsorts. The way I imagine the story I want to tell works better if the building starts abandoned, but I guess that might not actually make sense. I like the idea that Barret's just this weirdo who lives alone in this big abandoned building, and all the other slum people are kinda scared of him, except for the local ruffians (Johnny and friends) who like to mess with him. Once Tifa comes and the bar opens, everyone starts to warm up to him.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

They know something a bit funny is going in there, though.
Back in WWII, you could be in the Resistance and your closest friends or even your own family members wouldn't know. For their Avalanche cell to have survived as long as it has, they need to be good at keeping a secret. The rest of the neighbourhood just think Biggs, Wedge et al are hardcore regulars. Maybe they think Barret runs an invitation-only poker night? His reputation for irrationally flying off the handle probably serves him well.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Who do you think is the local muscle in Sector 7? Maybe it's Shinra. There's those two guards who are stationed near the pillar, but I think their job is to protect company assets, not local people. If Shinra isn't enforcing some kind of rule of law down there, then somebody else - e.g. a Don Corneo figure - will emerge to do it. It's hard to imagine them tolerating a wierd incomer with a gun arm.

I also like to think that Shinra child 'protection' services have tried several times to get Marlene off Barret.

 

[youffie]

Lic, that's great! I really like the idea about Tifa being left with Johnny's family, it's a nice little detail.

I always thought of something like that. Maybe Tifa wakes up in a hospital completely alone, maybe with some money left from Zangan and no clue about what the hell happened to her. I can see her having a real rough time in Midgar at the beginning, but she's very pragmatical and she knows that she has to find a job – plus, keeping busy can keep her mind off very bad thoughts that she's far from ready to address. So she gets the job at Seventh Heaven because she's, ur, well equipped for it. The only explanation I can think of for her apparently owning the bar is that the former owner died and passed it to her because he had no one else.

Of course, not addressing her problems and negative feelings only makes them worse and her rage towards Shinra grows even more in Midgar, where she can see how bad it is in her everyday life. I don't think she would immediately jump at the idea of becoming a terrorist, but she gets to know Barret at the bar where he holds his meetings, sometimes she keeps Marlene for him, and instead of kicking him out when she realizes what he's really doing, she slowly comes around the idea that that might be the answer to her problems. She lets him use the basement, and until she meets Cloud again, that's the extent of her involvement with AVALANCHE.

 

[jazzflower92]

Why would 7th Heaven have been abandoned? When Zack named it in Crisis Core, the guy who intended to build it was still in the planning stages, so it seems unlikely he would have built it and then abandoned it so quickly. For me another big question is "what happened to him?" I mean you can do a hand wave and say "he just decided to leave Midgar and gave the bar to Tifa", but here's my headcanon:

Zangan took her to Midgar and left her with Johnny's family. Tifa recovered and needed a job. She has all the qualifications for a good barmaid (huge hooters and a powerful right hook) so the local bar owner hires her. Tifa feels she's really come down in the world - from mayor's daughter to slum bar wench - but she has to eat, right? She can't sponge off Johnny's parents forever. And it's exhausting having to lie to them all the time. Anyway, the bar owner - let's call him Jim - realises she can cook up a storm and promotes her. She's starting to feel a bit better about herself.

Jim is the one who introduces Tifa to Barret. Barret's already living at 7th Heaven with Marlene; he does all the heavy lifting in the bar and odd jobs round the neighbourhood. He seems like a helpful guy and a doting father, with some anger management issues. The bar has a bunch of regulars including Biggs and Wedge and some other OCs. (A bar is the perfect HQ for a terrorist cell: nobody needs to justify their frequent visits to a bar, and every bar has its regulars who are usually a pretty rag-tag bunch anyway; think of "Cheers".) Gradually the knowledge grows on Tifa that they're an anti-Shinra group. The prospect of getting revenge is incredibly revitalising for her. She wants in. And Jim and Barret knows she'd be an asset.

Anyway, Jim gets killed, maybe when an Avalanche mission backfires, maybe in a reactor accident, maybe he's an innocent bystander who gets caught in the crossfire from a Turks shootout, maybe by Don Corneo's extortionists; that's yet to be decided. Tifa and Barret (and their Avalanche cell) have nowhere else to go, so they carry on living at 7th Heaven and running the shop, waiting for an heir to show up and claim the inheritance, but nobody ever does show up, and after a while everybody in the neighbourhood starts thinking of it as Tifa's bar. There's a rumour going round that Jim left the bar to her in his will, that he and Tifa were lovers, but he didn't and they weren't.

Hey, maybe his name is Jim Texas. Or maybe his first name is Texas. Texas McGilray.

That's my headcanon.

Okay, I really can get on this headcanon.

 

[Odysseus]

Okay I think I'm in love with "Jim Texas." I definitely might use him to explain away how "Texas" can be known on a fictional planet. What a hero that guy.

The reason I mentioned the slum not knowing Barret led Avalanche is because Mr. Ite had Barret meet Tifa by trying to recruit for Avalanche in 7th Heaven. If he did that, everyone would know it was in, little miss gossip girl would tell everyone (you know, that one NPC.)

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Oh her, yes, the neighbourhood snitch. Oh, you'll have fun giving them all names.

Just so you know, now that I've written out this headcanon, I might write it as a fic. All my fics have a tendency to balloon to the size of War and Peace, so it'll take me at least a year. I might wait until the Remake comes out just in case we're given any new canon.

 

[Odysseus]

Please, I beg you, regale us with the exploits of Jim Texas.

My thing is going to be a comic, not writing, and I tend to draw at a glacial pace. So the remake will probably be out before I get very far. I never really wrote out a draft or anything, I just start drawing and go. So what happens will be pretty malleable.

Since my brain is now committed to "7th heaven was abandoned," I think Tifa will actually start on the upper plate working at Goblin's bar. Zangan will have left her with another student of his. She'll seek out Avalanche after hearing murmurs about it from Shinra troops who frequent the bar. Texas Jim will have died never fulfilling his dream of having a hot babe running his establishment.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Jim Texas is a man who has led many lives.

 

[youffie]

I might be very wrong, but if I were in charge of the Remake (lol), I would wait until the last part to really delve into whatever happened to Tifa after Nibelheim. How she survived and how she ended up in Midgar is part of the mystery. But yeah, I'm probably wrong, since they've expanded it so much it's likely they will try to exploit this blank spot in the OG in Part 1.

Oh her, yes, the neighbourhood snitch. Oh, you'll have fun giving them all names.

Just so you know, now that I've written out this headcanon, I might write it as a fic. All my fics have a tendency to balloon to the size of War and Peace, so it'll take me at least a year. I might wait until the Remake comes out just in case we're given any new canon.

I haven't read fanfiction in a really long time, but I think I would read that fic.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I really wasn't aware that I had such a complete plot lurking in my head. OK, new project.

 

[Odysseus]

If nothing else comes from this thread, we at least got Jim fucking Texas.

 

[Erotic Materia]

If nothing else comes from this thread, we at least got Jim fucking Texas.

This whole thread just has me like

 

[Clement Rage]

Hmm...they both have massive grudges against the Shinra, it's not too hard to see them hitting it off. I don't see Zangan just dumping her randomly without some help. Maybe the bar owner was Zangan's student?

Headcanon: Tifa is the local gang boss, keeping Corneos crew off her land, with Barret's cover as her chief enforcer/bouncer. That's part of why it's such a big deal that T is going to Corneo. I don't like the idea that Shinra has much presence or knowledge of sector 7, it makes AVALANCHE seem ineffective.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Does it make Avalanche seem ineffective? They're not there to fight a turf war with Shinra. If Shinra had a significant presence in Sector 7, wouldn't that make Avalanche look more effective as a guerilla terrorist cell? It shows they're good at operating unseen and good at covering their tracks.

 

[Clement Rage]

Fair point, but it depends how it's played. Just some locals drinking at the end of their days work is one thing, but any kind of specific interest or people coming down from the plate to go to this specific bar doesn't work for me.

Odysseus can I suggest making up your own bar, if Tifa starts out working somewhere else? It's a hell of a long way down into the slums from Goblins.

 

[Odysseus]

Well I was just going to use Goblin's for the sake of the reference (and the fact that tifa sure as heck didn't get quality medical care in the slums.) She wouldn't actually go straight to 7th Heaven anyway, AVALANCHE wouldn't advertise where they work. My idea is that she stakes out the area to find who's putting up the flyers (which we know are placed right by the Goblins bar thanks to that NPC at the beginning of the game) and she would tail them and see about getting into the group.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I'd be really surprised if the bar staff at the Goblins didn't live in the slums. Commuter trains are running up and down to the slums all the time. Tifa's real problem will be getting her hands on an ID card, without which she can't ride the train. You can either make that a big plot point, or Zangan can arrange one for her before the fic starts, so to speak.

 

[Odysseus]

My current unwritten plan is to have an entire chapter dedicated to explaining Tifa's life situation post Nibelhiem. I imagine it being this melancholic story where she's just drudging day to day with not drive or motivation. Her life was ripped away from her in one night and she was left alone in an incredibly unfamiliar place with nobody to rely on. Joining Avalanche gives her something to try for. I should really stop talking all this big shit when this thing only exists as a half finished pencil sketch of Midgar though.