???????? They are family, they're the adoptive parents of Denzel, and Tifa is Cloud's taisetsu no josei, I don't really know how else I'm supposed to describe a couple that's not married???????
Because all of those things can still be true
without them actually being married, which is exactly the hope that some Cloud and Aerith shippers still hold on to.
The commitment of marriage, or even of just being boyfriend and girlfriend, is an intentional expression of devotion to one another that completely removes the possibility of Cloud still having feelings for Aerith
unless if the devs go “yeah, they’re married but he still likes Aerith”, which I’d highly doubt they’d do if they were willing to marry Cloud and Tifa in the first place. In that position, the burden of proof would fall on Cloud and Aerith fans to prove Cloud still likes Aerith, and that would be a lot harder to prove if Cloud explicitly devoted himself to Tifa.
Tifa’s statement about not being a real family probably makes more sense if they’re not married but regardless I’m not suggesting Cloud and Tifa aren’t the endgame pairing or that they don’t
resemble a married couple, but it takes no effort at all to just call Tifa Cloud’s wife
if that’s what they wanted.
Again, the point here is not one of romantic feelings, it’s specifically of
status. It’s not
do they like each other, it’s
is Tifa:
A. Cloud’s friend
B. Cloud’s friend that he’s in love with
C. Cloud’s girlfriend / fiancé / wife
In other words, it’s not
are they similar to a married couple, it’s
are they married full stop. And they don’t even need to show Cloud and Tifa confirming this, the devs could just say they are and move on lol.
Funny thing is...none of the other FF couples had to be held to such a high standard to declare their relationship status in game, like it was some mandatory check box in a Canon form.
Like, literally zero FF couples have had to say "We're boyfriend and girlfriend". "This person is the mother role to my father role"
"I have impregnated this woman, because of strong feelings on my end...hence we are to be husband and wife"
What you DO have, is "I love you" / "I have developed feelings for you" / "First guy I ever loved" etc. And EVEN so, if we're going to take Maiden as canon and ToTP as canon, then both Aerith and Tifa have said it.
Everyone just wants Cloud to say something to the tune of "I love you" before this whole LTD will "end". And even if it "ends" that way, some shippers will still go down unwillingly and in tears.
From JP perspective, people who are shy enough would just use "taisetsu na hito" to describe their lover when being asked and context would play. Again, JP isnt blatant like EN culture. Heck, most guys there even hardly say "I love you" to their romantic partner because to them, it lays deeper meaning and not something EN native casually say to everyone anytime. This is a different case to some people with personalities like Zack, for example, who would declare Aerith as his girlfriend to his friends and parents, no shy as fuck. But you cant ask people like Cloud who is very private and secretive to his own feeling does the same. "Because I have you" is the most romantic line ever coming from Cloud Strife's mouth while Zack could blatantly say "Daisuki da/I love you" easily.
Not only guys, the girl is also the same. This is why Yuna in JP actually said "Thank you" instead of "I love you" in EN localization (yeah, they kissed but still, that word isn't easy to be said). And many stories in JP having the girl say "I want to be with you/I want to spend time with you" (issho ni ittai desu) equally as "I love you". This is also what Aerith said to Zack with her note. And Zack understands that meaning, that's why he wants to return to Midgar, because their feeling is mutual.
And due to Asian collective culture, not individuality, a connotation of a man and woman forming a family is romantic. I watch a Korean Drama that is romantic as fuck but the guy there confesses his feeling with the line "I'd like to build a family with you" when they had dinner before comes to "would you marry me?" with a wedding ring in the ending. The same culture applies in my country, Indonesia.
It’s not just what the characters do in-universe though, I’m saying the devs could put this entire thing in the coffin if they just said “girlfriend” or “wife”
More than any narrative ambiguity, I think the core of this LTD is the inconclusiveness of Aerith's character arc in the OG for what concerns her human side. It makes sense since one of the points of her development is to realise the importance of her Cetra heritage, but still the story stresses her romantic dreams only to cut them short and never address them anymore once she dies.
As far as I've seen many people just can't believe that these romantic expectations ended in nothing. It doesn't matter if Cloud objectively shows almost no interest into it, Aerith's feelings are a loose end that many people resolved with Cloud being permanently in love with her, even if there's actually no objective proof, a CA outcome requires the characters to be turned into jerks to work, Aerith never met real Cloud and there's not a piece of evidence that she would have pursued this romance after realizing the truth about his fake persona.
Had the OG showed Zack trying to go back to Aerith before being killed, probably it would have spared fans from a lot of debates but his ending lines weren't exactly "that" romantic...
Ironically this is exactly how CC fixed the situation, I guess too late since so many people try to diminish its importance and canonicity to the point of absurdity.
It seems to me that CA stans hate Zack more than Sephiroth, since her first love is more of a threat for their ship than her killer. Kind of a disturbing mindset, if I may say so.
But see, a statement explicitly confirming Cloud doesn’t have any feelings for Aerith anymore brings the kind of finality that forces people to either accept the story or spend the rest of their days being salty about it because the hope they thought they had has been taken from them (like Naruto and Sakura shippers lol)
