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

[Rin]

And I was saying how if the devs are supposedly not wanting CA's to see it that way it feels like a set up bc of course those that favor Aerith and Cloud would. Especially with romantic framing.

I agree w/ what you're saying here but also wanted to say that ultimately, I think CA or CT just standing next to each other would cause fans who favour them to see something no matter what--which is fine by me because that's what shippers are gonna do.

For example, I've seen CA fans say that the scene in ACC where Cloud calls Aerith his mother is a romantic moment even though Zack is right there and him and Aerith are making light of it by saying Cloud is too big to adopt lol. Like for the most part a lot of extremist shippers don't care about context so long as their ship is interacting in some way.

I think it's a feeling of being validated.

Yeah, definitely. But... sometimes you can't always get what you want, so it's better to just accept reality and then go out and make your own content if that's what brings you joy. You can't strong arm a whole game company into doing what you want. Hasn't worked in their favour even one time.

 

[shady]

No see, Cloud called the drink beautiful /s.

And yeah they did use the shot of the fist bump pre-release iirc as some "proof" of them friendzoning each other.

It was "sibling coded" apparently.

 

[LunarTarotGirl]

I agree w/ what you're saying here but also wanted to say that ultimately, I think CA or CT just standing next to each other would cause fans who favour them to see something no matter what--which is fine by me because that's what shippers are gonna do.

For example, I've seen CA fans say that the scene in ACC where Cloud calls Aerith his mother is a romantic moment even though Zack is right there and him and Aerith are making light of it by saying Cloud is too big to adopt lol. Like for the most part a lot of extremist shippers don't care about context so long as their ship is interacting in some way.

Yeah, definitely. But... sometimes you can't always get what you want, so it's better to just accept reality and then go out and make your own content if that's what brings you joy. You can't strong arm a whole game company into doing what you want. Hasn't worked in their favour even one time.

I 100% agree but what I mean here is the way the scenes are shown. Like Aerith and Cloud get called a couple for example. And in JP he is talking about how he is bad at dates then she teases him being nervous. The stumble and almost kiss. This is 100% fuel.

Stuff like that goes beyond "shippers gonna ship". Though I agree just standing in the same frame would do it too...in this case it seems to me to be intentionally designed to get that response.

And idk how I feel about that bc and I wonder why bc in the end it seems they want to show CT and ZA endgame while still allowing CA's to see what we want.

And I agree and that's why even though I usually ship non canon you will never catch me arguing against canon materials. I just accept whatever I am given. I wish more people would.

 

[LNK]

Yeah, definitely. But... sometimes you can't always get what you want, so it's better to just accept reality and then go out and make your own content if that's what brings you joy. You can't strong arm a whole game company into doing what you want. Hasn't worked in their favour even one time.

Oh I agree. There's always those that don't care about anyone but themselves though. As long as they're pleased, nothing else matters

 

[GamerSkull]

View attachment 14982

It was "sibling coded" apparently.

There’s almost a hilarious irony to that tweet.

 

[Rin]

I 100% agree but what I mean here is the way the scenes are shown. Like Aerith and Cloud get called a couple for example. And in JP he is talking about how he is bad at dates then she teases him being nervous.

Stuff like that goes beyond "shippers gonna ship". Though I agree just standing in the same frame would do it too...in this case it seems to me to be intentionally designed to get that response.

Honestly, the NPCs do this for him and Yuffie too at certain points of the game (and Aerith herself romanticizes them hanging out lol) so comments like that have started becoming meaningless to me. I think it's really just heteronormativity at play lol which... yes, shippers are going to read into but I also think this is a game where you need to play every route to understand that certain things just aren't that important--including NPCs misreading party dynamics.

It's like the NPCs who think Nanaki is Clouds dog. Should we actually take that seriously? Probably not since Nanaki is a fully sentient animal but it's not like the NPCs know that.

Oh I agree. There's always those that don't care about anyone but themselves though. As long as they're pleased, nothing else matters

So exhausting lol I don't know how they live like that.

 

[Stiggie]

There’s almost a hilarious irony to that tweet.

The annoying part is that we'll never get that person admit that they were wrong, not about clerith, but about that specific tweet, I'd like just one acknowledgement, just once

 

[LunarTarotGirl]

@Rin Yeah I agree but it's basically not really about what's actually there but how it is perceived. Also Cloud just never denies it. Like with the Aerith date too Madam M calls her his girlfriend and he doesn't deny it.

The truth is they're always going to give the shippers something. So I can definitely see why besides from willfull ignorance some would read into it. I expect them to. And I think to an extent creators also may expect it too. Even if the intent in context is different. And it's not like it's exactly discouraged either.

And that's why it's important to have honest discussions about these things instead of shutting people down, acting like people are crazy or stupid etc and I mean this for any fandom.

 

[insanehobbit]

Yeah, I think there are always going to be people who see any CA scene as romantic because a) it's two hot people sharing a frame; b) there's obvious romantic interest on Aerith's end. So if there are shippers who want to avoid every optional Tifa scene (and skip the non-optional ones if they want, I guess LOL), and give SE their money, that's their prerogative.

For everyone else, I do feel like the game encourages you to do the Aerith & Tifa sidequests in CdS back-to-back. There's no real reason for Tifa's quest to be locked behind the bathing suit thing (it's not a progression thing like with the Chocobo races), and Jules literally crashes the end of Aerith's quest so that the "date" concludes in a pretty strange and anticlimatic way, while also heavily suggesting -- "hey do this one next!"

So on its own, sure I guess I can see how some people might interpret the "date" as Cloud just being nervous/playing hard to get, but if you contrast that with the conversation he has with Tifa on their gym rat "bro hang," it really is night and day. He has no problem continuing and even leading the conversation with Tifa.

There's even a shared subject between the two quests. During Aerith's, he agrees with her that he doesn't care about food...and proceeds to spend the entirety of Tifa's quest talking to Tifa about their food preferences, lol.

I also don't think this version of Tifa would care that Cloud held Aerith's hand on the gondola. In fact, she probably would have been pissed if she found out that he didn't do anything to comfort her, and just sat around like a useless dead fish. Rebirth!Tifa is refreshingly not jealous/possessive at all. She likes to see the "weird loner" boy from her childhood making new friends. Like in her optional dialogue thing at Costa del Sol, she's surprised, but very pleasantly so, that Cloud had a conversation with Barret about a new Seventh Heaven that she didn't know about. Look how far that boy has come since Remake. Growth!

 

[LNK]

So exhausting lol I don't know how they live like that

Right? They don't even care that it makes the characters look like really crappy people, when they don't actually come across that way.

 

[LNK]

And that's why it's important to have honest discussions about these things instead of shutting people down, acting like people are crazy or stupid etc and I mean this for any fandom.

I agree to an extant. Some people are just not worth having the discussion with though. The extreme is an extreme for a reason. Those people aren't there to have honest conversations.

 

[Hellenic]

View attachment 14982

It was "sibling coded" apparently.

Yeah that's the post i was thinking of.

 

[shady]

The fuel for LTD shipping is 100% provided by SE without a doubt. Like it gets to a point where, yes I think CT is the canon romance but I cannot 100% discredit everything that CA's believe either -- unless developers intentionally say so after the fact -- because what they do is give crumbs to both sides to the point where, if both sides argue fairly, they both have points they can make.

Maybe they'll prove me wrong in Part 3 -- because there's been some scenes in this game that you could consider an LTD killer -- but I've often said they just don't have the stones to fully commit to the one side and tell the story they want to tell because they seem to be terrified of alienating one of the sides, the sides that they've fueled for 27 years rather than just say outright what the situation is.

Also because they don't want to fully commit, they want to have their cake and eat it, the characters and the overall story suffer as a result and the fandom becomes toxic, because we're all camping in here chatting about this shit when instead we should be chatting about the great relationships these characters have regardless of romance and about the game itself. Nobody wants this LTD shit anymore, nor have they wanted it for a long ass time, but SE just cannot help themselves it seems.

Like we all have to deal with takes like this



Just as we have to deal with equally bad takes about Aerith or Clerith, like her being a homewrecker or whatever. SE just pull the damn plug man.

 

[Rin]

Like with the Aerith date too Madam M calls her his girlfriend and he doesn't deny it.

Yeah, but she says this for Yuffie as well and he also doesn't deny it. Their dialogue doesn't change no matter which girl Cloud is hanging out with, at least if you're talking about the Rebirth scene in Chocobo Square.

Which is why I'm agreeing w/ you overall but I just think if the fandom has enough sense to realize they shouldn't take NPC Cloud/Yuffie misconceptions all that seriously, it's not that difficult to apply the same logic to CA. The "issue" is that they don't want to and it works as a nice confirmation bias for their preference. Again, I don't care about this particularly because shippers are gonna ship, but I don't consider NPCs misreading the group dynamics as an example of SE playing the fence because there's always going to be a difference in how the devs portray genuine romantic scenes vs. the generic, "haha Cloud is hanging out with a girl" gags, y'know?

Now I do think there ARE crumbs for this ship and that SE is playing the fence in a way (while still leaning to CT), I just don't think those side quests & NPC comments are it.

 

[Someonesbunny]

While I understand the idea of ship fuel being these small moments that people can enjoy on their own, I think it's disingenuous not to take these moments as part of the totality of the story. To be clear, I think it's fair to have been excited by the "stumble-to-breathing-range" moment between Cloud and Aerith on the gondola, but it seems a little dishonest not to see this as contextually tied to him choosing to sit across from her when she motions him next to her in the literal seconds that succeed this moment.

I understand the point that if you are a CA shipper, you would prefer to simply skip all the Tifa content, and I suppose that's fine, but this does somewhat constitute a willful blindness. All materials exist to be compared and contrasted in order to discern precisely the relationships that each of them have with the protagonist. Now, if we're only talking about shipping and preference, again, that's fine - but more often than not, we'd be debating canon, so personal player choice doesn't really come into play. On that, I think that the the only proper way of reviewing any of these materials would be to treat every scene that exists as something that was meant to be viewed and to accept that every scene that has a high/low threshold for each scene version is to be treated as pass/fail.

I don't think there's too much to interpret anyway since so much of this was sort of on the nose.

 

[GamerSkull]

The fuel for LTD shipping is 100% provided by SE without a doubt. Like it gets to a point where, yes I think CT is the canon romance but I cannot 100% discredit everything that CA's believe either -- unless developers intentionally say so after the fact -- because what they do is give crumbs to both sides to the point where, if both sides argue fairly, they both have points they can make.

Maybe they'll prove me wrong in Part 3 -- because there's been some scenes in this game that you could consider an LTD killer -- but I've often said they just don't have the stones to fully commit to the one side and tell the story they want to tell because they seem to be terrified of alienating one of the sides, the sides that they've fueled for 27 years rather than just say outright what the situation is.

Also because they don't want to fully commit, they want to have their cake and eat it, the characters and the overall story suffer as a result and the fandom becomes toxic, because we're all camping in here chatting about this shit when instead we should be chatting about the great relationships these characters have regardless of romance and about the game itself. Nobody wants this LTD shit anymore, nor have they wanted it for a long ass time, but SE just cannot help themselves it seems.

Like we all have to deal with takes like this

View attachment 14983View attachment 14984View attachment 14985View attachment 14986

Just as we have to deal with equally bad takes about Aerith or Clerith, like her being a homewrecker or whatever. SE just pull the damn plug man.

Ooof that post hurts my soul.

This is an example of an extremist post. Specifically the final part about Tifa.

 

[Shadowfox]

This is what makes me laugh the most, all the anti-CT talking points that they've used for years gets flat out debunked by Nojima every time. I have a running list of all the things they've said and all the ways he's addressed them in the last 4 years. It's so funny and it's definitely because he sees the comments and is like "No" because the debunking is so specifically curated to their exact claims.

It probably is like that. Even AC Cloud the sad loner who isolates himself from his friends was specifically depicted as such by SE because of the popular fandom image of him post-OG. The difference being that fans imagined him being alone because he was pining for his dead love Aerith; whereas SE had AC (and ACC especiallyl) show that him being alone was due to lingering guilt and his own impending death, and then showed that without those things weighing him down, he's actually a family man, openly affectionate and caring to his loved ones.

Out of curiosity, what would you guys say constitutes an extremist for either side? Since I don't think the debate is equal (at all) I don't think that an extremist belief on one side would necessarily count as an extremist belief on the other.

An extremist for me would be one who insists on willfully misunderstanding and maligning the story and characters, or deliberately ignores aspects of them to maintain a skewed idea of the work. In terms of this LTD, if someone were to acknowledge the events and story of FFVII, or the characters as they are presented to us by the creators, and still decide that they want to ship another couple because it appeals to them more, then that's not an extremist; that's just a fan like any other.

What's funny about the high five is that now Cloud and Tifa also got it and more. So much for that from Remake.

Even Tifa and Aerith got their share of high fives with each other in Remake. So, yeah, if anyone wants to claim that high fives are romantic, then they must never deny the truth of Aerti.

 

[LNK]

The fuel for LTD shipping is 100% provided by SE without a doubt. Like it gets to a point where, yes I think CT is the canon romance but I cannot 100% discredit everything that CA's believe either -- unless developers intentionally say so after the fact -- because what they do is give crumbs to both sides to the point where, if both sides argue fairly, they both have points they can make.

Maybe they'll prove me wrong in Part 3 -- because there's been some scenes in this game that you could consider an LTD killer -- but I've often said they just don't have the stones to fully commit to the one side and tell the story they want to tell because they seem to be terrified of alienating one of the sides, the sides that they've fueled for 27 years rather than just say outright what the situation is.

Also because they don't want to fully commit, they want to have their cake and eat it, the characters and the overall story suffer as a result and the fandom becomes toxic, because we're all camping in here chatting about this shit when instead we should be chatting about the great relationships these characters have regardless of romance and about the game itself. Nobody wants this LTD shit anymore, nor have they wanted it for a long ass time, but SE just cannot help themselves it seems.

Like we all have to deal with takes like this

View attachment 14983View attachment 14984View attachment 14985View attachment 14986

Just as we have to deal with equally bad takes about Aerith or Clerith, like her being a homewrecker or whatever. SE just pull the damn plug man.

I actually like the way SE has handled the LT. Call me silly for appreciating complex relationships that aren't super straight forward and black/white.

Prior to Aerith's death, there's a chance Cloud had feelings for Aerith. Pretty vague about it though. With Tifa, we know Cloud always had feelings for her. Clerith's are simply clinging to "what if."

 

[AncientGrimoire]

The fuel for LTD shipping is 100% provided by SE without a doubt. Like it gets to a point where, yes I think CT is the canon romance but I cannot 100% discredit everything that CA's believe either -- unless developers intentionally say so after the fact -- because what they do is give crumbs to both sides to the point where, if both sides argue fairly, they both have points they can make.

Maybe they'll prove me wrong in Part 3 -- because there's been some scenes in this game that you could consider an LTD killer -- but I've often said they just don't have the stones to fully commit to the one side and tell the story they want to tell because they seem to be terrified of alienating one of the sides, the sides that they've fueled for 27 years rather than just say outright what the situation is.

Also because they don't want to fully commit, they want to have their cake and eat it, the characters and the overall story suffer as a result and the fandom becomes toxic, because we're all camping in here chatting about this shit when instead we should be chatting about the great relationships these characters have regardless of romance and about the game itself. Nobody wants this LTD shit anymore, nor have they wanted it for a long ass time, but SE just cannot help themselves it seems.

Like we all have to deal with takes like this

View attachment 14983View attachment 14984View attachment 14985View attachment 14986

Just as we have to deal with equally bad takes about Aerith or Clerith, like her being a homewrecker or whatever. SE just pull the damn plug man.

To have takes like these, you must be ending up on an astral plane with all that projection.

 

[shady]

The amount of "People only like Tifa because of her chest size" remarks i've had to mute on Twitter over the past few weeks is a human rights violation in of itself.

 

[LunarTarotGirl]

Yeah, but she says this for Yuffie as well and he also doesn't deny it. Their dialogue doesn't change no matter which girl Cloud is hanging out with, at least if you're talking about the Rebirth scene in Chocobo Square.

Which is why I'm agreeing w/ you overall but I just think if the fandom has enough sense to realize they shouldn't take NPC Cloud/Yuffie misconceptions all that seriously, it's not that difficult to apply the same logic to CA. The "issue" is that they don't want to and it works as a nice confirmation bias for their preference. Again, I don't care about this particularly because shippers are gonna ship, but I don't consider NPCs misreading the group dynamics as an example of SE playing the fence because there's always going to be a difference in how the devs portray genuine romantic scenes vs. the generic, "haha Cloud is hanging out with a girl" gags, y'know?

Now I do think there ARE crumbs for this ship and that SE is playing the fence in a way (while still leaning to CT), I just don't think those side quests & NPC comments are it.

I see what you're saying. And yeah I personally didn't see it as much of anything. But I know other CAs will.

But yeah exactly that it lets anyone who wants their confirmation bias to have it.

And they know how fans will react so my conclusion is I don't think they care in the end of fans see CA as romantic. They mostly let CAs think that but they then let anyone else playing know CT and ZA is endgame. So it does feel like both sides get something.

And I do have to wonder why. Do they actually want to solve the LTD or not? For years I was under the impression they wanted to end it.

But doing things this way doesss give the other side hope and I really think they just should not have based on the narrative they're building. They could of just not.

 

[shady]

I actually like the way SE has handled the LT. Call me silly for appreciating complex relationships that aren't super straight forward and black/white.

The thing is, It's not about how SE portray them necessarily, because I agree it's great to have complex and nuanced relationships between all the characters, romantic or not. The real problem is SE will portray characters how they want and then feel almost no need to clarify certain portrayals they make and then because of that the LTD has fuel to rumble on and be toxic.

Reasonably you could deduce in AC that Cloud and Tifa are in a relationship, but you can also be forgiven somewhat for people thinking they aren't -- even though I think its pretty obvious -- and then because when pressed on it they don't clarify outright, they obfuscate or give vague answers people see this as an opportunity to be like HA see, they didn't say they ARE in a relationship, clearly now Cloud just wants to die to be with Aerith he doesn't even sleep in the same bed as Tifa, he clearly wanted to live in Aeriths church blah blah blah, which is still a widely popular opinion amongst some people, including influential streamers. When all it takes is for them to say yes they are to basically quash all stupidity.

Now maybe they don't owe anyone a clarification or feel like they even need to, but there's a reason there's been nothing but shit flinging from both sides for many many many years now.

 

[AncientGrimoire]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, misogyny is nearly always at the root of the most extreme and toxic takes in the LTD.

 

[LNK]

The thing is, It's not about how SE portray them necessarily, because I agree it's great to have complex and nuanced relationships between all the characters, romantic or not. The real problem is SE will portray characters how they want and then feel almost no need to clarify certain portrayals they make and then because of that the LTD has fuel to rumble on and be toxic. Now maybe they don't owe anyone a clarification or feel like they even need to, but there's a reason there's been nothing but shit flinging from both sides for many many many years now.

They don't need to clarify things though. That's been done. It was done in ff7, AC, and OtwtaS

 

[shady]

They don't need to clarify things though. That's been done. It was done in ff7, AC, and OtwtaS

Again I would agree to a point, but then why are we still in here debating this mess?