It’s a shame but also not a surprise some of the more vocal shippers don’t come here because the pattern seems to be “set up a false premise to an audience that already agrees with you, then plug your ears at people pointing out that false premise.”
The position that I’ve consistently noticed with some people is that “the romance is optional, but here’s why the devs actually intended for Cloud and Aerith to be the
real romance of FF7”. The rest of that Twitter thread elaborates further, but I often see this presumption that Cloud and Tifa’s relationship is negligible and it sounds smart to shippers but unfortunately sometimes affects casual fans’ perceptions especially when coming from people with an online presence.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the roles that Cloud’s relationships with Aerith and Tifa play in his character arc. As I’ve said, shipping whoever you want will never be a problem to me. But I can’t take anybody seriously as a “fan” of FF7 if they're so blinded by shipper goggles that they seem to only ever pay attention when one girl in on-screen while turning their brains off for anything related to the other girl.
I’m not proud of how I kept up with his online behavior after being banned from here, but I just knew that dude would cross the line at some point. Check this thread if you wanna see just how deep the rabbit hole went. (Unsurprisingly, he’s the one who started that thread in the first place.)
Perseverance - A Cloud & Jessie Club https://www.deviantart.com/thestrifeisrife/art/Am-I-a-bad-person-Cloud-827032464?ga_submit_new=10%3A1579075798 "Cloud and Jessie inside the Sector 4 Plate" by Odysseus Jessie breaks down when the weight of what she's done through her bombs becomes too...
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