I know that we generally like to differentiate the "debaters" from the "extremists, but the ongoing meltdowns of kissgate and "Tifa's not a mother so
NOT-Happy-Mother's-Day-Tifa" or "Cloud
still wants to die" sort of suggests that this is one of those instances where the extremists may actually more accurately define the group since it really feels like these extremes could be the logical conclusion of these debates.
I've seen enough to know that the absolute worst of the Cloti LTD extremists will always find a way to mischaracterize Aerith in some way or offload their own dislike of Aerith onto Cloud and say that "he deeply, deeply dislikes her" (which we know he doesn't). That being said, that's actually sort of all they end up doing - most of what I see when it comes to the debate are Clotis who are usually invested enough to be able to make direct citations, sometimes they get into debate pervert tactics too. They can be sort of mean and often kind of flippant about things and definitely joke about things like Aerith dying, but that's sort of light work in the realm of trolling. I also happen to believe that a lot of these people are the frustrated and embattled of the fandom who have, often cynically, decided to just
fight fire with fire, or in this case,
be bigger dicks to the current reigning dicks.
On the other hand, Clerith LTD extremists will do any or all of the following: mischaracterize Tifa to be cruel, villainous, or be an "unreliable narrator" and Cloud to be suicidal, quote non-canon materials (Maiden who etc. etc.), handwave canon materials (especially the newer materials like 2000 gil and ToTP), cherry-pick quotes (we can recently remember how they pick out "Tifa doesn't like Cloud" in ToTP and handily leave out the "Tifa learned that she does like Cloud and
she actually likes him that way" statement only pages after), accept shoddy and citation-less interpretation as truth (recently, the likely Twitter bot-farmed "interpretation" of why the kiss doesn't matter
again, just a couple of weeks ago), disregard inconvenient dev statements (like "the dates are a reflection of what Cloud would do..."), re-interpret dev statements to suggest what they would like them to suggest (... which led to "the dates are not canon anyway"), replace loaded in-script statements that do not benefit their ship to neutral statements (for example the "Cloud's true self comes out with Tifa" vs. "Cloud just speaks plainly to Tifa" debate in 2020, and vice versa for the inverse, naturally), suggest that native Japanese speakers do not know their own language because Japan is an alien and mystical place with an impenetrable and unknowable language laden with ritual and context (a place where intimacy by hand is better than intimacy by lips) (
incidentally, this is also a BJ/HJ joke, special apologies to Madam M).
A somewhat ancient example of this general lack of academic rigour was when
Advent Children came out in the Venice Film Festival and someone went to watch it and went on to summarize the material
incorrectly, but, if I'm not mistaken, this became the source of much of the misinformation going around about AC (specifically, "Cloud is suicidal"). The fact that these attitudes persist despite the fact that ACC exists and more materials are now readily available in official format rather than fan translation really makes this particularly frustrating.
God, I feel like there's so much more, but I am also not sure what else to say at this point that wouldn't just be a straight insult. Incidentally, I appreciate academic rigour over the absence of expertise so I would rather debates with some substantive argumentation. Most of the people I end up interacting with seem to have left their rebuttals at home.
Though obviously i agree despite that.
