Yes. Because we aren't talking about Canon!Aerith but Clerith!Aerith, who is essentially a proxy for the girls' (despite certain members' age, I cannot think of any of them as anything but girls) own desires. And as established on numerous occasions, several of them have a crush on Cloud, and want Aerith (themself) to win.
I see this a lot and oh my god it makes me fucking rage.
AERITH IS NOT A PERFECT PRINCESS PROJECTION OF EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO BE. AERITH IS NOT BELLA FROM TWILIGHT, PERFECT MARY SUE AND HELPLESSLY IN LOVE WITH SOME CRAZY DOUCHEBAG.
Insinuating these sort of things is a deep insult to the writers. If you look at who she is in the game and you read some of what the game's creators have said about her in interviews, she's actually one of (in my opinion) SE's most well written and complex heroines.
Underneath her happy exterior is someone who is painfully lonely, and at times almost dark in her nature (she's heard
dead people all of her life). She's not a perfect beloved angel social butterfly; as a child she was always
different.
Why, when analyzing her character, do even people who claim to like her as a character completely forget these things?
(as a side note, I think both Tifa and Aerith were wonderfully crafted characters, and outside of Crisis Core [I exclude this mostly because tbh I haven't played it] the Compilation and the years of the staff talking and writing about them have only made them richer characters. I like this.)
also forgive any typos I have been drinking hurrrr
