NO NO NO NO NO! There is bad, then there is traumatizing. There aren't enough warnings. I wish I had heed the warnings, but I didn't. Now it's forever etched in my mind. *twich* And if the first chapter doesn't get you, the third one will literally kill any sense of normalcy, happiness, and humanity you have in you. You will want to burn your soul in an inferno of 1000 fires to cleanse it, but it will never come clean. NEVER.
*Note to self: never read Cloud Mows the Lawn.*
FANART! Please let's keep talking about fanart. I agree with your assessment with cloti/clerith art. I think it also inadvertently shows a lot about the two groups as well.
It's always been something I cannot help but recognize with the images of the girls: Aerith has a princess-like image. Long curls, the pink colour that is girlish (yes, it's a stereotype and thus stupid, but one that is played with), the long dress-skirt and the puffy shoulders in her original image scream "Fairy-tale princess!" from a mile away
(of course, there are people like me who thought that Aerith was a catgirl, since I took her ribbon for cat ears... WHAT DO YOU MEAN, IT WAS JUST ME??????????? ). And yet, she's the one with the foxy, flirty attitude, who grew up in the slums.
Tifa has a more rogue-ish image, with gloves that miss the fingers, a short skirt, simple clothes, not very striking colours, even the red on her is toned darker, obviously a fighter and looks more like the type of woman who would be comfortable around men and with flirting,
(and again, I sincerely thought she was far older than both Cloud and Aerith, like around 25 when I first saw her. I imagine my surprise when I learned she younger than both!) yet she is the one who had romantic ideas about being saved by a hero, she's the shy and reserved one.
With fanart, since it is image-oriented (NO SH*T, SHERLOCK!), the exterior is taken into account, rather than the interior. Had the interior been taken into account, the fairy-tale-ish would be the Cloti and Clerith would be the realistic one.
Also, I am endlessly amused how Cloud's image in not taken into acoount here.
Nice twisting the tropes there, SE.