Hawk,
I will happily respond to your quotes, and I'll do so without getting belligerent or personal. BTW, I genuinely wanted to know the full context of your quotes.
Oh, and I spent a great deal of time crafting this response because I do think we can find common ground. But I thoroughly expect the personal attacks to continue and for my motives to be questioned. However, before I respond to your quotes, I would like to present my overall argument in (perhaps) a more articulate fashion.
Is my main goal to show that Cloud didn't care for anyone else? No.
Then why do you discard almost every moment Cloud showed concern for Tifa and turn the remainder (the Wall Market scenario) into actually only being concern for Aerith? You don't even allow anyone else to care about Aerith -- they just go rescue her because Cloud loves her and he's the main character and they aren't proper characters in their own right.
BlankBeat said:
To me, it shouldn't be hard to see how Cloud and Aerith fit the classic description of a tragic love story. In fact, it's obvious from the get-go that this was SE's intention.
You're meant to see elements of that, yes, but taking that as the entire story discards all the revelations about Cloud that follow. The development team built up a lot of expectations that they later turned on their asses -- Sephiroth being the same kind of special snowflake as Aerith, Cloud's status as a cocky and cold badass, Cait Sith's prediction, Tifa having always crushed on Cloud since they were kids while he was oblivious, Cloud wanting to join SOLDIER for glory, the apparent tragic love story. All of these things played on tropes and plot decoys to build expectations that were deliberately misleading.
FFVII included or considered every common manga ploy down to Sephiroth and Aerith either being siblings or former lovers. They were trying to fuck with us and they did a marvelous job at it.
Sephiroth wasn't an Ancient. Cloud was actually an extremely soft-hearted fellow with a massive inferiority complex. Cait Sith's prediction was a cruel inaccuracy. Cloud had actually been the one with the crush on Tifa originally. He wanted to join SOLDIER to impress a girl. The real tragic love story was that Aerith was chasing a ghost until she realized what she was doing, then never got the chance to really know Cloud before she was murdered.
You want to talk about literary intent? Fine, let's do that. Why even reveal near the game's end -- in its greatest moment of revelation, mind you -- that Cloud ever had romantic feelings for Tifa if the intention was simply that there is a tragic love story at work with Cloud and Aerith? Why do that if it's only about them? Why even have the Zack angle? What is the literary intent there? What is being revealed about the real love story with an unresolved romance and a throwaway crush that never had any relevance before this point in the story and wasn't needed to explain any of it?
It wasn't necessary to explain Cloud joining SOLDIER. The game had already shown us that he aspired to be like Sephiroth, just as many other young men his age were. We didn't need Luke Skywalker to have a crush on some girl to understand why he wanted to go off and fight the Empire. We just knew he was a young man who aspired to be like legendary heroes who had made a difference before him.
Like Sephiroth being an Ancient or Tifa having a crush on Cloud since childhood that he didn't know or care about, the tragic love story of Cloud and Aerith was largely a decoy.
It is a testament to how well-written that decoy is that you mistook it for the actual story, but it is still a decoy. The game is remarkably well-written for being in development even as it was written. You still have people playing this game and walking away not understanding what a Sephiroth clone is or believing that Cloud was created by Hojo -- because those people mistook the decoy for the actual story, just like you.
They stopped paying attention to what was happening in the story at a certain point and accepted that what they had been shown up to that point was the story. You did the same.
You're arguing conclusions for the entire story based on only half of it, and when half of that half was designed to deliberately mislead you.
BlankBeat said:
I agree with this quote. Cloud agrees to disguise himself as a woman to help Tifa because he didn't want Aerith to help her alone.
It doesn't fucking say that. It says he does it to help Tifa. End of. Aerith is said to provide the suggestion, not be the cause.
BlankBeat said:
The only reason I'm being such a stickler about this is because I don't believe Cloud rescuing Tifa discredits Barret's observation that Aerith, in particular, seems to be the first person Cloud is willing to fight for.
Yet Barret makes no such observation. He observes that even Cloud will risk himself for other people in the midst of him making an effort to save someone else shortly after he also risked his life to help Barret and the people of Sector 7.
Stop saying Barret said this "first person Cloud is willing to fight for" bullshit. He didn't. It's not the in script and you cannot quote it. It doesn't exist.
BlankBeat said:
In fact, I provided this as further evidence that Cloud put's Aerith's safety as his primary concern:
Tifa: "Corneo is looking for a bride."
"Everyday, he gets three girls, chooses one of them, and then....
...and, well....."
"Anyway, I have to be the girl... or I'm out for tonight."
(Aerith turns.)
Aerith: "Sorry... but I overheard..."
"If you know the three girls, there's no problem, right?"
Tifa: "I guess so, but..."
Aerith: "We have two here, right?"
Cloud: "No, Aerith! I can't have you get involved."
Aerith: "Oh? So it's all right for Tifa to be in danger?"
Cloud: "No, I don't want Tifa in...."
During this scene, Cloud showed more protectiveness towards Aerith's safety than Tifa's. In fact, Cloud isn't concerned about Tifa's safety until Aerith points out his double standard.
Where do you see that? When Aerith inserts herself into the situation and Cloud tells her no? Right before he also says he doesn't want Tifa involved either?
How do you constantly overlook what's going on in these scenes while quoting them? There's no double-standard. He responds to Aerith about her involvement at the exact moment Aerith is trying to become involved. When she then questions Tifa's involvement, Cloud says he doesn't want her in the mess either, then gets ignored by both women.
The only double-standards around here are your own. Cloud says he doesn't want to try to go save Aerith at the City of the Ancients? It's because he's afraid of hurting her again (exactly what he says). He doesn't want to risk causing a ruckus while breaking into Corneo's place to rescue Tifa? Well, clearly that's not because he's afraid of Tifa getting hurt while he causes said ruckus.
No, that must have something to do with Aerith too. The chick he could have told to wait in a safe location while he created the ruckus or could have hogtied and carried home if she refused.
Oh, and let's not forget how a line like "Well, if it's to save Tifa... I guess there's no way around" couldn't possibly reflect on Cloud's actual feelings at that time because it occurs during an optional event -- even though one of the game's biggest info dumps (Gast's tapes at Icicle Inn) is optional. That's still canon for some reason, but not Cloud caring about Tifa's well-being. Nope. He just doesn't give a shit about her
unless the player has him get in a hot tub full of naked men.
Great fucking story you've got there, BlankBeat.
You say you're not trying to paint a story in which Cloud only cares about Aerith or in which he's the only one who cares about her, but that's exactly what you do at every turn. And you should know: your story fucking sucks.
BlankBeat said:
This quote simply states the facts: Cloud dresses up as a woman and infiltrates Corneo's mansion. It doesn't tell us *WHY* Cloud did what he did.
I didn't say it did. I was giving it to you because you were asking for every goddamn thing under the sun except the line that told you that you were wrong.
BlankBeat said:
Then, when Tifa presents her plan to be one of Don's brides, Cloud has no reaction.
Ya do know Aerith spoke up first there, right?
BlankBeat said:
Then, once the plate falls and crushes Sector 7, Barret and Tifa begin mourning their losses, ranting and raving about Shinra, and discussing the whereabouts of Marlene. But Cloud is distracted. He's not partaking in their conversation and his mind seems to be elsewhere. Then, when Cloud abruptly leaves, Barret asks Tifa where she thinks he went. Tifa says, "Oh! Aerith!".
Cloud's mind was not focused on Shinra, the people that died in Sector 7, or Marlene. After Sector 7 was destroyed, Cloud was solely focused on rescuing Aerith.
After he made a pitstop first to find out how it all may be related to Sephiroth, you mean.
Not saying he didn't care for Aerith. Don't even try to say I'm saying it. But you're claiming that he was "solely focused on rescusing Aerith" when Cloud himself said he wanted to find out more about this Ancient shenanigans first, went to Aerith's house to ask about said Ancient shenanigans, and only then went to the Shin-Ra building.
BlankBeat said:
PS: I will eventually get around to the quote about Cloud staying because of his promise to Tifa. But just because I'm curious: what book is that scan coming from? And is there any other contextual information that may be relevant?
I'm not a fucking moron, BlankBeat. I see you trying to call my honesty into question again. I don't rip things out of context like you do with Wall Market and Barret's observation about Cloud fighting for others. That's the entire sidebar as related to the promise, and it's from the Ultimania Omega.
Which you should already know since I've mentioned that passage to you before.
Do you feel proud of yourself casting away integrity for the sake of a fictional pairing? Does this somehow validate you? Is your dignity intact because none of us know your real name while you hide behind an online moniker when guys like myself and Ryu openly use our real names?
I like to think that you still knowing who you are and what you're doing is enough to make you feel ashamed on some level.
