@Ryu: You took that love=irrational joke I made way too seriously. I didn't say love was 100% irrational, or that it doesn't have benefits both from an evolutionary standpoint and for our overall mental health.
Be funnier then.
All emotions have their irrational side though, without exception. Love and hate are probably the two easiest emotional states to spot the irrationality of. They both have a tendency to make people seem stupider or less sane than they are without them (not always though, the absence of love can literally drive some folks insane if it lasts too long). And damn it, I thought it was funny
It was not.
Incidentally, you are again conflating irrational emotion with irrationality born of emotion.
@Chun-Li: Screw you man-hands
I could more fully explain my point, but I've got better things to do right now. I'll do it later, if anyone still cares. Not likely lol.
1. Chun-Li? Man hands? Silly monkey.
2. If we're screwing her, I call dibs.
This whole irrational business might poignant in real world, but for fiction it completely makes sense. The two quotes Q provided might not be ROCK HARD SOLID PROOF, but ultimately it feels like we are fighting the semantics of the sentence rather than just taking the spirit and general thought it is suppose to provoke, irrational or not- Aerith loved Cloud and not because of his similarity in Zack.
But also not because of any insight into his true character beyond the most cursory glimpse.
Tifa didn't "know" the real Cloud until she met him in the lifestream, but we can assume she's been in love with him since before the game even started. She waited for him for two (iirc?) years at Nibelheim and when she met him again at Midgar, she immediately jumped at the chance to keep an eye on him.
Because she knew something was wrong with him. Tifa knew the real Cloud pre-lifestream. How well she did is up for debate, but well enough to know he's not himself when she finds him.
It's been argued by the other side that Tifa only liked him because he was going to be a "hero" but this is bullshit as we know since in Midgar she was trying to take care of him than the other way around. But that didn't stop her from thinking he could have been in soldier.
Despite the fact that she didn't know his weaker side, she know that Cloud wasn't truly Cloud and she hadn't quite confronted him as himself. Nor did she build a relationship with Cloud as himself. But she still loved him. The same way despite Aerith didn't know the true Cloud, she knew he wasn't quite himself and still loved him.
The difference here, I think, is Tifa knows Cloud is 'not himself' but does not lose her existing feelings, whereas Aerith has feelings and then later learns Cloud is not what she thinks he is, but does not lose feelings.
You can pick and prod apart all you want, trying to decipher history and "omg look at this scene- let's argue about how the grammar shows she really knew him" but they were on the same boat.
Ah, but even on the boat, port and starboard make a difference to the view.
Seriously, they were in similar, but not identical situations. Tifa had prior knowledge of who Cloud was and what he was like, to compare the 'off' Cloud too. Aerith only first met 'Off' Cloud.
Imagine an amnesiatic man. Two women love this man. One from before he lost his memories, the other one met him after. The former knows more about the man than the latter, even if she didn't know the man all too well beforehand.
There is only one true difference between the two, and that is Tifa gets to build a relationship with Cloud once he pieces himself together. Aerith and Cloud's relationship is all based, however, on the fact that she's dead. And it's hard to start a romantic relationship postmortem. I'm a firm believe that in FFVII, during disc one it was impossible to start a romance with him as he was too fucked up. But I also feel that it is important to note that feelings from Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith do not change about each other before and after his lfestream therapy.
That is certainly the biggest difference, but it's not just post de-headscrew. It's that one exists inside and on either side of the headscrew, but the other only exists inside it.
And Quex, Ms. Xiang is saying that Aerith loved Cloud DESPITE NOT KNOWING Cloud, not because she does know him.
The love is not in question. Her knowledge of him is. She loves Cloud despite the lack of Cloud, as opposed to for Cloud, as it were.
