I can't disagree with anything that's been said here, but I just really don't feel it. She's a just too much of the "imperfect good girl" whose flaws are too likable and rubs me the wrong way. I guess the way Stiggie feels about Aerith lol
Edit to clarify: I specifically mean remake Tifa. OG Tifa is fine I guess. Not my mega favorite, but doesn't rub me the wrong way either
Well, I don't see it as Tifa not dealing with her problems as much as I see it as her not being sure what the right answer is, which results in inactivity. This is a result from her being fundamentally a empathetic character.
Tifa generally understands both sides, but because of that, it becomes hard for her to fully commit to one side.
We see this in the contrast with Barret, where Barret refuses to take personal responsibility, or to empathize with the Shinra. Tifa understands that what they're doing is needed, but she also understands that Shinra is made up of normal people. She doesn't lie to herself, and because of that she doesn't know what the right answer is, and is wracked with guilt. Barret lies to himself by convincing himself that it's all justifies, and by doing so he tries to avoid feeling guilt, it's arguably a sign of weakness, while Tifa does the opposite.
Same thing with Elmyra and going after Aerith, on the one hand Cloud is right, and they should go save Aerith, on the other hand, Elmyra also has a point. So this results in indecisiveness.
She points this out in in the OG as well "I was always like that", it's the character flaw she has to overcome.
However, when she does make a decision, she does actually follow through with it. She's not afraid to follow through on her decisions, but since she generally has enough understanding as to what those decisions entail, she's hesitant about making them. When Barret tries to sell her the worldview of good men still being culpable for evil actions, she understands what the consequences are for that line of reasoning, and what you're throwing away, and she also understands that it applies to them as well. So she can't fully commit.
She's active in the neighborhood watch, and the bar, because those decisions are clear. Jessie acts to get a weaker blasting agent because there is no tradeoff there. It's not "Either kill people or let the reactor continue", it's "either kill people with the blast, or not kill people with the blast". She's fully onboard with the core premise of destroying the reactor, her "heart is in it", but there is no reason to make the blast larger than it needs to be.
With those kinds of problems Tifa also follows through, which is why she went undercover with Don Corneo, by herself, despite the danger, it's why she joined avalanche in the first place. She goes to Cloud for comfort, she goes after Avalanche on the pillar, she goes to save Aerith when the conflict is resolved, she goes after Sephiroth, etc.
If Tifa sees a solution to a problem, she will go for it, it's when she's not sure what the right thing to do is that she tends to opt for a wait and see approach.
Whether that's good or bad tends to depend on the situation, stirring up chaos isn't always good. And this also manifests in some powerful character traits where she's willing to endure mental pain for the sake of others, rather than heap her own worries onto them.
In AC, she's staying strong despite a absolutely HORRENDOUS situation. Her partner left her to go die in a church, her child is dying, Sephiroth remnants are attacking and she has to juggle all of that with no one to lean on.
That's why people tend to think she's mentally stronger than Cloud, because while she does suffer, and does need support, she's able, and willing, to endure all that while she helps others first, and hold out until they are strong enough to return the favor.
It's the difference between not feeling pain, and being able to endure a lot of it. Tifa is the second.
About her being too much of a "imperfect good girl", I'd say she's literally a terrorist. I just don't think you can fairly categorize her imperfections as being some sort of superficial beauty mark. She's fundamentally a good person, yes, but that's not the only character flaw that exists that's worth exploring, it's the contrast between her good motivations and character, and the moral greyness of her actions, and how she deals with that struggle and resulting guilt that makes her character and story 3-dimensional, and imperfect.
I hesitate to bring this back to Aerith, since, as you said, this shouldn't be some sort of Aerith vs Tifa thing, but I was just reminded of what I consider to be the weirdest sentence in remake. It's during the language of flowers when Aerith says "Maybe I should just give up, honestly it's what I do best". Cloud responds with "could have fooled me", and he's right, because this line comes completely out of nowhere, I've never even seen a hint that Aerith tends to "give up". If she were, and we were shown that, it would be a good character flaw for her to overcome, similar to Tifas indecisiveness. But I haven't seen her give up at all, at any point, if anything she's the one constantly telling people to not give up, that "we can do this, we can win, make it better, make it right, the future is always a blank slate", etc etc.
I got the distinct impression as though the developers realized that it's a problem that they hadn't given her a character flaw, and then tried to artificially assert one. I had a similar feeling when they established the character point of her "wanting to be found", which wasn't really a character flaw, but was meant to give some more color to what her character is feeling. In this case it made sense, because of course she'd want to engage with people after living in isolation, and it makes her behavior more understandable, and is a nice nod to "you came for me, that's all that matters", but I did sort of feel like it was inserted because they realized that except for the impersonal element of getting to grips with her Cetra nature, Aerith didn't have much going on internally in the OG. There was Zack of course, but that was rather understated, and thankfully, a lot more on the forefront now in remake, remake also adds the element of her apparently having to deal with the fact that she's going to die, which all makes her more interesting, although not necessarily more flawed.
In the original, I always felt like Cloud, Barret, and Tifa were all going through deep inner journeys about what they did, about Sephiroth, Shinra, Nibleheim, while Aerith was, in the words of the guidebook "more interested in the developing love triangle between her, Cloud, and Tifa". That's probably why I love crisis core so much. It made Aeriths actions in the OG feel more desperate and tragic when she's in denial and trying to relive her time with Zack, rather than the improperly
laissez-
faire, devil may care feeling I got from her originally, when she felt like she was on vacation flirting.
But I'm always ready for more.
It's kinda embarrassing, but I've cried torrents ever since Zakkura hit me hard last year (both through the platonic and romantic lens). It's a bit weird that I, together with a small community on Twitter, find a lot of comfort in a story full of suffering, but the reflective and coping mechanisms of the human psyche are really mysterious and unpredictable. Guess I'm going to use them to the max as long as the enjoyment lasts.
