Here's the thing, right? I personally think Cloud and Tifa's relationship is at its most interesting post-Advent Children. I understand that Advent Children is not a well written movie--in fact I truly believe the characterization of every character in it (especially Cloud and Tifa) was detrimental to their personalities in future works and in the fandom. The movie did irrevocable damage to how people perceive them and their relationship and I will never forgive it for that
but
and walk with me here
foundational, post-Advent Children sets up a really interesting dynamic for them. For one, they're older--only 22 and 23, yeah (and in my head I wish they were in their late twenties or god thirties? IMAGINE??? LETTING THEM GROW UP)--and still they're both on two different levels of mature. Cloud has to essentially force himself to grow from a stunted sixteen year old in a man's body to being a grown adult, meanwhile Tifa has already done that on her own for years. It's not a surprise that when Geostigma hit, Cloud got on the road and ran for the hills rather than deal with the emotional fall out. It's what he did when he was thirteen and went to Shrina, after all. A man whose still working with a teenager's sense of urgency is going to book it rather than stare it in the face.
Meanwhile, Tifa is stuck in Edge. Yeah, she loves Seventh Heaven, she loves Marlene, and she loves Denzel but whether you take Cloud and Tifa as lovers, ex's, or platonic friends, he still abandoned her with all the responsibility People can get made at her yelling at him all they want, but she was right in that moment. Cloud was chasing a phantom and in reality, Tifa was the one who had to pick up the pieces he left behind.
And how can resentment not fester from all that? People in the fandom want to perceive Tifa as having the patience of a saint but by god if there was ever a person who deserved to snap at Cloud, it was her. As if she's not grieving the loss of Aerith, as if she doesn't have the ribbon displayed openly on her arm while he hides it under a black sleeve, as if she was doesn't wait by the phone for him, answer his business calls, pay the bills, keep his room clean. Two years after the world is saved, Cloud gets to drive away on his motorcycle and Tifa is forced to play mother and wife for him regardless of her feelings.
He's not a fully developed person and I think Cloud realizes that in Advent Children. He ran because he couldn't be that person, for Tifa, for the kids, for Barret or anyone else on the team. He'd rather decay by himself in Aerith's church knowing that she would have slap him on the back of the head for what he was doing. AC had these fucked up but fantastic ideas for Cloud and Tifa because by god, it wasn't going to be a happy ending at the end of FF7 for them. Neither of were ready for it or grown enough for it.
They need time to figure themselves out as people and I think logically, as much as they do love each other, Tifa and Cloud are going to be naturally messy people together. How can you not be? All the love in the world doesn't fix the fact that one of them was had an identity crisis that rendered him comatose and the other is so traumatized by her past that she'd rather lie to someone to keep them together than risk losing them to the truth. There's no domesticity in that but I love that they attempted it, as if setting up a home and a job and sharing a bed after the end of the world would fix that. It's so childish and makes sense because they're both still effectively children.
Post-Advent Children adds the fun addition of them no longer being in survival mode. There's no excuse for either of them at the end of it to keep running away from their problems. Is Cloud smiling at Tifa in the end? Oh, of course, but a smile doesn't do away with months of abandonment, does it? He can't get on a motorcycle now and ride off, and she can't grin and bare it because she's too frighten of the alternative.
Like don't get me wrong, I love FF7 Cloud and Tifa, I adore them, but to see them as adults having to actually live with the fall out of their actions--actions that have hurt each other--and maybe accept that they romantized each other as a coping mechanism and don't really know each other (because who could they? FF7 is implied to have happen maybe A DAY after Tifa found Cloud at the train station). Advent Children Tifa and Cloud do know each other and that's what makes the resentment and bitterness between them worse. It's a betrayal after everything they'd been through.
What, weren't we done from hiding the truth from each other because it hurt? So there still isn't trust?
I understand the aversion in the Cloti space to make their relationship less than fluff after AC because it should be that happy ending (and I think some people take these issues as anti-cloti which is weird) but Cloud and Tifa, at least in the original FF7, worked because of how raw their relationship was. They want to idolize their childhood so bad, they want to live in this fantasy world where he's the hero and she's waiting on him, but the reality is that they were are both broken people who lied to each other and themselves, and are living in grief day after day.
(Also honestly the other reason I like AC-Tifa in particular is because it gives people the chance to write her as an actual three dimensional person who isn't waiting on Cloud hand and foot, waiting for him to come back into her life and give it all meaning. I still think the worse Tifa's are the ones written to be a round bound for Cloud, to watch him be the main character of his own little drama while she keeps everything afloat and works as glorified therapist/mother.)
they won't tell you this in therapy but sometimes the best way to stop catastrophizing/anxiety is to interrupt your spiraling with "girl what the hell are you talking about"
this one has legit helped so much with my mental and physical disabilities. Do you know how often some bullshit happens and I sigh and say "but we move"
"what if they fucked" WRONG. what if they ruined each other's lives irreparably. what if there was nothing left but a smoldering heap. what if everything that brought them together twisted and corroded and ripped them apart. and then they fucked.
ec lowkey confirmed why sephiroth leaving shinra would have been a nightmare for him. i mean in cc alone, they hunted zack and cloud down to the ends of the earth with an entire army and won in the end by killing zack. and when team glenn deserted, they realized that shinra basically was the world. they controlled too much of it to truly escape. sephiroth would have had to run to either avalanche or wutai but both would have hated and not trusted shinra’s famous hero. there would be no peace for him.
Yeah, this is another major factor. Sephiroth is one of the most recognizable people on the planet. His physical appearance literally singles him out. If he were to go on the run, people would recognize him. And would likely alert Shinra. There's no way Shinra would ever let him go. They'd either re-capture him or would euthanize him.
Really makes me wonder why he gets sent to Nibelheim right before he plans on retiring. I really do think Hojo set that up in order to see what would happen. Because otherwise, what were Sephiroth's options? What would retirement even look like? Would Shinra continue to monitor him? Would they even let him leave Midgar? We know that they'd already made weapons designed to kill him in advance. So was Hojo looking for a way of avoiding that outcome? Was Nibelheim his twisted way of trying to save Sephiroth? Was he planning on Sephiroth dying but at least he'd get to record some info? Did he think Sephiroth would just come back? Or was he not involved at all and Nibelheim was just one big poorly fated coincidence?
Really eerie. Either way, there was no way Sephiroth was ever going to be free. Shinra would never let that happen.
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