tifa lockhart's tragic characterization
Jun. 12th, 2020 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cometoheavenfindmetheremiss tifa lockheart!!! nibelheim's sweetheart, cloud strife's childhood friend, owner and proprieter of seventh heaven, best friend of aerith gainsborough, guardian of marlene and denzel, and final fantasy seven's "second heroine" ... on the surface her character is really pretty simple to grasp. she's a demure, sweet, kind-hearted girly-girl under all of her power and martial arts prowess. she's a bit selfish and headstrong when it comes to her desires... but aren't we all? recently i've had the pleasure of watching (and re-watching AND re-watching) the ffvii remake AND i've just finished my own full playthrough of the original game :)
back in the day... aerith stood out to me immediately, as someone who had never played a final fantasy game back in 2005, as a sweet girl with not much substance. keep in mind... i was 6 years old and only had kh1&2 for reference and was in the midst of starting my long battle with internalized misogyny. i was WRONG (and that's partially due to the fact that SE has flanderized the character's of ff7's personalities so much since the original game came out in 1997 (when i was -2 years old)). aerith was never JUST a sweet girl with strange quips and a love for the planet. however, i barely noticed her back in the day. i was always under the assumption that tifa lockheart, who i'd only ever seen in kh2 (believe me it was enough at the time LMAO) was infinitely more important and cool. i was wrong about that, too.
turns out 6 year olds aren't right about a lot of things.
when i saw cloud strife for the first time, he seemed like any dark & brooding protagonist. he had problems in kh2 i couldn't quite grasp as a child. i just knew he was cool. i knew tifa was cool, too. relentlessly hounding cloud and wanting to help him... even though he ultimately doesn't accept her help, that stood out to me. i always just assumed there was something more there, i guess. my older brother, who was 13 at the time, told me that tifa and cloud were from another game... one he hadn't played. he insisted we watch advent children around christmas that year and i fell asleep during it, go figure :|
so, living with only that context and then mostly forgetting that those characters exist, i took it for what i thought it was. tifa and cloud were in love, clearly, but cloud didn't want her help... why? it got too weird and complicated for my 6 year old brain to handle so i moved on pretty fast. color me surprised when i found out there was another heroine in ffvii... a girl who i didn't remember when i saw her death scene. when i watched aerith die for the first time, i must've been around 13 or 14. i could only make fun of the playstation's limited ability to process such a "heartbreaking scene". as she fell into cloud's blocky arms, i felt nothing. then i forgot about it.
long preamble aside, you get my point.
i didn't get why aerith mattered so much. i knew tifa and cloud were supposedly lovers... so why was i supposed to feel anything for the girl in the long pink dress who'd died in his arms. i have context now and i want to explore my thoughts on ffvii's heroines. so! i'll start with tifa.
we first meet tifa in the slums of nibelheim's sector 7. she runs a bar there named seventh heaven, and is beloved by her patrons. she is part of the eco-terrorist group, avalanche, and has strong connections to all of the people you just blew up a power plant with. as for cloud, we're told that they're childhood friends. it's easy to believe, honestly... they have a nice playful banter (if ya choose to play it that way, of course) and you can clearly see they care through their words. after meeting tifa, you get a bit of an inkling about her character. she's a lot more... shy than you'd think by looking at her outfit and fighting style (let's NOT slutshame tifa ^__^). she seems to like it when cloud flirts with her. she wants to tell cloud something but the moment always seems to escape her. this is no more clear than in the scene right before you meet aerith properly where, as cloud dangles from one side of the destroyed bridge, tifa calls to him from the other side. she says she has something important to tell him. something he needs to know before he can die. and then he falls.
knowing tifa's character, the moments apart from cloud after this interaction, not knowing whether or not he lived or died after falling from that great height but hoping desperately that he had... it's clear to see that when you reunite with her in the basement of don corneo's mansion that she is relieved and a little bit peeved that cloud spent time having fun with aerith while she was, not only trapped in this creep's basement but, hoping against hope that he was even still alive. there's a lot of moments like this in ffvii... where tifa's hope is thrown aside. she becomes a bit more selfish in cloud's presence because of this, mostly, but probably not only, because of aerith's budding relationship with him.
she's jealous that aerith is able to talk so farmiliarly with her childhood friend... the only thing she has left of her life that was unceremoniously taken away from her. right as she began to build a new life, cloud waltzed into it again and she wanted to take care of him. keep him around and near her. after she meets aerith she's beginning to see that things can't be that picturesque for her, perhaps. she's jealous that aerith is so, seemingly, level-headed in the face of danger. she's jealous that aerith can bare to say things she can't even imagine thinking, i think.
she has a right to be jealous, to a degree. cloud was all she had left of nibelheim... she says herself, during his comatose. "i made it this far believing in the memories we shared." we learn just how much tifa means to cloud during their time in the lifestream. never exactly being friends, but still being important to each other nonetheless. for fans of tifa i think the moment in the lifestream feels like a triumph. so she IS just as important to cloud as aerith. sure... i'd like to think so too... heh :/
tifa represents many things, just as aerith does. she is a matron of loss... of the past... she tries not to wallow in her own pitiable grief, though. she loses so much in ffvii that thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. her mother. her father. her hometown. her teacher. her friends. her bar. her best friend. her childhood friend. through every loss she gets more and more desperate... only wishing that there were no violence in the world. she seeks not to lose more. she doesn't want anyone else to lose anything else. it's admirble, if a bit childish. she IS only 20 years old, though.
that's not to say tifa ONLY loses things, obviously. she loses a lot and then gains a lot, as is the way of life. however, it's in her response to that loss and gain that we can see her true character. after cloud has been awakened from his like... week long coma... and the party are about to fight sephiroth, there's an optional scene that occurs under the highwind with tifa. if you'd been playing (up until the point of aerith's death) the "tifa" way, then you'll likely get the scene in which tifa says the words:
"cloud, words aren't the only thing that tell people what you're thinking."
which is fine and all... except without the implication that they've had sex under the highwind, they've either been talking all night with tifa's head rested on cloud shoulder until she fell asleep or they've just been sat in silence that whole time... either way, not much changes despite them "confirming their feelings" about what happened in the lifestream. in the low affection version of the scene, the ending remains the same, with tifa saying:
"this day will never come again... so let me have this moment..."
strangest thing... isn't it? i just now realized that maybe the affection points are cloud's affection for everybody, instead of their affection for him. clearly tifa is still in love with him in the low affection scene, it's only cloud's reactions that dictate the difference in her words. she clearly doesn't want to cloud go without saying even MORE in the morning:
"but. i still...?!" (she says this in the morning in either scene)
if she had confirmed her feelings... what more would she need to say? well, either way.
i think cloud and tifa reinforce a lot of each other's insecurities, weirdly... cloud always seems to be on the edge of disappearing into thin air again, which tifa can't stand. she wants him to be present in her life AND his own... not fading away into her memories once again. cloud, especially after aerith's death, feels worthless (in ac at least lol) because he feels like he can't save anyone and therefore, no one needs him around. i think this is one of the reasons why their relationship never feels like real love to me... like sure. their relationship is REALISTIC but it isn't healthy and that's reinforced by the very narrative of the compilation. lines like:
"wow, cloud. you sure are messed up!" (from the og)
"cloud, you're scaring me." (remake)
"cloud. cloud, you're hurting me." (remake again, in their most "romantic" scene for that matter)
t: "do you love me?"
c: "..."
t: "hey, cloud. do you love marlene?"
c: "yeah. but sometimes i don't know how to approach her."
t: "even though we've been together for some time?"
c: "maybe that just isn't enough."
t: "even we aren't enough for you?"
c: "..."
t: "sorry for asking some strange things."
c: "don't apologize. it's my problem."
t: "let's work hard together."
'tifa waited for his answer, though she couldn't hear it even if she until the morning.' (case of tifa)
cloud never really responds to these statements in any way but as a mentally ill person, if someone i loved said that to me... i'd feel like shit! :) i don't think tifa deserves to talk to him like that. i know she's trying to help but she's doing it in the most selfish way possible, always relating his problems and faults back to his "feelings" for her (statements like "WHAT ABOUT ME? WHAT ABOUT US?" like... i'm not saying their relationship is abusive at all but it is very toxic. things like that are hard to avoid in "realistic relationships" though, i guess lol)... considering during their time in the memory of nibelheim, she's only trying to suppress the inevitable. (lying to cloud about sephiroth not telling the truth, even though she KNOWS cloud "wasn't" in nibelheim) it all culminates in that moment... her reluctance to bite the bullet and tell him that "no. sephiroth isn't lying. you're the one misremembering things, cloud." she can't bring herself to. i don't even think her motivations are fully selfish, either. she only wants cloud to be okay, after all. but she certainly isn't being righteous or doing the right thing for anybody in the situation, much less herself and cloud.
she'll berate him for his memory problems and mental health and then turn around and exacerbate those problems by reinforcing his insecurities and downplaying his trauma of aerith's death.
"why do we have to lose out to a memory?!"
LIKE. GIRL. i GET that you're upset that he isn't doing his best for you or the kids rn and ik he SHOULD be doing better but he lost the love of his life two years ago... ONLY two years ago. that's a fresh fucking wound that you should still be healing from, too. you were such good friends with her... YOU wanted to meet her in the promised land, too. or did you forget?
she doesn't create any meaningful memories with cloud in ff7, either. even their date that you work so hard to get is just... her treating cloud like he's just out of reach and being jealous that aerith can be so candid about her feelings while tifa, herself, cannot. i don't get it!!!! your time together in the lifestream is spent piecing cloud's memory of their hometown back together. very little of their relationship is even friendly back then, let alone romantic. even when tifa comes clean to cloud's memory about how she'd look for news about him in the paper and thought about him a lot after he left, it rings hollow. so what? you cared for him after he was gone. you're building a monument to someone who doesn't and never existed (her "promised hero", cloud) and then you fell in love with that monument and you're ANGRY that the person that monument was built around isn't as heroic and altruistic and loving as you thought he'd be????!!! NO SHIT! he's a PERSON. i think cloud says it best in the remake after she hounds him about what happened after he left nibelheim.
t: "i'm sorry. i know it's a touchy subject."
c: "not exactly small talk. especially with someone you haven't seen in a while." (he even says this kinda bitterly)
t: "i get it."
ughhhhhh just. her whole relationship with cloud is sooooo contrived & they make each other pretty miserable as well. so what's left?
well. the thing is that outside of her relationship with cloud, tifa is a wonderful character with a lot of potential, actually lmfao...
she's realistic. she's very motherly and sweet but also hardheaded and emotional... that all culminates into a really interesting character! i find myself wanting to learn more about her constantly, too. how did she learn to bartend? how did she meet barret and join avalanche? WHY did she join avalanche? i wish i knew more about her than the fact that she's a good fighter who grew up near cloud and is in love with him for absolutely no reason lmao :/ she truly deserves more than cloud tbh like ... the love triangle really doesn't paint him in a good light either like ik you can love more than one person (rare) but it never ends well and cloud's feelings for either girl being diluted by the other seem to mean that his feelings for both of them aren't even that strong... but like. i don't think cloud loves tifa in that way anymore.
he used to want her attention so bad. he wanted her to SEE him... like REALLY see him... but he never got that. when tifa does fall in love with him it's just because he's there, y'know? she hyped him up so much in her mind the years he was gone and by the time they met again she was like "oh... it's my hero!" and her misremembering their childhood really didn't help with that fact. sigh.
however, as soon as cloud meets aerith, the man tifa has tried so hard to keep near her is on the verge of slipping away. she knows she can't do anything about it, though, that's why she has such "peevish feelings" about it.
despite all that, she grows to love aerith just as much as cloud does, completely breaking down when she dies. she wants to meet aerith in the promised land, too, like i said :| she loves her!!! they're friends!!!
i think cloud & tifa's relationship is better and more genuinely read as two people who knew each other as children, one who grew out of his love for the girl next door, and one who grew into her love for her "hero" during his absence. when they meet again, 5 years later, neither of them remember each other properly (and memory loss is not avery good basis for love, imo... but that's just me) and become very good friends, despite their past. their friendship isn't always perfect or healthy but they're there for each other through thick and thin and they form a found family together. that's still just as lovely a story as, if not a better one than, them falling in "love" and being in an unhealthy relationship while taking care of two children. (btw marlene is BARRET'S daughter. stop erasing him from her life & the lives of cloud & tifa in general lmfao)
if aerith hadn't come along... if geostigma hadn't been a thing... if sephiroth had stayed dead... maybe. but that's not the world they live in. perfect for a fix-it fic, though!
tbh there's even this part in the og, if you go back to gongaga while you're playing as tifa while cloud is in mideel, the old man in the graveyard says something to the effect of (because i stupidly didn't take a screenshot -___-) about tifa looking for her "best friend" and that she'd find him if she looked enough.
best friend... huh? :| gee. :| i wonder. :| who that could be referencing :|
meanwhile, aerith is referred to as his "guardian angel" lmao.... GOD. square are so obvious...
anyways.
i think it's tragic that tifa didn't get much character development beyond her relationship with cloud... if anything her character kinda degraded within ff7 and the compilation so i really hope they fix that in the remake. but we don't learn much meaningful information about her within the story except through letters in her room (one from zangan and the other from a character so unimportant that he didn't even get a name). despite all this, i love tifa lockheart. i admire her strength and emotional vulnerability. i admire the fact that she loves cloud despite his many, many faults. that she sticks with him through the toughest parts of his journey. that she wants to save the planet and her friends. i just wish there was more, i guess. that's enough for some people but her characterization is pretty dependent on her childhood trauma and her love for cloud and that's really it :/ she deserved a more fleshed-out character imo! why didn't SHE get a game, square? 👁👁
i think where tifa really shines is in her realtionships with the children, marlene & denzel. she's not their mom, but she is treated (and sometimes referred to) as such. cloud is never referred to or acts like a father to denzel or marlene, though. when barret is around, he's the father. cloud is more like a cool older brother than anything but he tries his best. even tifa sees him as a child and that feeling is referenced MANY TIMES within the writings of the compilation. not that that means she can't be attracted to him like... most men ARE childish LMAO but she feels very motherly feelings towards cloud when she really takes a step back and examines their relationship, y'know?
and i'm glad they fleshed out her relationship with avalanche in the remake, too! i would ever go as far as to say that she has more chemistry with JESSIE than cloud lmfao. she loved that girl... tifa/jessie fanfics please 🤲
but idk... that's just what i think! this is formatted weird bc i wrote this over three days and i just kinda wrote whatever came to my mind but that's pretty much all my thoughts on tifa!!! i love her <3 taurus queen!
back in the day... aerith stood out to me immediately, as someone who had never played a final fantasy game back in 2005, as a sweet girl with not much substance. keep in mind... i was 6 years old and only had kh1&2 for reference and was in the midst of starting my long battle with internalized misogyny. i was WRONG (and that's partially due to the fact that SE has flanderized the character's of ff7's personalities so much since the original game came out in 1997 (when i was -2 years old)). aerith was never JUST a sweet girl with strange quips and a love for the planet. however, i barely noticed her back in the day. i was always under the assumption that tifa lockheart, who i'd only ever seen in kh2 (believe me it was enough at the time LMAO) was infinitely more important and cool. i was wrong about that, too.
turns out 6 year olds aren't right about a lot of things.
when i saw cloud strife for the first time, he seemed like any dark & brooding protagonist. he had problems in kh2 i couldn't quite grasp as a child. i just knew he was cool. i knew tifa was cool, too. relentlessly hounding cloud and wanting to help him... even though he ultimately doesn't accept her help, that stood out to me. i always just assumed there was something more there, i guess. my older brother, who was 13 at the time, told me that tifa and cloud were from another game... one he hadn't played. he insisted we watch advent children around christmas that year and i fell asleep during it, go figure :|
so, living with only that context and then mostly forgetting that those characters exist, i took it for what i thought it was. tifa and cloud were in love, clearly, but cloud didn't want her help... why? it got too weird and complicated for my 6 year old brain to handle so i moved on pretty fast. color me surprised when i found out there was another heroine in ffvii... a girl who i didn't remember when i saw her death scene. when i watched aerith die for the first time, i must've been around 13 or 14. i could only make fun of the playstation's limited ability to process such a "heartbreaking scene". as she fell into cloud's blocky arms, i felt nothing. then i forgot about it.
long preamble aside, you get my point.
i didn't get why aerith mattered so much. i knew tifa and cloud were supposedly lovers... so why was i supposed to feel anything for the girl in the long pink dress who'd died in his arms. i have context now and i want to explore my thoughts on ffvii's heroines. so! i'll start with tifa.
we first meet tifa in the slums of nibelheim's sector 7. she runs a bar there named seventh heaven, and is beloved by her patrons. she is part of the eco-terrorist group, avalanche, and has strong connections to all of the people you just blew up a power plant with. as for cloud, we're told that they're childhood friends. it's easy to believe, honestly... they have a nice playful banter (if ya choose to play it that way, of course) and you can clearly see they care through their words. after meeting tifa, you get a bit of an inkling about her character. she's a lot more... shy than you'd think by looking at her outfit and fighting style (let's NOT slutshame tifa ^__^). she seems to like it when cloud flirts with her. she wants to tell cloud something but the moment always seems to escape her. this is no more clear than in the scene right before you meet aerith properly where, as cloud dangles from one side of the destroyed bridge, tifa calls to him from the other side. she says she has something important to tell him. something he needs to know before he can die. and then he falls.
knowing tifa's character, the moments apart from cloud after this interaction, not knowing whether or not he lived or died after falling from that great height but hoping desperately that he had... it's clear to see that when you reunite with her in the basement of don corneo's mansion that she is relieved and a little bit peeved that cloud spent time having fun with aerith while she was, not only trapped in this creep's basement but, hoping against hope that he was even still alive. there's a lot of moments like this in ffvii... where tifa's hope is thrown aside. she becomes a bit more selfish in cloud's presence because of this, mostly, but probably not only, because of aerith's budding relationship with him.
she's jealous that aerith is able to talk so farmiliarly with her childhood friend... the only thing she has left of her life that was unceremoniously taken away from her. right as she began to build a new life, cloud waltzed into it again and she wanted to take care of him. keep him around and near her. after she meets aerith she's beginning to see that things can't be that picturesque for her, perhaps. she's jealous that aerith is so, seemingly, level-headed in the face of danger. she's jealous that aerith can bare to say things she can't even imagine thinking, i think.
she has a right to be jealous, to a degree. cloud was all she had left of nibelheim... she says herself, during his comatose. "i made it this far believing in the memories we shared." we learn just how much tifa means to cloud during their time in the lifestream. never exactly being friends, but still being important to each other nonetheless. for fans of tifa i think the moment in the lifestream feels like a triumph. so she IS just as important to cloud as aerith. sure... i'd like to think so too... heh :/
tifa represents many things, just as aerith does. she is a matron of loss... of the past... she tries not to wallow in her own pitiable grief, though. she loses so much in ffvii that thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. her mother. her father. her hometown. her teacher. her friends. her bar. her best friend. her childhood friend. through every loss she gets more and more desperate... only wishing that there were no violence in the world. she seeks not to lose more. she doesn't want anyone else to lose anything else. it's admirble, if a bit childish. she IS only 20 years old, though.
that's not to say tifa ONLY loses things, obviously. she loses a lot and then gains a lot, as is the way of life. however, it's in her response to that loss and gain that we can see her true character. after cloud has been awakened from his like... week long coma... and the party are about to fight sephiroth, there's an optional scene that occurs under the highwind with tifa. if you'd been playing (up until the point of aerith's death) the "tifa" way, then you'll likely get the scene in which tifa says the words:
"cloud, words aren't the only thing that tell people what you're thinking."
which is fine and all... except without the implication that they've had sex under the highwind, they've either been talking all night with tifa's head rested on cloud shoulder until she fell asleep or they've just been sat in silence that whole time... either way, not much changes despite them "confirming their feelings" about what happened in the lifestream. in the low affection version of the scene, the ending remains the same, with tifa saying:
"this day will never come again... so let me have this moment..."
strangest thing... isn't it? i just now realized that maybe the affection points are cloud's affection for everybody, instead of their affection for him. clearly tifa is still in love with him in the low affection scene, it's only cloud's reactions that dictate the difference in her words. she clearly doesn't want to cloud go without saying even MORE in the morning:
"but. i still...?!" (she says this in the morning in either scene)
if she had confirmed her feelings... what more would she need to say? well, either way.
i think cloud and tifa reinforce a lot of each other's insecurities, weirdly... cloud always seems to be on the edge of disappearing into thin air again, which tifa can't stand. she wants him to be present in her life AND his own... not fading away into her memories once again. cloud, especially after aerith's death, feels worthless (in ac at least lol) because he feels like he can't save anyone and therefore, no one needs him around. i think this is one of the reasons why their relationship never feels like real love to me... like sure. their relationship is REALISTIC but it isn't healthy and that's reinforced by the very narrative of the compilation. lines like:
"wow, cloud. you sure are messed up!" (from the og)
"cloud, you're scaring me." (remake)
"cloud. cloud, you're hurting me." (remake again, in their most "romantic" scene for that matter)
t: "do you love me?"
c: "..."
t: "hey, cloud. do you love marlene?"
c: "yeah. but sometimes i don't know how to approach her."
t: "even though we've been together for some time?"
c: "maybe that just isn't enough."
t: "even we aren't enough for you?"
c: "..."
t: "sorry for asking some strange things."
c: "don't apologize. it's my problem."
t: "let's work hard together."
'tifa waited for his answer, though she couldn't hear it even if she until the morning.' (case of tifa)
cloud never really responds to these statements in any way but as a mentally ill person, if someone i loved said that to me... i'd feel like shit! :) i don't think tifa deserves to talk to him like that. i know she's trying to help but she's doing it in the most selfish way possible, always relating his problems and faults back to his "feelings" for her (statements like "WHAT ABOUT ME? WHAT ABOUT US?" like... i'm not saying their relationship is abusive at all but it is very toxic. things like that are hard to avoid in "realistic relationships" though, i guess lol)... considering during their time in the memory of nibelheim, she's only trying to suppress the inevitable. (lying to cloud about sephiroth not telling the truth, even though she KNOWS cloud "wasn't" in nibelheim) it all culminates in that moment... her reluctance to bite the bullet and tell him that "no. sephiroth isn't lying. you're the one misremembering things, cloud." she can't bring herself to. i don't even think her motivations are fully selfish, either. she only wants cloud to be okay, after all. but she certainly isn't being righteous or doing the right thing for anybody in the situation, much less herself and cloud.
she'll berate him for his memory problems and mental health and then turn around and exacerbate those problems by reinforcing his insecurities and downplaying his trauma of aerith's death.
"why do we have to lose out to a memory?!"
LIKE. GIRL. i GET that you're upset that he isn't doing his best for you or the kids rn and ik he SHOULD be doing better but he lost the love of his life two years ago... ONLY two years ago. that's a fresh fucking wound that you should still be healing from, too. you were such good friends with her... YOU wanted to meet her in the promised land, too. or did you forget?
she doesn't create any meaningful memories with cloud in ff7, either. even their date that you work so hard to get is just... her treating cloud like he's just out of reach and being jealous that aerith can be so candid about her feelings while tifa, herself, cannot. i don't get it!!!! your time together in the lifestream is spent piecing cloud's memory of their hometown back together. very little of their relationship is even friendly back then, let alone romantic. even when tifa comes clean to cloud's memory about how she'd look for news about him in the paper and thought about him a lot after he left, it rings hollow. so what? you cared for him after he was gone. you're building a monument to someone who doesn't and never existed (her "promised hero", cloud) and then you fell in love with that monument and you're ANGRY that the person that monument was built around isn't as heroic and altruistic and loving as you thought he'd be????!!! NO SHIT! he's a PERSON. i think cloud says it best in the remake after she hounds him about what happened after he left nibelheim.
t: "i'm sorry. i know it's a touchy subject."
c: "not exactly small talk. especially with someone you haven't seen in a while." (he even says this kinda bitterly)
t: "i get it."
ughhhhhh just. her whole relationship with cloud is sooooo contrived & they make each other pretty miserable as well. so what's left?
well. the thing is that outside of her relationship with cloud, tifa is a wonderful character with a lot of potential, actually lmfao...
she's realistic. she's very motherly and sweet but also hardheaded and emotional... that all culminates into a really interesting character! i find myself wanting to learn more about her constantly, too. how did she learn to bartend? how did she meet barret and join avalanche? WHY did she join avalanche? i wish i knew more about her than the fact that she's a good fighter who grew up near cloud and is in love with him for absolutely no reason lmao :/ she truly deserves more than cloud tbh like ... the love triangle really doesn't paint him in a good light either like ik you can love more than one person (rare) but it never ends well and cloud's feelings for either girl being diluted by the other seem to mean that his feelings for both of them aren't even that strong... but like. i don't think cloud loves tifa in that way anymore.
he used to want her attention so bad. he wanted her to SEE him... like REALLY see him... but he never got that. when tifa does fall in love with him it's just because he's there, y'know? she hyped him up so much in her mind the years he was gone and by the time they met again she was like "oh... it's my hero!" and her misremembering their childhood really didn't help with that fact. sigh.
however, as soon as cloud meets aerith, the man tifa has tried so hard to keep near her is on the verge of slipping away. she knows she can't do anything about it, though, that's why she has such "peevish feelings" about it.
despite all that, she grows to love aerith just as much as cloud does, completely breaking down when she dies. she wants to meet aerith in the promised land, too, like i said :| she loves her!!! they're friends!!!
i think cloud & tifa's relationship is better and more genuinely read as two people who knew each other as children, one who grew out of his love for the girl next door, and one who grew into her love for her "hero" during his absence. when they meet again, 5 years later, neither of them remember each other properly (and memory loss is not avery good basis for love, imo... but that's just me) and become very good friends, despite their past. their friendship isn't always perfect or healthy but they're there for each other through thick and thin and they form a found family together. that's still just as lovely a story as, if not a better one than, them falling in "love" and being in an unhealthy relationship while taking care of two children. (btw marlene is BARRET'S daughter. stop erasing him from her life & the lives of cloud & tifa in general lmfao)
if aerith hadn't come along... if geostigma hadn't been a thing... if sephiroth had stayed dead... maybe. but that's not the world they live in. perfect for a fix-it fic, though!
tbh there's even this part in the og, if you go back to gongaga while you're playing as tifa while cloud is in mideel, the old man in the graveyard says something to the effect of (because i stupidly didn't take a screenshot -___-) about tifa looking for her "best friend" and that she'd find him if she looked enough.
best friend... huh? :| gee. :| i wonder. :| who that could be referencing :|
meanwhile, aerith is referred to as his "guardian angel" lmao.... GOD. square are so obvious...
anyways.
i think it's tragic that tifa didn't get much character development beyond her relationship with cloud... if anything her character kinda degraded within ff7 and the compilation so i really hope they fix that in the remake. but we don't learn much meaningful information about her within the story except through letters in her room (one from zangan and the other from a character so unimportant that he didn't even get a name). despite all this, i love tifa lockheart. i admire her strength and emotional vulnerability. i admire the fact that she loves cloud despite his many, many faults. that she sticks with him through the toughest parts of his journey. that she wants to save the planet and her friends. i just wish there was more, i guess. that's enough for some people but her characterization is pretty dependent on her childhood trauma and her love for cloud and that's really it :/ she deserved a more fleshed-out character imo! why didn't SHE get a game, square? 👁👁
i think where tifa really shines is in her realtionships with the children, marlene & denzel. she's not their mom, but she is treated (and sometimes referred to) as such. cloud is never referred to or acts like a father to denzel or marlene, though. when barret is around, he's the father. cloud is more like a cool older brother than anything but he tries his best. even tifa sees him as a child and that feeling is referenced MANY TIMES within the writings of the compilation. not that that means she can't be attracted to him like... most men ARE childish LMAO but she feels very motherly feelings towards cloud when she really takes a step back and examines their relationship, y'know?
and i'm glad they fleshed out her relationship with avalanche in the remake, too! i would ever go as far as to say that she has more chemistry with JESSIE than cloud lmfao. she loved that girl... tifa/jessie fanfics please 🤲
but idk... that's just what i think! this is formatted weird bc i wrote this over three days and i just kinda wrote whatever came to my mind but that's pretty much all my thoughts on tifa!!! i love her <3 taurus queen!
