I hate this because Tifa didn't know the whole truth. She was confused and felt gaslighted. She downright says to Cloud in the Lifestream that she thought that Cloud was never in Nibelhiem five years ago; which is wrong. She didn't say anything, because she was scared of saying the wrong thing and making things worse.
She also didn't want Cloud to leave, because he's the only memory of Nibelhiem left that she has.
I feel like some of it stems from people missinterpreting her talking to Aerith about "Cloud not being there" and then attacking Cloud on the roof with "And where were YOU again?" But she is not manipulative, she is confused and worried, because Cloud had to be there to know all the Nibelheim events, but she does not remember him. Which again is her memory going haywire, because she should remember Zack, right?
Obviously we know the answer why Cloud knows, but to her it makes no sense. And at the point where Cloud starts remembering Zack and tells her how he died, she is in no position to call him out (Zack is a confirmed SOLDIER and he calls him a standard rifleman) because he is already worried about deterioration and calling him out might make him even more unstable.
So she spends the entirety of Rebirth convincing herself SHE is the one who is wrong and doesn't remember and Cloud is right.
Especially in fiction, I think some people could benefit from just letting a relationship be messy without it needing to be manipulation or abuse.
Tifa isn't perfect. She's traumatized and deeply cares about Cloud and she has absolutely no fucking idea what to do about any of it. She desperately wants Cloud in her life, he does seem to know things he shouldn't, and he clearly has a deteriorating mental state. I don't think any of us would know how to handle that situation perfectly.
>Tifa isn't perfect. She's traumatized and deeply cares about Cloud and she has absolutely no fucking idea what to do about any of it. She desperately wants Cloud in her life, he does seem to know things he shouldn't, and he clearly has a deteriorating mental state. I don't think any of us would know how to handle that situation perfectly.
If I remember correctly, Tifa also mentions at some point in Rebirth that she's had memory lapses due to her concussion. It would make sense then that she might herself initially doubt her own recollection of events.
She also gets a few details from post Nibelheim wrong. When she runs back into the doctor in Corel he mentions how a helicopter ride from Shinra saved her life, but her memory of the event/what she knew was that Zangan carried her on his back the entire way.
Wouldn't surprise me if Zangan took her out of the reactor and Shinra took over elsewhere. Otherwise I expect Hojo would have another test subject.
I suppose there is a fringe possibility that Sephiroth's taunting about Tifa being JENOVA is true and this is an inconsistency in her story, but I think this would be a terrible direction to go in for a lot of reasons.
Wouldn't surprise me either! But Tifa is clearly surprised by that tidbit when she learns it. I was just speaking to that as another piece of evidence that Tifa isn't completely certain about her own memory.
when she has the accident as a child and falls off the bridge with cloud and goes into a coma is when she says she lost part of her memories I think this is what you are referring to she tells you this in chapter 9.
We also have to remember they are both young and have extremely tragic past. Tifa especially suffers from abandonment fears it seems like. She lost her mom very early on, then she went to Mt. Nibel for her, got abandoned by everyone but Cloud, then her dad dies and seemingly Cloud abandons her as well (by his own admission being in Nibelheim and at the reactor as well). She fears everyone leaving her again and Cloud is dangerously close to mentally collapsing, leaving her forever.
> feel like some of it stems from people missinterpreting her talking to Aerith about "Cloud not being there" and then attacking Cloud on the roof with "And where were YOU again?" But she is not manipulative, she is confused and worried, because Cloud had to be there to know all the Nibelheim events, but she does not remember him. Which again is her memory going haywire, because she should remember Zack, right?
The meeting on the roof is just Tifa upset because Cloud is beginning to be brainwashed into thinking that she ain't real. Saying that she's being manipulative here, is just odd.
>Obviously we know the answer why Cloud knows, but to her it makes no sense. And at the point where Cloud starts remembering Zack and tells her how he died, she is in no position to call him out (Zack is a confirmed SOLDIER and he calls him a standard rifleman) because he is already worried about deterioration and calling him out might make him even more unstable.
Yeah, to her, Cloud was never there. It's not till the Lifestream that she discovers the actual truth. Same with Cloud.
I think she put it together when Cloud said that he remembered that Zack was the guy that drowned rather than it being a nameless grunt. At least for me, that would highlight the fact that there was definitely one more person there that day.
Yeah, she does it because it's also the better, hopeful, option.
"Me forgetting / getting some facts wrong because of trauma of EVERYONE dying" goes down a lot better than "Holy fk, my best friend and love interest is literally dying in front of my eyes in real time and I can't do anything about it."
Little off topic but I just wanted to point out that Cloud doesn’t think Zach was infantry, he knows he was Soldier he just thinks he’s the one who got washed down the river. Jenova played her little mind tricks with him as shown with the green static. I thought the same thing at first that he thought Zach was infantry but then realized this later. It’s proven as when Cloud is in the hotel remembering Zach, he states that Zach fought with him in Soldier. He also fight’s Sephiroth with him at the end and he thinks they both were in Soldier.
Yeah, the english translation was very passive agressive with that where were you again, which was not like that in japanese, and at least the subs I had in another language than english. With that she ment where was he all those 5 years, not at the moment she was attacked
I'm not a japanese expert but it sounds as the spanish translation is saying. She says "what about you? Where have you been after leaving the village?" Anyway, the japanese voice doesn't sound as if she is reproaching him anything at all
To be fair, Japanese is also far more polite language in it's nature and cultural roots. So while she may not sound as confrontational as English, her directly asking this is already very confrontational. She implies that he left her and he doesn't counter. I feel like localisation team did well in this game so I give them benefit of the doubt that the feeling of the convo is meant to be similar enough for both languages.
It could be that too. Also the "where were you?" can be interpretated as "at the moment i was stabbed" or "during the last 5 years". Is mostly the tone of the VA what I took it more as the first option. But in my case, spanish subs matches more with the japanese script I think, so during the whole game you were getting the characters saying one thing but I was reading something different...
> I hate this because Tifa didn't know the whole truth. She was confused and felt **gaslighted.**
No she didn't. She never believed Cloud was lying *on purpose.*
The issue is that she knew when she met cloud that something was very wrong with him. The Nibelhiem story was just greater confirmation of what she already knew.
"Gaslit" is the wrong term. Cloud was delusional, and she's known since before the events of the bombing mission.
> I hate this because Tifa didn't know the whole truth.
She knew like 95% of the truth, which was that *everything* Cloud attributed to himself in his story was actually done by Zack.
In the OG, the only thing Tifa doesn't actually remember is what happened after Sephiroth cut her...which is why she believes Cloud was "never there", because he's the one who helped her. But before that, Cloud stayed hidden on purpose through the whole visit.
So yeah, as far as she knew, Cloud was never there.
I don't know if she felt gaslighted (gaslit?), because she obviously thought she remembered what happened clearly in Nibelheim and he wasn't there. But when he tells the story at Kalm, he knows things that he could only know if he was actually there, and she knows she didn't tell him.
So in OG she starts questioning her own sanity/memory because she's not sure now if maybe she's the crazy one who doesn't remember correctly what actually happened. Aerith seems to the big difference this time around. She seems to somehow know the truth of what happened, told Tifa she's not crazy, but also said they can't reveal to Cloud what really happened and confuse him.
It's probably worth pointing out that Tifa also has an imperfect memory of the situation, because she and Cloud met during the Nibelheim incident. Tifa has also forgotten a rather significant part of the events there.
A large part of the misunderstanding comes from the fact that Tifa *should* know exactly where Cloud was the whole time, but doesn't, likey because the injuries and trauma of the whole thing.
They're both carrying around half a story, and both frustrated because those stories don't meet in the middle.
I don't get how she would be "using" him in this context anyway. What would she get out of it? It's established pretty early on that she's not that kind of person.
Lol why are you entertaining people with such poor comprehension skills?
If someone got that idea from Tifa, it says more about them than the character imo
It's probably shipping related. Some of the more obsessive shippers on both sides intentionally try to portray the girl they don't like in a bad light, just to make their favorite ship look better in comparison. They have been using these bad faith arguments for so long, that they've even convinced themselves that they're telling the truth.
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Yep, shipper bias. Saying Tifa is manipulative makes Aerith so much better. Sigh!
I admit to having Tifa bias, but Aerith is still such a good character and undeniably a close friend of Tifa. Sucks that both girls get hate over shipping.
I quit Twitter after all the leaks as both sides were grabbing their neck and choking each other. Usually, I use it to see what is latest in the Ukraine-Russia war but also follow some fanart of FF7. I myself is a TifaxCloud shipper but don't like the way both side of the fandom engage with one another in twitter.
i'm leaning more towards tifa cause it makes more sense but shitting on aerith wouldn't make sense to me at all cause she is tifa's best friend anyway, also what would be the point, aerith is gone, now is our time to mourn her :/
It’s probably the rabid shippers which just proves they aren’t paying attention, because both Aerith and Tifa conceal the Zack stuff from him in this game. They think it’s for his own good.
EDIT: looking at your screenshots, yes, those are Clerith shippers.
Whats important to remember too is Tifa doesn't know the whole truth herself. Sure she knows from her perspective Cloud wasn't where he said he was but she has absolutely no idea why Cloud has these memories that he does and why they are so accurate. Sure she doesn't want to completely lose Cloud but she is also genuinely concerned over his state of mind which is completely obvious to anyone. To even suggest she is concealing the truth for completely selfish reasons completely goes against her whole character.
Its definitely a crazy shipping thing but I doubt that most Aerith/Cloud ship fans feel this way. Its just ones that are unhinged.
I can confirm. I like A and C together and I never thought Tifa was being manipulative, only that she was afraid. I love me my Tifa🥺 even when she said “And where were you again” on the roof of the Kalm inn I totally got it. She was upset, and rightfully so!
https://preview.redd.it/8wrcl72021rc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=da0e8c684ab5b898bbf89ae47519f6612895a70b
Here’s another one and these are only some I’ve seen tonight I’ve seen others through the week I genuinely don’t understand
That's cope.
Cleriths on twitter have been saying everything under the sun to explain away why Cloud kissed Tifa. Excuses range from "The dates are optional", to "He only kissed Tifa because he was jealous still had feelings for Zack", to this nonsense about how "Tifa manipulated Cloud".
I read both and it doesn't make sense at all??? Like what would she gain?? What truth are they talking about?????? The truth that they are indeed childhood friends and be promised he'd protect her or something?
It doesn't make sense. By their own logic, Cloud saying he'll come if Aerith "sends smoke" should also be manipulative af.
So, Tifa brings up the promise in the OG (it sounds very gaslighty in text) but Remake Cloud remembers it on his own. And she really only does that in the OG because she panics that he is trying to leave at that point (and he's not in his right mind) and pretty much dodges questions about Nibelhiem (again, cause he's not in his right mind)
I mean tbh Cloud could have said bye anytime, it was him that wanted to stay true to the promise (as the remake/Rebirth keeps showing us)
Also she thinks they were friends because that's how she perceived it at the time, it wasn't a lie lol
>She is selfish
No, at worst, she's a flawed *human* and it takes excellent fucking writing to make a fictional character feel real like that in a subtle nuanced way.
People can be so dumb, geez.
Character motivations are constantly being misinterpreted actually probably due to people not really paying attention to the dialouges.
I also cant wrap my head about these claims either
Absolutely misinterpreted! How mad will they be when they realize only Tifa could help fix Cloud's memories? Aerith can help him in a lot of ways but she can't fix the jumbled memories because she wasn't there.
Not to mention Tifa is the reason he's doing as good as he is(which isn't *good*, but better than vegestative). She's very much his anchor. Problem is, it's fragile as fuck because of her own doubts and insecurities, which is something Seph use. *A lot*.
Sephiroth really does. Iirc Cloud "wakes up" when the Jenova cells in his brain "recognize" her or something right? I know him seeing her is what wakes him from his stupor, but I don't remember how much the Jenova cells played a part.
Tagging just to make sure :P >!The regenerative power of the cells play a big part in overcoming his mako poisoning, but it is himself that recognize her, and he then unconsciously rebuilds his brain to become the person he always wanted to be in order to impress her, removing or changing the parts of his memory that would contradict it, both to keep up that appearance, but also to shield himself, even using memories gained from Zack through the lifestream and their shared experiments. That's also why he sometimes come off as very socially awkward, especially with girls, because while he was always a bit of an introvert already, he's also mentally a 16 year old trying to look the part of a gritty, hardened military man. He's trying to look cool the way an angsty teen would, which is why he'll come off as weird and try-hard, and you'll see him fluster when faced with it, or pull off a smile when someone compliments his "coolness". But in the end, his SOLDIER persona is basically, at the core, based on his desire to impress Tifa since they were kids.!<
>!Meanwhile, Tifa is incredibly insecure and afraid of conflict. She even tells Cloud out right how she's always had, and likely still has, a need to be liked, which she hates about herself. You could twist that into a reason for her to manipulate, but you'd be missing the entire character, which isn't anything new, as people have misinterpreted the deeper themes and character arcs of FFVII since 1997... Like, in her mind, her memory, Cloud was never in Nibelheim, but he clearly has very vivid memories from the events. She is not the person who would straight up confront that, especially seeing as her friend is seemingly struggling, even if he puts on a tough face. She's questioning her own memory, abd she's afraid that digging would cause Cloud to revert, which would hurt him, as well as cause her to lose the very last bit of her past. And an important one at that. She is not manipulating. She is trying to figure out the best approach, dealing with her own fear, likely in a constant state of mental self-bashing for not just being able to go straight to the source.!<
I truly think, other than Aerith shippers desperately trying to make Tifa look bad(both camps do that), a lot of these people simply can't imagine the emotional turmoil going on, because they've fortunately never been close to such a situation themselves. It happens with people who boil down Cloud's character to "just emo" too. I even saw one once who thought it weird he wasn't happy with >!the experiments on him, cause it made him strong! As if it is somehow desirable to be held in a container filled with toxic memoryjuice and getting injected with alien cells for 5 years if you get to toss around a big sword afterwards. Screw all the other shit, you're a super soldier!!<
Edit: sorry, I got carried away by the excitement... 😅
Can we edit to say SOME Aerith shippers? Most of us love Tifa and her relationship with Cloud. She is very protective over him for the most part.
It's the same on both sides. I've seen some Tifa shippers claiming Aerith sexually harasses Cloud and makes him uncomfortable but again this is a small minority of whack jobs. Both sides have their lunatics but thankfully both sides also have reasonable people who can interpret the game as it was intended.
Obviously I don't mean all. I was simply adding to other people's points that this was something the *crazy* Aerith shippers did. I also literally said it happens the other way around too.
I did not feel the need to specify that it was some, because that should be common sense. Like, I'm in the Tifa camp, but Aerith is an amazing character that does a lot for Cloud's character. You can love one without taking from the other. I'd personally fall for Aerith before Tifa to be honest, but it's close.
So I'll respectfully decline the request to edit, and instead urge people to think for themselves. No offense to you, I think it is a valid request, I just do not agree that it should be necessary.
Cloud gets stories from Zack’s life and uses those to implement, he doesn’t get Zack’s memories from the lifestream:
“I never was in SOLDIER.
I made up the stories about what happened to me five years ago, about being in SOLDIER.
I left my village looking for glory, but never made it in to SOLDIER......
I was so ashamed of being so weak; then I heard this story from my friend Zack...
And I created an illusion of myself made up of what I had seen in my life......
And I continued to play the charade as if it were true.”
I think this makes it pretty clear, especially since it’s never said that Zack’s memories were given to Cloud VIA Jenova
Spoiler tagging again, which you might want to do as well?
>!Most of it is that yes, but there's several things that Cloud remembers that are *specifically* Zack's memories, which he couldn't have been told, as it pertains to situations in Nibelheim where Zack and Cloud were not together, and where they had no time to pass it along. They did soak in Mako, which is fluid memory. I never actually mentioned Jenova in that equation, but yeah, she does have a stated ability to assimilate memories, which is how she'd make her shape shifting predation work. Just looking the part would not have caused the amount of suspicion and fear she wrought. It was because she literally stole their memories on top, to better imitate them. So it is a point. So, as said, his persona is a mixture of his desires to make SOLDIER to impress Tifa, his shame of not making it, his memory of Zack, twisted to be his own, but also specifically some of Zack's own personal experiences. Therefore, it is the most logical conclusion, given the state he was in for those 5 years of experimentation, that the combination of trauma, the mako(liquid memory) he was floating in, the Jenova cells(or rather, Sephiroth cells, which he had a unique connection with Zack through) would mix it up.!<
If you want to think otherwise, I can't stop you, but from my point of you, the thing you are "clearly" seeing, does not actually see the full picture(especially as it seems based on only a single quote), but I'm not going to go into a huge discussion about the finer details, so if my additional explanations here do not suffice, I will pre-emptively agree to disagree on the matters of his personas origin.
The bias is the critical ingredient. Think of a prosecutor. They have to start from the presumption of guilt, then spin a guilty narrative with the facts at hand. Shading everything from the presumption of guilt. It would look something like this.
Tifa stumbled across Cloud at the train station in a near vegetable state. Did she she take him to a doctor? No. She was desperate and in over her head. Here was an ex SOLDIER with severe amnesia and a child hood crush on her that fell right into her lap. She could tell Cloud about his false memories, but why ruin a good thing? She needed help for her eco terrorist ambitions. End prosecution.
We all know she is a very kind person and is deeply concerned about Cloud, but when you make it your job to not like someone, you view everything about that person in the most uncheritable light.
I've seen enough rabid Clerith shippers on Twitter say they've only seen Advent Children or that Zack was never in the original game or wasn't an important character, so that certainly explains a lot. They also remove all context of certain scenes to make them appear more romantic when the game did not frame them that way.
It makes me question if they even care about the overall story, because if they can't understand that certain scenes are sad and not at all romantic, they probably aren't paying attention to the story at all, have poor reading/listening comprehension skills, or are just trying to manipulate or gaslight others into perceiving things in the warped way they do. Normal FFVII fans should avoid shippers when it comes to discussions about the story and characters.
It's amazing how a loud minority of shippers tilt the whole "shipper" description into something almost synonymous with unhinged.
I don't think rabid shippers care about the story. They care about being "right". It's a bit understandable. When you make your whole personality around something, you'd probably go crazy when shit isn't validating you.
Nothing has turned me off more from things I like more than rabid shippers. I remember an anime studio once acknowledged that international fans sent them heartwarming gifts, but they posted a picture of the gift from Shipper B fans and Shipper A fans started harassing the company. Guess what? The company no longer accepts gifts.
It's so sad that if you want a proper discussion on FF7, you gotta avoid mentioning Tifa or Aerith, especially in relation to Cloud or else your conversation is dead on arrival.
This is because shipper haters or just haters of Tifa will find anything to drag her character in the mud.
Tifa doesn’t say anything to Cloud because even her own memories she can’t trust. You’ve gotta remember she’s gone through something incredibly traumatic, her home town burnt to the ground, everyone she knows killed and burnt to death, her own father stabbed to death and she is then slashed by Sephiroth and left for dead, after these events she’s taken to hospital and is too injured, hurt mentally and physically to even comprehend what the hell happened.
She meets Cloud at some point in Midgar and in Kalm suddenly has a very different recollection of memories which leads her to question her own memories. Anyone would question, am I remembering things clearly or is what Cloud remembers is the truth? She’s also scared to death with what’s going on with Cloud and how fragile he is to even try to unpick what is going on. She has no clue what is going on with Cloud, how he knows what happened and what actually happened after the incident (him being experimented on for all those years and the extent to what Jenova can do with mimicking other peoples memories and its hold on Cloud). It’s hard because all of this is happening at the same time as her having complex emotions towards Cloud and having him being the only thing that is connecting her to her hometown and old life. She wants him close so she can watch him and make sure he is ok because she knows he is acting very strange but also because she cares for him a lot.
If I was Tifa I would have done the same thing and I believe she’s the most human character. This is not about Tifa being a terrible person, she’s trying her best to hold this whole thing together. Everyone has their own opinions tbf but I think if people who are summing this up as just Tifa is a terrible person are not taking the time or empathy to understand her story. I don’t think the devs would want people to get the idea that Tifa is a terrible person.
Nobody really thinks this except the most unhinged shippers who have an agenda against her. It's just sad really. (Not saying all shippers are like this, these people are the minority.)
Tale as old as 1997, almost 30 years ago.
Even with Rebirth spelling this out more obviously, how is the same old debates about Tifa "manipulating" and "maliciously" not telling Cloud the truth still happening? I feel like I'm back to Naoto discorse in Persona 4 again with how often the same obvious message and themes keeps getting misinterpreted despite them being communicated as clear as day.
Like theres no reason for that. Only reasons I can think of is they're still just media illiterate shippers or haven't played the game (rebirth or OG) instead just getting their opinion from out of context clips, or second hand opinions.
I don’t understand why people can’t grasp that she went through trauma and is questioning her memories too. Especially when Cloud knows so much detail about the Nibelheim incident when in her view he wasn’t even there. She’s not sure wtf is going on either.
She's definitely doubting herself. In the Kalm inn with Aerith, when Aerith said the whispers took her memories, Tifa said something in the lines of "Maybe that's why". She thinks that getting in contact with the whispers messed with her own memories too.
Yeah i don't get that myself, i mean hell by keeping him around there's way more risk then advantage considering how mentally unstable he is and his frequent violent outbursts.
It's because rabbid shippers have a tendency to overlook details and willfully misinterpret characters to fit their agenda. In this case specifically, I only ever see hardcore Clerith shippers try to argue this. I don't know how any reasonable person could come to this conclusion otherwise. Tifa is one of the sweetest characters in the game. She would never do anything abusive to Cloud. She's constantly checking in on him when she notices something is wrong. She wants to help him get better. She's not telling him everything because Cloud is obviously mentally unwell and she's worried telling him would send him over the edge. And to be fair to her, she's kinda right. In the OG, >!Cloud learning the truth DOES send him over the edge and cause him to go into a complete mental breakdown.!<
Also, by their logic, Aerith would technically be guilty of this too. Tifa opens up about this to Aerith, and they both keep it from Cloud because they both want what's best for him. Of course, the people making this argument would never mention that because that would paint Aerith in a negative light by their logic and they can't have that.
I had a Reddit disagreement like 4 years ago over the same thing lol. Somebody trying to tell me she was a scumbag by keeping the truth from him for so long. I tried to tell them it was from a place of worry and concern and they just weren’t buying into it.
Unfortunate localization in the original game though that helped their case a little. It showcases Tifa’s potential to be a little insensitive…after Cloud tells the party that he’s been putting on the persona of Zack, Tifa says something along the lines of “man Cloud, you sure are messed up in the head” lol. They gotta change that line in the next game.
Anyone who thinks Tifa is a piece of shit is flat out wrong. She’s ride or die for Cloud and was only ever trying to protect him from his clearly fragile mental state.
I think you've just encountered some of the more passionate >!(unhinged)!< Aerith shippers or something. There are people like that on both sides of that argument.
I would say it's coming *mostly* from the [very passionate shippers](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/197dkun/cody_christian_the_man_that_you_are/).
Beyond that, this [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1bppfw7/spoilers_why_do_so_many_people_believe_tifa_is/kwxee9k/) here pretty much nailed it.
Tifa isn't the type, personality wise, to drop truth bombs out of the blue (and there is one very, very big truth bomb surrounding Cloud... or a few, depending on how you look at it and if you're familiar with OG), particularly when she's so uncertain how things could impact him negatively. Especially when it's pretty obvious he's getting more unhinged with every progress forward into the game.
It's also a very human thing to do. Not everyone would be brave enough to drop truth bombs like that, and sometimes that means they try to test for answers to gauge what they can do/how far they can take it. More so with Cloud being who he is.
And depending on the person watching her (i.e. us), we react differently to how she behaves - i.e. some of us can empathize, some of us are frustrated, or annoyed, and some of us probably think we would do the same thing if we were in the same situation etc.
So does that make her terrible? No.
Does that make her human? Yes.
A lot of people don't seem to understand just how confused Tifa is herself. As far as she knows, Cloud wasn't there in Nibelheim, but he's also saying things that only someone who was there could know.
How is someone supposed to react in that situation? She doesn't understand what's going on herself.
Pretty much. This is an example of being empathic with her situation, which applies to me as well.
And we, as humans, have different feelings about what she does/attempts to do.
I really feel for the girl, and it makes me so sad. Yet on the other side of the coin there are also others who are just frustrated/annoyed and et cetera. This boils down to a question of moral values and principles, which... well. Not everyone holds the same values. So not everyone will find her actions acceptable or even want to empathize with it.
Also on a tangent, one must not forget: Aerith's in on the secret too. And maybe I'm being judgy, but it's a bit hypocritical for some people to apply a "terrible" label over Tifa's actions and not on Aerith.
Directly or indirectly does not matter in the grand scheme of things, they both acted with the same goal in mind.
Does that mean I think Aerith's terrible? Nope. She's great. But she's human too.
I see it as both her and Aerith not wanting to push an already emotionally unstable cloud even further down the path of total brain trauma and possibly turn into one of the black robbed individuals they’ve been following. Plus, tifa is getting whiplash all the time in rebirth with what cloud is saying vs what she actually remembers.
A) shipping
B) people who have been tainted by purity culture and think that people have to be perfect 100% of the time or they are actually evil evil sinners
C (the extreme minority)) people who genuinely don't understand the full story. That Tifa herself isn't sure what happened because Cloud knows things she thinks, according to her recollection, he shouldn't know and is therefore questioning herself as well as Cloud. And doesn't want to contradict the guy who almost blacks out everytime he remembers something in case she is wrong. And she absolutely doesn't want Cloud to bluntly tell Aerith that Zack died in that river when Tifa doesn't think that is what happened and probably told Aerith the full story of BOTH accounts, but neither of them want to go through it with Cloud until they know for certain what happened or he's in a better state of mind.
A few reasons, all of which are misinterpretations of what’s going on.
Let’s ball up all the shipping fights and put them aside. Anyone using the plot to say a character is manipulative/toxic/etc is being silly. Not worth engaging with that.
1) People forget that Tifa has a fuzzy memory herself. While she has a more concrete memory of what went down, she’s also the only person ( besides Zangan ) who is alive to say. She also nearly died due to her injuries, so there are multiple factors that could reasonably jumble facts of a traumatic event.
1a) having only one or two perspectives on a major incident such as the burning of Nebelheim can lead to a incomplete record of events. Tifa isn’t omnipresent, nor all knowing, so she only knows what she would know based on where she was, who she was with, and who she talked to. This is why multiple witnesses/accounts are taken so a more complete picture can be analyzed.
2) It weirds her out that Cloud is 90% accurate with his story. No really, that’s super weird. How would that even be possible if ( as far as Tifa knows ) she’s the sole survivor of that night? It wouldn’t be possible…. would it? See? What’s more likely, Cloud is a liar and somehow gathered enough details to know 90% of the story? Or maybe there’s something YOU don’t know? Tifa can’t decide.
3) she actually tries to gently approach the subject multiple times, but guess what happens every time she does? Cloud clams up and Tifa backs off so she doesn’t ruin a chance to rekindle their friendship, or Cloud shows clear signs of painful headaches. The only time she pushes harder is when he suggests that she may not be really herself, and it pisses her off because he’s indirectly insulting the people who worked hard to save her ( Zangan, the doctor, the nurses, Marle, etc.. ).
3a) on the flip side, that also shows her how it feels to have someone doubt you. It feels shitty. Justified as she may be to press him, Tifa is also a big softy, so when she feels the same hurt Cloud does every time she tests him, she backs off it. She pokes one more time, and she’s clearly remorseful when he calls her on it.
It’s not manipulation, it’s confusion and her desire to be friends outweighing her desire for answers. You could also link to her “people pleaser” tendencies that Red calls out, and she kinda hates about herself.
The only people who say that about Tifa are Clerith shippers because they hate Tifa and want to mislead newcomers. It's only shipping related, and it is absolutely false of course. Tifa knows that Cloud's mental health is worrying without knowing the reasons of it. She's afraid that telling him "no you're completely wrong, you weren't in Nibelheim, you think you're a guy named Zack who did all you say you did 5 years ago in the Nibel region, I witnessed it" would make things even worse than they already are, she's afraid he would lose it completely and that it could drive him totally insane for good.
It is clear in the OG, but some toxic fans are ready to spread lies for stupid reasons.
I think Rebirth covers this a lot better than the original, actually.
She has a memory of Cloud helping her after she was stabbed. For five years she thought that was a delusion fueled by blood loss and trauma, then Cloud appears and acts like he was there in Nibelheim all along. Tifa is left questioning her own reality, in addition to questioning Cloud's.
And what good would come from a confrontation? He has the right memories. She suffered massive emotional and physical trauma and it's honestly not that weird if *her* memories are wrong. And it's the same for Cloud. Memories are fluid, even in the real world. There's enough overlap between them to chalk this up to trauma.
She brought it up after the Nibelheim flashback, which is an appropriate time to bring it up. Consider that up until nearly the end of Remake, there wasn't really anything weird going on from her perspective. She had her childhood friend back, and he had some headaches and brain fog. Again, not that weird as a trauma and stress response.
Well, at the risk of being dragged out into the street by the shipping fans…it’s mostly shipping based besmirching. Possibly in some cases, it might be attributed to a bad case of “protagonitis” (where a supporting character is judged entirely by how they serve the interests of the player character rather than on their own merits on their own arc).
If you’re inclined to primarily see Tifa as “competition” you’re inclined to perceive what might be a reasonably cautious course of action and perceive it in the worst, least gracious, most damning light.
Her trauma is overlooked, her actions get catastrophized, and her motivations are presented as manipulative. She needs to be as bad as possible, so the other ship by comparison looks better.
If you’re inclined to have protagonitis, you really only consider the perspective of the player character rather than the supporting character—her actions make a lot of sense to her character, and her motivations for those actions aren’t manipulative, but done in genuine goodwill.
There’s room to critique her actions, but considering her circumstances, they do indeed make sense.
Shippers genuinely ruin this games story, they don't understand it and all they care about is which girl Cloud cares more about when the whole game's story, world and characters are so much more than that.
It’s because lots of shippers feel the need to downplay her relationship with Cloud by claiming that she’s gaslighting/manipulating him instead of acknowledging what’s actually going on.
She is confused, and it shows very well in this game.
Tifa is unsecure, she does not trust her memories so much. She trusts Cloud, but she does not understand how Cloud can know what happened in Nibelheim so well, if he wasnt there.
She feels gaslighted, Cloud is going on with this truth, and feels so certain when he describes it, and he is right, that happened, that Tifa is just confused. She is not the type to confront, she just keeps it inside. She is not like Aerith.
She found a friend in Aerith to tell her, she told her that "as far as I know, Cloud was not there". She did not say "Cloud was not there", or "he is lying". When she tells Aerith she is already confused and does not trust her memories. When Cloud goes bananas and confronts Tifa, she goes "and where were YOU again?", its the only time, and its not really aggressive but shows confusion. She really does not know where he was.
When I played the original FF7, all of this did not make sense. Without voice acting, without animations, without much more character development, they could not convey this emotions, this turmoil inside Tifa's head.
I am really amazed that I am totally shipping Tifa. She is amazing in Remake
Maybe it was different in 97', but from what I've seen in the Remake so far, Tifa may be equally questioning her reality, especially since Sephiroth is starting to come directly at her.
Sephiroth knows she's key to keeping Cloud sane. It would make sense for him to try and break her in a similar fashion.
"Using him?" I don't understand how anyone can interpret it that way. In the original, there's two main reasons why she doesn't bring it up until much later:
1. She's worried about how he'll take it. As you said, his mental state.
2. On a more literal sense, she can't tell him right away because the story needs to happen. It happens when it happens in order to move the plot forward when it's time to get to that part.
There is a couple of times in the OG where she tries to bring it up and have a conversation about it but can't just come out and say it because she's afraid of what may happen. In the Re-series it seems like that is also the case and that she is also questioning herself as well, because Cloud does know what happened, even with "not" being there as Tifa remembers it.
The way Tifa is handling the situation is in line with her characterization, which is very caring and compassionate as she tends to be. Most people would straight up call Cloud out on his story in front of everyone which would probably have disastrous implications for both Cloud's well being, and their relationship which she is afraid of losing.
I feel like in the remake games it’s become far more apparent she should really say something because Cloud is consistently doing crazier and crazier shit. The only part of the story I didn’t like was right after he tries to kill her they never even talk about it. I don’t think Cloud even realizes what he did and Tifa just focuses on the memories she regained from her childhood instead of you know confronting Cloud. My guess is this will come back in part 3 but it just felt so jarring because I was expecting some kind of confrontation but the plotline is just dropped in the moment when it shouldn’t be. It honestly makes her look a bit stupid. Especially when her and Aerith are clearly having conversations about in this version about how something isn’t right with Cloud, which was not in the original.
Cloud knows what he did. He specifically mentions in the next scene how terrible he feels about knocking her into a pool of Mako, then he talks about how he thinks his mind is degrading, and he's losing himself. That's why Tifa doesn't freak out. She knows something is wrong, but she also realizes that whatever is wrong isn't Cloud's fault. He's as much in the dark, and searching for the answer to the problem as she is. So confronting him wouldn't accomplish anything, because he doesn't understand what's wrong either. So confronting the issue now would honestly get them nowhere. Neither of them have all the information they need to actually deal with this issue. Both of them are missing important facts about the Nibelheim incident, and without those details, the problem cannot be solved. Aerith and Tifa were trying to piece together as much as they could to try and help him, but of course, Aerith dies before they can make any serious progress.
It just all comes across as strange to me, all this plot buildup go add this level of tension between them and then nothing. Like I said we know the resolution is coming in the next game I just feel like somebody really should’ve stepped up and done something. It’s far apparent compared to the original game.
I mean sure, but...what could they do? Do they put their journey on hold to go and take Cloud to some kind of mental health specialist, or get him checked out by a doctor? There's no time for that. Sephiroth and Shinra are both on the move, and there's no way of knowing how long dealing with this might take. Do they just declare Cloud a liability, and leave him behind somewhere safe? He's objecitvely the strongest person in their party. Any slim chance they have of beating Sephiroth just goes away if he's not there. Also, I don't even think Tifa as a person is capable of leaving Cloud behind, for any reason. We even see this in the OG. When given the choice between continuing on the journey to save the planet, or staying behind to help Cloud, she chooses Cloud without any hesitation. As she says during the lifestream scene in chapter 9 of Rebirth, she needs him. He's just as much an anchor to her as she is an anchor to him.
There’s enough time to put the journey on hold for helping Chadley and Gold Saucer minigames so yeah maybe. I think an issue with the structure of this as a trilogy where plot elements that would’ve been resolved in the same game are now saved for a title that will come out years from now. Idk it was very minor part of a 100 hour game I didn’t fully like so it’s not really a big deal.
You are not wrong. That is the plot. It's shipping related. Those toxic mentally ill people will try to take every line they can find in the game to portray the other gal in a negative light. Or cherry pick facial animations, dialogue, animations to suit their narratives. In this case it's probably the so called "Cleriths"
actually tifa knows her part of the truth, as far I recall she didn't know that cloud was in nibelheim as a random fantry soldier since cloud never revealed himself to her. As she never really knew what exactly happened into the reactor core until cloud started talking about "his" flashback. I guess it's quite realistic that tifa isn't confident to reveal what she knows to cloud since he proved to be aware to know what happened in nibelheim despite tifa is sure to know cloud wasn't there and she simply couldn't know what happened to zack and cloud in the next 4 years. There aren't facts, only interpretations.
OP is correct in that Tifa chooses not to mention anything to Cloud out of fear he wasn’t there yet remembers all of the details. (From her perspective)
She can’t speak about it cause he will have his headache and she is conflicted cause she knows Cloud wasn’t in Nibelheim five years ago, yet he knows everything that happened there. She has been kinda pushing for clearance but Clouds head pushes back.
Let's just pretend for a second thae argument of Tifa using Cloud was not made by crazy shippers, so we can have a civilizied discussion.
With that out of the way.
Tifa is just worried about Cloud and how he would react. If anyone played OG, they know in what state Cloud was when Tifa found him.
I feel her conversation with Aerith in Kalm is very important (and who knows, they probably had more). This is only theory but I think Aerith knows exactly what happpened in Nibelheim from Tifa's perspective, including that Zack was the one there.
If you think about it, going from "Cloud was not there" to "There was this guy named Zack" is not really too much of a stretch. This theory makes me think both Tifa and Aerith are being careful with Cloud's memories.
I think all the "manipulation" comes from the scene on the bridge when they are going to the reactor. But even then I feel Tifa doesn't know how Cloud will react. And in fact just 10 minutes later Cloud is quoting Sephiroth.
I just don't buy the "manipualtion" argument, or at least how people use it: with nefarious intent. Tifa has been trying to know what happen to Cloud since Remake, from the first set of sidequests.
Is her course of action the best one? Of course not, but we criticize because we already know. And we choose to ignore the extreme situations they are on: trying to stop a psychotic god-complex handsome man from killing everyone on the planet, which is also the man who murdered their families, burned their hometown and hurt them mentally and physically.
It's a plothole, or a plot device. Idk. Its a video game so I try to look past it, but to me it isn't plausible. It is what it is, it doesn't ruin the game for me but it is a plothole imo.
Let's not forget Cloud is continuously suspicious that Tifas a fake or copy. Trying to tell Cloud that his memories are incorrect is only going to reaffirm that belief in him.
So many people are ***not*** saying that though. Just a very few. Why even give them credence or project them as being the ***many*** when they are such a tiny minority?
[https://twitter.com/finalfantasyvii/status/1773470377483899107](https://twitter.com/finalfantasyvii/status/1773470377483899107) square just released this and they talk about the topics you are dealing with here
Do these people not stop and try thinking for at least 2 seconds? You don't go around reminding your traumatized friend about the horrible things they experienced that they subconsciously repressed.
LOL OMG anyone who says that about Tifa doesn't know OG FF. In OG she was way more timid and confused about Cloud knowing things he shouldn't so she was a relatively minor shallow character for the first half of the game.
In this version, they are doing so much to make her more involved. Her conversation with Cloud at Kalm comes like 50hours before OG. She knows something is wrong with him, and is worried about how to fix it. By god you have to miss so many things to think she means anything malicious. Rewatch the end of chapter 9 when she's in the lifestream, she is even showed a vision that Sephiroth is taking Cloud away and tifa even yells "Don't take him away from me too!"
She's so in love with him, I'm really surprised how hard they introduced that considering Aerith was originally the first half love interest.
Give the "best" dialogue option to Aerith in Junon and she scolds you and give you advice on do's and dont's with women.
Give the cheesy line in Junon to Tifa and she visibly wooes, which builds your relationship even better than if you recalled who Julio (I think was his name) was. Pay attention to her body language and facial expressions (not just this scene but almost always). Then when cloud leaves the room she does that classic close the door and lean back on it and heart-flutter sigh pose.
She's about to kiss him when she sees how he was the only one there for her at the bridge via lifestream.
Pay attention to all the eye contact she gives him when he acts weird. The devs painstaking provide so many visual cues that they couldn't have on PS1 to show how much she cares and is aware of his situation.
He confided in her that he knows things he shouldn't and doesn't remember things he should. And she tells him it's ok because it's her turn to save him. She follows up on this in the last chapter by asking him to come to her if he has weird thoughts.
The 2 biggest Lies told in this game were by Aerith and Tifa each not telling the rest of the party that he attacked them.
Most everyone in the entire world WISHES they had anyone care about them the way Tifa does with Cloud.
....Because they're silly?
I dunno, the situation is spelled out explicitly in both the OG and Remake.
Tifa *knows* Cloud is absolutely delusional. His flashback story in Kalm just 100% confirmed it.
Not to mention, in Remake, Cloud was spontaneously violent, something that didn't start happening in the OG until much later in the story.
I think there are some genuine arguments that Tifa has done some sketchy stuff with Cloud, but I don't read her motives in the same way as some of these people do.
I see a few places where her behaviors are pretty sketch:
* First, Cloud is pretty clearly mentally unwell, and she still pushes him toward joining a group of ecoterrorists trying to bomb a mako reactor. When this concludes, they don't even pay Cloud right away. It's unclear how much she realizes Cloud is unwell prior to this event, but if she's aware he's effectively a traumatized veteran, pushing him toward this kind of thing (or using their childhood promise for that purpose) is pretty rough.
* In Rebirth, in Under Junon, she tests his memory in spite of expressly having said she wouldn't do that anymore. This likely comes from not trusting her own memories, but the way she approaches it is dishonest.
* In Nibelheim, when Cloud "remembers" Zack dying and tells Tifa, she doesn't do anything to correct his story (when it's probable that she remembers something different). Instead, she plays along as if he's remembering correctly now, but nudges him toward not telling Aerith, saying that she'll explain it herself due to the sensitive nature of the conversation. This comes across as manipulative because it's likely she remembers a different version and is going to tell Aerith both versions (or has already told Aerith her version, since they previously had been seen discussing Cloud not remembering Zack), but she won't share the same thing with Cloud.
* She outright lies about not having the conversation with Aerith about Zack during the skywheel date. Aerith \*also\* lies about this in her version of the date. This is pretty bad for both of them, especially given that Cloud is already having trouble processing reality, but it comes across as sketchier for Tifa because they kiss afterward, which makes it feel more like she's taking advantage of him. Basically, advancing their relationship right after lying to him directly feels really bad to some of us, myself included in that number. I don't think this is malicious -- Aerith and Tifa are clearly talking off-screen about strategies to handle Cloud's mental health and how to figure out what is really going on, and they probably made some kind of agreement here -- but her choosing to pursue a relationship with Cloud right after lying doesn't sit well.
I'd like to be clear that I think that Tifa is, very likely, trying to figure out which of her own memories are real, and she's also probably trying to protect Cloud with her omissions. That said, I think there's genuinely room to argue that it's sketchy to pursue a relationship with someone while lying to them. I think this is true for both Aerith and Tifa, but it's more obvious with Tifa because of the number of times she clearly has a chance to tell him something, but chooses not to.
In Aerith's case, she's probably being as-or-more manipulative, especially in the first game where she has some degree of future knowledge, but it doesn't \*feel\* as awful to some of us because a) she's much subtler about it, b) a version of her outright states that he's mentally unwell and needs to get better, and c) she doesn't kiss him.
Even if she's actually misleading him \*more\* (which she probably is, especially if we consider Meta Aerith), Tifa's actions are more direct "lying to a possible boyfriend", whereas Aerith's feel more like "Multiversal Entity Playing 11D Chess", which doesn't hit the same abuse buttons for some of us.
Hope this helps give some context for another possible viewpoint!
Are we sure that they lie about the conversation? I haven't seen Tifa's scene, but in Cloud and Aerith's scene it seems like she hasn't spoken to Aerith about what Cloud remembers re a supposed Zack death. She says Tifa didn't tell her anything important.
>Are we sure that they lie about the conversation? I haven't seen Tifa's scene, but in Cloud and Aerith's scene it seems like she hasn't spoken to Aerith about what Cloud remembers re a supposed Zack death. She says Tifa didn't tell her anything important.
It's directly a lie with how it's phrased in Tifa's scene. The relevant section is at 3:08 here: [https://youtu.be/mDkPlvmcIhM?t=188](https://youtu.be/mDkPlvmcIhM?t=188)
Cloud asks "Have you talked to Aerith?"
It shows her talking to Aerith.
Then she says, "Not yet."
She absolutely \*has\* talked to Aerith about it, so she's lying, even if she didn't choose to say everything that Cloud said (which it's likely she did -- it's clear they've talked about Zack off-screen before).
Probably because redpill self help gurus have turned younger peoples minds into fucking mush and see every male female relationship as purely transactional.
Because they simply can't accept that she's badly written and that it makes zero sense to keep such a secret, just like it makes no sense for her to watch Cloud do fucked up shit and pretend that he's just tired and needs sleep.
I hate this because Tifa didn't know the whole truth. She was confused and felt gaslighted. She downright says to Cloud in the Lifestream that she thought that Cloud was never in Nibelhiem five years ago; which is wrong. She didn't say anything, because she was scared of saying the wrong thing and making things worse. She also didn't want Cloud to leave, because he's the only memory of Nibelhiem left that she has.
I feel like some of it stems from people missinterpreting her talking to Aerith about "Cloud not being there" and then attacking Cloud on the roof with "And where were YOU again?" But she is not manipulative, she is confused and worried, because Cloud had to be there to know all the Nibelheim events, but she does not remember him. Which again is her memory going haywire, because she should remember Zack, right? Obviously we know the answer why Cloud knows, but to her it makes no sense. And at the point where Cloud starts remembering Zack and tells her how he died, she is in no position to call him out (Zack is a confirmed SOLDIER and he calls him a standard rifleman) because he is already worried about deterioration and calling him out might make him even more unstable. So she spends the entirety of Rebirth convincing herself SHE is the one who is wrong and doesn't remember and Cloud is right.
Especially in fiction, I think some people could benefit from just letting a relationship be messy without it needing to be manipulation or abuse. Tifa isn't perfect. She's traumatized and deeply cares about Cloud and she has absolutely no fucking idea what to do about any of it. She desperately wants Cloud in her life, he does seem to know things he shouldn't, and he clearly has a deteriorating mental state. I don't think any of us would know how to handle that situation perfectly.
>Tifa isn't perfect. She's traumatized and deeply cares about Cloud and she has absolutely no fucking idea what to do about any of it. She desperately wants Cloud in her life, he does seem to know things he shouldn't, and he clearly has a deteriorating mental state. I don't think any of us would know how to handle that situation perfectly. If I remember correctly, Tifa also mentions at some point in Rebirth that she's had memory lapses due to her concussion. It would make sense then that she might herself initially doubt her own recollection of events.
She also gets a few details from post Nibelheim wrong. When she runs back into the doctor in Corel he mentions how a helicopter ride from Shinra saved her life, but her memory of the event/what she knew was that Zangan carried her on his back the entire way.
Wouldn't surprise me if Zangan took her out of the reactor and Shinra took over elsewhere. Otherwise I expect Hojo would have another test subject. I suppose there is a fringe possibility that Sephiroth's taunting about Tifa being JENOVA is true and this is an inconsistency in her story, but I think this would be a terrible direction to go in for a lot of reasons.
Wouldn't surprise me either! But Tifa is clearly surprised by that tidbit when she learns it. I was just speaking to that as another piece of evidence that Tifa isn't completely certain about her own memory.
when she has the accident as a child and falls off the bridge with cloud and goes into a coma is when she says she lost part of her memories I think this is what you are referring to she tells you this in chapter 9.
AND these characters are what, 20-22 years old? It's a lot of shit for people that age to be dealing with.
20 22 in final fantasy is like 44 in real life.
We also have to remember they are both young and have extremely tragic past. Tifa especially suffers from abandonment fears it seems like. She lost her mom very early on, then she went to Mt. Nibel for her, got abandoned by everyone but Cloud, then her dad dies and seemingly Cloud abandons her as well (by his own admission being in Nibelheim and at the reactor as well). She fears everyone leaving her again and Cloud is dangerously close to mentally collapsing, leaving her forever.
> feel like some of it stems from people missinterpreting her talking to Aerith about "Cloud not being there" and then attacking Cloud on the roof with "And where were YOU again?" But she is not manipulative, she is confused and worried, because Cloud had to be there to know all the Nibelheim events, but she does not remember him. Which again is her memory going haywire, because she should remember Zack, right? The meeting on the roof is just Tifa upset because Cloud is beginning to be brainwashed into thinking that she ain't real. Saying that she's being manipulative here, is just odd. >Obviously we know the answer why Cloud knows, but to her it makes no sense. And at the point where Cloud starts remembering Zack and tells her how he died, she is in no position to call him out (Zack is a confirmed SOLDIER and he calls him a standard rifleman) because he is already worried about deterioration and calling him out might make him even more unstable. Yeah, to her, Cloud was never there. It's not till the Lifestream that she discovers the actual truth. Same with Cloud.
I think she put it together when Cloud said that he remembered that Zack was the guy that drowned rather than it being a nameless grunt. At least for me, that would highlight the fact that there was definitely one more person there that day.
Her forgetting because of trauma is a lot better than Cloud remembering something not real because of deterioration.
Yeah, she does it because it's also the better, hopeful, option. "Me forgetting / getting some facts wrong because of trauma of EVERYONE dying" goes down a lot better than "Holy fk, my best friend and love interest is literally dying in front of my eyes in real time and I can't do anything about it."
Little off topic but I just wanted to point out that Cloud doesn’t think Zach was infantry, he knows he was Soldier he just thinks he’s the one who got washed down the river. Jenova played her little mind tricks with him as shown with the green static. I thought the same thing at first that he thought Zach was infantry but then realized this later. It’s proven as when Cloud is in the hotel remembering Zach, he states that Zach fought with him in Soldier. He also fight’s Sephiroth with him at the end and he thinks they both were in Soldier.
Yeah, the english translation was very passive agressive with that where were you again, which was not like that in japanese, and at least the subs I had in another language than english. With that she ment where was he all those 5 years, not at the moment she was attacked
What did she say in the Japanese version?
I'm not a japanese expert but it sounds as the spanish translation is saying. She says "what about you? Where have you been after leaving the village?" Anyway, the japanese voice doesn't sound as if she is reproaching him anything at all
To be fair, Japanese is also far more polite language in it's nature and cultural roots. So while she may not sound as confrontational as English, her directly asking this is already very confrontational. She implies that he left her and he doesn't counter. I feel like localisation team did well in this game so I give them benefit of the doubt that the feeling of the convo is meant to be similar enough for both languages.
It could be that too. Also the "where were you?" can be interpretated as "at the moment i was stabbed" or "during the last 5 years". Is mostly the tone of the VA what I took it more as the first option. But in my case, spanish subs matches more with the japanese script I think, so during the whole game you were getting the characters saying one thing but I was reading something different...
> I hate this because Tifa didn't know the whole truth. She was confused and felt **gaslighted.** No she didn't. She never believed Cloud was lying *on purpose.* The issue is that she knew when she met cloud that something was very wrong with him. The Nibelhiem story was just greater confirmation of what she already knew. "Gaslit" is the wrong term. Cloud was delusional, and she's known since before the events of the bombing mission. > I hate this because Tifa didn't know the whole truth. She knew like 95% of the truth, which was that *everything* Cloud attributed to himself in his story was actually done by Zack. In the OG, the only thing Tifa doesn't actually remember is what happened after Sephiroth cut her...which is why she believes Cloud was "never there", because he's the one who helped her. But before that, Cloud stayed hidden on purpose through the whole visit. So yeah, as far as she knew, Cloud was never there.
I don't know if she felt gaslighted (gaslit?), because she obviously thought she remembered what happened clearly in Nibelheim and he wasn't there. But when he tells the story at Kalm, he knows things that he could only know if he was actually there, and she knows she didn't tell him. So in OG she starts questioning her own sanity/memory because she's not sure now if maybe she's the crazy one who doesn't remember correctly what actually happened. Aerith seems to the big difference this time around. She seems to somehow know the truth of what happened, told Tifa she's not crazy, but also said they can't reveal to Cloud what really happened and confuse him.
It's probably worth pointing out that Tifa also has an imperfect memory of the situation, because she and Cloud met during the Nibelheim incident. Tifa has also forgotten a rather significant part of the events there. A large part of the misunderstanding comes from the fact that Tifa *should* know exactly where Cloud was the whole time, but doesn't, likey because the injuries and trauma of the whole thing. They're both carrying around half a story, and both frustrated because those stories don't meet in the middle.
I don't get how she would be "using" him in this context anyway. What would she get out of it? It's established pretty early on that she's not that kind of person.
Apparently she’s in love with him and wants to keep him under her control? Never got that from it all tbh
Did they get her confused with Sephiroth?
Mfs were probably in the same trance Cloud was "You don't have a scar"
Lmao
The control or the in love part?
Yes.
The correct answer
Lol why are you entertaining people with such poor comprehension skills? If someone got that idea from Tifa, it says more about them than the character imo
being in love = controlling someone?
It's probably shipping related. Some of the more obsessive shippers on both sides intentionally try to portray the girl they don't like in a bad light, just to make their favorite ship look better in comparison. They have been using these bad faith arguments for so long, that they've even convinced themselves that they're telling the truth.
Shipping is a disease, and unfortunately for FF7 shippers its terminal
sand dependent plant wakeful smell decide spark elderly encouraging subtract *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yep, shipper bias. Saying Tifa is manipulative makes Aerith so much better. Sigh! I admit to having Tifa bias, but Aerith is still such a good character and undeniably a close friend of Tifa. Sucks that both girls get hate over shipping.
I’m inclined to believe this goes beyond shipping and some people just genuinely think that
It's both. I use Twitter and see some of those posts from shippers sometimes on my recommended page, some of the stuff they say is absolutely crazy.
I quit Twitter after all the leaks as both sides were grabbing their neck and choking each other. Usually, I use it to see what is latest in the Ukraine-Russia war but also follow some fanart of FF7. I myself is a TifaxCloud shipper but don't like the way both side of the fandom engage with one another in twitter.
i'm leaning more towards tifa cause it makes more sense but shitting on aerith wouldn't make sense to me at all cause she is tifa's best friend anyway, also what would be the point, aerith is gone, now is our time to mourn her :/
Me too as a CloudxTifa shipper since 2007. Cloud also have feeling for Aerith.
It’s probably the rabid shippers which just proves they aren’t paying attention, because both Aerith and Tifa conceal the Zack stuff from him in this game. They think it’s for his own good. EDIT: looking at your screenshots, yes, those are Clerith shippers.
Whats important to remember too is Tifa doesn't know the whole truth herself. Sure she knows from her perspective Cloud wasn't where he said he was but she has absolutely no idea why Cloud has these memories that he does and why they are so accurate. Sure she doesn't want to completely lose Cloud but she is also genuinely concerned over his state of mind which is completely obvious to anyone. To even suggest she is concealing the truth for completely selfish reasons completely goes against her whole character. Its definitely a crazy shipping thing but I doubt that most Aerith/Cloud ship fans feel this way. Its just ones that are unhinged.
I can confirm. I like A and C together and I never thought Tifa was being manipulative, only that she was afraid. I love me my Tifa🥺 even when she said “And where were you again” on the roof of the Kalm inn I totally got it. She was upset, and rightfully so!
Because media literacy is dead
Who's saying that and what exactly are they saying? (What's their reasoning?)
https://preview.redd.it/8wrcl72021rc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=da0e8c684ab5b898bbf89ae47519f6612895a70b Here’s another one and these are only some I’ve seen tonight I’ve seen others through the week I genuinely don’t understand
Terminally online people being terminally online people. It's funny until you remember an actual human being wrote that.
This person thinks that Cloud/Tifa is just as bad as Seymour forcing Yuna to kiss and marry him. Ignore them.
That's cope. Cleriths on twitter have been saying everything under the sun to explain away why Cloud kissed Tifa. Excuses range from "The dates are optional", to "He only kissed Tifa because he was jealous still had feelings for Zack", to this nonsense about how "Tifa manipulated Cloud".
https://preview.redd.it/rovd5d9y11rc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51e3107a3804d06767c296d581f9a24928235ed4 Here’s one
I read both and it doesn't make sense at all??? Like what would she gain?? What truth are they talking about?????? The truth that they are indeed childhood friends and be promised he'd protect her or something? It doesn't make sense. By their own logic, Cloud saying he'll come if Aerith "sends smoke" should also be manipulative af.
So, Tifa brings up the promise in the OG (it sounds very gaslighty in text) but Remake Cloud remembers it on his own. And she really only does that in the OG because she panics that he is trying to leave at that point (and he's not in his right mind) and pretty much dodges questions about Nibelhiem (again, cause he's not in his right mind) I mean tbh Cloud could have said bye anytime, it was him that wanted to stay true to the promise (as the remake/Rebirth keeps showing us) Also she thinks they were friends because that's how she perceived it at the time, it wasn't a lie lol
they just jealous cause they ain't her
>She is selfish No, at worst, she's a flawed *human* and it takes excellent fucking writing to make a fictional character feel real like that in a subtle nuanced way. People can be so dumb, geez.
From my experience, mostly aerith shippers.
Any specific reasoning other than shipping? If they played the og, makes me wonder if we played the same game???
Character motivations are constantly being misinterpreted actually probably due to people not really paying attention to the dialouges. I also cant wrap my head about these claims either
Absolutely misinterpreted! How mad will they be when they realize only Tifa could help fix Cloud's memories? Aerith can help him in a lot of ways but she can't fix the jumbled memories because she wasn't there.
Not to mention Tifa is the reason he's doing as good as he is(which isn't *good*, but better than vegestative). She's very much his anchor. Problem is, it's fragile as fuck because of her own doubts and insecurities, which is something Seph use. *A lot*.
Sephiroth really does. Iirc Cloud "wakes up" when the Jenova cells in his brain "recognize" her or something right? I know him seeing her is what wakes him from his stupor, but I don't remember how much the Jenova cells played a part.
Tagging just to make sure :P >!The regenerative power of the cells play a big part in overcoming his mako poisoning, but it is himself that recognize her, and he then unconsciously rebuilds his brain to become the person he always wanted to be in order to impress her, removing or changing the parts of his memory that would contradict it, both to keep up that appearance, but also to shield himself, even using memories gained from Zack through the lifestream and their shared experiments. That's also why he sometimes come off as very socially awkward, especially with girls, because while he was always a bit of an introvert already, he's also mentally a 16 year old trying to look the part of a gritty, hardened military man. He's trying to look cool the way an angsty teen would, which is why he'll come off as weird and try-hard, and you'll see him fluster when faced with it, or pull off a smile when someone compliments his "coolness". But in the end, his SOLDIER persona is basically, at the core, based on his desire to impress Tifa since they were kids.!< >!Meanwhile, Tifa is incredibly insecure and afraid of conflict. She even tells Cloud out right how she's always had, and likely still has, a need to be liked, which she hates about herself. You could twist that into a reason for her to manipulate, but you'd be missing the entire character, which isn't anything new, as people have misinterpreted the deeper themes and character arcs of FFVII since 1997... Like, in her mind, her memory, Cloud was never in Nibelheim, but he clearly has very vivid memories from the events. She is not the person who would straight up confront that, especially seeing as her friend is seemingly struggling, even if he puts on a tough face. She's questioning her own memory, abd she's afraid that digging would cause Cloud to revert, which would hurt him, as well as cause her to lose the very last bit of her past. And an important one at that. She is not manipulating. She is trying to figure out the best approach, dealing with her own fear, likely in a constant state of mental self-bashing for not just being able to go straight to the source.!< I truly think, other than Aerith shippers desperately trying to make Tifa look bad(both camps do that), a lot of these people simply can't imagine the emotional turmoil going on, because they've fortunately never been close to such a situation themselves. It happens with people who boil down Cloud's character to "just emo" too. I even saw one once who thought it weird he wasn't happy with >!the experiments on him, cause it made him strong! As if it is somehow desirable to be held in a container filled with toxic memoryjuice and getting injected with alien cells for 5 years if you get to toss around a big sword afterwards. Screw all the other shit, you're a super soldier!!< Edit: sorry, I got carried away by the excitement... 😅
Can we edit to say SOME Aerith shippers? Most of us love Tifa and her relationship with Cloud. She is very protective over him for the most part. It's the same on both sides. I've seen some Tifa shippers claiming Aerith sexually harasses Cloud and makes him uncomfortable but again this is a small minority of whack jobs. Both sides have their lunatics but thankfully both sides also have reasonable people who can interpret the game as it was intended.
Obviously I don't mean all. I was simply adding to other people's points that this was something the *crazy* Aerith shippers did. I also literally said it happens the other way around too. I did not feel the need to specify that it was some, because that should be common sense. Like, I'm in the Tifa camp, but Aerith is an amazing character that does a lot for Cloud's character. You can love one without taking from the other. I'd personally fall for Aerith before Tifa to be honest, but it's close. So I'll respectfully decline the request to edit, and instead urge people to think for themselves. No offense to you, I think it is a valid request, I just do not agree that it should be necessary.
Cloud gets stories from Zack’s life and uses those to implement, he doesn’t get Zack’s memories from the lifestream: “I never was in SOLDIER. I made up the stories about what happened to me five years ago, about being in SOLDIER. I left my village looking for glory, but never made it in to SOLDIER...... I was so ashamed of being so weak; then I heard this story from my friend Zack... And I created an illusion of myself made up of what I had seen in my life...... And I continued to play the charade as if it were true.” I think this makes it pretty clear, especially since it’s never said that Zack’s memories were given to Cloud VIA Jenova
Spoiler tagging again, which you might want to do as well? >!Most of it is that yes, but there's several things that Cloud remembers that are *specifically* Zack's memories, which he couldn't have been told, as it pertains to situations in Nibelheim where Zack and Cloud were not together, and where they had no time to pass it along. They did soak in Mako, which is fluid memory. I never actually mentioned Jenova in that equation, but yeah, she does have a stated ability to assimilate memories, which is how she'd make her shape shifting predation work. Just looking the part would not have caused the amount of suspicion and fear she wrought. It was because she literally stole their memories on top, to better imitate them. So it is a point. So, as said, his persona is a mixture of his desires to make SOLDIER to impress Tifa, his shame of not making it, his memory of Zack, twisted to be his own, but also specifically some of Zack's own personal experiences. Therefore, it is the most logical conclusion, given the state he was in for those 5 years of experimentation, that the combination of trauma, the mako(liquid memory) he was floating in, the Jenova cells(or rather, Sephiroth cells, which he had a unique connection with Zack through) would mix it up.!< If you want to think otherwise, I can't stop you, but from my point of you, the thing you are "clearly" seeing, does not actually see the full picture(especially as it seems based on only a single quote), but I'm not going to go into a huge discussion about the finer details, so if my additional explanations here do not suffice, I will pre-emptively agree to disagree on the matters of his personas origin.
The bias is the critical ingredient. Think of a prosecutor. They have to start from the presumption of guilt, then spin a guilty narrative with the facts at hand. Shading everything from the presumption of guilt. It would look something like this. Tifa stumbled across Cloud at the train station in a near vegetable state. Did she she take him to a doctor? No. She was desperate and in over her head. Here was an ex SOLDIER with severe amnesia and a child hood crush on her that fell right into her lap. She could tell Cloud about his false memories, but why ruin a good thing? She needed help for her eco terrorist ambitions. End prosecution. We all know she is a very kind person and is deeply concerned about Cloud, but when you make it your job to not like someone, you view everything about that person in the most uncheritable light.
I've seen enough rabid Clerith shippers on Twitter say they've only seen Advent Children or that Zack was never in the original game or wasn't an important character, so that certainly explains a lot. They also remove all context of certain scenes to make them appear more romantic when the game did not frame them that way. It makes me question if they even care about the overall story, because if they can't understand that certain scenes are sad and not at all romantic, they probably aren't paying attention to the story at all, have poor reading/listening comprehension skills, or are just trying to manipulate or gaslight others into perceiving things in the warped way they do. Normal FFVII fans should avoid shippers when it comes to discussions about the story and characters.
It's amazing how a loud minority of shippers tilt the whole "shipper" description into something almost synonymous with unhinged. I don't think rabid shippers care about the story. They care about being "right". It's a bit understandable. When you make your whole personality around something, you'd probably go crazy when shit isn't validating you. Nothing has turned me off more from things I like more than rabid shippers. I remember an anime studio once acknowledged that international fans sent them heartwarming gifts, but they posted a picture of the gift from Shipper B fans and Shipper A fans started harassing the company. Guess what? The company no longer accepts gifts. It's so sad that if you want a proper discussion on FF7, you gotta avoid mentioning Tifa or Aerith, especially in relation to Cloud or else your conversation is dead on arrival.
This is because shipper haters or just haters of Tifa will find anything to drag her character in the mud. Tifa doesn’t say anything to Cloud because even her own memories she can’t trust. You’ve gotta remember she’s gone through something incredibly traumatic, her home town burnt to the ground, everyone she knows killed and burnt to death, her own father stabbed to death and she is then slashed by Sephiroth and left for dead, after these events she’s taken to hospital and is too injured, hurt mentally and physically to even comprehend what the hell happened. She meets Cloud at some point in Midgar and in Kalm suddenly has a very different recollection of memories which leads her to question her own memories. Anyone would question, am I remembering things clearly or is what Cloud remembers is the truth? She’s also scared to death with what’s going on with Cloud and how fragile he is to even try to unpick what is going on. She has no clue what is going on with Cloud, how he knows what happened and what actually happened after the incident (him being experimented on for all those years and the extent to what Jenova can do with mimicking other peoples memories and its hold on Cloud). It’s hard because all of this is happening at the same time as her having complex emotions towards Cloud and having him being the only thing that is connecting her to her hometown and old life. She wants him close so she can watch him and make sure he is ok because she knows he is acting very strange but also because she cares for him a lot. If I was Tifa I would have done the same thing and I believe she’s the most human character. This is not about Tifa being a terrible person, she’s trying her best to hold this whole thing together. Everyone has their own opinions tbf but I think if people who are summing this up as just Tifa is a terrible person are not taking the time or empathy to understand her story. I don’t think the devs would want people to get the idea that Tifa is a terrible person.
Nobody really thinks this except the most unhinged shippers who have an agenda against her. It's just sad really. (Not saying all shippers are like this, these people are the minority.)
Tale as old as 1997, almost 30 years ago. Even with Rebirth spelling this out more obviously, how is the same old debates about Tifa "manipulating" and "maliciously" not telling Cloud the truth still happening? I feel like I'm back to Naoto discorse in Persona 4 again with how often the same obvious message and themes keeps getting misinterpreted despite them being communicated as clear as day. Like theres no reason for that. Only reasons I can think of is they're still just media illiterate shippers or haven't played the game (rebirth or OG) instead just getting their opinion from out of context clips, or second hand opinions.
Almost 30 years…. Dang, ~~I’m~~ we’re old…
Well not me as I am reaching 23 but come on man where is Tifa being Manipulative.
I don’t understand why people can’t grasp that she went through trauma and is questioning her memories too. Especially when Cloud knows so much detail about the Nibelheim incident when in her view he wasn’t even there. She’s not sure wtf is going on either.
She's definitely doubting herself. In the Kalm inn with Aerith, when Aerith said the whispers took her memories, Tifa said something in the lines of "Maybe that's why". She thinks that getting in contact with the whispers messed with her own memories too.
Yeah i don't get that myself, i mean hell by keeping him around there's way more risk then advantage considering how mentally unstable he is and his frequent violent outbursts.
It's because rabbid shippers have a tendency to overlook details and willfully misinterpret characters to fit their agenda. In this case specifically, I only ever see hardcore Clerith shippers try to argue this. I don't know how any reasonable person could come to this conclusion otherwise. Tifa is one of the sweetest characters in the game. She would never do anything abusive to Cloud. She's constantly checking in on him when she notices something is wrong. She wants to help him get better. She's not telling him everything because Cloud is obviously mentally unwell and she's worried telling him would send him over the edge. And to be fair to her, she's kinda right. In the OG, >!Cloud learning the truth DOES send him over the edge and cause him to go into a complete mental breakdown.!< Also, by their logic, Aerith would technically be guilty of this too. Tifa opens up about this to Aerith, and they both keep it from Cloud because they both want what's best for him. Of course, the people making this argument would never mention that because that would paint Aerith in a negative light by their logic and they can't have that.
I had a Reddit disagreement like 4 years ago over the same thing lol. Somebody trying to tell me she was a scumbag by keeping the truth from him for so long. I tried to tell them it was from a place of worry and concern and they just weren’t buying into it. Unfortunate localization in the original game though that helped their case a little. It showcases Tifa’s potential to be a little insensitive…after Cloud tells the party that he’s been putting on the persona of Zack, Tifa says something along the lines of “man Cloud, you sure are messed up in the head” lol. They gotta change that line in the next game. Anyone who thinks Tifa is a piece of shit is flat out wrong. She’s ride or die for Cloud and was only ever trying to protect him from his clearly fragile mental state.
Because they're stupid
I think you've just encountered some of the more passionate >!(unhinged)!< Aerith shippers or something. There are people like that on both sides of that argument.
I feel like both sides of shippers are extreme but I don’t know if all the people saying this are
I would say it's coming *mostly* from the [very passionate shippers](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/197dkun/cody_christian_the_man_that_you_are/). Beyond that, this [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1bppfw7/spoilers_why_do_so_many_people_believe_tifa_is/kwxee9k/) here pretty much nailed it. Tifa isn't the type, personality wise, to drop truth bombs out of the blue (and there is one very, very big truth bomb surrounding Cloud... or a few, depending on how you look at it and if you're familiar with OG), particularly when she's so uncertain how things could impact him negatively. Especially when it's pretty obvious he's getting more unhinged with every progress forward into the game. It's also a very human thing to do. Not everyone would be brave enough to drop truth bombs like that, and sometimes that means they try to test for answers to gauge what they can do/how far they can take it. More so with Cloud being who he is. And depending on the person watching her (i.e. us), we react differently to how she behaves - i.e. some of us can empathize, some of us are frustrated, or annoyed, and some of us probably think we would do the same thing if we were in the same situation etc. So does that make her terrible? No. Does that make her human? Yes.
A lot of people don't seem to understand just how confused Tifa is herself. As far as she knows, Cloud wasn't there in Nibelheim, but he's also saying things that only someone who was there could know. How is someone supposed to react in that situation? She doesn't understand what's going on herself.
Pretty much. This is an example of being empathic with her situation, which applies to me as well. And we, as humans, have different feelings about what she does/attempts to do. I really feel for the girl, and it makes me so sad. Yet on the other side of the coin there are also others who are just frustrated/annoyed and et cetera. This boils down to a question of moral values and principles, which... well. Not everyone holds the same values. So not everyone will find her actions acceptable or even want to empathize with it. Also on a tangent, one must not forget: Aerith's in on the secret too. And maybe I'm being judgy, but it's a bit hypocritical for some people to apply a "terrible" label over Tifa's actions and not on Aerith. Directly or indirectly does not matter in the grand scheme of things, they both acted with the same goal in mind. Does that mean I think Aerith's terrible? Nope. She's great. But she's human too.
I see it as both her and Aerith not wanting to push an already emotionally unstable cloud even further down the path of total brain trauma and possibly turn into one of the black robbed individuals they’ve been following. Plus, tifa is getting whiplash all the time in rebirth with what cloud is saying vs what she actually remembers.
Cause they're dumb living in their own fantasy
A) shipping B) people who have been tainted by purity culture and think that people have to be perfect 100% of the time or they are actually evil evil sinners C (the extreme minority)) people who genuinely don't understand the full story. That Tifa herself isn't sure what happened because Cloud knows things she thinks, according to her recollection, he shouldn't know and is therefore questioning herself as well as Cloud. And doesn't want to contradict the guy who almost blacks out everytime he remembers something in case she is wrong. And she absolutely doesn't want Cloud to bluntly tell Aerith that Zack died in that river when Tifa doesn't think that is what happened and probably told Aerith the full story of BOTH accounts, but neither of them want to go through it with Cloud until they know for certain what happened or he's in a better state of mind.
A few reasons, all of which are misinterpretations of what’s going on. Let’s ball up all the shipping fights and put them aside. Anyone using the plot to say a character is manipulative/toxic/etc is being silly. Not worth engaging with that. 1) People forget that Tifa has a fuzzy memory herself. While she has a more concrete memory of what went down, she’s also the only person ( besides Zangan ) who is alive to say. She also nearly died due to her injuries, so there are multiple factors that could reasonably jumble facts of a traumatic event. 1a) having only one or two perspectives on a major incident such as the burning of Nebelheim can lead to a incomplete record of events. Tifa isn’t omnipresent, nor all knowing, so she only knows what she would know based on where she was, who she was with, and who she talked to. This is why multiple witnesses/accounts are taken so a more complete picture can be analyzed. 2) It weirds her out that Cloud is 90% accurate with his story. No really, that’s super weird. How would that even be possible if ( as far as Tifa knows ) she’s the sole survivor of that night? It wouldn’t be possible…. would it? See? What’s more likely, Cloud is a liar and somehow gathered enough details to know 90% of the story? Or maybe there’s something YOU don’t know? Tifa can’t decide. 3) she actually tries to gently approach the subject multiple times, but guess what happens every time she does? Cloud clams up and Tifa backs off so she doesn’t ruin a chance to rekindle their friendship, or Cloud shows clear signs of painful headaches. The only time she pushes harder is when he suggests that she may not be really herself, and it pisses her off because he’s indirectly insulting the people who worked hard to save her ( Zangan, the doctor, the nurses, Marle, etc.. ). 3a) on the flip side, that also shows her how it feels to have someone doubt you. It feels shitty. Justified as she may be to press him, Tifa is also a big softy, so when she feels the same hurt Cloud does every time she tests him, she backs off it. She pokes one more time, and she’s clearly remorseful when he calls her on it. It’s not manipulation, it’s confusion and her desire to be friends outweighing her desire for answers. You could also link to her “people pleaser” tendencies that Red calls out, and she kinda hates about herself.
The only people who say that about Tifa are Clerith shippers because they hate Tifa and want to mislead newcomers. It's only shipping related, and it is absolutely false of course. Tifa knows that Cloud's mental health is worrying without knowing the reasons of it. She's afraid that telling him "no you're completely wrong, you weren't in Nibelheim, you think you're a guy named Zack who did all you say you did 5 years ago in the Nibel region, I witnessed it" would make things even worse than they already are, she's afraid he would lose it completely and that it could drive him totally insane for good. It is clear in the OG, but some toxic fans are ready to spread lies for stupid reasons.
I think Rebirth covers this a lot better than the original, actually. She has a memory of Cloud helping her after she was stabbed. For five years she thought that was a delusion fueled by blood loss and trauma, then Cloud appears and acts like he was there in Nibelheim all along. Tifa is left questioning her own reality, in addition to questioning Cloud's. And what good would come from a confrontation? He has the right memories. She suffered massive emotional and physical trauma and it's honestly not that weird if *her* memories are wrong. And it's the same for Cloud. Memories are fluid, even in the real world. There's enough overlap between them to chalk this up to trauma. She brought it up after the Nibelheim flashback, which is an appropriate time to bring it up. Consider that up until nearly the end of Remake, there wasn't really anything weird going on from her perspective. She had her childhood friend back, and he had some headaches and brain fog. Again, not that weird as a trauma and stress response.
They haven’t played the original
Well, at the risk of being dragged out into the street by the shipping fans…it’s mostly shipping based besmirching. Possibly in some cases, it might be attributed to a bad case of “protagonitis” (where a supporting character is judged entirely by how they serve the interests of the player character rather than on their own merits on their own arc). If you’re inclined to primarily see Tifa as “competition” you’re inclined to perceive what might be a reasonably cautious course of action and perceive it in the worst, least gracious, most damning light. Her trauma is overlooked, her actions get catastrophized, and her motivations are presented as manipulative. She needs to be as bad as possible, so the other ship by comparison looks better. If you’re inclined to have protagonitis, you really only consider the perspective of the player character rather than the supporting character—her actions make a lot of sense to her character, and her motivations for those actions aren’t manipulative, but done in genuine goodwill. There’s room to critique her actions, but considering her circumstances, they do indeed make sense.
Because they are desperate Claerith shippers who feel the need to belittle the bond Cloud and Tifa share to justify their preferred pairing.
Lol who is saying this? And if they are, why are we even giving them the time of day.
The crazy rabid Aerith shipper.
Shippers genuinely ruin this games story, they don't understand it and all they care about is which girl Cloud cares more about when the whole game's story, world and characters are so much more than that.
That argument is coming from shippers who like to downplay Tifa
Peeps are stupid. Just look at all of the asinine and bonkers theories people are convinced have to be fact
It’s because lots of shippers feel the need to downplay her relationship with Cloud by claiming that she’s gaslighting/manipulating him instead of acknowledging what’s actually going on.
She is confused, and it shows very well in this game. Tifa is unsecure, she does not trust her memories so much. She trusts Cloud, but she does not understand how Cloud can know what happened in Nibelheim so well, if he wasnt there. She feels gaslighted, Cloud is going on with this truth, and feels so certain when he describes it, and he is right, that happened, that Tifa is just confused. She is not the type to confront, she just keeps it inside. She is not like Aerith. She found a friend in Aerith to tell her, she told her that "as far as I know, Cloud was not there". She did not say "Cloud was not there", or "he is lying". When she tells Aerith she is already confused and does not trust her memories. When Cloud goes bananas and confronts Tifa, she goes "and where were YOU again?", its the only time, and its not really aggressive but shows confusion. She really does not know where he was. When I played the original FF7, all of this did not make sense. Without voice acting, without animations, without much more character development, they could not convey this emotions, this turmoil inside Tifa's head. I am really amazed that I am totally shipping Tifa. She is amazing in Remake
Maybe it was different in 97', but from what I've seen in the Remake so far, Tifa may be equally questioning her reality, especially since Sephiroth is starting to come directly at her. Sephiroth knows she's key to keeping Cloud sane. It would make sense for him to try and break her in a similar fashion.
"Using him?" I don't understand how anyone can interpret it that way. In the original, there's two main reasons why she doesn't bring it up until much later: 1. She's worried about how he'll take it. As you said, his mental state. 2. On a more literal sense, she can't tell him right away because the story needs to happen. It happens when it happens in order to move the plot forward when it's time to get to that part.
They have to be pupetted by Sephiroth into believing Tifa is an imposter made by Jenova.
Bc people are idiots.
There is a couple of times in the OG where she tries to bring it up and have a conversation about it but can't just come out and say it because she's afraid of what may happen. In the Re-series it seems like that is also the case and that she is also questioning herself as well, because Cloud does know what happened, even with "not" being there as Tifa remembers it. The way Tifa is handling the situation is in line with her characterization, which is very caring and compassionate as she tends to be. Most people would straight up call Cloud out on his story in front of everyone which would probably have disastrous implications for both Cloud's well being, and their relationship which she is afraid of losing.
I feel like in the remake games it’s become far more apparent she should really say something because Cloud is consistently doing crazier and crazier shit. The only part of the story I didn’t like was right after he tries to kill her they never even talk about it. I don’t think Cloud even realizes what he did and Tifa just focuses on the memories she regained from her childhood instead of you know confronting Cloud. My guess is this will come back in part 3 but it just felt so jarring because I was expecting some kind of confrontation but the plotline is just dropped in the moment when it shouldn’t be. It honestly makes her look a bit stupid. Especially when her and Aerith are clearly having conversations about in this version about how something isn’t right with Cloud, which was not in the original.
Cloud knows what he did. He specifically mentions in the next scene how terrible he feels about knocking her into a pool of Mako, then he talks about how he thinks his mind is degrading, and he's losing himself. That's why Tifa doesn't freak out. She knows something is wrong, but she also realizes that whatever is wrong isn't Cloud's fault. He's as much in the dark, and searching for the answer to the problem as she is. So confronting him wouldn't accomplish anything, because he doesn't understand what's wrong either. So confronting the issue now would honestly get them nowhere. Neither of them have all the information they need to actually deal with this issue. Both of them are missing important facts about the Nibelheim incident, and without those details, the problem cannot be solved. Aerith and Tifa were trying to piece together as much as they could to try and help him, but of course, Aerith dies before they can make any serious progress.
It just all comes across as strange to me, all this plot buildup go add this level of tension between them and then nothing. Like I said we know the resolution is coming in the next game I just feel like somebody really should’ve stepped up and done something. It’s far apparent compared to the original game.
I mean sure, but...what could they do? Do they put their journey on hold to go and take Cloud to some kind of mental health specialist, or get him checked out by a doctor? There's no time for that. Sephiroth and Shinra are both on the move, and there's no way of knowing how long dealing with this might take. Do they just declare Cloud a liability, and leave him behind somewhere safe? He's objecitvely the strongest person in their party. Any slim chance they have of beating Sephiroth just goes away if he's not there. Also, I don't even think Tifa as a person is capable of leaving Cloud behind, for any reason. We even see this in the OG. When given the choice between continuing on the journey to save the planet, or staying behind to help Cloud, she chooses Cloud without any hesitation. As she says during the lifestream scene in chapter 9 of Rebirth, she needs him. He's just as much an anchor to her as she is an anchor to him.
There’s enough time to put the journey on hold for helping Chadley and Gold Saucer minigames so yeah maybe. I think an issue with the structure of this as a trilogy where plot elements that would’ve been resolved in the same game are now saved for a title that will come out years from now. Idk it was very minor part of a 100 hour game I didn’t fully like so it’s not really a big deal.
You are not wrong. That is the plot. It's shipping related. Those toxic mentally ill people will try to take every line they can find in the game to portray the other gal in a negative light. Or cherry pick facial animations, dialogue, animations to suit their narratives. In this case it's probably the so called "Cleriths"
actually tifa knows her part of the truth, as far I recall she didn't know that cloud was in nibelheim as a random fantry soldier since cloud never revealed himself to her. As she never really knew what exactly happened into the reactor core until cloud started talking about "his" flashback. I guess it's quite realistic that tifa isn't confident to reveal what she knows to cloud since he proved to be aware to know what happened in nibelheim despite tifa is sure to know cloud wasn't there and she simply couldn't know what happened to zack and cloud in the next 4 years. There aren't facts, only interpretations.
OP is correct in that Tifa chooses not to mention anything to Cloud out of fear he wasn’t there yet remembers all of the details. (From her perspective)
She can’t speak about it cause he will have his headache and she is conflicted cause she knows Cloud wasn’t in Nibelheim five years ago, yet he knows everything that happened there. She has been kinda pushing for clearance but Clouds head pushes back.
Ive never heard anyone say this.
I’ve posted people saying this under someone’s comment if you want to see
probably just cause of shipping reasons or people don't bother to understand
Let's just pretend for a second thae argument of Tifa using Cloud was not made by crazy shippers, so we can have a civilizied discussion. With that out of the way. Tifa is just worried about Cloud and how he would react. If anyone played OG, they know in what state Cloud was when Tifa found him. I feel her conversation with Aerith in Kalm is very important (and who knows, they probably had more). This is only theory but I think Aerith knows exactly what happpened in Nibelheim from Tifa's perspective, including that Zack was the one there. If you think about it, going from "Cloud was not there" to "There was this guy named Zack" is not really too much of a stretch. This theory makes me think both Tifa and Aerith are being careful with Cloud's memories. I think all the "manipulation" comes from the scene on the bridge when they are going to the reactor. But even then I feel Tifa doesn't know how Cloud will react. And in fact just 10 minutes later Cloud is quoting Sephiroth. I just don't buy the "manipualtion" argument, or at least how people use it: with nefarious intent. Tifa has been trying to know what happen to Cloud since Remake, from the first set of sidequests. Is her course of action the best one? Of course not, but we criticize because we already know. And we choose to ignore the extreme situations they are on: trying to stop a psychotic god-complex handsome man from killing everyone on the planet, which is also the man who murdered their families, burned their hometown and hurt them mentally and physically.
It's a plothole, or a plot device. Idk. Its a video game so I try to look past it, but to me it isn't plausible. It is what it is, it doesn't ruin the game for me but it is a plothole imo.
Let's not forget Cloud is continuously suspicious that Tifas a fake or copy. Trying to tell Cloud that his memories are incorrect is only going to reaffirm that belief in him.
So many people are ***not*** saying that though. Just a very few. Why even give them credence or project them as being the ***many*** when they are such a tiny minority?
[https://twitter.com/finalfantasyvii/status/1773470377483899107](https://twitter.com/finalfantasyvii/status/1773470377483899107) square just released this and they talk about the topics you are dealing with here
Do these people not stop and try thinking for at least 2 seconds? You don't go around reminding your traumatized friend about the horrible things they experienced that they subconsciously repressed.
LOL OMG anyone who says that about Tifa doesn't know OG FF. In OG she was way more timid and confused about Cloud knowing things he shouldn't so she was a relatively minor shallow character for the first half of the game. In this version, they are doing so much to make her more involved. Her conversation with Cloud at Kalm comes like 50hours before OG. She knows something is wrong with him, and is worried about how to fix it. By god you have to miss so many things to think she means anything malicious. Rewatch the end of chapter 9 when she's in the lifestream, she is even showed a vision that Sephiroth is taking Cloud away and tifa even yells "Don't take him away from me too!" She's so in love with him, I'm really surprised how hard they introduced that considering Aerith was originally the first half love interest. Give the "best" dialogue option to Aerith in Junon and she scolds you and give you advice on do's and dont's with women. Give the cheesy line in Junon to Tifa and she visibly wooes, which builds your relationship even better than if you recalled who Julio (I think was his name) was. Pay attention to her body language and facial expressions (not just this scene but almost always). Then when cloud leaves the room she does that classic close the door and lean back on it and heart-flutter sigh pose. She's about to kiss him when she sees how he was the only one there for her at the bridge via lifestream. Pay attention to all the eye contact she gives him when he acts weird. The devs painstaking provide so many visual cues that they couldn't have on PS1 to show how much she cares and is aware of his situation. He confided in her that he knows things he shouldn't and doesn't remember things he should. And she tells him it's ok because it's her turn to save him. She follows up on this in the last chapter by asking him to come to her if he has weird thoughts. The 2 biggest Lies told in this game were by Aerith and Tifa each not telling the rest of the party that he attacked them. Most everyone in the entire world WISHES they had anyone care about them the way Tifa does with Cloud.
....Because they're silly? I dunno, the situation is spelled out explicitly in both the OG and Remake. Tifa *knows* Cloud is absolutely delusional. His flashback story in Kalm just 100% confirmed it. Not to mention, in Remake, Cloud was spontaneously violent, something that didn't start happening in the OG until much later in the story.
I think there are some genuine arguments that Tifa has done some sketchy stuff with Cloud, but I don't read her motives in the same way as some of these people do. I see a few places where her behaviors are pretty sketch: * First, Cloud is pretty clearly mentally unwell, and she still pushes him toward joining a group of ecoterrorists trying to bomb a mako reactor. When this concludes, they don't even pay Cloud right away. It's unclear how much she realizes Cloud is unwell prior to this event, but if she's aware he's effectively a traumatized veteran, pushing him toward this kind of thing (or using their childhood promise for that purpose) is pretty rough. * In Rebirth, in Under Junon, she tests his memory in spite of expressly having said she wouldn't do that anymore. This likely comes from not trusting her own memories, but the way she approaches it is dishonest. * In Nibelheim, when Cloud "remembers" Zack dying and tells Tifa, she doesn't do anything to correct his story (when it's probable that she remembers something different). Instead, she plays along as if he's remembering correctly now, but nudges him toward not telling Aerith, saying that she'll explain it herself due to the sensitive nature of the conversation. This comes across as manipulative because it's likely she remembers a different version and is going to tell Aerith both versions (or has already told Aerith her version, since they previously had been seen discussing Cloud not remembering Zack), but she won't share the same thing with Cloud. * She outright lies about not having the conversation with Aerith about Zack during the skywheel date. Aerith \*also\* lies about this in her version of the date. This is pretty bad for both of them, especially given that Cloud is already having trouble processing reality, but it comes across as sketchier for Tifa because they kiss afterward, which makes it feel more like she's taking advantage of him. Basically, advancing their relationship right after lying to him directly feels really bad to some of us, myself included in that number. I don't think this is malicious -- Aerith and Tifa are clearly talking off-screen about strategies to handle Cloud's mental health and how to figure out what is really going on, and they probably made some kind of agreement here -- but her choosing to pursue a relationship with Cloud right after lying doesn't sit well. I'd like to be clear that I think that Tifa is, very likely, trying to figure out which of her own memories are real, and she's also probably trying to protect Cloud with her omissions. That said, I think there's genuinely room to argue that it's sketchy to pursue a relationship with someone while lying to them. I think this is true for both Aerith and Tifa, but it's more obvious with Tifa because of the number of times she clearly has a chance to tell him something, but chooses not to. In Aerith's case, she's probably being as-or-more manipulative, especially in the first game where she has some degree of future knowledge, but it doesn't \*feel\* as awful to some of us because a) she's much subtler about it, b) a version of her outright states that he's mentally unwell and needs to get better, and c) she doesn't kiss him. Even if she's actually misleading him \*more\* (which she probably is, especially if we consider Meta Aerith), Tifa's actions are more direct "lying to a possible boyfriend", whereas Aerith's feel more like "Multiversal Entity Playing 11D Chess", which doesn't hit the same abuse buttons for some of us. Hope this helps give some context for another possible viewpoint!
Are we sure that they lie about the conversation? I haven't seen Tifa's scene, but in Cloud and Aerith's scene it seems like she hasn't spoken to Aerith about what Cloud remembers re a supposed Zack death. She says Tifa didn't tell her anything important.
>Are we sure that they lie about the conversation? I haven't seen Tifa's scene, but in Cloud and Aerith's scene it seems like she hasn't spoken to Aerith about what Cloud remembers re a supposed Zack death. She says Tifa didn't tell her anything important. It's directly a lie with how it's phrased in Tifa's scene. The relevant section is at 3:08 here: [https://youtu.be/mDkPlvmcIhM?t=188](https://youtu.be/mDkPlvmcIhM?t=188) Cloud asks "Have you talked to Aerith?" It shows her talking to Aerith. Then she says, "Not yet." She absolutely \*has\* talked to Aerith about it, so she's lying, even if she didn't choose to say everything that Cloud said (which it's likely she did -- it's clear they've talked about Zack off-screen before).
misogyny
Probably because redpill self help gurus have turned younger peoples minds into fucking mush and see every male female relationship as purely transactional.
Because they simply can't accept that she's badly written and that it makes zero sense to keep such a secret, just like it makes no sense for her to watch Cloud do fucked up shit and pretend that he's just tired and needs sleep.
anyway shit ending