#the things they go through with evans family and the amount of turmoil he goes through on a daily basis is enough

[puhpandas]

sometimes I think my flashlight duo is too imbalanced with Gregory being so much to Evan but Evan not being as much to Gregory (how much they like changed eachothers lives I mean) but then I remember I made it so one of the things Gregory tells Evan all the time is that it doesnt matter how much he can offer him because that's not why hes his friend.

like Gregory isnt friends with Evan because he can give him something, hes friends with him because he likes him as a person. and u know Evan would always be feeling guilty about spoiling the mood or ruining the fun or something but the reality is that Gregory doesnt mind and just loves being Evan's friend and knowing him and spending time with him. and that can be enough

[iaintyourbro]

Let’s Talk About... On the Way to a Smile: Case of Tifa and The Kids are Alright: A Turks Side Story

Yes, I couldn’t sleep... again. I’ve gotten good at staying up two days at a time. Then sleeping and going back to it. I suppose it’s the quarantine... Which is only going to get worse it seems...

In any case, I finally got to read Case of Tifa... and... if you came out of that thinking they weren’t a thing... I don’t know what to tell you. I honestly went in to it expecting it to seem very ambiguous and very non-Cloti (in a sense). 

What struck me, first of all is the amount of guilt Tifa talks about having. Tifa seems to be just as bad as Cloud is, she just deals with it differently. Oddly enough, Cloud doesn’t show that much guilt immediately. Tifa is the one who is struggling with this major guilt initially. 

So let’s start with some screenshots (pictures?) I took of excerpts I found interesting. Some I’m sure you’ve seen before. 

Here we have Tifa talking about the guilt. She also feels insanely guilty for what happened to not only Aerith, but everything else that happened (Sector 7 Plate Drop/Avalanche). The other weird thing about this... and this is legit at the end of the OG... she almost is convincing herself that she should stay alive. I found a lot of sadness in that. And it’s not because of anything Cloud did. No... actually I think that’s what snaps her out of it. 

Of course we have a smiling Cloud. You’re going to see Cloud smiles... a lot... and he laughs too, which I really hope they show him laughing because I don’t know what it sounds like... 

I’m sure everyone has seen this. It’s the next page after Tifa calls Cloud out on his bright dork smile he’s giving. I mean he fucking says he has her. And that he knows what that means. 

I... I don’t know how you can’t take this in a romantic sense. Maybe because the guy barely smiles so to me this is massive. Maybe because he had a hell of a time telling her anything down Under the Highwind. I don’t know. But this seems like something that’s profound to tell a person. That’s the end of that section (teases - perfect moment for a kiss). 

I like the “What about you? Are you okay?” Strikes me as something we saw in Chapter 17 when you first get control of Tifa and Aerith, right? “What about you, Tifa? How are you doing?”

Tifa loses it, crying. Guilt, guilt, guilt. They talk more about Tifa’s guilt than they do Cloud’s guilt. Cloud comforts her here. Another profound thing at this point, but... we are seeing him do this in Remake already. The hug is the major one... 

But things like when he grabs her from having a crate fall on her... he could have pulled her out of the way and let her go or pushed her (like Leslie does in the sewers). No, he holds on to her. She actually is the first one to let go here. (Look how cute they are PSPSPSPSPSPSPS)

So this whole part just cracks me up. For one, it shows that these three were busy doing stuff together and slept under the plate, even though it could collapse. 

I HOPE WE GET A GODDAMN VISUAL OF THIS. Barret making happy Cloud and Tifa drinks? LAUGHING THEIR ASSES OFF?!  Barret talking about his past?!

“The other two [Cloud and Tifa] couldn’t remember the last time they’d laughed so much.” 

Let’s be real... probably when they were like 14 - maybe. 

There’s also a part later down that I didn’t get where Barret makes fun of them for getting trashed during this night. I would kill to ALSO see that. 

But... laughing, drunk Cloud? Laughing, drunk Tifa? Plz. 

Happy... sounds like the correct term.

Now there are moments as time goes on - mainly after the bar is open - where Tifa thinks about once the bar gets ready, is Cloud going to leave...

This is where I think people take it as they’re nothing. Tifa I think just has a very hard time accepting that not everything is going to be taken away from her. The impression I got from reading this is it was all in her head. Cloud himself gave no indication that he wanted to leave. (The Geostigma catalyst is later)

And here’s why I said I got no feeling that Cloud wanted to leave. (Oh here’s more about Tifa’s guilt). Above this, Marlene says Cloud and Tifa can be her parents and the two look at each other. Cloud doesn’t look away. Cloud also says Awesome with conviction. Looks at Tifa almost to confirm it’s okay... but these two like to talk without words. I think he knew she was getting nervous, so this was his way of saying “See? I’m not going anywhere?” 

Marlene gave him a nice little assist here so he didn’t have to say anything and Tifa didn’t have to ask. 

Tifa, I think, was already going through her major guilt turmoil - she had an immediate reaction to it. I think she knew, deep down, that Cloud eventually WOULD have this problem, and when she sees the slip from Elmyra for the Forgotten City, I think she knew that was the catalyst. 

“Stop worrying about what they were to each other.” I’ve seen a lot of jokes, mostly on Japanese Twitter posts, that Cloud assumed Tifa was his girlfriend. Like, he didn’t realize he needed to tell her that. I read a post about this somewhere too, that they got the impression Cloud (in the land of Cloud’s mind...) got was that Tifa was his girlfriend and knew this. I’m not sure if it’s because of Under the Highwind, I don’t know if it’s because he pulled the same shit on her and talked to her while she was sleeping. I have no idea. 

To me, Cloud and Tifa don’t have to say they’re boyfriend and girlfriend. It seems kind of funny after all they’ve been through. They’re almost like extensions of each other at this point. 

Okay so the above is from The Kids are Alright. Evan goes to see Tifa at the bar because he just saw Cloud and needs to get to Nibelheim. And Cloud tells him to talk to Tifa. 

I have to laugh about this Evan staring at chest line... lololol

Let’s talk about how she describes Aerith. “Friend doesn’t do her justice.”

...Did Tifa have romantic feelings for Aerith? Probably not (though we’d all be fine with it because Aerti is adorable). @holysmotez​ Made a very good post about how Aerith can be seen more as a holy/religious figure. I think Tifa saying this really does enforce that with me as well. 

Also this is the part where you find out there’s blackmail pictures of all three of them in the dresses: Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith. 

But I marked an interesting one - “I’ll be fine. And I’ve got Cloud, too.” She sounded confident.

Now, I was blowing through this at this point. I will go back and do a normal reading of it, but after this, Kyrie and Evan go on a journey round the world it feels like. There’s Nibelheim talk. They talk about some of the people who were killed during the Reunion and are found at the northern crater. 

And here is the end of The Kids are Alright. 

Cloud tells Evan that they’re a family. 

This is AT THE END OF AC when the church is being utilized as a way to heal folks. On thing that also seems odd... A lot of people were under the impression that Cloud disappeared for months... but it was like a week. Tifa blows him a kissy kissy at the end of the movie, then apparently walks up with him and the kids to see Evan and Kyrie - very family like. 

I also did not get any jealousy vibes from Tifa and no I’m hiding this cuz Aerith feelings from Cloud.

The part where he tells her where he found Denzel felt more like he knew she was worried about him closing in on himself again (which he already was anyway), but her reaction didn’t come off as she felt jealous nor that she felt he was hiding it cuz feelings. She wanted to go cuz she wanted to go and be with him and maybe feel her friend (more than friend) there.

I got the same feeling as I did when he was taking extra jobs to get extra money for his bike. Like I should have told you I was there, and it wasn’t really planned. I think he was praying or whatever the equivalent would be. He was feeling guilty, going down a bad path... because he wasn’t just visiting the church in AC. He also was visiting Zack’s grave. I mean, he let the Buster Sword rust to hell out there. (Angeal knows what you did, Cloud.)

So here’s how I feel after reading this, and now I do think that Remake is setting this up better.

Aerith is the same type of person to Cloud and Tifa. They both feel the same way about her. She feels the same way about them. It’s different than a simple friendship, but it’s not romantic. Spiritual is a good way to describe this. 

There is the part where Aerith says Cloud was more than a friend, for she had loved him. By itself I’d say holy shit, wow, Aerith had romantic feelings for Cloud. After reading the rest of this, thinking of the OG, AC, CC, and Remake - yes, she loved him - but not like she loved Zack - she loved Cloud as a special person, not in a romantic sense. I think she almost felt like she had to protect him, because in this same part when she says she loved him, she also says she knows he has almost a delicate heart, but also needed to find a way to warn him about the shit about to go down. 

I think if you asked Aerith about Tifa, she’d say she loved Tifa too. I think OG didn’t do a good job of building up the Tifa and Aerith friendship to show exactly how important she really was to the whole thing, but time constraints, technology, whatever, a lot of games in the 90s suffered from this type of shit. Get the game out! We’ll figure out the rest later...

This also does not talk about Cloud’s feelings on Aerith. The only indicator we really get in this is that Cloud felt guilty that he could not protect Aerith. 

My guess is he told Tifa this at one point, probably during one of the conversations that she needed his help to stay strong. That’s not romance. He felt obligated to protect her because he was supposed to be her bodyguard, but beyond that, he just protects people. He doesn’t have to be madly in love with them. There’s a difference in how he reacts to her death and Tifa’s simulated death. Cloud is able to function, fight Jenova, and carry her off to drop her off in the lake. 

Tifa’s he completely starts to freak. We see what he does in Nibelheim and overtakes Sephiroth. I am not sure what would have happened if Sephiroth didn’t stab him and Tifa had died at that point... I really don’t know. 

In any case, you should go read these novels too. The Kids are Alright has Kyrie and Leslie in it. Evan I’m sure we will see at some point soon.

Don’t be afraid to read them... I was because of shit information online, so I hope this puts you at ease.

Oh, Barret and Cid have a conversation about Cloud and Tifa being together too...