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| Similarities: Cloud & Tifa to ...Ron & Hermione!; I solemnly swear that I am up to no good | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 30 May 2014 - 09:47 (73 Views) | |
| Splash | 30 May 2014 - 09:47 Post #1 |
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Elite Member
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Hey everyone. I am shocked that the first essay I posted on this forum has had over 100 views. This is neither a good or bad thing but very surprising because it was really quiet when I first joined this place and thought no more than one or two people could want to read my silly entries. Well the second essay is much more lighthearted. Because I am such a Potterhead nut and cannot refrain from bringing my first love into everything I am going to examine some similarities between Ron and Hermione and Cloud and Tifa - as couples… of all couples is that farfetched or what?! It cannot be denied that Ron Weasley’s temperament is a universe away from Cloud Strife’s and likewise with Tifa Lockhart and Hermione Granger. But surprisingly there are many similarities in their relationship dynamic and romantic progression and hopefully reading this will shed light to my observations and sort of make sense. I’m not going to throw many references or official quotes for Cloud and Tifa so don’t interpret this as me trying to canonize or prove anything. This is just my ‘fantarding’ and an obsession with writing being made very clear. There is going to be lots of intermingling between Ron&Hermione and Cloud&Tifa in the comparisons. So if you don’t know Potter this essay will not be that cohesive to you, sorry! 1) Both couples met in their childhood but experienced a bad start. Ron disliked Hermione at first sight. At one point he even made fun of her that she cried for a whole day in the bathroom. It took a good portion of the first book for Harry Ron and Hermione to start hanging out together. There is no evidence whatsoever that Tifa herself bullied Cloud but their potential to have a strong early childhood friendship was impeded by Tifa’s gang of friends who ostracized Cloud and didn’t let him join the group. Although he too developed a reputation for starting fights with people and this could have hindered his friendship with Tifa. However the lasting state of these two couples suggests that a bad start doesn’t doom your chances of being together romantically in the future. Yipee. 2) In their teens the couples started developing romantic feelings for each other. Cloud had a crush on Tifa for a while but didn’t do anything about it until they talked at the dating well. Tifa developed a crush on Cloud after their promise making scene. There are indicators that their feelings were mild at this time – read ‘dim’ since they were only starting to speak properly to each other and hey feelings have to start from somewhere. With HP it’s not hard to detect that Ron and Hermione started having a ‘thing’ for each other in the fourth book when the Yule ball drama ensued. Read "Just because it’s taken you three years to notice, Ron, doesn’t mean no one else has spotted I’m a girl!" (book four). Hermione got upset that Ron asked her out as a last resort and then Ron got jealous when she went with Krum. This happened when they were 13-14, around the same age Cloud and Tifa were in the promise scene. 3) The guys date another girl throughout the story plot. Cloud dated Aerith and there are options to date Yuffie and Barret as well. Ron brought Padma Patil to the Yule ball then dated Lavender two years later. I think both the FF7 and Potter universe recognize that dating other people and many of them happens in reality. It’s a normal part of life and the men didn’t end up marrying or committing to every person they dated since polygamy seems to be outlawed in both universes. 4) Both women have trouble processing and expressing their romantic feelings. Yeah I’d go so far to say they have trouble coming to terms with their own emotions and expressing them in an optimal manner. Tifa lets her feelings show up in a ‘peevish’ way and visibly shows jealousy around Aerith and Cloud. Haha well Hermione doesn’t do much better when she conjures up yellow canaries and enchants them to attack Ron for dating Lavender in book six. Both of the women experience jealousy, insecurity, pettiness and show it via not so favorable ways. Do we love Hermione or Tifa any less? No no no! These negative feelings could have been their first revelation that they had strong feelings for the men. Kind of like the first time a girl knows she could love the guy romantically is because she feels so upset about him dating someone else… That’s ok! They can learn to harness their feelings in a self- controlled and positive way. And that’s what happened - with Tifa ignoring her jealousy to maintain a genuine friendship with Aerith and Hermione not deliberately coming between Ron and Lavender. 5) The men are oblivious or seemingly indifferent to the womens’ feelings at one stage. Cloud is oblivious to both Aerith and Tifa’s feelings for him up until the HA highwind confession scene between him and Tifa. If Tifa’s date happens she tries to confess her feelings and he obviously doesn’t pick up on it. He’s known not to be the brightest in the bunch, e.g. Aerith describes him as ‘simplistic and awkward’ (MWTTP). Hermione herself says Ron has the emotional range of a teaspoon. It’s probably just normal for guys not to detect these subtle and implicit emotional cues like girls can. It’s not because Ron and Cloud are pathological jerks who want to see the women in their life suffer while fully knowing that they have tender and vulnerable emotions towards them. :P 6) Both couples experience hardship and go through rough patches in their relationship. Yes we know CoT and ACC presented some hardships and incompatibilities between Cloud and Tifa. Marlene notices they are having a rough patch and in CoT not getting along very well. They have trouble communicating their desires to each other in that Tifa is shy, feels guilty and selfish and Cloud was “not very candid to begin with” (Nomura). In regards to Ron and Hermione they have fought countless times in the book series, go through periods of ignoring each other. Poor Harry has to act as the mediator between the two and sometimes gets irritated and impatient about it. If this was the only information we as readers/players had about their relationship history - it would look pretty bad at first glance. But we have more information and recognize that these rough patches are temporary and will be overcome when there is time and freedom to resolve such problems. 7) At some point in the story the men experience a personal crisis and leave the woman behind. Haha smooth move guys! We probably all know Cloud’s deal with his guilt, sins and Geostigma shenanigans. He didn’t leave because Tifa was making him miserable. In HP book seven Ron up and leaves Harry and Hermione on their mission to find Horcruxes for a few reasons; the verbalized one being that he cannot hear news about his large family at home and feels worried/guilty. He is also wearing part of Voldemort’s soul as a necklace which impedes his judgment and magnifies his negative emotions of being frustrated, worried, inadequate and paranoid about Harry becoming closer to Hermione. Perhaps Geostigma warped Cloud’s emotions in a similar way. The crux is, both men were suffering a crisis and left due to extraneous circumstances that had nothing to do with the women themselves making them miserable and driving them away. 8) But they resolve their personal issues and come back. Cloud got a lecture from Tifa. Ron was slapped by Hermione and ignored for a while. But they both came back to the women they liked, and resumed their mission so good on them! 9) The character designers did a lot of thinking about who would live and end up together. This is kind of an obvious point because authors plan a lot. JKR in the latest issue of Wonderland states “I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really” and for a time considered matching Harry with Hermione (uh wow!). She also seriously considered killing of Ron (nooo!) So I’m not going to pick on SE quotes and know jack all about what’s really on their minds but it’s true that Tifa did not even exist as one of the original three characters of FF7 which consisted of Barret, Aerith and Cloud. Originally it was Barret’s death and not Aerith’s that was planned. But I’ll throw in this quote by Nomura: “To make up for Aerith dying, we needed a heroine to stay by the hero’s side until the end.” Judging by that quote Tifa’s character may have been created for that purpose, but the point is that the character designers made a lot of deliberation about who would live and love and that no romantic pairing was set in stone from the start. Indeed there was a lot of mind changing and alterations to original plans. 10) The couples have trouble deepening their relationship because of more pressing circumstances. Ron and Hermione don’t have the time and freedom to deepen their relationship when they are hunting down Horcruxes with Harry and trying to save the Wizarding World. Likewise in FF7 Cloud and Tifa’s blossoming new relationship and start to their new life is hindered by an onset of Geostigma, and the impending crisis presented by the silver haired trio who triggers the return of Sephiroth which predates the potential destruction of the planet – again. It’s hard to prioritize romantic relationships within that type of global crises. 11) Romance is not the priority in both universes. Yes I adore the Cloud and Tifa pairing (obviously) and Ron and Hermione for well needed comic relief in the HP series but their relationships are just a minor side story in the grand scheme of things. FF7 encompasses so many central preoccupations and moral lessons that have nought to do with romantic parings; the consequences of abusing science, love of money and power, greed of world corporations, the importance of the planet etc etc. Same goes for Harry Potter; while the concept of love is the main underlying moral lesson in the series it is most certainly not limited to romantic love nor is romantic love dubbed the ‘highest’ form of love in HP. Thank you. 12) But both pairs get their happy endings anyway. After all the fanbase (and faithful consumers) need to be pleased don’t they :P. Ron and Hermione have a pretty much confirmed relationship, get married, raise children and live together. End of ACC and in DoC Cloud and Tifa live together after Cloud resolves his personal issues and raise foster children. They do not have a marriage certificate but I’d say their dynamic of living together, settling down and raising children is on par with Ron and Hermione. And I won’t deny that Ron and Hermione’s physical affection for each other is much more obvious than Cloud and Tifa’s. But that’s deliberate because Nomura wanted to differentiate Advent Children from Hollywood films in that Hollywood audiences need overt messages delivered to them in cinema. Given that Warner Brothers Studios is based in Hollywood it's unsurprising that Ron and Hermione’s affection is more apparent. But personally I feel it’s the same message just different delivery, and that while Ron and Hermione engage in lots of gratuitous snogging the nature of their relationship and romantic progression has many similarities to Cloud and Tifa. Mischief managed! Hope you had fun ;) <3 Splash. Edited by Splash, 30 May 2014 - 10:22.
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6:46 PM Jul 10