When did you fall in love with the CT pairing?

[MechShield]

For me, it was when I first played in 1997 and she seemed extra happy to see Cloud. I was a kid and wouldn’t fully understand the full nuance of their relationship until years later, but I liked that both of them could fight and I was deeply moved by the Lifestream Sequence even in my youth.

[Zayana973]

Hi!

I stumbled upon FF7 Remake in April 2020 because a streamer I was following was playing it.

I watched his entire adventure in the game, was immediately impressed by the visual/sound quality and found the gameplay very engaging, Tifa was a crush when I saw her first scene and I fell directly in love with cloti when I saw the train moment.

After that, I started to get interested in this ship and looked up a bit more about them on the Internet. I was only a spectator and started to be active in the fandom from October 2020 by joining twitter and going to specific discords.

I then watched ACC, played OG and Crisis Core Reunion, read OTWTAS, TOTP & 2,000 gil.

It’s become a real addiction lol But I don’t regret it because cloti has become my ultimate OTP.

• This reply was modified 6 days, 2 hours ago by Zayana973.

[MechShield]

That train-roll really was something special, wasn’t it?

As someone who saw first hand how they handled the pair in the past, to say I was pleasantly SHOCKED by the train roll would be an understatement.

In general, Remake did such a good job of making us root for them in a way that I feel OG failed to in the early game at times.

Nice to see you Zayana!! ❤️

[Zayana973]

It was super special and I think the trilogy depicts their relationship well, it makes you want to root for them from the start. Nice to see you too.

[Somebody’s Nightmare]

For me it started when I played the OG which was probably around 1999. I was immediately drawn to Tifa as a character and the potential love interest after reading the game insert, but after beginning my playthrough and reaching the Promise scene in Midgar, that sealed it for me. Everything that came after that in the game for me only further solidified my love of the ship, especially the Lifestream scene, Mideel, the HW, and NC.

I will say, though, I did not become the obsessive brainrotted cloti I am now until I played Remake in 2020. That game and the ReTrilogy thus far has just amplified my love for them to the point that I literally haven’t been able to stop thinking bout them for the last 5 years, lol.

[MechShield]

That promise scene is intense, even then!

I honestly never understood how anyone could see that Remake version that we get so early and go on to ship them with anyone else.

They were bound to each other from that day onward in my book ❤️

[jordypordy]

It’s funny really! So I played FF7 in 2016 and was pretty neutral on the ship until the LSS, to which my eyes were partially opened. It wasn’t until UTHW however that I really fell in love with it.

I went in completely neutral, had no idea Tifa even existed. I knew who Aerith was, but here I am almost 10 years later. Goes to show that biases aren’t everything!

[jvl1031]

I played Final Fantasy 7 Remake first and thought Cloud and Tifa had really good romantic tension and chemistry. Then I went and played the original game, and that showed me that Cloud and Tifa were meant to be together all along. I fell in love with their story and was rooting for them to start a life together, and Advent Children makes it clear that they do. I also played the remaster of Crisis Core, which also made it clear that Cloti is the endgame ship for the main story, but I did fall in love with Zerith as well. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Ever Crisis have given me more of what I love about Cloti and Zerith.

[JediJen]

I played the OG in 1997. I didn’t know anything about it and was encouraged to play it by my cousins. I wasn’t into JRPGs (or turn-based combat) even though I was way into anime and manga. The story hooked me in and I was impressed by what they were able to do and convey, even though some things were a bit disjointed. I wasn’t a kid when I played and thought the story was pretty straight-forward after a certain point. To be super real, I didn’t think much of it after that. I understood that Cloud liked Tifa (the LS was glaringly obvious to that end) and I didn’t pick up another turn-based game ever until I replayed the OG on the Switch a few years ago.

Fast-forward to 2020 and the obvious chemistry between Cloud and Tifa in HD were off the charts and the hooks were in. The visuals, the voice-acting, and their character interactions only expanded and solidified what I got from their story in the OG and I was all-in. Honestly, I didn’t know there was such a raging debate online about this until I joined in on FF7twt. I was surprised by all the discourse and the weird bending of what I thought was pretty straight-forward. This distortion that people were undergoing also became a sub-interest for me as a psycho-social phenomenon. So yeah, FF7 remained pretty dormant for me for decades; I enjoyed it for what is was….until the Remake, when it set up shop in my brain.

[tallulah876]

Ha, same. It’s funny how an interest can lie dormant for years then all the sudden…

[tallulah876]

I played the OG as a kid back in 1997 with my big bro, though back then I was mostly interested in playing dress up with Cloud and Aerith (Aeris, lol) on Wall Street. Total Disc One girly. Then as a teenager, I became obsessed with Advent Children in 2005, replayed the OG and fully invested in the Disc Two storyline, and became obsessed with Cloud/Tifa. That was when I started writing fanfiction on ff.net…before like a 10-year hiatus.

I missed the initial Remake craze! I heard about it, but did not tune in and kind of just assumed a 1:1 remake of the OG. The winter before Rebirth came out, I saw some Remake content and it sucked me in. My mind was blown re: how much it expanded on Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. By the time Rebirth came out, I was lost and just had to start writing Cloud/Tifa fanfiction again. The stories and the characters of FF7 truly are timeless <3