TTD: OTP Ramble (FFVII, B/T)

[wallwalker]

owlmoose asked me to go on about an OTP. I'm okay with that.

(In which I go on about Barret/Tifa more than strictly necessary. Spoilers for FFVII below this point.)

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So this is one of the first non-canon pairings I really started shipping. I liked them as a couple from the first time I played the game, although for most of that time I thought of them as a doomed couple (because I figured that Tifa and Cloud were written to end up together and Barret was just going to be left out.) A lot of what I wrote back then was one-sided stuff - Barret loving Tifa and knowing he was wanting something he shouldn't have and trying not to let it show. Still, they were always important to each other. Barret gave Tifa a reason to keep going - she was sort of drifting aimlessly, in my head, before they met. And Tifa kept Barret from going off the handle and kept him from making terrible decisions. I'm firmly convinced that the reason he immediately decided that he wasn't cut out to be a leader as soon as Tifa left was because he just didn't think he could do it without her to keep him from doing anything stupid.

It took me a long time to get to the point I have reached where I can write what I want and don't really care whether or not it complies perfectly with canon. And yeah, I've gotten hit with the OOC argument a few times. I think some of my recent attempts were OOC, but not just because Tifa and Barret were together - it was because it had been a while since I'd refreshed myself on the game. Still, part of the reason why is because almost everything that we know about Tifa's personality comes from her interactions with Cloud, and his memories of her. We so rarely get to see her as her own person. I've always liked the idea of seeing a different side of her, and if her assertive side ever would come out, it would be with Barret.

I'd have to find the link again, but in the Japanese version, when Barret's getting particularly grumpy with Cloud, she tells him, "Barret! Do you want to go!?" Sounds like a challenge to me, and not something a blushing virgin would say. I'm fairly sure it was in the context of physical fighting, too - I don't think that she threatens to beat him up on a usual basis (because that would be bad) but I do think that they've sparred together and he respects her strength, and she knows it'll cut through his griping and get his attention. (Or something. I can see where it could be read as a bad thing, but that's not how I interpret it.) Anyway, I think that she's more confident with him, and less uncertain. Her uncertainty comes out when she meets Cloud again, which isn't surprising; I just wish we could've seen other sides of her personality in the game too.

(And no, I don't think that her staying behind with Cloud was a kiss of death for a relationship with Barret. Think about it - Tifa went searching for someone she knew ever since she was a child, and is doing what she can to help him. Barret was in a very similar situation with Dyne and never went looking for him, and it ended badly. I think he'd support her in trying to do something that he thinks he should've done.)

Anyway. I wrote a lot of stuff about them a few years back. Then I petered off. I wasn't doing that much with the fandom in general until I joined tumblr and found a fan community dedicated to the pairing. So technically, when I tag stuff with the name smash on tumblr, I'm not actually tagging with the name smash. I'm tagging with the name of the community, so that they can find my stuff. ;) (Now I'm tagging stuff with the name smash still, because that community has disappeared, which is why I made somekindalady in the first place.)
Anyway, it was (and is) fairly slow, so I started posting more about the two of them, because I was happy to find more fans and wanted to boost it up a bit I even started trying to do fanart of them, even though my artistic talents are currently iffy at best. (That 30 Day OTP Challenge was quite the learning experience, and I still haven't redrawn some of the pictures where I just said, "I'm super tired and out of ideas, so here's a sketch from Marlene's point of view!" Considering that I started that challenge at about the time I started going to school, and I'm still going, that's not surprising.)

I've written a lot of domestic fluff, because they probably didn't get the chance to have a lot of that. Those moments probably met a lot to them - they could just be two people who cared about each other, and not two fighters trying to save the world.And, of course, there's Marlene too - I'm sure they tried to give her a stable home as best they could, between the two of them.

I realize that a lot of that is pregame meta. Their relationship after the game ended - when they didn't have a real crisis to team up against - would be different. I still want to write some sort of resolution to that, maybe something relating to Barret's travels to find power sources so that they can both have time to work things through. I didn't get to write it - I was going to do it this past month, but I was too tired from math. (It might've turned into Tifa/Cloud/Barret if I had, which is fine with me too. Cloud's important to them both too, IMO. But that's another ramble.)