about the site

I first played Final Fantasy VII in 2006, and immediately fell in love with the story, characters, gameplay — pretty much everything. (In fact, as soon as I finished it, the first thing I wanted to do was play it again. That's the sign of a great game to me.)

Cloud and Tifa have always been some of my favorite characters, and in fact I started working on a fansite for Cloud in 2007. It never got very far (a good thing, because it was terrible), and neither did the Tifa site I started on around the same time. I've always wanted to analyze the two of them in fansite form, but I have to admit I never expected that the best way to do it would be through a relationship site.

To be honest, it took quite a while for this pairing to grow on me. After my initial infatuation with FFVII, which lasted for a good few years, I fell out of the fandom entirely and my interest faded. In 2013, however, I replayed the game twice within the span of a few months, and found myself captivated by the connection Cloud and Tifa shared. I also saw Advent Children Complete for the first time then, and was soundly impressed by its improvements to the film's plot.

What really got me was coming back and looking at their relationship with a more adult perspective. I was barely 17 when I first played FFVII — as an adult, I appreciated both Cloud and Tifa in entirely different ways. Nowadays, I find it a lot easier to understand Cloud's struggle for identity and fight to overcome his guilt. And I see so much more of the nuance in Tifa's character: not just her strength of character, but the weaknesses she holds at bay, like her fear and self-doubt. They're both wonderfully rounded characters.

I also really love how they try to build a family in Advent Children. The film itself shows them at their lowest point, and the On the Way to a Smile novella tells the story of how they got there, but I think they — along with Marlene and Denzel — would ultimately find happiness together in this little family unit of theirs. That story really stuck with me in a way I didn't expect when I came back to FFVII, and I find it a really hopeful story amidst all the general depressing stuff that happens in the FFVII world. Cloud and Tifa themselves are orphans after what happened in Nibelheim, and seeing them try to be parents to Denzel (and Marlene, while Barret is away) is really moving.

I started working on the fansite portion of this site in early 2014, and happened to be approved for the fanlisting shortly afterward. Unfortunately, things haven't aligned since then to allow me to complete the rest of the content. I have a good chunk of it written, but it needs a lot more work before it's anywhere close to being done. Right now, I don't anticipate this site's completion until sometime in 2017, unless I find myself with much more time available to work on it.