Steak said:

Ugh, snob alert. Who else but an elitist could take a light hearted comment and make an essay length comment about it? When did I ever say anything about identifying as Cloud, presumptuous much?

And btw, I don't think of any of my childhood heroes as "toys".

/pushes them together instead

now kiss

Steak said:

There was no love triangle. Most people had a preference and they went with it regardless of the content of the story or characters.

Fundamental lack of respect for your toys.

Except that the original game gave you dialogue options that allowed you to influence the question, culminating in who you went on a date with at the Gold Saucer. It's hardly a lack of respect for the "toy" when the toy was specifically designed to be used that way.

(If you rejected both Tifa and Aerith equally, you got Yuffie. If you rejected them both and hadn't added Yuffie to the party, you got Barret.)

Mithiwithi said:

Except that the original game gave you dialogue options that allowed you to influence the question, culminating in who you went on a date with at the Gold Saucer. It's hardly a lack of respect for the "toy" when the toy was specifically designed to be used that way.

(If you rejected both Tifa and Aerith equally, you got Yuffie. If you rejected them both and hadn't added Yuffie to the party, you got Barret.)

None of which matters, since Cloud up to the mid point of the game isn't really Cloud. Besides which, getting Yuffie or Barret is more complicated than that. Getting Yuffie requires completing the Wutai sidequest and backtracking to Kalm without having talked to any of the NPCs in the town and giving them answers Yuffie likes.

WatcherCCG said:

The side of the girl who isn't going to be murdered for the sake of cheap, low-effort drama and angst.

Had to get rid of the competition so some would choose the otherwise suboptimal route, after all.

As far as that goes, what's really left for Aeris's contribution to the plot after summoning Holy? She either gets in the way of future developments, such as Cloud's and Tifa's unrequited love for one another being resolved, or she starts doing annoying Cetra ex- machina bullshit that robs everyone else of their agency. Like she's doing in the Remake. The original game had mysterious, uncertain, ambiguity. A character who's basically designed to tell you *exactly* how it is ruins everything.