Last time, we looked at Anastar's willingness to reject common sense to construct fanciful notions that in her mind support the 'totally canon' Clerith pairing, rejecting the big picture, common sense, and basic literary convention to focus on tiny details and percieved symbolism that she ascribes far more importance than any reasonable person would give.
In this installment, we'll take a look at how she ignores common sense and literary convention so she can pretend that her two biggest roadblocks, the feelings of Cloud towards Tifa and of Aerith towards Zack, do not apply. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it. Take hers.
In short, past feelings can't be used to reinforce present feelings. The Anastar and her gang see this as their silver bullet, and shoot it as often as they can at the past affections of Cloud and Aerith towards people who aren't each other, not realizing that they are a different kind of beast entirely. Briefly, I'd like to show why they think this argument is a silver bullet, why it's a dud, and why, even if weren't, it shoots them in the foot.
They think the argument is a silver bullet because in their mind it lets them ignore anything that happened before the game started, so that Cloud's crush or Zack and Aerith's relationship don't get in the way of their OTP. It fails for a myriad of reasons, such as Cloud saying his feelings haven't changed, or the Crisis Core Ultimania saying that Aerith's feelings for Zack influence her actions towards Cloud, etc., but the real reason that their argument is a dud is because it makes no narrative sense to spend as much time as the creators have on these 'past emotions' for them to have no bearing on the present or future of the story, especially given the nature of flashbacks in general.
As with generally all information given in fiction, Flashbacks, and by extension, prequels- or at least good ones- give the audience information relevant to the context of the story it is in. When you show a flashback, however, you jar the audience out of the flow of the story and threaten to shatter their suspension of disbelief. Moreover, it requires far more effort to construct a flashback or prequel than it does to simply inform an audience another way, so when you are shown a flashback, and especially when you are shown a prequel, you're being shown an event from the past that the writer or writers has deemed to be important enough to be given its own sequence. Assuming that the Final Fantasy team doesn't use flashbacks to give information relevant to the present day of the story not only makes no narrative sense, it also renders several of their games meaningless. What purpose are the flashbacks of Dirge of Cerberus, Final Fantasy 8, or Final Fantasy 10 dealing with emotions if not to emphasize these emotions in the present day? They simply make no sense otherwise. The same holds true of Cloud's flashbacks in Final Fantasy 7, or the cornucopia of information about Aerith's love for Zack peppering the latter part of Crisis Core, and for the matter, Crisis Core in its entirety.
Lastly, even if their argument was correct, it hurts their desired conclusion just as much, if not more so than it hurts their opposition. Why? Because any relationship or feelings for each other that Cloud and Aerith could have had during Final Fantasy Seven are now 'in the past', and thus, don't apply to 'the present' of Advent Children or Dirge of Cerberus. So, if the past doesn't matter, then anything that Cloud and Aerith might have had doesn't matter either. Anastar and co. can't admit that their conclusion is dead in the water by their own argument, so they make an exception for their pairing, but they have never offered an explanation as to why they're exempt, leaving us to simply guess at their reasoning. Is there's an expiration date on love for other people, a sort of "Void unless consumated by XX/XX/XXXX?" Does the countdown start based on distance or time apart? How great must the gap be before it starts? Does coming close again reset it, halt it, or have no affect? Once expired, can one simply renew the love, like a driver's license, or is it closed forever, like a legal case?
And yes, faithful pencilnecks, those are all absurd questions, but as they say, garbage in, garbage out. When your source material is Destiny Fulfilled and the clingers on who populate it, absurd is pretty much all you're getting.
We shall return again as soon as the Cleriths make some lulzworthy posts. Of course, we could make something up, like they do, but we like to consider ourselves honest people here, and won't be stooping to their level just to fulfill our quota.