Nervous Twitches and Justified Paranoia

So, it's that time of year again. That time of year when the weather has gotten slightly colder. That time of year when I start to live in a constant state of paranoia.

That time of year when bloody massive spiders start turning up inside the house. 

So yes, it may not surprise you to know that I am an arachnophobe. If a spider turns up in a room with me and I see it, people will know it is there. This is because if one turns up, I will make a small noise of alarm, freeze and stare fixedly at it. Unless it moves. If it moves then I become an incoherent tangle of limbs and choked noises of alarm moving very swiftly in the opposite direction.

I don't think this should be a surprise to anyone. I mean, have you seen those things? Look at them. They are fundamentally wrong. They have too many legs and they move too damn fast and they just turn up. Seriously, where do they come from? You're just sitting there, minding your own business and they just appear from nowhere. And then they disappear again. The damn things are ninjas on too many legs.

And of course, once one of them shows up, I can no longer relax. I go into permanent battle mode. Well, permanent ready-to-run-away-at-the-first-sign-of-even-the-tiniest-movement-mode. This is why I haven't got around to tidying my room. What if I moved something and there was one of those really effing big ones sitting there? And then what if it ran away and disappeared? I'd never be able to sleep in that room again. And this is my room is a complete mess. 

This would also be why I avoid being in the flat on my own as much as possible right now. Some people may call this cowardly and tell me I'm a wimp, but I beg to differ. To paraphrase Allie Brosh: I might be bigger than them, but I am also bigger than a grenade, and hell if I'm not gonna run away from one of those if a live one turns up in the same room as me.

Also, come on, spiders are freaking scary, okay?

You see?

I Had A Fight With My Brain And I Don't Think She's Coming Home...

You know, for someone that gets writers' guilt as badly as I do, I sure am good at neglecting to update things.

Anyway, it's been a while. Again. Apparently holidays are really just no good for me to get any writing done; I need classes and deadlines and things that I can procrastinate around. But as it happens, I've been binging on cartoons recently, so here's a post on that.

When you look at cartoons today, it's pretty clear that we've moved on from the golden age of Cartoon Network. Shows like Johnny Bravo, Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, they're gone. Unfortunately, the networks all seem to be moving onto saccharine live-action high school 'dramas,' to the point that Nickelodeon made a live action version of Fairly Odd Parents I don't even-

*ahem*

Anyway, despite the fact that the networks are apparently all veering in the direction of CG or live action shows, there is still some hope for the cartoon fans, even if it is coming in the form of reboots.

Yeah, I could totally talk about My Little Pony here, but everybody and their dog is talking about that, and while, yes, I love the show, I don't think anyone needs to hear any more about it from me. So I'm gonna talk about Scooby Doo instead.

Scooby Doo is one of the most recognisable franchises to come out of America. Since it was introduced in 1969 as Scooby Doo, Where Are You! it has enjoyed a long and successful career, if one filled with many revisions and reboots.

So far, Scooby Doo has managed to wring out around seventeen tv series, seven made-for-tv movies and sixteen direct-to-video/dvd movies, as well as the two major live-action ones. Of course, not all of these are good (some of them involved Scrappy. Enough said), but the characters are loved enough to keep people coming back.

And that brings me to the most recent incarnation of the show: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated.

This particular show started its run in July 2010. Of all of the newer series, this one borrows the most heavily from the original source material, while also taking a much darker sense of humour and a slightly more modern spin.

The characters, while still entirely recognisable, have undergone slight reboots in personality. Shaggy, however, is still the same big-eating, heavily-implied-to-be-a-stoner coward that everyone knows and loves. Fred is still the leader, although in this 'verse, is completely obsessed with traps. Like, we're talking almost on a romantic level here. Daphne is slightly better at getting herself out of trouble, whereas Velma has developed an extremely dry sense of humour. She also happens to be dating Shaggy, which causes no end of both confusion and hilarity. Our title character also remains largely the same, but has picked up the same vicious sarcasm as Velma, which always causes me to blink in confusion for a couple of seconds whenever it surfaces.

Anyway, aside from the characters, the show itself is rather different from the many variations that the franchise has undergone. Other reboots, such as What's New Scooby Doo? tried to go for a much more colourful, modern approach to the show, updating the outfits and technology. Mystery Incorporated, on the other hand, returns to the traditional and recognisable outifits, and also takes on the darker background tones of the original series. Notably, technology such as laptops and mobile phones are present, but are purposefully dated and clunky looking, and an old eight-track even shows up at one point (not that the gang knows what it is, but it was a nice touch). Overall, the atmosphere is very much in keeping with the slightly creepier aesthetic of the original, even though the backgrounds and a lot of the transition scenes rely on CG animation instead of the more traditional forms.

Also commendable is the fact that this show actually manages to make the monsters reasonably scary, and features actual peril. The last episode I watched featured a propane tanker blowing up, and the gang actually being in real instead of fake monster related danger. There are also quite a few more instances of adult-humour in this adaptation, and overall, the show feels geared more towards teenagers and older viewers. It is also, I should mention, rather enjoyable once you get over the slightly different feel of the characters

So yep, that's me done rambling for today. Now I guess I should get back to reading those novels I have to finish for next week...

I'm Still Not Dead! Also Stuff About Books and E-Readers

Woo, it's been a while. Yeah, basically I've going up and down and up and down and drowning myself in video games for the last month and a bit. While the latter part of this was (and still is) awesome, the fact that I haven't updated this blog in that month and a bit, even for webcomic reviews, has left me with a bad case of writing guilt. I blame the fact that I have almost no sense of routine during the holidays, and no looming deadlines to give me procrastination inspiration.

Anyway, this is just gonna be a short one, because I don't have the time to do a proper chunky post right now. I'll probably get working on a review or something soon, and since I'm back on a cartoon watching phase, that'll probably come up at some point too.

Anyway, there's one discussion that I've had several times with different people since last Christmas. This being on whether the existence of the Amazon Kindle and all the various other e-readers is a good thing. Opinions are mixed on this one, and for pretty good reason.

My parents surprised me with a Kindle as a Christmas present. Prior to this, I had never really considered getting one, since a) they were expensive and b) I have three bookcases worth of books in my house and see no reason to stop there. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised to receive one.

Now, bookshops are struggling a bit these days, what with books often being cheaper when bought online, and now even cheaper than that when bought on the Kindle. I get that, and I know I would be devastated if bookshops stopped being a thing. However, that's not to say that the Kindle and its ilk will be responsible for this.

Personally, I will always prefer books to the Kindle. There's just something about the physical presence of a book that trumps the nice slimline design of the technological version. On the other hand, I'm a student, and I live in a flat with very limited storage space, especially when you consider that I'm doing an English degree and therefore need a lot of books. Suddenly, the Kindle makes sense. I'm doing two English modules this coming semester, and I need a total of eleven books. That's a lot when you consider the space they take up, not to mention the cost of them. However, I managed to get seven on them on the Kindle for around £11 or so, which ain't too bad really.

Kindles are also handy when it comes to travelling. A lot of us like to take books on a long journey, but if you're flying, books can often be a pain when it comes to baggage allowances, and I know that I've often been forced to leave a book behind when I'm packing to get the train home. Books, however awesome, are often bulky and awkward to pack, especially if you're like me and my dad and are almost OCD about not creasing the pages or the spine. The Kindle, or indeed most e-readers, are much smaller and slimmer, and if you've got a half-decent cover on them, you've got less need to worry about damaging them. Not to mention that the Kindle can hold a lot of books, which can be organised however you want, bookmarked, annotated, whatever you need, all without damaging an actual book. It's surprisingly useful.

Again, I'm never going to say that the Kindle is better than having an actual book in your hands, but it is at least handy.

One other thing is the variety you can get with the Kindle store. I love reading, I love books. Unfortunately, the only book I've bought in months is the latest Dresden File, because unfortunately, the book industry has gone the same way as the video game industry. Or maybe that's the other way around. Anyway, the point is that publishers don't want to publish anything they don't know will sell, which is why the market has been flooded by a million different Twilight knock-offs, each as dire as the last. It's trash, but it's trash that sells.

One thing about the new e-book culture is that it is now incredibly easy to self-publish e-books. Sometimes, this isn't exactly a good thing, since many of these aren't edited, and so contain either a lot of mistakes, or are just plain bad. On the other hand, it has allowed a lot more original material to become available to readers through the likes of the Kindle store. I've found two novels that I actually got for free, written by new, unpublished authors, and you know, they were good. Free releases on the Kindle store is also a good way for them to advertise; the first of the two authors I read included a preview chapter for the second book they'd written, also on the Kindle store, but this time for a price. I haven't actually got around to buying that yet, but I'm considering it.

Again, this is now leading to an army of Twilight-clones flooding e-books as well, but if you take the time to sift through all of that, you can find some real gems. And if people read them on the Kindle, there's a much better chance of the author actually getting published later, since they can assure the publishers that 'hey, look; people are reading my stuff; it sells.'

In conclusion, I have no idea what the existence of Kindles and e-readers will do for bookshops. Maybe they will spell the end, in which case I'll be up in arms just as fast as anyone else. The Kindle and its kind do have their merits though; I don't see any reason why we should shun them entirely in favour of their paper-hearted older siblings.

Monthly Webcomic Review: Sandra and Woo

Today, I decided I would write a blog post. This is purely because I haven't written anything in the past week and a half, and my creative side was crying and begging me to let her do something, and it's been almost a month since I last blogged, so here we are.

The reasons I haven't been posting (in case anyone cares, and even if you don't I'm telling you anyway) are multiple and varied. You can basically boil it down to my life has been going every which way and I haven't been keeping up with it very well. That said, I think I've more or less got it under control now, so maybe I'll write a post about that next time in order to give myself some sort of closure. You may want to skip reading that next post *laugh*

Anyway, on with the webcomic stuff!

A webcomic about friendship, life and the art of (not) eating squirrels.

This is one I found a few weeks ago and fell in love with almost instantly. This may or may not be because it's a series starring a girl and her talking raccoon, and is so stuffed full of Final Fantasy and other geeky references that I fangirl squee about something on just about every other strip. It also deals with some deeper issues in a way that, while mostly light-hearted, still has enough impact to hit home.

The Setting

The title characters.

The comic takes place in a typical urban setting. The main human characters are high school students, and the animal characters are either pets, or live in nearby woodland. As a result, the story swings between the two settings, with Sandra (our main human protagonist) dealing with high school life, friend and boyfriend troubles and various other things, while Woo (her talking raccoon) often has his own story arcs outside of the town, with his two friends Shadow (a fox) and Sid (a squirrel they're both trying really hard not to eat).

While the setting is simplistic, it serves to highlight the more complex relationships between characters, and allows for flexibility in the storytelling.

The Characters

Sandra and Woo has a very varied cast. While you have the two main characters, you also have each of their circles of friends, and their parents (in the case of the human characters). Thankfully, these are balanced extremely well, with all of the characters being entertaining in their own way.

These are our three main human protagonists, Sandra and her two best friends Larisa and Cloud (yes, named after the Final Fantasy VII protagonist; his little sister is also named Yuna).

Sandra is presented as your basic everygirl character. She's clever, not entirely socially awkward, but suffers from insecurities about her appearance, especially when she and Larisa are in competition for Cloud's affections. However, she is also possessed of  sharp wit and dry sense of humour, but not so much that she doesn't suffer from the odd unreasonable outburst of temper, just like the rest of us. Also, her chosen method of dealing with her troubles is the same as mine, which, of course, made me like her even more (and this probably tells you more about me than you needed to know).

Larisa is Sandra's pyromaniac and quite possibly psychopathic Russian friend. Mostly, she is used as a foil and rival character to Sandra, although some strips do show that she cares a lot for her friend. While she hasn't had a great deal of focus put on her yet, Larisa shows signs of being one of the deeper characters from the comic, with some hints as to why she acts out as much as she does.

Cloud is the best friend/love interest character. Child of very geeky parents (although his mother has a very dark past that she apparently remedies with video game and fanfiction), Cloud is also skilled in martial arts and swordplay, is the heartthrob of the school, and... has no idea what he's actually doing when it comes to girls. Therefore, any scene focusing on him and Sandra is adorable, and their relationship is actually portrayed in a likeable and realistic way.

Woo, at first, seems to be an almost Garfield-esque figure; all thought bubbles and no speech. Until we find out he can actually talk (and Sandra was just as surprised about it as everyone else). After running away from his old owner (who is heavily implied to have been abusive), Woo and Sandra mutually adopt each other, and Woo swings between being the Hobbes of their relationship, or running off having his own adventures with his two friends from the local woodland, which mostly involve Sid talking them out of eating him, or trying to save the environment.

The other two have not been entirely developed. All we really do know is that Shadow has a wife and children who he loves dearly, and that Sid is a little ball of paranoia, who really wants to trust his best friends, but some days...

The Story

The other two people in this picture are Sandra's dad and Cloud's mum.

The comic basically runs on separate story arcs, with continuity shout-outs turning up throughout. Many of these arcs constitute aesops, while others simply deal with growing up and dealing with other people. Overall, the stories are generally light hearted, with any serious messages being alleviated with a more lighthearted moment afterwards. That's not to say that these devalue the more serious aspects, but they do stop the comic from being mired in serious life lessons.

For those interested, Sandra and Woo updates every Monday and Thursday.

It probably sounded better in my head

I don't know how many writers actually read this thing, but the ones that do may understand why I haven't been updating this for a while. You ever start writing something, and the plot just sort of eats you and you can't do anything else? That's basically what happened.

Anyway, in between writing chapters for that story and plugging away at my new job and .hack//Infection, I was desperately trying to come up with a topic for a new post. Someone (and you know who you are) suggested I do something on cheese, except that I don't like cheese, so it would either be an extremely short post or I'd wax lyrical about how cheese is the worst thing ever and then I would just alienate everyone and... I'll just stop rambling about cheese now, shall I?

Anyway, yesterday, someone over on the Genesis Awards started a thread asking whether anyone actually listens to song lyrics, and when I started thinking about that, I somehow ended up drifting on to TV Tropes, and from there I somehow came up with the concept for this post (yes, the process was exactly as non-sequitur as it sounds).

There is a trope known as Alternative Character Interpretation, which I find to be great fun. Basically, this trope boils down to: Character A appears to be fooling everyone into thinking that he's actually really stupid while being secretly very clever and making them underestimate him, however it could also be interpreted that he is actually genuinely stupid and just has an amazing aptitude for accidentally ending up with the right answers by accidentally annoying them out of people. The outcomes of both situations are the same, it's just that the character is slightly different in each case.

Why am I telling you this? Because this morning I got a Bruno Mars song in my head and suddenly realised that if you take bits of some of his songs out of context, they can actually be interpreted completely differently. Take his song 'Just The Way You Are' for example.

'When I see your face

There's not a thing that I would change

Cause you're amazing

Just the way you are

And when you smile,

The whole world stops and stares for awhile

Cause girl you're amazing

Just the way you are'

In the song, this is actually Bruno telling his girlfriend that she's far prettier than she thinks she is. It's all wonderfully romantic. However, it could also be interpreted as a stalker with a crush idolising this girl from afar. Think about it; overly romanticised descriptions of her, obsessive repetitions of these, that one line where he says that he tells her these things every day. The girl is never stated to be his girlfriend, so you have the fun twist where he's actually just phoning this poor girl up and breathing heavily down the phone for a few minutes before creepily telling her how amazing she is. Every single day.

Now I know that the song is implying no such thing, but it's kind of funny to think it is. In a morbid, really not all that funny at all sort of way because stalking is in no way funny...

*ahem* Moving on.

The other song is 'Grenade'. This one's about how Bruno really loves this girl, but she treats him like dirt and is basically just a bitch. However, when I was thinking about the chorus, this little imaginary exchange  popped into my head:

Girl: Hey Bruno, could you do the dishes for me please?

Bruno: I'd catch a grenade for ya

Girl: Uh... that's... sweet, I guess? But I really just need-

Bruno: Throw my hand on a blade for ya

Girl: Umm... no, I just need you to wash them, not-

Bruno: I'd jump in front of a train for ya

Girl: Bruno, you really don't have to try this hard to get out of doing the dishes. I can just-

Bruno: You know I'd do anything for ya

Girl: But not the dishes?

Bruno: I would go through all of this pain, take a bullet straight through my brain

Girl: Bruno, you're just being silly now.

Bruno: Yes, I would die for you baby

Girl: I really don't want you to do that Bruno. Just the dishes would be fine, really.

Bruno: But you won't do the same

Girl: Well, no; I don't think either of us being dead is exactly conducive to this relationship continuing. Oh, you know what? I'll just do the damn dishes myself, okay? You just sit there, being all melodramatic, like usual.

No, I don't know what Bruno Mars ever did to me either, but I do seem to like making him kind of a jerk, don't I? No idea what that says about me.

Anyway, despite the fact that all of this interpretation was pointless and silly, it was still really quite fun. Try it sometime; if nothing else, it'll give you something other than the weather to babble nervously about when trying desperately to fill an awkward silence.

Monthly Webcomic Review: Awkward Zombie/Aikonia

Well, I'm currently camped out in the university atrium trying to publicise a Zombie Apocalypse. I would also be trying to write an essay that's due for Thursday, but it's very hard to rewrite a short story when said short story is not currently in the immediate vicinity. I blame this on the fact that I was up far too early this morning and didn't get any coffee before I left the flat, and a small green book is very forgettable in that situation. And then we had to push the apocalypse back a week because the weather this week is dismal.

So yeah, today is going well.

I have had coffee by now though, so it could be worse. Anyway, it's time for another webcomic review! Yaaaaaaay! I'm actually reviewing two comics today, drawn by the same artist, Katie Tiedrich.

I actually stumbled across Awkward Zombie before it was Awkward Zombie, back when Katie was best known as Hail-Neko-Yasha on deviantArt. Mostly, her comics consisted (and still consist) of stand-alone video-game comics, usually pointing out strange plot holes or featuring various things she did while playing.

She does bring up good points, such as how the hell is Boo meant to play football? He has no legs.

 Mostly, the comics are geared towards gamers, but she often does slice-of-life strips about her current adventures at college. While usually featuring Nintendo games such as Legend of Zelda, Super Smash Brothers and Pokemon, World of Warcraft comics also feature heavily, supplemented with a healthy dose of random games from almost any genre, ranging from Shadow of the Colossus to Excite Truck to Portal 2.

It's always worth checking out Awkward Zombie simply for the comedy value and the pleasantly quirky art-style. The sharp sense of humour and usually very accurate pointing out of plot holes make for entertaining reading, even if you aren't familiar with the game she's featuring. Also, the artist comments she makes on them are usually worth reading as well.

Since Awkard Zombie is a set of mostly stand along comics, there isn't really a whole lot to say about it. So I thought I would talk about the other comic that Katie is currently working on. She's only doing the art for this one though, as part of a four-person team.

Aikonia is actually promotional material and a precursor for an upcoming browser-based game of the same name by MADSOFT Games. It's a fairly standard fantasy premise, with some similarities with both Trudi Canavan's Black Magician Trilogy and Maria V. Snyder's Yelena Zaltana trilogy.

The Setting

Click to see full-size, or alternatively, go read the comic.

Aikonia is set in a world where magic is accessed through a veil which requires training in order to use correctly. The actual setting of the comic mostly takes place in a magicians' academy, where this training takes place.

The academy is overseen by a council of elders, except that something shady is going on in the upper echelons, and no one is sure who can trust who anymore. After a strange discovery is made while a low-ranking magician is out on assignment, the council is suddenly divided even further, and then one of the council members mysteriously dies...

The Characters

The cast of Aikonia is fairly large, and no particular focus has been put on one character over another yet. However, the developing character relationships and twists have been interesting so far, and I would safely assume that they will continue to develop like that.

As this is a relatively new webcomic, the story's really only gearing up just now. But the plot seems interesting and the premise is pretty solid. If the game that follows is anything like the comic at all, it should be pretty good.

Both of these update every Monday.

The Easy Way to Annoy Fanfiction Writers

In my last post, I briefly mentioned my soft spot for the losing side of a love triangle. I also mentioned that this was not the case for Final Fantasy VII. Then I remembered an old post that I made on my Live Journal account back when I used the thing, and thought 'I could update that, and post it here! Who would know?'

And then I told you that, so now you all know I'm lazy, but I doubt that you're surprised.

Anyway, the post concerned the numerous 'shipping wars' that spring up in fandoms, particularly in the fanfiction aspect. An interesting minefield to navigate, I've been fortunate to only receive a few (poorly spelled) scathing reviews concerning my choices of pairing. Others... are not so lucky.

Shipping and the Snobbery, Snapping and Snarling Therein

I only really became familiar with the concept of shipping a couple of months after I started writing fanfiction. Even then, it was only after I joined the Genesis Awards that I learned exactly what it was. Now, thankfully GA is fairly neutral territory when it comes to shipping, but elsewhere, be prepared to be virtually mauled for even daring to suggest that X is in love with Y, or Y with Z, or even Z with X.

I. The 'You Don't Like It, You Suck' Problem

As I have mentioned, I'm secretly a bit of a squishy romantic type, and as a result, I do lean towards writing romances rather a lot. These days, they don't tend to be quite as mushy as they used to be (cos I can actually write emotions now), but still romances nevertheless. My favourite pairing to write has always been Tifa and Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. Maybe I'm just a sucker for the victorious childhood friend relationship, I don't know, I just really liked those two together. However, I was aware that not everyone might want to read that, so I politely put a note in the summary saying what the pairing was. Then, I received this review:

'it sucks!!

cloti sucks y cant people know that!

gay...'

This was my first realisation that some fans, and in my experience, quite a lot VII fans, can be rather irrational about the pairings they support. The Cloud/Tifa/Aerith argument seems to me, at times, to be completely blown out of all proportion, and this attitude towards pairings seems to transcend into other fandoms also. Of course, I'm not saying the problem originated with VII; it's just the most prominent example I know of. In any case, I have my own reasons for supporting the Cloud/Tifa pairing, and I'm quite happy for someone to disagree with them as long as they're at least polite about it, unlike 'CLORITH' up there (yes, they named themselves after the portmaneu name of the rival couple, just to let me know how much they hated my pairing choice)

Another, much bigger example which I'm sure a lot of the older GA members would dearly love to forget is the lovely incident that led to us losing half of the admin staff back on our old board. Over a pairing row. About characters in a video game. Of course, it wasn't quite as simple as that, but a lot of it was caused by people who got so defensive over fictional characters and fictional relationships that they thought that it was perfectly acceptable to be extremely rude about it to everyone and anyone who so much as hinted at disagreeing with them. There's nothing wrong with a good debate, but I do not see the need to verbally abuse someone for not liking the same pairing as you do, and especially without any good justification for doing so.

There are numerous other examples of this problem, and I received a similar review to the one above for a Kingdom Hearts story I wrote, since apparently it was not acceptable for me to pair Sora with Kairi because 'she doesn't deserve him; she's always taking him away from Riku' This also leads us into the next problem.

II. The 'True Love' Problem

Now, going back to VII again, Cloud's feelings were initially left completely ambiguous and open to interpretation, unlike, say, Zidane and Garnet from IX or Tidus and Yuna from X. Square Enix only recently released material finally stating that Cloud and Tifa are the canon pairing of the VII compilation (along with Zack and Aerith). Of course, canon relationships mean nothing in fanfiction if you don't want them to, which isn't always a bad thing. However, this is one of the issues that just plain baffles me. Sometimes, pairings seem to come from nowhere, based on nothing, and yet they have an entire fanbase ready to defend it to the death, as it were, because it's totally true love and don't you dare say it isn't.

Now, for me, this includes many yaoi pairings, especially Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts based ones, and I'm not about to tell anyone that they shouldn't enjoy them, but they do not make the least bit of sense to me. From what I can identify, these seem to be the main causes for support of these pairings:

1. The Main Protagonist and the Main Antagonist (Cloud/Sephiroth etc.)

2. The Best Friends/The Bromantics (Roxas/Axel etc.)

3.The Hero and the Rival (Sora/Riku etc.)

4. TheTwo Hot Guys who Totally Looked At Each Other That One Time (any number of random pairings that make your head hurt)

There are probably others, but those are the ones I have seen the most often. And they don't just apply to yaoi either; heterosexual or yuri pairings often fall under these headings as well, with their own variations thrown in. Now, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with supporting them, and I do know many yaoi fans who I get along with absolutely fine (you know who you are). In fact, this really all boils right back down to the whole 'you don't like it, you suck' thing. Some fans get snooty about it, and proceed to give you a swift tongue lashing about why you are wrong. This brings us on to...

III. The 'My Canon is Better than your Canon' Problem

This is the argument that nightmares are made of. I touched on it a couple of times already, but this is the big one and so it gets its own special section all to itself.

Anyway, this one comes up damn near everytime shipping gets mentioned. But of course it does; shipping is built on personal fanon. Where I see Cloud and Tifa as a canon pairing because a) I know that relationships based on friendships can work and b) Aerith is out of the running because she's a teensy bit dead (and I don't like her, but that's a whole other bag o' gerbils) and c) Square Enix have finally said so, other people think that they would be awful together, and Tifa doesn't deserve Cloud anyway, what were you thinking? (and other, much more reasonable arguments). In any case, pairings, and character interpretations by extension, are pretty much all subject to personal canon; 'fanon' in more casual terms. However, that's not where the problem really is.

The problem is that some people aren't content with fanon; they want their pairing proven, and will support it with whatever piece of evidence they can get from the subject matter, no matter how flimsy or insignificant. Now, the only real experience I have with this comes from FFVII, although I have seen it in Kingdom Hearts also. Anyway, since the FFVII Ultimania was published (and I have never read it by the way), it seems that there's even more of a scramble to grab what they can get. Cloud/Tifa fans jump on the 'Under the Highwind' scene and the cut 'Chocobo Stable' scene while Cloud/Aerith fans continually bring up the fact that Tifa 'lied to Cloud' and various other things (I'm not as familiar with this side of the argument). And then the yaoi fans jump in with the fact that Cloud is obviously just not interested in women. Or they just go another way altogether and say that the Ultimania/Compilation/whatever just doesn't count because it wasn't there to begin with shut up (again, there are more rational arguments).

I find it confusing, and all a bit silly. It's useful to have things you can interpret as support for a chosen pairing, yes. It's handy for fic writing if nothing else, but where is this idea that one must use all evidence possible to support one pairing and shoot down any opposing party? I can only really repeat my sentiment that they are fictional characters. There is no need to get so bloody worked up.