This Is Tifa Lockhart's World And We're All Just Living In It

thegamer.com:

We can’t get enough of Tifa Lockhart. She’s been stealing hearts since the release of Final Fantasy 7 way back in 1997, but recent years have seen her experience a resurgence of almost untold magnitude. Whether she’s being railed in Italian parliament, having lewd statues produced of her legendary figure or going on dates with Aerith Gainsborough, it seems the JRPG heroine is an unstoppable force in the modern zeitgeist.

The arrival of Final Fantasy 7 Remake brought all of these characters back into the limelight, rebranding the likes of Tifa, Aerith, and Cloud into beloved icons that the wider community expressed a collective horniness for. We weren’t afraid to talk about polycules, sapphic pairings, or how Cloud is little more than an emotional support twink for his two fellow party members. There was something oddly wholesome about it all, and there still is, even as companies seek to abuse this new outlook with egregious merchandise that nobody can afford. I say that, but I bet some of you have already pre-ordered that figurine.

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Despite how revered the entire cast is among fans, Tifa has seemingly taken on a life of her own. The traffic and discussion for any news story surrounding the character is absurd, and part of me wants to believe that goes beyond the absurd subject and readers purely hoping to see Tifa having her backdoors smashed in. It probably doesn’t, but I can keep dreaming. It’s much like Lady Dimitrescu, with Tifa’s character rising above the source material and becoming a cultural object of its own with supreme push and pull wherever she might emerge. It goes beyond sex selling, and at the centre sits a compelling character whose