regesc replied to your post: grab hands at
ZACK FAIR!!! with his ideals of becoming a hero and making to 1st class while his views are being warped by the media!!! shinra is great!! SOLDIER is better because it produces some of the best heroes the world has ever seen!!! adults taking that mindset and manipulating him to do things for them, taking advantage of him!! altho i do think that genuinely thought for his well being but in the end its shinra that recruited an actual KID and not having the right mindset to turn him away because uh maybe taking child soldiers isnt the best play? im giving them too much credit
MEETING A MENTOR HE CAN TRUST!!!! taking every bit of information angeal gave him as truth! SOLDIER honor!! embrace ur dreams of being a hero!! whatever SOLDIER honor meant, if what angeal says is true then its gotta be ZACK THINKING THE ABSOLUTE WORLD OF HIM first seeing angeal as his mentor then a friend who he can be comfortable around only to turn out that he was an experiment from project g. i think that alone zack would still accept him because hes still angeal no matter its just how he went on thinking that hes a monster along with meeting genesis that those are wings of monsters!! sure zacks mind doesnt see them as that but the more he sees the horror of the underbelly of SOLDIER and shinra he finds that more true, that they are monsters
BUT NO MATTER WHAT he still manages to keep a positive outlook!!! hes sad that angeal betrayed him and shinra, but as long as hes alive tho he cant help but be worried u know!! until he has to kill him by his hand and then well .... u know how that goes.
i think out of all the ppl hes met that he can fully trust after that is kunsel, aerith, cloud, and sephiroth (even tho hes suspicious as well but even tho sephiroth pushed those missions on zack to intend to use him because hes a goddamn coward idk chief!!!) AND THAT DOESNT CHANGE when they get to nibelheim just gonna check a busted reactor u know skipping thru a field of flowers THEN BOOM u see those pods with long mutated humans into monsters and finding out what jenova rly is because genesis rly has to push sephiroth that he too is a monster and not at all human like he thought he was SO ZACK FEELS like he has to take the blame because hes the one that continued to push the conversation in that direction even tho he had no idea genesis was going to be there
and then when sephiroth burns down nibelheim because hes a dramatic bitch and suddenly think hes god or something and i feel like zack is responsible for that too because u do see him in the basement of the shinra manor reading and he does try to get him to come out and talk but nothing ever happens beyond that so ofc w the burden that SOLDIER put on him, with angeal forcing zack to kill him, sephiroth forcing zack on these missions that deal with genesis and angeal, and even missions where none of these guys are involved, he constantly thinks that its his responsibility to deal with this mess which its not !!! zack shouldnt have to have this much pushed onto him!!! he just wanted to be a hero, not deal with the slack that genesis put down that escalated onto SOLDIER
and when hes put in that pod (oh boy i do love to talk about that), he GOT SO MANY OF HIS YEARS TAKEN FROM HIM. zack “im 18 but now im 23″ fair and he doesnt even realize it!!! he doesnt even know and he has to save cloud too because he thinks that its his fault for putting cloud in this scenario when it isnt!!! cloud shouldnt have ever come on that mission to nibelheim in the first place!! so now hes trying to run away from shinra while taking care of a comatose cloud which the most he can do is breathe.
and then when he finally deals with genesis and killing him off he doesnt feel any better than he did before!! talking it out was long gone esp with how many times he has attempted to kill him or take his cells because he was infused with jenovas. no one at SOLDIER rly thought of zack as a human tbh. not someone with feelings, a family, a relationship but ur a member of SOLDIER, someone whos all brute and only does things to help out the smarter ppl like. thats not what he wanted to be at all!! he was supposed to be a hero and at this point its still his goal but with a different take!! he wants to be a hero still but not like this never like this.
AND THEN THE SHINRA SHOWDOWN ugh !!!!!!! UGH!!!!!!!! he didnt deserve this!!! literally fighting for his life (and this isnt the 1st time!!) to keep going and to be free!! in canon he literally gets gunned down, but we dont go for that. zack is on the brink of death, but with jenovas cells aid him to keep him alive!!! not like he asked for that because he kind of like .... WANTED to die, as long as cloud was still safe!! altho that was his whole goal at that point was keep cloud safe (because even tho they were both fugitives, genesis pointed out that cloud was the last being with perfect s cells, so he probably also thought that shinra wanted to recapture cloud for that too even having no idea they were both failed experiments).
AND HONESTLY HE DOESNT HAVE THE TIME FOR THINGS TO CATCH up like the fact that he doesnt ever deal with his trauma, its always pushed to the back to be dealt with later and when he gets to midgar, he literally has no chance but to face it head on. he breaks down too!!! putting all the pieces together but now hes in a safe area where ppl actually care about him!! and hes so grateful for that!!! but even after all this; after being used, manipulated, lied to, he still has such a hopeful outlook on the future!!! yeah he realizes too late that shinra fucking SUCKS and so does SOLDIER and anyone who would want to be in it is a fool but no one knows that besides him, kunsel, and the other 1st classes (which sephiroth is presumed to be dead), not including hojo, or the other scientists that helped create this mess.
overall zack is a good boy and i love him ...... SO MUCH he was just an innocent kid and look at him!!! hes got ptsd!!!
