#I HAVE NO CHILL WRT FF7 LMAO

[dyradoodles]

Hiiiiii! 💕 I was just wondering….. what are your preferences for Zack & Seph? Do you ship ‘em, is it up to circumstance, does the age matter to you/do you consider their age and their gap? Why not even throw in how you fell in love with Zack & Seph to begin with? Do you have sources?? MLA format for Zack’s fandom page???

*plops down on floor*

Details plz! ❤️

Ah yes hello person that I definitely do not know, who definitely didn't see me say I could write an essay about this very subject on discord LMFAO

I'll put the actual essay under a cut for people who don't want to scroll through my Many Feelings about these two lol As a TLDR to your questions:

Yes I ship them, but also Yes it's up to circumstance! Yes I consider their canon ages/the age gap (which most visibly manifests in me only drawing them platonically if I'm drawing Zack as a Second/with the puppy hair, or writing a fic taking place during CC)! I was actually into Aeriseph first and stumbled into ZackSeph fics, and realized it was a similar dynamic, but with someone who spent time with Seph canonically before he went bananas! All of this was before CC came out and I've been loving these characters for 20+ years!

To borrow a phrase (from crylin iirc), honestly, I like just seeing them standing next to each other, romantic or no LMAO <3

NOW, FOR THE ESSAY.

So to expand on what I said earlier, I think it's obvious from my blog and ZS server that I ship these two LMAO That said, the way I ship them is based heavily on the era of fandom before CC was a thing. I got into FF7 around 2002 (possibly earlier, I just don't have the dates on drawings that old), five years before CC came out. At the time, we knew next to nothing about Zack beyond the very short clips of him in OG. So, fandom did what fandom does best, and tried to fill in the blanks!

Some of the efforts to figure out who Zack was went all the way down to his name, because it's Zakkusu in Japanese. So you'll see him as Zax, too - There were heated debates on whether to use Zack or Zax. And no last name! Fandom had to come up with surnames themselves. We also didn't have much of a reference beyond his polygon model, which seemed to have darker skin and, (as many fics described it) violet eyes. It was also assumed that, since he was a First who worked closely with Sephiroth, he was probably around Sephiroth's age. You likely already see where I'm going with this, laying all that out lol The Zack I draw and write is very much based on that time period, and if I'm honest, that's the character I really ship with Seph. I still joke in my fics sometimes that Zack's last name might be Donovan or Darklighter, etc., which are old fandom surnames!

Now, obviously CC came out and threw all this on its head, because we finally got a whole GAME about this (important!) minor character. I have many beefs with CC's writing and Square's insistence that so many of their characters need to be child prodigies (they can't ALL be prodigies, Square!!!). With Zack going from an assumed early 20s to suddenly being 16, and all the craziness of CC's plot, the way I approached the ship changed as well.

This is where I would firmly say my stance is: I don't think Seph had any interest in Zack romantically, in CC. Because that's a kid lmao If I'm engaging with the Compilation as a whole, I definitely lean way more into the mentor/mentee relationship for the two of them. As a personal rule, I only draw them platonically if Zack's got the puppy hair, because that was the most obvious visual cue I could think of that could draw that line between Zack's teen years vs. adult. If Seph managed to not go insane, then yeah, later in life I could still see them getting together! But clearly that's already AU territory lmfao

Ultimately, what I like best about Zack & Seph is how they treat each other (while Seph is still sane lol). That goes for platonically and romantically. Zack is so genuine and kind, and treats Seph the way he always wanted to be treated - like he's human. He can joke around with Seph in a way most people simply can't. Meanwhile, Seph treats Zack's feelings with respect, even during the times he's laughing at Zack for being ridiculous. He's also honest with Zack. He answers truthfully when Zack asks what's wrong, and it's clear that it's because he knows Zack is not a threat; Zack will take Seph's feelings seriously, too. I can enjoy the drama of the trauma and heartbreak that comes with Sephiroth's descent into villainy, but my favorite stuff definitely involves a lot of Nibelheim fix-it fics lol

Despite all the changes CC made to Zack and his relationship to Sephiroth (RIP Second in Command Zax Donovan/Darklighter/Knightblade, my beloved), their actual dynamic with regard to how they treat each other stayed, miraculously, intact. That's the real reason they're still my favorite characters, and how my enjoyment of FF7 has remained as strong as it is after literal decades. Square can retcon as many things as they want in the Compilation, but they'll never stop me from making art and fic of the characters I grew up with. Unless I get a C&D for some reason LMFAO Until then, I'll keep enjoying my AUs (and if anything, I have even more reason to enjoy them now that AUs themselves are canon - you bet your ass I'll be in the AUs where ONLY OG happened and I can ignore everything else LOL)

Thank you for the questions!! It was fun to get all my thoughts written down in one huge chunk, as opposed to my typical disjointed ramblings to my friends. Hopefully it was an interesting read!

Sources:

Fanlore. “Zack Fair.” The Organization for Transformative Works, 2 Jan. 2023, fanlore.org/wiki/Zack_Fair.

Doodles, Dyra. "Way Too Much Fandom Lurking." Dyra's Childhood to Adulthood, Copious Amounts of Fanfiction, 3 Apr. 2024