Zack Fair, Violence, and Tragedy
Over the last month or two I’ve seen several posts about the nature of Zack Fair’s tragedy and his seeming heel-toe-turn and thought I’d chime in.
Also like last time: this is only my interpretation of canon, there is no one true analysis to take as gospel. If you disagree/differ in opinion/even just want to talk please reblog or dm! I enjoy talking to other people about this sort of thing, fandom is all about discussion after all!
While I agree with the sentiment I’ve seen going around that Zack’s relationship to violence plays a role there are other nuances and factors at play here. I’d argue that it’s more accurate to say that Zack is becoming more aware of personal and professional culture outside of SOLDIER and outside of both ShinRa’s constraining grip and Angeal’s attempts at protection. Even then it takes great personal tragedy caused by the inherent contradictions of ShinRa’s reality for him to realize that he has functionally been on the wrong side.
Sure he’s not callous like Cloud is in the beginning of original and Remake, but he certainly isn’t horrified at his actions just because there is violence. I’d argue the violence of his actions isn’t the main horror to him in isolation. I’d argue that even the death that results from violence isn’t what the core of the issue is either.
Zack’s hinging point is more his loyalty and his pride. What he does for other people and what he believes in and of himself. Specifically these things in conjunction with his desire to be a good person.
The language of Pride, the non-localized direct translation of the word hokori or 誇り(JP CC Script), is what’s going to be used here rather than Honor.
誇り | Hokori - To take pride in; To boast of
Definition Sources: 1, 2, 3
Just keep in mind that I’ve written this from as neutral a point of view as possible on the matter of pride since the Western perception definitively does not apply. To be proud is not a crime and it is not foolish it simply is.
Zack initially places his pride in SOLDIER- in what being a SOLDIER means to him. In how being a SOLDIER is his and that they are his people and thus he lets ShinRa policies define how he frames his morality. Thus ShinRa defines good in Zack Fair’s life.
Zack wants to be a hero. He wants to help people. He is trusting and kind and respectful to people consistently outside of the conflict of the mass desertion. Zack genuinely wants to be a good person and help other people, good or otherwise. He is led to believe by ShinRa propaganda that the best way to help people or to be anything meaningful in this world is through them. This is a baited trap that he falls into, Zack is prime prey this trap was intended to catch.
He is angry at Genesis and horrified by Angeal, especially at the beginning, not for cruelty or violence or even really death… He is angry at them for their betrayal. Sure he is violent and angry in the instance he thinks Angeal has murdered his own mother, as with Genesis and his parents, but that does not define his antagonism, his hatred, his regret, his sense of justice with them at all.
Zack does not raise his sword at Genesis for the people of Banora, he raises his sword for SOLDIER.
Zack understandably feels, and has been, betrayed.
He is hurt and angry and alone in a way he’s never been since he got into the SOLDIER program. He falls deeper into the illusions of ShinRa for that reason, angry and hurting and grieving the life he had with people in it who will never return. There is a deep sense of nostalgia throughout Crisis Core in the sense of the word’s initial meaning: the pain of missing home. Specifically the homes we find in people.
Even as he believes in ShinRa's twisted reality Zack wants to help. He wants to protect those he cares for. Zack wants to be good. Unfortunately in Zack Fair’s life the undisputed definition of good is now written by the ShinRa Electric Power Corporation alone.
Then he meets Aerith.
Suddenly ShinRa’s version of right and wrong have opposition but the control that ShinRa has over his life, total and complete as it is, prevents that from sinking in. Zack is perceptive though, around Aerith he is her version of good and then he has to go back to what equates to his phase of reality. A sanctuary is not safe, not truly, when watchers are peering in through the back door ready to drag you out by your feet if you misstep.
Zack wants to be a man Aerith or anyone won’t be scared of. He wants to do that not because he is suddenly horrified at his own violence but rather in consideration of others. Zack is highly empathetic after all once he can see someone else’s perspective. He wants to be what Aerith wants, even if he doesn’t really and truly understand it yet, because he cares about her and cares about her opinion. He cares about her comfort. Zack still puts most of his pride within SOLDIER though. That means that Aerith’s morals cannot sink through his skin to his center, not like Angeal’s had. She makes him think but she is not shaping his mind, he is left to do that himself.
Zack spends a lot of time questioning Angeal and being upset at and about him off screen even more than on screen. We don’t get a front row seat for all of it. The big takeaway is that Zack doesn’t shed Angeal’s morals that he’s taken on himself. He can’t after all, not with ShinRa only just seeming tarnished. ShinRa would need to rust and crumble fully before he actually can let them go. Before he can be free in his own mind.
ShinRa chips and rusts in an instant under Sephiroth’s hand. The last holdout crumbled in the fight of two victims of ShinRa and someone who will become one soon. ShinRa is no longer the defined of good, not after what Zack sees is the response to the Nibelheim Incident.
ShinRa not being good, worse even ShinRa being bad breaks the entire morality system. The illusions crack and Zack is forced to examine himself, his actions, and his biases in ways Aerith made him want to but that he couldn’t afford to truly indulge in. Even more that he was scared of self introspection in a sense, of the paradigm of his reality shifting even further.
He eventually truly reframes his actions and has to reckon with them (and himself) at the end of the game, chapter 9 and onwards. It is only then that he actually LOOKS and is fully horrified by what he sees of himself. That horror only progresses as he fights for both his and Cloud’s lives. That horror only builds as he realizes he’s exactly the person who his girlfriend SHOULD be terrified of despite his best attempts- that he’s everything she was talking about. He’s everything she was talking about even after trying to change the way he acts around her.
To abuse the innate metaphors: Zack Fair goes to Nibelheim, a well trained attack dog, still seeing relatively little wrong with fulfilling ShinRa’s orders. Zack is only then on the cusp of figuring out that he does not want to be there, that he is the antagonist of the planet’s (and Aerith’s) story unwittingly.
Zack Fair leaves Nibelheim beaten. He tries to go back to the safety of what was once his home prior to ShinRa only to be waylaid.
Zack Fair leaves Banora free and irrevocably changed.
He is free in the sense that the illusions he held himself too are crumbling even more with knowledge that his demons are men too. He is free through the knowledge that he is one of those demons. , that he has been shaped to be one, and that good intentions pave a terribly walkable path to hell.
Zack leaves with the knowledge that he was the monster in the closet. The knowledge that his sword was not just the executioner’s blade but the enforcer’s. The sword kept clean in favor of bloody hands and higher risks is now drowning in pools of it. Zack leaves with the knowledge that he never would have been truly free.
Yet he is in the sense that he can choose- actually choose- what he wants, what he values. He chooses Aerith and he chooses Cloud as he has each time before. He chooses violence. It is something he knows and among what he is good at. It is not all he is but it is a tool he can use.
He chooses to pay the price of freedom.
Crisis Core is a tragedy and Zack and Genesis both are tragic figures at its center. Zack’s arc is angled to the viewer for maximum effect but Genesis’s does mirror it in a way just on an offset path already initiated. Sephiroth is also a tragic character, undeniably so. However structure wise his role is more murky given the way he has the ability to be the god waiting in the machine, a guaranteed victory or unavoidable altered trajectory should he choose to act, for most of the story.
And that’s a large part of why I love Zack as a character, aside from things I’ve said before about what makes him such a good narrator. Zack is the unlucky prodigy at the center of a story about wars, abusers, connections, and perspectives. He wants to be good, he wants to be a person that helps.
He can’t, not really, not in the way he wants.
Crisis Core is a cautionary tale about exactly that going wrong and how anyone can be taken advantage of.
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And I saw another beast come up out of the earth...and he spake as a dragon. (Revelation 13:11)
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The Coronation of His Majesty King Bastian I - The Hour of Wolves
When he was born he was a small thing. A screaming infant, a second son, destined perhaps for military greatness, but never dukedom. Never inheritance. Never conquest.
But at the inception of the light, the birth of the world, the moment between silence and splendor when The Glory breathed across the scope of creation: he was no small thing then.
Even then, he was coming.
His rise runs with blood: knives in the back, poison, betrayal, kidnapping and vengeance.
His rise burns with greatness: glory, family, rescue, love and ferocity.
The secret world recognized him before he knew himself. A fairy witch marked his passing and offered her slender wrist for his talons. A dead sun opens its mouth for him, a vanished Christ is his counterpart, a death knight worships before him, a raven-haired little girl holds the hand of her doting and beloved father.
The world we know calls him king of France, the monarch of a seized throne, a general who has promised the great lords England on its knees.
The Devil, in his own tongue, may call him son. The Glory has said nothing.
Would you know him if you saw him? Would you recognize what he is?
Bow, while you consider, and kiss his ring. There is a crown of flame upon his brow.
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Since Claire's the Trollhunter in First Frost how do her and Strickler's interactions go after she finds out he's a Changeling, or sorta Changeling, like does she go after him straight away or tell her friends? Because they almost never interacted in Trollhunters.
I’ve actually thought about this because I don’t think they ever really did interact at least not after he was outed as a changeling, even when she was possessed, which is so strange.
But she connects the pieces after the Grit Shaka incident and they get the Gumm Gumm totem off another one of the kids. Jim still has no idea, neither does Barbara.
Claire does confront him alone, a very Claire move, out of blue and Strickler isn’t surprised, he drops the ball that he knows she’s cursed, but he still isn’t aware she’s the Trollhunter which comes back to bite him exponentially not long after.
I’ve got most of it blocked out and man, they’re both really cunning, and natural thinkers, the dialogue gets so snippy. And here he knows exactly where to antagonize, her strained relationship with her mom, being cursed, her little brother in the darklands, she almost goes after him right then and there for that comment. But the interaction happens in a public place so she can’t exactly get away with beating her history teacher to a pulp without running the high risk of getting hauled to the station.
Claire does actually end up telling the other kids about Strickler after she confronts him, the only reason she didn’t immediately is because one, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure and two, Jim and Barbara.
The dinner goes down a lot differently afterwards, because Strickler assumes the Trollhunter is actually Jim still, he isn’t expecting to get sacked by 5’5 of fury from the basement nor Draal more so later.
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