copying from my twitter thread in case i decide to delete it someday :D

ok so i'll preface this by saying i genuinely don't care or mind if other people like him or ship him w anyone. i love ff7 and that includes characters i don't exactly connect with

anyway TW big rant and opinions :33333

my issue with zack is mainly that i find him frustratingly underwritten and underutilized in storytelling. in the beginning of crisis core, he fights in the war against wutai for shinra but the story gives him no serious reflection on what shinra is doing and the consequences of his actions in participating in the war. zack stays happy go lucky and loyal to shinra rather than critically questioning the system he serves that is actively ruining not only foreign countries but his OWN home! gongaga has a reactor!!

i could understand if that first segment was meant to set him up as an unreliable narrator and how shinra's exploitation of land and resources is seen as a good thing at first and how wutai is the bad guy just because of his initial perseption, but that doesnt change until very late into the game, and even then barely at all. when shinra's experiments are discovered by zack and all the corruption + its impact on cetras and sephiroth, zack witnesses all of these horrific truths but he doesnt even stop to think about them? he doesn't go through any sort of internal conflict or identity or morality crisis in his role as a shinra soldier. he is the same upbeat puppy throughout the entire story. ik some people like that but he feels like insane missed potential for a story that could've been extremely relevant to todays [political climate]. a protagonist who was the same rank as sephiroth, participated in the war, and was experimented on shouldve had a MUCH deeper moral arc man like what..

i also srsly dislike how his character is like a placeholder to explain away things they couldn't be bothered to write about. seventh heaven being named by him is ridiculous even as a joke. also zack explains cloud's past, the soldier image, and how he ends up back in midgar but his own character feels like an after thought.

my main reason for disliking him though;;; unsurprisingly aerith LOL

i know a lot of people love them together but i personally think that the way that aerith's writing is minimized by making her iconic personality and traits retroactively linked to zack (ribbon, "one date", personality) SO gross. it reduces her individuality as an original, stereotype breaking character to "zack but girl",, totally separating her development from her own personality, choices, and experiences. and compared to cloud, who was my first introduction to ff7, zack is just so boring;
cloud has layered trauma, is emotionally repressed, is confused over his identity and experiences depression and then OVERCOMES!!! his depression.. he is so so special to me as someone who takes 7 too many pills every morning for my mental health (tmi sorry lol) zack is brave and cool and happy and thats cool. its just not for me and yes thats why i dislike zack fair thank you for coming to my ted talk.

cough his fans can be really annoying too

oh my gosh i’m so sorry! i thought i replied to this already 😿

i think the biggest thing i’ve learned is to let yourself take it slowly. i have to do that a lot because of my own mental health stuff, and trying to force myself to do everything at once just makes things harder. remember that pretty much everyone around you is also starting a completely new part of their life and is probably nervous too :”)

say hi to people, compliment them, laugh when things get awkward, and don’t be too scared of embarrassing yourself!! being a little vulnerable usually makes other people feel more comfortable too. and if someone judges you for being yourself, that’s honestly a pretty good sign they’re not someone you need around you anyway.

new things are scary, but they’re also what shape you the most. this is YOUR time to make your life into something new!! don’t keep people around who make you feel uncomfortable or worse about yourself. finish your homework…., invite people over, go on walks together, explore wherever you’re living, try to save money when you can, and PLEASE go to the random school events because there is always free food LOL

you really don’t have to have everything figured out immediately. just try things, be kind to yourself, and let yourself enjoy these new experiences 💗 it’s ok to be scared or nervous but try not to let that hold you back!

i did enjoy brand new day!! i really did 😭 i just don’t think that necessarily means i think it was objectively a good movie, if that makes sense. there were a lot of scenes i loved individually, but as a whole it felt sooo incomplete to me.

i know it’s obviously setting up doomsday, and i’m not against cliffhangers at all, but for an almost 3 hour movie i feel like something should have actually reached a conclusion before they opened up even more loose ends 😭 it felt like all of this could’ve been skipped. i would’ve preferred more attention to the spiderman transformation into manspider + im butthurt we missed out on 4 whole years of his life with no call backs to anything he experienced in that time

jean is probably the biggest example for me because i actually really liked a lot of what they did with her. her scenes with peter were sweet, the aunt may scene was genuinely so well done, and the v-max reveal made my heart DROP :( i felt so bad for her and her sister. but she also did some genuinely awful things and the movie barely lets her reckon with any of it. she retraumatizes hulk badly enough that he gets sent to a psychiatric ward (tho we know why he’s actually not gonna be in the movies anymore 🇵🇸), she takes control of people’s bodies and forces them to do things against their will, she hurts innocent people in the process… the grandma especially made me so sad :/ i understand that she was desperate and trying to get to her sister, and that makes her sympathetic to me, but sympathy and accountability aren’t mutually exclusive. i wanted her to at least realize the weight of what she had done yk??

ALSO!(‘!!?! the mj stuff BOTHERED me, especially because they hyped her up so much in the trailers. somehow ned, with like five minutes of screentime, and the punisher got more satisfying character/relationship moments than she did 😭 bless her heart. the reveal was a huge gut punch w the letter and ughhh tears but afterward she just felt so disconnected from the character she was in the previous movies. like how are you not curious about any of these memories or moments bro omg. and i hate saying this because i like her, but it also kind of exposed how little they’ve actually developed her outside of peter/spiderman. she deserves to feel like a person with her own interiority and not just someone whose characterization changes depending on what peter’s arc needs.. bye the theory her bf might be green jackel is more interesting than her entire character

and peter dropping that HUGE emotional bomb on her just for her to be kind of dismissive and then for the movie to move on was sooo strange to me. and no i don’t think she owes him reciprocation at all. that’s not what i mean!!!! i just think a confession that emotionally loaded should have changed the atmosphere between them more than it did 😭 instead she leaves so quick and then he goes to her house and then it’s basically like okayyy see you next movie!! i’m curious about the tears tho..

black widow was peak though. literally no complaints there i loved her bad.

and the surveillance stuff was sooo weird to me too 😭 why does spider-man basically have his own little flock camera palantir database system and access to facial recognition footage of everyone in new york?? and why does the movie treat that like this neutral/cool superhero tool instead of something kind of horrifying lmao 😭 there was also just this weird pro-war/security-state undertone in parts of the movie that i really didn’t know what to do with. so uncomfortable 😣

so like… i had fun!! there’s a lot in it that i genuinely love and i’m excited to see where some of it goes. i just think the fact i enjoyed watching this and me thinking that this is a well constructed movie are two completely different things :”)