The mere thought of Angeal is about to make me an endangered species

Sephiroth reading

THE ZACK FAIR BRAINROT IS SO REAL

Because @salternateunreality started it and then it just didn't stop.

What I mostly like about the little S/L ship is how healthily balanced their relationship seems to be. They both seem to be equally powerful, but in different ways.

Lazard is not physically strong, but when it comes to social situations, he’s an expert. The youngest Director in ShinRa, at 23 years old he is already in charge of ShinRa’s most powerful force, SOLDIER and is doing a good job when dealing with other directors, SOLDIERs, the president, etc. People like Domino and Palmer (sometimes even Reeve) do not get much respect because of how soft they are. And SOLDIERs are apparently not above talking shit about people they do not respect (and you might say duuh, well of course Sephiroth would talk badly and openly disrespect Hojo. And in real life I would agree, but in fiction I guess you can only say a character does smth if they’re portrayed doing smth? So yes, Sephiroth will let people know if he disrespects them). So despite being young, poor and unenhanced, Lazard compensates it with social expertise to gain position of power. We can see that when he predicts Genesis’ parents are lying to ShinRa. And once again, in real life one might say duuuh, but in Crisis Core it is shown that Lazard makes a prediction about people’s motives and behavior and even Zack needs an explanation why he made that guess and later it is revealed that Genesis’ parents indeed cannot be trusted as they falsified info about Genesis (that he wasn’t any special from the G cells – Sephiroth finds their falsified reports later in game). So yes, this short game about Zack takes time to point out how well Lazard can read people.

Which brings me to my point: apparently Sephiroth accepts hugs and affirmations if people interpret his needs correctly. I would have never thought Sephiroth lets people hug him when he’s in a sulky vulnerable mood, but here we go.

I think Lazard is much more protective of Sephiroth than vice versa. He is very conventional and modern when it comes to ideas about leadership – mutual respect, trust, good communication. Which had without a doubt severely clashed with everything Sephiroth believed in when he was transferred from prof Hojo to SOLDIER. Of course Lazard’s main goal in life was to end the evil ShinRa corporation and to do it by destroying SOLDIER department. But for that, he had to establish himself as a leader of SOLDIER first. And Sephiroth needed a lot of conditioning to be undone. Lazard is very hands-on leader who wants to see in person how his SOLDIERs are performing their tasks, to personally evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. So imagine Sephiroth returning from a mission where he slept outside in horrible weather for a week because he was given the wrong key, but he didn’t want to complain, because hardships made him stronger. Or being injured and not having the means to return to the base so he’d walk for miles and miles before getting any medical attention. "Pain is good for you!" After finding it out, Lazard would call him to his office and try to gently suggest that maybe instead of hiding the fact that something is wrong, he can trust him and openly discuss it. I imagine Lazard having to explain to Sephiroth such concepts as survivor’s guilt, etc, to tell Sephiroth what he is feeling and why he’s feeling that. And at first it was probably just so Lazard can have Sephiroth as a functioning team member, but in CC it appears to evolve further and Sephiroth goes to sulk in Lazard’s office when things are bad.

Lazard is portrayed to have a lot of empathy and he fights for the greater good. He sacrificed Genesis, Angeal and himself to destroy ShinRa and yes it was a scummy thing to do and he felt a lot of guilt because of it. But imagine an empathetic person who believes in making the right choices being in charge of young Sephiroth. That young man is so broken even Glenn tries to adopt him. FF7 timeline is a mess, but CC lasts for at least 7 years. So I would say S and L know one another for a decade, give or take a couple of years.

Lazard is pretty upset about his father abandoning his mother and him in the slums. For a young fatherless child, slums must have been a very scary place, especially in dystopian hellscape that is FF7. And while he is well adjusted, having someone as strong and loyal as Sephiroth must feel very nice for him.

And Sephiroth never found his mother, but there was this soft and gentle guardian who probably understood his needs better than he ever could.

This is the part where I wipe a tear and say that in another scenario they could have been perfect for one another. Both professional, respected adults, very strong in their own ways, perfectly fulfilling each other’s needs. But Lazard’s main goal was to destroy the evil corporation and Sephiroth was loyal to ShinRa until it was too late.

Genesis: I hate ShinRa, so I will desert and attack it.

Lazard: I hate ShinRa so I will join it and undo it from inside.

Sephiroth: METEOR.

literally no one asked but to me the difference between smth like advent children & crisis core and whats going on with the remasters is.. shit now just feels utterly soulless. to be fair i wasnt old enough to recall anything about advent children's marketing and only just barely remember seeing stuff for crisis core psp, but the works themselves at least feel complete and independent of each other while still feeling grounded in ffvii's narrative. the added characters and plot devices exist to further the plot of the mini-story theyre contained in and nothing more.

is advent children ridiculous? absolutely. it's a confusing, reference bound video game lore movie. but it doesnt feel like its trying so hard to be more than that. its an scifi-fantasy action romp with painfully 2005 music and character designs. the remnants are stupid additional characters but they dont try to seem more important to the wider plot than they are. theyre there to tell the audience "hey, sephiroth's gonna be here soon but not yet", they disappear when sephiroth is on screen and die when sephiroth is killed. its a contained story that ends when the credits roll.

angeal and genesis have been. distorted. over time i feel but in the original crisis core they feel like theyre of similar value. angeal needed to support zack like how zack supported cloud, and sephiroth isnt evil yet so genesis is our major villain. theyre perfectly fine in these roles, they do their job, theyre effective at it and theyre reasonably good characters that (for the most part. side eyes genesis.) dont waste our time. crisis core is a perfectly fine prequel. i had fun with it, i had fun with the characters, and it should have been left alone.

the remasters do something similar but worse -- they fucking bait you over the span of 4 years now instead of over the span of a 2 hr movie or couple dozen hours of a video game. youre hoping to see your favorite character again, maybe this year the cryptic reference they made will be made clear but if not!! you bet your ass in 2030 theres gonna be another $70 game for you to buy to see if that plotline gets resolved! also we're going to post vague clerith for this months twitter announcement to get engagement and arguments going, and then next month we'll post vague cloti to make the arguing worse and keep those eyes on our game that means nothing anymore. but also this is going to be SOOOOOO important and life changing in the narrative so you best not look away! fucking attention span deletion method of telling a story. its sad

HELLO !!! i am here and i wanted to know more about ff7r and crisis core !!! i have so many questions and they may be dumb but. i don't care. are they the same thing? are they different? when do sephiroth and genesis and angeal come in!!! do you have any headcanons or other details about them (or the game/games!!!) that you can share!!! i like hearing you talk about all these things and i like learning!!! -heavenshipped 💗

AAAAAAH LIV @heavenshipped YOU'VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD BUT IN A REALLY GOOD WAY!!! ok this uh. despite my best efforts is gonna get Really Long. i'm gonna probs put hcs in a separate post but even then i just KNOOOW this will b long despite that <3 I Just Have A Lot Of Thoughts And Love In Me Alright

SO!! some handy terms and abbreviations to know before we set off on backstory!

squeenix/squenix/squinx: square enix, the game developers

ff7: final fantasy 7! like last year or smth, squeenix put out the first part of the remake, aka ff7r :D the protag of the game is cloud and the primary antagonist is seph after he loses his mind thanks to an alien called jenova :/ angeal and gen r both canonically dead in this game, but i’m hoping for flashbacks ft them in the second part!

cc: crisis core, a prequel for ff7 that's about zack's time as a soldier! zack and cloud were friends and we get to see that in this game, along with that sweet sweet geal/seph/gen content, so it holds a special place in my heart for that reason :') side note: this game also makes me jealous of zack, bc aerith is set up as his love interest :^) we r Homosexualising

shinra: shinra electric power company, the company that founded and runs the city of midgar and the SOLDIER program

ASGZC: angeal, sephiroth, genesis, zack, and cloud, my BOYS,, can be shortened to ASG for the himbo holy trinity

SOLDIER: the name of the program AND the job title! angeal, seph, gen, zack, and i were first class soldiers before we did some treason bc shinra Sucks

mako: liquid energy within the planet that shinra uses to make power. it's. not a renewable resource, but they sure use it like one! it's also used to enhance the soldiers and gives them a sickass blue-green eyeglow

AIGHT let's-a go!! ⚠️ all of this is subject to change bc i am Just Like That! also the canonical timeline for ff7 is a mess so i made up my own dates ⚠️ so zack and i are bffs who met when we were 15 and had just moved to the centre of midgar in order to join the SOLDIER program! female soldiers r pretty uncommon and i wasn't too keen on living in the dorms, so after Just A Couple Months of knowing each other, zack and i got an apartment together. in hindsight we shouldn't have made it seven years, but somehow we didn't burn the place down ONCE. he's only Four Months Younger than me, so he complains whenever i call him little brother, but ik he doesn't actually mind :')

when zack was 16, angeal started mentoring him, which was the first time i met angeal! it's funny, i like. Saw seph and gen in passing, but never had any reason to talk to them ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ when i was 17, an accident on a mission revealed that i had a real talent with magic, and p much right after that, genesis took me on! while this was largely bc he's renowed for his skill w magic and thus was the best person to teach me, it was also in part to save me from becoming a lab rat, and i'm still grateful that he offered to do that.

zack met cloud first when we were 18 and was like "can we keep him" and i am immune to zack's puppy dog eyes but not to cloudlet's! so he basically became the third roommate ^_^ cloud also wanted to join soldier, so he thought zack and i had the coolest job Ever (AND we had met general sephiroth!!! holy fuck!!!)

despite appearances, seph is the youngest of ASG. by crisis core, angeal is 26, gen is 25, and seph, the babey of the family, is 23. (he's only a year older than me and zack... cloud's still only 20 tho lol rip) why YES, shinra does in fact use child soldiers! why do you think we did the treason! 😊😊 seph is ALSO not immune to cloud, specifically how persistent and sharp he is, and decided to mentor him when cloudlet was 18 (after being a child soldier himself, seph's got some... reservations abt the concept lmao)

gen and i were SOOOO awkward and stupid around one another at first!!!! because we were so close in age that i was like yeah you're teaching me but i have friends who are 20. we're still in the Being Friends gap. and he took a hot sec to make up his mind and be friends. he didn't catch feelings until i was like. 20, but it was a STEEP and precipitous drop lmao

angeal 🤝 me: being The Semi-Well Adjusted Ones responsible for keeping our two other idiot friends alive. fr we bonded over years' worth of keeping zack from running off cliffs and falling into manholes. he also taught me how to cook. zack jokingly referred to us as mom and dad for years. we were the most likely to get into disagreements but the least likely to actually argue bc neither of us like. enjoys arguments that much. angeal literally refused to let himself have AAAANY feelings for yours truly until i was 21, which i appreciate thank u king

learning that seph was A SINGLE YEAR OLDER THAN ME was the Biggest twist of 17 year old me's life on g-d. and i took that VERY personally ngl like i INSTANTLY decided that as another member of the "consistently mistaken for a much older Adult person" gang, we were GONNA bond!!! and we did!!! i'm largely responsible for his taste in music and i am VERY proud of this, tyvm. he's also kind of a swords nerd (his sword has a name...) and that rubbed off on me over time. if u asked him he couldn't rly tell u when he first had a crush on me, but i can tell u that the pining had become obvious by the time i was 19 and he was 20 uwu

AND BECAUSE I CAN NEVER LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE!! i threw in a one-sided bodyguard romance bc nobody can stop me. sorry tseng LMAO that's a whole separate spotify playlist tho so i will not include it here ffhshdgs if u would like to hear abt that feel free to ask tho!!

liv i LOVE u sm!!! thank u for letting me talk abt this i have simply been EXPLODING with thoughts, plans, and information about ff7!!!!! hopefully this was all vaguely coherent, bc i loved being able to share it with YOU!!!!! i didn't make that pink on purpose i just think my emotions got so strong that tumblr decided it had to be pink /j

@unhr:

who these ppl are even ????? like Genesis isn't even nice to begin w/ ??? rmbr sephiroth's recollection of them fighting in the training room and gENESIS STRAIGHT UP BURNED ANGEAL'S FACE FOR INTERVENING LIKE ????? DUDE ??? HE ALSO GUILT-TRIPS ANGEAL ??????

ngl tho the entirety of crisis core is Genesis appearing out of nowhere and breaking out a LOVELESS verse while zax just tells him to shut up

BUT YEA I JUST RLY LOVE ZAX BC?????  WHAT HAPPENED WASNT EVEN SMTH HE WANTED TO DO AND HE DIED WITHOUT BEING A HERO SO HAHA !

THE TRAINING ROOM SCENE ACTUALLY MAKES ME REALLY MAD BC THE ENGLISH VERSION WAS SUCH A BAD MISTRANSLATION AND IT WRECKS A LOT OF HOW HE’S PRESENTED AS A CHARACTER LMAO but that’s a personal gripe and him burning angeal in the face was still....A Mess 

ASDFGHF LIKE IDK IT WAS WEIRD BC PPL JUST WANTED ME TO WRITE GENESIS AS LIKE ?? this easy-to-approach and amicable guy & got mad at me when he was just a sarky fuck n it’s like...?? He’s Not Approachable Or Even Remotely Sociable Lmao ?? i think it’s probs bc, even tho he was an antagonist, he wasn’t really a Villain so ppl were expected him to be this befriendable muse asdfghgfdsa 

AND HONESTLY LIKE THE SCENE !! WHERE SEPHIROTH LEARNS ABT WHAT HE IS !! genesis just shows up and taunts him like,,,,i think genesis’ degradation played a huge role in why he was acting so fuckin bizarre at that point in time specifically but it was still like...mate,,,The Fuck Are You Even Trying ASDFGFD GENESIS WAS MOSTLY A WEIRD NUISANCE FOR MOST OF THE GAME LIKE SHINRA IS ARGUABLY THE ACTUAL ANTAGONIST IN THE GAME, GENESIS WAS JUST SOME GUY CAUSING A MESS ASDFGHGFDFG

ALSO YEAH THAT’S ALSO WHY LIKE ??? GOING ON FROM MY POINT ABT SHINRA, a lot of ppl in the ffvii fandom seem to completely under-emphasise how shit shinra really are and how zax, specifically, was exploited throughout the events of crisis core. i feel like the whole point of CC is that ur seeing it through zax’ eyes so, yes, characters who were enemies in the og (e.g; tseng) are shown in a much better light bc ?? zax isn’t yet privy to just how shinra is ?? and that’s why his death is so sad bc he’s done all this shit that wasn’t even his choice bc it was his job and shinra basically sold this idea of ‘following our orders = heroic’ so, by the time zax learned how fucked up everything was, it was too late aND I’M MAD IT’S SUCH A CRUEL PLOTLINE AND YET PPL COMPLETELY WASH OVER THAT

also crisis core is kinda fucked up bc like,,,,zax n genesis were both characters who rlly wanted to be seen as heroes but sephiroth rlly didnt and yet he was the one seen as a hero,,,Harsh. 

In Last Order Zack is portrayed to have a lot of empathy, so I wonder why he never showed any to Sephiroth.

When Sephiroth was going through a very traumatic time, sent ON A MISSION TO ELIMINATE HIS ONLY FRIENDS, Zack laughed how spoilt he was. Haha, dumb Sephiroth has it too good!

When Sephiroth told Zack he might abandon ShinRa, meaning "I will throw my whole life away and become primary target of ShinRa that won't stop until they kill me" Zack didn't even react. Sephiroth said he was about to desert! He trusted this very sensitive information to Zack. 0 response. Talk to the wall, wall might care more

When Sephiroth opened up and began to trauma dump in Nibelheim about his mother's death, Zack was like "Whatever, old dude, I have more fun things to do than listen to this"

When Sephiroth realised he was a monster, and Zack just chillaxed, watching Sephiroth suffer. One (1) word of support was too much effort for our lovely boy Zack.

When Sephiroth locked himself up for 7 days, Zack decided not to inform any grown ups who might bother to do smth. A rock would have understood Sephiroth needed immediate help. Zack understood that too. He just couldn’t be bothered.

"I trusted you, Sephiroth!!!" Angeal is allowed to betray him, Genesis is allowed to betray everyone and kill innocent people, Lazard is allowed to destroy sanity of every good SOLDIER, and Zack is willing to understand and forgive. But Sephiroth can gtfo, no forgiveness for him. Let's go chill with Lazard and tell him all about how he's a good person and forgiven and it's all good.

I can almost see malice at how Zack treated Sephiroth, nobody is that braindead to not understand what's going on. He knew. He really knew. He chose to sit in the front row and enjoy the show

@unhr:

LIKE I ACTUALLY LOVE THE JAPANESE VERSION DONT GET ME WRONG BUT I ALSO LIKE THE ENGLISH VERSION BUT THE TRANSLATIONS THAT GO WRONG GETS TO ME LIKE NO IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THAT NRDJDJSJSJ like genesis just wants to be a hero ok ???? and sephiroth was made to be a perfect SOLDIER so he got it  &  it wasn't even his choice and there's two people who actively does things to the best of their abilities but it's always sephiroth who gets the title like it's p pitiful

that sephiroth got what he never wanted and the two never gotten what they've always wanted !!!! and ok ive always seen genesis as a brat maybe bc of his upbringing ??  but yea i see him as a brat who's there to constantly make a mess in FF vii crisis core bc he's trying to stay alive and he's lIKE ADDING UP TO THE THINGS THAT ZAX STRESSES ABT RJFJDJDJ but genesis isn't even nice to begin like yea he has his moments but he's not a Nice Nice idk where ppl get that image

THAT SCENE IN NIBELHEIM MAKES ME LAUGH BC HIS PETTINESS AND BRATTINESS FULL ON APPEARS??  He's like telling sephiroth how he's the perfect monster and then later on says that he needs his help like bitch do u rly think that sephiroth will help u like that???  so when sephiroth said 'u will rot' IM JUST YES BITCH U SHOULDA ASKED NICELY

legit there's so many loopholes in FF vii : cc fjrjjdjdnn but like yea u right abt shinra being the army and zax is actually ignorant abt all of these things bc he wants to be a hero so bad !!  that he follows around every order like a dog so when genesis calls him a lap dog it's actually accurate ?  zax throughout the game is forced into things he doesn't want to deal with in the first place but has to anyway.  and the end results in his own misery and inevitably,

his own death ?  so i hate to see fans shifting the blame to one antagonist to another like yea they have a part in but the main antagonist is actually shinra and how fucked they really are!!  like look how much they drove zax to a wall like they fucking???  sent an army for two fucking fugitives.  two!!!!!  and tseng and cissnei are portrayed to be the good people bc they help out zax but there's always an ulterior motive there that either zax turns a blind eye to or

is just too ignorant to see. bc he wants to be a hero in his own way and achieving that thru any means made him somewhat blind??  to what's really happening around him .  So it was late by the time he found out and he fucking died without being a fucking hero like i cried a lot a while ago bc of this --- he's such a light hearted boy and he's always stereotyped into it but can't u see how much pain he's not showing and he's carrying it all on his own???

thanks for coming into my Ted talk !  fnfdjdjDNDJSJSJ

YEAH SAME LIKE I DO REALLY LIKE THE ENG VERSION AND IT’S THE VERSION I PLAYED AND STUFF SO I DO HAVE AN ATTACHMENT TO IT BUT I ALSO MOSTLY BASE MY PORTRAYAL OFF OF THE JAPANESE VERSION?? it annoys me a lot that the eng version presented genesis as wanting to be better than sephiroth (the world needs a new hero) instead of a guy who just desperately wanted to be his honest peer (i too would like to become a hero in the japanese version iirc). LIKE GENESIS IS DEFINITELY SUPER MISGUIDED but i don’t like the fact that the translation really played down his obvious inferiority complex. they painted genesis as someone with a superiority complex instead which is........a really odd choice imo ASDFGHGF

BUT YEAH OMG LIKE GENESIS IS BASICALLY LIKE....he’s that kid who’s been smart and praised and shit all his life but doesn’t know how to cope when he’s in a larger environment and he’s not the best anymore ASDFGHGFDSA LIKE I GUESS THO ?? HE WASN’T VERY SOCIABLE GROWING UP AND HE KEPT TO HIMSELF AND WAS ALSO ADOPTED AND SHIT SO being this smart kid who idk got prizes for inventing apple juice was smth he clung to and, altho he already admired sephiroth beforehand, being faced w/the fact he wasn’t ever going to be as good and, by sole virtue of not being sephiroth, wasn’t ever going to be praised for his efforts in the own way. like i imagine SOLDIER first class all did a lot in the war but sephiroth was the one who got all the press for it. i don’t think that’d bother angeal bc he doesn’t seem to care about that sort of thing but genesis seems like?? he really wanted validation so that would have really been....Yikes ASDFGFDSDFA

that doesn’t excuse how he reacts in the end at all but i think that definitely plays a lot into it esp bc like??? again, shinra aren’t good people. they exploit SOLDIER immensely and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that environment would have fucked genesis up a little, esp since he was only a ??? teenager when he joined shinra. which IS ALSO INTERESTING BC ?? IT ACTUALLY PRESENTS A LOT OF PARALLELS WITH ZAX THAT PEOPLE DON’T REALLY GO INTO ASDFGHGFD MAYBE THAT WASN’T INTENTIONAL BUT i think it’s really interesting that they’re characters who start out with similar motives but end up going in totally different directions ?? ASDFGFDS I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHT AND ANALYSIS IN MIND ABT GENESIS I HONESTLY FORGOT HOW MUCH I’D OVERTHOUGHT HIS CHARACTER LMAO

i think tho like ?? the unwilling soldier getting screwed over is really a reoccurring theme in final fantasy and one I ACTUALLY FIND REALLY INTERESTING ??? hence me making kael bc i kinda wanted to do what crisis core essentially did with humanising SOLDIER but with the galbadian army instead just bc like...there’s a lot to explore there. i think the fact that FF always has this kind of take of like,,,the enemies you spend so much of the game killing aren’t necessarily even BAD people, they’re just people being exploited or indoctrinated by the real villains. even the Big Bads of most FF games were characters who were fucked over by whatever imperialistic entity happens to appear in that game at some point?? sephiroth is definitely a good example of that.

AND YEAH LIKE THE FACT THE GAME IS through zax’ eyes like that and all these characters who should be enemies are treated as friends just makes his death EVEN MORE tragic than it was in the original game? bc you get to experience zax learning to TRUST these people and put his faith in this system that is ultimately evil and corrupt, only for THEM to be the ones that kill him. it’s such a nasty betrayal. he goes through the whole game doing only what he thinks is right, right until his very last moment, and all he gets for it in the end is a firing squad shooting him down. IT’S SO SAD, HONESTLY ASDFGHGFD LIKE IT’S SAD ON ITS OWN JUST BC IT’S A DEATH SCENE BUT THE WIDER PICTURE IS WHAT MAKES IT ESPECIALLY TRAGIC ?? it’s that kind of...knowing he never really had a chance to begin with. shinra wanted zax to live and die for SOLDIER and, when he decides he wants to live his own life instead, they kill him anyway ):

AND YEAH I DON’T GET WHY PEOPLE WASH OVER ZAX’ STRUGGLES SO MUCH LIKE?? he’s gone through SO much over the course of the game. he’s experienced war, experienced people close to him dying, experienced everything he believed in turning out to be false ?? so on and so forth?? like everyone seems to accept that the events of nibelheim and the following experimentation shit traumatised cloud but people don’t seem to focus on the fact that zax went through that too. hojo experimented on him too. just because he came out conscious, unlike cloud, and was optimistic enough to keep going doesn’t mean it didn’t have a really nasty effect on him. we just don’t get to see any of that because he’s killed and the game ends before anybody gets a chance to dwell on it.