#adhd zack fair

[salternateunreality2]

AGSZC Deep Cleaning the Biohazard that is Zack’s Apartment

From the @strayheartless vault <3

—

Zack: It’s not a biohazard, that would mean nothing’s living there, and look, my pets are fine! *opens a drawer with a new litter of mice in it*

Genesis: AAAAAAA! Ahem. I mean to say: Zachariah McKinley Fair, a biohazard means it is unsafe for humans, and often involves dangerous non-human organisms. SUCH AS WILD MICE.

Zack: They’re not wild, they’re my fri-

Genesis: Zachariah. If you finish that word, I will firaga them immediately.

Zack: NO! *Hides the mice with his body*

—-

After Genesis’ 5th childish scream, Angeal’s 3rd round of dry-heaving, and Sephiroth and Cloud being found twitching near the entrance, Zack concedes that maybe he has some work to do.

—

Cloud decides to body-double for Zack by riding him like a backpack.

Zack: Maybe this sock is salvageable!

Koala Cloud: Nope, put it in the bag.

Zack: But I wanna- 

Cloud: IN THE BAG, FAIR.

—

Sephiroth is in full-coverage PPE to protect his hair and senses, and is excavating the fridge with gloves. 

Zack: But my pasta is in that tub of whipped cream! 

Angeal, working at the sink and dry-heaving: I MADE THAT FOR YOU LAST MONTH.

—

They have to set up a rotating schedule of visiting Zack's apartment so he's motivated to clean everything at least weekly, but Zack is really grateful.

He never means for it to get this bad, it’s just…he makes friends with the critters! And, well, sometimes he forgets things. And…and sometimes he just gets overwhelmed. He looks at the pile of dishes and knows he can’t do them all today, so he doesn’t do any.

Or he tries. He starts by picking up the dishes in his bedroom, but trips over a shirt along the way. He sets the dishes down to take the shirt to the laundry, but his eyes catch on the dusty blinds, so obviously he has to clean them, but then he looks up and it’s 3 hours later and he’s dismantled the whole window dressing and is cleaning the grooves with a q-tip and everything is worse than when he started.

Zack breaks down trying to explain it, and Genesis is the first to tell him he understands. Genesis and Angeal sandwich him between themselves while Sephiroth puts a hand on Zack’s shoulder and Cloud starts worming his way into Zack’s arms.

—

Zack cleans for each of them all the time, but for some reason, he can’t understand why they’d help him too.

It surprises him when Angeal comes over and just. Does all his dishes. Or when Genesis comes over and "purifies this hellhole of a bathroom" (gives it a decent clean and fills it with good soaps/battery operated candles/fresh towels). Or when Cloud obsessively sorts and folds his laundry, or when Sephiroth puts everything through the wash when he's working from home one day.

Zack doesn't GET that he's done the exact same things for them, like the time he scoured Angeal's pots for half a day, or polished every metallic surface in Sephiroth's apartment, or dusted Genesis' place so thoroughly it gleamed, or put fresh sheets on Cloud's bed, bundled him up, and did all his laundry while he was dissociating.

He doesn't realize the insurmountable task of addressing The Chair is easy for Angeal (it all goes in the wash. It's all dirty enough.), but the same man finds throwing out socks with holes hard (but acceptable when Zack does it for him).

Zack forgets that he folded all of Gen's towels into swans when Gen’s parents were coming into town and is blown away when Gen leaves a simply folded towel on the rack.

He thinks the work he puts into adding color to Sephiroth’s spartan apartment is nothing, not realizing Sephiroth’s heart is warmed by each and every little splash Zack sneaks in.

Zack doesn’t realize that Cloud would rather do all of Zack’s mopping than address the sensory hell that is washing monster gunk off his own boots, which Zack does for him often.

[errantnight]

The gods nerfed Zack by giving him ADHD because otherwise he'd be too powerful

[strayheartless]

Dumb ADHD shit Zack Fair has done (I may or may not be projecting):

Zack has served Angeal orange cordial with milk in it instead of water several times. Every time Angeal stares between him and the cup of juice until Zack realised what he’s done.

Taken a shopping basket all the way home from the supermarket and went to put it away in the closet until he caught himself thinking “why won’t it fit in here?! How did I get it out this morning?!” The poor boy had to go all the way back to the shop ashamed.

Sometimes walks into Clouds barracks looking really excited and when Cloud asks “what is it?” Zack replies “I can’t remember,” with far more enthusiasm than is warranted.

Got interrupted mid work flow by the phone while writing reports and got so mad he ripped the whole thing off of his desk and threw it at the wall. There is now a very sizeable hole between Zack and Genesis’s office walls.

Walked face first into Sephiroth’s chest after turning to walk away from some troops he was conducting room inspection on.

Has broken several door frames while catching himself from falling.

Disassociated in the middle of a tactile meeting and had to ask Lazard if they could schedule a one to one meeting to go back over what had just been said.

Eaten an entire family sized chocomeal after forgetting to eat all day and then had a panic attack because the sugar and salt content was so high he started to feel sickly and ended up needing Angeal to calm him down by feeding him ginger ale and hugging him tightly till it passed.

Sat on the back emergency fire escape stairs for four hours because the 46th floor was too loud and bright and he was going to punch Genesis in the face if he quoted LOVELESS one more time.

Managed to Yell at, cry on, cling to in anguished apology Cloud twice in one day. Cloud is yet to be told why this happened.

Bit Sephiroth on impulse while zoning out of what he was being told.

Whacked Gen with a mission file on impulse.

Couldn’t sleep so tried to lay with his head hanging off the bed and then wondered why his blood pressure went squiggly in the shower.

Once walked into an enemy base and had to call Angeal to remind him why he was in there.

Was made fun of to his face, and repeated what the other person said in their accent because his brain liked the sound… he got punched for mimicking.

Gets in trouble for repeating the same movie quote over and over again out loud frequently.

Is exhausted.

Yeah this was projecting…

[sinnashuart]

Zack's ADHD

Zack fair has ADHD. That's something I see tons of people acknowledge that I myself agree with, but a lot of it feels very shallow/surface level? I mostly see people talk about his diffculty paying attention, but never really explore a lot of the other symptoms of ADHD that he very clearly has. In general, ADHD has symptoms that can be put in two categories. These being inattentiveness and Hyperactivity/Impulsive behavior. I'm going to try to go into each symptom I've seen him display. Going through things that fall under inattentiveness since that's what most people focus on first and foremost! Obviously, Zack has a short attention span. The opening of Crisis core has Angeal setting him back on track multiple times, and has to remind him of his mission. That bleeds into another symptom of ADHD, which is having a hard time listening to or following instructions.

Another few symptoms of ADHD under inattentiveness is being disorganized, forgetful, and making careless mistakes. Zack has shown to fit under all of these things in DMW scenes. One in particular features him both losing materia AND forgetting his sword.

Again, we see that he's a messy person when he's talking to Aerith in another DMW scene.

Now I'm going to go into the symptoms that fall under Hyperactivity. Some of the most talked about symptoms he exhibits are a lack of ability to stay still, excessive physical movement, and excessive talking. Noteably too, people with ADHD can have difficulty controlling the volume of their voice, or how fast they speak. For example here, Zack is told right before to calm down by Angeal, and immediately proceeds to talk loudly (giving away their position.)

Circling back to the previously mentioned symptoms, trouble staying still and excessive movement are some of the few things I feel people notice first in correlation to ADHD, but never really think about what it really is in the context of ADHD. Zack tends to do squats when he's excited. It's a repeated motion he does to calm himself down and/or focus. Sound familiar? that's because it's stimming. Interupting conversations lines up with ADHD, and is something Zack does in-game too!

Here he interupts Angeal's speech (and gets a fond smile in turn. I will bring this up later for something else). Zack is impulsive by nature, and tends to rush into things without a clear plan. He has a very absent sense of danger sometimes as well. All of which fall under the Hyperactivity category of ADHD symptoms.

The symptoms I see in Zack that hardly a soul has acknowledged though, is him being easily frustrated or irritated. ADHD makes it hard to regulate emotions, and Zack showcases this a lot throughout Crisis Core. For Zack, this sometimes seems to fall under under Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which is common in people with ADHD. It's a discomfort and difficulty regulating feelings of failure or rejection. For Zack, this also takes the form of confusion/frustration/annoyance. However, in most instances of him taking criticism, he mostly manages to move past his and take the criticism/corrections to improve himself. Funnily enough, you can see his quick frustration/irritatrion in the very first cutscene when Angeal jumps down to elaborate on the parts of the mission he missed because Zack jumped a bit too soon due to his eagerness (more impulsivity). Zack gets angry due to this interuption to the task he was focused on, and becomes cheerful as soon as he is able to get back to his task. The frustration with interuption and being quickly upset is interesting. There are more instances of this kind of behavior, and it all really feels like it falls under this umbrella of him struggling to regulate his emotions. This also goes hand in hand with his stimming, since it isn't just the frustration/anger he has difficulty managing. His excitement and stress is something we also see him have difficulty managing, and can be tied into a lot of the other aspects of ADHD I have discussed here! Zack gets frustrated again later when Angeal ends the training simulator, and puts an end to the task he had been hyperfocused on.

It's an irrational anger, but it makes more sense when read through this lense. Zack was excited and hyperfocusing on his mission. He charged ahead without hearing or understanding the full objective, and almost got hurt (in the context of the training sim). The sim was ended before Zack felt it was "finished", which resulted in a frustration he expressed outwardly. His hasty behavior and exciteability is a core character trait, but makes far more sense if you read him as a character who lives with ADHD. How he is written and how other characters interact with him is interesting to watch as well! One thing in particular I love a lot is Angeal's treatment of Zack's ADHD tendencies. For being in the military, which is a very unforgiving enviornment, Angeal shows quite a lot of compassion for Zack's ADHD tendencies. Things that would normally get him into trouble are instead corrected rather gently! Angeal consistently repeats instructions to Zack when he needs it, and keeps a firm hand when he guides Zack through missions. He never tells Zack to sit still. He never berrates him for his interjections (Zack going "And? And and and?"). The only time he really scolds Zack is when he's doing something that may endanger them.

For example, here they're on a mission that requires stealth. Zack being loud isn't normally a problem, but here, they need to be relatively quiet in order to achieve their goal. Angeal is compassionate and understanding when Zack is... doing things that are very ADHD coded. As mentioned earlier, Angeal doesn't get upset when Zack interupts him. Instead, he just smiles. It's likely Angeal was the one who taught Zack to do squats to stim, actually. In the Ever Crisis version of Crisis Core, Angeal says this to Zack. Although it's not necessarily canon, it's still entirely plausible and just. Very wholesome.

More of Angeal's tolerance for Zack can be seen here, when Zack's attitude slips after being criticized, and Angeal pays it no mind. (Again, his rejection sensitive dysphoria plays a part in having him react rudely)

Again, you need to keep in mind that despite their closeness, Angeal is still both his mentor and superior. He doesn't have to be as patient with Zack as he is in-game, but he does so anyway because... that's just how he is. Angeal cares a LOT about his loved ones, and Zack is included in this. He shows a lot of love to this little guy! I think it's nice, because I love seeing characters with ADHD being treated with consideration by others. It's something I wish people did more IRL, really. Lots of ableism surrounding aspects of ADHD that aren't as easy to romanticize and considered "annoying", so having Angeal respond to them with understanding makes me incredibly happy. Altogether I just absolutely love Zack as a character. I love reading him with ADHD since I have it myself. I just want people to see the depth to it more though, since there's more to it than just "he's high energy and gets distracted". You get to understand his actions or irrational behavior a lot more when you dive past the surface of his writing. Big, massive, enormous fucking thanks to my bestie @rune-rapier for letting me bounce ideas to and from him!! He helped me get a lot of these scenes in here to analyze, and brought up a LOT of points that made it in this post, and made it a lot easier for me to word.

[do-you-know-this-adhd-character]

Do you know this (noncanon) ADHD character?

Evidence is below the cut!

Submitter links this post which is very compelling, as well as listing the following things:

- stims/fidgets by doing repeated squats; whenever he’s stressed or bored he does squats

- Has difficulty controlling his voice volume and with being too loud; for example, he was on a mission (he’s essentially a super soldier) that required stealth and talked too loud, alerting the enemy

- he will consistently forget important things in excitement; his sword and his materia (which lets him do magic) are some items he’s forgotten

- He acts very hyper—constantly moving, talking fast, etc

- He will often interrupt people

- On the mission that opens the game, he’s told by his mentor some information then a few minutes later seems to forget it

- he is often reminded by his mentor to focus

- He hates sitting still and waiting (he broke cover on a mission to pace)

- impulsively jumps to conclusions

[wowa-bublord]

I love your art it always puts a smile on my face when I see you post! I also like seeing people make Cloud take more of an initiative in zakkura~

thank u!!! ehehe, 2 me they r like this

[rocktis]

fanon my beloved vs. fanon my beloathed

beloved - zack's nicknames for cloud (spikey, sunshine, cloudy, etc) - kunsel has hacked into shinra's database and could cause massive damage to the company on a whim by tapping a few keys beloathed - "zack's so stupid lol he's such a himbo" - "cloud's just a cocky asshole who doesn't care about anything but money and himself"

[soggy-fishsticks]

[webkinzyuri]

happy autism

[ID in alt text]

[tamagoneko]

😈x😇

[hungarianmudkip69]

as a depressed adhd person, zack has become even more relatable in the latter half of the game

[errantnight]

Got any cute/wholesome headcanons to share? Thanks!

Sephiroth had a little quirk when he was younger, after he'd got out of the labs and got to eat 'real food' (MREs are delicious when you've spent your life eating those emergency ration bricks and nutrient supplement drinks) He would arrange every bit of it separately and eat one thing at a time so he could enjoy the different flavors and textures by themselves. As an adult he still does it, always leaving his favorite bit for last, but only when there isn't anyone watching.

Genesis funds arts and theater extra-curricular classes in several schools in low income towns because its a travesty that these kids would be deprived of such things. He has a whole fund set up to buy art supplies for students and sets and costumes for the theater kids. The only requirement to get into the classes is that you read Loveless and write a little report on it.

Angeal always buys the ugly produce so it doesn't go to waste. There's nothing wrong with a wonky avocado or a knobbly potato! They taste exactly the same. He doesn't understand why anyone cares what their veggies look like when they're going to dice them up or mash them. It's all the same thing! The members of his fan club pick up on this and wage a little war against food waste on the Plate and make a ton of donations to soup kitchens in the slums.

Zack has severe ADHD! He's brilliant, but unfocused a lot of the time because he's so impulsive. When he was a child in Gongaga he would get overstimulated and angry because of it and would stomp off into the jungle to purposefully provoke the touch-me frogs. He'd let one hit him and turn him into a frog on purpose! As a frog he can relax, his brain getting a little quieter with him being so small. His mom would watch him go, sigh, and put some Maiden's Kiss in a bowl by the back door for when he felt better. Sometimes he'd come home and his dad would ruefully pick him up and put him in a terrarium in his bedroom (it had little ramps to get in and out himself! and he'd spend all night like that when things were hard for him.

[strayheartless]

so does zack, seph and gen are all aware that they are neurodivergent?

Errr not officially aware as in they have been to a doctor who has formally tested them. But aware in the sense of they experience all these different things that are hard to ignore.

I kind of write a lot of these things with a duel idea of “they don’t know, but if they were formally diagnosed they’d recognise that it’s because of their diagnosis.”

The reality is that Zack, Seph, Gen and probably Cloud would not be able to be diagnosed unless they were willing to give up their jobs as members of a military force. Most armed forces (or at least in my country) don’t allow formally diagnosed autistic and ADHD people in the military.

Whether Shinra cares is up for debate, but I’d imagine they wouldn’t put much effort into accommodating neurodivergent peoples needs.

Also there’s the question of if it’s an available diagnosis within the world of FFvii. Assuming it is then how readily available is it?

I generally see it like this:

Genesis: seen as “gifted kid” because he was so intelligent, never got diagnosed because his parents didn’t believe autism and ADHD were a real thing. Gen was simply seen as bossy and opinionated. He he could be brutally honest but he wasn’t a bad kid. Gillian was very good with him, and Angeal never seemed to have an issue with how much Genesis could be.

Sephiroth: Hojo ignored all his signs on purpose, has read very bad and harmful science on “curing” autism and has traumatised sephiroth to the point of deep rooted masking. It’s hard to tell what’s trauma and what’s Autism with Sephiroth these days.

Zack: His parents were told he probably was ADHD in fact his teachers were almost positive he was. The problem was there’s not a lot of funding in country reactor town education, so mr and mrs Fair would have had to pay a lot of money to get him diagnosed and that would mean taking him all the way to Midgar or Kalm to find a doctor to diagnose him formally. In the end they went to the library and read up on what they could do to help him.

Cloud: Cloud doesn’t know what Autism is. He doesn’t know he has it. He doesn’t know that his mother desperately tried to get him diagnosed when he was little because she thought it might ease how people treated him. And Cloud certainly doesn’t know that his main problem with communication and sustaining friendship has to do with said autism. Claudia tried so hard to find a way. She’d suspected since he was little because he didn’t like eye contact and he was slow to speak, but she never had the money.

[noxsylvania]

prompt idea for you: you’ve got ND seph and autistic cloud. what about adhd zack?

You.. you understand.

[biganimal92]

tumblr is not yet ready for the discussion about how the increasing need for representation of any identity that isn't cishet and/or white superseding any other facet of storytelling is in fact creating an ever-worsening trend in tokenization of micro-identities including but not limited to gender expression and mental illness and that this tokenization has not been confined to online communities for a long time

[wowa-bublord]

Do either Zack or Cloud have their traumas manifest in a fear of physical touch? Or a fear of anything that the other may trigger by accident? Sorry My Whump Is Kicking In Today

NO NEED 2 APOLOGIZE FOR ANY ASKS i am eating them all the time

Zack and cloud I think are both very touchy and clingy, it's definitely one of Zacks main love languages. He bites he wrestles he messes up everyones hair. if you have talked 2 him for 4 seconds he will give you a hug and explode all of your bones

But their fears definitely do pop up from time to time. Cloud has days where he doesn't want contact from anyone, I imagine him as already pretty touch averse (he has autism 2 me) so when things get tough and he can't deal with it that day, I imagine him as pretty good at shutting it down. Cloud in general I imagine as really good at setting boundaries, and doesn't usually think about how the way he expresses his dislike for things might bother the other person. It doesn't even cross his mind. Like in this comic!!

zack is. not as good on that front.

the strugglers