There is a HUGE fandom for Zack, Angeal and Genesis, especially in various pairings with Cloud and Sephiroth, as you can see from AO3.
The 7th most popular pairing in the FFVII fandom is Genesis/Sephiroth
The 8th most popular is Genesis/Cloud
The 9th most popular is Genesis/Cloud/Sephiroth/Angeal/Zack
All of these have more fanfic written for them than Aerith or Aeris/Cloud.
The MOST popular pairing is Cloud/Sephiroth
Cloud features in 3,443 fics
Sephiroth features in 2,467
Zack in 2166
Genesis in 1,140
Angeal in 1,013
Angeal, Zack and Genesis are in the top ten most popular characters.
I don't understand it either.
I think "huge" is pretty relative, especially in the context of what you're talking about here - "vocal minorities" and all that.
Fans that go as far as writing/reading/even caring about fan-fiction and character pairings are a huge minority of any community of people following fiction in the first place.
So I don't think trends among fringes of consumer-bases like that is something that impresses many companies or content creators when they consider where to take their intellectual properties in the future.
AC apparently sold around 4-5 million copies, and CC around 3.2.
FFVII by contrast has sold around 11 million copies.
Of course, many of those sales are bound to be re-buys by people who already bought the game at some earlier point in their life, but I think this might apply to AC as well, with it's multiple versions (DVD, Blue-ray, complete editions etc.). As for CC, it's just not really in the same ball-park regardless.
So in either case, when we're now looking at people who write/read fan-fiction, or cosplay, motivated by the compilation material, we're looking at a pretty slim group of people comparatively to the larger FFVII fan/consumer base.
Most fans I know (and have met over the years) of FFVII - people interested in the remake mind you - wouldn't touch fan-fiction, cosplay or FFVII fan-communities with a ten-foot long pole.
They also aren't particularly fond of the compilation.
Now, of course there's a selection bias, in that if they're my friends, they probably have some overlapping personality traits that would inspire the same kind of dislike for the compilation that I have - but even so, outside of fringe, really obsessive FF fan communities, I hardly ever see anyone who enjoyed the OG praise the compilation.
More generally, to the topic though (end of reply portion) :
As I've said before, this game is its own thing continuity-wise, and is a complete re-write/restructure of the original plot.
As much as I loath the compilation, that's largely not on the basis or opinion that it expands on a story that arguably didn't need it, or that all the ideas present within it are bad - but simply that I find the execution of those ideas to be extremely poor and often thematically inconsistent with the source material in ways that it shouldn't be given they are so closely connected.
Given that the remake is its own thing, I don't have any inherent issue with re-using ideas from the compilation. There are plenty of base ideas introduced in the compilation that could be useful for fleshing out the plot of the remake (For instance, I think in retrospect that the history of the Buster Sword is something I didn't know I wanted until the compilation decided to add it. I didn't like how they did it, but the idea of having it is good IMO)
This is why this topic IMO is slightly confused.
This really isn't a matter of whether "the compilation" makes its way into the remake or not - rather it is how are the using/rewriting the ideas and sequences of the compilation material,
if they see fit to use it.
The idea that they'll just straight up reference it as is (I'll pace myself here)
very unlikely(take that as you may), but that is not the same as the ideas or characters from the compilation being completely absent.
It's also something I wouldn't want. The compilation is not good enough, IMO to warrant inclusion as is. I think it demands rewrites even more so than the original game.
Putting an apple in the reactor example is a good way of illustrating what I mean :
Doing that would simply be a pure nod to the compilation, implying events that happened in the compilation are equally true for the basis of the remake, even if not shown. That's one way of doing it, but again
very unlikely.
More likely is that you could find, say, a location or character from the
compilation that wasn't in the original game, but also doesn't actually completely resemble or seem consistent with the compilation from which its based - although it may make more sense for the remake's new narrative.
So like, maybe there's a Genesis, but he doesn't look like Gackt, doesn't have a wing or site poetry, although he might be there as an additional 1st Class SOLDIER during flash-back after Cloud fixes his memories (
not saying that's going to happen, or even that this would be a good thing).
Just saying this - do not to expect compilation material (as in ideas/concept/characters) to be absent, but at the same time do not expect that material to be faithful to the titles from which they were pulled/derived, or to be handled in the same way.
That's probably the most realistic way to approach this work IMO, and I think that could turn out either way.
I don't think basing new ideas on the ideas of the compilation is bad.
The real bad thing IMO would be to simply mindlessly insert references to it, acting as if AC and CC are canon as is to the remake's new narrative.
