Haha. Yeah, you're energy came through. I'll admit to making some assumptions while reading it that you write exactly like you talk-sorta like I do. I could hear a voice in the comment and it was just fun.
You mention the "all male cast", which is honestly something that I was a bit ashamed of by the end. I like diversity in characters and I really tried to come up diverse personalities and combatted a lot of stereotypes here. However, in the process of that-- I completely left out female characters. Since this as a first writing attempt, I sorta went the direction of "write what you know." I don't know that I can write a good female character-- at least what my goals for the character would be so I very much stuck to my comfort zone in terms of gender. I wrote a very "bro" story here and I'm fine with that. However, it does kinda suck that we don't have female characters (I did sprinkle them in as secondary characters throughout so females do exist, lol). But with the story, I felt like I was already trying to do a lot and I was worried I'd end up writing a cliche female character and that would be almost more offensive than not including some.
In terms of gender and their relation to the Zack. I think that can really depend on the person. I tried to include a lot of generic struggles and hopefully those had enough of a reference point that people could relate to something in their own life just to be able to empathize with the characters in that moment. Gender is certainly a variable here as also is culture, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and tons of physical characteristics that are included in the story. As a female, i'm glad you were able to relate at least to some degree and hopefully the all male cast wasn't too exclusive.
Chapter 6 is coming up. I'm good. 6 is a difficult chapter so I'm ready to get started with it. I do take breaks but there's also a ton of work to do on this stuff when you mostly develop it solo. There's not a lot of time to take breaks but I am pretty good at self care most of the time. I've taken my motivation seriously on this project-- it's easy to get burnout doing that and that impacts the community, characters, and me so it's important I avoid that. I'm good :)
You take care of yourself too <3