fic: wasteland (ff7, cloud+zack)

[jukeboxhound]

wasteland
FF7 || PG-13 || Cloud, Zack || ~1,200 words
Sometimes your worst enemy is just day-to-day life. Modern!AU.

• Lyrics come from Rise Against, "The Approaching Curve"; Plowed, "Sponge"; The Killers, "Runaways." Because they're favorites, and I can, and this is semi-pretentious self-indulgence (i.e. therapy!fic for disaffected twenty-somethings

Comments

[artimusdin]

*happy chin-hand*

[jukeboxhound]

<3

[askerian]

oh man, i love how you write them and you haven't lost the knack. cloud's weariness is palpable all through this, as is the way it lifts at the end because zack brings him ~hope~. d'awwwwwwwwww. yess guys move together in a townhouse *chinhands at*

[jukeboxhound]

I farted this out to try to get back into their heads or whatever, so thank you, you've made me feel a lot better. :)

[etrix]

Nice!

You manage to capture so much undertone with so few words. I have mad envy.

[jukeboxhound]

One of the most helpful tips I read concerned emotion: rather than telling, like, "Cloud was angry," show, like, "Cloud's hands clenched into fists" and don't even mention the emotion itself. ...Pretend all that was worded clearly. Anyway, it's something I want to practice, so.

[etrix]

Yeah. "Show. Don't tell." Working hard on that one myself. You just make it seem easy.

[jukeboxhound]

Thank you, and I'm sorry for telling you something so basic you already know. While I'd always known and understood the phrase, it took a particular wording at just the right time for my brain to go HOLY SHIT, YOU'RE RIGHT. Idk.

[razziecat]

That bit about watching the road behind him...

...I see what you did there.. ;)

[jukeboxhound]

I'm gonna pretend that I totally intended something clever. (But, uh, what did I do there?)

[razziecat]

Well, I read it as the road = Cloud's life so far; a glance back at the road = looking back at how far he'd come, or even leaving old attitudes/ fears/worries behind him.

I could be overanalyzing a bit here... ;)

Some lovely writing in this piece, though...words dropping like stones, the car purring down the road...Very nice.

[jukeboxhound]

OH, okay, yes, that was intentional. For some reason I thought you thought it was a ref to A Long, Hard Road, because 'road' and 'Cloud.' I STILL LOVE THAT GODDAMN FIC, OKAY, DON'T JUDGE ME.