Letters Between Aerith, Leon, and Cid (27)

Link to the chapter: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9446325/27/What-s-all-Gone-on-Before

Link to the live tumbl (it was live): http://magiksbrain.tumblr.com/tagged/ch27/chrono

So, I'm not quite sure what gave me the idea to do letters, but I fell in love with it as soon as I wrote them out.  I think it was because I knew that the characters were writing letters back and forth to each other, so why not exemplify that? As the liveblog said, I'm using them to almost summarize things that would take longer scenes to work out otherwise, but I still get a great bit of emotion, because I'm actually in these characters heads.

Yes, this time around, there was a lot of summary involved, but I think that'll change in the future.  I'm intending to write a lot more letters between the characters as the story progresses.

by ~venardhi on dA

And, since I can't really find a good picture of letters, have an awesome cosplay of Cid!

I think this is the first point in which Aerith's initial worry about Zack starts to show.  Because, honestly, she's just sitting off to the side as she's watching Zack cope with both the fact that he killed someone and the fact that his friend is dying.  This is also where Aerith vows to do whatever she can to help Zack.  Because that's who Aerith is.  Also, Aerith's been writing letters for a long while.  She writes to Zack because she loves him, and Leon because she loves him--but in a different way.  She just wants Leon to come home, and at the same time, she wants Leon to follow his heart (especially where Rinoa is involved.)  Aerith's a huge Squinoa shipper.

Leon, of course, responds to every letter Aerith sends, when he gets the chance to, anyway.  He's busy killing Sorceresses! Well, sort of.  Aerith ends up being the first person he admits to that he might actually like Rinoa.  Of course, he hasn't quite admitted it yet, but he's gotten really close.  (While he's doing that, he's being super adorable and it's just so feels-inducing.)  Meanwhile, he's also struggling with his feelings towards his father, and he just wants some answers, which is why he reaches out to Cid.

Cid, of course, never writes letters.  He only wrote one because Leon wanted a response and Aerith pestered him to do it.  This particular letter of Cid's gave me so many feels and it was not okay! Because Cid is a father figure to Leon, it's just not the most obvious relationship in the worlds.  But Cid really does want the best for Leon, as a weird mixture of an older-brother-father-figure-ish-thing.  The age difference is something I haven't quite figured out, but, all the same, ugh, Cid, feels!

I really love how the different styles showed up.  I think I really pulled that off.  Aerith's very detailed in her letters.  She wants to let the people she's writing to know exactly what's going on.  But, outside of that, the letters become a place where she ends up voicing her most inner thoughts.

Leon, on the other hand, doesn't really have a logical order to his letters.  They're very stream of consciousness, because he's still trying to figure everything out as he's writing it.  The letter writing is a way that he organizes his thoughts, which ends up making the letters unorganized.  However, for the things he does know and has figured out, he ends up being very brief, because why waste the time otherwise?

Cid's style is a lot how Cid just talks.  In this particular letter, he was telling a story, so I can't really narrow down if all of his letters are/would be like this.  All the same, he doesn't write letters often, so, he probably has a lot to say (even if it's only one one particular subject) when he does write letters.

Anywho, that's all I have to say. This vid is awesome.