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Retrospective Itch

by Dusty (link)

Genre cest, drama/angst
Pairings Taylor/OMC, Zac/OFC, Zac/OMC, Zaylor
Length prologue, 20 chapters and epilogue
Status Completed

There are a few things you can expect with a story from Dusty–namely, Zaylor, drug use and angst. Retrospective Itch is no exception, but it still manages to be distinct from the rest of her body of work.

As usual, the story is totally AU, but after a confusing prologue, Dusty hops back in time to fill in several of the gaps and explain how Taylor has come to be in a band that hasn’t yet made it big. The reason is a big, understandable one, that it isn’t pleasant to read about–not just because of the homophobia, but the violence.

After quite a bit of that, an interlude from the story’s present once again confuses and muddles things up. It seems to be from Zac’s point of view, and still hints that the two of them have lost touch somehow, in a way that I know I have to keep reading to discover. The mixture of past and present leaves me feeling impatient and hardly sated at all with the few answers I get along the way to explain how it all fits together.

Those answers do eventually come, at a bit of a breakneck pace, as Dusty flits back and forth between Zac and Taylor’s stories. They don’t reunite until the very end, and I found myself wondering, as the pages went by, if they even would. It’s a little too abrupt, but still full of emotion, so that the overall impression I’m left with is a positive one. The writing might be a bit sloppy at times, but Retrospective Itch hits just about all the right notes through its somewhat scattered narrative.

Review by Bethany (website)