#tthael

[scoobydoomidnightblue]

Thinking about Richie Tozier in these trying times.

@tthael

Indelicate is still my favorite.

#it #reddie #when they go shopping #the lizard shirt #crying #actively #now what i’m gonna say may sound indelicate #ifithollers

[tthael]

I really admire so many things about your writing - the introspection and deep meaning, the realistic and sensitive way that you handle topics. Do you have any recs for fav media/books/tv shows/fanfics ? I guess I'm curious if there are any you think might have similar qualities/themes?

This is a tough one because basically everything I consume gets picked apart and reused in some way. However, I’ll give it a shot:

The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak. There’s quite a lot I like about Zusak’s use of language and have since 2007 when I read The Book Thief for the first time, and there’s something very cinematic and magical about I Am the Messenger (particularly in the chapter with the young track runner).

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. He’s most commonly known for Cloud Atlas, but he has an ongoing theme of vampires and cannibalism reappearing in his work (I just read Slade House for the first time while I was in quarantine) and there’s something deeply satisfying about the way that all of the disparate pieces come to fruition at the climax of The Bone Clocks. Not a perfect book, but deeply satisfying.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. Again, she’s most commonly known for The Poisonwood Bible, but I liked that well enough to read The Lacuna in 2013, and I completely hated it for the first half of the book until finally something clicked in my brain and I activated the literary critic within, who doesn’t care so much about whether they enjoy something and more cares about how well something is done. The description of US American rationing during World War II really got me onto the novel’s side, if that makes sense; and I do love a good family epic, and while this only focuses on one protagonist instead of generations of them, it’s interesting in a similar way to The Bone Clocks where you see everything start to snowball together.

Literally anything by Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher. I particularly recommend The Raven and The Reindeer, which I read shortly after being diagnosed with my chronic illness and really helped me to understand the irrelevance of shame. There’s something very satisfying about saying “a reindeer doesn’t care if it smells bad, so I’m going to lean into that particular apathy and not allow a bully to take me down over it.” Something comforting about taking shelter in the animal and in survival, when you and your body are in one place and working on the same side, and it’s your brain that’s ready to give up first but your body will keep dragging you through because that’s what it does. Certain lines in Indelicate were inspired by her adaptation of Tam Lin in Jackalope Wives and other Stories (https://www.amazon.com/Jackalope-Wives-Other-Stories-Kingfisher-ebook/dp/B071946RLN). Lots of her short stories are available at this link for free: http://www.redwombatstudio.com/portfolio/writing/short-stories/

TV’s a little harder to unpack, since I don’t always think in terms of visual media, I tend to default to words first. Recently I’ve been enjoying New Amsterdam on NBC--it’s nice to see the radical socialist doctor doing his damnedest to secure the right thing--and Call the Midwife--similar reasons. There’s a lot about meeting someone where they are in both shows that I appreciate.

There’s also a lot of music that inspires my writing so I’ll have to dedicate a post specifically to that in my methods and materials.

Fanfic, though! Lots of my favorites, lots of genres. Here we go:

we are all stardust by synergenic (Losseflame) (https://archiveofourown.org/works/5682496) Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, pairing Finn/Poe Dameron. Sexually explicit, but also leans a lot into physicality. You can probably see the influence on the very first chapter of Indelicate when Eddie’s waking up in pain and Richie’s at his bedside. It’s very much inspired by a similar sickbed scene here.

If They Haven’t Learned Your Name by silentwalrus (https://archiveofourown.org/works/6329503) Captain America/Marvel Cinematic Universe Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes. The holy grail of Steve/Bucky fanfiction. If you want independent character exploration, this is the place to go. Natasha shaving her head? Yes. Sam pleading with Steve to keep his shit together while thirty Koren grandmothers assume they are American celebrities? Yes. Bucky defiantly hunting down his sense of self while bingeing romance novels in a space ship? Yes. Pay particular attention to the Sam chapters, because they’re a beautiful way of defining Steve’s characterization from an outside perspective, and I’m trying to do the same with Eddie looking at Richie in Indelicate.

An Ever-Fixed Mark by AMarguerite (https://archiveofourown.org/works/8523001) Pride & Prejudice (Jane Austen) Elizabeth Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam, Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy. Soulmark AU. This is one of my longtime favorite fanfictions and what it taught me was cause and effect. The characters move the plot forward based on their assumptions and decisions. Definitely very helpful when I was writing TTHAEL by the seat of my pants.

You Can Keep Holding On by NorthernSparrow (https://archiveofourown.org/works/7233709) Supernatural Dean Winchester/Castiel. Sexually explicit. A lot of the summary I can give here is spoilers, but if you read this one through, you’ll be able to see the inspiration for the “Can you tell me where I can get another Eddie Kaspbrak?” scene in Indelicate.

Work of All Saints by antistar_e (kaikamahine) (https://archiveofourown.org/works/15006644) Coco (2017) Imelda Rivera/Héctor Rivera/Ernesto de la Cruz. Sexually mature. Oh my GOD this is a beautiful coming-of-age story set in turn-of-the-century Oaxaca, this is the best complete expansion of canon that I’ve ever seen; the author takes the pieces and runs with them and it is WONDERFUL.

Lycanthropic Studies by Eiiri (https://archiveofourown.org/series/575263) Harry Potter, Remus Lupin/Sirius Black canon-divergence AU. I very much enjoy the meditation on lycanthropy as a chronic illness and I sometimes reread this for comfort. Particularly early on Remus has a rant about how he’s sick and he’s always sick and his life doesn’t stop for it, despite holidays and birthdays he still has to deal with the consequences of his illness and take the devastating medication, and there’s a lot about that that speaks to me. I haven’t kept up with the series for some time, though.

Careful Truths by SassySnowperson (https://archiveofourown.org/works/12111966) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Bodhi Rook/Luke Skywalker canon-divergence AU. Sexually explicit. Honestly identity p!rn fics are a good inspiration for that third-person limited perspective I’ve been working on in Indelicate. Also I love love LOVE Bodhi Rook. It’s fun watching him run in circles trying to conceal his identity from Luke while completely oblivious to Luke doing exactly the same thing.

Stammtisch by chaya (https://archiveofourown.org/works/15060152) Critical Role: Season 2, Caleb Widogast/Mollymauk Tealeaf, AU. Sexually explicit. Long before Caleb actually leveled up enough to cast Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion, chaya speculated about what kind of spaces he might create for each of his friends. I think it’s a very good resource for really condensing characterization down into lots of images and concepts and deciding what other characters know about them. The idea of making space for someone else is something that I lean into a lot when I write Ben, who’s the kind of man who will set himself on fire to keep those he loves warm, and even though Critical Role has far more material than even IT for determining characterization, and even though this particular moment has already occurred in canon--it’s just a wonderful homey story, and has the kind of found family vibes I like for the Losers as well.

I know that’s a lot to unpack there, but all of those fics are very good and I recommend reading any assortment that appeals to you. (Work of All Saints in particular you don’t have to be familiar with the source material beyond the basic premise; it stands on its own.) Thank you for asking, and thank you for reading!

#nocturnalpinkcat #my fic #indelicate #now what i'm gonna say may sound indelicate #nwigsmsi #things that happen after eddie lives #tthael #fic recs #book recs

[sn0wbrigade]

back at it with another messy doodle based off this fic by @tthael

its a small scene but i work at sbux and felt compelled to draw richie with mocha choca bullshit lmao

#it #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #reddie #tbh the best description of frapps

[iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid]

Fic Rec List (A Tag Game!)

Rules: Post links (Ao3, ff.net, etc.); specify fandom/pairing/etc; don’t answer the same fic twice - spread the appreciation; tag other people; you don’t have to answer all the questions, but leave them in the list so the next person can answer if they want.

i was tagged by @aninfinitenumberofmonkeys, who is also listed below because they’re a banging author and i love love love their work. ALSO i tried to tag the author’s tumblr where i could find it, but if i forgot or i totally fucked up and tagged you for a fic you didn’t write please let me know 😅

Fandoms mentioned are MCU, Stephen King’s It, The Umbrella Academy, Shazam!, Welcome to Night Vale

1. Favourite complete fic you’ve read this month (multiple chapters/parts): and i will not remember that i ever felt the pain by Fluffifullness @fluffifullness (It) -- it’s about the longing! it’s about grief and love and how they’re connected! it’s about the angst! but most importantly it’s about eddie 👏 getting 👏 all 👏 the 👏 hugs 👏👏👏

2. Favourite complete fic you’ve read this month (one-shot): we'll laugh and we'll cry until there's no more tears by knewwellenough @transfinnpoe (It) -- what’s better than this? coupla guys bein’ dudes, coupla dudes cryin’ and huggin’, coupla guys bein’ gay. ugh god i’m still weeping over this reunion hug, like, yeah there’s smut eventually but guys the hUG--

3. Favourite WIP you’ve read this month: hold on i still need you by QueenWithABeeThrone (It) because @viciousmaukeries is both a master of the written word and a genie specializing in granting my very specific fic wishes before i’ve even thought to wish them, so please, go read this tam lin au i’m still losing my whole mind over it

4. One fic/series you’ve read which you keep coming back to again and again:  hoping to be found by eddiespaghetti (foxwatson) @eddykaspbraks (It) -- *blows a kiss in the general direction of NYC* for eddie kaspbrak getting the healing he deserves

5. Most underrated fic you’ve read this year: did you know there’s no option to sort your bookmarks by kudos wtf anyway let’s go with some by virtue fall by StarryCleric (Umbrella Academy) because WHY are all my favorite five character studies so criminally underappreciated

6. Most underrated fic you’ve read EVER: trade all my tomorrows by tombenough_and_continent (Umbrella Academy) because again, why are all my favorite five character studies so underappreciated, wtf where’s the LOVE for my sad traumatized old man assassin, huh??? where???

7. Favourite whump/angst fic of the year: Next time, hire a nanny by TheArchaeologist @ancientstone (Umbrella Academy) i am counting this as whump/angst because my dude gets real hurt in this, but tbh it’s the ACTION i love this fic for, just nonstop heart pumping adrenaline and worry for my favorite time traveling (retired) assassin and his adorable little niece, and some amazingly soft hurt/comfort at the end

8. Favourite hurt/comfort fic of the year: If Either Way's The Hard Road by altschmerzes @altschmerzes (Shazam!) -- brothers being soft! my soft spot for kids played by jack dylan grazer strikes again! ahhh! good shit!

9. Favourite fluff fic of the year: Everybody Comes A-Running by Infinite_Monkeys @aninfinitenumberofmonkeys (MCU, GotG) -- listen, i KNOW i’m biased! i know! but this is still SO SO GOOD. the image of loki falling asleep while the guardians doodle on his leg cast is a gift i never knew i needed and it’s fantastic

11. Favourite smut fic of the year: Things That Happens After Eddie Lives (It) by IfItHollers @tthael is not, strictly speaking, a “smut fic,” it’s a fix-it that just happens to have some E-rated scenes, and it would have fit fine in #4′s slot because i’ve reread the whole thing so many times, but listen, this fic’s sex scenes are like the only sex scenes i’ve ever read and liked. talk about keeping in character, man! top fucking notch! plus there’s a line in there like “eddie knows exactly what oxygen does to fire but he breathes in anyway” while richie’s going down on him and, really, that line alone gives it this position on the list SO

10. Favourite gen fic of the year: the only soul I've ever saved by valkyrisms @valkyrisms (MCU, Thor, Spider-man) -- i just had the absolute pleasure of rereading this because it’s been months and i forgot so much of it, GOD if there’s a perfect way to write the unlikely friendship of loki and peter parker, it is unequivocally this

12. Favourite fix-it fic of the year/ever: An Eye For An Eye by dgalerab @dgalerab (Umbrella Academy) because it is no secret at all that this is my favorite fic, and series, bar none. season 2 will not live up to this, i’ve already accepted it, i’m alright with it, because i can always come back and read this after, y’know?

13. Favourite crack-fic fic of the year: 

14. Favourite sick-fic this year: 

15. Favourite kid-fic this year: kith and kin by penhaligon @arthurpenhaligons (Umbrella Academy) i know i’ve flailed over this on tumblr before but, guys, c’mon, UNCLE FIVE. what else do i need to say? i still cry every time i reach five saying “i don’t want to do this anymore” even though i’ve reread this several times, i just....... five ;_;

15. Fic this year which you didn’t expect to love as much as you do: Mostly Void, Partially Stars by Infinite_Monkeys @aninfinitenumberofmonkeys (MCU, Thor, Welcome to Night Vale) because who writes an mcu night vale crossover and makes it work? oh my god how, this was so good, it’s a mark of superb writing when i actually bark laugh while reading it, like, what a concept, what execution, what a fic, take all my kudos just take em

16. Fic which convinced you to ship a pairing: 

17. Favourite AU you’ve read this year: Who You Gonna Call..? by lesbuchanan @lesbuchanan (Umbrella Academy) -- why is river consistently the most galaxy brained person on this site? i have no words but *chef’s kiss*

18. Longest fic/series you’ve read this year: Keep the Car Running (MCU, GotG) starmora! woo! literally 300k+ of starmora and i did not regret a single second of the entire week it took me to read it

19. The last fic you’ve read: all good things by Fluffifullness @fluffifullness (It) -- pleASE someone for the love of god go read this fic and come scream about it with me, it’s just. so good. so so good. the losers defeat pennywise but don’t manage to prevent all those eggs from hatching, resulting in an apocalypse au that so far is MINDBLOWINGLY good and i’m dying over here just thinking about it

20. Wildcard fic you haven’t mentioned but deserves a shout-out + why:  In Our Bones by scullyseviltwin @scullyseviltwin (It) because it made me CRY and then it made me cry AGAIN and i LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT

EDIT I WAS SUPPOSED TO TAG PEOPLE AKJHSKJFHAKJFH WHOOPS uhhh okay how bout if i tagged you as an author consider yourself tagged? yeah let’s go with that, but like, no pressure you know the drill just do it if you feel like it or if you’re like me and you’re using this as an excuse to procrastinate other things

EDIT #2 also just like. do this. if you feel like it, regardless of whether you’re tagged or not, just like........ pretend i tagged you aiight

#huh i actually managed to do most of them #i did this over the course of like three days lmao #tag game #long post #fic recs #oh and i don't think the game actually necessitates commentary i'm just like this

[janiedean]

meme - fanfic preferences

tagged by @tthael thank you! 

slow burn or love at first sight

fake dating or secret dating

enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers

oh no there’s only one bed or long distance with correspondence

hurt/comfort or amnesia (BOTH BOTH BOTH)

fantasy au or modern au

mutual pining or domestic bliss

smut or fluff (BOTH)

canon compliant or fix-it fic

alternate universe or future fic

one shot or multi chapter

kid fic or road trip fic

reincarnation or character death (note: as someone in the Les Mis fandom I’ve read a couple of both of these, but they’re not really my bag)

arranged marriage or accidental marriage

high school romance or middle aged romance (I’ll take both tbf but anything that’s not hs is automatically superior xD)

time travel or isolated together

neighbors or roommates (BOTH)

sci-fi au or magic au

body swap or gender bend

angst or crack (note: crack treated seriously, all the way)

apocalyptic or mundane

tagging hmm @aviss @lordhellebore @randomingoftherandomness and whoever else wants to XD

#about me

[tthael]

Dude your writing is so stunning. I was gonna ask if you took any creative writing courses or something and saw you majored in literature so like no wonder lol. I wish to write as good as you but as someone who wants to drop out of college I dont see that happening. Anyway you're awesome and I hope you have a good day 💙💙

 I am going to tell you a secret.

I did not learn how to write like this in college.

Most of my creative writing classes (and I only took 4) taught me to read. They were all workshops, and collaborative, and I learned how to read a piece of writing and identify what it was about--and that’s very different from identifying what the writer intended to write. It taught me to read a story about an adult whose divorced mother is remarrying and say, “Okay, but I don’t think that this story is about the capitalist recompartmentalization of families the way that the title seems to indicate. I think that the questions posed by the premise are ‘where are my roots? where does my identity come from? what dynamics do I retreat to when I need to feel safe, and what do I do when that refuge is taken away?’“ And identifying what a story is actually about is a very important part of the writing and revision process. Workshops also taught me to take critique without taking it personally, and to assess what was a critique worth taking, and whether the giver knew what they were talking about and what their opinion is worth.

Most of my literature courses taught me to think critically--in the sense of “identify this and examine what it means.” What does it mean, in Parable of the Sower, that empathy can be weaponized and used to incapacitate others? What does it mean, in RENT, that Benny is offering the protagonists jobs in their fields and they’re eschewing in favor of authenticity and integrity? What does Watership Down have to say about the nature-vs.-nurture argument and its limitations?

But I did not learn how to write like this in college. I learned how to write like this from fandom.

Some things came pre-loaded. I like writing dialogue, and I’ve been told I’m good at it, and I think it’s because eventually I worked out that nobody ever manages to say exactly what they mean and communication is frequently less like an arrow aiming for a target and more like a small boat bumping up against a dock while the people onboard try to tie their ropes to secure it. I like characters over action, and that’s reflected in the stories I tell--all very heavy character-driven stories, where the ratio of introspection to actual events is very high.

Z. Z. Packer’s “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” taught me to appreciate the way that characterization leads to action; but I never put that into practice until I went on (forgive me) tumblr and started reading meta. dear-wormwoods is one of my biggest sources of Eddie characterization meta, and that has influenced my fics more than anything else in fandom, though we’ve never spoken. When I was reading bagginshield, I read avelera’s meta for them.

But I’ve also found that many of the best meta writers (that I’ve found anyway) are also the best writers I’ve read. I went straight from avelera’s bagginshield literary analysis to their Pacific Rim fanfiction “the only way out is down” and reading their commentary on how they shaped the work during revision. I read amarguerite’s “Some Friendlier Sky” (Les Miserables fanfiction) and then “An Ever-Fixed Mark” (Pride and Prejudice) and I started asking her questions--”you compare Courfeyrac to a cat, and then Mr. Darcy to a cat, even though they’re very different characters. What’s the thought process there?” and she told me and we talked about it. I read chrononautical’s “A Road from the Garden” (The Hobbit) and went line by line picking out the things I liked in the comment, and I had this sudden epiphany about how Tolkien shows the dwarves as sets of brothers, which means that they are technically a race of brothers in their presentation, so it was GENIUS to play around with the brother dynamic in a work like that and reflect on how frequently an individual will tolerate mistreatment of themselves that they would never permit to happen to someone they loved--like, say, a brother.

I learned the basics of literary criticism and critical analysis from college, and from reading the western canon and trying to pick apart things that were useful to me. But it’s so much easier when everything is written in vernacular instead of faux-detached academic writing, and when everyone involved is genuinely excited about and dedicated to the work instead of being forced to dwell on The Old Man and the Sea yet again, and when there’s space for people to go back and forth analyzing and agreeing or saying “but what if” or rejecting and are just united by this love of the content or the characters or the book or the history.

You can learn to write like--well, you would write like you, not like me, that’s how style is. But you don’t have to go to college to do it. My current style is not the product of the institution that gave me my degree--it’s the product of more recent years’ immersion in fanfiction (and more recently some traditionally published original work) and music and content I get for free online. And you can also get a circle of people who are happy to write together, read each other’s work, comment on each other’s strengths and the things they like, make suggestions as to how to improve things. You don’t have to do that in college. You just have to read and write a lot, and the things that you read will influence what writing you produce, and in identifying what you like about the things you read and how they do the things they do, you will be able to look at your own work critically and shape it more towards your satisfaction.

The work I’m writing for IT is some of the best work of my life. TTHAEL is the first long work I’ve completed to my satisfaction. Indelicate is the first thing I’ve written that I feel is really exemplary of my style. Margot’s Room is the first self-contained short work I’ve completed to my satisfaction--and the first explicit sexual content I’ve written that I’m happy with both level of detail and atmosphere. Even Automatic-Mechanical-Pneumatic--which I wrote and posted in the same day, so it’s more of a draft--I look at it and recognize it has pacing issues (you can tell I was racing a clock to get the words out), some of the symbolism is too overt because the characters are too self-aware of it, at one point I tripped up and referred to a character by the real-world inspiration--but that’s a solid draft and it has good parts.

You don’t have to go to college to learn to write. Writing is a skill, and writing is work. And there are advantages that people in colleges have re: networking and libraries and available resources and professors who are being paid to give you feedback. But no institution is going to put you through a four-year program and at the end you’ll come out a “finished” writer, with no more room to improve. That’s something you have to do on your own.

#anon #ask #writing advice #my fic #indelicate #tthael #automatic-mechanical-pneumatic #a-m-p

[tthael]

i think you have officially ruined every other reddie fic for me 😭 i be reading fics like “hmmm this is good but its not indelicate” and find myself rereading your chapters like some kind of weirdo 😩 this was meant to come off as a compliment btw your writing is unmatched and you are so unbelievably skilled have a nice night!

Oh wow that’s so nice, thank you so much. I’ve been very influenced by a number of other writers in the fandom--I just observed on another post talking about the influence of IT the book on TTHAEL that because I wrote TTHAEL so quickly after seeing IT (2019) and reading IT (King), those were the primary influences. Now, I’ve consumed so much other IT fanfiction in the last year that I can definitely feel how it’s influencing my writing, particularly Indelicate. And I’m okay with that--there are a lot of wonderful works in the fandom, and a lot of wonderful writers, and I’ve had a wonderful time in this last year. It has also given me the confidence to look at my written work (and my two and a half completed novels) and go, “Wait, I think I might be good at what I do,” which is a level of confidence I had yet to achieve before I accidentally wrote a novel for the clown movie.

I’ve been really blown away by the response to Indelicate and very appreciative of the feedback I get every time I update. It’s been almost universally positive, and the criticism I’ve gotten has been warranted, reasoned, and justified (I’m thinking specifically of all the people who look at my Hamilton reference title and go “oh,” which they are right to do). I’m really thrilled by what a welcoming, encouraging, receptive audience there is for this extremely long character sketch written by a disabled person coping with their disability, and how all the feedback I’ve seen has been delighted by how I’m transposing this into a love story. I think that if I were to write a collection of short stories as a debut book, I’d call it something along the line of “Love Stories with Chunks Cut Out,” because that’s what moves me. I’m delighted and relieved to find that other people are ready to read them. Thank you so much for being one of those people.

#anon #my fic #my writing #indelicate #tthael #things that happen after

[tthael]

I hope this doesn’t come off as me being demanding or causes you stress, but I want you to know that I can’t read more than two paragraphs of Indelicate without thinking “oh man, I’d KILL to get to read this exact thing again but from Richie’s perspective”. In other words, I have approximately another 20 chapters to look forward to and will definitely want more once I’ve read them.

You know, I had been telling myself for a while “okay, just stick with Eddie’s perspective here, and then you can go on to Stan’s perspective, and then the story will be done.” And then there was a scene that I was really looking forward to towards the middle-end of Indelicate, that I was having the darnedest time writing even though objectively it is very fun, and I asked myself, “Why is it?” And the answer was, Eddie’s very passive in the scene and Richie’s very active, and even though Eddie has a lot going on in his internal narrative, he’s being kind of a closed book to Richie and mostly reacting instead of acting, which is what is making it harder to write.

Now, does that mean I should break my point of view for the whole work just because this one scene is fighting me? I mean, I could, but I’m kind of attached to the idea that Indelicate is Eddie’s story in particular. So how do I walk myself (and Richie and Eddie) through the events of the scene?

I have decided to write it in Richie’s perspective first, and then write it from Eddie’s perspective.

This is the first scene in Indelicate I’ve done like that (though I did have a lot of fun playing around with that in TTHAEL and TTHABL, because it didn’t occur to me until I was writing TTHABL that Ben would be genuinely angry with Richie in certain scenes, because Ben is such a tip-of-the-iceberg kind of guy), and it’s still a scene that’s very far in the future compared to where the AO3 fic is in relation to what I have mapped out for the completed fic. But at the moment I’m amusing myself by writing this fun scene from Richie’s perspective, and I plan to put it on my Patreon until I post the scene written from Eddie’s perspective, at which time I will add Richie’s perspective of that one scene to AO3. I will never have Patreon-exclusive fanfiction (for copyright and intellectual property law reasons, if nothing else), but if you’re a fan of Richie’s point of view, that bonus outtake may be relevant to your interests--when I actually get around to writing it.

#anon #my fic #indelicate #tthael #tthabl #things that happen after

[tthael]

Are you still taking asks? Disregard if not, but I'm still thinking about the TTHAEL universe now and then, and I know Kay has plenty of justified reasons for not being too jazzed about Richie, but I'm wondering if, over the course of Bev's life with R and K as some of her best friends, they ever end up having any more positive interactions?

My state of taking asks is nebulous because it takes me a while to get around to them but I do usually plan to answer.

So the thing about Kay is that she’s angry with Richie’s stage persona and his early career. And some people--like Eddie--make a clear division between the things that Richie says on stage and the things he actually thinks, and are relieved by him turning over a new leaf after Derry and writing his own stuff and the still-irreverent but overtly gay and left-leaning comedy he now produces. And some people--like Kay--maintain that Richie is still responsible for the things he said, even when he wasn’t writing them, because he put them out into the world and he had a significant fan following of people (mostly men) who treat women very badly. The division between Kay’s followers and Richie’s early followers is pretty clear, it’s a straight line down the middle.

And Kay loves Bev with all her heart, and agrees that Ben Hanscom is certainly an improvement on Tom Rogan, but Kay always second-guesses Bev’s relationships around men. She’s always keeping an eye out. Bev’s in charge of Bev, but if Kay witnessed behavior that worried her she would start making a list and just... preparing herself, the way that she did when Bev was married to Tom. So the fact that Bev went off to Derry and came back with five previously-unheard-of man friends, several of whom are extremely famous, one of whom is Richie goddamn Tozier? Kay is completely flummoxed. And out of the lot of them, Richie Tozier is definitely the worst, as far as Kay’s concerned.

So Richie is himself when they’re like, sitting around Ben’s firepit in Nebraska, and he isn’t overtly an asshole (or at least, not any more than he naturally is). He’s obnoxious, and he’s a man, but he doesn’t seem to be deliberately misogynistic the way he  plays on stage. And Kay doesn’t know what’s going on with him and the little guy (the fact that Eddie is exactly her height doesn’t stop him from being the little guy) until Richie Tozier actually like puts an arm around him and pulls him tight to his side, and Kay understands how toxic masculinity is a prison that doesn’t allow men to touch each other except in acts of violence, but she’s pretty surprised that Richie Tozier would pull a move like that. And Eddie kind of snarks at him a little but also leans his head back against Richie’s shoulder because he’s had too much to drink and he’s totally nodding off, and Kay just... files that away. (She works it out by the time she sees them dancing together at Ben & Bev’s wedding.)

So Kay and Richie are probably two of the most important people in Bev’s life (Kay being the exceptional non-Loser) and frequently they’re at events that are important to Bev. They’re in closer proximity than Kay would prefer, but Kay can be civil. For Bev. And Richie never says anything to Kay that really sets her off, but he also never apologizes.

(It never occurs to Richie that Kay might want an apology. He never said anything offensive to her specifically, and he’s not going to ask her for a benediction from all of womankind or anything.)

But I picture maybe one day there’s some kind of event happening in a gallery, and Bev’s there, and Kay’s there, and inexplicably Richie’s there but Eddie’s not so he’s sulking a little, and they’re both like in the back of the room drinking and pointedly not talking, and Kay is noticing how Bev’s actually mingling with people this time. When Rogan&Marsh did their public appearances, their congratulatory events, Tom always did the talking, and if Bev dared to speak to anyone it was because she was on his arm and he could listen to what she said. If Bev was tired and perched at the bar and drinking screwdrivers because she was just worn out, she didn’t talk much. But now Bev’s heading her own label and she’s out there working the room and accepting the congratulations that she’s due for her work, and Kay--who is two drinks in and feeling relaxed enough to initiate conversation with Richie goddamn Tozier--asks something about the security at the event.

And Richie snorts and tells her about the time after he and Bev got papped, when they were all convinced that Tom Rogan was out standing in the pool at his apartment complex. Kay casts an eye over the big glass windows (lots of natural light!) of the gallery but it’s all pretty opaque darkness out there. She doesn’t touch her scar. She doesn’t wear concealer over it either.

“She told me that night that she wanted to kill him,” Richie says quietly. He’s also been drinking a little but he probably wouldn’t say that to anyone other than Kay. Not Ben, because it would upset Ben. Maybe Eddie, but talking about Bev like that to Eddie feels a little bit like going around Bev’s back. Kay’s different, though. Kay understands.

“Out in your pool?” Kay thinks about the logistics. It would have been very easy.

“No,” Richie says. “We were, like, eating nachos and drinking, that’s what they papped us doing, and she was like, ‘I want to kill him.’“

Kay remembers those photos--Beverly Marsh’s New Funnyman?--and how at ease Bev had looked, despite being tucked into the corner. The way they shoved the dish of nachos back and forth at each other. Bev didn’t look the way she did with Tom, she looked the way she did with Kay, when she forgot there was anything to hide. She can’t imagine Bev saying anything like that to her with that look on her face. Bev holds things back, now that Tom’s hurt both of them.

“Really,” she says, almost impressed.

“Yeah, and then she walked it back, but.” Richie Tozier shrugs. “I mean, if the opportunity presented itself, I’d ask her first, but.”

There’s a sealed court case in Derry, Maine, with Richie Tozier’s name on it. Kay doesn’t know the details, but it’s like a little bit of the night comes in to their corner, casting shadows over them while Bev, out on the floor, just blazes with light.

“Well, how kind of you to ask her first,” Kay says airily, but actually she prefers that to him taking things into his own hands. Better Richie than Ben--Bev doesn’t want to do without Ben, for all that she could--but he’s still the one that draws the most of Kay’s suspicion, seconded only by the horror writer Bev’s still tense and awkward around.

Richie smiles in response to the joke and replies, just as airily, in a voice tending toward an English accent, “I am but a simple old-fashioned man. I need her blessing before I go out and commit vigilante justice.” In his own voice he says, “Also Eddie would fucking kill me, so we’d have to be really good at cleaning our tracks.”

Kay snorts. “If you two go out and kill him without inviting me along I’ll never forgive you,” she says. It’s not even that she wants to kill Tom Rogan, it’s that she’s so angry about what he did to her and Bev that she wants him to hang himself with his own rope. She wants to take what he did and throw it back in his face--this is not /her/ fault, it’s his, and she wants him to never be able to do anything without what he did haunting him.

That’s not always the world they live in, but it’s the one Kay McCall is trying to make.

Richie Tozier just lifts his eyebrows, considering. “Fair,” he seems to decide. He looks at her glass, which is down to just ice. “You want another--?”

“Yeah.”

“What’re you drinking?”

“I don’t know, it was friggin’ disgusting.”

He laughs. “What do you want to be drinking?”

“Just get me a screwdriver,” she says. “Me and Bev’ll match.”

“Got it,” he says, and goes to get her a drink.

#long post #my fic #tthael #tthabl #things that happen after beverly leaves #domestic violence #violence against women

[tthael]

I've just started reading the book and honestly if anything it has made me appreciate the incredible work you put into eddie lives and beverly leaves even MORE than i already did. eddie's feelings towards myra are just So Much, and i would personally quite like to rip tom rogan apart with my bare hands. the way you included all of that info (and more!! miniseries lore!! movie canon!!) in tthael/bl is honestly incredible

Honestly my consumption of the IT franchise went IT Chapter 1 in 2017, IT book in winter/early spring 2018, massive depression and IT audiobook in summer 2019, IT Chapter 2 in fall 2019, writing TTHAEL one week later in fall 2019. So when I look at it, a lot of my perspective on IT--especially the work I did in the Things That Happen After series--is much more relevant to the book than it is to IT fanfiction, which I only tangentially consumed before I saw the 2019 movie and lost my mind a little bit.

I think that since then, a lot of my characterization has been influenced by other IT fanfiction I’ve read--and since I usually read about the adults, it’s very influenced by other people’s perceptions of IT (2019) and common fandom-accepted traits. But I’m almost proud of how fast I created TTHAEL, because it had very little time to be influenced by anything other than myself in a vacuum. I fear that’s not necessarily the case for my current works, but since I still have the audiobook on my phone--if I really want to do something about that, I can if I choose to.

Anyway, let’s all get together and rip fictional character Tom Rogan apart with our bare hands, shall we? Thank you so much for reading.

#anon #my fic #tthael #tthabl #things that happen after #indelicate

[tthael]

long time listener first time caller here! you've written from a variety of different perspectives across your fics and each one is masterfully done, just wondering is there a character in particular you enjoy writing from the POV of the most? or do they all have different appeal for you?

Ha! I like the radio talk show metaphor.

I don’t know if I have a hierarchy of favorites, but I certainly find Richie and Eddie the easiest right now. Probably because I’ve written them the most--Ben and Bev are a little more serious, Bill’s hard to get a handle on because he canonically violates the rules of “third person limited” by reading other people’s thoughts (damn it, Bill), and I haven’t really tried Mike yet. Stan wants to be written soon, though--he was talking to me at dinner. I’m gonna have to go back through his letter and then think about how I want to structure his sentences, because I feel like it would be appropriate for him to have a certain direct practicality that I’m definitely out of practice with since I’ve been writing almost exclusively Eddie since January.

I think that writing Richie makes me funnier in real life? It definitely made me weird to talk to when I was writing TTHAEL, and I definitely made some jokes that had my Partner like “why would you SAY that?” But also the self-loathing is kind of exhausting, so Richie’s got kind of a flat, cynical, oily texture to his inner narrative, and then it’s sharp when he’s making a joke or verbally lashing  out at someone. I love him, but I don’t think I’ve tried to write an uncomplicatedly happy Richie yet.

Eddie, though--Eddie’s fun to write because he has such depth, and he’s prone to flights of fancy, even though he would deny it out loud. (I’m thinking about book!Eddie reflecting on a baseball player having the glory of the cosmos in the strength of his swing; so I translated that to Richie crouched in a visitor’s chair in a hospital room, looking “positively geographic” like a mountain range.) But film!Eddie makes him sharper and makes him talk fast, which means I feel like I  can have longer run-on sentences. I guess that means that, for me, writing from Eddie’s perspective is enabling--and I do enjoy that.

Thank you so much for reading!

#my fic #indelicate #tthael #tthabl #before history

[tthael]

Pardon me for asking you this but is Richie bi or gay in your fic?

Which fic? Every time I write Richie he comes out a little differently. I tend to focus on different aspects of his personality for each fic I write him in, and I like to write a blend of book and film canon. For instance, I’d say that in Automatic - Mechanical - Pneumatic he’s probably gay, just based on the amount of emphasis he puts on dæmon gender and adhering to the stereotype (which in universe is probably homophobic/representative of internalized homophobia) that same-sex dæmons indicate a same-sex attracted person, and how he feels that a female dæmon allows him to evade notice/hide in plain sight. A-M-P is probably the most film-canon-informed of my fics so far, just based on the pop culture presence he has in that one, which means he takes the most inspiration from Hader’s presence, and if you’ll excuse the simplification, probably the gayest portrayal.

Things That Happen After Eddie Lives and Now What I’m Gonna Say May Sound Indelicate are more ambiguous because they draw more from book canon than others (my logic: I read the doorstopper, I’m gonna use it). In both I think Richie experiences a certain amount of pressure towards compulsory heterosexuality, and has had sexual encounters with women. TTHAEL has Richie describe himself to Eddie as “gay for you,” tell Bill that he’s gay over the phone, and be completely stunned by his first sexual encounter with Eddie because he’s never been invested like that before--in TTHAEL I think I have Richie mention at some point he’s never gone further than drunken kissing with men, so it could be because it’s his first time going that far with a man, it could be because it’s the first time he’s been sober, or it could be because he’s in love with Eddie and that makes sex better, even awkward sex. Also when I write Richie he’s a 40-year-old comedian who’s built his brand on misogynistic jokes and what I see as “sticking it to PC culture” (ugh), so I don’t think he’s uh, woke enough to see any particular nuance in there. TTHAEL!Richie would most likely describe himself as gay once he and Eddie get together/once he comes out, but I didn’t set down to write him as gay or bisexual.

Because Indelicate is still in progress, Richie hasn’t come out yet, and Richie’s previous romantic and sexual history is going to be discussed in the fic, I’m going to decline to answer this at this time.

Anon, I’m also going to give you the benefit of the doubt--because my readers have been so generous in their responses so far, but usually there’s a name attached to the inquiries, so please excuse my wariness--that this question is asked in good faith and is not a form of baiting. I know that there are arguments in the fandom about preferred portrayals of both Richie and Eddie’s sexual orientations, and I know that these interpretations are frequently informed by the different canon portrayals--book fans tend to see Richie as bi, movie fans tend to see Richie as gay, the latter especially when his appearance/description is inspired by Bill Hader’s portrayal.

I have no interest in these arguments. I can tell you that I personally prefer portrayals of Eddie where he’s gay (prefer, as in my personal preference, and not necessarily something I would ascribe to others!), and that I have no strong preference for gay vs. bisexual Richie. I have no interest in discussing other fic authors’ portrayals of these characters where their sexualities differ from my portrayals’ characters’ sexualities. I am interested in literary analysis and queer readings (in the academic sense) of both characters directly from the Stephen King text, but I’ve read plenty of these by other authors and don’t have anything new to add to the conversation. I am less interested in film analysis, probably because it’s not something I’ve studied. I am also not going to insist that any of my interpretations of the characters are correct, because that’s usually not the nature of literary analysis.

So, if you are completely squicked out by reading fic where Richie’s sexuality is up in the air, or where there’s a possibility of him having had a history with women regardless of how fulfilling he found it--you might not enjoy my fic. And that’s okay! I can tell you that in the Reddie fic I’ve written so far (Things That Happen After Eddie Lives and Automatic - Mechanical - Pneumatic) Richie only has in-story romantic and sexual relationships with Eddie, so you are welcome to assume whichever you wish. But I’m not willing to rule out writing fic where Richie identifies as strictly gay or strictly bisexual, and because I draw from both book and film when I write I feel there are grounds enough for either.

I apologize if this answer comes off as defensive, but I’m very leery of this kind of question (as well as the dreaded top/bottom discourse) because of how quickly it can become inflammatory. I want to make it clear that I have no interest in participating beyond a discussion of my own fic. If this was not your intent, I apologize for my suspicions, but please think of me as someone trying to handle a very polarizing topic with as much delicacy as possible. But thank you for reaching out to me with your question; I hope that this answer is as satisfying as it can be, and if you’d like clarity on anything I’ve mentioned you are of course welcome to ask. If I have nothing more to say about it, I will tell you that.

#my fic #things that happen after eddie lives #tthael #now what i'm gonna say may sound indelicate #indelicate #nwigsmsi #automatic-mechanical-pneumatic #a-m-p #Anonymous

[tthael]

i just finished your post chapter two road trip fic and honestly i loved EVERYTHING about it. it was hilarious, the romance was so genuine, and the characterisation of all the losers was perfect. so uh, yeah. thanks for writing it

Thank you so much! I was sort of in a daze when I wrote Things That Happen After Eddie Lives--for months I hadn’t written anything that I felt good about, and all of a sudden it was like the IT franchise just grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let me go for a good two weeks. I was deeply weird to talk to during that time, and I wrote compulsively. Part of me wishes that I was able to harness that productivity again, but it was definitely unsustainable in the long-term. I feel a lot of affection for it, not just because I had a lot of fun writing it, but because it was the first project on that scale that I completed to my satisfaction. Sometimes I go back and reread it and I’m happy to find that I like it, too. The goal when I write is to write the kind of things that I want to read--and I’m always very happy to hear that other people enjoy my work!

#my fic #things that happen after eddie lives #tthael #things that happen after #ttha #anon

[tthael]

was just thinking in tthael richie is kind of confident in his love/attraction to eddie and he's like "You want me more" when they are at the kissing bridge and he wants to show eddie their initials. hes very open with his feelings (as much as richie ever is) and doesnt want eddie to go back to new york. when in indelicate he seems unsure and insecure about it idk i was just wondering your thoughts! love both stories SO MUCH and its such a treat to read your writing :)

Woof, that was one of the ballsiest scenes I wrote for Richie, probably including all the IT fic I’ve written so far. In that particular scene in TTHAEL, I have Richie kind of aware that there’s a mutual attraction between him and Eddie, but also extremely afraid that Eddie is going to put that feeling back in his hat and go back to Myra and live as a “straight” man and forget all about Richie. The reason that Eddie’s response is to curse Richie out (if I remember correctly) is because Richie hasn’t come out to Eddie yet in that scene and Eddie thinks this is one more dig at his wife and his life and his presumed sexuality, and it’s an escalation of Richie’s typical flirtatious and teasing behavior--somewhere between “you know you want me” and Richie’s taunts about his mother and Myra in general.

That moment kind of happens in Indelicate too--when Eddie, realizing that if he’s going to be honest with Richie, needs to call Myra and break things off with her so that he’s in the clear. I think of Eddie as ruled by arbitrary principles and slowly working out which ones are moral and which ones are stupid--behavior classified as “cheating” is wrong, in Indelicate Eddie’s rulebook (which I also agree with), and he has to break that formal contract with Myra before he can admit to Richie what he feels. Richie, on the other hand, interprets this as “we just got too overtly homoerotic with each other and I’m gonna no-homo you by calling my wife,” and that’s why he’s so angry with Eddie that he just kind of chucks his phone at him and leaves without saying anything. So when he comes back and starts joking about Eddie’s heterosexual marriage, Eddie really blindsides him by coming out right there and kind of knocks the wind out of his sails.

Back to TTHAEL: Richie’s about ready to declare himself, to show Eddie the R+E on the bridge, to ask Eddie not to go back to his wife--and he does this after Eddie has already declared his intent to return to New York. If there were a song lyric for this moment (and you know if it’s out there I’m gonna find it), it’s “I would beg if I thought it would make you stay” from “Love You All the Time.” And then Richie realizes that Eddie is just as terrified as he is. And he has this kind of insight into what it means to be loved, for Eddie--his mother’s “love,” which was suffocating and abusive and entrapping--and he realizes that he doesn’t want to push Eddie so much. He just wants to make it clear that Eddie has options. I specifically reference “Love is an Open Door” in that scene not just because I’m Frozen trash, but also because Richie is giving Eddie permission to run if he needs to--not just from Myra and the rest of his life, but also from Richie himself.

Now at this point in Indelicate: Richie’s not out. He’s never actually said the words “I’m gay,” “I’m bisexual,” “I like men,” “I’m in love with Eddie” out loud. The most he’s copped to is (to a medical professional) admitting to having had sexual contact with men in the past, in order to get cleared to give Eddie blood to save his life; and (to Eddie) sometimes having sex with men, which he then qualifies by saying he doesn’t date--so there’s no emotional attachment there, Richie’s trying to make clear. It’s simultaneously an “I am available” and “no homo though.”

However--Richie absolutely went through the freakout at the end of the 2019 movie that he did in Indelicate, with the added stressors of carrying Eddie out of Its lair, performing CPR, injuring Eddie further, Eddie dying on the table not once but twice, and being wrestled into a chair by Ben Hanscom and forcibly sedated by a medical professional. Everyone who saw that absolutely knows that Richie’s in love with Eddie. You don’t see Ben or Bill melting down like that. Richie is thrilled that Eddie’s alive. Richie is obviously in love with Eddie. Richie is ready to dedicate the rest of his life to following Eddie around in whatever way Eddie will allow him.

Richie also knows that Eddie can’t leave. That Eddie needs medical help. That Eddie’s survived serious emotional and psychological abuse by at least his mother, maybe his wife (Richie doesn’t know and I haven’t explored it yet, but let’s assume that Richie thinks Myra is just a clone of Sonia the way I wrote her in TTHAEL). Richie also has issues with feeling out of control of himself--the werewolf shows up again in Indelicate not just as a replacement for Stan’s head, but also as a reminder of that fear that Richie has of being predatory. It’s the internalized homophobia. Richie’s not predatory for being attracted to Eddie, but he feels like it, and he’s disgusted with himself for what he feels is him trying to get at Eddie while Eddie needs support in a very real and practical way. So Richie’s trying to keep things--not professional, but at least consensual. Richie feels that, at this time, any move he made on Eddie would be coercion because Eddie is a little bit dependent on Richie for financial and physical help. And also Richie is deathly afraid of making the first move, finding out that Eddie’s gay but not into Richie specifically, and having to leave Eddie again. It would be better than Eddie dying, of course! But Richie would lose him again anyway.

So that’s the emotional place that Richie’s in right now. He’s absolutely holding back, only doing things that can be dismissed as “just helping a buddy out” or “just Richie being typical Richie” and kicking himself for enjoying them. He feels he cannot be honest about his feelings because it might make Eddie feel unsafe--which is exactly what causes him to change his mind about showing him the R+E in TTHAEL. And Eddie, who has already told Richie “I love you” and gotten a ��soft no” in response, is a little bit wounded and also very afraid that he’ll drive Richie away by being honest with his feelings--and he doesn’t want Richie to go.

#my fic #indelicate #tthael #things that happen after eddie lives #Anonymous

[tthael]

hey!!! i just found & binged all of indelicate today & i am Completely and Totally obsessed with it!!! youre such a fantastic writer its not even funny. I was wondering if you had an upload schedule or if you just drop by with chapters whenever it feels right? i feel like i’ll be looking for new chapters every hour now and was curious haha

Thank you so much for reading! I’m so glad you like it!

I think you might be giving me too much credit in calling what I have going on an upload “schedule.” My update time can vary wildly (as readers who read my earlier fic, where I uploaded a chapter a day, sometimes 2, for about 2 weeks straight, can testify). This is because the gap between updates is literally however long it takes me to write the next chapter.

TTHAEL, my first fic, had maybe one or two drafts per chapter, which is part of how I was able to upload it all so fast, and I did have to take a break in the middle because I went on a road trip to help my mother buy and transport a cow (I’d say long story, but that’s about it). I’m in a different emotional place writing Indelicate, though, and I have different responsibilities outside of fic writing that mean I don’t always get to it in a timely manner, or sometimes the inspiration for writing a scene is just hard-won and I have to delete pages after feeling like I’m just sitting there hacking at the page for however long (Penelope unweaving her shroud). Also I’m being more stringent with the quality of Indelicate--I’ve found that maybe one to two drafts is fine for a rough draft, but that I tend to feel really good about a chapter after I’ve hit draft 3, brought similar concepts and themes together, cut certain phrases, whatever I need to do to get it to a place I’m happy with. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to the place where I was writing and uploading a chapter every day, but I think that the quality of my work is better for it.

But if you want the live feed of my chapter updates, every time I post a new chapter (or a new work) I post an alert here on tumblr and on twitter. Here my tag is #new chapter update. On twitter (@IfItHollers), you might have to wade through non-IT content (I livetweeted the BBC Watership Down miniseries this week), but you’ll get that notification of a new chapter being up, and also some fic I’ve written directly into twitter threads. I think technically one of those threads is an addendum to Indelicate, since it’s based on a line I have in an earlier chapter about Eddie watching all of the Academy Award nominees in the hopes that someone will ask him about his opinions on who should win and then no one ever did.

But yeah! You don’t have to be refreshing my page every hour, you can get almost live commentary on my social media!

#anon #ask #my fic #indelicate #now what i'm gonna say may sound indelicate #nwigsmsi #things that happen after eddie lives #tthael

[tthael]

Fanfic meme - 2, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12

2) What is your favorite snippet of dialogue?

Oh, I love writing dialogue. But if I had to pick just one little exchange, and not a monologue, it’d be Eddie: “It’s tea tree. It keeps away lice.” Richie: “Do you have lice?” Eddie: “I don’t, I use tea tree shampoo.” from Things That Happen after Eddie Leaves.

5) What’s your favorite headcanon you use in fics?

Secret romantic Richie Tozier. I know that strict adherents to IT Chapter One (2017) tend to refer to Finn Wolfhard’s interpretation that Richie is a neglected child, but I really like the snapshots of Wentworth and Maggie that we get from the book--in which Went plays along with Richie’s eccentricity while winding him up and also putting him in his place as a child, and Maggie is bewildered and exhausted by her husband and child in equal measure. I think that the idea of Went being very sweet to Maggie is cute, and I think the idea of Richie subconsciously mimicking that behavior towards Eddie--the nicknames, “cute cute cute,” general flirtiness--is extremely funny. Especially if it never occurs to Richie until he’s in a room with both Eddie and his parents at the same time and Richie has the horrified realization that he’s transparent like glass, which I did in Indelicate.

7) How much do you like symbolism in your fics?

I’m the kind of person where my first instinct is to put absolutely everything on the page and trust nothing to the reader; it’s the maximalist in me extruding. So I think that in most of my fic, the symbolism (if there is any) is kind of an afterthought. Also I tend to post as I write, and I think for consistent symbolism you need a better plot outline than I usually start with. HOWEVER the exception to this would probably be my dæmon AU Automatic - Mechanical - Pneumatic, in which everyone has a literal symbol of their soul accompanying them at all times. So I went pretty hard with the symbolism there, but also I couldn’t resist spelling it out for the audience--Eddie has a boar because a boar will kill a hunter that impales it even at the cost of its own life, and Richie has a capuchin monkey because he physically and emotionally cannot stop performing. (I need to go back and edit that fic sometime; I wrote it all in one day and the pacing bothers me, but also I could in theory wind that back a bit.)

8) How often do people catch onto your little details?

Constantly. I have been very lucky in the quality of my readers and the comments they leave on my work. I regularly get line-by-line comments on my chapters talking about the things that excited them most, or that got the biggest emotional reaction. I cannot say how much I appreciate this.

11) What’s a fanfic idea you haven’t done yet?

Something that I don’t even have a draft for? I’ve had an HDM-fusion AU for IT in my head for a while (different from A-M-P because it focuses more on the whole “children get together and kill God” arc from His Dark Materials) that has transman!witch!Richie Tozier, and I sort of have something simmering for after the Losers’ childhood adventures where Richie is like “well, I’m functionally immortal, I have killed God, I am in love with a man but afraid that if we ever express commitment there are circumstances under which I would harm him--what the fuck do I do now?” Very inspired by the summer I went nuts just reading all of Adventures in Effulgence by Alicorn and Pyth. Part of me feels like I’d have to write the preceding childhood adventures (very inspired by Republic of Heaven Community Radio by Sailor_Ptah and also a little bit by Kiki’s Delivery Service from Studio Ghibli) first, but part of me is like “pull the trigger, write about post-heroic adults.” Because, you know, I like to write romance.

12) What’s the hardest thing to write for you?

Honestly? What I think of as “the in-between bits.” There are parts that I really want to write, scenes that I have fully illustrated in my head--and then there’s a whole lot of work to be done on the page to get there. Like--I’m sure there’s an alternate universe in which I wrote Richie and Eddie having a full trip to Vegas towards the end of Things That Happen after Eddie Lives, but I was like “I have only the foggiest idea of what Vegas is like, I don’t care for gambling, and I am starving for the emotional confessions, I have to pull the plug on this” and so I have Richie make an emotionally healthy choice and abort the mission. I was just SO EAGER to get to the fun part, which was Richie finally admitting to Eddie in so many words that he’s in love with him, and having Eddie meet him halfway.

Thank you for playing!

#anon #ask #my fic #things that happen after eddie lives #tthael #things that happen after #automatic - mechanical - pneumatic #A-M-P