#nwigsmsi

[tthael]

Idk why this thought suddenly hit me out of nowhere but I NEED to know what you think Eddie and Richie would make their passwords for emails, social media, etc.

Let me see... I think that Eddie probably underwent some kind of corporate security training and that he changes his password once a month, but it's always in a pattern that he recognizes--so one month it's !atsymbolQWaszx12, and then the next month it's atsymbol#WEsdxc23, and then the month after that it's #$ERdfcv34. This has the downside that Eddie can't remember any of his passwords unless he's looking at a physical computer screen and an alphabetized keyboard (ABCDEFG) is of no use to him, especially on phones. I think that Richie probably picks a word and then slaps a year on it (something I'm in the habit of doing), so after he and Eddie get together it's Spaghedward2017! or something like that. I think in Indelicate he probably has it Ooweeoo2016 but he's constantly forgetting how he spelled ooweeoo so he's always logging in through 2-factor authentication and he never actually gets around to changing the password to something he'll remember.

[tthael]

Chapters: 25/? Fandom: IT - Stephen King, IT (Movies - Muschietti) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris, Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh Characters: Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier, Stanley Uris, Myra Kaspbrak, Patricia Blum Uris, Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough, Ben Hanscom, Mike Hanlon, Will Hanlon Additional Tags: Fix-It, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Stanley Uris Lives, Getting Together, Medical Inaccuracies, Coming Out, Eddie Kaspbrak Gets Divorced, Size Kink, eddie kaspbrak explores his sexuality in teeny-tiny steps, Painkillers, Injury Recovery, richie tozier's all-dead rock show, Explicit Sexual Content, Bodily Fluids, Emetophobia, scalp massage, Lots of conversations, Past Drug Use, Bodily Functions, mix of book and film canon, mike's book backstory, stephen we need to talk about leprosy, the persistent sexual threat of eddie's childhood phobias, Body Horror, Frozen Yogurt, acts of service, Eating Disorders, Disordered Eating, orthorexia, Making Out, canon-typical leprosy stigma, canon-typical HIV/AIDS stigma, Internalized Homophobia, Canon-Typical Racism, Canon-Typical Homophobia, eroticized asphyxiation imagery, Asphyxiation, Erotic Nightmares, Masturbation in Shower, Fantasizing, Podfic & Podficced Works Summary:

Eddie Kaspbrak has lived his whole life being told that he's delicate, and he's not. And nearly bleeding out in an alien fear demon's lair has helped him realize that--as well as what he can live through. It puts his priorities in some perspective.

What he is, is injured. And married. To like, a woman. And gay. And stupidly, stupidly in love with Richie Tozier, after all these years. And he'd like to use his new lease on life to act on many of these things, if only Richie would cooperate.

[tthael]

Chapters: 24/? Fandom: IT - Stephen King, IT (Movies - Muschietti) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris, Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh Characters: Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier, Stanley Uris, Myra Kaspbrak, Patricia Blum Uris, Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough, Ben Hanscom, Mike Hanlon, Will Hanlon Additional Tags: Fix-It, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Stanley Uris Lives, Getting Together, Medical Inaccuracies, Coming Out, Eddie Kaspbrak Gets Divorced, Size Kink, eddie kaspbrak explores his sexuality in teeny-tiny steps, Painkillers, Injury Recovery, richie tozier's all-dead rock show, Explicit Sexual Content, Bodily Fluids, Emetophobia, scalp massage, Lots of conversations, Past Drug Use, Bodily Functions, mix of book and film canon, mike's book backstory, stephen we need to talk about leprosy, the persistent sexual threat of eddie's childhood phobias, Body Horror, Frozen Yogurt, acts of service, Eating Disorders, Disordered Eating, orthorexia, Making Out, canon-typical leprosy stigma, canon-typical HIV/AIDS stigma, Internalized Homophobia, Canon-Typical Racism, Canon-Typical Homophobia, eroticized asphyxiation imagery, Asphyxiation, Erotic Nightmares, Masturbation in Shower, Fantasizing Summary:

Eddie Kaspbrak has lived his whole life being told that he's delicate, and he's not. And nearly bleeding out in an alien fear demon's lair has helped him realize that--as well as what he can live through. It puts his priorities in some perspective.

What he is, is injured. And married. To like, a woman. And gay. And stupidly, stupidly in love with Richie Tozier, after all these years. And he'd like to use his new lease on life to act on many of these things, if only Richie would cooperate.

[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!

[tthael]

patiently waiting for a new indelicate update 🙌❤️

I know! I signed up to participate in the Clowntown Reverse Bang (https://twitter.com/ClowntownBang) and I have two commitments, and you know how biting off more than I can chew is kind of my thing? Also I agreed to be a beta reader and one person has already reached out to me, though they haven’t provided a draft to exchange yet. I’m planning on cranking out two long (not Indelicate long, but long!) works, ideally both by the end of April.

I have a significant chunk of the next chapter--not done, but drafted in a way I’m satisfied with, and I have a feeling that the readers are going to like it! I just can’t confirm when it will be out, because I feel a sense of obligation to complete the commitments I made to the artists I’m collaborating with before I address my personal projects. (Not that this has stopped me from writing smut for Bathtub Barracuda, but you know how it is.) I promise I will get back to Indelicate! I just don’t have a timeframe for you yet. I appreciate your patience!

[tthael]

If you're still doing the DVD commentary thing, I'm curious about your thought process behind the whole discussion they have in the car at the end of chapter 11, when Richie asks Eddie why he thinks It targeted them specifically.

Oh boy, this answer’s a bit depressing.

See, I’ve gotten a lot of responses talking about how much they love Went and Maggie in Indelicate. And while they are fun--and a lot of their dynamic is influenced by my own parents and grandparents, and I decided to write their behavior as sort of blueprints for Richie and his behavior towards Eddie--Richie is more upset than he lets on about their conversation about Henry Bowers and his childhood.

So in Chapter 10, I have Richie sort of pick a fight with his parents. Eddie gives him an opening, and Richie immediately seizes onto the topic of Henry Bowers and his childhood bullying, because he wants to confront his parents. About their choice to live in Derry? Maybe. About their failure to respond appropriately to some very violent childhood bullying? Definitely. Richie brings up the incident from the book where Bowers wipes out in front of their class and Richie automatically and without thinking goes, “Hey, Bananaheels!” and Bowers chases Richie all the way through Freese’s department store with his cronies, intending to beat him. Because movie!Richie wears the Freese’s shirt, I decided to keep that incident.

And Went’s immediate response to Richie’s story of “Remember when I was in great fear of physical violence and very real fear for my safety?” is to ask, “Well, what did you do to make him angry?”

I don’t know if you’ve read Things That Happen After Beverly Leaves, but in that fic I have Bev and Richie have a conversation about Tom Rogan and a specific incident of violence that happens during the fic, during which Bev asserts that it was her fault that he went after her because she was antagonizing him. And Richie’s response is something to the effect of, “Oh, really? Does everyone have that threshold? What do you have to say to me before I decide to beat you, then?” Because it’s bullshit and victim blaming, and everyone has a choice of whether or not to commit violence, especially in positions of power. (Even when the violence is committed in self-defense, there’s always the choice to--not defend yourself, and to accept those consequences. In this instance, I’m not describing “violence” as an umbrella “this is always bad” sort of thing; but I do think that it’s always bad when enacted on someone else for the purpose of harming them, especially from a position of power to someone weaker.)

Like many readers of IT by Stephen King, I was horrified by the blasé approach that most of the adults have to the childhood bullying portrayed in the book. I know that King experienced bullying as a child--probably part of why he writes it so elaborately and brutally; and I know that one of It’s influences is that It exaggerates the negative and harmful tendencies of all of Derry’s residents, including bullies like Henry Bowers (even before It interferes with him directly), Alvin Marsh and Sonia Kaspbrak (whose “protective” and abusive natures become exaggerated and inhuman), and adults who turn blind eyes to the violence happening in front of them (the older couple who saw Bowers cutting Ben and drove on, bystanders who saw Alvin Marsh chasing Bev through the street and did nothing, a shopkeeper who tried to intervene in an act of bullying and allowed Bowers and his gang to run him off instead of rescuing the Loser in question, though I’m afraid I don’t remember the specifics).

In this case, I decided that the Toziers didn’t respond appropriately to defend their son. You can decide whether that was because of Derry and It or because of their parenting style. But in this case I decided to have Wentworth demand that Richie take responsibility for his victimization. And Richie gives a sort of Stepford smile when he admits to provoking Bowers; and Wentworth’s response is “You’re very smart, but you kept being stupid and getting into fights.”

If you read the Bananaheels scene from IT, we see that Richie has literally no brain-to-mouth filter. The very second the words are out of his mouth, he wants to kick himself, but he knows Bowers will do it for him. I also write Richie as having untreated ADHD, especially as a child, and his failure to consider cause and effect here is influenced by my own brother. He literally could not consider the consequences of his temper tantrums when he was a child, because there was no reflection or consideration of cause and effect for him. Many child psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists attested to this. Because this is a real person and someone I have great affection for, I’m not interested in breaking down whether that’s an element of being a child (it was not in my experience) or an element of having untreated ADHD (again, it was not in my experience, as I suffered crippling overthink and decision paralysis at the other end of the spectrum). But I did decide to let that influence Richie.

Eddie is very uncomfortable with Richie’s parents’ lack of sympathy, especially because he shared the experience with Richie; but he’s also uncomfortable with parents in general and very aware that he’s in the Toziers’ space and doesn’t feel he has standing towards them. Richie gets more defensive, Stepford smiling, and recounts other stories of Bowers’ gang harassing the Losers, getting crueler and more flippant both with himself and with his friends (he casually insults Ben), and culminates in the story of Bowers cutting Ben for the crime of not allowing him to cheat off him in school, something that Richie is sure the Toziers cannot claim was the wrong thing to do, the way they suggested that Richie’s actions were the wrong thing to do.

Only then does Wentworth remember that the childhood bully Richie mentioned was actually arrested and imprisoned for fratricide. This is something that even the fog of Derry’s memory loss didn’t take away from him completely, and Richie discussing it brings it back up. And Richie gleefully confirms that yes, that is the Henry Bowers he meant, and actually he tried to lynch Mike and successfully stabbed Eddie in the face, two actions that the Toziers cannot dismiss as provoked. Then the Toziers get distracted by dentistry and Richie coldly and excellently lies to his parents’ faces not just about Bowers’ whereabouts but about the fact that he killed them.

So Richie’s topic of conversation when he and Eddie leave is “Why do you think It went after us?” because he’s still trying to deal with the victim blaming his father expressed and what he actually means is “What do you think I did that made this happen to me?” Then Richie talks about his parents’ choice not to have any children after him, and makes a joke that’s actually completely serious about being such an annoying child that his parents decided they didn’t want any more, even at the potential of his mother’s longed-for daughter, because (in Richie’s mind) the risk of a second Richie was too great. And Richie jokes about his own death, and admits to Eddie that he was very lonely, because Richie is still very lonely right now.

And Eddie says that he’s not lonely and he never felt lonely, and Richie hears “I wasn’t lonely because I had you,” and that’s what he really needs to hear right then. It’s not a love confession (a love confession would be too good to be true), but Richie thinks it’s as good as he’s going to get, so he eats it up.

Even Eddie’s thoughts are about victim blaming, which comes down to an argument that I read on tumblr some years ago: that “she shouldn’t have dressed like that, she shouldn’t have gone off by herself” means “rape the other girl, the one who did all the wrong things,” the one that means violence as punishment. Eddie thinks that victim blaming in this case means that It should have killed and eaten the other kid, which is of course wrong, because It had to be stopped for its monstrosity, not because it was an ineffective deterrent or punishment.

So Eddie pushes Richie in the other direction--he says that what made a difference was not that the Losers ran around without supervision, but that they loved each other enough to risk their lives trying to save each other. Even Richie, in his magnanimous cruelty after speechifying and leaving Bill on the hook, chose to kill the fucking clown rather than abandon Bill, rather than leave It to eat the other kid. And when Richie says “Good for us,” about the Losers being willing to die for each other, he gets grim because Eddie is still like that, trying to die for him; and Richie can forgive himself for trying to die to save the others, but he doesn’t know if he can forgive Eddie for actually dying to save him yet.

That was a long one, but I’m planning on digging back into Maggie and Went in Indelicate again and it’s good practice for me to analyze the choices I made months ago. So thank you for asking! And for reading, of course.

[tthael]

I apologize if you’ve already written about this before, but one thing I’ve been wondering about your Indelicate version of Eddie is in regard to his occasional tendency toward more (for lack of a better/less serious-sounding term) “aggresive” actions (e.g., throwing the lotion bottle, throwing the water, etc.) directed toward Richie. I know it was hinted at that the urges to aggress may sometimes be/have been the result of repressed or misconstrued attraction, but I’m wondering if some of it is also a result of Eddie’s injury and the related feelings of a lack of control over his own body? Like hypothetically, if Eddie were never injured or if we fast-forward to him completely healed, do you think that moments like that would still happen? Or am I just really reading too much into the fic and making up this aspect of it? Hope that makes sense - I just love your characterization of Eddie and I want to make sure I’m understanding as much as I can!

I actually haven’t written about this before, and I think that it’s a good thing that I take the time to meditate on it now, because I don’t want the idea that throwing things at your romantic partner is, like, a good thing.

So a lot of my thoughts on Eddie’s aggression derive from two specific aspects of his portrayal. The first (chronologically in Eddie’s timeline) is the portrayal of Eddie as high-strung, snappy, and verbally combative in IT Chapter One (2017).  Within the last year and a half I saw a post that pointed out that some of Eddie’s aggression--especially in interacting with Richie--probably derives from the high-stress situations of a) being hunted by an alien clown demon and b) being abused at home. I had a college professor discussing a history and trauma class point out that, “Traumatized people don’t always behave well.” There are the usual caveats that explanations are not excuses; however, I think that the constant knowledge that he has to return to Sonia’s house and the persistent alarms telling him when he has to take medication, so that even when he’s apart from her he can’t get away from her interference, means that Eddie’s under high pressure. And then you get to the point where all of the children in Derry are being hunted by an actual monster, and it’s a wonder that Eddie behaves as well as he does, because I certainly wouldn’t.

I usually like to incorporate some of book!Eddie’s dreamy introspection into his internal narrative in Indelicate, and I think that some of his pressures are relaxing now that he’s a) no longer living in a house with Sonia, b) acting specifically in ways that maximize his own agency (going where he wants with whom he wants, eating what he wants, actively rejecting much of her influence). However, he’s still got a lot on his plate, and some habits die hard. This is why I have moments of Eddie waiting with the perfect snappy comeback on his tongue, and then stopping himself because he knows it’s something he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t actually want Richie to never talk again, he loves it when Richie talks, and he’s struggling towards sincerity. I personally have a lot of difficulty letting go of the put-down jokes in favor of being sincere with the people I love, so I thought I’d give Eddie several moments of consciously choosing to be honest and kind with Richie.

The second influence on Eddie’s relationship to physically “lashing out” is his introductory scene from IT (1986), where he’s leaving home and Myra is chasing after him demanding explanations and wailing about how terrified she is. I know that there are lots of analyses of this scene and thoughts on Myra versus Sonia, and I’m not interested in those right now; however, what caught my eye was that Eddie sees Myra’s distress and his first thought is something along the lines of “you might as well hit her”--not that he wants to hit her and he has nothing to lose, but that his causing her emotional distress is as bad as physically abusing his wife. (I can’t recall at the moment whether Eddie’s section comes before or after Bev’s introduction, but I want to say that it’s before, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that Bev and Eddie’s very different home lives are contrasted.)

So I thought, that as a boy child without a father, raised and abused by his single mother--and considering his issues with (as I write it) suppressed gay feelings, and the sort of “glass closet” I write him with--Eddie’s concepts of masculinity are probably pretty toxic. I think that in order to maintain control over Eddie, Sonia probably got very emotionally manipulative when he resisted her at all, especially as he got older and taller and physically stronger than her, and that she probably cried out things like “Eddie, you’re hurting me, how can you hurt your mother like this?” and made Eddie feel like the abuser (which is, I’m given to understand, a frequent tactic of abusers: reversing the roles to make the victim feel apologetic and guilty). I’m specifically thinking of the way that Gillian Flynn writes manipulative white women who weaponize white women’s fragility--Adora in Sharp Objects, since that’s actually the only Gillian Flynn book I’ve read so far. I think that Eddie would be very conscious of what he perceives as his capacity to be an aggressor, and it would be one more way that Sonia could keep him docile.

Later, with Myra--and I’m writing Myra more sympathetically in Indelicate than I did in Things That Happen After Eddie Lives, so I’m not interested in getting into the “is Myra abusive?” conversation right now, because I’ve written her both ways--I think that Eddie likely had a sort of learned helplessness about his own agency with Sonia that he then transferred onto his relationship with Myra. In Indelicate, I write him with a lot of reluctance to volunteer any information towards her, or his emotional state, or to make any of his wishes known (frequently she shoots them down as too extravagant, the way that I talked about Eddie’s relationship to money and luxury and Myra refusing a larger bed).

I write Eddie as largely unaware of his attraction to men until his near-death-experience, but only because he did not allow himself to connect the dots between what he thought of as physical symptoms (tunnel vision on hot man in coffee shop = optic nerve impairment, see doctor); but I think that Eddie was profoundly aware of his unhappiness in his marriage and just tried to reason with himself that everyone felt like that, and everyone was miserable and suppressing their own wants and needs, because that’s just what marriage is, and any other approach to his marriage would make him abusive, so Eddie and Myra’s marriage was emotionally volatile and extremely stressful.

Which is to say that Indelicate Eddie is a powder keg when Richie gets to him.

Again, I don’t think that throwing things at your romantic partner is an acceptable mode of interaction and I don’t want any readers to get the idea that that’s the underlying message of Indelicate, because it’s not. The scene with the moisturizer is derived from something that happened to me years ago (I was Richie, the guy I had a crush on was Eddie) involving a wayward Frisbee; the scene where Eddie tries and fails to throw a drink at Richie is derived from an anecdote of the early days of my parents’ marriage (my mother was Eddie), one that my father’s coworkers and boss loved to talk about and his best friend still brings up when they hang out.

However, Eddie’s relationship to physicality is also deeply informed by a tumblr post I saw over a year ago that talked about how Eddie grew up being told that he was fragile and delicate and sickly, and how Richie did not give a shit about any of that and was more than willing to just grapple him. For this fic, I decided to lean into that idea: that Eddie longs to be treated as though he’s solid and healthy and strong, and he finds a lot of relief in Richie <i>not</i> treating him gently. But because Eddie is actually physically injured in Indelicate, Richie is being careful not to break him while also dealing with Eddie’s very real (and largely unvoiced) desire for physical contact. It’s not an accident that at the end of the chapter in which Richie and Eddie have a shouting match that Richie wrestles Eddie to the floor and pins him and blows a raspberry on his belly--which is incredibly juvenile at the same time that it’s a display of Richie’s physical capabilities and Eddie finds that bizarrely attractive.

So, on top of Eddie’s desire for physical contact, his extreme stressors, and his lifetime of maladaptive coping mechanisms--the other thing that I consider when I write his dynamic with Richie is that Richie is not physically intimidated by Eddie at all. This is not because Richie is stronger than Eddie (he is) or larger than Eddie (he is). This is because there was a time in which Richie and Eddie found it perfectly acceptable to grapple each other as a form of interactions, because Richie and Eddie have known each other since they were seven years old. I even like to think that at one point, Eddie was the taller of the two, because Richie hit a really ridiculous growth spurt somewhere around the start of puberty and Eddie was something of a “late-bloomer,” and Eddie silently seethed about it through their entire adolescence.

So when Richie and Eddie lash out at each other--largely Eddie, because I think Richie, with his fear of the werewolf and of losing control and hurting someone--they’re building on sort of a lifetime of informal physicality. Stitchy does something similar in their Richie/Eddie fic where elements of roleplay always appear in their romance, because they were kids who played pretend games together, and when you have a bond like that with someone, it does permanently shape what sort of interaction you do and do not find acceptable. I also included a flashback into childhood where Richie gets angry with Eddie and very deliberately and methodically pushes him down on the ground and Eddie cries, not because Richie physically hurt him (he didn’t), but because it wasn’t in good fun there, that was Richie deciding to throw him around because he knew it would upset him.

So there’s a lot going into Eddie’s physically aggressive responses in Indelicate--the toxic masculinity that dictates the way that men are allowed to express anger and the ways in which they are allowed to touch each other; the profound stress that Eddie has endured for his whole lifetime without getting many better coping mechanisms; the feeling of lack of control of his physical body; a regression to childhood habits; and a deep sense of relief that Richie (being big, strong, and a man) is not vulnerable to him in the way that Sonia convinced him she (and later Myra) were.

I hmm’d and haww’d over a scene in the most recent chapter in which Eddie strikes Richie with an open hand (it’s a little slap on the chest, and I wanted it to come across very like the sort of corrective smack to the back of the head that I can imagine any of the Losers issuing to Richie back in 1989 when he shoots off at the mouth), because that’s not something I’d be comfortable doing to a romantic partner myself. Richie thinks nothing of it and turns it into a dirty joke, but I do need to get more into Eddie’s decision to touch Richie in kind ways in direct refusal of that “you construct intricate rituals that allow you to touch other men” facet of toxic masculinity.

I know it’s a ridiculously long answer, but it’s a serious issue and I wanted to give it the greatest possible consideration instead of writing something flip. Because both the incidents you named (ones I didn’t even realize formed a pattern, to be honest) are drawn from real life, I can’t say that they’re moments that are influenced by Eddie’s physical disability, but I do think they’re more influenced by his emotional state. I also think that as some of his stressors come off his plate and he gets more comfortable having an adult relationship with Richie, he’s going to stop throwing things at him. I even had Eddie stop after throwing the water, not just because it was ridiculous but because he realized how out of line he was in that moment. Recognizing when you’re out of control in an argument is, I find, an important part of self-improvement; and learning to walk away or to reset is a valuable skill.

Thank you so much for reading!

[tthael]

first of all, i want to thank you for how generous you are with answering questions about your work! it's always so interesting to see how authors approach research, story structure, etc, and i really appreciate the insight into your process. you've posted the rough story beats for indelicate a few times as you've progressed through the chapters & it's been fun to see what some of the reveals were. i'm curious if we've passed any of the other blocked out story beats since the last update?

Oh goodness, I’m so used to putting uncensored outlines on Patreon that I had to go back through my own blog and hunt down my old outlines. Let’s see.

I think that was June; we’ve gone from “EDDIE SHAVES” TO “LOUDLY [REDACTED]”; and now I had to go back to my Patreon to check on what was actually under the Redacted blocks, because I delete these off of the working doc as soon as I post the chapter.

So we have in order:

[EDDIE SHAVES]

[THIS STORY NEEDS MORE MIKE HANLON]

[HICKEYS]

[RICHIE IS EATING SKITTLES LIKE THEY’RE GOING OUT OF STYLE]

[EDDIE TRIES TO CRAM A LIFETIME OF SEXUAL EDUCATION INTO THE 2+ WEEKS BEFORE HIS SWEAT BAN OFFICIALLY ENDS; IT GETS WEIRD]

[EDDIE WATCHES PORN] (You’ll notice that this is a beat that I eliminated from the final draft of Chapter 23, because it turned out that there was more than enough to fill the chapter, and I found I was reluctant to try to unpack the idea of ethical pornography in a fanfiction. It was intended to be a cameo from another fandom, so maybe I’ll write that as an outtake eventually.

[LOUDLY JERKING IT IN THE SHOWER]

Those are all of the beats from that draft that we’ve gotten to in the story so far.

Then there’s this one:

You’ll notice that this was a later draft, because earlier elements from date night were omitted from the top, but nothing new.

However, I pulled a more detailed chapter outline off of Patreon for the date night chapter:

So those are the beats we’ve hit so far, and every chapter outline gets more detailed as I get to the actual draft. Here’s the outline for Chapter 24:

And here’s the most recent outline for the whole doc:

Thank you for letting me be self-indulgent, and thank you for reading! I genuinely think we’re in the final stretch of the story (or swinging towards it, since I’m pretty sure that the end of the story will happen in Georgia), but as you can see there are plenty of more beats to hit.

[tthael]

hey! I love your writing so much and loved the recent update! I’m curious if you’re planning on talking about Richie and addiction a little more in Indelicate?

So addiction in Indelicate is a tricky subject, because Eddie is very much addicted to prescription medication BUT he went cold turkey, he detoxed while in a coma, and he has so many additional medical problems. He also has a bit of conditioning--and I intended to chalk this up to the same divine intervention/NDE revelation that caused him to realize he’s been clean all along--where the sensation of swallowing pills causes him physical nausea. This is not a realistic portrayal of addiction, nor is it meant to be.

But I also characterize Richie as an addict, and I haven’t explored that a lot in the text. I think part of it is because Eddie’s afraid to ask too many questions, in part because it’s a sensitive topic, and in part because asking those questions in turn opens him up for questions about his prescription medication addiction. Eddie lambasted Richie for being avoidant, but Richie also went after Eddie’s pill addiction, and both of these were very much “pot calling the kettle black” situations.

So in Indelicate, Richie entered rehab semi-voluntarily about three years ago (2013) following losing “control” of his cocaine addiction. I chose cocaine specifically because I also characterize Richie as having ADHD, and I know that uppers work inversely in people with ADHD and cause a relaxant effect, hence why ADHD medication is marketed as an upper on the street. (My brother spent a lifetime of going to sleepaway camps and being told to hide his medication so that his roommates didn’t steal it, because it was speed.) This is not something that I made up--I did some research into the intersection of ADHD and cocaine usage, and what I found was that “COCAINE IS STRONGLY NOT ADVISED AS TREATMENT FOR ADHD.” But I also reasoned that Richie is in show business in LA and has been extremely unhappy for a long time, and likely had access to cocaine whether he wanted it or not, and it seemed reasonable that he might use it as a way of dealing with his profound dissatisfaction.

I plan on exploring the circumstances that led to Richie’s decision to enter rehab, and some of the medical consequences thereof, in the fic. (My beta and I were recently going back and forth about it.) I think that he’s done quite well since rehab and has not used cocaine since then, though he sometimes abuses alcohol when he feels similar impulses (see, him getting angry with Eddie and biting the cap off a beer bottle very early in the morning).

The thing that I’ve had consistently in my head when writing Richie is that when he’s stressed, he craves, and frequently he fills that void with candy or alcohol, and since he’s the designated driver if Eddie needs to go to the hospital, he’s been opting for candy. If the constant coffee drinking is him self-medicating for ADHD, and his constant phone usage is because he has a machine that provides dopamine in his pocket literally at all times, then the scene where he’s just snarfing Skittles is a coping mechanism specific to the cocaine addiction. (Which means that he really needs to brush his teeth, and yet!)

Is this a realistic portrayal of addiction? No. I strongly doubt it. Again, this is not a medically accurate fic. I also think of Richie as sort of a closed book--or a magician misdirecting the viewer! He doesn’t want to talk about his feelings; he certainly doesn’t want to talk about his cocaine addiction with Eddie, and he’s not going to bring it up unless he can make a joke about it! And because I’m focusing a lot on Eddie’s physical injury recovery, I’m focusing less on his substance abuse recovery--though it would be something for him and Richie to bond over, and they might! But I also didn’t want to blithely ignore the topic, especially because I write Richie as having an addictive personality and I wanted to convey that he also had a whole life before he saw Eddie again, just as Eddie has this whole life that he’s leaving behind.

(There’s this scene involving Richie, Eddie, and Wentworth related to this ask that I’m just dying to get to!)

Thank you so much for reading, I know it’s a long answer (as if I ever provide any other kind). Indelicate is not so much a story of addiction as it is a story of physical injury recovery and coping with learned helplessness, but I want you to know that I’m treating the topic with careful consideration, I’ve done research, and I’m doing my best. It’s always in the back of my head when I’m writing Richie, and it influences his character as he works through his emotional arc.

[tthael]

i’m not sure if this was part of some big ploy but every time i read indelicate i get a hankering for skittles and now it’s a full blown snack problem. everyday i want skittles

This fanfiction is not sponsored by Skittles. I receive no benefit, financial or otherwise, when you purchase/consume Skittles as a result of reading Indelicate. Thank you for your time.

(Now I want Skittles)

[tthael]

I've really been enjoying your DVD commentary on Indelicate (and the fic itself, of course!). Particularly the bit about Went and Maggie - you do such a good job of evoking that messy dynamic between an adult child and parents who were not abusive or necessarily bad parents, but who also failed him in a way that did real and lasting damage.

Thanks! It’s not a question of whether Went and Maggie are good people or good parents (an item I know is of hot debate within the fandom and different interpretations of adaptations), but in this way they did fail Richie, and since a lot of IT is about the real and lasting damage of childhood, it felt appropriate to bring that dynamic into Indelicate.

Thank you for reading!

[tthael]

hi hollers! can i ask about the dish soap in the last chapter of indelicate? is that a reference to something from canon, or something that we shouldn't have context for as of yet? thank you again for all of your fantastic writing!

You absolutely can!

It is not a reference to anything from canon, it's a one-liner that Eddie doesn't have context for yet either, but when he asks Richie about it Richie is going to be very embarrassed by his babble and he's going to explain it. It will happen onscreen, but probably in the context of Adult Activities so if you're avoiding explicit content you may miss the scene.

Thank you for reaching out and asking! Now I'm imagining someone asking Stephen, "Uh, in IT, is there any meaning to the dish soap?" and having him be like "...What are you talking about?"

[tthael]

For the DVD commentary: From [“You’re always holding my hand.”Some of the fervor dies within him. Richie’s smile slides off his face and he glares at him, colder than Eddie’s ever seen him.] to [Richie breathes slowly and his breath turns to vapor in the morning air. Eddie thinks of something animal, something large and dark and dangerous, but only because it’s cornered.] (I'm curious about Richie's POV and thoughts here, but you don't have to answer that if you don't want to!)

Oh good! I thought really hard about how this was going to go down, since I knew that the mutual confession and kiss was going to be one of the big watershed moments of Indelicate.

So in this scene, Eddie is asserting his autonomy and really declaring himself to Richie--partially because he’s confusing Richie’s desire to help with his mother’s desire to control him, but partially because he really does love Richie. He says the line “you’re always holding my hand” and it sort of changes his gears from I’m a grown man and I don’t need my hand held to actually I really like it when Richie holds my hand because it means something different with him. It’s just a hand. It’s support and camaraderie and affection with Richie; it’s not a way to steer him or drag him away from things or infantilize (spelling?) him the way it was with his mother.

But Richie only hears I’m a grown man and I don’t need you. And he’s convinced--the same way that he goes for the jugular when he’s fighting with Eddie, because the best defense is a good offense with them--that Eddie’s about to rip him apart, that he’s going to say that he knows that Richie is in love with him and not just reject him but humiliate him in the way that growing up in homophobic Derry has led him to expect. Richie isn’t just angry in this moment, he’s terrified.

So when Eddie totally switches the script by trying to show his physical capabilities--riding a bike--Richie’s thrown, and then when Eddie wipes out Richie’s hurt and defensive feelings come second to his very real concern for Eddie’s potential injury and his surprise and pleasure at how unpredictable Eddie is. Richie feels very open for Eddie to hurt him there, and Eddie doesn’t, and part of Richie’s response when Eddie plants one on him is just euphoric relief--that it all could have gone wrong and instead it went right in the best way Richie could have even hoped for. Eddie’s a little lightheaded in that scene from emotional strain, but he has no idea how dazed Richie is.

Thank you for playing along and for reading!

[tthael]

👏i absolutely love your writing, thank you for indelicate. could you elaborate on why richie responded the way he did when eddie came out of the coma and told him he loved him? i sometimes wonder whether he genuinely didn't think eddie was cognizant enough to know what he was saying, or if he wasn't ready to deal with his own feelings, or if he was worried eddie would respond badly if he knew richie's feelings (despite the love confession). i love your insight and the way you've written things.

Sure! So when I write Richie he tends to be very self-deprecating, lots of internalized self-loathing, even aside from the internalized homophobia. I like to write him as very intelligent but constantly drawing more attention to his goofball traits, constantly misdirecting people about his real feelings, and somewhere between clinically depressed and fundamentally dissatisfied with a position in the world that he expected would bring him happiness--and it didn’t. At his heart, Richie thinks that he is a bad person--he thinks he is the werewolf--and the reasons for that are multifaceted the way they are in real life.

So Richie’s disbelief--and it’s genuine disbelief--to Eddie’s declaration of love is multifacted:

1) He thinks that Eddie does not know what he’s saying, because Eddie is heavily medicated post-coma.

2) He thinks that, even if Eddie does know what he’s saying, he means it platonically. Eddie says I love you, not I’m in love with you; meaning that Richie (who does not believe that Eddie could love him) assumes that he must mean platonically, the way that Richie himself loves Bev and Bill and Stan and Mike and Ben.

2) a) This does not mean that Richie doesn’t feel the pang of getting so close to what he most wants, while under a great deal of emotional strain having witnessed Eddie crash multiple times and being generally uncertain about whether he was going to live or die. He wants Eddie to love him. Ideally he’d like it if Eddie were in love with him, but he’ll take what he can get.

2) b) Richie definitely cries in the men’s room after this and Stan finds him and sort of mops him up.

3) During the ordeal that was transporting Eddie from Neibolt to the hospital to surgery to the larger hospital in Bangor and through Eddie’s two crashes, Richie embarrassed himself spectacularly by being inconsolable in a very conspicuous way that made it clear to all of the Losers that Richie was invested in Eddie way more than “just friends.” Richie did not get to choose to come out to them. He’s lost a certain amount of agency here and afterwards he was mortified and determinedly not talking about it. So it’s not that Richie doesn’t know his own feelings, because he does; but he’s never been comfortable with other people knowing his feelings. Richie’s idea of dealing with a feeling is suppressing the hell out of it or mocking it. He can’t really control all of the Losers’ reactions to it, which is part of why he’s so angry with the Losers when Eddie wakes up--he’s feeling overprotective of Eddie, but he’s also redirecting his hurt and embarrassment and loss of control in that direction. Which is why Eddie snaps at him and asks for his coffee and tells him to go cool off. Eddie has no interest in being controlled and has to assert his own autonomy right back.

I’ve been getting a lot of requests for insight into Richie’s point of view in this fic and I think I’m going to do a couple of little outtakes from his perspective in the Indelicate universe. But thanks for giving me the chance to talk about it!

[tthael]

I would like to openly appreciate how slowwwww the burn is in Indelicate. The deliberation with which you make readers wait for even that first kiss! To start with a bang (I Love You) and then let the story play out from there in what is a very realistic, deliberate pace alongside Eddie's racing thoughts... Incredible restraint and patience. You have built my heart up and torn it open time and time again. Thank you.

I wish that I could say that it was all deliberate (since in TTHAEL Richie and Eddie have to grow into their feelings for each other, and in TTHABL Ben and Beverly become committed before they really know each other as adults, and it would really make sense if I had a trifecta of “the love confession you don’t believe followed by the love confession you can’t deny”), but the truth is that I’m just long-winded. I didn’t realize how much time Eddie would have to spend in hospital. And I’m not even writing a super-realistic portrayal of recovery from that particular injury, because I have no idea what that would look like. If Eddie’s having an easier time of it than expected, I’m gonna chalk it up to Turtle Magic.

The first kiss was one scene that I knew I was dying to get to, and I planned it out months in advance (I remember visiting my parents over the holidays and standing at the top of their stairs and going, “Oh yeah, this is gonna be good,” and since I started writing the fic in November 2019, it was a long time coming). I’ve been delighted by the reception to it. I also feel like, by bringing the reader along with Eddie on his emotional journey from the totally unsatisfying love confession to the first kiss, we really see the relief that goes into that kind of resolution after all the buildup. I felt that getting it so emotionally intense justified exactly how physically intense Eddie’s and Richie’s responses were.

Thank you so much for reading!

[tthael]

I added I Like It by TEAM to my music playlist solely bc of Indelicate and whenever it comes up I think of Richie & Eddie

I am glad to hear it! I first heard that song back in 2017 when I was working a soul-sucking office job and I was like “playing this on loop for hours will absolutely give my brain the happy juice to get through until quitting time!” Now that I’m well clear of that job, it just makes me happy to hear the singer’s voice drop really low in that one part.

Richie voice: It’s hot, I’ll fucking say it.