#ttha

[tthael]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Audra Phillips Characters: Richie Tozier, Beverly Marsh, Richie's Agent, Ben Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak, Bill Denbrough, Kay McCall (IT) Additional Tags: Richie Tozier's Stand Up Act, Richie Tozier's Sense of Humor, gay sex jokes, Gun Control, mass shootings, Feminism, jerking it, the gay optometrist, getting engaged, Death Threats, the baby lesbians from Panera (OCs), Harry potter reference, Jimmy John's reference, eating ass, the problem of violence in America, Police Brutality, a Lebanese-American child with a potato clock, Richie Tozier's hypothetical daughter (OC), actual real-life serial killers, the guy in your office who eats at his desk and chews with his mouth open, Facebook, Monologue Series: Part 3 of Things that Happen After Summary:

Armed with his own material, the formerly-edgy stand-up comic embraces a different kind of stage persona, offering his takes on growing up closeted and coming out at forty-one, his friendship with fashion designer Beverly Marsh, commitment, and gun control in the United States.

[tthael]

i'm reading IT for the first time and i have had the reaction "oh this was in TTHAEL" at more than one detail. thank you for doing Kay less dirty >:O

LOL thank you so much! In IT Part 2 Bev never went to Kay’s, but in TTHABL Tom assumed she did and went after Kay. Kay, however, literally had no idea what Tom was talking about and just figured that Bev had run, which meant that Tom went through with his threat to cut her with the shard of vase. But Kay avoids a lot of the shame she felt in IT (King) because she physically couldn’t betray Bev. She had never even heard of Derry, Maine.

I don’t want to downplay the lingering effects that violence has on a person, especially gendered violence, but I think a lot of Beverly Leaves is kind of an Exhibit A on my take on that. Kay is deeply disturbed by Tom’s attack on her, and she’s clinging to what she didn’t have in canon: the triumph of having protected Bev. She compensates for the feelings of violation and helplessness by casting herself in the role of protector. I don’t want to accuse Stephen King of writing women badly (cough nipples cough), but I think the time update also changes some of Kay’s approach to feminism and her response to Tom. Book!Kay went to the ER full of shame knowing that Tom was after Bev and that she had no way to warn her he was coming. TTHABL!Kay went to the ER like she was going to war, and waged it until she finally got confirmation that Bev was still alive.

TTHABL’s Kay is still hashing it out with a therapist. Everyone in the Things That Happen After ‘verse is in therapy.

[tthael]

All your WIPs are works I am EXTREMELY excited for, wow. Especially because you have proven yourself to be a consistently great writer. I'm curious, do you know how long you expect each of them to be? Are you picturing all very long fics like the TTH series? Or are any shorter? I wanna add: disclaimer that it doesn't matter if you make one short or one long, or if it takes forever to get out, or you drop a fic. Writing as much as you do is a LOT of work, I'm not entitled to that labor

Oh man, I don’t think Bill Denbrough Writes an Ending is going to be as long as Eddie Lives and Beverly Leaves. In fact, I’m planning on keeping it entirely in Bill’s perspective, and probably not having chapter breaks unless I can feel the thing getting SUPER long. So stylistically it will be extremely different than the first two. But no estimates for a wordcount yet. It’s going to cover a longer period of time than Eddie Lives and go past the end of Beverly Leaves, but the scenes aren’t going to be continuous. We’ll have a lot of timeskips.

Eldritch Teen Losers is, I think, probably going to be an epic. I want to rotate between all the Losers, which means 7 points of view, and I want to follow them basically from killing It all the way to... high school graduation? Young adulthood? I’m not sure. It’s gonna be sprawling, have a lot of moving parts, and I don’t quite know what the ending is going to be like. No wordcount estimates yet either.

And Indelicate—I have at least 20K saved up from NaNoWriMo last year, and I haven’t even gotten them out of Derry yet. Also I’m not really happy with anything past the first scene, so I keep scrapping and rewriting. But I think that one’s going to have another road trip in it too. So yeah, it’s gonna be long.

I feel like I’m really setting myself up for some marathon writing. Maybe I should do some short sprints to work my way up to it or something.

[tthael]

Can I just say I really love how well you grasp all of the Losers? Like, characterization/motivations wise? I feel like usually people get Richie/Eddie because they're the most popular, and Stan and Bev also have pretty clear personalities. But often, Ben/Mike/Bill are just sort of there/interchangeable. So I really appreciate that you wrote/are writing fics about and from the POV of Ben/Bill. And with Mike I love how you characterized him, he's fully developed and a specific part of the group

I love them all and it’s not fair to leave any of them out. I felt so guilty for giving a fix-it to Eddie but not to Stan that Stan became a very active player in Things That Happened After Eddie Lives, completely to my surprise considering what I intended to write when I started out.

Since Things That Happen After is explicitly a shipping series, I didn’t really know what to do with Mike at first. Some of my friends in the IT fandom and I have been talking about this--I’m not a big fan of pairing off characters just because they’re single at the end of the canon, but also I don’t feel good about  leaving Mike out, especially because he’s the only black character. He’s going to play a larger role in Bill’s installment in the series--Mike’s kind of the free agent in this series, having dedicated his life to the study of a single place and a single entity and the way they warped each other, so I’ve given him freedom to move and travel, and a fairly popular travel blog. I’ve been thinking about writing odd snippets from Mike’s point of view--I really do hate leaving him out--kind of as a bonus to the series, but I think I need to finish my works in progress before I bite off any more. But Mike’s subplot in TTHA is drawn from Stephen King’s UR, a novella he wrote to promote the Kindle that was included in the Bazaar of Bad Dreams audiobook I heard back in 2017. He’s not sitting idle, and I fully believe that he’s pursuing happiness in the way that all people are entitled to and a way that Mike definitely deserves to after all those years in isolation--but I haven’t come to any resolutions about ways I’m comfortable portraying his romantic life. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens--he’s one of the characters who surprises me.

[tthael]

I want you to know I literally read the one fucking sentence you posted for indelicate (word: stretch) and i'm already dying over this fic, fuck. Also, if you still feel like doing the word ask game: water

I’m definitely still doing the word game! This one has multiple hits for all three WIPs!

Indelicate:

“He should sit up, take some Tums, drink some water, eat some bread or something to soak up the stomach acid. That beeping rises in his ear again and then sinks away.”

Bill Denbrough Writes an Ending:

“‘And he went down into the basement and got the turtle wax, and I showed him how to waterproof it, and we named her the S.S. Georgie.’ He smiles a little bit, watching his wife’s face. ‘And before he left, he said I love you Billy, and he kissed me on the cheek. That wasn’t normal for him. It’s almost like he knew something was going to happen.’”

Eldritch Teen Losers:

“They’re all tired and a little sick with what they’ve done, and there’s blood and sewage all over them. They’re happy to spill out into the Barrens, into the dirty water where they’ve played all summer and where Ben built the dam. Surprising all of them--himself included--Eddie is the first one to drop to his knees in the stream and start washing his face.”

Thank you for playing!

[tthael]

If any of these words are in any of your WIPs (which, btw, all sound like GREAT concepts): scared, sweet, and eyes. You don't have to do all of them or anything, I just figured I would give more options in case only one of those words shows up in your WIPs or something

Bill Denbrough Writes an Ending:

“When she closes the door she turns with her back pressed to it, her hands behind her. Slowly she takes off her sunglasses and looks at him. Her eyes are silver.”

Indelicate: 

“With light pressure he lifts Eddie’s eyelid, and Eddie pulls a  face at him but allows it without flinching back. ‘Oh, sweetheart, they’ve got you on the good drugs, don’t they?’”

“The pain in his chest dies down, choosing instead to knife through his skull as the light pours into his eyes, and then that bodily  grievance fades too.”

Eldritch Teen Losers:

“Ben and Stan are shapes more defined by darkness than anything else on the shore, and Eddie is hunched in the dark water and Richie can hear his teeth chattering, and Mike’s dirty t-shirt looks bright white now that Richie’s eyes have adjusted. He’ll never be scared of the dark again.”

“[The joke] dies faster than his one about Betty hopping around without her shoe. No one so much as glares or rolls their eyes--they barely acknowledge it. Ordinarily Richie would hate that, but even he’s too tired to be courting their attention the way he normally would. He doesn’t have the energy to feel bereft.”

Thank you for playing!

[tthael]

if it's okay, can i ask: do you know yet what the title for your bill fic is going to be?

I think I’m going with “Bill Denbrough Writes an Ending.” I know it doesn’t fit with the theme of “Eddie Lives”/“Beverly Leaves,” but it feels right for now. Also I have some evocative stuff planned for the summary that I’m planning on taking a little more seriously than I did for the summary for Things That Happen After Eddie Lives. I’m looking forward to it!

[tthael]

15 19 23

Thank you for playing along!

15) Something you’ve learned this year

Oh man, probably that I’m capable of finishing a novel, actually! I didn’t know that I was capable of finishing a project of that length, but it’s been weirdly reassuring to know that I’m capable of cranking out a project like that and being happy with it at the end. I told myself that I would write like two chapters of domestic fluff and then I would have one more completed work on my profile and it would empower me to keep going with my more ambitious projects--and instead the creative process kind of crept up behind me and hit me over the head with a chair. It’s a good feeling--something I learned about myself, you know?

19) Any new fics to start next year

Okay I’m not sure if this is cheating per NaNoWriMo rules, because I have at least beginnings for a lot of the fics I want to write, but my current undeclared works in progress are:

a) Bill Denbrough Writes an Ending--the finale to the Things That Happen After Eddie Lives series. I’ve written the opening scene, I know what the very last scene is going to be, and I’m so excited to get there. Also, people who are here for Reddie (and to a lesser extent Benverly) will be able to see updates on what happens with them. And then I’ll be able to answer the spoilery post-fic questions I’ve been dying to talk about.

b) Indelicate--what I’ve been affectionately referring to as “the size-kink fic,” in which Eddie does get vibe-checked at the end of It Part Two (2019), but thanks to the intervention of a Mr. Stan Uris, manages to make it to emergency medical attention. With a new lease on life, Eddie decides to pursue the things he wants, which include eating ice cream out of the quart with a spoon, dangerous bike rides, and Richie. This was gonna be my NaNoWriMo project but I only made it to 20K words, and now I’ve decided to adjust my goals for this fic and redraft from the beginning.

c) “Eldritch Teen Losers” fic--the kids succeed in killing Pennywise the first time around, but the seven of them start changing in exciting, disturbing, and reality-warping ways after the fact. Which is not going to make puberty any easier, let’s be clear.

23) Fics you wanted to write but didn’t

a) Richie Tozier’s Obligatory Coming-Out Comedy Standup Special--I started to draft this on my phone, but what I’ve learned is that I haven’t watched nearly enough comedy standup to know what makes a routine good, and now I’m worried about my ability to pull it off to my satisfaction when so many people have done such great standup sketches for Richie. I’m not gonna say never, but it might be a while before I’ve done my research to my satisfaction.

b) And this is not an IT fic, but when I watched Undeadwood on Critical Role this year I absolutely made up a player character to go along with the four-episode campaign, so I might end up writing a gender-interrogating Western inspired by Brian W. Foster, my favorite beta reader (who’s a big fan of Westerns), and my undying love of “Wild Wild West” by Will Smith.

Thank you thank you for asking!