re-reading revisions and i have to ask abt this line "maybe someday Soda might call and the conversation you've been putting off for years will finally happen" - what are your thoughts about soda in this fic? did he act differently or did he still try to keep the peace? what does pony think of him?
ooohh this is a great question.
it's something i've talked about before—that in essence, the slap is a dirty family secret the moment it occurs. revisions takes on the idea that most of what happened in the book was true but edited down to wash off some worse parts. one of the worst parts is that in reality, darry punched pony and pony edited it into a slap on the page. the second is that the talk at the end of the book, which i didn't reveal in the fic but kept in mind, didn't actually happen the way ponyboy wrote it. in reality, that scene is both a real event to a point and wish ponyboy had for a talk that could have happened.
in part of that is because here, there's still a court case and all but pony still felt compelled to edit the truth. going up to the court forced him to lie that he was slapped and not punched, and his brothers were well aware of this fact. this changed their relationships with each other pretty drastically even if none of the three could acknowledge it at the time. soda was much more aware of the fact that pony wasn't really like them, aware that he had somewhat failed, and aware that trying to fix it was harder than what he could do. and this soda tried what he could, but they never actually sat down and really talked about what happened to johnny and dallas. soda certainly tried but never knew how.
and a bigger issue, as things went on, is before darry died there were a few things happening that added to that pile that i'll cut for courtesy. mild trampsverse spoilers in the sense i'll be touching on some of this:
darry's letters from vietnam were very strange to pony and soda. they would notice that he seemed to be self editing a lot, that his handwriting started looking strange through some and that he clearly seemed to be holding back. (they would never put together until i think a lot older, that darry had gained a heroin addiction and had been hiding it from them. this is something i'm toying with in trampsverse but with tons more layers)
ponyboy is queer, which is tagged and alluded too but not explicitly spelled out. he hid it from darry fairly well while soda picked up on little things over the years, and he never quite understood how to handle that for pony. by the time the fic is happening the HIV/AIDs crisis is in full swing, and i think that will finally break the dam between them to talk about it after the movie premiere. which pony is not really prepared for yet it will go a long way to repair things.
all three of them being rocked by subsequent deaths of other people in the gang either through violence or drugs or time. i think evie still blows up into a career in this au but she's one of the only girls besides sandy who made it out. two bit and ponyboy became very close, and two bit's a wrestler. two bit does know ponyboy is queer (there was a kiss that happened years on. two gently let him down and pony finally came clean about his crush on dallas) and soda's been upset for years over steve dying after coming back from nam but their relationship suffered bc steve never let his hatred for sandy go.
and the publication of the outsiders. pony published it without talking to soda or darry about it, during college. this was... a huge rift because it put their family business out into the open. pony didn't think it would be a huge hit. he severely miscalculated and it made all of them question things. soda came off in the best light—which is something he acknowledged and at the same time he felt c r u s h e d reading all of the things that pony wrote that happened to him that he had no idea of. soda grappled a lot with guilt over things he didn't know or see and that pony didn't tell him. for all pony worships him, pony doesn't tell him a lot about the things that have happened to him. it made soda feel as if he failed him really badly by not letting pony know he could take hearing bad things and it made him be more critical of darry too. at the same time, he and darry both had their own talks. i don't think he or darry truly got over how awful the fountain scene was in the novel and how they didn't know how bad it was at the time. and before darry died i think soda was finally reaching a point where he could fully talk to him and then. well. darry died.
darry dying should have gotten them closer and instead i think the grief became another person and soda and pony grieved differently. and because soda is in fl with sandy, it made the long distance settle in. pony wanted to isolate, soda wanted to come together but after the funeral it just got to be too painful and thus things cooled in communication. that coupled with their suspicions over darry in nam made for a very difficult time
by about the early 90s though i would say they're in a much better, open place. they're able to be much more fully honest about themselves, their relationships and each other. pony has to tell soda he didn't know everything and soda has to reassure pony that he's okay with what he's got to tell. it's imperfect—pony's still got loner tendencies and soda still sometimes seems as if reality takes a minute to register. i think sandy helped bridge things between them too, with her own difficult family and generally being able to strike a midtone (sorry sandy i forgot u my love my angel) with them.
II. Has writing a fic ever changed your opinion of a character? — yes. until i started writing her myself? didn't care about angela. at all. she was like the rest of the shepards to me, a plot point and not a character until after talking with a friend, decided i didn't have to kowtow to the really bad fanon depictions of her. so many fanon depictions of her made her into this effy/euphoria girl bpd princess lite self insert and i just... did not care for her until i thought about her on my own and started writing her. i only trust her with my beloved ring of mutuals.
III. Tell us about a headcanon you invented for a fic — three universal headcanons for all my aus more or less are
(1) dallas is deaf in his left ear due to his mother striking him there repeatedly as a child. no one knows about it until ponyboy realizes it in the early 70s due to an accident where dallas got injured badly and when their son teo is born deaf is when everyone else realizes since that's when dallas decides to actually learn ASL for his baby
(2) when they were children, steve wanted to have all day with soda and didn't want the "tagalong" around so he locked pony (either three or six) into a closet all day one summer. he got caught as soon as jennifer curtis came home and freed pony, who'd been there for hours. steve got smacked in the middle of the street and soda couldn't see him for a week after that. jennifer never forgave him.
(3) jennifer curtis comes from a wealthy oil family that she ran away from due to her father + had post partum depression after soda. that's why that gap is there. none of her sons ever knew she almost left after soda's second or third birthday for good. (in greekverse aus, pony comes out of this period)
XII. Do you write in order, jump around the draft, or a mix? Something else? — i write in order for drafts for the most part but some aus just have moments posted, some have longform serialization, some are just a one shot.
XVIII. If you have noticed themes emerging in your writing, what are they? What broad themes and topics do you enjoy exploring? — lmfao oh, i love insane blood family, i tend to ruminate on sibling relationships not being easy, insane people in love no matter the scenario, domesticity between characters, and shared communal meals. i used to make a running post of all the mealtimes i wrote in fic and had to stop because it went on too long. i also am very preoccupied with parents as people.
