#automatic-mechanical-pneumatic

 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.

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.