the ballad of lilian and ratricia

This blog post is about the writing of this “novella” I just posted on AO3.

First off, I hope you enjoyed it! It was meant to be fun and dumb and hot and I think I covered my bases pretty well. As I mentioned in the author’s note on AO3, I wrote this to help me keep my distance from the completed first draft of my second novel, as I wanted to give it (and me) some breathing room before I came back for revisions and edits. Also, I hate editing. Also, the closer I get to a finished product, the closer I get to having to query again, and that makes me shrivel up inside like a raisin.

Writing Rat on a Horse was probably the most fun I’ve had writing in… years. I wrote it in just under three weeks. I’m not trying to sell it or impress anyone. I’m really embodying my old fanfiction mindset of “write what you want because no one can write what you want better than you”. There was so little planning and so much “teehee, wouldn’t it be funny if Lily tried to climb out the window” or “why shouldn’t Gardenia be a Royalist freak for no reason other than it’s goofy”. Rat’s name is Patricia because “Ratricia” is the funniest joke I’ve ever told.

At the end of the day, Rat on a Horse is fun lesbian erotica, not meant to light the world on fire. However, in the name of fun, I am going to talk about what I do think it has to offer; goofiness, lesbian sex, and dynamic characters.

GOOFINESS

More women should be goofy. There are goofy women out there, but there should be more. The reasons why more women aren’t goofy make me sad. When I am not mentally unwell, I would consider myself a fairly goofy woman. Thinking about the “goofy” people in my life growing up is also sobering, because they were all men. We all have the funny uncle, right? The one who’s just a big kid himself, and all the adult women in the family roll their eyes at him but, like, in a good natured way? How many people have a goofy aunt? We are not socially conditioned to allow women to be goofy, because they’re the ones who have to mind the goofy men. Women aren’t allowed to be goofy, because they’re busy, like, taking care of their families and houses and smashing the glass ceiling and stuff. Even when women are goofy, they’re seen as cringeworthy and embarrassing. I would know, because I often think that way about those kinds of women. It’s so deeply entrenched it almost feels biological. When I was a kid, I told my mom I thought women just weren’t as funny as men. It’s so ingrained into us I am still constantly fighting my preconceptions and picking apart my motivations when it comes to judging other women. You see a lot of lukewarm discussions about the double standards between women and men, but so many of them are painful to watch #girlboss moments lacking even the slightest semblance of nuance that it feels like they never really discussed anything at all (“You think a girl can’t shoot? Well, mr sir, I grew up with TWENTY-SIX brothers” bangbangbang bullseye and damn she’s still so sexy!!). Maybe I am just soft like clay and everyone else is impervious to this and I’m just emotionally weak and susceptible to outside influence and also a raging misogynist.

The funny thing is, after a lot (some might say too much) self reflection, I realized that being terminally goofy myself had started to make me feel like I was unable to take myself, my work, or my feelings seriously whatsoever. Like I had to brush everything off, nothing was allowed to cut too close, and that became dehumanizing and dissociative in its own way, as if I was more of a one dimensional character than an actual human being. It sucks, too, because I say this knowing that at the same time, goofball men are still taken seriously when it’s time to be serious. There’s nothing eating away at them, warning them that they’re trying to run away from themselves and all of their complicated feelings because they like to play little pranks or make stupid jokes or honk their girlfriends’ boobs or whatever. It’s really hard to gauge how gendered this phenomenon is versus how I, as a human, am lacking in general.

All that to say, I like writing goofy women. I like giving them airtime in my stories. I feel like I have a pretty good goofy baseline from the fandom world, along with my to-the-beat-of-my-own drum sense of humour. I liked writing Rat because she’s cool, but I really liked writing Rat because she’s an annoying goofball who enjoys trolling her loved ones. I’m not sure cool people actually exist, but if they do, they’re probably quite one dimensional and boring.

LESBIAN SEX

I enjoyed writing that phrase in Header 1 all caps. I was going to just put in this section, “need I say more?” but it’s me, so I will. I enjoy exploring the different types of sex and turn-ons and attraction and libido women can have/feel. Despite all the supposed “empowering” sex tips out there for women, the landscape of female humans getting down together often still feels weirdly barren and unsexy and lacking tension. Not saying I’m out here to educate or write the most true-to-life lesbian sex. Just cause it’s two women having it (doing it?) doesn’t mean it’ll be good, unfortunately. In erotica-world, though, bad sex (generally with someone else first) is just a precursor for GREAT SEX between the main couple later on. That wasn’t actually the case with Ratricia and Lilian, because Rat’s sex life prior to Lily isn’t mentioned and Lily is a loser virgin <3. But again, that’s kind of the point. The likelihood of sex with a twenty-five year old lesbian virgin who’s never even jerked off being mindblowingly good the entire time is like, mmmmmmm, okay, not SUPER likely. But at the same time, isn’t it fun to imagine a world where being so super into each other (even when one half of you doesn’t realize it) and both of you going off like rockets in the back of your car in the parking lot of an auto insurance broker is possible? And doesn’t result in an indecent exposure charge?

I also really enjoy exploring romance/fanfiction tropes between female characters. You see so little of it in general that it’s fun to play with those expectations in an environment both steeped in and deeply resistant to the socialized and gendered life of women. For example, playing with the trope of “character doesn’t know they’re gay,” is a very different experience if the character is female or male. Personality-dependent, absolutely, but also sex-dependent. Dean Winchester’s relationship to masculinity is not the same as, say, Ashley Bonnie’s relationship to femininity (does anyone even remember that’s Ashley’s last name? No? That’s okay, it’s mentioned literally once in Don’t Worry, I forgive you). But also, IT IS! Both of them are characters who are quite married to the gendered expectations they grew up swimming in. But but also also, those same gendered expectations and how they impact a person are very different. I really enjoyed exploring that relationship while writing m/m fanfiction, so I suppose it only makes sense that I feel similarly exploring the same themes with f/f. Even though Rat on a Horse is just goofin around, you can still see this theme play out, in Lily’s character especially. She has quite specific ideas about shaving and how men/women should do it, all based on what she’s been told by the world around her, while also barely adhering to her own rules. Her expectations of “proper” society are essentially arbitrary, tied up in the media she consumed growing up and her own difficult, homegrown personality. Even very cool very sexy Rat doesn’t escape unscathed, when she talks about growing up as a tomboy who decided chores were for girly girls, and then Ms Arbitrary Lily and her should-be-shaved-but-isn’t pussy shows up to remind Rat that the gendered division of labour means very little in a single-sex household.

Anyway. I thought it was fun. I like riding the line between “realistic” sex and “fanfiction” sex, I guess. Adds a little verisimilitude without fully watering down the fantasy. Like, for example, the fact that shower sex really does mess with lubrication and having sex in a gym shower is SOOOOOOOOO GROSS. Oh my God, especially Rat pushing Lily up against the wall. Disgusting. Disgusting! Good for them.

DYNAMIC CHARACTERS

I like Lily and Rat and I think they’re both weird and interesting, even for the scant thirty-thousand word world in which they live. Heck, I think the same of Gardenia and Gina. One expectation of the romance genre I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to succumb to is the blank slate protagonist for the reader to project onto. Maybe it’s because in the fanfiction world, characters come with built-in personalities, so it kind of forces your hand into working with characters with at least some semblance of depth. Obviously, one of the mainstays of fandom is misinterpreting the characters so badly that by the time the tumblr machine is done with them, they’re barely more than a name and an archetype and a catch phrase, but I’m speaking only for myself, as someone who really enjoyed having the dollhouse pre-built so I could come in and start throwing wrenches into things immediately. I like a character I can sink my teeth into. I like that Lily, with her oddness and her peculiar way of speaking and her hypocrisy and her tetchiness, is not a blank slate. I like that Rat is hiding a very goofy, silly, and earnest personality beneath her gym bro cool lesbian exterior. “Dynamic” doesn’t necessarily mean a character is the complete opposite inside as they are outside, just that they are interesting, active, and stand out on the page. It also doesn’t mean they aren’t relatable in any way— I actually find Lily quite relatable in some ways. Distressingly so, one might say. I also share some characteristics with Rat. Sometimes, I think it’s good to make characters contradictory. It’s another way of adding verisimilitude to a story, because most people, including myself, are contradictory and hypocritical in some ways. It’s all part of the complex and annoying soup of humanity.

RANDOM POINTS OF POTENTIAL INTEREST

Sometimes I write something that is such a blatant personal fantasy of mine I can only laugh. Living in a quaint (PAID OFF!!) cottage in the woods with a whimsical golden bedroom and a beautiful garden and a cozy nook and a well-stocked kitchen full of hearty homemade meals in a town known for its natural beauty, and also your wife-to-be is a hot firefighter. And you drive a civic. What more could you ask for???

There was no reason Rat on a Horse was set in Smithers besides the fact that I had heard of it before and wanted a relatively rural setting. The people of Smithers are called Smithereens, which is hilarious, and I wish I had gotten a chance to work it into the story. If I ever had the chance, I would absolutely visit, it looks like a beautiful place and Lily definitely doesn’t do it justice during her guided tour. There is really an ICBC on Murray Street, though. And, not on Murray Street, a Safeway. And a Subway. But no Walmart! I actually checked because I was going to send Lily there for her gym clothes, but alas, t’was not to be. Not that it would have mattered if I conjured a Walmart into the fictional version of Smithers, but for no good reason, I often stalk Google Maps while writing and am always checking if this or that is “realistic” or not. That habit is a holdover from my Supernatural days when I would constantly be mapping out the road trips and travel times of the Winchesters. I mostly got a break in Wangxian fandom for obvious reasons. Even for Don’t Worry I was skulking around on Maps, especially to help me visualize LA, a place I would rather die before visiting. I also used a lot of Google Maps for novel 2, as the protagonist travels often for work (how else could I accurately describe what it’s like driving on the I-5!!!!!!). It’s especially funny when I realize how little I pay attention to geography/travel time as a reader. Unless you’re a weird internet detective or Game of Thrones post season-5, literally no one cares how accurate your fictional travel time is, or if you said a Walmart existed where it doesn’t.

I also wrote in past tense for the first time in… YEARS. All my fanfiction was in present tense. Even in university I was constantly writing in present tense because of my screenwriting specialty. I remember my terrifying first/second year fiction instructor telling us how people always thought writing in the present tense made things feel more urgent, but actually, the real use-case for present tense was…

I forget the end of her argument, lol. Sad. All I can say is, I wrote in present tense because that’s just how most fanfiction is written. I wrote Don’t Worry in present tense because it was what I was used to. I wrote novel 2 in present tense for the same reason. I thought it would be a good chance to dust off the cobwebs with Lily and Rat, and figured if I missed a tense or two it wasn’t the end of the world. Though someone did mention in the comments I typo’d “barely” as “barley” which is such a me-mistake, but also a good reminder to watch your wiggle words. If I torched the majority of my adverbs like I should’ve, I probably would’ve been safe. A terrifying thought, but one of my most-formed and most-likely-to-be-written-next ideas is in FIRST PERSON. Mama mia.

No more drawing it out. Ending the blog post now because Rat on a Horse has to be done so I can return to book 2 and try to churn out some editing juice. Can’t afford that early 2000s Civic on an ao3 writer’s salary!!