v-s.net v0.6

Wednesday, 7:36 pm in Memes & Quizzes

Questions are from randomredux.

Rules:
1. Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.
3. You’ll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4. You’ll include this explanation.
5. You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed

1. What got you interested in drawing and writing?
I don’t really know. I guess it’s just something I’ve always done. I remember when I was, like, a right wee tyke and people used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would answer “Author and illustrator!”. So yeah. [shrugs]

2. What introduced you to the world of slash, shipping, and all things fandom?
For slash it was reading first the Anne Rice Interview With the Vampire series and thinking, “Hey, you know what, Lestat is really, like… gay.” Then reading Poppy Z. Brite stuff I borrowed off a friend of mine. Then I did some school-related work with ~koorime [h] and yeah… the rest is kind of history.

3. You’ve said in the past that most female lead characters are, quote unquote, so fucking lame. What would you do to remedy this, and what do you think causes it?
Hollywood stereotypes of the female being essentially what’s called in the roleplaying world a ‘dingus’; ie. a passive plot device that’s there for the main (male) character to chase after. I guess I feel most female character are simply there as (sex-)objects and not as actual characters. Not everything suffers from this; Buffy/Angel have strong female leads (even if I don’t actually like Buffy), but Julie from The Maxx (by Sam Keith) is kind of my quintessential female-written-by-a-male lead. She’s got a fat stomach and beheads the bad guy. She is ‘protected’ by Maxx in the typical superhero damsel-in-distress type role, but she realises the destructiveness of this relationship and ultimately leaves it of her own volition; saving Maxx in the process.

So yeah, not all female leads annoy me, but most of them do.

4. As far as the rest of the world knows, your country is a desolate wasteland populated by boomerangs, deadly creatures, and Steve Irwin (just messing with ya!). Which of these creatures would you like to see banished from your presence and placed in, oh…let’s say Washington DC?
Steve Irwin. I think I’d be ashamed to inflict Americans on poor, innocent crocodiles, redbacks, blue-ringed octapi, box jellyfish, et cetera…

5. What gave you the idea for the Herebeyond? And on a larger scale, where do most of your ideas come from?
Herebeyond largely comes from ripping off other people. Really. The Haunt (where it is set) I’ve had for… litterally years. It’s influenced a lot by Beetlejuice since it was originally the home of Loki (aka. Lain) who was incredibly ripped off. The characters come from all over the place, but mostly self-serving, over-analytical, critical reasons. Thus Herebeyond doesn’t ‘flow’ very easily and it’s hard to write. Oh, the MEK comes form ~pushtyber [h], who in turn got it from Warren Ellis; though the idea has more-or-less existed in my stuff for a while.

Et tu, Angelus? is my “close to the heart” series and that comes from a lot of everywhere, but mostly religious esoterica (Kabbalah, Enochian writings on Angels) and the girly desire for vampy-angel slash (no, not that Angel). Lokken/Elle/Amael originally comes from a Vampire: the Masquerade game (as my current Werewolf troop will attest to). At one stage I started drawing him with wings and it kind of progressed from there. It got to the point where he really didn’t fit into WoD mythos any more, so I killed him off and he was migrated to EtA?. Sam comes from my irritation at my high-school friends getting brainwashed by religious fanatics, James my love of hacker/cyberpunk lore, and Lee from… er… my desire to have a pale-skinned sliver-haired assassin guy? Something like that.

The AU EtA? picks no bones about being influenced by my love of technological high-fantasy (ie. non-Earth fantasy with modern instead of medieval elements), which is something that Western Tolkein-dominated fantasy rarely does. Final Fantasy is a big influence here, especially seven and eight; I tend to like the more technological FFs. It also draws heavily from Kabbalah.

So yeah… slashy high-tech high-fantasy; both EtA? and Herebeyond. I guess I just write what I’d want to read.

• Tags » herebeyond, meme, random redux, tagged, writing