The KSA Archive Interview with Jen

Interviews by Fans
Title:	The KSA Archive Interview with Jen
Interviewer:	Selursera
Interviewee:	Jen
Date(s):	January 2000
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
External Links:	interview is here, Archived version
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Jen was interviewed by Selursera in 2000 for The KSA Archive.

Some Excerpts

I was vaguely aware of 'Hercules' and idly decided to check it out one week, as it seemed to involve under-dressed men with longish hair and so might help an otherwise boring afternoon to pass more enjoyably. The fates must have been kind, because the episode being shown that week was 'The Wedding of Alcemene'. Even more significantly, the episode was already half-way through. Which means that instead of switching off again fairly swiftly, having discovered that the reception of the channel it was being shown on was appalling, I sat drooling happily over a slightly fuzzy vision of dark male beauty, who seemed to be Hercules' brother. The reception was so bad that the credits at the end were unreadable, but I did a very quick online search to discover that the character, Iphicles, was played by somebody called Kevin Smith, and that he also played Ares.

So I dug myself in the following week, ready to enjoy, only to find that Iphicles didn't reappear. Nor did he the following week, nor the one after that. And neither was there any sign of this Ares guy. So I gave up.

I tried again a few months later, having moved house to an area where the reception was much better, and that was when I saw Ares for the first time. From that time on, I was hooked enough to begin to watch 'Xena' as well, and now I usually enjoy them even if it's an episode with no Kevin Smith character involved!

When I started watching both X:WP and H:TLJ properly, I searched on-line from my work PC for websites and found an amazing amount of fan fiction on-line. I read my way through quite a lot of that before discovering that the character in whom I was most interested, Iphicles, rarely appeared. When he did, it seemed that it was usually (though not always) as an under-developed plot device. So I decided to remedy that and write my very own Iphicles-centered piece of fiction, purely for my own enjoyment. It dawned on me by about page 89 of this epic that it was such an incredible Mary Sue that, not only could I never let anyone else look at it, but I couldn't even bear to carry on writing it. So just in case anybody had written any more Iphicles-centered fiction I performed yet another search for 'Iphicles' on the web, this time from my brand-new internet connection at home. Well, imagine my surprise when my search threw up all sorts of references to fiction, which seemed to have Iphicles in a starring role! This was an adult site, and consequently barred by my workplace internet access. It was called the Archive for the Ksmithares mailing list. I began to read, eyes opening wider and wider as I had my very first encounter with slash, and decided I had to join as I enjoyed so many of the stories. From reading other people's stories, it just seemed a natural progression to write my own (Voice from the Past). It says a lot about the supportive nature of the list that I had the courage to share it with a beta, who encouraged me to post it, and the lovely comments I received mean that I haven't stopped writing since!

I like to read and write about men having sex because I find it very erotic. It's also the case that the characters who interest me in the Hercuverse are sexually attractive males, and so when I write about them, and their relationships with one another, the relationships almost always have a sexual element. When I'm writing about a sexual relationship, I find it important to show the physical side of that relationship as it can show so much about the characters and about the way they view one another.

Feedback lets you know what is and isn't working in your writing, and whether you're successful in putting across what it is that you intended. To find somebody who will honestly critique your work is wonderful - if you wish for it!

As far as I am concerned, without feedback I certainly wouldn't share my writing, and I'm not sure how much I'd continue to write. I'm always delighted to receive feedback, and I'm extremely grateful for the time and effort that people put into it. It has also been the case that talking with people about stories has sometimes led on to other conversations, and I have made some new friends that way.

I do like any critiquing to be couched in constructive terms Betareaders are different - they're there to rip it to shreds and tell me in no uncertain terms where the problems are.

Because I know how important feedback is to me as a writer, I try to give it on any story I have enjoyed, but I have to say that I'm not particularly good at analysing stories or characters. I tend to respond intuitively and while I might know on an emotional or psychological level what is valid (or what I believe to be valid) I'm not necessarily able to deconstruct it.