Ask the Author: apocalypsos

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Ask the Author: apocalypsos (Jennifer)
Interviewer:
Interviewee:	apocalypsos
Date(s):	June 6, 2007
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Supernatural
External Links:	interview is here, Archived version
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apocalypsos was interviewed in 2007 for Supernatural Roundtable.

Some Excerpts

Okay, so, about me. I’ve been in fandom and writing fanfic since I first jumped online eleven years ago. My first real fandom was Highlander: The Series, although don’t ask me where any of those stories are because I seriously have no freaking clue where they might be anymore. Somewhere along the line I fell into Buffy/Angel fandom, where I got a crash course in ‘shipper wars by being a Buffy/Spike supporter. Sometime in about 2003 my old boss talked me into getting back into the LJ I’d signed up for two years earlier and never used, and ever since then I’ve been here, writing multiple stories for Buffy, X-Men movieverse, Lost, Ugly Betty, Terminator, The 4400, Veronica Mars, Project Runway RPS, Heroes, and of course Supernatural and CW RPS, not to mention lots of other single stories in smaller fandoms.

I got into Supernatural a few months after the show first started and fell into the fandom almost immediately. I’ll write anything in this fandom -- gen, het, slash, Wincest, whatever -- but what I love to write most of all is Dean when he‘s capable, smart, or has some weird secret talent he’s not telling Sam or the rest of us about. I’ve written almost a hundred Supernatural fics that are all tagged here -- I think I need about four or five more to crack triple digits. I've only written a couple of RPS fics so far, although the story I wrote for Bigbang (and will be posting in a few weeks) is RPS and it seems to have cracked open that part of my brain and set loose the plotbunnies, so let's see how that turns out. :)

My first Supernatural fic was Gremlins. My personal favorite is Real Men Don‘t Make Cheesecake because I just really love the thought that out of all of the classes which Dean would fit into and genuinely enjoy taking (even though he might not admit it), home economics would be the one to hit home. I also love Straight On ‘Til Morning, clay and paste and down, Across the Universe and Thirty-Two Flavors. The story that probably got the best response out of all of them in regards to recs and comments and whatnot was On A Steel Horse, which always amuses me considering I slapped it together in about an hour.

A lot of it is that I do a TON of thinking during and after the new episodes about the road less traveled. Like, okay, we got our happy ending for this week, but what if we hadn't? What if Sam died? What if Dean died? What if they both died? (Oh, I know there are some writers out there who aren't big on character death but I'll gleefully kill off anybody. God knows they're not going to do it on the show, right? And that's half the fun of writing fanfic -- writing stuff you're never going to see in canon. ;)) What if they both got turned into vampires or werewolves or ninjas? What if they were all girls?

I swear I'll do that with every single turn of the plot. My night job's kind of boring, so that's usually where my mind wanders and I get the best ideas. And when I do brainstorm, I pretty much let it go and write down anything that comes to mind, and I mean anything. I never, EVER edit when I'm brainstorming for story ideas. I think on one of my plotbunny lists I've got "AU, in which Dean is a giant chicken" written down because of somebody at work mentioning the Animaniacs at the right time. Did I ever write it? Not that specifically -- because HEE, a little too silly even for me -- but I was laughing over it one day and thought, "Oh, my God, wingfic," and that was clay and paste and down.

As for how I approach them, it really depends a lot about how early in the canon the AU comes into play. Like with Straight On 'Til Morning, Mary being alive is definitely going to change the dynamic between the boys, whether or not the family moves around, how they handle money, if somebody's there for the kids when they get home, how John is as a father, if Sam gets to go to school without a hassle, etc. Whereas with Across the Universe it's still the same Dean, for the most part, except for being all broken and developing roots of a sort to hold onto the part of Sam's life that's left behind. It's a lot like the difference between standing on the banks of a pond and dropping a stone in right in front of you as opposed to throwing it into the center and watching the ripples spread out all around. And you really don't have to hold onto canon quite as tightly the earlier you change the 'verse you're working in.

I think that's one of my bigger pet peeves when I'm reading AU fic, when something huge changed very early in their lives -- John and Mary both died, child services took them away from John after the fire, whatever -- and they're both almost exactly the same people. I mean, they are but they shouldn't be. They may be having the same experiences as our Sam and Dean, but who's to say they'll make the exact same decisions? A Sam and Dean who aren't raised by John or don't know about hunting might not be all that eager to go running into a burning building. Nothing's to say they wouldn't, but I'd always rather playing with that other option where they stand back and say, "No, no, I'll just let the firemen handle this one." I adore a challenge. Give me a situation where they do something completely the opposite of what we expect them to and I'm dying to write that. :)

Oh, it was great writing fic after the finale and reading it especially. You learned so much about people's writing preferences after that, because the people who hated killing characters off went into this radio silence while the rest of us were all gleefully bumping off Winchesters left and right. HEE.

I think the main thing about writing fic right after the season one finale was that you knew damn well they weren't going to kill off Dean and Sam (although John was fair game). They might toy with them a little before they made them better, but they were going to live. The writers left us at this astoundingly bleak point but if you were willing to kill them off or fuck with them in general there were SO MANY THINGS you could write. Death! Brain damage! Loss of limbs! Paralysis! Personally, it was this angsty plotbunny parade traipsing through my brain.

Once I got past that initial "OMGWTFMACKTRUCK?!" reaction I had three guys severely injured in a crushed Impala in this limbo for four whole months. At that point it was like, best-case scenario or worst, I don't care, I just need an ending, damn it. Closure! I need closure! I don't know about anybody else, but I couldn't just leave them there. They weren't even my characters and I was like, "Noooo! Somebody has to get them out! No, wait, I'll do it!" It didn't even matter to me if I killed them off or not. Just ... out of the car, in some way, shape or form, if for no other reason than my own mental stability.

Seriously, if that had been the end of the series I think I would have had a stroke. :)