From the Bard's Quill Interview with EA Week
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | From the Bard's Quill Interview with EA Week |
| Interviewer: | Tom |
| Interviewee: | EA Week |
| Date(s): | June 2, 1999 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Xena: Warrior Princess |
| External Links: | From the Bard's Quill Interview with EA Week |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
EA Week was interviewed in 1998 by for the Xena: Warrior Princess site Tom's Xena Fan Fiction Archive.
Other interviews in the series: From the Bard's Quill Interview Series.
Some Excerpts
Q: What inspired you to write Xena fanfic in the first place?
EA: The same thing that inspires me in almost any fandom-- a desire to explore the characters, their situations, and their relationships with each other. My first XWP fanfic was "April Fools," which ended up being this huge 440-page crossed-universe novella. The seed idea came from reading some commentary on the Chakram mailing list, and from individual correspondence with other fans. The idea took root and grew like the plant in the Little Shop of Horrors.
Q: I understand you've written fanfic before XWP. Tell us about some of that.
EA: I wrote my first fanfics in college. I'd started watching the British TV series Dr. Who, and began spinning my own story ideas. I've only done three or four pieces in this universe, though. I also started watching another British series, Robin of Sherwood, in college. For such a short-lived series, it has an amazing fan base. I met a lot of friends through this fandom, and many of them are just incredibly literate. When I started writing stories based on this show, I had one of my new friends edit my writing. She was absolutely invaluable. I contributed to a number of 'zines over a period of about three years.
I started watching the X-Files in the fall of 1995, and I've written one novella based on that show, but I need to get the thing edited so I can post it to a web site. April Fools was actually my second XF fanfic, but it was the first one to get published. I'm working on a third right now. I love the show to pieces, but I find that I need a very particular inspiration to write a story based on it-- maybe because they do such a good job with the actual series, I almost feel like I don't have anything to add, sometimes!
My newest show, one I would love to create some fanfic for, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I really love Oz, the teenage werewolf. I'd like to do some stories about him.
Q: Some have argued that fanfic should stay close to canon, and others that it should explore avenues not open to the show. Which point-of-view do you agree with (or both?)
EA:A little of each. Of course, a big draw of fanfic is being able to explore something that's not possible, given constraints of time and budget, not to mention things like copyright and network censorship! You can't do crossed-universe stories on TV, unless they're two series created by the same person and shown on the same network.
In fanfic, a writer can also go places where the staff doesn't seem interested in going. A lot of my own writing has been inspired by simply wanting to develop a character I feel is overlooked or ignored.
However, I do feel it is important to stick to the 'feel' of the series and the characters. If writers start going too far down unfamiliar roads, their stories begin to bear less and less resemblence to the source material. Sooner or later, the stories are really the writers' own creation, with the physical bodies of the original characters, but not their personalities.
In any show that runs long enough, all writers develop an affinity for a particular point in the series, and I think that's where they tend to mentally 'place' the characters. For me with XWP, it's second season. I don't care for the directions the staff have taken in the third and fourth seasons. I don't pretend the events of those episodes haven't occured, but I don't emphasize them strongly. For example in "Consequences," I mention Solon's death, but I don't dwell on the circumstances surrounding it.
With any ongoing series, it is impossible to keep fan stories completely canonical unless you set them between specific episodes that have already taken place. I have a disclaimer in the introduction to "April Fools," that says the story is apocryphal. It breaks with canon at the end of the '96-'97 season. It's funny to read it now and realize that many of the characters I included are now dead.
So I guess I would describe my approach as adhering to the canon when possible, with selective emphasis on the aspects of each series I find most appealing.
Q: I've heard many fanfic readers (and writers) try to cast 'original' characters in fanfic. Do you do the same, and if so, could you give us some examples? EA: Sure, I do. So far, the favorite 'original' character I've created is Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. I put her in a story called "Of Harmony and Strife," which is included in a 'zine called The Daily Muse, due out this summer. She's not original in the sense that I made her up-- she's a figure from mythology-- but she hasn't been included in either HTLJ or XWP, so I decided to base her on Alicia Silverstone's character in the movie "Clueless." I figured that Aphrodite would've raised her, so she's pretty much an air-headed valley girl.
The gist of the story is that Aphrodite needs Ares to babysit Harmonia for the weekend, and he agrees to do this if Aphrodite will put a love spell on Xena for him. He has no idea what to do with the kid, so he foists her off on Strife. Of course, the two of them get into all sorts of trouble together. I had a lot of fun with Harmonia.
I created a lot of new characters for "Blood Loyalty"-- Joxer's father, for example. I created an actor named Stavros, who I based on David Bowie, another actor based on Kenneth Branagh, and an architect based on Sting. The architect's wife is based on Susan Sarandon. I love doing that sort of thing, because it gives me a physical form and a voice to work with.
Q: In your most recent story, you flesh out Joxer's family quite a bit. Tell us a little about the creative process behind that. EA: Again, this was fueled by a frustration that the writers haven't done enough with the character. He's always used as the butt of idiotic jokes. Even this late in the fourth season, we don't even know the name of the village where he grew up, or really anything about him at all. He almost never grows or changes. Once in a while, we get these fleeting glimpses of maturity-- such as in "A Family Affair"-- but three or four episodes later, he's back to Moron Central.
So I took the surface of his character, and tried to think of ideas why he behaves as he does-- why, for example, does he have his heart so set on being a warrior or a hero, when he's so unsuited to the task? What was his family like? How did they shape his character? He'd said that his father was a warrior, and that his mother wanted him to learn music. At the end of "King of Assassins," we learn his father is in prison. Given this, and Jett's choice of career, I assumed Joxer must have had a pretty miserable childhood, if this is what his family is like. And given his weird combination of over-inflated ego and barrel-bottom self-esteem, it seemed even more likely to me that he'd had no positive role models as a child.
So I fleshed out his mother and father, and even gave Jett a little more depth and color. This is all in a new story at Tom's page, "Blood Loyalty." I put Joxer in a situation where he's forced to choose between protecting his family, and fighting for the 'greater good,' so to speak. In the course of this conflict, he grows up a bit.
My take on Joxer is that he's incredibly innocent-- at the beginning of "For Him the Bell Tolls" he's in the woods, literally 'playing Xena,' the way a little kid would. I think this almost delusional world he's built around himself is a protective buffer against cruel reality. In "Blood Loyalty," this buffer is stripped away, and he's really forced to confront himself-- and to start building up a new self-image, and a new life.