In Their Own Words Interview with Sabine

Interviews by Fans
Title:	In Their Own Words Interview with Sabine
Interviewer:	Sarah Ellen Parsons
Interviewee:	Sabine
Date(s):	2001
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	The X-Files, slash, West Wing, Sports Night
External Links:	interview is here; reference link
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In 2001, Sabine was interviewed "In Their Own Words" by Sarah Ellen Parsons.

Some Excerpts

I started out in Trek. I was very very bad. *g* Trek's a whole other ballgame, though, you've got a zillion pairings, folks don't use betas the way they do in XF, and the community's a lot more disparate -- one way to look at it is that over in XF we're all huddled (for the most part) around the same MSR campfire, while over in Trek I was writing not only a bunch of different pairings (K/Du, J/7, if you really want to know) but a couple different SERIES and it wasn't as insular or snuggly as XF. Plus, yeah, mostly I sucked.

First [X-Files] thing I read was CiCi Lean's "Wonderland." A friend of mine forwarded it to me and I thought it was a riot. First thing I wrote, ever, fanfic-like, was a Trek story called "Requiem for Gallitep," for the first Strange New Worlds contest. After I didn't, ahem, win, I went hunting on the internet to see if people were out there talking about the contest. Turned out they were talking, posting stories, bitching and moaning about John Ordover, the whole shootinmatch. That was how fanfic snuck up on me.

[regarding the collective fan-created myth-web]: Well, as far as XF is concerned, I have a very particular Mulder and Scully who don't really like each other and keep breaking up all the time. That's something unique about me, mostly, though in XF, really, there's nothing new under the sun. In Sports Night? Not enough people are writing, right now. Fandom's still too young, and Charlemagne's still the master of sexy fun. In West Wing, I'm certainly the only person with this very cruel and arrogant Josh Lyman who's in his miserable self-destructive spiral. I mean, again, it's a young fandom, and among the decent writers, I've spent more time in that crazy brilliant impossible brain of his, and I think I'm helping set the tone for the way his character works in fanfic.

No, actually, [details are] things I find very prevalent, at least in the stuff I like. The details make the story. I like when I can have the external action and the little scene-dressing stuff mirror the internal goings-on of the character, as I said up there in the thing about overarching themes. That's what's cool about writing, is that we can manipulate the world to have it mimic what's going on in the characters' heads.

It's just a lot more interesting to me watch Mulder open the refrigerator and close it again and then open it again because he thinks maybe there WILL be more beer this time, and then realize he is indeed out of beer, even if he goes and checks again in an hour -- that's more interesting to me than to hear Mulder say, "I love Scully so much, there's something missing from my life!"

I want to be forced to make the mental leap from the beer to Scully. I like being challenged, and plus, beer's a lot cooler -- especially when the little refrigerator light keeps flickering off, and something that used to be green is limp and brown and smells funny, and he's not sure when he bought those eggs, probably years ago -- a lot more interesting than six or seven pages of moony interior monologue. And it tells us the same thing.

No one has ever tried to suggest that I get off on being sarcastic (which of course I do) at the expense of genuinely trying to help their writing (which of course I don't). That is to say -- sarcasm's a kind of beta-voice, but it's a tool to get the more important points across.

There are stories I've beta'd that I'm as proud of as I am of things I've written. I love working with writers, good writers. It's a kind of cool-by-osmosis.

I'd also be lost without my betas to help me, because I'm always too close to what I'm writing to know with any sort of clarity what works and what doesn't. I seek out readers and editors who will be as candid with me as I am with them, because I don't believe we get anywhere mincing words. At least, not if we're genuinely interested in writing and posting the best possible piece of work.

Seriously, I'm better because Punk's made me better, and because she knows me well enough to be able to say "okay, this isn't what I would write, but I know your style and I'll fake it and help fix the things that need fixing." Which is the mark of a good beta, because editing needs to be tailored to the specific writer, to a certain extent.

And to another extent, saying "he enjoyed the feel of the taller man's hand on his ass," or "the titian-haired agent walked into her office" is never, ever good.

So Punk and my other betas kick my ass, and in turn I get to kick their asses back, and at the end of the day, with luck, nobody's writing about "the lanky FBI agent" or using the word "sexily" in any context whatsoever.

I formed YV when I stopped reading atxc and the big lists, because I didn't have the time, mainly. So I sort of corralled the authors I liked and the people I knew in an attempt to, you know, have less mail to have to read.

Back in Trek, I was involved in this now-famous flamewar in...1996? 97? which spawned a little Trek subgroup called TSU: Trek Smut University. That was a bunch of fabulously funny strange people, as I recall. I was also part of a beta circle much like YV back then, called "Critters," and later, when I got into K/Du, I was part of a group called "The Serpent and the Hawk" for (at the time) the few of us who got off on the Kira/Dukat pairing. I have no idea what's happened to any of these groups now.

"Our Boys" was one of those "gee I wish all the good fic were together someplace, OH, WAIT" moments. august and Punk and I also started a little WW/SN writer's list called "The Mango." It's always easier to get friendly in a group of 12 or 20 than it is in a group of 500. Color me antisocial. *g* Big groups scare me.

So that would be the main reason, same reason I e-mail and IM people I've befriended in the writing community. Nice to have like minds to talk to.

I've accrued a bunch of really great people across a bunch of fandoms, people that edit for me and let me beta their stuff, people who come to town and visit and sleep on my futon, people who go on road trips with me. I've got some terrific friends. I'm terribly lucky.

Get a beta. Get four. Don't let the desire for feedback make you post prematurely, or make you want to post as a WIP when you're not sure where the story's going. There's far more to be reaped by working through a really cool story, figuring out the ins and outs and getting a beta or three to tell you what works and what sucks, and then having something really brilliant at the end.

There are times I could afford to take my own advice, there. *g*

Of course, I gotta say, there's something to be said about the world of fanfic as being a safe place for people to be able to post whatever the hell they want. And more power to them, but if you're asking what my advice is for people who want to be GOOD, there it is.

That's a good question. I mean, insofar as [why I write slash is] a hard question. I mean, in the way people say, "well, that's a good question," and then mumble something incoherent and quickly talk about something else. *g*

I'll try and answer, though, and with something beyond "all the cool kids are doing it!" Although -- and that was mostly a joke, but it turns out -- a lot of the slash writers I've met have been really spectacular, I mean, somehow, percentagewise, I've run into a ton of excellent slash writers as compared to gen writers. Then again, the pool's smaller. Or is it? I've never seen a statistic, but in XF, certainly, it is. In Sports Night, it's much bigger -- Dan/Casey is the pairing to write. I think? Might just be based on what I've read. Like Sentinel, I've never READ any TS fic that wasn't Jim/Blair. Or dueSouth that wasn't Fraser/some Ray or other. It must exist, but I haven't seen it.

Trek had a good percentage of slash writers, because of course K/S started it all. The boundaries between slash and het weren't as drawn, in Trek, as they are in other fandoms, but that's probably because alt.startrek.creative and ASCEM were proving grounds for so MANY pairings that het and slash both found homes there. I mean, I was writing J/7 and it was just another THING I was writing, it didn't really enter into the equation that that was slash and K/Du was het and I was swinging both ways. Whereas in XF the M/K writers are for the most part their own merry band, the M/Sk, and so forth. Same's true with West Wing, to the point where people on WestWingSlashFanfic are nervous about even posting their stuff to the gen lists.... I like slash for the reasons all those articles say we like slash, but on a more personal level it's because I like these characters and want to pair them up with people who'll offer good chemistry, or friction, or friendship. A lot of times that means I've got two men together, and I love reading slash because of the way writers explore the relationships between these men who've got faith and fury and love for one another.

Ha! I got a fan-fucking-tastic flame on "Some Books About Crooks" that included phrases like "it must be so sad to be you" and "I can see you just wrote this to get attention" and "guys must love you where you are because you're such a slut." I saved that note too, I love it. Go get 'em, I say.