Lois & Clark Nfic Archive Interview with Kaethel

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Lois & Clark Nfic Archive Interview with Kaethel
Interviewer:
Interviewee:	Kaethel
Date(s):	2001
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
External Links:	full interview is here, Archived version
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In 2001, Kaethel was interviewed for the Lois & Clark Nfic Archive.

See that site for others in this series.

Some Excerpts

...I'm a major lurker on most of those. Let's see...the fanfic list, lcnfanfic, afolcslife, deancainfans, the NAOS list, the UK list, and the German list. I'm a registered member on Anne's and Zoomway's Message Boards, and I'm a regular on irc. I'm also one of the FoLCs who help Anne gather the interviews for the Writers' Showcase.

The network was broadcasting two episodes in a row each Tuesday night, so I still kept coming back every other week. And then, one night, came Through a Glass Darkly and Big Girls Don't Fly. By the end of the second episode, I was in tears. I just couldn't bear the idea that Clark would leave for New Krypton, give up on everything that meant something to him, with no warranty that he'd ever come back. The added thing was that the show, as far as I was concerned, stopped there. I wasn't aware that a fourth season was being shot, so I was a bit mad at the writers for stopping with such a cliffhanger. I even remember asking for L&C books at a bookshop during the summer.

Then, somehow, my interest faded, until I couldn't even remember that I'd ever watched the show (no, don't scream <g>). That period didn't last too long, because one afternoon, the next year, one of my classmates told me that M6 was starting an every day rerun of Superman, and asked me if I would watch it. I shamefully admit it took her to remind me of the story for me to remember what that was all about <g>. And that night, I did watch the first part of the Pilot. I went on watching faithfully, until I left for a week's holiday in the Alps, and decided to set the VCR to record the episodes I would miss. No need to say that when I came back, the *very* first thing I did was to watch them....

The next step for me was to find myself in this tiny shop in Paris, something like three and a half years ago. I randomly asked the guy in charge if, by any chance, there were tapes of L&C available, because I really wanted to see the original version. I can't even describe my excitement when the guy said that of course there were, and he could order them for me! Seeing my first episode in English (I think it was I'm Looking Through You) was a really new experience for me. Until then, I'd never heard the actors' real voices (except for Teri's, thanks to her movie Heaven's Prisoner), and I admit I was really taken aback by Dean's voice. It was so different from the one I was used to!

Thanks to some very nice German FoLCs, I managed to get the entire collection of episodes in English, and I'm now practically unable to see a dubbed episode, because it just sounds...not right. <g> Even when I catch a rerun on TV (and they rerun L&C every year, here), I have to grimace when I notice the lack of emotion in their voices, when compared to the real thing, or worse, the translation mistakes (the worst one being in Soulmates, where they translated 'teddy' with the French equivalent of 'teddy bear' - did wonder what a teddy bear was doing there on their wedding night, though <g>).

So that's how L&C progressively sneaked its way into my life <g>.

Well, the main incentive for me is to be able to explore the deepest motives of the characters I love when they're confronted by some situations. I want to know what makes them tick, what makes them react, what they love and what they hate, what scares them, and why, and so on. I'm fascinated by their psyche, and how this man and this woman progressively evolved from colleagues to friends to lovers.

I also very much enjoy starting fanfics from real episode scenes, to which I inject some introspection to interpret the characters' reactions, and then lead the whole thing to a different direction from the one chosen by the show's producers. And since L&C is an endless love story, I also love imagining other ways for them to meet, under other circumstances. I think that very often, the choices you make have a whole series of consequences on your life, and I like applying that theory to the fanfic I write.

Basically, fanfic gives me something more than the TV show, and it's the possibility to enter the characters' mind and know what they're thinking.

Another dimension of fanfic writing that I enjoy is the brainstorming / beta-reading process. Discussing a premise you're working on is always an excellent way to get unstuck from a difficult scene, or to give you further ideas to elaborate your story. And then, there's co-authoring, which is absolutely delightful as well. :)

Finally, the other reason why I write fanfic is that I'm totally in love with the English language. I adore learning and using new words, finding new contexts for them, assembling them to create a rhythm that will emphasise an emotion I want to convey (I'm particularly fond of singled out sentences, and fragments), or describe the image that I see in my mind's eye. And that's why I'm eternally grateful to my beta-readers for helping me to correct my mistakes (and believe me, sometimes we have a good laugh when I add *the* preposition to a verb that makes it a slang word that doesn't fit *at all* in the context <g>). They're wonderfully patient with me, they don't even growl when they have to correct the same mistake a hundred times because I just won't remember that you say 'whirled' and not 'twirled' for a person (or is that the other way around? <bg>). But don't ask me to write a fanfic in French, it's impossible for me. Mom growls that it's a shame I can't even write a story in my own language <g>, but I tried, I really did; the words just don't flow.