McShep Match Team War 2009 Interview with emeraldsword
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | McShep Match Team War 2009 Interview with emeraldsword |
| Interviewer: | |
| Interviewee: | emeraldsword (Black Goddess) |
| Date(s): | August 16, 2009 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Stargate Atlantis |
| External Links: | McShep Match: Team War, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
emeraldsword was interviewed in 2009 for McShep Match.
It is part of this series: McShep Match Interview Series.
Excerpts
How long have you been writing fan fiction and/or making fan art and/or whatever else (vids, knitted goods, pornographic gingerbread cookies)?
My sister and I discovered the heady world of fanfic somewhere around the year 2000. We used to get two chairs and read each fic together, and at the beginning we shared an account on ff.net as well. Buffy/Spike shippers several years before it became canon, we discovered slash when an archive (anyone remember those?) mentioned a Spike/Xander fic. The link was down but we found some Spike/Angel and that was that. We co-wrote and posted some Buffy fic around that time, and it's still up on ff.net. I created my own account in March 2001 because my sister and I wanted to post under different pen names...
I tend to be serially monogamous though - I may stray into other fandoms occasionally but there's always one fandom which has my heart...for about two years, then we have a cooling off period and then I move on. First I was into Buffy and Angel the Series, then Harry Potter, then Digimon, then Formula 1 RPS. I read a HUGE amount of *NSync RPS, which was odd as I didn't know who they were before I started reading the fic, but all I wrote for that was a couple of drabbles because I never felt confident of my source material. Now I'm in SGA, where I read a lot more than I write but I do write.
What do you enjoy most about SGA and/or SGA fandom?
I like the range of stories - not just the McShep ones but the other pairings too. I love the mixture of crack, fluff]] and darkfic as well - I can usually find whatever I'm in the mood for, which is most pleasing. One of the things I like best in SGA fic is when the characters are aware that they are in a ludicrous situation but have to get on with things anyway, and SGA authors are good at making the characters aware that they're in a sci-fi story (or a porn film) while at the same time taking the situation seriously.
What are your 'tells'? How can a fic of yours be spotted in the wild?
Very British - I'm trying to get more of an American, or at least international feel for my SGA fic but apart from not using the really obviously British words, I'm not getting very far. I also struggle to resist including one-liners and/or puns, even if they're perhaps not appropriate.
Your SGA fic has a lot of gentle (as opposed to cracky) humour. How do you write humour? What are your influences? In RL, are you a humourous person?
Two main influences, I think - Discworld novels and Kate Atkinson's 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum'. I had trouble getting my sister to read that because when you start trying to summarise the plot it gets very depressing, but the POV character is so sharp that she makes the most awful events sound quite amusing. One of the things I like best in Pratchett is the way he takes things like phrenology to their logical conclusion. What both of these authors have in common (apart from my being exposed to both at a formative age) is seeing the absurdity in everyday life and pointing it out with a certain degree of affection - yes, it's crazy, stupid and pointless but we do it anyway so we might as well laugh about it. In real life I like telling stories and I tend to exaggerate - when I'm talking, no one has ever said something once, they've said something eighty millions times. I also think puns and double-entendres are the funniest things ever. I'm not sure I'd call myself a humourous person - I was never the class clown or anything, but I'd like to think that I'm relatively amusing!