McShep Match Team War 2009 Interview with telesilla
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | McShep Match Team War 2009 Interview with telesilla |
| Interviewer: | |
| Interviewee: | telesilla |
| Date(s): | August 8, 2009 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Stargate Atlantis |
| External Links: | Team Interviews: telesilla: mcshep_war, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
telesilla was interviewed in 2009 for McShep Match.
It is part of this series: McShep Match Interview Series.
Excerpts
In the wide, wide world of fanfic (not just SGA), there's a lot of kink-fic that just... doesn't work, or feels off. Yours does (TMI: at least for me). What do you consider important to the genre? What makes it work and makes it believably real? (And conversely, what are things that, in your opinion, make kink in a fic unbelievable? What doesn't work?)
I could go on at length about this--seriously, I've done hour-long con panels on the subject--but I'll try to keep it down.
The first real trick to getting kink right, as far as I'm concerned, is matching the kink to the characters in a way that works. I've written very formal D/s for characters before, for example, but I honestly can't imagine John and Rodney going in for the whole "Master/boy" thing. And while I do like Rodney on the bottom, I just can't see him as a sweet, obedient, pliant sub, at least not at the beginning of the scene. So really, the most important thing for me, both as a reader and writer is making sure that it's character first, kink second.
The other thing that either draws me in or throws me out of kink is the emotional component. A writer can do a Kink Bingo Postage stamp story involving four of my favorite kinks in my favorite fandom, but if there's no emotional connection between the characters it's just like reading a laundry list. The emotion doesn't have to be positive, but there needs to be something going on, because that sense of emotional exchange is a big part of why doing kink is so awesome.
What do you enjoy most about SGA and/or SGA fandom?
The show: As much as the writers and producers of the show itself piss me off, I still love the characters and the setting and the universe itself. The show itself straddles the line between too abysmal to write fic for and so excellent that you don't need to, making it perfect for fan writers. Not to say that the show writers didn't occasionally knock out a good episode, but still they left a lot of holes that needed filling.
The fandom: As with all the fandoms I've been in, the best thing about SGA fandom is the people in it. There are so many wonderfully talented and creative people involved in the fandom, not just writers, but artists and vidders and podfic recorders and people writing thoughtful meta and wonderful readers whose feedback blows me away sometimes.
And of course, there are the awesome fanworks; there's just so much of it! Even now that the canon is closed, there's still brilliant stuff being created.
What's up with the cross-dressing and gender-bending, baby? :D Do you have any problem reconciling these versions of John and Rodney with the tv canon?
To me the cross-dressing is like any other kink; there's no reason John (for example) wouldn't have that particular kink; it's not as if canon's very forthcoming on their sex lives. In fact, with most kinks, it's actually easier to assume that they have them than it is to assume that they're gay--we've got canonical evidence that both John and Rodney aren't gay, but nothing to say that John doesn't like dressing up in girl's panties or Rodney doesn't like a good spanking now and then.
Genderbending, well that's another story altogether. It also encompasses a bit of a range, from FtM Meredith (again, while it's really unlikely, there's actually nothing in canon to say he's not trans) to my always female Jay and Meredith who are like any other AU versions of John and Rodney. The trick there, like other AUs, is to keep them recognizable as themselves so hopefully the reader will say "yeah Rodney would be like that if he'd been born female and gone into the military."
You also write wonderful SGA RPS, and you've written AUs in both SGA and SGA RPS. Since you're comfortable writing AUs, it seems like choosing between writing SGA vs. SGA RPS would be based on personalities rather than the differences in canon circumstances. So I'm wondering, how do you decide when a story needs to be about Joe, David, Jason, Rachel and the cast, versus when it works better for John, Rodney, Ronon, Teyla and the expedition crew?
Oddly enough, it's almost always the other way around. Instead of having a story and trying to decide who fits it best, it's more about wanting to write about a set of characters in a certain situation. I tend to think of Joe and Jason or Joe and David or all three of them as having a much more relaxed attitude (since they're not, you know, in the City on the Edge of Forever fighting evil robots and space vampires), so if I'm in the mood for a buddy fuck kind of fic or something easygoing, I'll go with the RPS. The only time I've wanted to do something with FPF that I did as RPF instead is the Keptverse, because it's an RPS only verse (well and also because Nancy's Joe is sooooo awesome). If I had writing robots, I'd do an SGA FPF AU of that 'verse.