Octaves of the Heart Interview with Princess Plum Jade
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Octaves of the Heart Interview with Princess Plum Jade |
| Interviewer: | Octaves of the Heart |
| Interviewee: | Princess Plum Jade |
| Date(s): | 2006? |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Buffyverse |
| External Links: | "online here". Archived from the original on 2007-06-08. (scroll down) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Octaves of the Heart Interview with Princess Plum Jade is posted at the Buffy website Octaves.
For others in this series, see Octaves of the Heart Interview Series.
Princess Plum Jade Said
I first started co-writing Southern Hospitality with Velvet Blood for fun (it was the Christmas holidays, we were bored and had time to spare.) We posted it on a message board until it got to be too big, and then I created the BiNE!!! website to house romantic fiction and poetry.
Why BtVS and "Angel? They're the only shows I watch, I swear I'm not kidding. I don't actually watch TV much at all if I can help it. I'm a big reader, though. I love studying history, mythology, and the occult.
Without a doubt my fiction Remission is the baby of BiNE!!! and I am prouder of it and put more effort into it than any other fic I've written. I also really love Spoils because it involves my favorite storytelling elements: history, fantasy, mythology, and dark romance. (And I LOVE fantasizing about Angelus in that period! He would just fit right in!) Repeat the Sounding Joy has really challenged me to "stretch" because I don't really feel I relate to Buffy very well.
I really love writing Angel(us) as a more ambiguous character than he is portrayed on the show. I see Angel as having a lot of potential for darkness and I enjoy exploring that rather than just fobbing all his evil tendencies off on a psychopathic "evil twin". It's much harder to realistically portray Angelus as having any goodness in him but I still knock myself out trying!
About Ramadevi (my original character)...Rama was originally a "bit player" in Southern Hospitality and she just sort of grew into one of my main characters. Ramadevi is Angelus's one true love. NOT Angel's. The story of Remission was meant to show that Angelus once had a moment in time where he could have been truly happy; when he lost that chance, it helped shape him into the hate-fueled psycho machine we all know and--er--love?
I decided I had to use an original character because none of the female characters in BtVS "felt" right for Angelus. Simply put, he doesn't love any of them and none of them had the strength to be truly equal to him. While Buffy may be physically more powerful, she is somewhat emotionally crippled by her youth and intense love for Angel. I decided to create a really powerful character with certain fascinations that would be attractive to him. I also thought it would be intriguing to pair the "Scourge of Europe" with an Eastern female because the mindset of such a woman would have been so different from the average European when it came to dealing with a demanding male. I also wanted to write very sensual fic and since the Indian culture was much more open and less ashamed about sexuality than Europe it made sense to use that culture. I've taken bellydance classes and read the Kama-Sutra (the actual text, not the interesting picture books that are so popular, lol) just to get more "into" that way of thinking and it really changed my life.