Octaves of the Heart Interview with Thisveryinstant

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Octaves of the Heart Interview with Thisveryinstant
Interviewer:	Octaves of the Heart
Interviewee:	Thisveryinstant
Date(s):	early to mid-2000s?
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Buffyverse
External Links:	online here, Archived version
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Octaves of the Heart Interview with Thisveryinstant is posted at the Buffy website Octaves.

For others in this series, see Octaves of the Heart Interview Series.

Excerpts

It would be cool to hear about how you discovered the shows and what hooked you.

I actually started reading Jossverse fanfiction before I saw BtVS or AtS. Last August I randomly stumbled onto a Spike/Xander story by The Spike. I didn't know who Spike and Xander were, but it was just about the hottest thing I'd ever read. I asked for season one for my birthday, spent most of my savings on seasons two through five, downloaded the balance, and that was that. I've still got several seasons of Angel ahead of me. As for what hooked me...I love the way Buffy pokes fun at itself without trivializing its content. I love that moral ambiguity is written into scenarios that are usually reserved for second-string horror movies. The show manages to blend genre fantasy and brutal realism into a mix that constantly catches me off-guard. I love that every character is written and played with humor and compassion. I love that the writers don't pull punches--when shit goes down, we get to see it unfold in all its messy, ugly, human glory. I love that the writers play to the actors' strengths in a way that you don't see in most shows. I mean, it's obvious that the writers are also fans. How amazing is that?

In your experience as a writer, where does inspiration come from? Hm. To me, inspiration feels like a flash of connection. Inspiration happens when unrelated trains of thought get thrown together, and, rather than the train wreck you'd expect, there's a spark of possibility. I've been thinking a lot about why I write fanfic lately. Often I'm intrigued by the issues that canon won't touch, because of time constraints or continuity issues (or sheer depravity). A show like Buffy leaves a lot of unresolved issues, and sometimes those issues touch on something that's meaningful to me. But, honestly, that's just me intellectualizing. I write fanfiction because I'm a goofy, gushy, obsessive fangirl, and the things that are supposed to simply entertain me often end up taking over my mind. I wrote fanfic before I knew what fanfic WAS. I have notebooks full of self-insertion fic written in my wobbly, fourth grade handwriting, in which stunningly beautiful older-than-their-years teenage girls with shadowy pasts and names like Bronwyn or Juliet convince Rhett and Scarlett to give it another go, or show up in Westchester, New York as Wolverine's long lost sister. I can't stop thinking about the characters, so eventually I start to write about them.