Old School X Interview: nevdull
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Old School X Interview: nevdull |
| Interviewer: | Lilydale |
| Interviewee: | nevdull |
| Date(s): | January 19, 2021 |
| Medium: | online, Tumblr |
| Fandom(s): | The X-Files |
| External Links: | at lilydalexf; archive link |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Old School X Interview: nevdull was conducted by Lilydale as part of the series Old School X Interview Series.
Some Topics Discussed
- a mention of xf_book_club?
- staying away from fandom drama
- Scullyfic mailing list and its fiction prompts
- interactive fiction genre
- pen name: "There’s a special file on many operating systems called /dev/null, which acts like a black hole—anything you write to it is immediately deleted. It’s just a tweak on that."
From the Interview
What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?
It was all so positive for me. I’m no stranger to internet drama but I didn’t get drawn into it with this community (and when drama would erupt I generally had no idea what anyone was talking about!). I had a small group of friends I knew either purely online or partially in person and read the kinds of stories I liked or were recommended. I got a chance to practice both writing and editing, and get introduced to the practice of supportive critique that fandom does especially well. (Most modern software is extensively peer-reviewed, and I think I brought a lot of what I experienced with beta reading to my practice of code review both as a programmer and a manager.)
[...]
What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?
XF is my only fandom experience—I’ve gotten into other shows but I’ve read very little other fanfic and I’ve never gone to cons. I tried following some of my favorite writers to other fandoms where I also liked the source material (Buffy, Bones) but it just didn’t take. XF was singular for me in that way.
What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?
The naughty stories! At first that was the only thing that made sense to me to read, because that was what was missing from the show. I didn’t immediately grasp why anyone would read casefiles or post-ep fic or other genres—ironically these were the genres I ended up writing in. As time went on I would read just about anything from a favorite author or that got strong recommendations.