Sisters in Smut Interview with Deslea Judd
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Sisters in Smut Interview with Deslea Judd |
| Interviewer: | Sisters in Smut |
| Interviewee: | Deslea Judd |
| Date(s): | 2001 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | The X-Files |
| External Links: | Interview with Deslea Judd |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Sisters in Smut Interview with Deslea Judd was conducted in 2001.
It was part of a large project conducted by members of the Sisters in Smut, an X-Files archive with a focus on the character Walter Skinner.
See Sisters in Smut Interview Project.
Excerpts
Name/Screen name, Nom de Plume ( please tell us what inspired it ):
My name is Deslea R. Judd, and it's the only screen name I use. I don't use Nom de Plumes.
Hobbies/Other interests?:
Computer geek all the way, baby! I make digital art and music videos and maintain far too many web pages...the only interesting thing I do offline is figure and speed skating. I'm not competing at the moment, though. I don't have enough time (or money) to train as much as I'd have to to get back into that right now.
What was your first experience with fanfic? What was your first encounter with X-Files fanfic?:
Writing it. I'm a childhood abuse survivor, and I was held prisoner for a time. Hostages, especially child hostages, often report that television is crucial during times of captivity. It keeps them in touch with a vague idea of how the real world operates and how real people relate and behave. It can be the difference between readjusting to the real world or not. That was very much the case for me. So I immersed myself in it - particularly the daytime soaps - and I wrote about them and daydreamed about them and all the rest of it. So that was the start of fanfic for me. I had no idea anyone else did it. I was absolutely floored, and thrilled, when I came online in '96 and searched USENET for x-files, and found the creative newsgroup...especially as I'd just finished a 50,000 word X Files novel (Offspring).
I'm ashamed to say, I can't remember the first story I *read* - I was too thrilled about having somewhere to write - but I know one of the earliest was "Playing Goddess" by Shalimar. Another was a hysterical Mulder-and-Scully-go-on-Ricki-Lake parody by Sarah Kiley, but I can't recall the title. Pretty soon I was drowning in MSR and looking for Scully/Skinner, which was what I'd been writing; but there wasn't much back then. No organised archives; no mailing lists. A very small readership. You were considered very strange for writing it. I don't remember everyone who was writing it before me - Sally Bradstreet was one - but you could count them on one hand.
What made you into a Skinneroticist?:
Piper Maru/Apocrypha. End of story. I had *no* real feelings about Skinner one way or the other before that. I sorta liked the gunplay in Blessing Way, but I wasn't (I thought) a "Skinner fan". I was a Scullyist, through and through. Then, he got shot in Piper Maru. I didn't know it was coming. I wasn't on the Net at that stage. I actually *stood up* and shouted at the TV, "No! You can't do that!" So that was part of it...and I really liked the interplay of Scully and Skinner in that episode...that was what inspired Offspring. I also liked their interplay in Talitha Cumi and Terma, and Skinner himself in Avatar and Zero Sum.
What are your top five all-time favorite stories?:
Among Skinner-based fiction, Lyrica's Sharp Focus...Xanthe's Contagium...one called Kissing Booth, but I can't remember who wrote it...Perri Lamana-Watson's Won Ton Weekend (I think that's the title)...one called Patient S, not sure who wrote that; it may have been MLB. In more general terms, Rachel Anton's Shades of Scarlet Conquering...Kassandra's Shock the Monkey...She Who Hides' Mapping the Veins...Acaulescent and Maybe Marigolds by Miss Elise.
Are you still writing fanfic? What are you currently working on?:
I'm very heavily involved in Krycek/Marita at the moment. Last year I wrote a major K/Ma novel, Not My Lover, and this year I'm working on the prequel, Love Will Keep Me Alive, which is their account of Seasons 1 and 2. I'm also writing another, col/post-col K/Ma piece, And So It Ends, and a Krycek mood piece called The Mark of Cain. I'm also compiling an anthology of K/Ma stories in ebook format, and I'm the webmistress of Blondie's Ratcave, which is a K/Ma site with 80MB of content. I'm also involved in digital art and a little beta duty. I'm kinda busy *g*.
Do you write for other fandoms? Which ones? Do you write anything other than fanfic or are you planning to?:
No to other fandoms, but Profiler, Teletubbies, and Santa Barbara have all cropped up as guest appearances in my XF work. I write factual and research work for publications, but I have plans to rework some of my fanfic as general fiction - sooner, rather than later.
How do you feel about fanfic in general?:
I don't know that I "feel" anything about it as a concept. I guess I feel it has a lot of validity. People tend to sell fanfic short; they're sometimes a bit self-deprecating about it. I don't agree with that. There's a whole creativity cycle which we all help to keep pumping, and in a real sense we're reviving the tradition of folk narrative...communal storytelling just for the sake of storytelling. It's a wonderful thing.