Slashcast Insider Interview with Aspen
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Slashcast Insider Interview with Aspen (cursescar) |
| Interviewer: | charlotteschaos |
| Interviewee: | Aspen |
| Date(s): | April 7, 2007 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Harry Potter |
| External Links: | online here as a transcript, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Slashcast Insider Interview with Aspen is a podcast created by and posted to Slashcast as "Episode 16." Slashcast includes an transcript.
The interviewer is charlotteschaos, the interviewee is Aspen.
The Interview Series
See Slashcast Insider Interview Series.
Excerpts
I've been in fandom for so long now. I started off in popslash fandom in 1998 and I started out with het, and that whole Mary Sue genre that you so often find in music and band oriented fandoms. But I'd actually written original slash before, so writing two guys together wasn't a new thing for me at all. I was in the habit of writing these really long, stupid, epic original stories about that time, when I was like 14 or 15. The main thing is, I was always interested in the character dynamics and relationships that I didn't feel like I could include or extend on in the main stories, so I was always writing these little slash excerpts, almost like fanfiction for my own fic. So yea, I slashed my own characters way before I knew other people were doing it in a fannish way. And I never even knew of slash before I was writing my own popslash and setting it up online.It didn't take me long at all to start in. I started in 1998; I was writing slash in 1999 and it was all porn and- yea, I've always been a porn writer.
I really don't have [a writing process]. It changes depending on what I'm writing. Um, particularly if I'm doing a challenge fic, or a pornish_pixies fantasy fest type thing, I'll have, like, a proper introduction. Like, here's the scene, here's the time, here's what's going on, like bowling or something. Set up, throw the ball, hopefully have a strike. But with fics I'm just writing for myself, things don't tend to come in the solid little idea package where I'm trying to stick to a predetermined goal and trying to include a specific list of things in it...I really just like seeing where my mind will go. I do give it that freedom, I can't stick to an outline at all. If I even bother to actually outline a fic in any way, then I don't have the desire to do it that way anymore. I want the freedom to just follow my gut.
I don't recommend Windows Movie Maker [for vidding]. You can make do just fine, but the quality, I think, of the picture is not up to snuff. I would much rather use something like Adobe Premier. My vidding buddy, who I have a vid site with, uses- and his are all, like, crystal clear, DVD quality, gorgeous, and mine are all grainy and glitches here and there because Windows Movie Maker will fuck your shit right up...And I have, like- I have the really long process of having to convert a file to the type of file that I can work with in Windows Movie Maker, so making a vid is a huge process for me. It's one of those things where it takes up so much room on my hard drive that I have to do it all in, like, one or two sittings, or, you know, in the shortest time I can make myself do it, because if I have a movie or something on my computer, I don't have room for anything else.
Um, looking at my fics, you'd think that I'm obsessed with cross-dressing. I constantly put Draco in, you know, pink dresses or girly underwear, but I'm not. Cross dressing is actually luke warm at best, for me. Um, but I think there's a certain trend in the kinks that do really work for me, and that's humiliation. And I think that if you look at any of the plot-what-plots that I've written in the past two or so years, they all have dirty talk, which is- I sort of treat it like a branch of humiliation, since I always tend to be humiliating someone. Probably Draco. But, yea. So dirty talk at just about any level of filthiness is practically bullet-proof for me. Dirty talk and humiliation.
I love fanart so much, I can't even go into it. I used to have a huge fanart folder on my computer just from years of collecting fanart from all over, just a bunch of fandoms. And I've always felt like there was something about me that discourages people from doing fanart for me because I haven't gotten that much for my fics. At least, I feel like I haven't compared to a lot of people. But, um, luckily, [nebulaean] has done a lot for me, just out of the kindness of her heart. She did Arthur/Draco art for me.