The AD's Office Interview: Ethan Nelson aka Mallory Klohn

Interviews by Fans
Title:	The AD's Office Interview: Ethan Nelson aka Mallory Klohn
Interviewer:
Interviewee:	Ethan Nelson aka Mallory Klohn
Date(s):	March 11, 2000
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	X-Files
External Links:	part one, Archived version part two, Archived version
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The AD's Office Interview: Ethan Nelson aka Mallory Klohn is a chat.

It is part of a series. See The AD's Office Interviews.

The Introduction

I wrote my first slash story (Denny's Cycle I) sometime in 1996. Some people think I wrote it because I wanted to fill a niche that being M/Sk that was intentionally funny, of which there was a dearth at the time but really, I wrote it because I was pissed off and freaking out.

As with everybody except Bone, some of my stories aren't as good as others, but I find that the ones I wrote when I was pissed off and freaking out are generally the most popular....

I was one of the slash writers who write a big-ass pile o' fic in a month, and then post something every six months or so. I was willing to wait for an idea to come to me, and when I wasn't well, don't read "The Threat of Other Chicks", either, okay?

I retired Ethan Nelson because I'd made some pretty good friends as him, and realized *way* too late that some of them were very invested in the idea that he really was a guy. (Most people don't believe that, but trust me, I'm an idiot. Really.)

I might have stayed out of slash forever if I'd never seen... "Prisoner X". It's probably not the worst episode of "The Sentinel" ever made, but it remains the worst one I've seen, which is really saying something. I was only sort of sneering through most of it, but I swear to you, I came this close to incontinence of the bladder when it turned out that there was an official WWF Fighting Cage in the prison basement.

"Oh my god," I said, "it's 'Caged Heat IV: The Quickening'!"

As with most of my stories, "Woe is You I: Pine and Stew" began with a block of dialogue, and I plunked down my stool next to that block of dialogue and milked it for everything it was worth.

I still don't understand why this story was even as popular as it was, but experience has shown me that I'm a freak: when people comment on lines in my stories, they like something I lost sleep over, and totally ignore whatever I thought was the most kick-ass line in the piece.

My slashy inclinations have waned significantly over time. I don't have it in me to write any more XF, yet that remains my favorite of the three fandoms I've written for. Mulder and Skinner as I saw them, anyway had this tense, quirky, affectionately angry dynamic going. Jim and Blair are good friends, Ray and Ben are good friends, and Mulder and Skinner are...Mulder and Skinner.

Lately I've been saying I'm just not going to write slash anymore, but hey, you never know I've said it before.

Some Excerpts

I've been out of XF for an age. I'm baffled by the whole process. We didn't have Lone Gunmen slash when I was a kid! I left just when people were starting to use Krycek's stump in a, er, romantic sense.... Taking fisting to a whole new level...

I started out reading MSR, believe it or not. And then I found slash on the Gossamer archive. And then I saw... "Tunguska". I should tell you that I haven't watched XF since season 4. So "Tunguska" was totally my first solid Beavis & Butthead thing, you know, 'Huh-huh. They're doing it." I never did cotton to Krycek, but I was into Skinner right away. Even with the tighty-whiteys.

I've been, like, monumentally blocked XF-wise. I wrote one extremely mean parody that you can never, ever read, but other than that... Probably not. I'm leaving it to the big kids now... I would so burn in hell if I let people read it.... It's really cruel, and it mocks a specific writer in an identifiable way. It's just wrong. Even if it felt so right when I did it.... I say it's okay [for me to send it to you] as long as you don't go showing it to everyone.

I speak as someone who has never read any [Darth Maul slash]. The idea makes me squirm, and not for a fun reason.

It's too late. I have a theory that as soon as someone mentions a bad slash idea, the idea is out in the cosmos and someone writes it. Hence, in Sentinel, "Blair is Amish".

[Dropping out of fandom for a while]: No, no, nothing like that. It was the Ethan Nelson thing. I was a total newbie when I started writing slash. New to the net, new to fandom, new to slash. And by the time I realized that some people really cared whether or not Ethan was a guy, it had snowballed. I was mental at the time. So eventually, instead of just coming clean, I vanished. - I suck. - I still feel incredibly guilty about it, and I'm pretty sure this is part of the reason I can't write XF anymore.... And I told myself, you know, if someone else I knew on the net told me they weren't who they said they were, I wouldn't care. But that's me. I can't just make these sweeping decisions based on me. I'm a weirdo. It was the male slasher thing. I've spoken to people since who said there wasn't really anybody male writing slash at the time, and it had an impact on people. The funny thing is, I also know people who said I "wrote like a man", so they never wondered. Wrote like a man. Like, you have to write sap to write like a woman.

How many times have you read slash where some hard-hearted bastard cries his eyes out?... I don't even cry as much as Bodie and Doyle.

Somebody told me a long time ago, and we should all remember this, that for every one person that writes to you, there are at least 25 people who read you and liked you but never said anything.... Remember when I said I was a slash newbie? I didn't know people send feedback, then. I was all, "Holy crap!"

[Due South and the switching out of Rays]: It would be like if they got rid of Skinner and brought in a smaller guy with hair.