The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive Interview with Pepper

Interviews by Fans
Title:	The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive Interview with Pepper
Interviewer:	The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Interviewee:	Pepper
Date(s):	May 22, 2006
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	X-Men
External Links:	the interview is here, Archived version
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The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive Interview with Pepper was conducted in 2006.

Other Interviews in the Series

See The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive Interview Series.

Some Excerpts

I started by just writing stories for my own and my friends' amusement, based on characters we liked in books and television and movies. I've always written, as far back as I can remember, so writing fanfic was basically wish-fulfilment for the characters I liked – what I'd like them to do, who I'd like them to be with, and so on. I wrote stuff based on all sorts of stuff – Robin of Sherwood was a big one, and Labyrinth. I wanted to correct things, to give them the endings I wanted – Robin #1 *shouldn't* die! Sarah *should* go off with the Goblin King! Then I discovered the Net and the X-Files at about the same time, and came across fanfic newsgroups – wow, a whole world of people out there, doing what I was doing... amazing. Now every time I pick up a new obsession, I have a look on the Net for fanfics. Generally I start writing something of my own, but it usually doesn't get posted or finished because I can't catch the right tone – can't get the characters right

The first movie – which I didn't watch until ages after it came out, because I thought it didn't look that interesting... I fell in love instantly with the Logan and Rogue characters, and their interaction – and Rogue's green coat. Damn, I still want that coat. I thought they would be perfect for one another, wanted more, so did a search for Wolverine and Rogue, figuring someone else out there had to feel the same, and came across the WRFA. Spent days and nights reading it, got deeply immersed, got inspired, and found I loved writing the characters. I've picked up the comics, too, since then, but I don't read them religiously – they're too short, and I hate, hate, hate waiting months for the next part of the story.

I get my story ideas from a small boutique in Aberystwyth... I don't know, exactly, where they come from. I think they bubble under in my subconscious, when I see something... Something in my head goes 'hmmm... what if....?' Like a sort of unconscious problem-solving. And then I start to write it out, and it's like it was already there, just waiting to be written down. Well, that's generally how they start, but if they're long then there's a lot of swearing and rewriting and forcing myself to just write *some* damn thing...

One of my major sources of inspiration is music – Most Of The Time is from a Bob Dylan song, for instance. It's often not the whole song, though – usually just a turn of phrase that sets off a chain of thought. I used to read poetry (not so much anymore, I'm out of the habit), and that was really inspirational, too. I think the songs and poems that inspire me pack a lot of meaning into small phrases – so it leaves your imagination to do some work.

Uh, anyhow – I'm mostly inspired by things that aren't other stories. If anything in stories inspires me, again it's usually a particular turn of phrase, or an image that has stuck with me. I'm a big Margaret Atwood fan; she often gets me writing, because there's such a lot of vivid imagery in her writing.