The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive Interview with SJ Smith
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive Interview with SJ Smith |
| Interviewer: | The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive |
| Interviewee: | SJ Smith |
| Date(s): | December 14, 2004 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | X-Men |
| External Links: | interview is here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive Interview with SJ Smith was conducted in 2004.
Other Interviews in the Series
See The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive Interview Series.
Some Excerpts
It kinda started last year (2003) with my friend Leni sending me quotes from fiction she liked. All different fandoms, though she concentrated on sending me X-Men quotes - and even more specifically, a lot of W/R stories. I started asking for more stories and Leni obliged. So, when I came up with the idea of Logan and Rogue traveling the country together, I wrote it up and gave it to Leni as a Christmas prezzie. She liked it, despite the fact that I made her cry on Christmas (sorry, Leni!) and that started my writing a whole new genre of fanfic. Much to my beta's chagrin.
Drabbles aren’t my particular choice to write, really, because writing in one hundred words is difficult. Sometimes you need that extra word or two or five to make the story you’re telling work. I’d say they’re good for exercise work though and I don’t mind doing exercises, as long as I never have to write a sonnet again to save my life.
First of all, hands fascinate me; they’re quite literally one of the first things I notice about a person, whether I’m meeting someone personally or watching someone on TV or on the big screen. I love watching how people move their hands, how they use them to talk or what they do with them while they’re driving or how they touch the things around them. One of the most poignant images from the X-Men movies to me is the train scene in X1, when Rogue’s watching the woman stroking her son’s cheek. I thought it was a great way to point out this is something Rogue doesn’t get to experience, that casual touch.Then my friend Kristi wrote a series of drabbles on hands for another fandom and I was enthralled. Which led to the thought of touching and that in turn led me back to Rogue. I figured if anyone had a fascination with hands, it would be the girl who couldn’t touch anyone without some sort of barrier between their skins. And since hands make up so much of what a person is in the X-Men universe – Jean throws up her hand to stop the water from Alkali Dam, St. John juggles fire, Bobby directs ice flows from his fingertips, Magneto gestures and metal springs (no pun intended) to do his bidding, Logan, well, he beats up people and then we’ve got that whole claw thing going on.
When I was writing the story, I thought specifically about how the characters were portrayed by their hands. Then I tried to get into Rogue’s head for her perceptions about those hands and what they meant to her. The next thing I knew, the story was written.