We close out the year, not the decade as only plebeians think the decade is ending, with the author that helped close out ‘Series 1″. Originally, we were supposed to end on a cliffhanger. Yet, we pressed on through. Someday we’ll look back, forget all this and laugh, and laugh…oh boy.
1. Your fanfic was certainly a great way to end season one. What was your inspiration when writing it?
A while back, another fanfic writer (though I cannot recall exactly who) once wondered aloud if it were possible for me to write a terrible story. Not terrible as in “ooh, that was a scary one, folks!” but more of a “this makes Twilight look like a work of art” terrible.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call tempting fate. After laughing off the comment, I suddenly wondered if I could in fact deliberately write something utterly atrocious. I took as many of the laughable plot devices as I could harvest from SM fanfiction (ie, the mysterious new soldier, more reincarnated Silver Millennium characters) and tossed them in with as many tired cliches as possible. Then I sprinkled liberally with gross spelling and grammar errors (with just a hint of papika for flavour) and hit frappe. And voila! Instant badfic.
Incidentally, you have no idea how hard it is to deliberately misspell words when you have an instant-correct spellchecker working against you. Half the things I deliberately misspelled were immediately corrected, forcing me to go back and re-botch the word–an act that no doubt had my poor spellchecker recoiling in horror.
When I passed this experiment on to the Fic Bitch to read/gag at, she offered to post it on her message board to scare the other members. Amusingly, half the people on the Bitch Board guessed the author of the fic was not only a troll, but me. I don’t know if I should be flattered or frightened that my writing style remains that noticeable even when it sucks.
Which reminds me: I still need to write the sequel, OMGWTFBBQ-2: Electric Boogaloo. There’s an outline for it around my desk somewhere, filled with all the same Cockroach Clustery goodness (now with 25% more lark’s vomit!). If memory serves, this time around I’d be tossing in Sailor Terra, Usagi running away to the U.S., a CSI cameo and Tuxedo Travis using Jedi mind tricks.
2. You blur the line between Sailor Moon’s Japanese and American shows. Is this a commonality in fanfiction you come across?
When I first joined the fandom, absolutely. Then again, at the time most of us had been sucked into Anime by the DiC dub and knew little about the Japanese version (let alone all the surgical changes that had been performed in bringing it to English). Many fans wrote stories based on the dub, though I found that the longer a writer stayed in the Sailormoon fandom, the more their stories began aligning with the original Japanese version.
Nowadays, the fandom is a lot older so there are more stories and resources to work with if you want to base your story in the original Japanese version. Plus the advent of the Intarwebs & YouTube lets anyone who wants to see the original Japanese episodes watch them from start to finish. It is still possible to find fans writing from the DiC version, but they tend to be few and far between…or else you’ve just stumbled across their archives stories from long, long ago.
Mind you, it’s not uncommon to encounter a writer who’s merging the North American and Japanese versions into some strange little hybrid. They’ll pick & choose which parts of which version they like more, kind of like a salad bar. One could call this heresy of a sort, but you will also encounter some authors who’ve taken aspects of the Sailormoon anime and manga, and merged them together for the sake of their story. I’m guilty of that myself.
3. What are your roles with the FicBitch site and have you actually run across people trying to make the list on purpose?
I’d like to say I’m a muse and source of inspiration for the Fic Bitch, but in the end I’m probably just the guy standing on the corner holding up a sign that says, “The End of Evangelion is Nigh!” But in my defense, it’s a very pretty sign: I added glitter to it.
As for people deliberately attempting to make the list…so far I haven’t really encountered anyone doing it seriously. For comedic purposes like me, yes, but never in an attempt to garner an infamous name for themselves. Then again I haven’t been actively looking and I do rather fear what might happen to me should I encounter such a person. The odds favour me screaming like a girl and running to the furthest possible corner of the Net as I can find.
4. Can you tell me any projects you’ve been working on?
The last year has seen life come tapping my favourite shoulder in a rather ominous fashion whilst holding aloft a very large sledgehammer. As a result, any amount of writing I’ve done as of late has been abysmal at best, but I am holding out hope for 2010.
There are a number of original fiction projects on the go, short stories and novels alike, as well as an attempt at writing a Senshi/General romance for my wife…who’s insisted there had better be no Jedi mind tricks, running away to the U.S. or spelling errors in my story, or I’m doomed.
5. Finally, it’s been a while, will the FicBitch site be updated with new stories anytime soon?
It was once said that an infinite number of monkeys working on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually hammer out the entire works of Shakespeare. Well, eventually isn’t good enough for us. We’ve commandeered an infinite number of evil flying monkeys (plus 1, for good measure) and given them Velociraptors. Now so long as these Velociraptors don’t eat the monkeys or the typewriters first, that will make these the most bad-ass monkey-writers this planet has ever seen. And they shall be tasked with updating the Fic Bitch site.
Soon, the entire page will be presented in glorious 3-D Imax, resplendent with the most cutting edge Dolby sound. A simple click of the mouse on any link or icon will be the equivalent of experiencing orgasmic rays of sunshine in yyour stomach. Terrible fics gilded with scathing banter will come at you relentlessly like a horde of misspelled zombies.
You will be like Marty McFly standing in front of that wall-sized amp, guitar pick in hand, and you will contemplate whether to flee like so many cowards gone before you, or to show the universe that your balls are made of pure adamantium. The FicBitch website will be your woofer, turned all the way up to an 11. And the instant you dare to embrace your destiny and click on a page, it will explode in a fiery array of sparks and pure unbridled awesome as it sends your mind careening across the room. And you will love it, no matter how deaf you are or how badly your ears are bleeding.
[Disclaimer: this entire answer is a complete lie.]
Visit the Fic Bitch for yourself, and see what lies ahead http://ficbitch.wishing-blue.net/
