Interview velocitygrass
1. What was your first fandom? My first active fandom was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
2. How did you get into writing fanfic/creating fanart? I tend to chronicle my fannish activities beginning with BtVS, but I've been making up stories for as long as I can remember and I've been fannish long before that too. I used to obsessively collect and even catalogue every picture of Grace Kelly that I could find. I have a small collection of books about the making of "Gone With The Wind".
Before fandom I wrote a few original stories (the oldest I could find was written on July 4th, 1990) and then movies and a even a tv series (beginning in 1994). I vividly remember first coming across an X-Files fanfic and what the hell the point of that was (after all it didn't really happen; silly me). But then I found NC-17 fanfic, and then I found Buffy/Giles and I needed to write.
(As for art, I did collages from magazine cut-outs mixed with text and I did video editing back when we had an Amiga and a video card that could actually edit in real time. It was fun. There was one "video collage" I did, that included bits of Lindenstrasse (a German soap), Lois and Clark (Lois and Lex to be specific), and a French from film from which I cut all instances of Emmanuelle Béart saying "nothing" (don't ask, I have no idea what the film was), oh and also from Freddy's storyline from Till We Meet Again (I really, really wish someone would write an AU, where a young John Sheppard learns to fly with Freddy de Lancel. They could be BFF and he'd tell her that she's insane for falling for Mac and she could tell him he should just go for Rodney).
Then came the digital manipulation area, and I've started drawing, though my inability frustrates me, so I'm planning to look at Blender to either model art directly or model reference pictures. Okay, this got longer than expected...
3. Is SGA your main squeeze, or are you poly-fandom-ous? SGA is my main squeeze and it looks like we're in it for the long haul.
4. What makes John and Rodney such an inspiring couple for you? They just are (inspiring). I'll sit in the bus and start thinking about them. I'll read about a movie or book or video game and imagine them in the setting. I get images in my head that I want to re-create by any means at my disposal. I don't know what makes them different from other couples in other shows. They are versatile. They fit into just about any setting. They tap into themes I love. Unrequited love and hope. Teasing. Passion. Friendship. Love.
5. Who's your favorite, John or Rodney (or both)? How come? John. I don't know why. I don't tend to like the star of a show. It should have been Rodney who stole my heart, but the moment I saw John stumbling down that hill as he followed Teyla in the woods in the pilot and then pretend to act all casual and cool, I fell in love. Really, my notes about Rising are two bullet points for Rodney and paragraph after paragraph about John. Okay and then some more about Rodney, but really, John captured my heart in the first episode and there was never a reason for that to change.
6. Where can people find more of your work (McShep or otherwise)? All over the place! I admire all the others who are so organized and managed to upload everything to AO3 or have an up-to-date index. I've started uploading my stuff to AO3 and I do have an index of SGA stuff up to 2009. Then there's my Buffy/Giles fic, horribly formatted Giles/Xander here (look for stories by Gabriele Schulz) and I vaguely recall writing a Giles/Cordelia story that is posted on a site that managed to have three misspellings in my name. Then there's my single posted Harry Potter story. Did I mention I really need to get all this stuff onto AO3?
7. Pick a piece/story of yours that stands out for you. Give us links and tell us why! I don't think there's a single story that stands out, but for the purpose of this question, I'm going with Thought you should know. It's very short, but it says so much, and it's pining Rodney. For some reason, where pining John inspires me to fix things for him, pining Rodney just breaks my heart.
8. Finish this sentence: John and Rodney walk into a bar...
Rodney looks around, takes in the state of the furniture, the look that's not modern but also not deliberately old-fashioned. In short, it doesn't scream, "Come in, you're going to love it!"
At least not to him. John, however, seems to see things differently. "What do you think?" he asks, smiling widely, eyes shining with anticipation.
"You're the one who's going to have to work here," Rodney says.
John pouts. "But it's going to be our bar."
Rodney rolls his eyes. "I only have to look at you to know that you love it."
"But..." John begins. "I want you to love it too."
Rodney looks around again, forgetting about the furniture and concentrating on the people who'll come here to eat John's food. He imagines John walking around with pride. He imagines John feeding him when he comes over. "You know what. I think I'll love it."
(This might make more sense if you think of it as a sequel to New Shores.)
9. What question do you wish we'd asked? What are your favorite fic titles (of your own fic)? Answer "Equidistant" and (not yet published) "Centrifuge"
hoktauri asked: what's your name mean?
When I needed a name to sign up for LJ, gabi (and variations) were already taken. I thought it would be good to have a unique name that I could use anywhere I sign up. But it also should be something easy to remember and not random letters or the typical namebirthyear combo. I had the soundtrack of Clueless lying on my my desk at that moment and among the tracks were "Alright" by Supergrass and "My Forgotten Favorite" by Velocity Girl. Individually those band names were not unique but the velocitygrass combo is so senseless that I figured it would always be free. And so far it has been (I think once the name was gone, but I'm not entirely sure if I haven't done a mistake when signing up or something).
antares04a asked:
1) Did you ever write a SGA-SG-1 crossover? I do recall having written a Jack O'Neill scene or two (I know he definitely is in my upcoming Atlantis Big Bang), but the only real crossover at the top of my head is actually a Teyla/Sam/Ronon PWP. It was a comment fic, though the post is flocked now. Hmm, I also love Cameron Mitchell quite a bit. Surely, I've written about him at some point. Okay, I just did a search and it seems that the other Jack scene I was thinking about is in my story notes for a Big Bang I didn't write. As for Cam, there is Freakish, which is labelled as Sheppard/Rodney/Cameron, but only because it was the prompt. It's more like gen (with some Flyboys/Puddlejumper UST) and then John/Rodney pre-slash. He's also in the sequel to Lightning, which I apparently never posted. Did I mention I need to get all my fic on AO3? And post my written but unpolished things?
2) What other pairings than McShep do you like? Buffy/Giles, Mal/Simon (Firefly), Hermione/Snape (Harry Potter; why do I even spell this out; if the names Hermione and Snape don't ring a bell, I'm not entirely sure Harry Potter will ;), Winters/Nixon (Band of Brothers; I also adored the Damian/Ron fic that introduced me to RPS), Sydney/Jack (Alias; mostly non-romantic, though in all honesty their season 1 relationship hit my buttons so hard that I had this story idea where she turned out to be Sloane's daughter and...if you really want to know, ask and I can tell you; I've been very lucky with McShep; without going into detail, I'll just say that the one Sydney/Jack fic that I found back in the day was not what I wanted). Speaking of having no luck finding fic. I absolutely adored Cameron Mitchell and his fanboy charm, but none of the main characters really clicked with him (romantically) for me. However when I saw "Babylon", I immediately went online, expecting to find if not a huge subfandom, at least a healthy number of Cam/Jolan fic, because I don't think they could have made that episode any slashier. However, to my disappointment I couldn't find anything at all. Last, but not least, I should probably mention Joe/David and Hewligan in general.
And it's 2am now, so I should head to bed. If there's anything else you like to know, please ask. As you can see from some of my answers, I do love to ramble on about fannish things ;)