Karmen Ghia: What are you working on these days?

Raku: Actually, I'm working on changing careers and so I have little time to write at the moment. The snippets I'm working on in 10-minute segments include a variation on a story that's been written in several forms by a group of writers, and the remaining threads on "The Learning Curve."

KG: Okay, I'm sorry for the mundane questions but how long have you been in the Star Trek fan community?

R: My earliest Trek memories are from the third grade, roughly 1966, when our weekly newspaper had a short section of the script for "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and we were all assigned parts. I campaigned among my little friends to get the Spock part, and they agreed I was a good bet because I could pronounce all the words. I've been writing fanfic since - lessee - the summer of 1997.

KG: Have you stayed mainly in TOS or do you do other genres?

R: In fanfic writing, the only genre I've not written so far is DS9, because I know that show the least well. During its early seasons I was in school and couldn't see it although I'm a big fan of Avery Brooks (Hawk! Yow!). I just don't know enough to write it in a believable way. Also I don't like reptiles.

KG: I think I read once that _No Man_, a S/Mc, was your earliest story. How did that story come about and can I borrow Spock in a black robe having sex with McCoy for _After the Rescue_? (Oh, please say YES, I'll thank you in the credits!)

R: I'd been secretly working on "Never and Always," and was getting very ego-involved with it. Thought I needed a break. The topic of S/McC came up on the NG, everyone said Eww yuck (except jonk; Prelude in C# Minor is a whole different story), and I thought what the hell that might be fun to write, let's give it a whirl. Parts worked out ok, parts now make me wince when I read them. Guess that means I've grown, I hope. So "No Man" is the second piece I wrote but the first I posted. Spock in a black robe should be in the public domain. The dressers for the movies had the sense to put him in one as often as they decently could. In TNG also, bless their little hearts. Use it with my blessing, and send me a copy for heaven's sake!

KG: How did you decide to start writing what was in your head? What was your motivation?

R: We've talked a little about our various processes on the ng, I think. For me, usually a sort of film starts playing in my head and I transcribe it, typing as fast as I can go. Stories as a result are a combo of scenes that hardly change at all from their first draft, and other sections that go through 30 revisions. In the case of Learning Curve, more than that. The rape scene went thru a jillion revisions. jonk and another person made me tear it all down several times and try it again. I think it's probably one of the best parts of the story, and much of its strength comes from those two people lending me some of the lives, metaphorically speaking, saying No you're not done yet. Not yet. Not strong enough. Try again. Such things from beta readers are hard to hear, but necessary, and the story's better for it. I began writing fanfic after reading the stuff that was in the archive at that point (which wasn't much in TOS, tho a ton more in Voyager). I read some stuff, said Hey I can write about that well, let's see how it goes. Some of the stuff in the archive is beyond what I could write in terms of talent, then and now, but other stuff gave me hope, let's say.

KG: Rape? What rape is in Learning Curve? The wedding night with the Blake (or was it Donne?) poetry and green silk? If so, I totally spaced it and I usually don't miss such like. Help me, Raku; IMHO, everybody seemed quite willing in Learning Curve. I can't be *that* fucked up, can I?

R: It's a sonnet by Donne you're thinking about. Congratulations--you're the only one who's mentioned to me they saw anything rape-like about that scene. I wanted to set it up as a kind of parallel, or prelude, or whatever you want to call it, to what comes toward the end if you take that path. I've tried to work with the idea that when Spock rapes Valeris in the movie, it isn't the first time he's done that kind of work, for Jim or for others. That is, my way of making that scene less shockingly un-Spockian is to show--he's done it before. Got some hot mail on that topic lemme tell you! If you don't recall anything like that I think you probably followed a different thread--there's one long piece of the story in which Spock and..hmn, one of the characters...have a difficult scene. If you betake yourself to the site, the file you want is smcc.htm (must mention jonk kidding me about those initials in California parlance standing for "Sun Microcomputer Corporation," if I have it right. S/he kidded me pretty hard about the filename.). The full text of Learning Curve lives at http://members.aol.com/U2ukar, or you can get at it from my regular site, mentioned below.

KG: How did your first story come about? Can you recall the decision to write it or did you just wake up one day, face down on the keyboard, and there was the first 3,000 words? (This happened to me, that's why I'm asking.)

R: In general both have happened. There are sections of stories where I'd read it the next day and think Did I write *that*? Stuff I'd have no memory of. Eerie. For "Never and Always," the first scene had been kicking around my head for a while, since I'd seen STV and felt there were tons of loose ends left in the movie. I've always felt there was much more (*much* more) going on in that Yosemite scene than is shown, which is why I keep coming back to it in stories.

KG: And I just love it that you do keep going back to it. I, too, have pondered that camping trip quite a bit... But, oh well, on to the next question: What writers do you feel have influenced your slash writing?

R: You mean slash writers, or "real" writers? Slash writers--yow, let's not name names. The good ones. There, does that do it? Other writers who've influenced my writing: Milton for that combo of cerebral stuff plus down-to-earth rational. Hemingway for unattributed sentence fragments. Henry James, for long tedious sentences that wind on and on, with just a bunch of commas holding the whole thing together, hoping that readers stay with you, until it gets interesting again. Sylvia Plath for the imagery, esp. the color imagery. I've often thought that if there were fanfic slash in the 19th cent., Byron would have been a natural at it. I can just *see* his web page: 30 gigs of poem fragments and pictures of himself and audio clips and on and on and on

KG: I'll never be able to get the ByronPage out of my mind. Oh well. Who is your favorite character in slash to write about? Read about? And why?

R: Spock, because he's always been the center of ST for me. Kirk is growing on me; Tuvok seems to me to have great dramatic possibilities. What slash pairs do I *wish* I could read about? Why thank you for asking. A short list: -Christopher Robin and Pooh. -Aragorn and Legolas. -the protagonists in Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (the visiting ambassador from the Ekumen and the renegade minister) You get the idea.

KG: Very much so. Can't quite wrap my mind around Pooh and CR in a 69, but that's my problem, isn't it? Do you have some special technique for writing slash? (For example: I listen to really loud techno music. What do you do?)

R: Heavy metal. Guns N Roses (antisocial dickheads tho they are), esp. for fight scenes or violent scenes. Some grunge and recent pseudo-grunge, because it's so angst-filled. Fastball, Everclear, stuff like that. Most of the sex scenes are a one-time write-thru, because it's hard to keep track of whose hand is where and I find it easier to work off the film in my head rather than construct one blow by blow (so to say). Recently I've been plotting things with post-its stuck to the wall in front of me. I struggled with the plot to Learning Curve that way (there's software designed specifically. for hypertext stories, but I didn't know that when I started, and it's expensive). I ended up with a lot of little arrows pointing from post-it to post-it, as the plot developed. The post-its left hanging are the Spock/Uhura one on the left, and the resolution of the movie on the right. Also a few threadlets to lines that are there. So there's still stuff to do.

KG: And something to look forward to as well. What do you feel is the future of K/S?

R: I believe they eventually enroll in an assisted-care facility and learn macrame. I have lately begun to wonder if the genre is reaching its end because it has been so well explored, but we do seem to keep getting new writers (like me, for one). So maybe I'm too pessimistic. It seems to me that people are branching into Voyager partly because the "ensemble" nature of the show allows for many many more plots. Plots that involve kids, and more aliens than just Vulcans, and women, and different ages, etc.

KG: Me, I'm just a webizen so I know nothing of the printzine community, except for a brush or two with certain members. What is with those people? Are they really as uptight, narrow minded, hyper critical/sensitive and condescending as they seem or am I really just too fucked up to see their good points?

R: Is this a trick question? I've only seen a small handful of zines, and I don't really know any zine people well, so I can't really say. I've heard from those who do that the zine folks are skeptical of the web, but I don't know whether they're more skeptical of the web than other paper-based people, in the publishing industry for example. There are reasons to be skeptical of the web as a publishing medium, but most of them aren't connected IMHO to fanfic. One thing about the web that I think scares a lot of folks is the loss of control you get with web publishing. You hit "mail" and it's gone. People can do what they want with your stuff, including putting their name on it. Harder to do with paper. Personally I like that loss of control, that chance to let the balloon go, but not all feel that way.

KG: What's your thinking on chicks with dicks and Tupper Trek? I don't find it interesting, but my tastes are more, um, graphic. (I actually have trouble figuring what's going on [sexually] in much of K/S, it's way too subtle or something for me.)

R: I've come in late on Tupper Trek so I'm not a reliable guide. I do sometimes struggle with the stories that seem to feature awfully feminized men. Likewise the Janeway/Seven stories that sound like a couple of frat boys in drag (would that be "dicks on chicks"?). There are problems at both ends of the continuum. Mostly I just skip over those stories; judging from the ASC awards and so forth there are a lot of stories I'm not wild about that have great public appeal, and that's fine. No one makin' me read 'em, nor are those readers compelled to read my stuff, which I assume they in turn don't find appealing. That's one of the nifty things about the web, as has been observed. You click "next" and the problem goes away. But would I want to pay $10 or $20 and find I had such a story? Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

KG: Indeed. Have you had experience in the printzine community and the webslash community? If so, in what ways do their inherent strengths cause them to be inherently antagonistic? Or do I think that because I'm an asshole? (Okay, it's an awkward question, rephrase at will.)

R: See above . I think the antagonism is partly because the paper folks think the web will drive them out of existence. I think this is a reasonable concern: in a different age people like me would probably have sent stuff to zines. Conversely, there are those (also me) who likely wouldn't be involved if paper were the only choice. I found slash in the first place via a web search; I'd heard about it for years but never could find any in print. I was sorry the Randylanders thread on ASC took the turns it did, because it brought out a lot of those issues with less discussion than might have taken place. We haven't yet seen a real fanfic site making best use of the web (i.e., electronic commerce). I am pretty sure that Paramount and its Large Lawyers would arrive to squelch such a trial, and that would be a shame. jonk and wildcat and others made numerous interesting suggestions about how a fanfic site might work, and I'm sorry they haven't yet been tried. I think in the long run the fanfic world is likely to emulate the book/magazine publishing world: most stuff in electronic form, paper still existing but for special purposes. The web doesn't do justice to fanfic art, I'm told, for example.

KG: I was recently reading an article in diary form about filmmaker Roger Nygard latest project. This 'feels' partly true to me (even I'm sure there's more to K/S than this) but I'm wondering if you have any reaction to this quote from the article: "March 22, 1997, Pasadena: Today we interviewed two writers of underground, homoerotic Kirk/Spock stories at the Pasadena Convention Center. These stories are typically written by and for heterosexual women - women who want to read sexual stories about Kirk and Spock but don't want to imagine them with other women." (LAT Magazine 6/20/99)

R: I think that's selling the writers short, and also the readers. I think there's more going on than just women writing dirty stories for each other. For starters I think there are more men involved than is usually assumed. Auntie Ruth is better at the jargon than I am, but I think that the main force of the stream is those whose interests and views are less than typical taking larger-than-life characters and rewriting them to suit. That is, there's a ton more fanfic than just Star Trek: why *is* that? That'd be a better question than homing in on just KS. Why do people write about Naomi Wildman (little girl)? Or a hologram (the Holodoc)? Or the Borg? or the various DS9 aliens? Kinda like asking "What *is* it about Luke Skywalker" when there's the whole Star Wars universe kicking around. Besides--who you calling a heterosexual woman? Think of me as Klinger with a keyboard, please. In organdy. Leaping down the hillside. A great episode. Where was I?

KG : Leaping down a Korean hillside, I think. (DEEP breath; exhale: hokay!) What is the motivation to write slash? One can't sell it; one can't even eat it.

R: Well, it's cheaper than psychotherapy, as Buddhists sometimes say. I wonder if you'd get varying responses depending on which characters writers identify with. For me, it's not "writing slash," it's "writing about Spock, whom I can only see paired with Kirk." My S/McC story was mostly writing exercise; I began writing Tuvok/Paris partly as a joke, and partly because I thought there was good fictional stuff there to work with. I personally don't much like Paris, but he's a ton of fun to write. He's so amazingly American. I'm pleased that the Voyager writers are onto that: the interminable episode where the hunter species was using them in the holodeck for sport, and Paris comes blazing in as a Regular Army Joe--that was huge. I laughed for a week. I imagine there are different motivations for different stories, at least there are for me. In "Take It Like A Man" I tried to construct a story where the reader doesn't know one of the characters for half the story. Thought it would be fun--I was tired of the looooong list of header info that IMHO gives away half the story. In "Never and Always" I tried to see if I could hold a plot together for 60 or 80 pages. In "Judgment of Paris" I wanted to see what it was like only to write in first-person singular (damned hard, is the answer, btw). "Kama Sutra" began as a Christmas story believe it or not, in which Paris gives Tuvok a nifty book as a joke, and Tuvok calls his bluff. Parts of that may still emerge as a different story; I've got a gag-gift scene I don't want to give up on. And I want to punish Neelix. Horribly. "Blowing Out the Flame" seemed to me a more reasonable pon farr description than most we've seen (several of which I've written)--pon farr from Spock and Tuvok's description is unpleasant, yet most of us treat it as a fun sexual romp. So what if... it's not? Greywolf and probably others have also tackled this question; his "Lost Sailor," just posted, is in the same vein. Yow--it's good.

KG: I shall seek out "Lost Sailor" post haste. Do you have any thoughts on the future of Slash on the Web? I think it will have a long and happy future. I expect it will alter among pairs and shows--dunno if K/S has a long future to come, but the quantity of Voy. slash coming out is staggering--the virus is well down into the DNA, if that's not a mixed metaphor.

KG: You're very cool. Would you like to put your website address and/or recommended URLs here?:

R: Yow! Cool! Ironic in light of the weather outside, but thanks very much. My own main website is http://members.aol.com/raku2u. The other site I visit aside from the ASC/EM index is R'rain Prior's site, which often is more up-to-date in slasholandia, as you call it. It lives at http://trekslash.mb.ca Oddly, tho many of the writers I often talk with have personal sites, I fairly rarely visit them. Either I read their stories on the web, or they send them to me, or I beta them. Go figure.

KG: And one final question - in your opinion, who's bigger? Kirk or Spock?

R: I like to think of them as one entity, kinda like Kirk and Brandt in Jungle Kitty's recent story where they can't unstick themselves. That makes them *both* big, right?

KG : > Thank you, Raku.

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