Q&A with lounge-lily
I offered to do an author's commantary on a fic for Lil, which very quickly turned into a question and answer time. Somehow.
Anyway, for Lil and all those who are interested, here are the results. By all means ask more, i quite enjoyed this. It made me feel very... professional.
∞
Why do you write?
I’ve never stopped to think of this before. I have always written; I started with adapting things like Greek myths and various children’s stories when I was about eight. When I was 10 or 11, I began borrowing characters from TV, though I never realised it was fanfic until ... god, when I got into discussing Harry Potter online. I think a large part of it is to do with my brain - I have all these images and possibilities floating around and they need to come out or they’d drive me mad. Songs don’t help either. I’m completely attached to my music and I use it to help me write academic papers (also to function in general, because it shuts up the amount of thoughts I have at any given time) but occasionally (often, these days) a song will strike me as representing a particular facet of something - and lately it’s a particular facet of the Doctor/Donna relationship - and I just feel like I have to write down my interpretation of that. Which leads to fic.
Why Doctor Who and why the Doctor and Donna in particular?
‘Why Doctor Who?’ is easy. It’s sci-fi/fantasy. Now, I am a fantasy girl at heart, pure and simple. I don’t go in for aliens and creepy monsters and vector diagrams using Base 9. But Doctor Who has enough fantasy and magic to be appealing, with enough science to feel adult, and some incredibly complex plotlines. ‘Why Doctor/Donna?’ is one of those instinctual things. I remember when I fell in love with the idea of them together (“I bloody love you”, in Pompeii although I think I’d have been gone by the end of The Runaway Bride, if I’d seen that first). As for why... I knew the Doctor as a character was meant to be in love with Rose. My Billie Piper hatred knows no bounds, and part may be the simple perversion of Donna being Not Rose. But. She, as a character, is so wonderful and his complete antithesis, and I think she brings a whole level to him that you couldn’t see with other companions. At the end of the day, she’s human and she has no wish to be otherwise, and I’m willing to bet that if you offered the three companions the choice to mutate into a TimeLady, Rose and Martha would accept in a heartbeat. Donna wouldn’t. And I don’t think their relationship is all smitten love like Martha’s was, or love for the sake of because she’d loved Nine, like Rose’s was. He reveals himself to her slowly, and she can see past his TimeLordiness to the ‘person’ who is underneath all that. He’s encouraging and she shows her something so much bigger than she’d ever dreamed of, but something she needed to see, and he respects her like he didn’t respect the other two. Their whole relationship, on every level, is so complex and so beautiful that I couldn’t not be attracted to them.
Though at the end of the day, it’s probably as simple a reason as: ‘because I revel in impossible love stories’.
What would your first novel be about?
I’ve always been fascinated by the dark rewriting of fairy tales and legends, like Neil Gaiman and Gregory Maguire do. So my first novel (novella, really) is actually started (it began as a workshop piece for ENGL2201 in 2006) and is a ghost-story reworking of the Alice in Wonderland tale, set in Edwardian times, about a girl who is apparently possessed by the spirit of Alice. In actual fact, she’s severely depressed and hallucinating, but that would be giving away my plot.
Has there ever been a story that you've been compelled to write, even if you've never shared it with anyone?
Not stories, but I have written a series of free form poems (largely to dealing with my own feelings and certain events in my life). They’re very abstract and they were posted on a locked journal that one or two people may have had access to. One day I’ll go back to them, but I started them from a very dark place, and I don’t know that it would be quite as effective to continue them from another mindset.
What conclusion to the Doctor/Donna relationship would you like to see happen in the show?
Ideally? This is where i become a dedicated shipper. I’d like him to wake up and realise that he’s completely smitten, and that he needs her. And if Catherine and David weren’t working on anything else, I’d like them to continue their adventures, save a few more universes, and find some way of giving birth to a Time Baby. Which would ruin the whole concept of the show, but would allow him to retire from his duties, forgo his next two regenerations and spend his life with the first person who’s properly understood him since he left Gallifrey.
In reality, that won’t happen, because Russell is way too caught up in Rose and her dramas. So instead, I want closure. Proper closure. Restore Donna’s memory, because there are so many ways that could have been dealt with rather than a mind-wipe. Let her be brilliant, because she is; she saved the freakin’ world and she deserves to at least have that knowledge. Let them have their moment where they realise how much they mean to each other, while he’s still his tenth incarnation, then let him regenerate and wish her goodbye and good luck. She’ll understand; more than anyone, I think Donna would realise that each incarnation comes with its own idiosyncrasies and that the eleventh version might not, probably won’t, be the same as his tenth self. It’s the tenth version she loves, I can’t see her having fallen for Nine at all, and I think if she had a choice, she’d only want to be with that tenth version. She’d let Eleven find someone of his own, and bless him for having given her the chance to know him as Ten.
Anyway, for Lil and all those who are interested, here are the results. By all means ask more, i quite enjoyed this. It made me feel very... professional.
∞
Why do you write?
I’ve never stopped to think of this before. I have always written; I started with adapting things like Greek myths and various children’s stories when I was about eight. When I was 10 or 11, I began borrowing characters from TV, though I never realised it was fanfic until ... god, when I got into discussing Harry Potter online. I think a large part of it is to do with my brain - I have all these images and possibilities floating around and they need to come out or they’d drive me mad. Songs don’t help either. I’m completely attached to my music and I use it to help me write academic papers (also to function in general, because it shuts up the amount of thoughts I have at any given time) but occasionally (often, these days) a song will strike me as representing a particular facet of something - and lately it’s a particular facet of the Doctor/Donna relationship - and I just feel like I have to write down my interpretation of that. Which leads to fic.
Why Doctor Who and why the Doctor and Donna in particular?
‘Why Doctor Who?’ is easy. It’s sci-fi/fantasy. Now, I am a fantasy girl at heart, pure and simple. I don’t go in for aliens and creepy monsters and vector diagrams using Base 9. But Doctor Who has enough fantasy and magic to be appealing, with enough science to feel adult, and some incredibly complex plotlines. ‘Why Doctor/Donna?’ is one of those instinctual things. I remember when I fell in love with the idea of them together (“I bloody love you”, in Pompeii although I think I’d have been gone by the end of The Runaway Bride, if I’d seen that first). As for why... I knew the Doctor as a character was meant to be in love with Rose. My Billie Piper hatred knows no bounds, and part may be the simple perversion of Donna being Not Rose. But. She, as a character, is so wonderful and his complete antithesis, and I think she brings a whole level to him that you couldn’t see with other companions. At the end of the day, she’s human and she has no wish to be otherwise, and I’m willing to bet that if you offered the three companions the choice to mutate into a TimeLady, Rose and Martha would accept in a heartbeat. Donna wouldn’t. And I don’t think their relationship is all smitten love like Martha’s was, or love for the sake of because she’d loved Nine, like Rose’s was. He reveals himself to her slowly, and she can see past his TimeLordiness to the ‘person’ who is underneath all that. He’s encouraging and she shows her something so much bigger than she’d ever dreamed of, but something she needed to see, and he respects her like he didn’t respect the other two. Their whole relationship, on every level, is so complex and so beautiful that I couldn’t not be attracted to them.
Though at the end of the day, it’s probably as simple a reason as: ‘because I revel in impossible love stories’.
What would your first novel be about?
I’ve always been fascinated by the dark rewriting of fairy tales and legends, like Neil Gaiman and Gregory Maguire do. So my first novel (novella, really) is actually started (it began as a workshop piece for ENGL2201 in 2006) and is a ghost-story reworking of the Alice in Wonderland tale, set in Edwardian times, about a girl who is apparently possessed by the spirit of Alice. In actual fact, she’s severely depressed and hallucinating, but that would be giving away my plot.
Has there ever been a story that you've been compelled to write, even if you've never shared it with anyone?
Not stories, but I have written a series of free form poems (largely to dealing with my own feelings and certain events in my life). They’re very abstract and they were posted on a locked journal that one or two people may have had access to. One day I’ll go back to them, but I started them from a very dark place, and I don’t know that it would be quite as effective to continue them from another mindset.
What conclusion to the Doctor/Donna relationship would you like to see happen in the show?
Ideally? This is where i become a dedicated shipper. I’d like him to wake up and realise that he’s completely smitten, and that he needs her. And if Catherine and David weren’t working on anything else, I’d like them to continue their adventures, save a few more universes, and find some way of giving birth to a Time Baby. Which would ruin the whole concept of the show, but would allow him to retire from his duties, forgo his next two regenerations and spend his life with the first person who’s properly understood him since he left Gallifrey.
In reality, that won’t happen, because Russell is way too caught up in Rose and her dramas. So instead, I want closure. Proper closure. Restore Donna’s memory, because there are so many ways that could have been dealt with rather than a mind-wipe. Let her be brilliant, because she is; she saved the freakin’ world and she deserves to at least have that knowledge. Let them have their moment where they realise how much they mean to each other, while he’s still his tenth incarnation, then let him regenerate and wish her goodbye and good luck. She’ll understand; more than anyone, I think Donna would realise that each incarnation comes with its own idiosyncrasies and that the eleventh version might not, probably won’t, be the same as his tenth self. It’s the tenth version she loves, I can’t see her having fallen for Nine at all, and I think if she had a choice, she’d only want to be with that tenth version. She’d let Eleven find someone of his own, and bless him for having given her the chance to know him as Ten.