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Robert has established himself as a proficient author
with his stories
"More Sinned Against Than Sinning", "Callisto Explains It All", and
his most recent story "The Making of a Modern Goddess". Robert has
concentrated on the Goddess aspect of Callisto, and extrapolated her
to modern times. He brings a decidedly different viewpoint on the
character, one that stands out a bit from the rest of the Callisto
fan fiction out there.
"More Sinned Against Than Sinning" is a story that I
skipped when I was
first reading all the Callisto fan fiction out there. Upon reading the
description, I didn't think it would be appealing, since it was a
Goddess story with a warning about sex, language, violence, and
torture.
I had already read stories with what I thought was similar content and
those stories were awful, so I didn't want to read yet another bad
story.
Once I ran out of everything to read I finally read
"More Sinned..."
and
found much to my surprise a well written and entertaining story. Here
was a writer who could do a Goddess story with mature situations
without
being tastelessly graphic and explicit. It changed my misconception
that
there were no good stories in this subcategory, and I've since found
other good stories that pull off this combination successfully.
In August of 1998, I had a chance to ask Robert and a few other authors
some questions about writing Callisto fan fiction. Although the
original
questions and answers are a bit dated, Robert graciously took the time
to bring his answers up to date. This is the last of my initial batch
of interviews, and being the longest it has to be split into two parts.
I think you'll find this interview interesting and
informative. And
perhaps it will encourage any budding authors to write and share their
works with others. Creativity is something that should be encouraged
and fostered, and to that end, make sure to tell people what you
thought
of their efforts. Every message counts, and positive feedback is the
greatest reward that any artist will receive.
-- Kevin (Who sometimes has trouble taking his own advice...) |
[Kevin] What was your first Callisto story? Why
did you write it?
[Robert] More Sinned Against Than Sinning.
Really it was because I'd never seen any
fan fiction or anything on the show that did things the way I liked.
Poor Callisto never got any background depth on the show
and I felt
there
was such a lot going on with her that her story needed to be told. I
also
didn't like the "tough love" message of the shows - to invert a John
Major
phrase, "more understanding, less condemnation," was what she deserved.
I found it hard to accept the "Callisto becomes good",
"Callisto finds
her
soulmate", etc stories. People don't change that much unless something
radical happens to them. To me, fan fiction which has this happen is
almost
lying: it's writing about someone other than the character as some kind
of
wish-fulfillment, using her name, etc.
At the other scale of things, there's fan fic that
delights in gore,
rape,
etc. I don't think having Callisto as a serial killer, a Sadist,
exhibitionist, or whatever is any truer. It makes her mono-dimensional
and
removes any trace of characterisation.
So I wanted to write a piece of fan fic that was true to
Callisto (as I
see
her) and was sympathetic towards her.
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