And now, for an interview with the
vampire Ruro.
What got you into writing fiction?What I think of as my introduction to fiction was when I was learning English. Spanish is my first language, so as part of my ESL education, both my teacher and my mother (who is herself also a teacher) encouraged me to read a lot of books in English. In particular I liked the Madeline children's book series, written by Ludwig Bemelmans, and my teacher was more than okay with it when I turned out to like it so much, that I asked him for permission to sit in front of the class and read aloud to all my classmates. I distinctly remember those reading sessions as the moment that I realised that I like telling stories that interest my audience.
Writing them myself, though, would have to wait until I could actually write in English!
What sources outside of Touhou do you draw inspiration from?I draw inspiration from.... oh man, that's pretty hard. I never have drawn inspiration from Touhou exclusively. Hmm... I like literature from across cultures a lot. Mythology too. History, of course, which tends to come up a lot. That last one is probably the single biggest inspiration to anything I write.
Which Touhou character is your favorite to write? The most difficult write?My favourite Touhou character to write is almost certainly Utsuho. She's so wonderfully straightforward and simple, and just wants to help her underground family out. She's also super powerful and, in SA, very megalomaniacal and destructive. She's perfection.
The most difficult to write is probably Satori. I have such a hard time writing loners, because it's been a very long time since I was last emotionally alone the way she is in canon.
Out of all the stories you've written (Touhou-related or not), which one is your favorite?White Rose is one of my favourites if only because I've gotten so much writing done for it (even if I have to pick it up again sometime and dust it off). I really got into it when I was writing the end of part one.
For non-Touhou stuff, my favourite is probably Apple and Cinnamon (PMMM), because it's got a recurring plot hook that actually works in context, one of my favourite ships, and it won me two small Kyouko and Mami figurines in the contest I wrote it for. I also think it's good for being so short, since it clocks in under 10k words; by far my shortest complete work that I really enjoy.
Outside of Touhou fiction, what other works have you written fiction for?Hmm... Puella Magi Madoka Magica (also Kazumi Magica), Sailor Moon, and Precure. I'd like to branch out more, but I'm not the sort of person who thrives writing many projects at once; I have to focus on one or two.
What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of writing? The most challenging?I really love reading back over my stuff and seeing how the story flows together, it's so cool. Seeing other people's reactions to my stories is also right up there, I just love seeing people affected by it!
The most challenging aspect of writing, on the other hand, is forcing myself to ignore things like historical inaccuracy for the sake of continuing to push forward, and knowing when to stop researching and start writing.
If there is one aspect of your writing you would want to improve, what is it?I wish I could learn to write with less words and still be as effective. It's not even that my writing is purple prose-y, I think, I try to be concise, but they're just really involved, detailed stories.
When writing Touhou fiction, how do you usually approach official canon material? Do you build on top of it; do you go around it; or do you try and stay within it as much as possible? Something else?I used to try to stay within canon as much as possible, but then Symposium of Post-Mysticism happened. No, seriously, I long ago read most of the canon works that existed at the time on the wiki, but more and more often I ended up reading a lot of material and just ended up ignoring a lot of it in my writing. And yes, then SoPM was published, and now I just tend to forget it ever happened. Now I'm at a place where I care very little for recent canon stuff, since my ideas are based in earlier roots.
What are some of your favorite things to read, including but not limited to books?Books, naturally, but especially history ones! I have lately been very interested in the Silk Road (or rather, silk roads, the many trade routes that connected the old world of antiquity), the Byzantine Empire, and old-school Hawaiian mythology. I used to read the newspaper a lot, but I don't make as big a habit of it anymore, though I do try to stay caught up on global happenings. And yes, I love reading other people's fanfiction.
What particular genres do you enjoy reading? What particular genres do you enjoy writing?My answers for both parts of this question are near-identical so assume they go for both: historical fiction, epic-scale grand aventures, magical girl stuff. I enjoy reading comedy and I wish I could say I enjoy writing it, but I'm not any good at lighthearted stuff for the most part; I fully admit to preferring the dark side in the stories I read and write. Conversely, I don't enjoy reading romance, which is part of why my own writing is largely devoid of it.
Do you have any big projects we can look forward to on the horizon?Well, come NaNoWriMo I'm going to pick up Weave the Stars again and get another 50k words poured into it (which will hopefully finish it off!). I've also been working on a top secret Precure fiction thing, but I don't know how many people here would be interested in that.
PC-98 characters seem to feature prominently in your stories. What draws you to the PC-98 crew? Do you have a particular preference towards either PC-98 or Windows games over the others? Do you find the PC-98 characters harder or easier to write than Windows characters?You know, I've had this question in mind for years and I have never been able to find an answer to it that satisfies me in full. That said, I think it was partially because few other people really cared about PC-98 characters when I started out in the fandom. If I had started to write Remilia going against the grain of her fanon self, it would be hard for my own mind to accept, much less fans I'd like to read my story. With Yumemi, there's not really so much resistance; the PC-98 characters have even less canon material to go off on than most of the Windows characters, and it's easier to get into it and just keep writing without having to worry about getting tripped up.
If I recall correctly, you have a degree in Psychology. Given the emphasis on characterization in modern fiction writing, do you ever find yourself drawing on your Psychology knowledge when you write? If so, to what extent?You recall incorrectly! My degree is in International Relations. That said, I have studied psychology quite a bit! Not only was it one of my preferred elective subjects, I actually attended a few lectures here and there held by the Jung Society of Colorado, as research for White Rose.
I definitely have found myself drawing on my psych knowledge when writing, particularly when it comes to unhealthy relationships. I have this thing where all my personal relationships are actually pretty damn healthy and good, and yet I love seeing really unhealthy, messed-up relationships in fiction, because I think that's realistic too. Plus it makes for some delicious conflict.
I also have thrown a smattering of neuroatypical characters into my stories, as both heroes and villains, because I think it makes narratives more interesting if they reflect reality in small, detailed ways like that. So to use examples, the minor character Komeiji Miyani from White Rose has depersonalization disorder (
you try resisting the urge to give satori characters mental issues like that!) and the main character of Weave the Stars has agoraphobia and associated anxiety issues. I have OCD myself (the sort that obsesses over patterns and repetition), and I always wanted to see characters like that myself.
Your NaNoWriMo novel Weave the Stars is a particularly unique take on a Touhou fic. What inspired it? Do you do seamstress-work yourself?This is such a great question, it's going to take me a bit to unpack it.
What inspired it? A few main threads.
The first is minor: remember that fan theory that the multiple lives in Touhou games are actually representative of the changes of clothing the characters have on them, based on Sakuya's line in PCB against Alice that she has four changes of clothes (and, as the player sees, four lives)? Then also the recurring question of "who the hell makes all these characters' clothes, but especially the fairies'?" that comes up in Touhou fandom? I'm not the first person to get the idea of a Touhouverse tailor of clothes by a long shot, but I do think I'm the only one that took it in such a wildly different direction.
The second thing that inspired it goes a lot deeper.
I don't do seamstress work myself, but one of the people who has had a big impact on my life did. That was my great-grandmother, Rita Morales. My stories of her largely come from my own mother, who knew her and listened to her own stories when she was young. During the time of the Mexican Revolution, her family was fleeing south to escape the chaos of the north, and after settling down where they did, Rita found a man she wanted to marry. Now, my great-grandmother (just call her Abuela, that's what I do) Rita's family was pretty upper class and well to do; the man she wanted to marry was an ordinary farmer. Her father told her that if she married him, he would disown her. Naturally, she married him, and he did indeed disown her. The man turned out to be a useless drunk and Rita quickly had to learn how to support herself. The lady, however, had a lot of steel in her spine, so she learned how to sew.
This was in a country and time period in which women sewing was considered unfeminine, which is why the present day connotation of sewing being something extremely feminine makes me laugh so hard. You have to understand, women sewing dresses for money to support themselves was considered too aggressive: they needed to rely on men to bring money into households. But Abuelita didn't care; she went to a sewing school and got her certification, and quickly became one of the best seamstresses in town. By the time my mother was my age, her great-grandmother was the best seamstress in the city, after 50+ years of experience. Her dresses were amazing, and while she never became rich enough to earn back all the inheritance she lost out, she did quite well, and while I never met her, my mother tells me stories of how rad she was, and just how good she was with a needle and thread.
The third thing that inspired it was my learning about more Mexican history at the time, and history of all Latin America. I was interested in Asian immigration to the continent, in particular, and, well, Peru has the Incas, the other great pre-Hispanic civilization aside from Mexico's Aztecs and Mayans. At some point while reading about the Kasato Maru and Incan quipu, some threads crossed in my head and, well, I ended up with Mari Soledad Saihoushi.
There are also other threads that were drawn on for inspiration for the story, but those are
Is there a word of advice you'd like to give to aspiring fiction writers?I think it would be to just write. Don't worry about how trash your first story is, how you're not living up to your own ideas of how you want to execute your ideas, we all sucked too at first but then we just kept pushing. Even now, no one is as good as they think they are to pull off any given idea successfully, but you have to just grit your teeth and keep going, because if you wait until you're good enough to take on your story idea as well as you'd like, you'll NEVER be good enough. Learn from your mistakes, seek out resources and advice and support, and don't stop until you reach the end. And then take pride in how far you've come and how much better you've gotten.