SaltyWench joined THF on January 23, 2008. She has written 3 stories so far, one of which (Mirror Image) has been featured!

Interview conducted by undrockroll

In The Spotlight with SaltyWench!


How did you first get involved with Tokio Hotel?

OMG LOLOL I can’t believe I have to tell the truth about this. My mother had just been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer and it was about the fourth? Month of hospitals and chemo and I was just exhausted and emotionally gone. Just completely drained of anything at all; and one night I was poking youtube just looping around channel surfing, and on the side of the screen was all those little alternate videos you can watch and one was called “Emo boys kissing.” So OF COURSE I went to look, and on the side of that video there were five or six vids of the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. About seven or eight videos in I saw my first “Bill” written on the video.

Bill? O_o Why were they calling her Bill? I spent FOUR HOURS trying to find a picture showing an Adam’s apple. He was always in a choker. At the time there were only three sites in the whole world; German and French, which I couldn’t read, and Tokiohotel.co.uk, which I could.

So I joined the forum and made a nuisance of myself. OMG poor Kate. XD Here is this crazy ass old lady who has never been on a forum in her life triple posting and asking stupid questions and asking even stupider questions, just spamming her to death with chatter. You need to remember that for the past four months I’d had nothing in my life at all but hospitals and sickness and deep dark depression and suddenly there was this place about a beautiful little boy and people I could talk to. At the time there were only about 2,000 people in the whole world who spoke English that knew anything about them. A couple of weeks after I joined, Kate needed money for gallery software. Since I was pretty much the only person on the forum with a job, I bought it for her.

And then it all just started snowballing. Within five months I had my own forum. It was like a runaway train.

LOL! Well I am really glad you found something to distract you from all the hospital stuff. That can be very very difficult. :( How long were you in the fandom before you started to think, Hmmmmm, fanfic................

Six long weeks. I had never, ever planned on writing anything, ever. I was coerced. I was literally forced to write a twinslash story for the Admin of the original UK forum in exchange for unwatermarked pics. I am still writing that story. The Admin is gone, that forum is gone, most of the fans from that forum are gone, thankfully most of the watermarked photos from that forum are gone, but I’m still writing that story. It makes me laugh. I’m pretty sure I’ll still be writing this story when I’m running Georg’s son’s band’s forum.

Ooooh, that's when the real fun begins!

I hope his son never reads it, LOL

So, I guess it's common knowledge that you prefer the bassist. Do you think you can get into his head easiest? Who's the most difficult?

Definitely. He’s always been instantaneous for me. I just get him. I took one of those compatibility tests a couple years ago for myself and each of the boys. Georg and I? 100 percent compatibility. I couldn’t believe it. I’d felt that way all along but it made me laugh. The computer didn’t know I felt that way. Gustav? 82 percent. Tom and Bill? A 3. THREE. I would kill them in real life. But I think I’ve nailed all of them pretty accurately now and then. I've been told my record for correct guesses about things is suspicious, LOL and I can’t explain it at ALL. Things have shown up in my story months before the band ever mentioned them in print some place. Georg ironing everything was one, I couldn't believe it. So funny. Of all the random ass things to guess and get right. I always get extremely excited when that happens. If Tom ever says Bill collects hotel shower caps I’ll know they’re having me on.

Definitely Bill [is the most difficult]. We know the least about him. That’s counter-intuitive isn’t it? But it’s true. He does all the talking for the band but tells us nothing about himself. He has a tremendous persona that’s really hard to get behind. The glimpses we get of his true being come in flashes of surprise or anger, when he's confronted with something he doesn't expect, or when he forgets the camera is there. He's an extremely intense and passionate young man. We see him being silly a lot, but I don't give that much credit.

That's really interesting and true, huh? The front man reveals the most and yet, the veeery least about himself. Is there anything you just will not write?

Mpreg. Will never, ever happen.

No buttbabies for you?

Don't get me started, XD

But but... okay! So we know that Mirror Image is your baby. Did you expect it to become what it is? Have you been riding the plot twists and turns with the rest of us? :)

I don’t think any writer sits down when they begin a story and thinks, “when I finish this it will be a million words long.” That’s something that just happens. I think most writers would laugh if that thought popped into their head. Most of my chapters would be considered long fic, so thinking of it in those terms I’ve written about 70 stories. It makes me feel more productive. People tend to look at me funny when I say “yes, I’m a writer,’ and then they say “but you’ve only written one story, that doesn’t really count.” I guess it depends on how you look at it. I consider MI a Universe, where ten different stories are all taking place at the same time, interacting with each other in unexpected ways that can send any other story spinning off in an entirely unanticipated direction. It’s hard to keep all those balls in the air. I re-read constantly, and I always find something that goes “WHOA- you realize that because that happened this has to happen now, right?” And I go O_O damn. MI is sort of my version of the Sims. I don’t get tired of it because there is always something happening in one of their worlds that I can explore. I’ve been able to keep it moving along the original plot line but so much has happened that I never intended on that I just have to marvel that it’s all still on track. It’s so much more than I ever expected it to be.

That is a really cool way to look at it!! You're sort of the JK Rowling of our fandom.

I think I'm more of the trashy soap opera that takes a week to have anything happen after days of hand-wringing and merciless prolonging of the angst. Like Days of Our Lives, or as the Tokio Hotel World Turns.

No one ever said that was a bad thing! Are there any characterizations you wish would disappear like a bad Devilish song?

Well first off, there are no bad Devilish songs, each one is a treasure. My particular favorite is “I needn’t you.” If that song had been written today it would be the song “Imma unfriend you,” which I think is brilliant. I can’t hear that song without hearing baby Bill singing it. Which of course makes it better. That’s the song that should have been on the Devilish album.

As for fic, the twins acting like little girls. Most especially Bill being portrayed as a girly girl. Even worse is when girly girl Bill is called Billa. I don't remember how that got started but I can remember when it first showed up and I hated it even then.

Even though most of us got drawn into the fandom because we thought Bill was a girl... (Most of us, not all of us!) Do you think he'd get a kick out of tricking people or what?

No, that's not Bill.

:) Is there anything else you'd want your readers to know about you?

I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity in this fandom to express myself and for everyone who has encouraged me in the past and continues to do so. I work better and faster with feedback and I'm always up for an email or a PM discussion about the story, so don't be afraid to ask me for an explanation or to give me an idea, I love both.

I'd also like to set the record straight about a spurious rumor that has been passed around about me for three years now. I’d just like to say that no matter what you may have heard, it is absolutely not true that Georg dropped my oxygen tank during a debauched and drunken naked twister game after the Avalon concert in LA.

It was the Roxy. And it wasn’t his fault. Tom bumped it and sent it rolling when he unexpectedly pretzeled himself into a lurid position directly in front of him in order to accommodate left foot green.

The only one noticeably drunk was Bill, who was wandering around naked with a cigarette in one hand and a half empty champagne bottle in the other trying to make the claim that his jungle rainforest was perfectly normal in a healthy red-blooded male. The only one behaving in an overtly debauched manner was Schnee, who was in charge of spinning colors and was making shit up in order to mess with Bill. Right hand red, left foot blue made a man out of him, S’all I’m sayin

Well, I for one am RELIEVED. ;) Oh! One more thing. Any advice for writers who want to take on a longfic?

I think most writers write as they go; sitting down to elaborate on their universe when they have the time. This makes for a lot of wonderful stories that eventually just stop dead because the writer has written themselves into an unexpected corner and can’t think of a way out. If you really want to work on an extremely long fic, you need to write out your entire story first, start to end. Believe me, this will end up just a sparse outline, but you really need to know in advance where you want your story to end up so you can keep it going. Take the time to make a bible for your story. Make a list of everyone in the story, and write out for yourself all about them, who they are, important things that have happened to them, how they feel about things, even what they look like. This is particularly important for OCs. Get to really know your characters and start thinking about them, then write down what they do when no one is looking. Now go back into your story and start letting people know everything you’ve just discovered. Take one chapter at a time, take your time, and enjoy what you’re doing. Don’t write a long story for the comments. After a while people will just take your story for granted and never bother to let you know they’re still around reading. Write your story because you love it.

Thank you so much for sitting down with me! Any parting shots/ plugs/ caveats?

Since it's Autumn I'll go ahead and give a shameless plug to my twisted little Vampire fic The Day Georg Started to Act Weird. He doesn't kill any children in it, I promise.

We need to make our own entertainment right now because the boys are too busy to do it for us. Because of this there is nothing else happening and it is vitally important to the fandom that we keep interest in the band alive. Please write, read and donate to THF as often as you can, even if it's only five dollars. Everyone who belongs to the community needs to support it, spiritually, creatively and financially. A comment, a story and a dollar now and then can go a long way.

I also have a HUGE thank you and a bear hug for whoever asked about me. I love you too.


Thank you for your time, SaltyWench!!

12 Comments