Rolling Up Some Inspiration: An RPG Conversation With Kieron Gillen & Tim Sievert
Kieron Gillen: I should have sent you the other ones, I’m sorry. We’ve got issue up to four done now. I suck. The Wicked + The Divine was my turning-forty book, essentially. Here is goodbye to all the youth culture, and that weird obsession with pop music I have. And not even goodbye, but I’ve written about it all the way I can. So, Die is explicitly, “okay, I want to write about something which is obviously still me, but like, ideally involving stuff I haven’t written about before.” It was quite interesting. And since I wasn't working with Jamie again, and Stephanie is much more about mood and emotion than second-to-second precision, it’s going to be slightly more text. You know, it can’t be as clean. I’ve got to challenge [my methods] a bit. And issue one is just as clean as we get. Issue one is pretty slick in terms of mainstream comics I think.
Kieron Gillen: And a bit like that was I wanted to do something responding to that and to some degree it’s like I’m also writing about people I haven’t before ‘cause it’s like – I’ve said like Phonogram and The Wicked + The Divine are drawing from that period of my life, but Die is on some levels me thinking about the sort of people I knew as teenagers or even before and where are they now. None of the cast are people I know per se, but there’s definitely stuff I’ve experienced with people from that and that kind of – the fascinating knowledge you get from seeing somebody across a period time, it’s the only thing I really like about being older [laughs] is the idea that – oh, no. I remember when John Lennon died when I was a kid and can look across my entire life and see how people responded to John Lennon at different points and that gives me more perspectives on that one event and that’s the same of every single event in my life and that’s fascinating and bewildering and interesting. That’s kind of what I’m trying to do with Die, I guess. Just take these people and where their lives started and where their lives ended and the idea of D&D as this fantasy machine. I mean, Die is about – Die is about a lot more than the D&D stuff, but the idea – D&D, it seems a really interesting weaponization of fantasy [laughs] D&D, you know what I mean?
Gillen: That approach of how we approach stories that’s so addictive in D&D and so interesting in D&D, that’s sort of infected society – infected sounds like a loaded word, but kind of that post-modern approach to story, which you see in D&D is something we see in a lot more places post-D&D. So, I kind of wanted to draw [from that so it's] hopefully a personal story on the other hand, you know, this big piece of wanky, pretentious bullshit, which is how I roll.
Sievert: [Laughter.] So, are you – are any of the characters in Die you? [Gillen laughs] Or more you than not you?
Gillen: The classic standard answer is that they’re all me, said every single shitty writer ever.
Sievert: I say that, yeah.
Gillen: But if I was being honest, yeah. Some of – which ones are mostly me? You sort of definitely separate the strands. The caricature of who is this utterly shallow monster who’s like – oh, [Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace], have you ever seen Garth Marenghi? It’s a British – oh, it’s great. Short version, it is pretending to be a 1980 sci-fi series, which was produced by this writer –
Sievert: Oh! No, no, yeah, I know what that is.
Gillen: But basically [Chuck] is very clear in my fear that I might just be Garth Marenghi. [Laughs.] And the idea that oh, no, you’re literally one bad day away from just being that guy. So, that was the kind of – so, there’s definitely that awful portrait of what I could be. It’s almost the Joe Matt sort of approach. Ash is very me, Sol – Ash and Sol are kind of like this push and pull, I guess. I mean, Sol especially, the reason I decided I wanted to do this book is that I kind of realized, okay, did part of me disappear into a fantasy world at the age of 16 and how has that emotionally stunted me? I fell in love with hard with fantasy and fiction and all this stuff not just games, but the whole wider idea of fantasy and how much has actually being into this stuff removed from my life. And Sol is me really going for it, the idea basically, it’s kind of Peter Pan a [serial killer] is kind of what Sol is – I suppose the characters are more questions than portraits, I guess. Ash is [lot about the sexuality and identity stuff.] The other characters are definitely me thinking more about friends, I guess.
Gillen: That was depressing.
