This is a day most special: The 13th Warrior is being interviewed today. And it is no-one less than RedNovaTyrant himself, the author of jools such as The Greenhouse Effect and The Naughty List. And since I currently don't have the adequate words to prolong this intro even a slightest bit further than it humanely needs be prolonged for the sake of being prolonged, let us dive right into it like Hector's charioteer Cebriones dove from his chariot after being lethally struck by the stone flung by Patroclus.
Helel ben Shahaar: Let's kickstart it as it should: would you grace us with some info about your person?
RedNovaTyrant: His name is Tim and he likes to eat cookies. Oh, wait - you mean myself? Well, I hail from the Great White North, more towards the stormy, miserable Eastern side where the people are not so miserable or stormy. I've been writing since I was in grade primary, and actually still have those stories locked in the closet with Tim these days. I also enjoy the Video Games and making videos on my Youtube channel (shameless self promotion) when I'm not penning some god forsaken horror show. I recently got into doing narrations as well, and I'm enjoying that. I also love extremes; I'm the guy who will order the Super Mega Death Sauce chicken wings and eat the whole thing.
Hel: You say you've been writing since grade primary. How did you start?
Red: I remember seeing my father reading a big boy book with a gazillion pages and the only pictures being the cover and the author on the back for his bio. So six year old me said, "Hey, I'm gonna do that!" and proceeded to write a short story about a guy named Need who fought an alien.
This turned into a series, and then I just kept writing more and more stories from there. Then I hit the preteen years and realized, like many do, that I can use my talents to insert myself into the worlds of my favorite shows and books. So the fanfiction days went and passed, and I wrote more loosely in my high school days - more for assignments, less out of interest.
Hel: And how did you come to discover Creepypasta?
Red: Well, towards the end of high school, my father showed me a video on Youtube. It was a story of some kind of sleep prevention experiment, but the way it was told combined with the music and the imagery really disturbed me. Of course, I later found out that this was the infamous Russian Sleep Experiment. I didn't really look into creepypasta that much afterwards.
In my first year of university, a friend dragged me closer into the depths by introducing me to Mr. Creepypasta, and his reading of 1999. I really enjoyed listening to it, and put it down as a note to check out later. Summer came, had a boring desk job, and when I ran out of songs to play on repeat for eight hours, I decided to start listening to more narrations on Youtube. This, in turn, prompted me to write my first creepypasta, and evidently help me find my way here. I forgot to bring a ladder though, so I guess I'm still stuck down here haha. Interestingly, my one year anniversary on the Wiki was just less than two weeks ago.
Hel: Your arguably best known story, How to Beat the Sandman just won PotM. How does that make you feel?
Red: I'm really ecstatic over the fact Sandman won. It's definitely the story I'm the most proud of, since I had set out to write a "good" ritual pasta. And I guess I can say I've done so, now with it winning POTM. A big thank you to everyone who voted for it and/or enjoyed reading it. I can't really think of anything to say about winning since I'm no good at recieving praise, so I suppose I could share a fun fact about the story. The missing eye lids bit isn't a random throwaway piece of gore - I based it on an old myth about a monk named Bodhidharma. This monk wanted to meditate for nine years without sleeping, so he went up into a cave and just sat their pondering. Seven years in, he accidentally fell asleep, and when he woke up, he got so mad that he cut out his own eyelids and threw them to the ground. A bush supposedly grew from where his eye lids rested, and when people made a drink from the bush's leaves, they felt energized, less tired. And that's the myth about why tea keeps you awake.
Hel: Your activity on wiki is most versatile: you're both a writer and an editor, and not even a promising narrator and a potential rollback. How do you do it all? What's the secret?
Red: Well thank you for the compliment. And I suppose the secret is just having time. My desk job gives me a lot, but aside from that, I'm usually online most of the time anyways. Makes me sound a little sad, but there it is. The other big drive is my love of creation. I feel happiest when I'm writing a story, or editing together a video, because I like to entertain. also sacrificing hours of sleep but i wasn't going to be using them properly anyways
Hel: Not really sad: best of us do it.
But solitude may, like many other things, be frightening. What frightens you?
Red: Oh boy. I'm pretty sure everyone is scared of death, but my reason for it has more to do with my fear of eternity/the concept of infinity. The very idea of it absolutely shakes me to my core, and I can recall many a night where I've laid in bed thinking about countless possibilities of many scenarios, and realizing I still haven't thought of them. It's that realization that you can never come to all of the conclusions that scares me the most. On the more normal side, I do not care for the threat of epidemics, nuclear war, or people I care about getting axed.
Hel: Oh dear. I too fear infinity and eternity. But they are both natural and must be.
But what of supernatural? Do you believe in that? Have you ever been given a reason to believe in that?
Red: I prefer to view myself as agnostic towards that kind of thing. I don't have enough faith to commit to the belief in an afterlife until I see 100% proof of it, but of all the ideas of what happens once we exit stage left in the great play of life, some form of consciousness or existence is the most comforting to me. Plus, there's just too many sightings and reports for it all to just be coincidences. I've yet to have a ghostly encounter, but I do like to play with a Ouija board on Halloween with a Pagan High Priestess, so hopefully someday, I'll be able to cement my belief.
Hel: You said you liked reading. Any particular pieces from CPW that you enjoy?
Red: I do like to read. The RSE, obviously, is one of my favorites, but I'm also a sucker for ritual pastas. 11 Miles (though technically no longer on the Wiki) and The Devil Game in particular come to mind. Gateway of the Mind was good, Hopeless' Lost Episodes Can Be Found was pretty compelling, and your own Stargazer. For guilty pleasures, the Disney Mirror Ritual and Channel Infinity also entertain me.
Hel: And do you perchance have the least favourite story?
Red: My least favorite story... I mean, there's the usual contenders like Sonic.EXE and Jeff. But I do enjoy so-bad-it's-good stuff, so it's hard for me to genuinely hate bad stories.
Hel: How many Tim the Enchanters does it take to melt a metric square cubit of dry ice in Ulaanbaatar on the 22nd June while it rains?
Red: Five. Three if it's thundering - they can draw on that sweet, sweet lightning.
Hel: Lastly, but not leastly, do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Red: As my karate sensei of eleven years says: "Practice, practice, practice." The more you write, the better you will get. Then you can look back once you're writing the best stuff of your life and see where you've come from. Also, read. Do lots of reading. Find little things other authors do and adapt them into your writing. Build a style; every author have a particular way of writing. So find yours.