#interviews

[interact-if]

Pride Month Feature #3: Under Our Skins

Game: Under Our Skins

Author: Rowan (@if-underourskins)

Tags: Urban fantasy, romance, action (kinda)

Being hunted isn't for the weak. You've been on the run for the majority of your life, though it seems to only get more and more frequent as you age. You're a shapeshifter, whose bones, muscles and skin twist and stretch to transform, and it's why you've been looking over your shoulder all this time. 

You’re forced to flee when Officers from the Agency of Public Safety and Threat Containment (PSTC) came knocking on your door. They're who you've been running from all this time, the reason why you're alone...That is, till you end up in the town of Arden Grove and meet other shapeshifters like yourself. Do you trust them? Will they stay? Or will you end up alone once again?

Tell me more about yourself!

I’ve mentioned this a couple of times, but I’m a huge fan of the Spiderverse franchise, and I am in a lot of different fandoms. My favourite colour is red, which is really funny because the colour scheme of Under Our Skins is blue and grey, and I’m ethnically Chinese, which is actually why Elexis (one of the ROs) is Chinese. 

I am also pansexual and genderqueer, and there are elements of that that can be seen in my characters, especially Elexis and Seraph.

2. Can you tell me a bit about what you’re working on right now and your journey into interactive fiction? What inspired the game/story you’re currently writing?

I am currently working on a shapeshifter IF, aka Under Our Skins! I started with visual novels first, back in my 2024 exam season, and quickly got hooked. The first IF I ever played was Wayfarer and that led to many ranting sessions about it (my poor friends were stuck with me raving about how much I loved the game for days) and from there, I scoured itch.io for more games like that, which is how I stumbled across interactive fiction! For the next few months, it was just me falling in love with multiple interactive fictions before deciding I wanted to try my hand at writing one. 

What inspired Under Our Skins was just a car on Pinterest, and with a lot of time on my hands and a writer’s brain, I daydreamed a scene with my first character (and said car). I liked the scene so much that I then proceeded to think about how it’d make sense and what sort of a world it’d be set in and boom, I had the (rough) settings and systems of Under Our Skins. 

Read on for the full interview!

3. How does your work feature aspects of your queer identity / experience? 

I think that my writing will be influenced by the things I experience and observe in real life no matter what, and though there aren’t direct correlations, there are parallels in the way shapeshifters are treated and the way they adapt to society with the way queer people adapt to “pass” and more. 

Not all of them are purposeful, but when writing about the oppression of shapeshifters, I do take “inspiration” from the oppression that queer people face. There’s also the fact that the way shapeshifters cope with it, whether hiding or just dampening it to be more “normal” (and the fact that there’s a “normal” at all, when so many of them are born shapeshifters) just reminds me of what queer people have to do irl. 

The whole IF is not meant to be a commentary on queer people but I’ve definitely taken inspiration or been influenced by queer experiences.

4. What does your writing process look like? Any rituals or habits? Any tips, tricks, philosophies or approaches that have worked very well for you? 

My writing process is a mess. Right now, I have a planning doc, a writing doc and a google sheet with many different sections split to help me juggle the work of writing everything while stimulating my brain enough to get to work on the IF. It’s honestly pretty scattered, but hey, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

For the specifics however, it’s mostly just three phases that I constantly go back to. I use an outline to roughly plot out the chapter, which I then refer to when writing. Sometimes my writing veers off the path of my outline, sometimes parts of my outline doesn’t work with what I had written before, and I leave that to the editing part to polish everything up and just hope that it turns out alright. 

As for tips and tricks, there are two very important things that I try to keep in mind when writing: a. Your first draft is going to suck and b. Know what your other characters are doing and their motivations.

For the first, when writing, I often find myself hating whatever words I was typing – to me they all fall flat and miss their mark. This ends up with me hating writing and procrastinating continuing because if it sucks, why should I continue? But here’s the thing: it’s better that it exists and sucks, then to not exist at all. Your first draft is not supposed to be perfect, it’s job is to just exist, to pave a way for your next few drafts to improve on. If it doesn’t exist, there’s nothing to refine. So yeah, my first draft is going to suck, and I need to let it suck as long as I write it.

For the second, this just helps me more in the planning aspect. Knowing what the characters are doing helps me make sure that the timelines all line up, and to help me establish certain things even though the plot doesn’t require it just yet. It makes things feel real and more logical, and it can definitely come in handy when you cross-refer back to it.

5. How do you go about portraying queer characters, queer experiences, or queer storylines in your IF? 

I think the most important part for me is that the character’s queerness is a part of their identity, and is not their only, or most notable trait, while also acknowledging it and the way it has shaped their life.

With Under Our Skins, everyone is queer – 4 out of the 5 ROs are pansexual, one RO is trans and another is a lesbian. These are a part of their identity, and while sometimes it is just what it is, it has also impacted the way others treated them throughout their lives, and in the IF. 

I think the way I write – or will be writing, since the IF is still relatively new – is entirely linked to my queer experiences and the experiences I’ve observed. Parts of my characters I take from my own experience, others from my friends and people online, and there are also parts where I have to take creative liberties almost, like writing accepting parents and homo/transphobia.

6. Do you have favourite interactive fiction games, characters, scenes or authors that you’d like to recommend?

Here’s a list of IFs I love and adore (in no particular order):

(the famous) Infamous

Press Play

Children of Cain

Wayfarer

When Twilight Strikes

Apt 502

The six that thrive

Stygian Sun: Total Eclipse

Drink Your Villain Juice

Love After Death

The Advisor's Game

Disenchanted

and a lot more I can’t remember off the top of my head!!

7. If you were to say one thing to your readers, other authors, and/or the interactive fiction community: what would it be? 

To my readers, I’d say thank you <33 They’ve been so kind to me and the love that they’ve shown for the IF and characters is honestly so heartwarming and motivating!!

To other authors, y’all are honestly amazing and I hope that your projects work out and that you have nice lives (that sounds like a threat, help). I love so many of your works and it’s honestly an honor (?) to be an interactive fiction author when these are the people I’m standing with.

To the community, please, please be kind. Your comments, whether anonymous or not, are all directed to a person behind the screen – a person who is usually juggling their writing project alongside many, many irl responsibilities. There was a weird influx of hate recently and now that it’s mostly died down (that I’m aware of, anyway), let’s try to make it stay that way. Constructive criticism can be helpful but sending straight up hate is not and can oftentimes undermine an author’s motivation so, yeah, be kind.

[jbaileyfansite]

Jonathan Bailey recieving a little 'Benson' and telling the story on how he always wanted a puppy as a child but couldn't get it at the press tour of Jurassic World Rebirth [x]

[brunhielda]

Honestly, I am sure it is even worse for marginalized people, but in general interviewers seem to be the WORST.

In my head, any time I watch an interview or talk show I am mentally deciding if I would ever accept an interview offer with this person, as if one day, I might be famous enough people will actually be asking.

8/10 the answer is HELL NO.

I would crawl out my skin if someone made me sit on that couch for The Graham Norton Show. I might actually throw up on live tv.

Maybe it’s good I will never be famous. 😂 I would insult so many talk show hosts.

I’m always astonished at how well marginalised people keep their cool whenever they agree to go on Good Morning Britain because I think I’d last about two minutes (max) before I’d be asking if they know what a sentence is and would they let me finish one?

[popgirlssource]

Gracie Abrams | in the bag | Vouge ✧.*

[jxmimac]

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[manchesterau]

dan live on australian morning show said: "we're the guys that made your daughters hair blue, we're the person that made them a boy, maybe theyre a them now but you gotta love them because if you don't we will and that is a threat"

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[moxleyrollins]

You could have folded. You could have put this behind you at any moment. But this is your time. — Big E on Naomi finally getting her flowers

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David Foster Wallace.

[jbaileyfansite]

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