The Odds

Interview with Lizzie (RobotsWillCry)

[Questions by Carl (GhostOfTheIceberg)]

Hi! I'm assuming it's okay if I call you Robots? Your username is a bit long to type out!

No! It’s Lizzie, thanks. Nobody has called me Robots in over a year and there’s a good reason for that! I've had too many pseudonyms...let's stick with Lizzie.

Alright, then; how about we get to the serious stuff. Of the four "Gamemakers" of sorts who were active during the original Author Games, you're the only one who is still a member of the Gamemaking team. Could you comment on the progression of the account to what it is today?

This is a nasty question, you know that? Jack did a great job setting the account up and getting it started. All the bases were there: brilliant ideas, solid structure, all that sort of thing. But I don’t think it’s stretching it to point out that there were punctuality and organisation issues. That was why, when Jack offered me the chance to take over, I decided it was time to do something about that. I’d like to think we’ve been successful! That’s probably my major contribution to the account, to be honest. Everything else existed before the hand-over. 

Now, Age of Rebellion marks the beginning of your first term as president of the account, so you must have picked up plenty of tricks to running such a prolific account. What would you say is the most important thing you've learned?

Second term. Not first. Come on, Ghostie, you should know that!

Listen up, wannabe Gamemakers (I know you’re out there). Don’t be too soft. Don’t let competitors – even if they’re your friends – walk all over you. Make rules and stick to them. It makes things easier to organise and that way everybody knows what’s going on. But it’s important not to be too strict either. You need a certain degree of flexibility. It’s getting a balance, really. I know I lean towards being too strict, but I think that way it’s easier for everybody.

Oh, and one more thing. As torturous as it is knowing that someone deserves to win and probably isn’t going to, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Obviously besides running the account, you're an integral part of the Gamemaking team, just like anybody else. What would you say have been the most challenging Games for you to host? Which was the most enjoyable?

The most challenging was Seasons, by a long shot! Any Games where a Gamemaker vanishes without warning is challenging to run, but in Seasons both Jack and Luna disappeared and I had to try and pick up the pieces…which meant dealing with the vote-grubbing controversy, arranging tasks and formatting entries, all in the middle of my first-year exams at uni. Nowadays that sounds pretty simple, quite run-of-the-mill, but until then I’d never done any of that stuff. I’d just offered opinions when asked. So it was a bit of a shock. I must have proved I was capable, though; I was offered the chance to take over almost immediately afterwards!

I loved The Empty Throne, because it meant a lot of world-building and creative thought to build the idea into a proper Games. It was also, at the time, one of the strongest competitions we’d ever had and I loved watching everybody take the base that we’d created and build on it.

Is there anything in particular you'd like to see in our next Games?

I want to see people enjoying themselves! Oh, and I want to see realistic characters, imaginative ideas and people actually following the tasks this time!

Your alter ego, Alithia Warwell, is known for her sternness - her glare is known to be her trademark feature, and anybody whose trademark colour is grey can't be the bubbliest. How does she compare to you as a person?

Small correction: Alithia's favourite colour is dark blue, not grey!

Originally Alithia was a personification of my worst traits – a lot of people will be familiar with those! Over the course of the Games she’s started to develop her own personality around those, so I suppose actually she’s a bit more like me overall now. But only a bit! We’re not that much alike. I’m much more cheerful than her (though that’s not hard) and I’m a lot more relaxed and a bit less of a bitch. I'm a little bit more awkward around people than she is and, unlike her, I have the tendency to really put my foot in it. And I have a much better dress sense too. But I do have her no-nonsense attitude!

Now, let's pull away from the Author_Games universe for the rest of the interview. Do you prefer to read or write?

As a Lit student, I suppose I’m expected to say read, right? But it depends. When I’ve got an idea, writing is all I want to do. I have been known to scribble ideas on the back of football tickets before. But when I’m short on ideas or I’m tired, I love to curl up with a book. That or bake! You might not believe it, but I’m actually quite a good baker.

I suppose I’m not as much of a reader as I should be. Reading places your emotions in someone else’s hands; I prefer to control my own and use my writing to manipulate those of others. And on my course I rarely get time to read anything for my own amusement; it’s mostly just what’s on my reading lists.

Anybody who goes to your profile can see that you've written your fair share of Hunger Games fanfiction, but you've also written other novels, most of which are roughly dystopian. What's your favourite genre to write?

 Oh, you must be talking about the Shades series (shameless plug)! They’re pretty typical of what I enjoy writing; something where I can create a world and see how the characters respond. It doesn’t have to be dystopian. It can be science fiction – most of my early stories which are now deleted were sci-fi – or fantasy, or adventure, just so long as I get to make the setting as well as the characters. Coloured In and the other two are a little bit of an exception in that they’re set specifically on earth at a specific time (a hundred or so years into the future, after a build-up of existential angst has caused a war that changes what it means to be an individual forever). The rest have always been a little more improbable. Zombies, colliding universes, unidentified places where some people can see into the future…that sort of thing. Things that people can recognise, tied in with things they can’t. It's fun for me to write and I'd hope it's fun for the reader to read, too.

Now away from Wattpad all together! These interviews are, after all, about getting to know the people behind the characters. What should we know about you?

What do you want to know?

I’m not the easiest person to get along with! I’m harsh but I’m fair. Give me a reasonable chance and I’ll give you one too; give me no nonsense and you’ll find that I’m always up for a laugh, even if my sense of humour is a bit childish and mucky. I love sport, especially cricket and football, and now that I’ve tried surfing I just want to be able to surf every day (I live well inland, unfortunately). I value honesty above anything and I think I'm almost as loyal as you can get - especially to my sports teams!

And I’d survive the Hunger Games.