Today, I’m delighted to be hanging out with the incredible Ru Xu! Ru is the creator of the long-running webcomic Saint For Rent, as well as the NewsPrints graphic novels and a host of other wonderful work. Ru and I have had the opportunity to yell about our shared fandom at a variety of cons over the years, and I am so glad to document some of those yells here, for you, my beloved readers. Let’s roll!
Good morning, Ru! Thank you for joining me! Today, I’d like to wander with you along an imaginary boardwalk. There appears to be some kind of holographic card game going on closer to the other end, but the players seem distressed, so maaaybe we avoid that part.
Thanks, Gale! I say we take a closer look, as we’ll probably end up in the Shadow Realm by the end of the Q&A anyway. 🙂
You are fully aware that I know exactly what this is, and that it brings joy to every square inch of my heart, but would you mind describing this piece for our readers at home?
This, dear readers, is the Dark Magician Girl from Yu-Gi-Oh!. I was absolutely obsessed with her as a tween, and she is still near and dear to my heart. <3 This is actually the first DMG that I drew with my first drawing tablet (Intuos2) on my first version of Photoshop (CS2).
We have bonded over the fact that we are both long-time Yu-Gi-Oh! fans, with a deep and abiding passion that just will not quit, no matter what. Had you been invested in the show for very long when you made this? How did you get into it, and how did you participate in the fandom – privately, with friends, online…?
Thank you, what a fantastic reminder that we always need music to duel by! I drew this in my early days of the YGO fandom in 2003. Konami had just started releasing the English version of the actual card game in 2002, so I had the Yugi starter pack in English as well as a Japanese Dark Magician booster pack, which my local grocery store carried for some reason??? That was the first time I saw DMG, and it’s been true love ever since.
What a tangent. Anyway, by then I had started playing the card game with the neighbor boys, and I was watching the dub every Saturday. I think this was also when webrings were around, so I also spent a lot of time lurking around fansites on Angelfire and GeoCities. And reading fanfic on ff.net.
Oh my gosh, same (magical) hat!! I remember buying the starter decks and just being very distressed that there were Actual Rules.
I don’t blame you! The first season of the anime was really loosey-goosey. It slays me that Pegasus, the actual creator of the game in canon, held a tournament and was like, “No rules~ Learn to camp! :)” and that wasn’t good enough for Kaiba when he held his own tournament: “Everyone play by the rules! Also, I’m making up new rules! Loser loses their best cards, that’s a great rule! For me!”
Pretty sure the exact same thing happened with a seven-year-old I baby-sat once… KAIBA.
What kind of a role did drawing have in your life at that time?
I drew a lot of fanart and also original characters! I always liked telling stories, and drawing helped me do that in comic form. I feel like this hasn’t changed much since I’ve grown up, although it’s harder to find that all-encompassing, life-engulfing fandom that would eat me up from inside.
I think about this sometimes! Looking back, that was a really special feeling – being able to give your whole heart to a fandom without reservation – and it’s something I really cherish now that it doesn’t happen as often (alas).
What else were you interested in? Do you feel like this influenced your creative growth?
I liked history and social studies in school. I feel like most of my worldbuilding comes from this vein rather than inspiration from fantasy novels, which I also read a lot of.
Looking at your work today, this makes a ton of sense! Was there anything in particular that really got you interested in history?
I see it as intersected stories. So many things that were a big deal in history happened concurrently. By the time Julius Caesar was killed, China was already in its second dynasty, the Han. As a part of Asian diaspora, I enjoy entertaining ideas of how a person from Han China could be in Rome at the time, and for what reasons they might be there.
One more Yu-Gi-Oh! question and I promise I will move on (MAYBE). Has your perspective on it changed over the years? Any characters or storylines you appreciate more or less than you used to?
You literally added this question because I told you I might be a Kaiba bitch now, lmao! (HEH HEH.) Looking back at it as an adult allowed me to re-contextualize what an over-the-top edgelord series it was. I don’t find the duels as engaging as I used to, but I’m still very fond of the cast. Every time I revisit the series, I feel a new appreciation for a character I’d overlooked previously.
This time, it’s Seto Kaiba. He always seemed like the most adult character who had everything together! Now that I’m over a decade older than him, I just… Who let this 17-year-old billionaire buy a goddamned city to host a card game tournament? Or build his own personal version of the International Space Station? How is he supposed to finish high school while running a major corporation while being the sole parent to his little brother? Please, Mr. Kaiba, go to therapy!!
Casually jumping out of helicopters and bullying grandpas!! Kaiba, please, this is not a sustainable lifestyle!!!
So, like… white-haired cartoon characters. I don’t know why, but if there’s a white-haired character, I am very likely to be deeply invested in their personal happiness and well-being. This was also the case when I first encountered the main character of your eponymous webcomic, Saint For Rent (highly recommended, check it out, buy the merch)!
I would like to discuss Saint For Rent with you further, because it is very good, but first I must ask: do you have white-haired-character feelings, and if so, what are they and why? Who are your Bishies of Record?
Ah, yes. My weakness. I don’t know what the charm of the white-haired character is, but there are like two or more TVTropes pages on what makes them so compelling. As for me, I’ve always liked them! There’s something about the white-haired anime boy that drew me as a young Ru, but white-haired characters encompass all genders. 🙂 Growing up, my starter pack was Ryou+Yami+Thief Bakura (Yu-Gi-Oh!), Sesshomaru (Inu-Yasha), Allen Walker (D.Grayman), and Near (Death Note). It’s entirely possible that Saint came from some unholy mix of them… :’)
Saint For Rent! It’s been going since 2012 – and you somehow also made the time to create a pair of incredible graphic novels (NewsPrints and EndGames, available at your favorite bookstore), a wildly adorable comic about a werewolf-vampire couple, and just a bunch of other great stuff. You’re prolific!
Thanks! The fun in tackling new stories keeps me going! 🙂
Has the concept or execution of SFR changed a lot since you started working on this story? What keeps you excited? And how do you keep yourself from getting lost in all of the multiple-timeline-building details??? Please tell me how to organize my life??????
The initial concept of SfR came from me wanting to do a personal spin on a time travel story, by focusing on the ‘travel’ aspect. Travelers need places to rest, so that’s where the ‘inns for time travelers’ setup came from. Over the past eight years or so, with each inn introduced, the story began to dig deeper into the system that upholds these supernatural domiciles. Why are they there? What happens at the end of an operation within a set time period, as is the case with so many of these inns? And what happens to their innkeepers? We’re at the point in the story where I get to drop the truths and to start tying loose ends! I’m looking forward to paying off the arcs I’ve spent years building.
The details are in the characters. The story arcs depend on key character interactions. Knowing when and where these exchanges take place allows me to build each character’s life from one major moment to the next. I like to think that’s how people live, too, when they revisit memories.
I used to write down notes and timelines, but updating them was a pain. Whenever I changed a key moment for a character, that meant changing stuff for all the characters involved. Nothing on paper ever kept up with what was in my head, so now I just keep it updated in my mind. SfR has taken up a huge section of my mental RAM since 2012 anyway, so I might as well store it all in the mental cloud, lol.
That means I write down the day-to-day schedule in my life, though, because my brain is too overloaded with time travel nonsense to remember dates. :’D
You are so, so strong. ;^;
Any advice for up-and-coming duelists cartoonists?
Attention, duelists cartoonists! I know everyone says start out small with short comics and stories, and I’m going to add to it. The practical reason is so that you can finish what you started to gain confidence and have more finished work under your belt. You’re learning how to comic and honing your craft more quickly with each new project.
Another benefit that I don’t see explored as much: once you have a few stories done, you can see for yourself what your patterns in storytelling are, as well as what themes you tend to explore. You end up noticing what tropes you use a lot. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Do you really LOVE the tropes/themes/plots that you use a lot?
- Or are they just things you see a lot in media you consume, so you assume you need them in your own stories?
- Are they things that a mentor told you are important?
- Do you want to keep exploring them?
- Are there other tropes/themes/plots that you touched on in a story that you really liked, and it surprised you? Why? Do you want to explore them?
As storytellers, there are certain types of stories that we gravitate toward. For some, it’s as obvious as plot setups and character archetypes (coughImaishicough). For others, it may be that their works all seem to revolve around an intangible theme. When people tell you to find your own voice, this is what they’re actually referring to: the stories from your own perspective that you’re passionate about telling, the things that you like, your patterns.
What are you trying to get everyone to read/watch right now?
The Great Pretender on Netflix is a fun heist series with super charming characters! In a similar vein, I’ve also been listening to the Scam Goddess podcast while I work these days.
Anything else you’d like to mention? Upcoming projects, people you’d like to shout out, things I really should have asked but didn’t think to…?
You can always find out what projects I’m working on over at my twitter @ruemxu!
November is coming soon, and I ask my fellow Americans to vote for a president and Congress that will bring us back to some level of sanity and not antagonize China into a war??? Please, it’s all I want for Christmas this year.
Thank you SO much for your time!!!
Thanks for indulging me~! 😀 See you at the Battle City finals!
Go follow Ru and enjoy her work!! I promise you’ll love it!!!