Because of these several impediments, as well as other technical difficulties, you will find typos and occasional replication of text. In our humble opinion, typos show that the logs are of *live* chats, not canned interviews, and minimal editing of these logs has taken place.

Terence Chua's Home Page

[Cybling] Okay folks, Terence is here, just ran in from a concert with his guitar and sweating...
[Cybling] let's give him a big welcome..
[John] HI Terence!
[Chua] Hi all!
[Ryan] Hi there
[Chua] Just getting used to this keyboard...
[RandySmith] Hi, Chua.
* Cybling waves at Terence
[Chua] Not sure what you guys are gonna ask me, but ask away and I'll do my best to answer.
[John] What's the meaning of life?
[Chua] To give me all of your money.
[John] AH
[Cybling] Terence, you're a longtime fan nd new filker. How new?
[Cybling] LOLOL
[Chua] I got sucked into it when I attended Aussiecon last year.
[Ryan] Heh...
[John] Actually, what is Filking anyway?
[Chua] So about a year or so.
[Chua] Good question...
[MoonScale] Not to be rude, but I'd like to leave now
* MoonScale waves good night
[Ryan] Night MoonScale :)
[Chua] Filking is basically science fiction themed songs, or fannish songs.
[Chua] Think stuff like Weird Al Yankovic's "Yoda", for example.\
[John] AH, LOVE that song!
[Cybling] Good way to explain it Terence.
[Cybling] You actually live in Singapore, correct?
[Chua] Yep. Long way away from here.
[Cybling] You flew in just for this convention?
[John] WELCOME to the USA!
[Chua] I fly to the USA once or twice a year, usually. I have a lot of friends in Boston.
[Chua] After the Con, I'll be spending a week in Boston with them.
[John] Go SOX :)
[Cybling] Terence you have no accent and type like a deamon possessed. Are you american originally, or studied here?
[Chua] Nah. Just raised on British and US TV.
[John] What instrument do you play for Filking?
[Cybling] cool.
[Chua] A guitar. A very forgiving instrument. SOmetimes when you screw up, it sounds like you meant it.
[Cybling] ABBA based filk...that's what you call your work. ABBA?
[John] I tried that for a year, could not get the bar chords!
[Chua] Heh. I cheat on barre chords.
[Chua] Yeah, I started out by parodying ABBA songs.
[John] REALLY? what's your secret???
[Chua] John, only playing four strings.
[John] AH!
[Cybling] lololol
[Cybling] Terence you have a panel tomorrow on Friday called...
[John] There goes 2 yers of lesons down the drain!
[Cybling] Are Comic book Plots "Real Literature." I take it you're a comic book fan?
[Chua] Yes - since I was 3, if you believe my Mom. Aside from a 2-year hiatus from 1978 to 1980, I've been reading comics for 27 years.
[John] What happened between those years
[Kai] did someone say comics
* Kai perks up
[Chua] Oh. My Mom decided I was "too old" for comics and threw out my entire collection to date.
[Cybling] Ow!
[Kai] awww man
[Kai] thats bad
[John] OUCH!!!
[Chua] Yeah. Anyway, in 1980 I decided to pick up a copy of X-Men to see what was up.
[John] Same with my mom and baseball cards...must be genetic
* John ducks
[Kai] Mr.Chua Whats is your favorite comic or graphic novel and by whom
[Chua] I turned the cover page and I saw the X=Men looking down at a grave with the words JEAN GREY, died 1980.
[Chua] I had missed the ENTIRE Dark Pheonix saga. I swore never to give up comics again.
[Cybling] Oh dear.
[John] LOL
[Chua] Kai, God, there are so many.
[Kai] i Know
[Chua] Okay, let's see...
[John] Now we see how he handles pressure!
[Chua] If I had to teach a course on comic books in the second half of the century...
[Chua] I'd showcase two books.
[Chua] One - The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, and two - Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
[Cybling] Okay...I'm not a comic fan so I need some info here...
[Kai] those are so cool comics
[Cybling] what makes these two so special?
[Chua] Well, that'd take a lecture, really. :-)
[Chua] I'll try to keep it brief.
[Kai] Frank Miller works are nicely done
[Chua] DKR introduced the deconstructionist view into comic books.
[Chua] It was set 20 years in the future, about an aged Batman returning from retirement.
[John] Didn't Batman get injured by...Bane or whatever?
[Chua] It had themes ranging from vigilantism - at that time Bernie Goetz was a big deal - to the militarism of the Republican regime.
[Chua] That was in the regular comics several years later, John.
[Chua] DKR was published in 1986.
[John] Ah, ok
[Cybling] Thanks Terence!
[Cybling] Terence, I've been to your site and listened to your song about Chthulu.
[Chua] Oh dear. :)
[Cybling] What made you choose Lovecraftian themes?
[Kai] lol
[Chua] Well, I love Lovecraft's work.
[Kai] Terence do you have a email or something so i could contact you to talk to you about some comics and all
[Chua] And it seemed to go together with ABBA, the two being equally blasphemous.
[Cybling] lololol
[John] LOL
* Cybling snorts with laughter
[Chua] Kai, you can always find me on rec.arts.comics newsgroups.
* John hortles with demonic laughter
[Cybling] Excellent!
[Cybling] So you're a regular on rec.arts.comics.newsgroups excellent!
[Kai] ok
[Cybling] You're on another panel tomorrow...
[Cybling] Filk: North America Meets the Rest of the World....
[John] ah, another newsgroup to monitor...I don't have enough already!
[Cybling] is there something insular about Filk?
[Cybling] that we don't notice, like we don't notice all of our other cultural chauvinism?
[Chua] Well, filk is mostly North American dominated primarily because nearly all F&SF comes from the US.
[Chua] So it's much easier to write filk based on American SF themes.
[John] Who thought up the work Filk?
[Chua] The story goes that it was a typo.,
[Chua] Years ago, during one of the first SF cons, someone at the publications section mistyped the word "folk" songs.
[John] Really? wow, in that case, I invented 3 new words tonight lone!
[John] alone, that is
* Chua grins
[Chua] Kai, what comics do you read?
[John] What do you think about the new spiderman movie about to be filmed
[Chua] I think it's an interesting idea. I've read part of the treatment for it and it sounds good.
[Kai] lots ranging from Cyberpunk-Manga
[John] They got the Cider House Rules kid for the lead, correct?
[Chua] X-Men didn't suck as badly as I thought it would, so if they keep it up, Spider-Man has a good shot at not sucking either.
[Chua] Yeah, Tobey Maguire.
[John] AH!
[Cybling] Speaking of Manga...are you also a manga fan or is that only a subset of the whole comics fandom experience?
[Kai] the last graphic novel was Punisher & Wolverine Revelation
[John] Yeah, Patrick Stewart was a good choice
[Chua] Kai, yeah, I see the manga connection there. :)
[Kai] Pat Lee does some great art
[Ryan] mmmmm manga
[Chua] I'm not a big manga fan. The only manga I really own is Maison Ikkoku, by Rumiko Takahashi.
[John] manga? There are comics about eating???
[Chua] Manga are what they call comics in Japan.
* Cybling thwaps john
[John] Oh
[Ryan] LOL
[Kai] Some manga's art good like Ghost In Shell and Gundamm Wing
[Cybling] Are there any more questions for Terence Chua...we're getting close to the end of his chat time.
[Kai]
*Gundam
[Cybling] final question anyone?
[Chua] I guess I was just raised on good old American super-hero comics to the point where manga doesn't always work for me.
[John] going once
[Cybling] Okay...folks, I'm sorry.
[Cybling] I know Terence is a great guest...
[Kai] yup mr.chua how are you finally getting out in the open with people liking you so much
[Cybling] we'll have to get him back online with us once he gets back home to Singapore.
[Cybling] For now...let's give him a big round of applause!
* Cybling applauds loudly
[Chua] I love the attention. Now if only I can get groupies.
[Cybling] LOLOLOl
* Chua bows.
[Cybling] We'll work on that one.
* John appluds even louder now
[Kai] lol
[Chua] See you later, guys.
[John] Nite all!
[Kai] bye