I love how geeky The Starchildren is coming out. There's some obscure hippie-culture reference in everything. There's a man named Wheat Germ (and yes, he has a girlfriend named Holly). There's a girl whose codename is alternately Lovelight and Glow Girl. There's a man whose name is Jim that can communicate with reptiles. They all live on a commune, whose central house is The Red House ("over yonder"), and whose residents are nicknamed The Starchildren ("...on the black road to salvation, children of the forest, child of the Woodstock nation..."). They live outside a town named Clarksville.

I think Starchildren is just solid, concrete proof of my music-geektitude. Glow Girl/Lovelight is my Big Geeky Self-Insert. I think I've managed to avoid Mary-Sueing, though. She's kindhearted, friendly, and cheerful, but she's also nosy as hell, impatient, and stubborn. And her powers aren't godlike. In fact, they're not that useful: she can touch things and make them glow in the dark indefinitely. She's got a minor complex about it, too; her brothers have superstrength, invulnerability, and telekinesis, but she... pokes things. And they glow. If it's dark. (Her defense: "I can help you find your keys if you drop them in the dark!")

I love all of the Starchildren--Flowerchild, the Lizard King, Wheat Germ, Glow Girl/Lovelight, Woodstock, Radical, Dude, and Doobie. Most of them don't have very useful powers, which adds to their nonviolent stance. (i.e., "I don't want to get my ass kicked by some guy that could rip me in half like a phonebook. What can I do? I can make my hair grow to my ankles. Or I can bald myself without scissors and a shaver. Big fuckin' deal. I would die in a fight.")

They're normal people with mutations. They don't have tragic pasts that they must atone for. They don't feel as though they have to break kneecaps and bust faces to further the cause for peace. They're just people, really; they've never been trained for combat with superhumans or anything like that. But most of them are the optimistic hippie-type, who feel as though they can make things better through nonviolence and kindness to all beings. Of course, this doesn't work sometimes. Sometimes it does make things better. Sometimes it just makes people all the more suspicious.

What would you do if you got superpowers one day?

If I had superpowers, I would go about my life as usual. I would keep pushing for nonviolence; I would keep pushing for environmental cleanup; I would keep pushing for universal, divine love for all people. But superpowers might make my more menial tasks and jobs easier--I wouldn't have to stop to clean up my room, I could do it with telekinesis; I wouldn't have to pollute the earth by driving or tire myself by walking, I could fly; so on and so forth.