Liam Dryden

Open question to Liam Dryden

elanchana:

Lunaleven and I like to joke around that “Liam is Kai, Kai is Liam”, “Liam is playing himself in CoS”, etc. How do you consider yourself both similar to and different from Kairan Fisher?

I’ve had this saved in my drafts since you posted it because I wanted to give people a chance to see more of Kai, to get a better understanding of what I write here. So since you’ve now had a whole one more episode it seems like a good time!

(Warning in advance this is gonna seem really long-winded and pretentious so it’s cool if you scroll on okay yeah good)

In reference to the whole “Liam is Kai/Kai is Liam” thing: It’s not entirely true that we’re the same person, but it’s easy to see why people would say that; I mean for a while when people asked about the character, even I would just say “he’s me, but on a script”. There’s definitely parts of me and Kai that are the same, parts that people are more familiar with and more likely to point out. It’s absolutely true that a lot of what goes into Kai comes directly from my personality and experiences, because it has to! You can’t become a character if you can’t attune your own way of thinking to theirs. But like all characters, it’s a heavily exaggerated version of that personality.

I was cast in Chronicles of Syntax in 2009, based on a mix of what Sue had seen from my videos at that point, and a live audition. So basically I’ve had Kai on the back-burner of my mind for the past four years! Since in that time I myself have changed a lot as a person, I’ve had time to pick and choose aspects of myself to add to or enhance the character.

The most obvious example of this is a sort of two-year period of my videos (between about late 2010-early 2012), where I think I definitely show off the most “Kai-esque” facets of my personality. All the “pop culture reference/graphic t-shirt/unnecessary flailing/lol groovy” style content is basically the kind of thing I’m now putting into Kai. Although, it was in this period of time where my channel probably grew the most, which means most people will associate me as a person with that sort of stuff. As a result they probably won’t draw the distinction between Kai and me as well as the people that know me personally, or people who have noticed the shift in my videos since that time.

I’ve obviously been trying to tone that act down a bit since the series has been underway, because I feel like it’s important to draw a distinction; not just to let the character of Kai and CoS as a whole grow as their own thing, but also to emphasise my performance as just that - a performance - and in doing so hopefully earn credit as an actor, not just an internet personality who has been given lines and told to react.

I don’t know, this probably isn’t quite the style of answer you were looking for (you might have meant what fandoms are me and Kai both in or something). But I haven’t really talked properly about the performing aspect and since it’s not something I get to do a lot I thought I’d take this opportunity :)