Signal & Noise: V.Tracer on Maroon, Making, and the Refusal to Specialise
Maroon is a transmedia project in the truest sense of the term, a novel, a web ecosystem, physical objects, and a worldbuilding methodology that treats every medium as a distinct point of entry into the same dark signal.
V.Tracer is the creator of Maroon — a cyberpunk transmedia universe built across fiction, 3D fabrication, and platform infrastructure. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, she is a maker in the fullest sense: coder, sculptor, fabricator, and narrative architect. Maroon is a transmedia project in the truest sense of the term, a novel, a web ecosystem, physical objects, and a worldbuilding methodology that treats every medium as a distinct point of entry into the same dark signal.
V.Tracer joined the Art of FACELESS collective as a collaborator in 2025. What follows is a direct exchange — submitted questions, unfiltered answers. No polish. No editorial retrofit. The rougher edges are, as I told her upfront, the interesting parts.
This interview was conducted as part of AOF's ongoing documentation of independent transmedia worldbuilding practice, work being made outside traditional publishing and distribution structures, by makers who own their infrastructure and their IP.
Signal & Noise: V.Tracer on Maroon | Art of FACELESS
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VT
V.Tracer
Creator, Maroon · AOF Collective
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AN
Maroon. Before we talk about what it is, tell me what it isn't. What were you trying to avoid when you started it?
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VT
For Maroon, I'm trying to avoid the full cliché of cyberpunk fiction. Calling back to it? Of course. I love the genre, but there are certain aspects that are "expected" and I'm not interested in obeying those rules just because something is "supposed" to be there.
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AN
You're skilled across a range of disciplines: coding, 3D sculpture, fabrication. Most people with that profile end up specialists. You didn't. Was that a conscious refusal, or did it just happen?
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VT
Definitely just happened.
It probably has something to do with ADHD meeting anti-authority. My education isn't formal, so I never had a clear path into one discipline. I worked with what I had.
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AN
Asheville is an interesting place to be making the kind of work you make. It has a particular creative gravity, and a particular kind of noise. How much does where you are shape what you do?
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VT
It's like nothing else to be in a city full of creatives more talented than you.
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AN
When you first encountered The Hollow Circuit — not the pitch, not the summary, but the actual work — what was your first honest reaction? Not what you thought you were supposed to think. What actually landed?
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VT
The name was an immediate pull. Then I saw the transmedia work. The art that went with it. The novel was cyber/biopunk, trippy, and weird. It was like finding others who were already doing what I was working towards.
So I had to support it.
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AN
The name Maroon carries a lot of freight. The colour. The verb. The history of the Maroon communities. Did you come to those resonances deliberately, or did you choose the word first and find them after?
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VT
The verb and the weight of this word's history are the reason for Maroon's name.
It being a great color just happened to work out well in the end!
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AN
There's a version of what you do that gets described as 'multidisciplinary' and gets filed away neatly. Are you comfortable with that filing? Why?
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VT
I'm inspired by Japanese media mix projects like .hack, where the story is designed to exist across various forms of media.
Call it multidisciplinary, cross-media worldbuilding, transmedia, or whatever you'd like. As long as you talk about it. ;)
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AN
Tell me about a project — yours or someone else's — that failed in a way that taught you something you couldn't have learned from a success.
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VT
I'll have to be a bit careful here, and excuse the cliché. I've seen a lot of great projects fail. I've learned you don't necessarily need to be the most talented person, with the most money, and the best education.
You need to be persistent at what you choose to do creatively in a way that most people aren't.
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AN
The work you make exists across physical and digital planes simultaneously — objects that have weight and files that don't. What do you think about that gap? Does it matter to you?
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VT
Does it matter to me? No.
When it comes to this work, I'll be here doing it until I feel like it's done. Whatever that means. If it all disappears when I do, that's fine.
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AN
AOF operates under a faceless protocol. No biometric exposure in the creative work. When you became aware of that, what was your instinct? Resistance, recognition, or something else?
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VT
Recognition. I'm not someone who really needs to be seen as the face behind the art. I try to be perceived as little as possible, truth be told. Being faceless is a relief.
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AN
What does Maroon want to become? Not what you want for it — what does it want?
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VT
It wants to max my credit cards and find out if it's meant to become the next cyberpunk blockbuster or The Room.
Okay, okay. You got me. That's what I want.
What Maroon wants is simple: to make fun of tech and the billionaires who ruin it without directly calling them out by name.
So if people read this weirdness through that lens and get a laugh out of it, then it has done what it set out to do.
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V.Tracer's answer to the last question is the most honest thing anyone has said to me in an interview in a long time. The self-correction, catching herself mid-answer and giving the project its own voice, is exactly the kind of instinct that makes Maroon worth paying attention to.
What she has built at maroon-series.art is a cyberpunk transmedia universe rooted in independent infrastructure: a novel, a serialised narrative, physical objects fabricated and distributed through her own supply chain, and a web presence she controls entirely. No platform dependency. No permission required.
That's the same operating principle that runs through everything AOF builds. It's why V.Tracer is in the collective. The signal is the same. The frequency just differs.
Maroon Chapter 5 is live. C0C00N is available for pre-order. Go find it.
