Creative narcissism

Oh I'm writing alright. I got into college and got over all my angst about wanting to study what I want and not what is profitable. I'm starting my classes in September, and I'll be studying performance arts, so yay me. It makes me happy and inspired to know that I'm closer to becoming what I want to become.

But I'm currently in Moscow, living with my three friends in a flat with two computers, so my writing is limited to scribblings in my notebook and retyping them when the boys are sleeping. I'll be back on 25th and I hope to finish the sixth chapter of "Light and Fire" by then as well as accumulate enough material to start posting Ethan Rayne's diaries. But, well, who knows.

It looks like I've come to a break with my original work also, which sadly means you'll be seeing even less of me, since the majority of my original work is in Russian.

Life is generally fabulous, and everything is extremely perfect even despite the fact that I ruined my favorite shoes and now will have to go shopping when I return to Saint-Petersburg. I hate shopping, but life gives me lost of orgasms of different kinds, so I guess I'll make do.

I have a very big aversion to big touchy-feely talks that seem to spoil almost every fic I read. I've been reading a lot of Queer as Folk fiction, because BtVS/AtS fandom seems to be on vacation... And one of the most favorite plot devices in QaF fics is a shrink. Now I'm not against shrinks, don't get me wrong. I just think it is slacking off. You can't make characters understand something on their own, so you send a person to deliver the message. Sometimes it's plausible, but more often than not it's just, you know, a fangirl preaching to her favorite character. A self-insert. Now I would really want to read something about how Brian is dragged kicking and screaming to a therapist, and how that therapist completely fucks him over and drives him into a mental institution, to a suicide attempt or at least to throw Justing off one of his cliffs.


Another variation of a shrink as a plot device - long emotional discussions between the characters. It's not only QaFs problem, BtVS people suffer from this disease excessively.  Two characters have an emotional moment, alright, I get that. We all can see them weepy and emotional from time to time in canon... But when they continue having this emotional moment for twenty pages of yammering about how they love each other and about their issues - it's bullshit. They are grown men, for fuck's sake! I am a very introspective lesbian (for some reason people think lesbians are even worse than heterosexual women about the talking shit... I guess sometimes they are) with 2 years of Philosophy major and a tendency to be very open about my feelings - and even I don't talk this much!

Okay, I get it, sometimes real-life people really have very, very long talks. They do. I get it. But - newsflash! - you're not writing about real people. Twenty fucking pages of dialogue working through the feelings readers already understand is boring and anticlimactic. Where's the action? Do all your characters do is freak out, fuck and talk in different combinations?

Yeah, I know, I know. I should do something constructive instead of rant. Not now, though.

I have only one exam to go, and then I'm blissfully free to write anything I could possibly want... So this is kind of preview of things to come and a reminder for me not to laze around)

1. Light and Fire series. I haven't even finished the first part yet, but I already have 4 more planned, so wow, can you say "epic"? Well, maybe not for everyone, but for me it is.

2. Another Spike/Oz fic I have been planning for quite a long time, but delayed starting because I didn't want to get distracted. It goes AU after "New Moon Rising" with Oz staying in Sunnydale and becoming a very important figure in whole life-and-death battle. I've been toying around, reworking some parts of the plot entirely, but leaving other scenes almost completely intact... So it will be kinda strange, but I think actually easier than Light and Fire because I've at least seen Spike in a lot of situations that will arise.

3. Giles/Ethan story I've been working on with my co-author Jess, which actually starts to take form now, and a human AU Angel/Spike story, again cooperating with her. I'm very lucky to have found her, because I don't think I would finish any of those projects by myself, seeing as I write rather slowly. With her, I supply most of the ideas and write some scenes, but she does most of the writing, and it's perfect for me.

4. I started to do joss100 table for Ethan Rayne, but decided to keep it just on my computer for now, because I'm so slumped with my studies. When I figure out more of it, I'll start posting.

5. This actually should be listed first, because I'm really invested in this project. It will be the first original story I write in English, and it is set in alternative universe which I worked rather hard on conceptualizing. Romantically speaking, it will be mostly femslash, but the focus will be divided between romance and the actual plot involving supernatural occurrences, Apocalypse and a lot of morally questionable decisions. The working title of this one is "The Worlds Between", and it will be not as much a story about one group of people (although it will start that way), as a weird web of connections between different parts of a large multiverse.


And this is all nice and fabulous, but I realize that there is a huge risk that when I start studying (I'll finally study what I like, not some random thing, yay! 2 years of floating around are totally worth it, because now I actually get to do what I want) all those projects will fade to the background. I have a lot of writing to do in Russian, things I could actually get paid for, and so many things to learn I feel completely overwhelmed. So, yeah... This is basically a post I will feel guilty about in the future... Maybe that will motivate me to finish all those things.