Urgk.

Stomach hurts, tired but lying awake obsessively composing lj and paper journal entries regarding fic-writing paranoias and etc.

Probably shouldn't have blown off the weather folklore assignment/project. Am feeling like a bad person because of being a bad student. Also, cruising for insomnia. If I'm still awake at four a.m., I'll fake something up for the assignment, try for partial credit. And probably post some of those paranoid ramblings, too.

Now that I'm properly motivated to get to sleep...

Chewable antacids consumed: 2
Hours til alarm goes off: 7.5

Good morning, snowstorm.

So, we're going to skip straight over the homework angst and the fic-writing paranoia, and get straight to the Deep Thought.

What's slashy?

I'm not really confident in my ability to make a valid judgement on slashiness, but there are things that I think qualify, and, for me, they're generally *not* connected to anything I'd want to read or write slash about. This includes but is not limited to: nearly every interaction between Winters and Nixon in Band of Brothers the last twenty minutes of Jaws, which is the only part of the movie I've seen, from Richard Dreyfus going into the cage until they paddle off into the sunset, and, maybe, but I'm not sure about this, Catch Me if You Can, pretty much the whole part of the plot involving Frank and Carl's interaction.

And let me just say again: I don't mean, by that, that I think the relationship portrayed is a sexual or romantic one, and I don't want to read, or write, or even really think about the characters getting it on (especially not Winters and Nixon, because, okay, popstar RPS is one thing, but, dude, no).

So what *do* I mean? I mean it pushes my guy/guy buttons, makes me go Awwww and feel all warm and fuzzy. I think, sadly, that it boils down to pretty much any instance of two guys sharing caring/affection/tenderness (Or: Why Spy Game is a Touching Love Story, No, Really, I Mean It). I think my brain equates it partially to slash because those behaviors aren't typical between your average macho het guys. Which doesn't mean the guys who do it aren't het, I tell my brain, it means they're not locked into rigid homophobic gender roles, and that's *good*, and you should be impressed by their ability to be straight in a way that nonetheless allows them to care about other guys, not assume that their ability to do so makes them automatically a little bit gay. I think. Right?

The question is complicated by me and my best friend, who, I realized a few weeks ago, are slashy. If we were guys, and we behaved the way we do, we'd be really, really slashy. I think the effect is muted by our being female: affection doesn't stand out so much on women, because we're supposed to be all nurturing, but the fact remains that we come off like the other kind of girlfriends, most of the time.

So. I don't know what any of that means, and I'd go on to talk about why slash, and why guys, and stuff like that, but I have to get dressed and go to class and learn about snowstorms and not think about the fact that, hey, I didn't turn in that project. Good things I carry Tums in my backpack. Silly stomach.

(no subject)

Bleah. Thinking I should jump on the meme being propogated by zyre and mpoetess and others are propagating and get on the paid user bandwagon. Sort of maybe, um, toolazytogetupandfindmywallet.

Anyway, re: late night fic-writing paranoias, I'm just not writing anything today, except in the sense of pages of long-hand pen-and-paper writing in which I hash out what the hell is going on with these characters and what three pov's I need to add to the bits I thought I was done with and. Argh. Am also not reading any fic for a day or two, or as long as I can manage to go. Almost like giving up slash for Lent, except that it's not going to last anywhere near 40 days, and I can't really imagine calling up my Mom and telling her I gave up reading about gay vampire sex in preparation for the biggest feast day of the Catholic year... Among other things, I don't think she'd buy it if I claimed to have started, y'know, celebrating Lent.

The paranoia comes in mainly in that I've been reading lots of good stuff lately (pause for switchover to failure-to-feedback paranoia), and so then I've got, say, jennyo's Dawn rattling around my head, and ladycat777's Spike (well, three of her Spikes, actually), and so on, and I'm half-convinced that they've hit upon the One Right Way to interpret the character, and half-terrified that I'll start subconsciously ripping them off, and, in any case, get all paranoid. So maybe if I lay off the fic for a day or two, that will abate. Or, y'know, I could just read fic til the bad thoughts go away. That might work too.

Whole 'nother kind of feedback anxiety...

So I have this little brother. I have two, actually, but the one who causes me worry is the one who's nearest to hand, a college freshman here. He's applying to the School of Music, and he wants me to proofread his (already late) application essays. So I read them.

And now I have to say something, and I don't even know where to begin...

College is a time of discovery and exploration. Take that as you may, the intended inference is that of the future-oriented, career-planning
forethought of upper-level education. Although I have, for most of my teen
years, had a fairly strong intimation of the few select areas in which I may
both thrive and be happy in a career, the first year here at the University of
Michigan has driven me to discover my one true calling: theatre.

Honey: rewrite it so it's not *lame*, that would be a good start. Coherent would also be a plus. And only use words that you are familiar with the meaning of. And. Sigh. Little brothers: can't shoot 'em. Also can't really bear the thought of saying 'you have a typo in paragraph three but otherwise it looks great' and just... letting him turn that in. I mean, he really wants to do this School of Music thing. I'm bound by filial affection to stop him shooting himself in the foot with an irretrievably stupid essay. Rewriting the whole thing for him wouldn't solve the problem, though. And he's eighteen, and there's a certain full-of-oneself floweriness that I seem to remember going through late in high school, so. Maybe I should just let him get on with that. Maybe the School of Music won't mind.

The second essay... sigh, again. The instructions read:

Write a two-page, single-spaced narrative for which the [above] poem serves as a
creative catalyst, featuring yourself as the "main character".

Quite aside from the instruction-writer's need to put the phrase "main character" in quotes (like, what, this is some way-out usage that they're trying to distance themselves from?)... little brother doesn't seem to have understood 'yourself' in quite the normal sense. Said narrative is written in the first person, but, unless watching The Pianist has had a much greater psychological impact than I was aware of, he doesn't actually believe himself to be a Jew fleeing Nazis in Berlin. Sigh, again. Not to mention his story basically turning the poem into a story, to the point of mentioning all the same objects and yet totally managing to miss much of the point of the poem, and.

I love him, I do. Of my four brothers, he's the one I feel closest to in a certain specific sense. My older brothers, though no more distant in age than my younger brothers, have always seemed, y'know, older. And youngest brother is still a baby. And by that I mean he's sixteen, and no, I don't want to hear how very much sixteen-year-old boys are not babies, doesn't apply in this case.

But, Jebus. I don't know what to say.