can anybody find me somebody to love?
How To Research A Poem
Cruise through your hometown
looking for old friends,
marking into different columns
who has grown fat, bald, or dead.
Snap pictures of new storefronts.
Be sure to note the names of
what those places used to be.
Thumb through your high school
yearbook, phone your date for the prom
pretending to be pleased as she talks
about her spouse and children.
Explore your grandmother's house
looking for remnant shadows,
ignoring the nice young couple
who bought the house six years ago.
Dig through your parent's yard
for the bones of the family pet,
measuring the distance from
the garage to the femur both
in feet and meters.
Hang the Do Not Disturb sign for room 5
of the Ace Motel on your way out of town,
taking advantage of the cold shower
and neon lights outside your window.
~Justin Evans
***
Remix update:
= 25 stories still outstanding from their original remixers, all of whom have been in contact with me.
= 23 stories with pinch hitters.
That's actually not bad. I think. I hope. Fewer outstanding stories would be better, but *deep breath* I can be zen about this. I can. Dammit.
***
My own pinch hit, well, last night I was writing and getting ... not frustrated, but I think I am too close to this story. I mean, I really like the original story, and I am thrilled to be remixing it, a thrill that's been missing for most of this year's remix, to be honest, but also, I feel like, in making this story my own, in reshaping it, I've gotten too close, too entangled, and it's making it harder for me to write instead of easier, because I can't seem to step back and see what's best for the story. I'm not even sure I could explain it even if I could go into detail, and I'm pretty sure this one will be obvious as mine as soon as you read it, and I really hope that the story that ends up on paper is as amazing as the story in my head.
Sigh.
***
spnroundtable is discussing genderswap/genderfuck, and I still have not really figured out why always-a-girl!Sam has such a stranglehold on my writing brain (aside from how she is hot like burning), but she does.
My rambling comment, so I can find it again, behind the cut.
You know, I am still not certain *why* it works for me so well in SPN when I have never really cared one way or the other about genderswap in other fandoms. I mean, the stories where Dean is turned into a girl can be a lot of fun, and I've read some lovely ones where Sam wakes up a girl etc., but what really interests me is what if Sam were always a girl, and it specifically has to be Sam. Dean as a girl from the start interests me very little (and then only in relation to John (in a non-incest way, please)), mostly because I feel like it removes the most interesting thing about his character - that apparent split between the tough guy persona he wears and the obviously maternal influence he was in Sam's life.
If you make him a girl from the get-go, it's much harder to see the strain that role has put on him, because aren't girls "supposed" to take care of the family and love babies and all that crap? Girl!Dean can so easily become yet another woman who suffers and endures for her family, whereas with Dean as he is in canon, we can see what that kind of pressure does to a child without those stereotypical gender notions.
But the slight changes in the Sam/Dean dynamic if Sam is a girl? That really pings for me, given my kink for older brother/younger sister hetcest, especially ferociously protective older brother/somehow special younger sister.
Also, given my read of Dean as straight and definitely into women, I find it much easier (in the sense that the writer won't have to work as hard to get me to believe it) (and a million times hotter) to read Wincest with Sam as a girl than a guy. (I have actually have a harder time buying most Dean slash than I do Sam/Dean of most varieties).
Part of it is definitely wanting to see how Dean would change/be the same with having a constant female presence in his life. And part of it is indulging my own hetcest kink, which is specifically geared towards protective older brother/somehow special younger sister (Simon/River; Eomer/Eowyn), and the brother/brother dynamic just doesn't quite do it for me in that way.
Obviously, I have thought about this way too much. I thought writing one story where Sam has always been a girl would be enough, but apparently it's not. I can't seem to stop.
***
Cruise through your hometown
looking for old friends,
marking into different columns
who has grown fat, bald, or dead.
Snap pictures of new storefronts.
Be sure to note the names of
what those places used to be.
Thumb through your high school
yearbook, phone your date for the prom
pretending to be pleased as she talks
about her spouse and children.
Explore your grandmother's house
looking for remnant shadows,
ignoring the nice young couple
who bought the house six years ago.
Dig through your parent's yard
for the bones of the family pet,
measuring the distance from
the garage to the femur both
in feet and meters.
Hang the Do Not Disturb sign for room 5
of the Ace Motel on your way out of town,
taking advantage of the cold shower
and neon lights outside your window.
~Justin Evans
***
Remix update:
= 25 stories still outstanding from their original remixers, all of whom have been in contact with me.
= 23 stories with pinch hitters.
That's actually not bad. I think. I hope. Fewer outstanding stories would be better, but *deep breath* I can be zen about this. I can. Dammit.
***
My own pinch hit, well, last night I was writing and getting ... not frustrated, but I think I am too close to this story. I mean, I really like the original story, and I am thrilled to be remixing it, a thrill that's been missing for most of this year's remix, to be honest, but also, I feel like, in making this story my own, in reshaping it, I've gotten too close, too entangled, and it's making it harder for me to write instead of easier, because I can't seem to step back and see what's best for the story. I'm not even sure I could explain it even if I could go into detail, and I'm pretty sure this one will be obvious as mine as soon as you read it, and I really hope that the story that ends up on paper is as amazing as the story in my head.
Sigh.
***
spnroundtable is discussing genderswap/genderfuck, and I still have not really figured out why always-a-girl!Sam has such a stranglehold on my writing brain (aside from how she is hot like burning), but she does.
My rambling comment, so I can find it again, behind the cut.
You know, I am still not certain *why* it works for me so well in SPN when I have never really cared one way or the other about genderswap in other fandoms. I mean, the stories where Dean is turned into a girl can be a lot of fun, and I've read some lovely ones where Sam wakes up a girl etc., but what really interests me is what if Sam were always a girl, and it specifically has to be Sam. Dean as a girl from the start interests me very little (and then only in relation to John (in a non-incest way, please)), mostly because I feel like it removes the most interesting thing about his character - that apparent split between the tough guy persona he wears and the obviously maternal influence he was in Sam's life.
If you make him a girl from the get-go, it's much harder to see the strain that role has put on him, because aren't girls "supposed" to take care of the family and love babies and all that crap? Girl!Dean can so easily become yet another woman who suffers and endures for her family, whereas with Dean as he is in canon, we can see what that kind of pressure does to a child without those stereotypical gender notions.
But the slight changes in the Sam/Dean dynamic if Sam is a girl? That really pings for me, given my kink for older brother/younger sister hetcest, especially ferociously protective older brother/somehow special younger sister.
Also, given my read of Dean as straight and definitely into women, I find it much easier (in the sense that the writer won't have to work as hard to get me to believe it) (and a million times hotter) to read Wincest with Sam as a girl than a guy. (I have actually have a harder time buying most Dean slash than I do Sam/Dean of most varieties).
Part of it is definitely wanting to see how Dean would change/be the same with having a constant female presence in his life. And part of it is indulging my own hetcest kink, which is specifically geared towards protective older brother/somehow special younger sister (Simon/River; Eomer/Eowyn), and the brother/brother dynamic just doesn't quite do it for me in that way.
Obviously, I have thought about this way too much. I thought writing one story where Sam has always been a girl would be enough, but apparently it's not. I can't seem to stop.
***