I love Wednesdays

Wednesdays are nice, because that's when Mr. Estepheia takes the morning off...

This has been a busy week, RL-wise: Boardgaming, fantasy role-playing, meals, helping my English lecturer make posters for an upcoming creative writing competition, and the usual taking kids here and there.

The whole week will be busy, so I won't get a lot of writing done. I haven't even checked my LJ-friends' posts, yet.

Today I have to take the kids to gym class. Since it's 'Fasching' (or 'Karneval') here in Germany, they have to dress up in costume. I think I'll go for black cat in Tina's case. On Friday there's the big 'Faschingsparty' at kindergarten. Tina will be a Princess again. Not sure what to do with Toyah...

Here in Northern Germany 'Fasching' is no big deal. The kids are keen on it, but the habit of spending a week in costume, getting sloshed and hitting on everything that moves is more of a Rhineland thing. Together with the enforced bad clumsy totally un-witty har-dee-har teutonic dialect humor that has given us a bad name throughout the world. I'm really glad I live in Northern Germany, where we either have no sense of humor at all (which is better than the teutonic variety, trust me) or sound rude when we try to be funny (always better than sounding moronic).

Time to make lunch (Potatoe pancakes with apple sauce - yummie)

Why slash? How to define chemistry?

I wishlordshiva would continue her threesome fic. Speaking of Kalima, I'd like to mention that she raised a few interesting questions about slash and other fanfiction today.

I read an essay that dealt with the reasons why women read and write slash fiction. If I remember correctly, that essay maintained that slash fiction explores relationships among two individuals that are not set apart because of gender. Any conflict between them is a conflict of two equals and any power shifts between them are not predetermined by their gender but by other factors.
The reader can identify with both characters and roles in the relationship without feeling obliged to take sides.
I remember the rape discussions and gender games that went on during S6 of Buffy and have to agree that had the whole Spike/Buffy relationship been about to characters of equal gender, the discussions about the attempted rape might not have become quite as heated.
So, when we're not forced to take sides in the battle between the sexes we can go places in our heads which we might not visit otherwise.
*Shrug*
Lordshiva/Kalima also wondered whether we are being conditioned to see strife as sexy. Characters that are aggressive are supposed to have chemistry. I think that's very true.

I've known Mr. Estepheia for 25 years, we've been married for almost 15 years. We hardly ever argue, we have no agressive sparks, we're just happy in a very content and boring way. Sometimes I feel like we ought to be fighting to get some spice in our lives and then I smack my head. What am I thinking?! What's wrong with happy????

Yeah, fights make good stories, but in real life I can do without that kind of chemistry, thank you very much.