~~ reading, writing, angst & sex. yah, right.

there's like a writer's curse, or something, at work for me, it seems. maybe it's like when you do architecture for a living, you start seeing the supports and the angles and the window-types and "can i do this" and "no, i don't have the money for that" and "damn, that stone is expensive", instead of, "oh, what a beautiful building"-- which you're still aware of, but there are all these other things crowding in.

in general, reading is a joyous thing, and the better the writer, the more pleasure's there to be had. i hadn't tended to -notice- the details of sentence composition, quality of dialogue, word-choice, not on a conscious level. it was something i was aware of in the background, but it didn't overwhelm the sense of being taken away by the story, being lost in the fictional world.
    and now, it's like i've got this stubborn, horrible mind for details. not all the time-- i definitely do let go a lot, still. but it was just kind of scary, perusing a book on a bookstore shelf and seeing it from an editor's/fellow writer's perspective, and thinking, "wow, that's smooth and professional".

( am i having angst about a type of reading perception? or maybe to summarize, it's just weird having a writer's perception while reading. makes me feel either inadequate or patronizing. erk. )

~~

thinking about the weird and wacky world of fanfiction sexual orientation and romantic mores, and how that applies to "real life". mostly people don't think of it that way (since maybe it doesn't apply), but. in shows/canon where the characters are in a number of heterosexual relationships, the idea that all this "doesn't matter", that these extraneous het love interests are interchangeable, that you can be actively hetero and it wouldn't matter because your "true love" isn't, and well, you can express that (or want to express that)-- maybe even subconsciously-- and that would be the important thing.
    then there's the idea that you can only be "gay" for that one person. people make fun of that, but there are plenty of well-written stories that have one of the main characters slashed be only interested in same-sex-person X (that they're in love with). they love them for their mind-- or even body-- but it doesn't matter, what matters is that they love, and a lot. i don't even know what to say-- maybe that does happen. little in-depth scientific research has been done in this area of human sexuality (that i know of). plus, it seems rather on the less common side.

and i suppose you can further that to say that you can be straight for just one person. i don't know if you can. can sexuality exist in a vacuum? or is it faulty reasoning to generalize under the circumstances? don't we -all- generalize our sexuality from a limited collection of people we're attracted to, of whatever gender? you can take anybody and say they "just haven't met the right person", because how do you know they haven't? and why is it only one person?
    naturally, there's this feeling like "there's an exception to every rule", and you can definitely be much more likely to select from one given pool (ie, gender) than another. but there's some sort of inherent conflict, anyway, in thinking in terms of gender vs in terms of the particularity of a given person (of either gender), isn't there?

( it occurs to me that i may step on some toes with this, so a belated disclaimer: er. i'm just thinking all this through as i go along. i still haven't actually come to any conclusion. i'm dumb and my brain's frazzled from too much stress. )