I decided to do the creative story option for my Enchanted Imagination (a.k.a. my Fantasy Is Rad seminar) final, and it is in desperate need of a look-over before I hand it in tomorrow at 11:30AM EDT. If anybody runs across this post between now and 11 tomorrow morning and has time to offer some quick and dirty constructive criticism, I'd appreciate it immensely. Of course, regular constructive criticism/comments are appreciated well into the indefinite future. *wry grin*

Also, I don't have a title? Crap.

( Basically, a princess falls for her animal protector, but of course he is a prince in disguise. ~5,000 words )

Thanks for the advice, guys! I'm meeting with major adviser on Thursday and the Study Abroad dean sometime this week as well. I'm going to try to think positively about my future, or not think about it at all. For now, this seems like a good plan. Except that I kind of really need a job for this summer. At this rate I'm going to end up back at the boardwalk. -_-;

I wrote an extremely decent seven page paper in under 10 hours last night/today, which is an interesting achievement for me. "Remembrance and Self-Effacement in Christina Rossetti's Work." Basically I analyzed six poems of hers according to the theme for about 1500 words and then speculated for the other 800 as to why this binary was such a unique and all-encompassing concern for her. Easy-peasy! I love poetry and that class (Victorian Poetry) and am feeling more and more devastated that my last class with this teacher--Erik Gray, love of my intellectual life--is this Wednesday. I'm really afraid I might get choked up. I'm so embarrassing.

In other news, I apparently got chosen from a random draw of openID accounts on Dreamwidth to get an invite code, which is kind of nice (three days ahead of the curve! all registered openID users will receive invites on 4/30). However, I have been totally dithering about what to register as. Here are my current options:

search_soleil

searchsoleil

ssoleil

epaulettes

Mood chipper Music A Little Respect - Erasure Tags: poetry, school, usernames

MY LIFE IS A MESS.

Thing 1: I got to college and on my second day of classes my brand new laptop died. I suppose this was partially my fault. I fell asleep with it on my lap, awoke to it in a pile of dirty clothes beside my bed, and then found later that day that the laptop's battery socket was so loose it couldn't recognize my adapter when I plugged it in. But this is not what I told the lovely people at HP when I sent it in, so they had me send it to them, where they will fix it for free (because I am still under warranty, because I'd only had the laptop for two weeks).

So, what this amounts to is me having an extended nervous breakdown as I keep reaching for a laptop that is not there, and needing to do work and not having a laptop to do it on, and etc etc etc. loweryourwand has been very gracious and has let me use her laptop, but I don't like the fact that I'm basically on it all the time, yet it is hers and she has regular need of it.

Thing 2: I have this insane schedule that I think I'm going to have to prune even though, by God, I don't want to, because all of my classes are awesome (except Astronomy, which sucks, but it is a requirement, so I am stuck with it regardless of my personal opinions). Probably what will go is the complit class (Big Brother: The Poetics of Power). Already gone is Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Greece. What will be left is:

1) Enchanted Imagination, which is an English seminar that focuses on the continuity of Romantic/Victorian fantasy into our modern equivalent (hahaha, watch me die happy).
2) Astronomy, which I hate, and its lab, which will suck even worse, hoorah! I will valiantly struggle through.
3) Victorian Poetry with the professor who taught Romantic Poetry last semester, and who I have a GIGANTIC ACADEMIC CRUSH on. Talk Tennyson to me, baby!
4) Literary Criticism, which is a requirement for English majors, and is taught by my current adviser, who is a dear, although he is currently frustrating me rather a lot with his fluid office hours which make it impossible for me to talk about my current schedule.

The issue comes from having so many English classes which emphasize survey and participation. Basically, all of my classes want me to read a ton and also write about it or present on it. And I am slow and lazy and do not know how to deal with the workload I'm looking at with Big Brother still on my plate. HOWEVER, I really feel like I'm limiting myself overmuch by focusing so closely on English, and on a specific kind of English at that.

And to complicate my feelings, I can't tell how much of this academic angst is being unnecessarily inflamed by my general panic over my laptop and if things will seem any more manageable when I am not a nervous wreck 24/7. This is why I'd really like to talk to my adviser, and why I am so very frustrated that he cannot seem to keep his hours straight. I am in desperate need of advising! >:(

Thing 3: In other news, I'm going to NYCC and I am very excited! I am also sort of panicking that it's going to take a whole weekend that I will need for the crazy amount of work that I'm doing, but I am trying to focus on the positive, which is Torchwood previews and free stuff.

Mood hyper Tags: angst, school, self-hatred and despair

I think the general problem here is that I've forgotten how to write papers. I'll have had to write five this semester, that is insanely little for an English major taking two graduate level classes.

Anyway, my dilemma at present is this: I've decided to write my Victorian Literature paper of morality in Dorian Gray. The reason I decided this was because my teacher brought up this argument that although Oscar Wilde preached art for art's sake and hedonism and all that lovely rot in the Preface of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray is actually a very moral novel with a clearly moral ending. From there we sort of vaguely discussed whether that made Oscar Wilde vaguely hypocritical or if he was just being his usual contrary self, or what, and the whole time this was going on, the only thing in my head was that this whole argument was wrong:

That Oscar Wilde doesn't use morality in Dorian Gray as a means to an end like other books with a moral would. That each character has their own conflicting sets of morals, and that it was the play between these morals and not the results of them that Oscar Wilde wished to explore. That what makes Dorian Gray so disquieting to the reader is that no character is condemned--they just hurt each other in multifarious ways without the reader ever really knowing where the hurt and the evil originated. That the moral play and the moral conflict and that ultimately directionless moral disquiet is art as Oscar Wilde would define it, useless and unethical and beautiful as it is.

And that I'd had the whole thing explained to me perfectly before in Death Note meta.

Fucking Death Note, which, I'd like to qualify, I never even fucking finished.

But anyway, I thought it would be interesting to re-tailor all that meta-angst about a gay serial killer into a real paper about a book about a gay serial killer queer serial life-ruiner(?). However, trying to reconstruct what went through my head during this discussion is proving damn near impossible. This is what I get for trying to mix fandom and academia.

I blame this entirely on bookshop, especially since, when I sat down to write this paper about seven hours ago, I went to go find a link to this meta on her journal and couldn't. Argh.

But anyway, if there are any Death Note fans on my FList. The meta I'm looking for was a basic commentary that each of the characters in Death Note represented a differing moral standpoint, that they and the reader each brought their differing sets of ethics to the table and the resulting death match was what made Death Note so interesting. I already found another meta/analysis by bookshop that talks about Light's morality in particular, and how the inconsistencies therein which make him a sociopath, and that was interesting, but not the article I was hoping to find.

This is extremely frustrating and more frustrating because I know I am being OCD and tangential, but this is BUGGING ME SO MUCH GUYS. WHERE IS THE MASTERLIST OF DEATH NOTE META ON THE INTRANETS?

Am doing last minute edits to paper. Noticed that in conclusion, which I wrote while half-asleep, I actually referred to Keats as Arthur. Think perhaps need to step back and gain some perspective. Do not intend to do that anytime soon though. Will perhaps endeavor in order to do justice to other paper am writing this week on Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray less likely to remind me of 19th century medievalism, hopefully less likely candidate for distraction.

Mood tired Music The Greatest Love Of All - Whitney Houston Tags: barnard is the school of fandom, i just want bradley james shirtless, merlin, school, wtf

GUYS, I LOVE ROMANTIC POETRY. I LOVE SONNETS. I LOVE KEATS. OBVIOUSLY, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO SIT DOWN AND WRITE THIS PAPER. AND YET INSTEAD, I AM UNABLE TO EXTRICATE MYSELF FROM MY SPASTIC FANGIRLING. FUCKING FUCK WHY MUST ENGLAND BE SO GREAT WHY MUST MY LOVE GET ALL CONFUSED ABOUT WHICH TIME PERIOD I'M SUPPOSED TO BE FOCUSING ON (LIKE, FOR INSTANCE, CELTIC TIMES THAT PRODUCED THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND, 19TH CENTURY TIMES THAT PRODUCED KEATS AND TENNYSON AND WATERHOUSE, OR MODERN TIMES THAT PRODUCED BRADLEY JAMES' ASS).

Mood panicked Music MacArthur Park - Richard Harris Tags: anglophile, barnard is the school of fandom, fangirling, flailing, i just want bradley james shirtless, merlin, romanticism, school

Am watching Bram Stoker's Dracula for class tomorrow. So far we have:

• Gratuitous vandalism of religious statuary.
• Keanu Reeves with a horrible British accent.
• Old!Dracula with a hairdo that looks like a butt from the back.
• Gratuitous uses of circles in transitions.
• Random acts of orgy.
• Random acts of lesbianism.
• Random acts of bestiality.
• Gratuitous moaning of a sexual nature (even when not involved in a sexual situation, though really what in this movie is not at least a metaphor for a sexual situation).
• And Cary Elwes in a pornstache.

• the John Lennon sunglasses
• the long wavy hair
• the too-huge-to-be-real hat
• aaaand the pornstache.

Me: *paraphrasing a line from class* Shelley wouldn't write about a bird! He's Percy goddamn Shelley! It's a fuckin' cloud of fi-ya!
splintercat: hahaha. fuckin' a, man.
Me: Percy Shelley, man. He's one badass poet motherfucker. Effin' skylarks.
splintercat: aw man, don't mess with the skylarks, man. that shelley motherfucker will fuck you up.

*dies and dies*

P.S. Guys, I am totally spoiled for choice on the icon front. I nearly used my married icon, and my bitch plz icon, but in the end, I went for the period-matching roleplay icon. You have no idea how giddy with dorky love I am today.

Mood dorky Music Moon River - John Barrowman Tags: anglophile, barnard is the school of fandom, conversations, idk my bff saezutte, lawl, poetry, school, shelley, wtf

Continuing with Dracula, it seems to get less scary and more interesting the more I read.

Also, the more I read, the more weirded out by the many incarnations of Van Helsing I become. WTF Hollywood. WTF, Japan. The Van Helsing of this novel is one of the nicest and coolest Fictional Old Dudes I've ever encountered. He ranks up there with Dumbledore and Wilfred Mott. He is a fucking Yoda, complete with ominous speeches about being ready or not to know the truth/fight the baddie spoken in distinctively broken English. He possibly owns my soul. Is it just because his name sounds so badass that his character gets all these crazy reimaginings?

Also, for the same class (VicLit), I have the proposal for my final paper due tomorrow and I do not know what to write about. Mostly I want to write about the pop culture carry-over/staying power of so many of the books we've read, but no matter how I word it, it comes out sounding extremely unacademic, particularly for this srs bznz Literature class. Think think think. If anyone wants to prompt me (hahaha, academic paper prompts)... Right now Dracula is the focus of my hopes since it's grabbed so much of my attention, but I could have sworn I had mountains to say on many of the other books we've read at other times.

Bother, bother, bother. Think, think, think. :/ :< :(

Mood busy Music Handlebars, still. Worse since I keep trying to hum/rap it under my breath. Tags: books, dracula, school

Stayed up reading first third of Dracula for class. Was a mistake. Cannot turn off reading light. Afraid to try to sleep. Know am being idiot. Gave self fright going to the bathroom. Know will laugh at self in morning. Off to sooth away with yet more Janto.

P.S. Was tagging and noticed irony of my "stayed up late" tag.

Mood scared Tags: books, dracula, i am a vampire, school