half-real worlds of paper and ink

I posted my ff_exchange fic with four hours to spare! >.>

To clarify, that is actually Not a Good Thing, mostly because of my perfectionist tendencies. I usually reread fics multiple times before posting, often after setting it aside for a couple of days, and this one didn't get the same treatment. I finished writing it around seven hours before the deadline, and spent the rest of the time polishing it and going /o\ at how I keep thinking it's perfectly adequate, but not great. The last month has been somewhat stressful and I've had too many things on my mind (god it's been so, so hard to concentrate on anything) and I've been writing the fic in a rather distracted fashion, not quite knowing what I really wanted to do with it.

Also this is the first fic I've written since last year's exchange (yes, this very same Doink! Final Fantasy Exchange) and I am so out of practice. It's alarming that it's becoming a pattern -- the last three things I wrote were all for Doink! and the only reason I finished those fics is because I committed myself when I signed up and I dislike the thought of defaulting. Perhaps the solution to this is to go join more challenges, but I'm afraid the persistent anxiety of wanting to please the recipient will kill me. I've always been more worried whether or not someone will like what I wrote for them more than anything else when it comes to fic exchanges. Deadlines and word counts don't particularly scare me, even though I've been known to use the latter as an excuse.

But it's done now, and posted, and I'm crossing my fingers hoping that the recipient will like it! Reveals are in less than a week.


Also: Moogle Fluff is open and you can participate even if you didn't sign up for the exchange!


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Anyway. Between posting and riffling through folders with names that were mostly incomprehensible, I found a number of WIPs and ficlets and lines of dialogue from goodness knows when from a few different fandoms. I'm slowly sorting through these and trying to figure out what's worth continuing and finishing, and what should be considered as lost causes. There's one longish FFVIII fic -- more like a collection of scenes, rather -- that's been around for ages; it seems like the problem with it is I don't know whether or not I should break Squall and Rinoa up. (I think it was originally written for a challenge to "subvert your OTP" or some such thing; the notes to it are too vague for me to figure it out now.)

There's a Danny Phantom fic that's too angsty and has no resolution. There's a FFX/FFVIII crossover that's messy and convoluted, but I like the ideas in it even though I don't know which direction it's supposed to go now.

. . . I was quite surprised by some of these. A sort of bemused "I wrote that?" more than anything, especially when I realised that I had laughed while I was reading some of these things, and I wrote those and I have always been so critical of my own writing. I'm not even sure I can write like that any more.

Gong xi fa cai! (I am late, as usual.)

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So. It has been a long weekend here since we got Monday and Tuesday off for Chinese New Year. It's been an ok long weekend, I guess! No beaches, but maybe next time. I miss beaches. But! No worries! I have seven days off that I have to take because I haven't taken a single day this year and I have seven days carried forward from last year and I have to use them up by end of March (sounds like bad planning, doesn't it, or perhaps bad policy-making, but nothing much I can do about the latter) but the thing is I'm pretty much busy until the first week of March and there is no way out of it and I am feeling mostly resigned about the whole thing because I could have said no but I didn't and decided to take this on anyway so now I'm stuck with this mess. Sucks to be me, eh.

Read some books this weekend. Short ones, mostly. I seem to be having a lot of trouble finishing books lately. My attention simply wanders, and I can't focus enough to get through the pages. It's not just books I'm having trouble with, I guess -- I can't concentrate on code either, and I find myself spacing off while watching TV (or completely forgetting that I wanted to watch something on TV, like the episode of Supernatural that was on yesterday, oops).

Somehow, perhaps to make up for the books I haven't been reading, I ended up reading Star Wars AU fic. I . . . am not even sure how I got there; I've never been particularly interested in the fandom before. It's probably Kathy Tyers's The Truce at Bakura's fault. I read the book and found myself thinking, Oh come on. There must be better fic than this around! and ended up reading fic. Very long fic. Fic better than books fic. And I love AUs. Especially vast, detailed ones. Though not high school ones, even if they were detailed. You know, a long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, there used to be a difference between an alternate reality and an alternate universe -- one is where something changes in the original canon universe and causes different outcomes and another is where you'll inexplicably find everyone in a high school setting, but maybe I'm just a fandom dinosaur. (I can't remember which one is which any more anyway.)

Anyway! Star Wars AU! I'm mostly fascinated by the variations of:

1. Luke and Vader go on a camping trip end up working together. Sometimes, they save the galaxy. The permutations seem infinite: Vader finds Luke as a child; or Luke still ends up in Vader's clutches even after jumping down the gantry, poor boy (this seems a popular one); or Anakin Skywalker doesn't go evil; or Luke somehow joins Vader even before getting his hand cut off; or old Ben makes a disastrous decision and tells Luke the truth about his father; or a thousand other things
2. Luke turns to the dark side (and somehow or other ends up saving the galaxy anyway).

Here's one in the vein of (i): Between Flight and Longing by Sheila Snow, where Han, Luke and Darth Vader end up working together on a backwater planet finding a cure for a mysterious illness, and it's seriously epic. The writing is wonderful and Luke is Luke, and Vader is almost human while still being an evil Sith lord and Han is absolutely awesome.

Hm. Maybe I should come up with a list of fics later. I have a few bookmarked.

Also, skimming through fic summaries I accidentally found out what happens to some of the characters in the books and ended up having my heart broken, despite having only ever read one book from the New Jedi Order. Sad.

Hey guys! Anyone got any Harry Potter femslash recs? Hermione/Ginny would be nice, but anything well-written and enjoyable will do. I need to spam someone with those. XD XD

Why? Here's an IM conversation, edited for sanity's sake, and posted with the other party's full consent, heh.

( I can't believe you didn't know about fanfic. I should have educated you sooner. )

A lot of flailing around ensued. And then I tried to pitch Archive of Our Own again. :P