half-real worlds of paper and ink

Things accomplished:

• Income tax -- filed! LHDN owes me a few bucks. One day, probably in the far and distant future, I'll start doing it before the last week of April. Obviously this year is not the year.

• That application thing at the office that has been niggling me for the whole week -- sent and done with. They can do whatever they want with it now; I shall stop hurting my head thinking about it.



Things not done:

• My Doink! Final Fantasy Exchange fic! It only has an outline and I have about a week to get it done. asddl;kdgf. A good thing this is a long weekend -- we get Monday off because 1 May is Labour Day -- and I think I'll just spend the weekend curled up in bed, trying to write. Of course it has to be sunny and hot today -- why isn't it raining like the rest of the week? >.>

Or maybe I should go out and get ice cream first before writing. Ice cream, hmmm. And grocery shopping. And dinner, too. (I'll never get this fic done.)




Things I am considering:

• I'm thinking of getting myself an iPad! It would be awesome, don't you think, an iPad? It's my birthday in less than two weeks (I can't believe it's my birthday in less than two weeks) and it's a nice present for myself, yes? Though I'm sort of waiting on how that thing at work is going to work out first, because if it does work out, then I certainly deserve a nice present. (The word "work": the current bane of my existence.)

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

--

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.