The lingering sunshine

[dolorosa_12]

Summer is well and truly in its final days for the year here in Cambridge. The air has a distinctly autumnal feeling, blackberries are appearing in the hedgerows, and, best of all, it has started to rain again. The next two weekends are going to be very packed for me: next weekend I'll be in Italy for the wedding of two of my friends, and the following weekend my mother will be visiting (for those of you keeping count, that is indeed two trips she's made to Europe in the one northern summer. Oh, to be a wealthy baby boomer with loads of long service leave!). Luckily, this weekend lasts for three days due to the public holiday on Monday, and it's been nice to just nest at home and get lots done. This can probably be broken into three main categories:

Housework

I cleaned all the internal and external windows. (By internal windows I mean the ridiculous glass panels that are above every doorframe inside our house.)

I did two loads of laundry, which, given it rained on Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, and all day Sunday is something of an achievement.

I cleaned the fridge.

I cooked a massive vegetable soup to eat throughout the week, as well as all the weekend meals.

I planted garlic in the garden.

Stuff outside the house

Our friend B was visiting from Thursday to Saturday. He lives in Poland, but had come to Cambridge to use the university library to finish up his PhD corrections, so we didn't see him all that much. However, on the Friday night, he, Matthias and I went out to Thirsty, one of my favourite wine/beer sellers/bar, for drinks and food truck dinner.

I've just come back from a walk out to Grantchester. It's overcast, but not too cold, and all of Cambridge seems to have had the same idea. Matthias is working on an assignment for his librarianship MA, so I thought it best to get out of his hair for a bit.

Reading/Netflixing

I finished off a nonfiction book, Thunder At Twilight by Frederic Morton, which is about the history, politics and culture of Vienna in the year between the summer of 1913 and the outbreak of World War I. This is obviously a really fascinating time period, but I found the book somewhat frustrating due to the author's stylistic choices — namely, to use an almost novelistic tone and style, imagining what the historical figures were eating, drinking, saying or feeling at moments when he couldn't possibly have known that. If I'm reading historical fiction, I obviously have no problem with authors filling in the blanks in this manner, but I found it jarring in a work of nonfiction.

I read two novellas: 'The Black God's Drums' by P. Djèlí Clark, and 'Coral Bones' by Foz Meadows. Both were excellent, although I felt the former suffered from the constraints of its short length: the actual plot was slight, and it would have been fantastic as a novel, because its excellent setting (a steampunk nineteenth-century New Orleans in an alternative North America in which New Orleans was the site of a successful slave rebellion, the US Civil War ended in a truce, meaning the Confederacy still exists, and the Haitian slave rebellion was a success) and characters would really have benefited from being fleshed out into something novel-length. Hopefully Clark will write more in this setting. 'Coral Bones' — which imagines what happened to Miranda after the events of The Tempest (the answer: fairies, journeys, and an exploration of gender) is actually the first piece of fiction by Meadows that really works for me, and I highly recommend it.

Matthias and I also binge-watched most of the Netflix adaptation of Altered Carbon. Neither of us have read the books from which it was adapted, so I have no idea how faithful an adaptation it is, but as a television series in its own right it's pretty good. It explores pretty standard cyberpunk themes of immortality, cloning, humanity, bodies, how these interact and intersect, and how inequality affects all these things, in a pretty standard Blade Runner-esque cyberpunk setting (rain, smog, grimy neon night markets, flying cars, and super rich people living elevated lives in skyscrapers above the clouds), but since I like all these things, and enjoy the cast (honestly, it should be watched for Dichen Lachman alone), I don't mind the rather derivative themes and setting. It does have the sadly standard sexualised violence of a lot of Western cyberpunk, so do bear that in mind if you're making the decision to watch this based on my recommendation.

I'm now sitting here fretting about the fic_corner exchange. I finished up my assignment in good time, and I had thought this might be a rare exchange where my own request actually matched to an offer, but having checked Ao3, I can see that that's not the case, and I seem doomed to continue my exchange experience as one of life's perennial pinch-hit recipients. I suppose it can't be helped, given the fandoms-of-one I tend to request.

Comments

[silailo]

It’s starting to feel a bit like fall here, too. I wait so long for warm weather around here that I actually sort of dread the end of summer, haha. But the fires and smoke are so bad I think fall would do us some good.

And, oh, the fandom of one problem? I feel you. Most of my fandoms are tiny and/or obscure, which causes me to hang back from joining most exchanges. I try to include at least one fandom that’s large enough to get an offer, and so far that seems to have worked because I have yet to be a pinch hit.

[dolorosa_12]

I much prefer autumn to summer (I mean, I'm an Australian who moved to the UK, so I kind of have to, you know?). It's been a scary summer all around the world, that's for sure.

I tried your trick of including a larger fandom, and did seem to match initially, but given that I don't have a gift yet, it seems my initial writer must have dropped out at some point. I've been in nine exchanges so far (four Yuletides, and the rest other exchanges), and I've only ever had a fic written by the original author who matched ONCE. Every other time I've either immediately gone to pinch hits, or had the author default. Luckily I like writing too, or I'd find the whole experience really offputting.

[silailo]

I’ve heard the most popular thing in Yuletide are the punch hits. For some reason people love doing them and some recips hope their requests become pinch hits. But yeah, I can see where it would feel discouraging, and I’m sorry it keeps happening to you. :( I hope you get a great gift, though!

The issue I have is the popular fandoms I request tend to not be the fandoms I hope someone offers. I prefer my more obscure fandoms, but of course no one ever offers those. That’s not to say I don’t want a gift in my popular fandom, but deep inside I want my unpopular fandom. :(

[dolorosa_12]

Yeah, I've definitely heard that regarding Yuletide - and I've received great Yuletide gifts that were originally pinch hits. Hopefully this exchange will be the same.

I really hear you regarding tiny fandoms. I only request things that I would be happy to receive - and that goes for larger fandoms as well. I would never request, say, three fandoms I really want, and one that I don't want just to make up the numbers. Everything I request is something I'd be ecstatic to receive, given someone is going to the trouble of writing for me!

[silailo]

Oh, most certainly. If I can’t think of four fandoms I’d be ecstatic to get a gift in, then I don’t join in the exchange. I’ve had to skip Yuletide because I just didn’t have enough fandoms to put in at the time (I don’t have a lot to begin with). Sorry, I probably made it sound like I just throw in a fandom I don’t care about. *blush* And I have heard having a preferred fandom is a no-no. I just outed myself a bit there with that confession. o_o

[merit]

I was thinking of trying Altered Carbon. I also tried the The Magicians without reading the books and after reading some reviews of the books, I think I'll stick with the TV series which has been fairly enjoyable each season (though with some dark themes, including sexual assault, so that's my own warning! but did deal with it in a more open way than a lot of Western media).

Haha I was defaulted on late in an exchange and then the pinch hit lingered~~ a couple days past the original opening of the exchange. It was a moderately awkward experience.

ooh! garlic. have you planted it before?

[dolorosa_12]

I really, really love Altered Carbon. So far it's one of my favourite new shows this year (bearing in mind all the caveats in my post). So I personally highly recommend it, but your enjoyment will depend on how much you like tropey Western cyberpunk (and how much you're prepared to tolerate the misogyny that seems to go hand in hand with most of that kind of cyberpunk).

I suspect I'm going to end up in a similar situation regarding this exchange. I've only been participating in exchanges for about four years, and have done nine so far (four Yuletides, and five various other exchanges, none fandom- or pairing- or trope-specific). Of those nine exchanges, only ONE (Yuletide in 2016) resulted in an author matching to me initially, and then writing an assignment. Every single other exchange involved me either going immediately to pinch hits, or my assigned author defaulting at some stage of the writing period. I do tend to request really tiny fandoms (like, a big-for-Yuletide fandom might have a couple of hundred fics for it, but the things I request either have none, or have one or two fics on Ao3, all written by me), so I do leave myself open to this happening repeatedly, but it is a bit stressful.

I have planted garlic twice before, both times with great results.