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st_aurafinaThe secret wedding I'm not supposed to know about is this weekend. From a vast distance (the wedding is in Sydney) I can feel my family unit quivering with anticip-ation. My Canadian aunt has been quietly smuggled into the country. What will happen next? How will my mother find a balance between keeping the wedding a secret from her two prodigal daughters and yet maintain bragging rights on Facebook? Stay tuned and I will tell all, except I won't because it's all a secret because that's COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL OKAY?
My dad is obviously also in a confused state because he's randomly dropping into places where the secret cadre of relatives aren't, and reorganising things.
Transcription:
Papa: Is there a TV aerial point underneath the TV in the Monarc flat?
Papa: Ok. There it is. I found it.
Nat: I'm staying out of reception. Please tell me you didn't pull out random cords?
[later]
Me: Why is he even there? Shouldn't he be at the secret wedding?
Nat: OMG true? I think he just cracked it and left.
Me: Cracked the TV? Or the shits?
Nat: Nah crack the shits.
I just don't understand.
Books!
Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian, narrated by Ric Jerrom
Having overcome the hilarity of the spoken word seamen, I really loved this, which is exciting because, yay, it's the start of a series. Ric Jerrom is the narrator and he's great with accents, and has fantastic enthusiasm for things that I suspect would have made my eye drift from the page. (And also, in the writing, with characters who have great enthusiasm for all the different sails and masts and things of sailing.)
I'm taking the fact that I've tried to read this in book form many times and not been able to make my brain take it on board but could roar through it as an audiobook as a confirmation that I have some kind of undiagnosed ADHD. It's really interesting to me, the difference between what I take in from audiobooks and physical books. I enjoyed reading the Imperial Radch books, but I loved listening to them (and listened over and over.) I took in so much more from the recording than I did from the books, which makes me a little bit sad for all the books in the past that I've read and had lukewarm reactions to. Listening gives me more - what? brain space? I don't know - for taking in the language and the context and the author's intention. (And I get a lot more crochet done, which is good because my personal trainer is having triplets. I'm not even joking. I'm making, like, everything times three.)
Anyway. Master and Commander. It turns out I had absorbed by osmosis certain facts about the books from fandom at large: there's Jack (who has Russell Crowe's face) and there's Stephen (who has Paul Bettany's face) and they're basically married. I knew that Jack was the captain, Stephen was the doctor/zoologist. I didn't know that Jack was delightfully fat or chunky - 'fattish' was one of the ways he was described - and that he had some gloriously inelegant moments, like when his hair was all burned off in a battle and he had to use a medicated grease on his face. I did not know that Stephen was constantly dissecting dead animals. There was an amazingly specific description of a male mantis being eaten during copulation. Stephen was more weird than woobie, and Jack was more mercenary and mathematical than straight-up heroic, and I loved learning these things about them both. I think they'd both do excellently well in Star Fleet. Stephen would be in Xenoscience and Jack would endlessly be a Commander marking time waiting for his starship. (Am I suddenly writing an AU here? I am, aren't I?)
Anyway. There are many books ahead of me in this series, which is very comforting.
Altered Carbon - Richard K Morgan, narrated by Todd McLaren
I started watching the series when it came on Netflix, but there was a feeling that I was missing a lot of background detail. There was something NQR about watching a white guy play a Japanese guy that I needed more context for. Also there were things I wanted to know more about that the series was not dwelling on (like Quelcrist Falconer and the Envoys and the alien tech) so I stopped watching around ep 8 and checked out the audiobook. Then I restarted the TV series and enjoyed it a lot more.
Todd McLaren made some really weird pronunciation errors of perfectly normal words, and that would normally put me off but he was otherwise a good narrator, especially considering he had to deliver sci-fi language and intense noir tropes in the same voice. This is a noir story, so I had to make peace with the more annoying aspects of that, the worst of which were the intense descriptions of what each woman wore, without a parallel description of men's clothing. (Though, unlike the series, whenever Kovacs went to a brothel, there were male and female prostitutes.) There were a lot of jiggling breasts. I learned that graphic sex scenes are difficult for me to listen to, especially the kind of tropey sex a noir detective might have with a jiggly-breasted nymphette.
The book was good, though - good enough for me to push through these things and keep going. The mystery was good, the sci-fi was good, the concept of sleeving (where physical bodies are kinda interchangeable) was used cleverly. There was more of Kovac's heritage in the book, as well as the occasional mention of potential queerness - "Whenever I'm straight...", as in, when he's in a straight body. More gender fuckery than I saw in the series, in the sense of your consciousness not necessarily being the physical gender of your body. I wasn't expecting to like the female characters as much, it being so tropey noir, but I did. Ortega, the cop in the Organic Damage division, was fantastic - I think Todd McLaren was voicing her with a slight trace of a Hispanic accent? Whatever it was, it worked really well.
The hotel AI was less present in the book, in the sense that I didn't have the excellent visuals of Poe popping up all over the place being creepily loving, and also because we don't see the AI embodied until the very end of the book. The hotel in the book was the Hendrix, which made for some interesting psychedelic furnishing choices that worked really well, but would definitely not have translated to TV well, I think. I liked book!Hendrix a lot, especially when he showed up as himself. But I think I like TV!Poe better - as far as I've seen in the series, he has more of a hand in the plot.
So, I'd rec with caveats: the world building is excellent, the history and culture that develops when you can transfer your consciousness to another body is explored and evolved, the language is moody and neon-lit in the way of good noir detective stories. But. There's a lot of violence; there's some nasty shit that happens to female prostitutes; under the umbrella of physical bodies being interchangeable there's a tendency for the torture scenes to be incredibly graphic. There is an animal harm scene that results in death of a dog.
I really liked it - I didn't expect to like it this much. I've got the sequel queued up.
Blue Remembered Earth by Alistair Reynolds, narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
I tracked this down because I was scrolling through Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's recordings on Audible, but it segued neatly into the Afrofuturism vibe that was everywhere when Black Panther came out. I was cautious going into the book, because it's an Afrofuturist story written by a white guy, but it worked for me. (Maybe because of Kobna Holdbrook-Smith? I don't know.)
The story alternates between two POVs: adult siblings Geoffrey and Sunday Akinya, who have grown up part of a wealthy African family and are living the kind of awkward dilettante life that you see three or four generations into a dynasty. I loved Sunday, I tolerated Geoffrey, who started whiney and became heroic with not really enough justification for me. If the book was 100% Sunday's POV, I would recommend unreservedly.
The future is a world of transhumanism, climate change, space travel and philosophy. There's a feeling that man has become the best he can be, in the sense that poverty and crime have been eliminated, but there's a dissatisfaction that comes with that - there are aquatic nations of people who have genetically engineered themselves to live underwater, there are philosophical arguments about the next stage in human development, there is corporate espionage. Sunday lives in a community of artists on the moon that eschews the highly monitored lifestyle that is common on Earth. Her grandmother, who founded the family fortune (and incidentally sounds amazing) finally dies, and leaves a treasure hunt for her descendants to follow, which leads Sunday and Geoffrey to discover a great secret she has been hiding about her travels.
The next book in the series is narrated by Adjoa Andoh, so I am excite.
A Rare Book of Cunning Device - Ben Aaronovitch, narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
This is a Rivers of London short story, and it's lots of fun and delivers exactly the kind of things I would expect: Peter dealing with a magical problem, a hunt through a library, Professor Postmartin and a sassy elderly librarian. It's super and fun and short. And free!
Les Liaisons Dangereuses - Choderlos de Laclos, read by the cast of the play
Another one I picked up because it was short and free and because Adjoa Andoh is in the cast. It also has Janet McTeer playing the Marquise de Merteuil, so if you enjoyed her in Jessica Jones s2 and would like to hear her speaking low and breathy evil into your ear, I would recommend. But remember, this story is kinda gross, consent-wise. These are not nice people.
Yay books!!
Linkspams
Exchanges/Challenges
There's a lot of these right now, yay.
- Write Every Day is atauroracloud's place for the first half of the month
-![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
wipbigbang has sign-ups open for artists and authors: 2018 Sign-ups
This is a Big Bang with one goal in mind: to clean out your drafts folder. These are stories that were unfinished for whatever reason, that authors returned to and completed, and the art that goes with them! All fandoms welcome!
- There's going to be a Person of Interest exchange!!
poi_fanworks
-turingfest, an exchange for robotic characters
("Robotic" characters, for the purposes of this exchange, are characters in the realm of AIs, robots, androids, mecha, machines, cyborgs, and any other technology-focused characters.)
Ben Daniels round-up
Because he has amazing hair and a flippy coat from Jesus Christ Superstar. And because we are rewatching S2 of the Exorcist at the moment.
From his instagram:
bendanielsss: Somehow my Pilate coat flip didn’t make the live tv cut. Here it is in all its flicky plum leather glory
bendanielsss: It’s a Pilate/Caiaphas/Faceoff/Hairoff
bendanielsss: Because I’m pretty sure I’ll never get to rock one again here’s my mohawk for posterity before it’s all gone sour.
Producer Sean Crouch's mohawk fanfic on twitter: INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT. A Mowhawked Marcus performs an exorcism.
More JCSS costume porn: the purple leather bulge
This splendid scene from S1 ep1 of the Exorcist: It's just Marcus in a chair looking sassy
This video from 2013 when Ben was playing a character on The Paradise, mostly because he looks so dapper and prim with his cravat: Ben Daniels introduces the alpha male Tom Weston - The Paradise - Series 2 - BBC One
Rando sh*t
- Neural network-named tomatoes you won’t find at the farmer’s market
Any of these imaginary tomatoes has to be better than the Aunt Ruby's Green I have fostered love upon since LAST FUCKING AUGUST and yet has produced not a single fruit. Aunt Ruby is the second worst aunt. (Flo is, of course, forever the worst aunt.)
- Once again, on the internet we are all xkcd: xkcd 1976: Friendly Questions
- viamiss_s_b, this lovely analogy for finally getting an ASD diagnosis: Candidly Autistic: Sparrows and Penguins
- This excellent Very Hungry Caterpillar rendered in crochet. You push the foods into its mouth! Very Hungry Caterpillar
In other news, I am doing Camp Nano, and since this post rounds out at 2100 words, I am going to count it.
My dad is obviously also in a confused state because he's randomly dropping into places where the secret cadre of relatives aren't, and reorganising things.
Transcription:
Papa: Is there a TV aerial point underneath the TV in the Monarc flat?
Papa: Ok. There it is. I found it.
Nat: I'm staying out of reception. Please tell me you didn't pull out random cords?
[later]
Me: Why is he even there? Shouldn't he be at the secret wedding?
Nat: OMG true? I think he just cracked it and left.
Me: Cracked the TV? Or the shits?
Nat: Nah crack the shits.
I just don't understand.
Books!
Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian, narrated by Ric Jerrom
Having overcome the hilarity of the spoken word seamen, I really loved this, which is exciting because, yay, it's the start of a series. Ric Jerrom is the narrator and he's great with accents, and has fantastic enthusiasm for things that I suspect would have made my eye drift from the page. (And also, in the writing, with characters who have great enthusiasm for all the different sails and masts and things of sailing.)
I'm taking the fact that I've tried to read this in book form many times and not been able to make my brain take it on board but could roar through it as an audiobook as a confirmation that I have some kind of undiagnosed ADHD. It's really interesting to me, the difference between what I take in from audiobooks and physical books. I enjoyed reading the Imperial Radch books, but I loved listening to them (and listened over and over.) I took in so much more from the recording than I did from the books, which makes me a little bit sad for all the books in the past that I've read and had lukewarm reactions to. Listening gives me more - what? brain space? I don't know - for taking in the language and the context and the author's intention. (And I get a lot more crochet done, which is good because my personal trainer is having triplets. I'm not even joking. I'm making, like, everything times three.)
Anyway. Master and Commander. It turns out I had absorbed by osmosis certain facts about the books from fandom at large: there's Jack (who has Russell Crowe's face) and there's Stephen (who has Paul Bettany's face) and they're basically married. I knew that Jack was the captain, Stephen was the doctor/zoologist. I didn't know that Jack was delightfully fat or chunky - 'fattish' was one of the ways he was described - and that he had some gloriously inelegant moments, like when his hair was all burned off in a battle and he had to use a medicated grease on his face. I did not know that Stephen was constantly dissecting dead animals. There was an amazingly specific description of a male mantis being eaten during copulation. Stephen was more weird than woobie, and Jack was more mercenary and mathematical than straight-up heroic, and I loved learning these things about them both. I think they'd both do excellently well in Star Fleet. Stephen would be in Xenoscience and Jack would endlessly be a Commander marking time waiting for his starship. (Am I suddenly writing an AU here? I am, aren't I?)
Anyway. There are many books ahead of me in this series, which is very comforting.
Altered Carbon - Richard K Morgan, narrated by Todd McLaren
I started watching the series when it came on Netflix, but there was a feeling that I was missing a lot of background detail. There was something NQR about watching a white guy play a Japanese guy that I needed more context for. Also there were things I wanted to know more about that the series was not dwelling on (like Quelcrist Falconer and the Envoys and the alien tech) so I stopped watching around ep 8 and checked out the audiobook. Then I restarted the TV series and enjoyed it a lot more.
Todd McLaren made some really weird pronunciation errors of perfectly normal words, and that would normally put me off but he was otherwise a good narrator, especially considering he had to deliver sci-fi language and intense noir tropes in the same voice. This is a noir story, so I had to make peace with the more annoying aspects of that, the worst of which were the intense descriptions of what each woman wore, without a parallel description of men's clothing. (Though, unlike the series, whenever Kovacs went to a brothel, there were male and female prostitutes.) There were a lot of jiggling breasts. I learned that graphic sex scenes are difficult for me to listen to, especially the kind of tropey sex a noir detective might have with a jiggly-breasted nymphette.
The book was good, though - good enough for me to push through these things and keep going. The mystery was good, the sci-fi was good, the concept of sleeving (where physical bodies are kinda interchangeable) was used cleverly. There was more of Kovac's heritage in the book, as well as the occasional mention of potential queerness - "Whenever I'm straight...", as in, when he's in a straight body. More gender fuckery than I saw in the series, in the sense of your consciousness not necessarily being the physical gender of your body. I wasn't expecting to like the female characters as much, it being so tropey noir, but I did. Ortega, the cop in the Organic Damage division, was fantastic - I think Todd McLaren was voicing her with a slight trace of a Hispanic accent? Whatever it was, it worked really well.
The hotel AI was less present in the book, in the sense that I didn't have the excellent visuals of Poe popping up all over the place being creepily loving, and also because we don't see the AI embodied until the very end of the book. The hotel in the book was the Hendrix, which made for some interesting psychedelic furnishing choices that worked really well, but would definitely not have translated to TV well, I think. I liked book!Hendrix a lot, especially when he showed up as himself. But I think I like TV!Poe better - as far as I've seen in the series, he has more of a hand in the plot.
So, I'd rec with caveats: the world building is excellent, the history and culture that develops when you can transfer your consciousness to another body is explored and evolved, the language is moody and neon-lit in the way of good noir detective stories. But. There's a lot of violence; there's some nasty shit that happens to female prostitutes; under the umbrella of physical bodies being interchangeable there's a tendency for the torture scenes to be incredibly graphic. There is an animal harm scene that results in death of a dog.
I really liked it - I didn't expect to like it this much. I've got the sequel queued up.
Blue Remembered Earth by Alistair Reynolds, narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
I tracked this down because I was scrolling through Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's recordings on Audible, but it segued neatly into the Afrofuturism vibe that was everywhere when Black Panther came out. I was cautious going into the book, because it's an Afrofuturist story written by a white guy, but it worked for me. (Maybe because of Kobna Holdbrook-Smith? I don't know.)
The story alternates between two POVs: adult siblings Geoffrey and Sunday Akinya, who have grown up part of a wealthy African family and are living the kind of awkward dilettante life that you see three or four generations into a dynasty. I loved Sunday, I tolerated Geoffrey, who started whiney and became heroic with not really enough justification for me. If the book was 100% Sunday's POV, I would recommend unreservedly.
The future is a world of transhumanism, climate change, space travel and philosophy. There's a feeling that man has become the best he can be, in the sense that poverty and crime have been eliminated, but there's a dissatisfaction that comes with that - there are aquatic nations of people who have genetically engineered themselves to live underwater, there are philosophical arguments about the next stage in human development, there is corporate espionage. Sunday lives in a community of artists on the moon that eschews the highly monitored lifestyle that is common on Earth. Her grandmother, who founded the family fortune (and incidentally sounds amazing) finally dies, and leaves a treasure hunt for her descendants to follow, which leads Sunday and Geoffrey to discover a great secret she has been hiding about her travels.
The next book in the series is narrated by Adjoa Andoh, so I am excite.
A Rare Book of Cunning Device - Ben Aaronovitch, narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
This is a Rivers of London short story, and it's lots of fun and delivers exactly the kind of things I would expect: Peter dealing with a magical problem, a hunt through a library, Professor Postmartin and a sassy elderly librarian. It's super and fun and short. And free!
Les Liaisons Dangereuses - Choderlos de Laclos, read by the cast of the play
Another one I picked up because it was short and free and because Adjoa Andoh is in the cast. It also has Janet McTeer playing the Marquise de Merteuil, so if you enjoyed her in Jessica Jones s2 and would like to hear her speaking low and breathy evil into your ear, I would recommend. But remember, this story is kinda gross, consent-wise. These are not nice people.
Yay books!!
Linkspams
Exchanges/Challenges
There's a lot of these right now, yay.
- Write Every Day is at
auroracloud's place for the first half of the month-
wipbigbang has sign-ups open for artists and authors: 2018 Sign-upsThis is a Big Bang with one goal in mind: to clean out your drafts folder. These are stories that were unfinished for whatever reason, that authors returned to and completed, and the art that goes with them! All fandoms welcome!
- There's going to be a Person of Interest exchange!!
poi_fanworks-
turingfest, an exchange for robotic characters("Robotic" characters, for the purposes of this exchange, are characters in the realm of AIs, robots, androids, mecha, machines, cyborgs, and any other technology-focused characters.)
Ben Daniels round-up
Because he has amazing hair and a flippy coat from Jesus Christ Superstar. And because we are rewatching S2 of the Exorcist at the moment.
From his instagram:
bendanielsss: Somehow my Pilate coat flip didn’t make the live tv cut. Here it is in all its flicky plum leather glory
bendanielsss: It’s a Pilate/Caiaphas/Faceoff/Hairoff
bendanielsss: Because I’m pretty sure I’ll never get to rock one again here’s my mohawk for posterity before it’s all gone sour.
Producer Sean Crouch's mohawk fanfic on twitter: INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT. A Mowhawked Marcus performs an exorcism.
More JCSS costume porn: the purple leather bulge
This splendid scene from S1 ep1 of the Exorcist: It's just Marcus in a chair looking sassy
This video from 2013 when Ben was playing a character on The Paradise, mostly because he looks so dapper and prim with his cravat: Ben Daniels introduces the alpha male Tom Weston - The Paradise - Series 2 - BBC One
Rando sh*t
- Neural network-named tomatoes you won’t find at the farmer’s market
Any of these imaginary tomatoes has to be better than the Aunt Ruby's Green I have fostered love upon since LAST FUCKING AUGUST and yet has produced not a single fruit. Aunt Ruby is the second worst aunt. (Flo is, of course, forever the worst aunt.)
- Once again, on the internet we are all xkcd: xkcd 1976: Friendly Questions
- via
miss_s_b, this lovely analogy for finally getting an ASD diagnosis: Candidly Autistic: Sparrows and Penguins- This excellent Very Hungry Caterpillar rendered in crochet. You push the foods into its mouth! Very Hungry Caterpillar
In other news, I am doing Camp Nano, and since this post rounds out at 2100 words, I am going to count it.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 07:25 am (UTC)And this is a problem how?? ;-p
Yay! I am embarking on this series too, but very slowly! (That is because of me, not the series.) There will soon be a bit with a bear and maybe some bees that I hope you will enjoy too. (Stephen's conviction that it is absolutely fine to bring any animal on board His Majesty's Naval ships is always a highlight, and probably what was missing from the last one, now that I come to think of it.)
The crocheted Very Hungry Caterpillar is amazing! (I hope at least a bit washable, but still.)
I am slightly bemused at all this Ben Daniels stuff because it feels like time travel, as I had another flister very into him when he was in Law & Order UK so I have been there and done that all by osmosis nearly ten years ago, why am I osmosing again?
no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 07:38 am (UTC)I find audio books are fantastic for a sense of character, however I do not retain teh plot at all. I need to re-read Rivers of London for that reason -- listening to it as an audiobook gave me a great sense of who Peter and every one *were* as characters, but... I possibly couldn't tell you what actually happened (well, there were Rivers, and a creepy puppet-ghost-thing, and a really fantastically grounded idea of working for the police... yeah. All atmosphere and characters, no plot retention.)
(Flo is, of course, forever the worst aunt.)
Oh, man, yes. She really is.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 10:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 10:38 am (UTC)And I am now much more interested in Altered Carbon, books and show, than I was before.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 11:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 02:40 pm (UTC)Also, you almost tempt me to read Master and Commander.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 02:50 pm (UTC)He did some things great! Male and female characters, young and old, speeding up and intensifying the narration of dramatic conflict, distinguishing Stirling's bajillion slightly different accents, ALL EXPLAINED IN THE TEXT. But he also just, like, flat out mispronounces some words. Repeatedly. AND. AND. When non-native-speakers of English are speaking their first language, he still reads it as if it is accented English. ESPECIALLY THE JAPANESE CHARACTERS and I could not stop cringing. YES, Japanese speakers learning English do often have trouble with the R and L sounds. BUT NOT WHEN SPEAKING JAPANESE TO EACH OTHER.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 04:43 pm (UTC)It's really interesting to me, the difference between what I take in from audiobooks and physical books.
We're opposites! I have attention problems too, but I take in and retain text way better than audio.
(Am I suddenly writing an AU here? I am, aren't I?)
!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 04:56 pm (UTC)Yes, yes it is. :) I started reading them as a bonding thing with my grandfather years ago, and have been slowly continuing to do so since we lost him, and have yet to be bored with it. There's the occasional frustratingly angsty interlude, mostly to do with one (or both) of them making financial or romantic blunders, but they remain just as married and just perfectly themselves all the way throughout. I just bought book 19; I think there's 20 of them total plus another partial one?
no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 08:01 pm (UTC)Everyone else joining the Ben Daniels is awesome bandwagon is making me so happy. Because he is awesome. And somewhere out there, there is a recording of him reading Saki's stories that I would recommend beyond all things.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-07 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-07 03:41 am (UTC)The film is also good, though I don't remember which novel it is based on.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-09 12:01 pm (UTC)though I love nautical everything I've never managed to make much progress with the Master & Commander books. I read the whole Hornblower series without any trouble, but somehow this series eludes me. I feel that every time I pick the book up I've forgotten all the nautical vocabulary I ever had and feel completely lost, so I give up :/
no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-15 08:41 am (UTC)That is really interesting! It's absolutely 100% the other way for me. I cannot keep my focus on audio. I need something to look at. I have tried listening to audio books, but I drift off after five minutes and then spend eternities rewinding to find my place again. And again. And again. My brain does not want to listen to audio.
Otoh, I know people who fall asleep reading, which doesn't happen for me. As long as my eyes are open and there is visual input, I am awake and focused.
I also never could learn from listening to stuff in school, I had to see it written (or better yet, drawn) to understand.
It makes total sense to me that other people would be wired exactly the opposite way.