Definitely fallen in too deep

... despite the heat at both. I had to retreat to the safety of indoors in the middle of the day between Wednesday and Friday, because it felt like the sun was literally scorching my skin off. It's pretty hot here at home too, made worse by the fact that my apartment has windows to south and even with blinds closed still heats up. At least it's only a couple more days of this, and then it cools down again, and the UV is much less intense here even at midday.

Anyway, Amsterdam was very pretty. I liked how pedestrian friendly it was, as well as the extensive and easy public transport. It was very easy to get around, which I appreciated.

In airport efficiency comparison Helsinki-Vantaa won Schiphol by a country mile. Part of it was bad luck, but didn't change the fact I stood in lines for some two hours yesterday at Schiphol, not to mention they had very intense safety screening, they opened all the hand luggage in addition to scanning it. On the other hand, at this end I was on train a mere ten minutes after stepping out of the plane, which is very good considering the walk to train platform from the baggage claim is about five minutes. That included some good luck with my bag coming out among the very first, and the train arriving just when I reached the platform, but I very much appreciated it near midnight.

I brought stroopwafels for my family, although none of those for me bc of my celiac disease, just candy :D I also brought tulip bulbs for my mom to really lean on the stereotypical souvenirs.

I've got two more weeks of vacation left, I'll be home for it and doing day trips etc.

I also just now decided I'm not cooking anything until Monday when the heat lessens, but I do need to get to the grocery store. I had stuff for a snack at midnight and a breakfast, but that was about it.

I'm enjoying all things Captain Marvel tremendously, except for a little thing that parts of fandom does. Which is, for some reason to highlight how awesome Carol is they need to be bashing Steve. And of course it's a case of Steve being seen through the fanon lens aka stupid and has no common sense at all, yada yada, you know how I feel about that. It shouldn't have to be such a revolutionary idea that you can celebrate a character without putting others down. Also I think it's hilarious that some people consider Carol as super sensible when you know she has a reckless side and Maria has definitely sighed a lot of times over it.

Speaking of Steve and Carol, they both have the drive to do the thing they feel like they should be doing, even when others tell them they shouldn't, that they're not good enough etc. There's a very similar simmering anger in them that helps them push through when people say no. I really like that aspect in their motivation.

***

My key reactions after seeing Endgame press conference photos were basically, "DANAI GURIRA! Oh and I like Chris Evans' velvet pants and fun shoes."

That got me wondering if anyone has ever researched whether the preferences shift along with their cycle for bi/pan peeps who have a uterus and are of fertile age. I know there has been a study in which they found straight women liked men who looked like they had more testosterone (more square jaw etc) while they were ovulating than when they weren't. 

Because it was shark week for me when the press conference photos were published, and I was wondering if in a few weeks time I'll be appreciating more of Chris Evans than just his pants again:D

The basement of our apartment building got flooded yesterday, how's everyone else's weekend going?

A water main burst under our city block, and flooded the basements of some fifteen apartment buildings. I was at home waiting for my sister to come hang out with me when the power went out; apparently they had to cut it because the control boxes were getting submerged. I just thought it was a rare random power outage, I couldn't hear the fire engines because my windows open to the back alley, and only knew of the water when my sister came up and told the park in front was full of fire fighters pumping water out of the basements.

Thankfully it wasn't personally devastating for me, the water was pumped out and the building is safe, and I've got nothing in the basement storage but my bike, which only needs a bit of cleaning and will be alright. We did go out for lunch rather than cook for ourselves, but after a couple of hours the electricity came back as well. We did miss the men's free program at the figure skating worlds that we'd planned to be nervous over together, but all in all everything's fine.

I generally like watching trailers, but when it's a huge movie there tend to be so many and the later ones so spoilery that you basically know the plot beforehand if you watch them all, so I'm limiting myself. For example in the case of Captain Marvel I watched the later trailers after I'd seen it in the theater. As it is, I'm not proactively watching Endgame trailers anymore, but I'm not terribly spoiler phobic, so I don't mind seeing gifs or if the new trailer comes before some other movie at the theater I'm not going to cover my eyes and ears.

From what little I've seen, though, I can now put a check mark on something that seems to happen every time with MCU, namely someone (or more than one person), takes some detail from a trailer, gets very huffy about it online, and later it turns out they drew wrong conclusions and the tirade in retrospect is pretty stupid or maybe even embarrassing.

In this case it was that someone (I actually don't remember who it was, not someone I follow regularly, but that I knew of beforehand, might have been a BNF or a pro of some sort) took issue over how Steve in the previous trailer said that some people move on but not them. This person took it as Steve putting the Avengers on pedestal for not moving on, and that he was somehow belittling those who had to move on and not wallow in loss. Back then I kind of side eyed them, because that interpretation didn't feel at all consistent with Steve's previous characterization by the same writing team, and now lo and behold, turns out my gut reaction was right. In the scene Steve was actually making a point that it's a good thing, a smart thing to move on, to continue life after a tragedy, and it's pretty clear he knows it's not healthy to be unable to do so like he and the rest of the Avengers are.

Lessons learned, better judge the movie only after seeing it.

***

Speaking of judging movies, I haven't really sought out Captain Marvel reviews, mostly because I know a lot of them would annoy me. I'm not saying there isn't legitimate criticism, because there is, and I've also read good positive articles by pros as well as good metaposts from fandom, but there's also a lot of hypocrisy and stuff that just doesn't float.

I mean, if you say the story was a complete mess, you'd better have something else as an example than discontinuity about her spacesuit (she had no bag while walking around in jeans, so clearly she shouldn't have had the spacesuit in Louisiana). Yes, this is a real take I saw on twitter. Let's consider first, that discontinuity with costumes isn't actually a story issue and has nothing to do with the emotional effectiveness. Secondly, we saw plenty off time her helmet appear and disappear, so it shouldn't be too big a leap to assume that the whole suit works the same way. Both Iron Man and Black Panther have nano suits, so it's not outlandish for the Kree to have them.

I know that when they don't like something people tend to latch on details that stuck out whether or not they were the actual reason for why the movie doesn't work. However, there also seems to be a tendency to try and find every possible thing that didn't quite work and make them much bigger deal than they actually were (same thing happened with Wonder Woman and Black Panther, and undoubtedly will keep happening).

I'm also not a big fan of those reviews that wanted more of an agenda in it. In general it's okay to seek meaning, but one had to be willfully blind to consider there was no deeper substance in Captain Marvel. Also I'm wary of people saying there needs to be an agenda, because it's too close to the argument that there has to be a reason for a character to be something other than "default". That the hero can't be a woman, or POC, or LGBTQ+ just because, that there needs to be a reason other than it reflecting real life.

***

For me, this was quite a week at work and I'm tired, but on the other hand the cold I had is fully banished, and I'll finally get to see the Favorite tonight. I've been meaning to catch it ever since it was released here, but I've been too sick or busy or tired before.

This was a weird week in a lot of ways, tiring because I'm only today feeling sort of normal after the head cold, and on top of that I ended up working about five hours overtime this week, so it just compounded the exhaustion. I'll try and go to bead early today and hopefully recharge a bit.

I think I mentioned before I was thinking of getting a light therapy device? I actually did last week, but I suppose I'll have to wait a bit longer to see the actual effect, the illness after all made me tired anyway. I do think I've been more awake during the morning commute, so maybe it does sort of help.

The replacement E key arrived for my keyboard, which means I'm typing about a quarter faster again since I don't have to pause and slide it back into place every time I forget to be careful:D Anyway, if you happen to have a single broken key, don't believe them when the pros say you'll need to change the whole keyboard, it was very easy fix and cost me under ten dollars plus about half an hour of effort (25 minutes for the google search and ordering, five minutes for the replacement), rather than the two hundred a pro fix would have.

And I also got tickets for Captain Marvel today, so things are definitely looking up.

Today I woke up to the cat standing on my sternum, which wasn't so fun (he's not a small cat), and when I suggested he move he stood on my boob instead which was not an improvement:D

Anyway, it's been nice to have him, even when I have slept less because his nighttime walkabouts. He'll go back home to my sister sometime next week, unless something unexpected happens and there's still stuff that needs to be done in her new apartment.

***

We are having a proper winter in southern Finland this year, which I like much better than the last few years when we barely had any snow, and what we had lasted only days at a time. It's so much lighter and prettier now, and temperatures below freezing are much easier to dress for than the just above zero and raining.

***

My first book of the year was to read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell again, I'd read it once before several years ago. I like a lot about that book, especially the world building and style (which is probably divisive, for me the meandering works with this story), but there are also things that annoy me about it. For one, it's impossible to disregard that it preaches one thing and practices other; a fairly significant theme in the book is that you should respect the agency of women and people of color, and yet all the characters that actually have any agency are white men.

Moving on, I'm doing research for the HP story I'm hopefully going to finally write, which means rereading all the HP books. I'm in the middle of the Chamber of Secrets right now, it's been years since I last read them (I revisited the series as a whole fairly soon after the Deathly Hallows was released, but not since), and it's curious to see what I retain and what I've forgotten. The plot is familiar, but many details come as a surprise, same with the style somewhat.

I did remember everyone was mad at people more than I was really comfortable with, but the reasons seem more ludicrous than I remembered, and the scale of people's reactions completely blown out of proportion sometimes. Not to mention that every single adult in Harry's life is letting him down by leaving him at Dursleys, which I thought even before this reread, it just strikes me very strongly again. On the good side, the things I enjoyed before I very much still do, the richness of the magical world, and the potentials in it, as well as the compelling characters, which were the reasons that called me to write for the fandom in the first place. It's all still there, and reading the books is strengthening my resolve to write the post-war fic.