Erudite Waffles (3/4/23)

Hello after a week’s break. Let’s get down to it.

What I’m Up To

Let’s see. In a continuing effort to get my word count back up and deal with LWIA v4’s refusal to play nicely with my ADHD I’ve actually tried poking some TARDIS Eruditorum. So look for that on the Patreon. Past that, I sent a pitch out this week, but have mostly been reading and researching and only just switched back into writing mode in the last two days, in part on account of spending a week in Brooklyn.

But frankly who needs me when Christine is dropping career best essays like this.

Oh God You’re Going To Do Vacation Photos Again

Cool your serifs, center-justified boldface text. It was a much lower photo vacation than the last one, and much higher on low key sitting around Lexi’s place watching Game Changer on Dropout and eating the frankly astonishing popcorn she makes. (I am utterly mortified that the food hippies are right and “nutritional yeast” is good. This is actively offensive to me.) Got to take Christine perfume shopping (she now wears Imaginary Authors’ Memoirs of a Trespasser; I’m rocking Nobile 1942’s La Danza delle Libellule, and Penn added Comme des Garçons’ Copper to his collection) and see Battery Park with her, which is where her biological family landed in the country when emigrating from what’s now the Czech Republic, spent some time in MoMA, and went to a leather dyke event, though. But you’re spared photos.

I’m a Sans Serif Font You Typographically Ignorant Cunt

I think that kind of language is a bit unnecessary, Centyjust. (I can call you Centyjust, right?)

Actually… Actually That’s Kind of Cute

Glad you like it. Anyway, the other thing I’ve done is write reviews of all the official Halo releases from Nine Inch Nails with the intention of serializing them here over the next thirty-four weeks. So without further ado…

Halo 1: Down In It

Something like the sixth best song on Pretty Hate Machine gets two additional remixes, neither distinctive enough to bother pulling this disc out over the album version or, more to the point, the other disc they’re both included on. Still, something’s gotta be the debut single, and this is inoffensive, even if you’re more annoyed than satisfied when it’s stuck in your head. 2/9 Inches

And Now… Tumblr Asks!

As always, feel free to send me asks. 

Which is the better name for them: Nine Inch Nails, NIN, or The Nine Inch Nails?

The Nine Inch Nails, obvs.

Do we ever see the cybermen convert anyone in the classic series? It seems like an obvious thing to do with the premise, but I can’t think of examples.

Attack of the Cybermen. (And Tomb, as someone pointed out in reply.)

Have you read any of Miracleman: The Silver Age yet? If so, was it worth the wait?

None of the new issues; figure I’ll read the arc when it’s all together. But no. Nothing is worth that kind of wait. That kind of wait can only ever be disappointing.

Thoughts on the band XTC?

Back when I had Lettie I used to hold her and sing “bless you bless you dear little kitty girl, sweet little kitty girl on my shoulder” and I’ve never enjoyed actually listening to an XTC song nearly as much as that.

Question about an old, old topic, but were you ever interested in writing about the Sandbaggers? You mentioned it occasionally in random Eruditorium posts way back when. There is a dearth of critical material on the series, and most of what does exist is clearly based on Rucka and fucking Warren Ellis’ cheerleading for the series.

Yeah, I liked it and am glad I watched it and would readily go back to it if I were working on a project it was relevant to but it’s not high in my mind these days.

What would you say is the worst piece of TV that you ever watched?

I mean it’s hard to compete with, like, Heil Honey I’m Home.

Aside from Warren Ellis for obvious reasons, has your opinion on the major players in LWiA changed over the course of the project? If so, how and why?

My relationship with Gaiman grows more complicated by the day. And I’ve come to have much stronger feelings on Millar, where previously I’d been indifferent.

What makes Neil Gaiman complicated for you? He has Alan Moore’s blessing and is not a TERF or sexual harasser.

I think it’s really weird how your list of reasons to like him is focused entirely on elements outside of his actual work.

Which Gaiman works do you think aged worst? which still hold up?

Ramadan is probably hard to unseat as “aged worst.” Mostly I think it all holds up perfectly well, though. I don’t think Gaiman was secretly bad or anything.

Idk. Mostly the answer to this line of questions is “you know I’m posting v4 to Patreon, yeah?”

Has your relationship to Grant Morrison changed much, or were you always quite sceptical of their writing?

It’s not even that I’m skeptical. It’s just that I’ve always liked other stuff a bit more.

With the the scale of the Last War, is there any interest in generated epubs of the Books already completed?

Not especially. I put a pretty high quality bar on my book releases. It seems like the point of releasing a pay version of something that I’ve already put out for free. So a for-pay version that’s just got all the typos and first draft energy of the original feels like it, god this is a dispiriting way to talk, dilutes the brand.

Can you recommend media (books, TV, movies, comics, etc) about utopias? What do you like? What’s unchallenging but well-made? What’s critically interesting?

I mean, The Culture series is the obvious choice here. Past that I can’t say it’s a theme I’ve particularly explored in my media consumption.

How do you feel about the rewriting of works by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming to remove dated language? Should the original texts remain intact or should the publishers be allowed to remove anything that modern readers might take offence at?

I can’t rightly say I care, but then, I’m perfectly aware of the publication history of And Then There Were None, or how far the text of The Great Gatsby drifted over the decades after publication, or of dozens of other instances of post-publication revision for dozens of other reasons, and so accept that “the original texts” have never remained intact, and that this is just part of how publishing works and always has done. Like, just wait til you hear what happened to Star Wars, y’know?

So yeah. I fundamentally reject the idea that this is controversial or worthy of comment. We’re talking about it because of bad actors with insincere commitments to freedom of speech recognized there’s a grift to be run here, and I decline to feed that machine.

The Part Where She Leaves You With a Song