Death to Realism! 010
Death to Realism! 010
Crossing over into the double digits, huh! If you need a refresher on the origin & nature of these bi-weekly updates, check out the first issue before reading on.
What's New?
Sorry if this week's newsletter is a bit clipped! Something "new" for me is the damage modifier change applied to both drinking and muscle pain past 30, basically I am still adjusting to it and somehow yanked something very painfully in my back on Friday evening. Laying flat on my back was kind of boring me out of my mind but I am trying to do it as much as possible until I'm better.
However, before that I was poetically inspired by the latest entry in the wife games canon.
Coming Soon
The things I mentioned here last week are mostly the same! No huge news, just chipping away at some curation projects and calls for writing that may go out soon.
The Rec Room
I have been a fan of Jenny Hval's writing for a while, but this week was the first time I actually listened to some of her music! I found this one showstopping.
I turned into a cultural megalomaniac playing SMALL PRESS TYCOON
This article lists a set of net art projects to explore that use the internet's unique capacities for timing and waiting in interesting ways.
Horror season continues apace as I watched Mutilations (1987) in zone and Nightbreed (1990) on my own, both recommended
I've Been Reading
As if some outside force had ordained it, on Saturday morning my copy of Taiyo Matsumoto's No. 5, which has been recently reprinted, arrived. I used the full day of feeling dubious at the prospect of sitting up and using the computer to read it, and it has a lot of fantastic weird world-building details. It's also cool to see parts where Matsumoto's more well-known, bold line style starts incorporating the more sketchy and impressionistic look a lot of his more recent stuff has. I also reread the second half of Ping Pong, and some Wave Listen to Me! which are both masterpieces of tone and characterization, imo, though in very different directions.
I was also enchanted by the introduction of In Praise of Copying, which puts some stuff I've been trying to think through into very straightforward words, so I'm excited to read on.
This is an older article, but I found it especially interesting even having not read many novels of the tendency it's discussing, because so much of the general tone of how we talk about the internet also relies on these corrupting, monstrous cultural vocabularies. It also makes me think about how "being too online" as a complaint is mostly limited to the annoying behaviors of a minority of large twitter accounts, and there's a major lack of imagination in positing their concerns as like, relevant enough to everyone to make multiple youtube video essays on (lol)... But! also it's just dreary and inaccurate to act on the assumption that all of the internet is or will be has to be the same as that. The internet saved me too.
Anyways, one of the great things about the internet is that it makes it so easy to find intellectual compatriots; I loved this piece and feel like it both summarizes and gives me food for thought on the themes I try to work with in my own science fiction writing. I also liked this reflection on both good and bad walking in games, and good and bad hiking. And I feel like I'll have to do some more historical research to decide if I agree with the most interesting claim of this article (that Durer brought up the first court case based on the logic of intellectual property, in 1506), but it's a fascinating case regardless.
I think that's all I have this bi-week! For new subscribers who have signed on since the last newsletter, you can check out the archive of past issues at any time!
Thank you again for your support,
Emilie