(no subject)
I was never one for webcomics but I seem to have fallen for Questionable Content. Only I just realized that its large cast of characters and their complicated relationships- that I still haven't got straight onaccounta coming in at ep 200 or whatever-- feels exactly the same as the entries I read on my FFL or on various people's networks. Both are pixels on a screen involving people I (mostly) don't know, unless I've been reading them long enough to have a rough idea of who they are. Sometimes I'm reminded of that Jemisin story where people can only email each other but when the protag meets an actual person (I forget how) she disappears from the online universe. My universe has been virtually all-virtual for two and a half years now and I think it's messing with my thinking.
Meanwhile I have Michael Innes' first, Death at the President's Lodging, which I would never have suspected was about a university because I didn't think English universities *had* presidents. I wonder if Pratchett had this in mind when he wrote the early Unseen University where professors advance through murder. Even if not, it's unpleasantly reminiscent of the university gossip that reached even us undergrads back in the day: departmental feuds both inter and intra, back-biting and infighting and kimochi warui-ness all round. I could never have been an academic- too lazy, for one thing- but I begin to see in retrospect what was wrong with all my acquaintances who were or wanted to be. They might have been decent enough people to start with-- back in high school, maybe-- but departmental politics warped them very early on.
So I shall persevere with this, but on the whole I prefer Appleby in a country house setting.
Meanwhile I have Michael Innes' first, Death at the President's Lodging, which I would never have suspected was about a university because I didn't think English universities *had* presidents. I wonder if Pratchett had this in mind when he wrote the early Unseen University where professors advance through murder. Even if not, it's unpleasantly reminiscent of the university gossip that reached even us undergrads back in the day: departmental feuds both inter and intra, back-biting and infighting and kimochi warui-ness all round. I could never have been an academic- too lazy, for one thing- but I begin to see in retrospect what was wrong with all my acquaintances who were or wanted to be. They might have been decent enough people to start with-- back in high school, maybe-- but departmental politics warped them very early on.
So I shall persevere with this, but on the whole I prefer Appleby in a country house setting.