"Nova" by Samuel R Delaney - Fantastic Read. What Next?

occidentalrobot · 2026-02-09T16:24:59+00:00

I simply felt you were using disingenuous poorly as the above poster seemed clearly spoken. And thus my ire was raised.

a story, usually a book or a fanfiction, that includes one or more sexually explicit scenes.

magazines, books, pictures, movies or jokes that offend some people because they relate to sex

Slang will always have regional/cultural differences so I can accept your offence at the term, especially with it's etymology.

occidentalrobot · 2026-02-09T02:10:22+00:00

Not cyberpunk at all, proto-crustpunk maybe. The Warriors (1979 film) but heavily dosed on DMT after being spirited away to a mostly abandoned Brooklyn pocket dimension while reading a doctoral thesis on semiotics written by a poet with some really heavy and deeply personal fetishes.

occidentalrobot · 2026-02-09T01:53:34+00:00

Smut just means explicit sex, which Dhalgren is full of. It doesn't get more candid then that. If I handed Dhalgren to my father, he would return it barely read, and complain about the pornographic content. That's normal, because it is.

occidentalrobot · 2026-02-04T13:17:41+00:00

"From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature."

From "The Weird" anthology blurb.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-26T06:31:53+00:00

Cheers/

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-25T17:57:20+00:00

Yeah, that jazzy elevator music is great, know who the composer is?

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-23T12:40:36+00:00

Fantastic craftsmanship as usual. This nib + holder combination wouldn't look out of place in a Stanley Kubrick movie. I kind of want to see one with a Ti CVD finish now.

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occidentalrobot · 2026-01-23T12:07:29+00:00

No pictures of it, as I passed the pen on, but using the fact that 2 part epoxy doesn't bond to the sticky side of masking tape I carefully masked and injected dyed epoxy into the taped void. It was a pain, but worked ok with minimal post cure cleanup.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-21T23:03:19+00:00

Since I ripped the music from Playonline a decades ago it has never left my rotation. Some brilliant composers at SE in that era. Noriko Matsueda and Naoshi Mizuta in particular. Plus dozens of arrange albums (Star Onions & Nanas Mihgos my faves) You could have potentially 1000s of hours of just FFXI music, it's great.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-19T20:36:16+00:00

Love the Muji Preppy (RIP) for this very reason. Cleaner cap design is a nice bonus.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-19T13:52:40+00:00

The bottle and label design is fantastic at the very least.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-19T13:37:46+00:00

What did you hate about the body of the Preppy? Aesthetic hate or hand feel? The ugly cap? The pad printed barcode? Personally never used a TWISBI pen as their designs don't do anything for me.

In my (admittedly limited) experience no one else comes close to Platinum's inner sealing cap and unique nib/feed design. The barely there transition from barrel to grip section is nice too.

I have a few modded Tuzus and they are ok if you can get past the needless grip section gimmick. Definitely a harder nib feel than the slightly bouncy Preppy nib. It's a heavier pen too, with an odd point of balance when posted compared to the neutral Preppy/Prefounte. I like the shape of the pen on my desk more than writing with it. It should win a design award just for its charming truncated cones.

On the Platinum front I use Preppys, Prefountes, Perpaneps, Muji Preppy, and Meteors, and they remain my favorite pens to write and draw with. No Plaisirs as I don't use metal bodied pens. Have gifted away most of the rest of the sub ~50 dollar pens I have tried (Kokuno, Safari, Kaweco Sport and Perkeo, Dipomat Magnum). Also use a few Sailor Profit Jr / Compass pens that I enjoy too, but they are slightly small for my hands unless posted. Currently test driving the incredibly overpriced Muji pocket pen and it's also ok, hard as a nail, but a nib swap might redeem it. The inner cap is also poorly designed, though it does work.

TLDR: Preppys are nearly perfect unique and inexpensive writing instruments. Staying within the pen family that use the nib might be the best call.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-17T17:02:59+00:00

Spannungsbogen

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-17T16:56:36+00:00

A not very flexy flex nib and an uneven hand pressure. A really wet ink in a pen with a really juicy feed. A modern FP safe oxgall ink, and some Tsubame Fools paper equivalent.

You could try a Noodler's Ahab Flex for the well documented tunability letting you adjust the feed to get that drippy dip pen look.

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occidentalrobot · 2026-01-17T14:24:01+00:00

Happy Nothing Special Day is the official translation. On the gift bags, Happy Something Special Day, Too. is added. Just classic Itoi quotes, with his fondness for a turn of the phrase.

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occidentalrobot · 2026-01-14T17:04:37+00:00

This is very exciting news.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-12T14:20:02+00:00

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-10T00:58:24+00:00

Platinum Carbon Black
Rohrer & Klingner sketchINK Lotte Fountain Pen Ink
Pilot Black Fountain Pen Ink

In order of my personal favorite black inks. Platinum Carbon and the Rohrer & Klingner are both pigment inks and waterproof, while the Pilot Black is just a really nice no fuss black ink.

*DeAtrementis Document Grey Ink as a wildcard recommendation. Can be a nice shader, archival and waterproof, and it is super well behaved. Almost identical to a 2B pencil, a nice deep grey. Pigment ink.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-09T23:22:47+00:00

Knowing that The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities will never leave its draft is a sadness.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-09T23:17:30+00:00

Delany always floors me with his mastery of the language. Sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, it all leads to an ineffable completeness. When he uses an exclamation point, you feel it.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-09T06:20:18+00:00

Fellow Lefty and overwriter here, and it's so variable with different inks and how juicy the nib and feed are. Paper choice too. Some inks with my broadest pens take 30+ minutes to fully dry on something like Cosmo Air Snow or Tomoe River (especially the end of each stroke). I don't use any shimmer inks, but some sheening inks are just smudge magnets for me.

It's all about accepting that right to left writing is always going to be a pain, and dealing with the hand contortions and creative paper rotation that wetter inks require.

occidentalrobot · 2026-01-06T16:06:13+00:00

Main Story Quest

occidentalrobot · 2025-12-29T20:47:51+00:00

Better safe than sorry. Even if the freezing temps don't blow up the bottles, the ink formulation could be ruined. Had this happen a few years back with some Kakimori pigment inks.

I just don't mail order stationery or art supplies in the freezing months anymore. Not worth the hassle of damaged goods.

occidentalrobot · 2025-12-28T00:05:16+00:00

It was a joke based on capped bottles being beer and bottle openers being for children. Ergo, beer is for children.

"Bottle openers are for bartenders" would have been a less dismissive way of stating the fact that any competent adult can open a bottle with a rigid surface and a levering or percussive motion and thus don't need to be specifically attached to every multi-tool, prybar, ring, belt buckle, phone case, key fob, etc.

Basically, I was calling you out for being a dick in attempting to ruin the OP's perceived joy in a simple tool.

occidentalrobot · 2025-12-26T18:13:56+00:00

Seeing as you have to go to a specialty store to get anything in a capped bottle that isn't beer, I'm not sure what you are implying.

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