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VARIATIONS Issue #1 (March 8, 2021)
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the second issue of my online newsletter, Variations!
Has it really been 4 weeks (give or take) since I launched this thing? I mean, where does the time go? Why does it fly so quickly?
I’ll be honest. This first month hasn’t really been all that satisfying from a creative standpoint. Getting the newsletter up and running was a difficult learning experience and I had trouble writing and publishing my pieces in a consistent manner. I mean, to launch a Substack newsletter, I had to do a lot of little things, like set up an “About Me” Page, create a custom logo, figure out how images should be shaped so that they appear well in both the interface of Substack and on social media. And so, I wasn’t able to really keep up with the release schedule I had initially established.
My pilot piece, “Variations #1” came out a little late. Subsequently, I planned to release a long post that really accentuated the fact that textual variation was going to be a primary subject of this publication/newsletter. So, I chose to focus on the subject of the director’s cut, combining a historical analysis of the term and its definition with a look at Zack Snyder’s Justice League. But my essay took considerably longer to write than I anticipated. Not to mention, it grew so long, I had to break it up into two shorter posts, which became A History of the Director’s Cut and Snyder Cut Unlimited.
Part of the rationale for that was the fact that Substack has something of a per-article word and image limit, as posts that run over a certain amount of memory can end up getting clipped when sent out in email form. After learning about this, I decided to keep my posts shorter, usually about 2,000-2,500 words.
That’s one reason, as to why I wound up writing the Golden Compass article. Initially, it was going to be part of a larger listicle piece, but I decided to break it down into multiple shorter works for distribution purposes. Thus, the “HBO Max Could Reissue...” series was born. I hope to add about four-five installments to it over the next three months or so and possibly still do a shorter listicle version at some point. We’ll see how that develops.
In addition to that, cross-posting my articles on Medium has also been quite time consuming. The traditional “import” article feature on Medium doesn’t appear to work for Substack posts, and so I have to repost everything manually and specify a canonical link. Because the formats of the two platforms are quite different, everything I repost, be it text or image, also has to be slightly adjusted to the specific demands of the target platform. I need to add tags, SEO keywords, re-check the images, modify the paragraphs somewhat so the formatting looks proper with the new font and size.
And that’s not even mentioning the fact that personal life events make it difficult or impractical to keep to a rigorous schedule for a publication like this. Anyway, that’s why posts on Textual Variations have been off-schedule during this first month. (Indeed, this newsletter probably should’ve come out about 3 days ago.)
Coming Soon:
Now that we’re in April, I want to change things up. I want to get faster and more consistent with my posting. The goal for this month is to indeed make 5-6 articles, not counting the newsletter-style Variation posts. But I also want things to be a bit more loose this time, and so am refraining from a specific posting schedule. What are my plans in general then? Well, one thing I definitely hope to do this April is to finish reviewing the four remaining episodes of Servant Season 2. My episode-by-episode coverage will not be complete without them, and I’ve had to skip 2.04 for a while.
I’d also like to finish some of the articles I’ve previously planned for March, such as my listicle about deleted scenes and a comparative review of the Whedon and Snyder cuts of Justice League. But that might have to go on the back-burner as I feel the need to make works that are a bit more timely as well as more diverse in terms of their subject matter. For instance, I have an essay in mind about the connections between film, technology, and revision as well as one about the benefits of I-Tunes as a film/TV streaming platform. I’m also thinking of posting some thoughts in response to the World of Wong Kar Wai restoration controversy.
There have also been some unexpected developments in the film and TV worlds that I’d like to respond to. For instance, earlier this week, HBO unexpectedly announced that this month would be the “Iron Anniversary” month of Game of Thrones, which makes it the perfect time for me to finalize an article I’ve worked on in bits and pieces about the evolution of the series, particularly when it comes to the way it has treated its fantasy elements.
Similarly, I did not expect that the final season of Van Helsing, one of my favorite genre shows would suddenly come back in mid-April, so I’d like to at least write a general review of the series, which has never gotten the critical recognition it deserves.*
*At some point in the future, I hope to start reviewing the show full time. There are going to be 65 total episodes of the series and so I’d like to review every single one of them.
So, for now, that’s the plan but it is subject to change.
There are bound to be other digressions or areas of interest that come up unexpectedly that I’ll want to tackle at the spur of the moment.
Final notes:
Although I’d previously claimed that I’d keep my episodic Servant S2 reviews strictly to Medium, I ended up changing my mind and decided to post a review of the finale here on Substack. So, will there be any more Servant reviews here on Textual Variations?
Maybe.
The fact is, I keep going back and forth over whether or not these episodic reviews actually belong here. I might switch back to Medium-exclusivity for the episodic reviews in the future. I’ve also considered maybe starting a sub-newsletter devoted to just the episodic reviews and nothing else. But I don’t know.
My perspective on these things is constantly evolving. Writing, after all, is an organic process and I’m still figuring some things out when it comes to this publication. Hopefully, by the beginning of May, I will have worked out all the kinks.
Until next time, dear readers!
Best,
Mikhail Skoptsov
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