Okay, we need to talk about how these EPs reference the whole NIN discography

[acidpits]

The idea I'm stuck on at the moment is that the story being told across the first two EPs is one of time, trying to copy the past but each time it's copied it degrades over time and if you continue to copy the past then it will eventually become so warped and distorted it's unrecognisable.

The artwork for NTAE suggests this to me first - there are a couple of variations but essentially there is the adapted artwork of Still and the white version. This is like a degraded copy, maybe one of many like photocopying a photocopy of a photocopy (Copy of A, Copy of a...). The blurb for Still on nin.com is interesting as it goes out of the way to say, "One of Reznor's favourite records of his own".

It could be that the idea is one of returning to a past you remember with rose tinted glasses for some reasons but in reality that's not the whole story (the actual events), trying to copy them over and over but realising you can't because you simply aren't that person anymore and that by trying to rekindle a warped version of the past you're not keeping anything alive, you're essentially destroying something as the principle behind it decays with each attempt of a copy you make. The only way forward is to evolve - this is one of the switches on the ADD VIOLENCE machine, regress or evolve. You'll only regress and degrade if you keep trying to repeat the past and you'll regret it eventually when the results lead you down a path of either stagnation or destruction and real regret of having squandered time.