Rabid Sharks
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Prison Blog

In which Possum recounts his experiences as an offender in the system.

Possum Bones is autistic. He has identified as a dirty kid in the past, and he’s attended multiple rainbow gatherings. He has several years left to serve in the Washington Correctional system.

He has been making art since he could sit up. He communicates better in writing than speech. If you are interested in the experience of an autistic person doing prison time, check out his Prison Blog. If you are a fan of comic art, underground/outsider music, Lovecraft, Clarke Ashton Smith, Murakami, Cixui Liu, etc.

Dungeon Crawler Carl: gather him

#1 “dungeon crawler Carl " which my friend has, so far , its written in that amateurish drawl thats considered acceptable for web literature ... like some people probably defend this writing style by saying its more like how people talk, but its not " Catcher in the Rye " edgy , its just lazy. He just wrote " What the hell" like that, as a statement, and he began two sentences with " So, " in the space of a single half page.

#2 dungeon crawler Carl badly switching back into that casual voice and using phrases like" these guys " when you're supposed to be writing the voice of a vast alien ai ... A big problem with starting stories in this casual light novel voice is its hard once you've begun that way to then get your reader to take you seriously. Its easy to go from a serious or dramatic tone to a light or casual one briefly when you begin at a serious tone but if you begin in this casual tone you tend to drift back to that as your baseline. It seems like some people like this ? But to me its a concern. The tone you start with tends to set the trend for the rest of the book. It can be absurd and comedic but still not casual , like chuck pahlaniuk. But light novels and web novels so often use this casual voice that is just yuck to me.

#3 that casual voice just pervades everything , allowing any character in the story to make a puerile crack with information they wouldn't know anything about but the author would. This makes it sound like every character in the story is the same person.

#4 Yet another question that ends in an exclamation point and no question mark... there's also just not enough exposition. You ought to tease the plot a little so that when the shit goes down, we care about the character a little. I'm sorry, but your friend is an idiot and so is mine. These kinds of books are the literary equivalent of an episode of Scrubs.

#5 he also just ended a chapter with two consecutive sentences where he used the phrase "as I" ... horrible mistake. These kinds of books never have a sense of the lyrical qualities of writing.

#6 OK, rant over. I got to page 37 before giving up. It frustrates me that so many people like this and that this is a successful creative model because , in simple terms ... this is just not how you write . Its bad.

#7 OK, the " Cuck Aquaman " achievement was pretty funny. I did laugh at that . " New Achievement ! Cuck Aquaman ! " ...

TO BE CONTINUED

Elisa Carlson