AUTOPSY SUBS OPEN ALL WEEK/THE ARCHITECT, THE TYRANT, & A HEEL TURN

Substack, The Veil of Anonymity, And Knowing You are Not a Beautiful And Unique Snowflake

(Stolen art, memed by Emil Ottoman, for Cult of the Rainbow Rat 2023)

IF YOU WANT TO SUBMIT FIVE PAGES FOR THE WEEKLY AUTOPSY WE ARE NOW OPEN ALL WEEK LONG!

Just email five pages you’d like autopsied to: emilottoman@gmail.com

Please put: AUTOPSY in the email subject. And Please, no PDFs.

(Pictured left: Emil Ottoman next to the Hanged Saint, Evelyn Milquetoast, We were Marla and Tyler but we never fucked and she understood that everything about life was art, and lived it until the very end. Thanks to

Jon T

for the pixelglitch)

The Inciting Incident

Someone I respect made a list of authors of fiction on Substack who he likes. I accidentally amplified it to another social node I’m connected to. This is what happens when you walk through walls. (It’s also what happens when you put a former professional criminal and federal convict, author, editor, and general literary nerd on the list in the third spot.)

There were words exchanged between one party and a friend. There was a culture gap. An overreaction happened. It was explained by someone much less bellicose and belligerent I am currently. Apologies were proffered and amends were made. Someone I respect admitted they were ignorant of something and had overreacted, and proceeded to actively humble themselves and learn something from it. This is to be admired.

Now my friend. Something popped off inside his head. Among some of us we call him the ARChitect for a reason. I like him because he knows his shit. He’s bold. He’s brash. He knows the fuck what he’s talking about. And he knows an opportunity when he sees one.

And we could have actually built this up as a “drama” around your list and gotten attention for fiction. The problem on this app is none of the fiction published on here gets that much attention. like hardly any.

Just doing a list won’t break that up. Drama does! Why does this list matter? Why is this guy going so crazy over it? How do I get on the list? Who are these two? is something interesting happening here?

We lost all that when it got actually personal. Which sucks but whatever.

This is a pseudonym! how many people on here are using aliases? is the face yours? I keep getting surprised by the alias thing.

The thing is with art, staying in a child-like place is part of how you maintain creativity and freshness. So you literally have to stop yourself from being too much of an adult.

Also if you read really post, post modern fiction, identity and fucking with it and your history is part of the genre now. Think Phillip Roth in Operation Shylock where he tries to convince a journalist he actually did go crazy and the plot of the novel is true.

But yeah in general, only fools think they have stopped growing up.

I am glad we got passed this. I wish we could have made more of it.

Read the above. Then read it again. It’s important later.

(You could break this down into the whole story, but trust me, it’s just the inciting incident. This is the problem of the story, THIS, above, in the pull quote, if you read it, is what needs to be solved, and it’s not the story I just told in brief. Those were the first few chapters, and I’m happy with how they turned out.)

---

“The problem on this app is none of the fiction published on here gets that much attention. like hardly any.”

As an editor with my stripes, yeah. This is the issue.

Now I sit back in my orange Steelcase chair, cheap because it was City of St. Louis Orange, and I have to clean the fabric every 3 months, and in this world, on Substack, I’ve gained a reputation as an editor, which I am, and I also edit and co/run a project called The Nine Story Hotel.

I posted an autopsy of someone’s work. I solicited it. I usually charge a reading fee for this but it’s been harder to get bigger contracts in since the election. I wonder why. The reaction to that developmental and line edit pass, which me and a few close friends in the business do indeed call autopsies, was resoundingly and exceptionally fantastic. People have said they learned more from that post than in their entire time as writers.

This says more about them than it does me. Because I WANT to lift up new voices, I want to spread the craft, I want to read interesting new voices and new work. And I will never paywall the autopsies.

But this is me on Substack.

I met the ARChitect when he came onto one of my comment threads and challenged me to a timed flash fiction battle under his publication, Rap Fiction. Unfortunately my kitchen ceiling was in the process of disintegrating from hundreds of gallons of snow melt pouring through holes in it and I have a paid workshop coming up with

🫀body fluids🦷 - a lit mag

. I understood where he was coming from. I respected the brashness. He said he expected me to be bold, brave, and I explained that I have these things coming up, and if I take an L it may knock the hustle, because this upcoming workshop, it’s 12 students, one scholarship, two rounds of editorials from two professional editors, and there is NO peer critique. It’s $375 a seat early, and $400 once the acceptance period starts.

To give you an idea of what it’s going to be like the branding is “Short Story Slaughterhouse: An Editorial Abattoir.”

You have to apply with two pieces of fiction, your best work and what you want to get shredded in the workshop.

Why can me and the head editor of

🫀body fluids🦷 - a lit mag

run this?

Domain mastery.

Something lacking on the majority of this platform under the fiction tab.

Because see, they used to call me the Tyrant. Like I say, I’m kind, but I’m not nice, I don’t suffer fools, and being a Tyrant actually got someone to wait 4 years, cross five state lines, and end up on my doorstep with a knife wearing a dollar store red skull mask the day after I had left for Florida. The SHEER AUDACITY.

So, as a Tyrant, I’m not nice, and maybe I’m not always kind.

And then I started to see notes from the ARChitect.

A few crazy videos. Well picked. I come upon this and it comes together.

This is not fiction. It has no structure. It lacks intent. We don't trust the first person narrator but the writer doesn't seem aware of it. Its just stream of consciousness dribble. This is at best a mediocre diary entry. You should be reading way, way more. I would start with Grace Paley if I were you, since you have some really silly ideas that also needs re-education. Best of luck to you with your writing journey. I have freed you from the delusion that you are ready as a writer. You should thank me.

It was on a post that indeed, from a professional and structural point, was not fiction. It was a sketch. It was a list of things. It was expressionist. It showed competency in both English and a budding prose style, but it lacked coherence. It failed. It was a peanut butter blog post pretending to be fiction. A fictive diary entry. Non-narrative and metatextual prose maybe, but as fiction, it failed. The ARChitect was right.

It’s now that I’ll mention the ARChitect, he autopsied HIS OWN STORY, from the last fiction rap battle.

Ok, now go read the fist pull quote again.

In the business, we call this a heel turn.

In art, we call this method.

In literature, I call it reminding people that they are not beautiful and unique snowflakes. Just the same decaying organic matter as everything around them.

The Cacophony Society was a direct offshoot of the San Francisco Suicide Club, the Suicide Club was big on using DADA and Situationalist provocation (and the absurd) to challenge the status quo. View this ALL qua that lens.

So today I found out I’m fucked, and that writers, and anyone of any age on this platform who’s said “do it for the plot” in the past two years, didn’t get the notice. A plot moves, it’s just the vehicle for the story. I’m DADAdisappointed in y’all’s lack of imagination.

Thankfully someone else chimed in speaking a little bit of harsh truth.

was the criticism rough? i mean yeah, somewhat? i wish i caught the work before it was taken down but what he’s saying isn’t actually that bad (used to get my essays ripped apart at the graduate level way back when holy shit you start questioning everything in your life at that point) and his critique is useful. structure your shit, find your focus, here’s a lauded pro you can use to get some direction.

i’m all for art as expression—as play. i believe it is our right to be able to express ourselves creatively. we should all be doodling and making up songs and tripping over our feet and build birdhouses or whatever the fuck because it truly does help the soul.

but art as a discipline? as craft? as something you dedicate your life to? then yeah that’s how it goes take the lumps get good. realize you will be spending the rest of your life doing the work. it’s beautiful as shit and i love it (reminds me i need to find someone to critique my serial lol i need to go to bed).

Renni Grier

(thank you)

So then naturally this stupid shit happened.

(Screen clips stitched together by yours truly)

There’s a mistake in inductive reasoning going on here.

I’m 40 in April. I earned my striped. I’ve been around publishing and writing for pub, and especially editing a while.

And again, while this may be an immaculate heel turn, he’s right.

Motherfuckers, this ain’t OnlyFans

Don’t put disrespect on people’s life’s work, how they pay their BILLS, or even the incredibly competent strivers jaded before you were maybe even born, by talking about your 1500 subscribers. Fuck them too.

Disentangle yourself from the situation, take a step back, breathe, and realize that if you’re 22, you don’t even know the extent of what you don’t know about what you don’t know. And if you must, read the sentence twice.

---

We’re in act 2. Where the meat of the story happens.

This will make of break this as a piece of art. But I think the ARChitect is up to the challenge. He’s a smart man, and those throwing dirt on his name are using the disinhibition the veil of the internet and distance gives people to be shitty to each other.

Nothing he has said is wrong.

Bold, brash, a heel turn maybe, but not wrong.

And that’s the problem.

Because unless you prove it, you aren’t a beautiful and unique snowflake.

You can come on here and type some pretty words and feel good about yourself, but if you want to pretend like you’re playing writer when you don’t have any respect for the craft, or know shit about it, nah kids, I’m the Editor, and I’m the Tyrant. And he’s the ARChitect. And I know I’ve earned my stripes. And I can tell he’s earned his just by how he moves in the space.

Don’t get it twisted. You’re wasting opportunities to create better art, or you’re wasting opportunities to introspect, and consider whether or not you ARE dedicated.

Because some of us can tell by sentence 2 whether you’re going in the trash, or you’re going in the pile for consideration.

- Emil Ottoman, The fucking Editor