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Zani D's avatar

IMPORTANT NOTE FROM A COAUTHOR:

I did not write the entirety of the first part.

I didn't know how much he was going to include or how it would be integrated.

It's a letter I wrote Sarah in January while the roof was collapsing on Emil's family.

But the parentheses, and I didn't ask because I don't have to, are responses taken from Sarah's journal.

I didn't know what he was planning.

I never expected this.

I am not calm.

Motherfucker knew he could get me on his own.

You bastard.

I love you.

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Emil Ottoman's avatar

I promise, the story is actually going somewhere, It’s not just grief porno, I just couldn’t finish it all in one night. Also half journal, but there’s a turn where it goes to DMs. (I didn’t know how much I was planning or what I was planning exactly at first either.)

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Zani D's avatar

I typed "and potentially DMs" but the sentence looked better like that and I knew you'd correct me if that was the case.

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Emil Ottoman's avatar

I didn't want it all to be so painfully sad, but even the DMs were... Yeah, I'm a bastard. I should have decontextualized your words a little, made it more broad, but really, all I would have done was take out some time markers you have in that letter. Etc. Because this is basically how everyone who ever met her online or not felt. but the conversation between the text set left, and the metatext parenthetically, was important in giving voice to the Saint.

I was happy Pablo didn't mind the few changes I made to his immaculate poem to bring it both in line with The Saint as character, and as Sarah, along with putting in some depressing bits. Because it took most of the night to actually get his beautiful use of space on the page right. (His poetry is something else for how he works that, fucking immaculate. Using the entire toolbox. I fucking swoon over it.)

And then I had a snippet of story that I recontextualized in a more than totally believable way. Probably based partially on an event that happened. And of course, end on a song about heroin that's an earworm with a snippet of what comes next. (Final quote) signaling yeah, this gets really weird and really sad.

Finding the framing as mythic in the literal sense, with the protagonist being (you'll find out motherfuckers but Zani knows) even fit in with a scene towards the end of My Name is My Name. It's like my brain is doing stuff I don't know about all the time (insert laugh track here)

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M.P. Fitzgerald's avatar

My whole heart aches. I am grieving for someone I've never known and yet am indebted to them. I knew the four of you collaborating would end me. I am in tears.

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Zani D's avatar

I had no idea what he was planning.

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M.P. Fitzgerald's avatar

Y'all have put god on notice.

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Emil Ottoman's avatar

From the day after she died until we moved, one of my white boards had "FIND GOD AND KILL HIM THROUGH THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP" scrawled on it.

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M.P. Fitzgerald's avatar

This is the only way forward. Kill him with the power of friendship, we shall.

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Edith Bow's avatar

Grief just opened another hole in my chest cavity.

I miss the routines that revolved around her.

And saying I love her on the other end.

I say it every day still.

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George Kalantzis's avatar

Did you just...no wait you did. Spanbauer's ghost dragging a broken typewriter down the hallway of Palahniuk’s basement. I can see Burroughs vomiting cut-ups into a moleskine laced with opiates and menstrual blood. And somehow, this loss to suicide echos.

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Emil Ottoman's avatar

This is just the prelude, it's gonna get weirder and sadder.

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George Kalantzis's avatar

Am I the only twisted mind who saw that ?

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Sean Thomas McDonnell's avatar

Holy shit. Powerful. Might have been some tears over here.

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Sandolore Sykes's avatar

Damn.

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Keith Long's avatar

God damn

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wayback machine's avatar

Heart wrenching….goddamn. Took me three tries to get all the way through and I mean that in the best possible sense

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Emil Ottoman's avatar

Thank you.

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Zivah Avraham's avatar

Shattered twice over.

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Tom Schecter's avatar

This is about what I expected. By which I mean, I’m shaking.

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Roberta Lynn🍄's avatar

Fucking hell

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William Pauley III's avatar

Goddamn. I'm in shreds.

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Emil Ottoman's avatar

Mission accomplished, but from here it just gets weirder and sadder.

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Hali Reiskin's avatar

reads like Coltrane, aches like Nina Simone. Soulfully balanced in hues of bleak. Charged full of life, chords on razors edge.

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Emil Ottoman's avatar

Thank you, that's one hell of a comment.

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Zachary Dillon's avatar

Grief gut punch.

And he says another is coming, and I won’t dodge that one either.

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S M Garratt's avatar

I hope one day I have the honour, courage, strength and belief to love someone this much.

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