Some call me a closed-form elitist
And might ask of me to delete this
Though free-verse may be a purple rose
I will often say, “this could be prose”
Author: Crayshack
Umbrella
Originally published in the 2023 edition of The Hedge Apple.
Continue reading “Umbrella”Fungi’s Great Victory
Long ago, there was a great battle that was forgotten with time. Long before some monkeys learned to hit each other with sticks, wars were waged on a much grander scale. Entire clades of species conducted an arms race against each other that spanned eons. In this conflict, the entirety of human history is only the blink of an eye. Simply a single moment.
Continue reading “Fungi’s Great Victory”Book Announcement
A quick message for the small group of people who are subscribed to me and anyone else who might stumble across this. I am proud to say that I have published my first book. Through the Ages is a short poetry book featuring poems inspired by historical events.
The Princess, the Dragon, and the Tower
Clarissa, Crown Princess of the Kingdom of Brethonia, was not the biggest fan of parties. Too many drunk noblemen convinced that they were the Divine’s gift to all women. Too many social niceties that she had to keep track of for diplomatic reasons. And far too few excuses for her to avoid wearing a corset.
Continue reading “The Princess, the Dragon, and the Tower”Deadly Dorm
“Jimmy, I understand that you are ahead in your studies, but that doesn’t mean you can just sneak a cadaver into your dorm.”
Continue reading “Deadly Dorm”The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Proto-Avengers
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) is a movie that has been widely panned by many. It has poor CGI, a contrived plot, stiff acting, and a number of details that just don’t make much sense. Fans of the comic that it was based on found it to be a poor adaptation. It was even infamous for ending the acting career of the legendary Sean Connery because he was so disappointed in the movie that it cemented his decision to retire. All of these critiques are valid, as the movie is objectively not very good. And yet, I love it.
Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Proto-Avengers”Pi
A poem for Pi Day
Continue reading “Pi”Potential Confounding Factors in the Analysis of Kudos/Hits on AO3
Created in conjunction with /u/What_The_Function.
Archive Of Our Own (AO3) is a website designed for archiving fanfiction and the occasional amateur original work. The site has several metrics that it tracks, which can be used to measure the success of a particular story. Among them are Hits (a measurement of how many separate times a web browser has visited the page for a story) and Kudos (a vote of approval for a particular story that can be left by both registered users and guests). The site tracks them separately, and most users just use one stat or the other (or a different independent stat) to measure how successful a story is. However, some users have suggested looking at the measurement of Kudos/Hits instead. In theory, this will show a measurement of how much the people who read the story like it and will remove the confounding factors of some stories getting lucky with drawing more readers in and some stories simply appealing to a broader crowd. However, it has also been suggested that this measurement may introduce its own confounding factors.
Continue reading “Potential Confounding Factors in the Analysis of Kudos/Hits on AO3”Analyzing the Context of “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Mental illness is an insidious monster that affects far more people than many realize. Despite being common, it leaves little visible signs to show how much someone is suffering. Depression, in particular, is a mental condition that can often go completely unnoticed until it is too late. In the late 1800s, depression was often diagnosed as hysteria or neurasthenia. These diagnoses would often be followed by a prescription of strict rest referred to as the rest cure. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story that depicts the rest cure and how it can prove detrimental to the patient that it was trying to cure. Gilman strategically develops the narrator’s sentence over the course of the narrative, demonstrating the effects that the rest cure has on women’s mental health, which is to say that the rest cure fails to appropriately treat depression.
Continue reading “Analyzing the Context of “The Yellow Wallpaper””
Crayshack 