I asked GPT to write fantasy by Palahniuk. I thought the result was pretty funny so I'm sharing here for your amusement:In a world where dreams and nightmares are traded like currency, a realm where the laws of logic are as fickle as a teenager’s mood, we find our hero—a man named Jack, only his name isn’t really Jack. It’s something like Jaxar, but without the glamour, the pretense, or the punctuation. He’s an anti-hero, the kind who doesn’t quite fit into the heroic mold, but instead carves out a niche with jagged edges and tired eyes.Jack’s story begins in the Cradle of Lost Hopes, a decrepit city where hope was sold at auction and the proceeds never reached the promised land. Here, the streets are paved with the broken dreams of those who thought they’d find fortune or freedom but ended up with shackles of regret. The air smells of regret and burnt-out wishes, a fragrance not entirely dissimilar to that of a neglected candle.Jack’s apartment is a mess of stained tapestries and mismatched furniture—a shrine to the idea of anti-luxury. He sits in a threadbare armchair, nursing a potion of self-pity with a side of unfulfilled ambition. The walls of his home are lined with fading posters of forgotten heroes and discarded epics. One day, Jack receives an invitation—a gaudy scroll with gold edges that seems to mock him. It’s an offer to participate in the Tournament of Fates, a grand spectacle where contestants wager their very existence against the whims of fate itself. It promises glory, wealth, or perhaps even a soul-saving revelation. But Jack, being Jack, is more intrigued by the possibility of winning a refund on his squandered life.He takes a swig of his potion, which he calls "Existential Ennui," and decides that the Tournament is as good a distraction as any from his own internal despair. His competitors are a parade of exaggerated personas: a brooding knight who lives in a perpetual raincloud, a sorceress who looks like she walked straight out of a designer’s fantasy, and a dragon who complains about his midlife crisis.
The Tournament unfolds in a series of bizarre and disjointed trials, each more absurd than the last. The challenges are metaphysical, designed to strip away illusions and confront participants with their most haunting fears. It’s a game where losing means facing the raw, unfiltered reality of one’s self.In the end, Jack finds that the real tournament isn’t about defeating rivals or surviving absurdities—it’s about confronting the dismal reality he’s been running from. As he stands in the arena, the audience of fickle gods and jaded spirits watching from the bleachers, he realizes that the ultimate quest is not for glory but for a semblance of meaning in the chaos of existence.The final battle isn’t with a dragon or a dark lord; it’s with the empty, hollow shell of his former self. The prize, he discovers, isn’t wealth or power but a grudging acceptance of the absurdity of life. And as he emerges from the Tournament, scarred and wiser, Jack understands that in a world where dreams are currency, the true treasure is the courage to face one’s own nightmare and emerge from it, however battered, with a smirk of defiant hope.
>>23817922The premise sounds kinda good lol. On that note, reading Palahniuk is so frustrating; you can tell there's potential there (or at least there was!), that he could've been the next Easton Ellis, if not DeLillo. But it feels like he always settles for mediocrity; churning out an annoying pop-punk novella after another. Even when there's a sense that, had he the patience to develop his style, he could perhaps try and reach toward something truly exceptional.
>>23817963*And I do think that he's pretty much a terrible writer. But I can tell by his prose that he could've been great.
>thinly veiled Fight Club
>>23817963exactly this. I thought he was a genius when I was in high school and now looking back I just see someone whose taste/ambition started and ended with "making the literary equivalent of an okay punk album". Some of his prose is nice, a lot of it is tryhard edgy, but he really is a great storyteller with some unique plots that absolutely could've been handled with more care and become, like, something more than Gen X jaded-core coomer thrillers
