- The first thing most noticed about Max was his bowl cut and that his jeans were too short for his legs. He was still wearing faded pairs of jeans that he likely had since he was in high school. This is what it looked like.
- The second thing people noticed was Max's complete inability to modulate his voice. This guy was loud as shit and had no idea.
Obviously this is odd/somewhere on the autism spectrum, but not really noteworthy in and of itself. However...
- Max remains one of the worst workshop participants I've ever worked with. He would constantly interrupt people with "Now I'm talking" or "My turn to talk now" while holding up his index finger like an adult scolding a child.
- Max had an enormous hate-boner for any story involving drugs or sex. He would find any stories containing either to be "poorly written" and "trashy." He was also fond of reminding everyone that he had never touched drugs in his life.
- His other comments were equally useless for an author. He hated any story that had "froufrou emotions." Essentially anything that wasn't trying to be "awesome" was bad. Few stories were trying to be "awesome" as he defined it.
- If there was an assigned reading that was a piece of fiction, he hated it. If the assigned reading was about method and technique, he would talk about how much he thought it was stupid and disagreed with it.
This was his routine throughout the workshop. It was not until nearer the end was it finally time for his story. His story was a cliche bit about Russians inventing zombies that attack and kill a group of vodka swilling miners. In terms of other projects by spergs talked about on this forum, it was much closer to Golden Knight's
Myth of the Legendary Warrior in terms of quality than
Tiberius Rising. Which is a feat given the quality of both. Ultimately, a collection of images and ideas he thought were awesome but he had no sense (and I don't think he really cared) of what building blocks actually made even the most basic story.
I was fed up with this guy at this point and his story being as bad as it was didn't help. When it was time to finally talk about his story I really tore into it for being a generic and uninteresting mess. To my relief the instructor agreed with what I had to say, and was far more annoyed with Max's entry than myself.
His response was that he was "writing it for himself." Which is maybe the worst response you can have at a workshop. If you were really writing for yourself then why bring it before other people at all? No one tricks you about what the function of a workshop is. It's just a waste of everyone's time and effort otherwise.
In retrospect he reminds me quite a bit of a certain Golden Knight talked about on here and gives me the impression that TGK was likely similar to this guy during his college years.
I lost track of him after the course ended. I hope he got some much needed therapy, but I have a feeling he is more likely in some dark corner of the internet doing what he always did biding time before he ends up someone's pet lolcow.
