Shuffle
Welcome to the 2021 Annual Issue! Today is all about the Shuffle, in every sense of the word as we mark the halfway point through Vol. 1 and some of the serials get shuffled around and replaced. We’re also bringing you new issues of the Shuffle Anthology because we’ve had fun writing those and we thought it would be cool to revisit a couple of the worlds we’ve created so far.
I won’t keep you, there are a lot of stories to enjoy. We will see you soon for Issue 7!
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This week:
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ANNUALS
Shuffle – Playlist 1
A PRL Anthology Series
There are always two sides to every good debate. The Shuffle takes us back to the time of True Enlightenment and we get the same story from the other side.
Someone Else’s Dream (Absofacto, Trinix) Reprise: “I knew him before I met him but it was easy to see him as just the black and white ink of his resume that I memorized because I saw it as often as I did. He has an impressive resume, for sure, but back then, he was just a naive man who completely misunderstood the significance of the supposed cosmic event that seemed to allow animals to speak like human beings.”
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Fiona English, the black female android, is loose in the world and memories of a life are still coming to the surface of her consciousness. What’s the first thing she does with her new found freedom? I bet you can’t guess.
Body Remix (Tion Wayne, Russ Millions, Jack Harlow) Reprise: “Fiona had battered her way to freedom. The uniform she wore in the facility was similar to a prison jumpsuit and the orange of her body stuck out against the hues of nature. She wasn’t concerned with her appearance, she was wide-eyed and taking in her surroundings.”
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You are not ready, dear readers. This is a monumental moment in PRL history, the debut of the one and only Doom. Bow before your new master.
Phantoms (Czarface, MF DOOM): “Everyone called her Doom and they forgot the person she was before she became the villain who conquered an entire block of countries on the east coast of the African continent. She became more than human and the magic she mastered made her something like a god, or devil, on Earth.”
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And lastly, the Shuffle takes us to the border of North and South Carolina, to a lake in North Carolina that is close to a town called Lancaster in South Carolina. Every location has history and a man encounters the history of the area while out on the water.
Water (Bishop Briggs): “Buckey loves the water. He can’t get enough of it, especially lately in Lancaster, South Carolina where he lives and the summer heat is borderline oppressive and thick with humidity. He works as a lifeguard at two local gyms and it’s the only job he’s ever had since he started working at fifteen years old.”
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Wes switches up his Vol. 1 contribution with the debut of his collection about the many different types of relationships that men share. We start with his introduction and he helps you understand why this project means so much to him.
Wes E. L.’s Relationships and Men: “My long conversations with my uncle Thomas always make me think about male relationships. He has had an intimate friendship with a man for most of his adult life, but that is not to say that the two of them shared a sexual relationship, only that they know one another extremely well, better than either’s family members and significant others.”
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Eleven years ago I wrote a series of prose poems inspired by a Mos Def song from his album The Ecstatic. I didn’t write it for any particular reason. I guess 2010 was a chaotic year, but who can remember after the 2020 we had? I was reading over them and some of the themes feel topical so we’re shuffling up the serial poem in the back half of Vol. 1 to…
Life in Marvelous Times (2010): “Haiti just fell apart. One second it was standing and the next there were people in rocks, as though they had been trapped there by a cruel hand smashing them down from above.”
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Existence as we know it is not unique. There are countless existences and the ambitious contributors here at the PRL Serials are contributing to the unfathomable work across the multiverse to produce the complete, or perpetually in progress, guide to everything.
Encyclopedia of the Known Multiverse Vol. ∞: “There can only be one Volume of this Encyclopedia, and this Volume is always expanding.”
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Remember all the way back in Vol. I when Rebel Max had a journal? It’s back and this time, he’s exploring the lives of an immigrant family in Ladoga.
Selections from Rebel Max’s Journal (Vol. 1 Annual): PTSD: “There are Latin Americans all around Ladoga and they are not just Mexican, though it seems to be true that there is a large Mexican American population in east Ladoga. There are Spanish speaking enclaves in both of Ladoga’s projects and in the communities that surround them.”
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It’s the PRL Serials Volume 1, 2021 Annual Issue! The best serial fiction you’ve read this year, and then some.
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PRL Serials 