This makes me so proud! Lovely work!! I know how much you have been aching to get this out and I can see why, its just the perfect rewrite for the slot and I truly hope it is able to pull through!
Your writing amazes me, your messages astound me and your positive attitude all throughout the rewrite process was admirable.
You deserve all the praise for yet another gorgeous article Jak!
+1
This feels like two mostly complete stories attempting to slot themselves together. The demons don't quite gel with the themes of anonymity and aimlessness; alternatively, the village of the nameless feels superfluous to the story of horrid natal demons.
I know this is all one big metaphor for [SEE TOP POST SPOILER], but diegetically it feels jumbled.
The "monsters" are representative of someone's alternate personas when they join other communities online. See:
Subject: Well, uh… (A pause) I think I just mean… like, the children here are much more than you think, you know? They're more than kids. They're reflections of us. Everyone in here has them, and everyone is always trying to teach their own ways. They suck all of that in like sponges. They're smart, you know.
And:
The demons […] now living among us in the physical world. They may share the face of innocents, but deep down they are the wicked personas of […] those who've created them. Those with malice in their hearts and boiling anger throughout their souls. […]
From my experience online: I've seen these internet personas to be often draining and much more decrepit and/or evil, despite the fact that many online still uphold them for unclear reasons. This was more of a message of: "Be careful who you are online. Be nice to the people you meet." If that makes any sorts of sense (which doesn't detract or anything from your critique. Just sort of my intention for the article itself)
[…] these creatures are not our kin.
Found a typo, last paragraph. Other than that, +1 very intriguing and high-quality in writing.
The image is broken for me, I’m using iPhone. Might just be me. Other than that, this was a nice read. +1
Very nice! I love the subtlety, while you still kept it short and sweet. A perfectly digestible piece. Definitely getting an up from me.
A little strange, and not a scip with a lot of excitement, but certainly a good read to me.
I was getting a subtle connection to internet communities as I read, and I'm glad to see the connection was intended. This didn't really make me feel anything in a particularly strong manner, but it was a good story.
Is there any specific reasoning behind the crazy color pallet on the image of someone from within the anomaly? I don't think I parsed that out, or gathered any importance about it.
Im glad you enjoyed! I'm happy the correlation parsed as well. There really shouldn't be a huge "A-HA!" moment necessarily, this was just my attempt at making an allegory from the Internet as I saw it.
The image is supposed to highlight the fact that these people are being affected by something that's preventing us ordinary people from being able to discern who they are.
Honestly, once I read "Tim B-L" I was a little disappointed. And the final footnote sucked the energy out. This should stand alone without giving away the meaning.
I'm also not really on board with the "fake child" metaphor. I can't really draw any interesting insight from that.
I like this more as a metaphor for how having actual children leads some people to make life choices that look horrific to the rest of us: especially moving to the burbs and giving up adult life — as if the kids leech your soul out.
But the ending doesn't leave me room for this interpretation, flattening this beautiful work into a simple and kind of dated allegory.
No-vote for now.
I have to admit that I didn't quite get the anonymity of the internet thing here. I mean, I did 'get it' in the sense that it's spelt out for you at the end, but it feels like the ideas here are separated? The last explanatory document feels very unlike the rest of the document, which is odd. Maybe it's this same explanatory style? It feels like an infodump of some sort. Which is fine usually, but it denotes that there is a loss of focus for the rest of the article. I also don't quite get the children? You mention they represent people's alternate personas, but considering the overall messages, do all people have wicked personas? That doesn't seem like the message you were trying to get out so it feels… Off.
In that regard, I prefer the child metaphor Popageorgio got out of this. To me that makes more sense… Which means this article, in my eyes, failed to properly convey its message.
That being said, I did enjoy the read itself; it's only when you get to the end that it starts falling apart so… Hmmm. Yeah, sorry, it's a downvote. I feel like it needs a better execution of the ideas presented here.