I really like the high concept here. You did an excellent job exploring the situation the way many of us would. Obviously, given the format, you are leaving me wanting more. Which is a wonderful feeling. I love the concept and love what you did with it. It’s a fascinating world building 7-part short story. Well done. I love your writing.
Thank you very much, Mr. VIP reader. And I have to admit, I left MYSELF wanting more from this story, which felt good on my end, too. That open-ended aesthetic makes the ending stronger for me, and helped me keep loving the story during all the OCD revisions.
Thumbs up! So throughout this whole thing I could not help but keep thinking of the expression 'being afraid of your own shadow' and the phrase's meaning or implication as a metaphor in the story. And with the way that it's ended I think it fits well with the resolute punchline Reg offered in the end. This idea of the whole world being afraid of their own shadows, and yet we should be responsible for not being afraid and standing to make the world better even when it doesnt make sense and 'everything is awful' or frightening.
What a fun little ride. Thank you for this! I will be on watch for the next dispatch.
So glad you enjoyed it! And that's definitely a metaphor that drove a lot of the tonal and character choices. Avoidance is sort of the default setting for a lot of people. We call it phone addiction, but the truth is that being present, dealing with the discomfort of the current moment or situation, is very hard. Doomscrolling is just the latest and greatest means of escape.
Wowow. Unexpected ending, lots of loose ends that I'm surprisingly glad didn't get tied up. OH how I want to explore the shadow portal of mystery! But I'm also really proud of Reg at the same time. The idea that "Whatever shape [the world is] in, it's up to us to make it better" is obviously quite a wonderful sentiment.
But yeah now I want to explore his shadow, the loyalty vs deceit, and more. How many other people were offered/encouraged by their shadows to jump in? Is this happening because the shadows realized their life was incomplete without the reality they left? So many fun questions.
Thank you! I'm glad you dig the questions. I'm always a little torn -- in sci-fi, I want all my questions answered, but my favorite magical realism stories always leave a lot of the biggest questions unanswered. I guess that's what keeps some of the magic alive.
I also enjoyed the existence of obvious loose ends, especially Thea. She was so curious about shadowloss at its onset that I’m convinced she walked through a portal just to see where it went.
Yes! That was something I deliberately didn't resolve, even in my own mind. I wanted it to stay a mystery. But I also had the gut feeling that she would have charged right through. Perhaps even thinking it was possible Reg had escaped his own captivity that way (after not hearing from him for weeks). In an earlier draft, Reg went through for precisely that reason, to go find Thea. But ultimately, it felt too easy. He would have been leaving all the hardest problems behind.
What an awesome original concept! I truly loved reading every issue. I want to see this as a graphic novel, or series directed by Noah Hawley.
Also want to see a series of memes with the caption “the kind of instant terror you might feel if you looked over and spotted a wasp the size of a pony perched on your couch.”
I could not help but think about Covid and the last 4+ years overall whenever the Shadows were mentioned in this Part; i had thought about it before in the story, but more so in Part 7. I personally have had to grapple with this new reality / new world I am living in, which is certainly different than the pre-Covid world, possibly different from pre-Trump (not disparaging in anyway about Trump, just more that I think his presidency really showed the full rot of the System we have all been living under for the last 30-40 years - and it stinks to high heaven!), which is different than the pre-2008 GCF world which is different than the pre-9/11 world…and so on. I appreciate that Reg was shaken alive by disaster / mayhem / the Gods shaking the earthly snow globe on us and turning everything upside down and inside out these last years; I find this true for myself - that I at first resists change and tough times and what my Mom used to call Shit Sandwiches. But after the resistance and the bitching and the raging, I eventually get to a place of acceptance. Reg’s acceptance was of his world as it is, and I find myself fighting that fight sometimes on a daily basis, and on a good day, i too am able to be in acceptance. Great story man, I am looking forward to more.
I love this. The sense that chaos is descending into the world, and that change is happening too fast for us to handle, definitely informed this story -- not consciously at first, but certainly as I pressed toward the end. I have this idea that the world is always in a state of apocalypse for some people, maybe most people. The cliché is that the only constant is change. But the radical and relentless nature of that change can be singularly hard to cope with at certain stages of life. Learning how to accept and then progress along with those changes is one of the main projects of being human.
Fabulous read. Expert pacing, delicious voice. It draws on so many of my favorite things yet stays completely fresh and unexpected. I’m queued for the inevitable feature film adaptation
I really like the high concept here. You did an excellent job exploring the situation the way many of us would. Obviously, given the format, you are leaving me wanting more. Which is a wonderful feeling. I love the concept and love what you did with it. It’s a fascinating world building 7-part short story. Well done. I love your writing.
Thank you very much, Mr. VIP reader. And I have to admit, I left MYSELF wanting more from this story, which felt good on my end, too. That open-ended aesthetic makes the ending stronger for me, and helped me keep loving the story during all the OCD revisions.
Thumbs up! So throughout this whole thing I could not help but keep thinking of the expression 'being afraid of your own shadow' and the phrase's meaning or implication as a metaphor in the story. And with the way that it's ended I think it fits well with the resolute punchline Reg offered in the end. This idea of the whole world being afraid of their own shadows, and yet we should be responsible for not being afraid and standing to make the world better even when it doesnt make sense and 'everything is awful' or frightening.
What a fun little ride. Thank you for this! I will be on watch for the next dispatch.
So glad you enjoyed it! And that's definitely a metaphor that drove a lot of the tonal and character choices. Avoidance is sort of the default setting for a lot of people. We call it phone addiction, but the truth is that being present, dealing with the discomfort of the current moment or situation, is very hard. Doomscrolling is just the latest and greatest means of escape.
Wowow. Unexpected ending, lots of loose ends that I'm surprisingly glad didn't get tied up. OH how I want to explore the shadow portal of mystery! But I'm also really proud of Reg at the same time. The idea that "Whatever shape [the world is] in, it's up to us to make it better" is obviously quite a wonderful sentiment.
But yeah now I want to explore his shadow, the loyalty vs deceit, and more. How many other people were offered/encouraged by their shadows to jump in? Is this happening because the shadows realized their life was incomplete without the reality they left? So many fun questions.
Thank you! I'm glad you dig the questions. I'm always a little torn -- in sci-fi, I want all my questions answered, but my favorite magical realism stories always leave a lot of the biggest questions unanswered. I guess that's what keeps some of the magic alive.
I also enjoyed the existence of obvious loose ends, especially Thea. She was so curious about shadowloss at its onset that I’m convinced she walked through a portal just to see where it went.
Yes! That was something I deliberately didn't resolve, even in my own mind. I wanted it to stay a mystery. But I also had the gut feeling that she would have charged right through. Perhaps even thinking it was possible Reg had escaped his own captivity that way (after not hearing from him for weeks). In an earlier draft, Reg went through for precisely that reason, to go find Thea. But ultimately, it felt too easy. He would have been leaving all the hardest problems behind.
What an awesome original concept! I truly loved reading every issue. I want to see this as a graphic novel, or series directed by Noah Hawley.
Also want to see a series of memes with the caption “the kind of instant terror you might feel if you looked over and spotted a wasp the size of a pony perched on your couch.”
Thanks for sharing with us, Jordan!
Thanks, Ryan! That means a lot. But I don't want Noah Hawley anywhere near this. He's too talented. It would make me look bad.
To help with the memes, I'll make a point to sneak into your house wearing a wasp costume sometime soon.
I could not help but think about Covid and the last 4+ years overall whenever the Shadows were mentioned in this Part; i had thought about it before in the story, but more so in Part 7. I personally have had to grapple with this new reality / new world I am living in, which is certainly different than the pre-Covid world, possibly different from pre-Trump (not disparaging in anyway about Trump, just more that I think his presidency really showed the full rot of the System we have all been living under for the last 30-40 years - and it stinks to high heaven!), which is different than the pre-2008 GCF world which is different than the pre-9/11 world…and so on. I appreciate that Reg was shaken alive by disaster / mayhem / the Gods shaking the earthly snow globe on us and turning everything upside down and inside out these last years; I find this true for myself - that I at first resists change and tough times and what my Mom used to call Shit Sandwiches. But after the resistance and the bitching and the raging, I eventually get to a place of acceptance. Reg’s acceptance was of his world as it is, and I find myself fighting that fight sometimes on a daily basis, and on a good day, i too am able to be in acceptance. Great story man, I am looking forward to more.
I love this. The sense that chaos is descending into the world, and that change is happening too fast for us to handle, definitely informed this story -- not consciously at first, but certainly as I pressed toward the end. I have this idea that the world is always in a state of apocalypse for some people, maybe most people. The cliché is that the only constant is change. But the radical and relentless nature of that change can be singularly hard to cope with at certain stages of life. Learning how to accept and then progress along with those changes is one of the main projects of being human.
Fabulous read. Expert pacing, delicious voice. It draws on so many of my favorite things yet stays completely fresh and unexpected. I’m queued for the inevitable feature film adaptation
Thank you! Let me know when you get the financing together.