Okay so, firstly, great great great piece. Your right, you synthesised some many huge parts together into one cohesive hole. The daughter’s feelings about the YouTuber, the weight the YouTuber feels, the dynamic between the daughter and the father. The last bit about telling stories. There is so much to this that is fantastic! Great writing, great dialogue, great feeling.
But what I have to know, is, do you have a daughter? Like is this a non-fiction story? Because if it is, I’m not really sure why, but I assumed you didn’t have kids. And if you don’t have kids, and you made this whole story up, then that is equally impressive in the sheer imagination and creativity of it. Either way, bravo sir! Great piece. :)
Thank you for reading this. I know it was a lot, but I couldn’t escape that this was the story in its entirety. I’m glad you found good in it. I wanted to say all this in an essay, but only by putting Mosey in my position could I convey the smallness I and others feel. This whole thing began to form when I said to myself “John Green makes me feel like a child.”
I owe gratitude to you for this structure: you commented a few weeks ago about Dostoyevsky and the creating characters to hash out internal conflict, and it really encouraged me to look for opportunities like this to play with reality under the guise of an essay. This became a short story, but I wrote it as an essay in the vein of “Celebrity Crushed” to grapple with the John Green comparison problem.
As for Mosey, no, I don’t have any kids, but she’s been with me, in a way, for a long time. I wrote a piece in June 2023 called “My Little GIF” that explains her origins better. This was my first time allowing myself to bring her to life in any form. In the piece, Mosey’s experience is a stand-in for mine (“Juanita Verde” is gender-swapped John Green in Spanish), but the narrator is me, just like in “Celebrity Crushed” and “Banach-Heartski”. I know that’s bizarre, but it’s my best explanation for what I’m doing.
This is a long way of saying that your praise for that construction really landed. I really wanted this piece to work. Thank you, as always.
So, ummmmm, WOW. This was riveting, vivid and heart-warming all simultaneously. Although you and I have had variations of conversations about this very topic before, I was enthralled. I love that Mosey lives in you and I can, in retrospect, feel her presence in you in so many of our afternoon conversations. Thanks for saving so many Starfish, for 15 years of diligently standing on the shoreline of HL-5.
I think this piece definitely worked. There wasn’t a moment throughout it that I was totally engaged and interested. I also knew the whole time through and felt it clearly, that you was the narrator. I think that’s why I had to ask if you had a daughter, because it was so real. Which is a testament to you creating fully-formed characters.
As for the Dostoevsky comment and you taking that on board and using it hash out internal conflict — I’m absolutely thrilled to hear that. I’m glad my comment helped, and I also think it is freaking AWESOME that you engaging with your writing in that way! It feels like such a pure use art. And it reminds me of a line a like — “the value of a piece of art is not in the art itself, but rather in what it did to the artists through the act of creating it”.
Okay so, firstly, great great great piece. Your right, you synthesised some many huge parts together into one cohesive hole. The daughter’s feelings about the YouTuber, the weight the YouTuber feels, the dynamic between the daughter and the father. The last bit about telling stories. There is so much to this that is fantastic! Great writing, great dialogue, great feeling.
But what I have to know, is, do you have a daughter? Like is this a non-fiction story? Because if it is, I’m not really sure why, but I assumed you didn’t have kids. And if you don’t have kids, and you made this whole story up, then that is equally impressive in the sheer imagination and creativity of it. Either way, bravo sir! Great piece. :)
Thank you for reading this. I know it was a lot, but I couldn’t escape that this was the story in its entirety. I’m glad you found good in it. I wanted to say all this in an essay, but only by putting Mosey in my position could I convey the smallness I and others feel. This whole thing began to form when I said to myself “John Green makes me feel like a child.”
I owe gratitude to you for this structure: you commented a few weeks ago about Dostoyevsky and the creating characters to hash out internal conflict, and it really encouraged me to look for opportunities like this to play with reality under the guise of an essay. This became a short story, but I wrote it as an essay in the vein of “Celebrity Crushed” to grapple with the John Green comparison problem.
As for Mosey, no, I don’t have any kids, but she’s been with me, in a way, for a long time. I wrote a piece in June 2023 called “My Little GIF” that explains her origins better. This was my first time allowing myself to bring her to life in any form. In the piece, Mosey’s experience is a stand-in for mine (“Juanita Verde” is gender-swapped John Green in Spanish), but the narrator is me, just like in “Celebrity Crushed” and “Banach-Heartski”. I know that’s bizarre, but it’s my best explanation for what I’m doing.
This is a long way of saying that your praise for that construction really landed. I really wanted this piece to work. Thank you, as always.
So, ummmmm, WOW. This was riveting, vivid and heart-warming all simultaneously. Although you and I have had variations of conversations about this very topic before, I was enthralled. I love that Mosey lives in you and I can, in retrospect, feel her presence in you in so many of our afternoon conversations. Thanks for saving so many Starfish, for 15 years of diligently standing on the shoreline of HL-5.
I think this piece definitely worked. There wasn’t a moment throughout it that I was totally engaged and interested. I also knew the whole time through and felt it clearly, that you was the narrator. I think that’s why I had to ask if you had a daughter, because it was so real. Which is a testament to you creating fully-formed characters.
As for the Dostoevsky comment and you taking that on board and using it hash out internal conflict — I’m absolutely thrilled to hear that. I’m glad my comment helped, and I also think it is freaking AWESOME that you engaging with your writing in that way! It feels like such a pure use art. And it reminds me of a line a like — “the value of a piece of art is not in the art itself, but rather in what it did to the artists through the act of creating it”.
Thanks Michael :)