Talk:Dear Theodore/@comment-9041013-20191114123530

Oof there's a lot to unpack here. It might be a stretch on my part but I definitely see some deeper meanings in your words, Spirit. One might say even hidden meanings. The story itself starts rather bluntly but as it progresses it's kind of hard to miss out on the symbolism of the whole thing.

The monster out here is portrayed as something natural that potentially everyone gets to live with, perhaps a species symbiotic to our own. That's a really nice touch. I also like the fact that the creature is not inherently bad. It just operates on a sort of system that is not moral nor strictly logic but very humanlike nonetheless. On top of having an ambigious personality that diviates from traditional monsters or protective deities, there is the aspect of the undefined form of the thing. While it seems to have a real form we potentially cannot comprehent or that the beast conceals from us for some reason. The way it addresses it's preference to Theo's perceived appearence of itself leads me to believe that the beast isn't exactly sure of what it truly looks like itself, perhaps it has forgotten what it looks like. That's a really nice touch, or maybe I'm just digging in too deeply.

I also loved the way that you've reference big foot and modern day folklore there.

Now onto the course of action the creature decides to take; we harken back to it's sort of amoral living standard. The creature likes Theo and opts to protect him and make him happy in the long term. It decides to illiminate what it percieves as a threat to Theo's happiness and long term health. I do have to commend you for choosing a very realistic and grounded danger; broken homes are a terrible thing.

The way the beast speaks of the consequences is also very real life-like and mature; regardless of how terrible ones parents are to each other and how much their strained relationship is and damaging to the individuals, usually unless there is direct and blatant abuse people cannot really help but love and cherrish their parents. Even some abused children wouldn't hate their parents and will enternally try to justify their love. "But it's my parent... So, while they've hurt me, I can't bring myself to hate them because they did it for the reasons..." We've all heard or seen this argument pop up.

The talk about optimism and innocence in regards to Theo is also very deep if you'd ask me. Obviously, Theodore won't like that his parents have been "unalived". Given how the monster is planning on doing that soon, this is bound to have a profound impact on his psyche. While the monster hopes that Theo will stay optimistic and life-happy it's more of a false hope than anything else. Yes, the child might grow up being mostly happy but this optimism is more likely to be replaced by acceptance of "fate" in regards to terrible situations and the ability to take those rather lightly more than actual optimism at best. This makes the whole thing even more tragic.

I also enjoyed the fact that the beast is fully self aware, it knows what it will do is most likely wrong from a human perspective and it knows that it might ruin Theo and it full well understands that Theo might even never connect the dots or read the letter and yet it still expresses itself in such a way, maybe to ease it's own internal conflict about committing the terrible act. Now that I think about it; this monster is far more human than it is not.

A truly fitting imagery and metaphor; humans are the biggest monsters out there.

Good job. :)

P.s you might want to narrate it somewhere down the line ;)