Talk:Three Red Seconds/@comment-5025667-20130412154813/@comment-7706473-20130413151021

To be honest, I think you can see my background in 'serious' writing coming out here. If it'd just been up to me, and time was a limitless thing, I'd probably do more of a story exploring their relationships, the small town - etc. I could very easily make the characters above the subjects of a novel, and it wouldn't be too off from other things I've written... But again, I wrote this when suffering from a lack of moonlight and sleep, and too much coffee. So we get this. Also as a side note, the title is an homage to a peculiar swear my grandmother had for doing things at an inhuman speed. "They built that there theater in three red seconds."

Now - with the following, keep in mind that these are just my opinions as the writer. Like all stories, interpretation is up to the reader, always.

For one thing - while writing it, I had far more sympathy for the demon than the narrator. Ehehe, even if the demon didn't once show any concern for having fun with the narrator, it was very caught by surprise - and a day is too quick a time to really to get to know someone, so even if it had landed on its feet (as they were) it might have been hard to find something that the narrator considered 'fun'.

Another - I imagined in my mind both the narrator as female, and the demon as 'female-ish' when I wrote the story. I didn't want to do anything to hint that they were so, as I feel stories like this work better when the audience can decide matters for themselves, you know? This doesn't really have anything to do with the plot, but I guess I made the narrator feel overtly masculine - not that I mind, as that works just as well with the story's intent.

Finally - The harshness of the ending. I'm not sure how well I conveyed this, but this scenario has happened countless times. The horror for me as a writer was the idea that the summoner did this, time and time again - and perhaps the little town knew, even if they didn't really understand fully. How else do people get packages of rare, possibly occult knives from bookstores? Why else would the waitress consider warning the demon - a demon, of all things?.. To me, the narrator is a vile person, but one who might also be pitied, on some (very distant) level.

One last thing; perhaps my favorite scene to write was swinging. I've always felt there's something pensive about it, though what exactly I do not know. I also feel it does a very good job of encompassing the story in a nutshell, heh.