Why You Should Read "I Am Demon" (if you haven't already...) - - - Top Shelf #3

Alright, it's high time I did another Top Shelf blog. These are always tricky to do because I haven't read these recently, and on rereads I always find I've forgotten a lot of important things, the sorts of things I need to remember for these blogs. That's why I was so lazy on "If Horses Had Gods" and pretty much just copy/pasted my story comments. So let's go with the easiest one I have left to do, since the others are both HUGE. This one I can at least skim through to remind myself of what's important. So.

I Am Demon

by Aquaman

Lately I have had very clear time for reading and not much else, but not much of it. For the last couple weeks I've worked a night shift at a plastics factory. That means I sleep during the day and work five nights a week, with three short breaks. I get no network data service anywhere in the building, so since I have neither the memory space available nor the interest for phone games, the only things I can really occupy my time with on break is whatever I have loaded in my browser tabs already. Before I leave home I load up ten or twelve chapters at once, all on different tabs. As long as that's not too much wordcount-wise, they stay loaded.

Still, that means that if I really don't like a story, I'm stuck with it and can't move on to the next one until I go home. It happened a couple times, and then I tried loading five or so chapters each from two different stories, just in case. That didn't work because I got two good stories that I wanted to see more of, and I had to pick one and wait to continue the other.

So now I'm pickier about what I read. I used to just go through my Read Later one by one in the order I added them, but now I judge by view/like ratios. Up to a certain view count, this is actually a really good way to gauge the relative quality of a story before going in. My line in the sand is about 10/1. If a story is good enough that one out of ten readers bothers to hit the like button, it's good enough for me. I'm happy to say that all of my stories are above this line, though I'm not sure if it holds as true for low-exposure stories like mine. I know it falls apart after a large amount of exposure. All the really big, famous fics have terrible ratios, even though everyone likes them. I guess less people bother to click the button at that point. Reading it and maybe leaving a comment is enough.

Anyway, this test works best for mid-fame fics. So you should have a good idea how good I Am Demon is when you see that it fully doubles my lower limit. This might be the highest ratio I've ever seen on a fic. It only has 2,200-ish views, but a relatively whopping 450-ish likes. That's one in five readers.

So why is I Am Demon so good? Well, I can only tell you vaguely, since I haven't read it in almost a year and my recollection is terrible. First of all, IAD has the best use of colored text you'll ever see. The unique perspective uses colors like a magnifying glass to highlight... You know what, let's start from the basics.

I Am Demon is a story about what happened after the Hearthswarming story, told from the perspective of a newly-born Windigo. The narrator sees the world differently than others do, seeing emotions and colors and conditions more than anything else. Like I said, Aquaman uses colored text to show us things that we, as human beings, otherwise wouldn't be able to comprehend in the way a Windigo does. It's fascinating to read.

The plot is interesting enough that I want to find out what happens next, but that's not what's important so much as the POV is. Getting into the contest scene recently, where Aquaman is still kicking and competing, I've seen a lot of experimental fics like this. You'll notice from the long description that this was the winner of Eq Daily's Outside-Insight Contest, and you'll agree with that choice when you read it. This is by far the best experimental fic I've ever read, and I'm very glad it was executed for a long-form contest like Outside-Insight instead of something like the Writeoff.

Just go read it. It's not all that long. Just wait until I convince you to read Background Pony and The Immortal Game.