To write or not to write

I'll give you my secrets as a fellow short fic writer who sometimes dips into medium-fic and the occasional long fic.

Be obsessed with your story. This can go a LONG way to helping you maintain your motivation. Daydream about it. Make playlists about it. Talk to friends about it.

Try to make each chapter feel like a oneshot. Give it an opening, a middle, and a closing. Have some character development or achieve a plot point or drop a clue that will be used later in the story. The more you can give yourself the satisfaction you get from a oneshot, the better.

Do jump to oneshots on the side to keep you going through the long fic. Sometimes you really do need to get the feeling of "done" to be able to continue something that's still in progress. Don't deny yourself that feeling just because you think you should. Life needs dessert and short fic writers need completed works.

Embrace a B plot (and a C plot and a D plot). These side plots can last for a single chapter or can be threaded through the whole story or they can bridge from chapter 12 to chapter 18. Whatever their final form, these smaller stories-within-the-story also help to satisfy the need for a short, punchy hit of dopamine when the story is starting to feel huge.

jon: I'll do you one better, I'll lie about my age by 10+ years so I can be respected in this field.

He has a situationship with Marnie he is DESPERATE to hide due to his position as Mayor despITE THE FACT THAT NOBODY WOULD CARE. He's all up in his own ass for no fucking reason when he does the bare fucking minimum.

MEANWHILE my boy Theo, Raccoon Mayor of Grimshire changes his whole-ass biological sleep schedule in order to run his town. Yes, he likes finer things like cheeses and seems lazy on the surface.

But he DOES work hard. He DOES try deeply for the town. He DESPERATELY doesn't want any of the residents to die, even if it means accepting scorn and hate from the villagers as he bows his head to the demands of the Army and Pirates.

The villagers lament that they wish Percy was mayor and talk about how hard he works (and he does!! I love that little man!!) and look to him when things start going down because he is such a public face of the towns government-

But in the end, when things are at the most dire and even Percy is shaking and even he doesn't know what to do or say-

Theo steps up. He stops bowing his head and bares his teeth. He rallys his people, lays out a very good plan for the town to SURVIVE, and people listen.

um

Most mammals have, compared to humans, an elongated jaw. So a little tiny bump of a mammary gland is fine, just enough to get the nostrils away from the teat, and the young can freely breathe while nursing. However, as humans started using fire more and more to cook food - which softened it up, rendering powerful jaws less necessary - their jaws began to shorten, resulting in the development of the chin and other unique facial structures as the face flattened out.

This, of course, meant that babies could suffocate while nursing, which would obviously be bad. But what if... what if nipple further from chest? Bigger bump, so baby's nose have spot to go that isn't directly into mommy's chest? Oh, turns out that works! Of course, as more and more fat stores become dedicated to growing that breast mound to keep baby from suffocating, it becomes harder and harder for the mother to reabsorb that tissue when not nursing (as many other mammals do), so they just... don't. Knockon effects from there, and bam. Tiddies.

In which Petrified of who you are (and who you have become) by @dualogical and @overthinkit-underscore continues to make me scream internally /pos

Spoons can be used pretty much anywhere.

Carnival tickets are only good for the carnival, and it’s only in town for a limited amount of time.

The thing is... the story has led parents to think it's okay to sacrifice their children, metaphorically and sometimes literally, for a false sense of moral superiority. How many LGBT+ children have been sacrificed in the supposed name of Christianity? How many autistic children? How many orphaned children? How many abused children?

Instead, Abraham royally screws up, traumatises his son, and in doing so, loses his son, loses g-d's will and favor, and in the Tanakh we never really hear from Abraham again after this point, because he failed.

It's a story about someone blindly following in faith, and losing the most important things to them because they never stopped to think "Wait, did I hear this right? And if I did hear this right, am I so sure that this is something I want to follow?"

More to the point, though, the academic view, which, if it's not a consensus, is at least very widely held, is that in the oldest version of the story, Abraham did sacrifice Isaac, and the story we have in Genesis today is a later reworking after child sacrifice became unacceptable. The smoking gun here is mainly that when Abraham returns to his servants afterwards, in Gen 22:19, there is no mention of Isaac returning with him, even though when they were going up the mountain it is consistently said that they both went. (This is, incidentally, also the view of a number of medieval rabbinical commentators, including the Yalqut Reubeni, which has Isaac recuperating in Heaven for three years after being stabbed and then returning to Earth.)

I personally think it's more likely the whole episode was written to explain why Abraham had a firstborn son who went on to live and do things instead of being sacrificed as was expected of Israelites at the time. There are a number of passages that indicate the sacrifice of firstborns was a thing you had to do, including Exodus 22:29-30:

מְלֵאָתְךָ וְדִמְעֲךָ לֹא תְאַחֵר בְּכוֹר בָּנֶיךָ תִּתֶּן־לִּי׃ məlēʔātəkā wədīmʕăkā lōʔ təʔaḥēr bəkôr bānekā titten-llî. You shall not delay to make offerings from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. כֵּן־תַּעֲשֶׂה לְשֹׁרְךָ לְצֹאנֶךָ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים יִהְיֶה עִם־אִמּוֹ בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי תִּתְּנוֹ־לִי׃ kēn-taʕăśe ləšōrəkā ləṣōʔnekā šibʕat yāmîm yīhəye ʕīm-ʔīmmô bayyôm haššəmînî tīttənô-lî. You shall do the same with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to me.

(I include verse 30 to show that this is indeed about sacrifice and not, like, priestly service, unless you want to believe oxen and sheep can be priests.)

This is part of the Covenant Code, which is generally regarded as the earliest prescriptive/legislative text in the Bible.

People eventually stopped loving child sacrifice, though, and you get mechanisms for getting out of it pretty quickly, by redeeming your firstborn instead (i.e. by making some substitute sacrifice; Exo 13:15 et al.) and/or by counting the religious service of the Levites as balancing it out (either altogether or one for one with any excess firstborns still having to be redeemed; Num 3, 8). Jeremiah has God saying that the practice of child sacrifice that existed among the Israelites is actually something he did not command (Jer 7:31), but that also confirms that child sacrifice is something that did happen at least as far as the author of Jeremiah believed, and Ezekiel, who explains the commandment to sacrifice firstborn as deliberately cruel punishment on God's part ("in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the Lord"; Eze 20:23-26), also presupposes that this was a thing that happened. By extension, the fact that it didn't happen with Abraham's firstborn is then something that would need addressing, and the binding of Isaac is just that: Abraham actually was going to sacrifice Isaac as per normal, but God intervened.

And FWIW, child sacrifice really wasn't that unusual in the region (the Phoenicians seem to have done it until quite late), and in a time when infant mortality was extremely high anyway, if you believe in gods that can be appealed to through sacrifice, it makes sense that you might sacrifice the first one in order to secure the divine intervention that will enable the subsequent ones to survive. This logic also seems to be present in what God says to Abraham afterwards (Gen 22:16-17):

וַיֹּאמֶר בִּי נִשְׁבַּעְתִּי נְאֻם־יְהוָה כִּי יַעַן אֲשֶׁר עָשִׂיתָ אֶת־הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה וְלֹא חָשַׂכְתָּ אֶת־בִּנְךָ אֶת־יְחִידֶךָ׃ wayyōʔmer bî nišbaʕtî nəʔūm-YHWH kî yaʕan ʔăšer ʕāśîtā ʔet-haddābār hazze wəlōʔ ḥāśaktā ʔet-bīnəkā ʔet-yəḥîdekā. By myself I have sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, כִּי־בָרֵךְ אֲבָרֶכְךָ וְהַרְבָּה אַרְבֶּה אֶת־זַרְעֲךָ כְּכוֹכְבֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם וְכַחוֹל אֲשֶׁר עַל־שְׂפַת הַיָּם kî-bārēk ʔăbārekəkā wəharbā ʔarbe ʔet-zarʕăkā kəkôkəbê haššāmayīm wəkaḥôl ʔăšer ʕal-śəpat hayyām [...] I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. [...]

You sacrificed/were willing to sacrifice your firstborn, therefore your subsequent offspring will be plentiful and live. The fact that this logic is laid out here like this with no mention of Isaac surviving is also part of the reason so many people think the sacrifice did actually happen in the oldest version of the story.