Something Smart. Also Intelligent. Probably. Maybe

they match each other's freak- NO!! they match each other's stupid

humanity's first miscommunication with an intelligent alien race <333

each other’s freak- NO!! they match

each other’s stupid

The school system I grew up in put an absolutely ungodly amount of pressure on kids to Show Up Every Day No Matter What. Many schools are like this, but looking back, my town’s was borderline fucking dystopian. They asked me why I didn’t just “postpone” a surgery at one point— when I was fifteen— to give you an idea of how monumentally obtuse these people were.

So, in elementary school, I started having chicken pox symptoms, right? They were mild because I was vaccinated (yay!) but my mom recognized them quickly and took me to the doctor, because my mom is a reasonable human being with standards. The doctor said “yup, you’ve got those pox, it may seem mild but please for the love of god DO NOT take her to school, she is very contagious even though she may FEEL okay.”

So I had to stay home from school until I got clearance from my doctor to go back. I was an angry little gremlin the whole time, because I wanted to go to the school library and read books about the human skull, but my mother said, “no, you cannot leave this house, and do not scratch the bumps please.” So I sat at home and tried not to scratch the bumps, like a good little gremlin.

A few days into my Chicken Pox Related House Arrest, we got a letter from the school. I was far from the only person with chicken pox, as it so happened. Like… a tenth of my second grade class had Confirmed Pox. We all fell ill within DAYS of each other.

So how did this happen, you ask? Well, a kid had chicken pox, and he came to school anyway. “Ah, well perhaps they didn’t know,” you may very well say. “Maybe his parents didn’t notice!” No. No, they noticed. In fact they KNEW it was CHICKEN POX. They sent him to school anyway.

The kid’s parents…….. were, in fact, teachers at the school. And they KNOWINGLY made him go to school sick, because they didn’t want to risk hurting his precious “perfect attendance” record. They figured that since he wasn’t, like, Literally Dying, it was better for him not to miss school. Never mind the fact that they were actively endangering hundreds of little kids.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college. A kid came to class with mumps because he ‘couldn’t afford to miss’. Guess what happened? Mumps outbreak! Diseases are, as it turns out, good at being diseases! Vaccinations are phenomenal, but they can only do so much, and some people rely on herd immunity to not be killed by preventable illness.

This entire attitude needs to die. It’s dangerous. Food service workers are forced to show up sick, little kids are forced to show up sick, college students show up sick because they’re afraid of flunking out.

at what age does a child cross from innocent pre-exposed object to sullied brain adult? what is the normal age to experience or witness violence? where does that leave those who experience and witness violence at younger ages? who may never have lived a 'violence-free' existence?

do we actually think that children are ontologically incapable of being interested in violence, or are we merely so threatened by the idea they could be that we refuse to even speak the possibility?

is it the worst thing in the world to pick up a book and then decide its subject matter is unappealing, frightening, or overwhelming? is that such a foreign fucking concept? did anything scary ever happen to you as an 8 year old? did it have an instant off-switch as effective as 'close the cover and pick up something else'?

I wrote a fic, and I'm almost finished and I hope to upload it soon. It's pretty long, and I've been working on it for over two years. I love it, it's one of my babies.

Now, as you might guess, comments are incredibly precious to me. I've written other stories, and there are comments that are several years old that I still go back to. Sometimes because I need inspiration, sometimes just because I need some positivity in my life. I'm so incredibly thankful for every single one.

The thing is, with my new fic, I feel like it would be better to post it in a couple, maybe three or four, pretty long chapters, so in big chunks. It feels better to me. But on the other hand, I'm pretty sure people react only once a chapter. And I think I'll find out more about what they think about specific parts if I split the chapters up. Also, if it's just finished within a couple weeks, no one is going to read it after that.

It kinda feels wrong to only do that for the comments, but on the other hand, there's so much work in it. I've been working on it for years, and I feel like I want it to be seen as much as possible. I don't know if there's a (ethical) right answer, I was just curious about your thoughts, I guess.

<3

You have no way of knowing this, anon, but I write adult education courses for a living and I've recently been working on one related to Ethics as a practical skill and regulatory requirement.

So I looked through your stated issue here, and I ran it through the ethical decision-making framework that is the basis for the course I've been writing, and you're actually fine.

The reason why I say that is because no matter which choice you provide, you are still giving your readers the story in its entirety. You are not tricking or fooling them into clicking something that will steal their data or their money. You are not feeding them the first three chapters and holding the fourth one hostage until you receive enough comments to release it.

All you are suggesting doing is separating the story into more chapters than you, as the author, think it actually needs. That's your prerogative as the author. Part of your job is determining chapter breaks, and how you make that determination is entirely up to you.

People who prefer longer chapters can read your work in Entire Work mode. People who prefer shorter chapters have a better chance of reading it at all. (I say this as someone who has had an 85K oneshot in my Marked for Later for 6 years now and has never actually opened it because ohmygodthat'ssolong)