hell or glory | Glowfic Constellation

from_scratch

Wow he's smol. What's the content of his letters to the editor?

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Twelve-year-old Sindri had strong opinions about youth rights. Sixteen-year-old Sindri responded to a call for comment on a literary review column; he likes the column overall, and here are a few things he's impressed by and a few things he thinks they could be doing better. (If Cam feels compelled to check, Sindri is currently seventeen and a half.)

from_scratch

He does. That is a little young. ...What are the essays about?

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Robert Heinlein was a weirdo but he wrote some good stuff! A solid grasp of history is crucial to a deep understanding of modern society! Comparison of the nature and history of chess and other chess-like games from other cultures! Frank Herbert's Dune: great wordlbuilding, fucked-up ideas about gender! A thoughtful, nuanced look at climate change and the degree to which it is worth worrying about in this decade and decades to come! This book about how demons are all out to steal your soul is blatantly self-serving trash! Glaciers: they're fucking gorgeous!

from_scratch

Glaciers sure are fucking gorgeous.

I did not have anywhere near this publication history at your age.

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The crypto paper was a fluke, I happened to strike up a conversation in a coffee shop and ended up playing sounding board a bit more actively than either of us intended. What else have you got? All those essay contests? People keep telling me about them and I keep finding that I have something to say, and as you may have observed, when I have something to say I'm not shy about saying it. Nor about putting in the work to say it well.

from_scratch

I had somehow noticed that. Also letters to the editor.

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Oh, you have seen that one thing I wrote when I was twelve and you're still talking to me, excellent.

from_scratch

Hey, I don't see any obvious reason twelve-year-olds shouldn't vote. What are they gonna do, organize into a bloc and try to find a candidate who will give them all ponies? If they vote for major party candidates they're not doing anything adults of sound mind don't and if they turn out to have weird voting tendencies maybe there's a reason for that politicians should look into.

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...It may undermine my twelve-year-old self's point slightly if I say that, had anyone suggested it, he would totally have founded the Pony Party and organized widespread support for it just to prove you don't have to be sixteen to get a voice in politics. In fairness to my twelve-year-old self, he would have switched to something less silly than the Pony Party if he came across a better idea.

from_scratch

At least 'Pony Party' has pleasing alliteration and rhyme.

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I like to think I have a talent for that sort of thing.

from_scratch

What am I missing by not being able to read the stuff in Thulic?

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Some local politics, another piece about how much I like glaciers, a couple more book reviews of things you won't have heard of because you don't read Thulic, and a pun-filled exploration of the varying levels of mutual intelligibility between Thulic and assorted other Scandinavian languages.

from_scratch

Would that I could appreciate the puns but I'm not really good at picking up languages the long way.

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I'm from Thule, where the default assumption when you meet another local is that they're bilingual in English and Thulic with at minimum enough French to tell you to fuck off in; I have no idea how my language-learning skills compare to an average human's. I like languages, though, they're fun.

from_scratch

They are! I really appreciate them now that I have more than high school Spanish to play with, I just cheated at most of them.

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Cheater. (I say this with admiration and envy. I'd love to be able to learn every major language on Earth just by catching a bunch of circles from assorted locations. Well, one day.)

from_scratch