cornerofmadness

I'm tired so I probably won't do this justice. But a few days ago ysabetwordsmith had a post about fire magic and some ongoing conversation led to the trope of adults in YA being negligent, useless or abusive as a means to giving the YA protagonist more freedom from adult supervision, the awful teachers at a magical school (sorry Dumbledore, you're not as good as we're meant to find you) and that segued into real life child soldiers and the lasting trauma (after talking about the hot trend of magical school + hunger games trope that has kids fighting to the death to win....name a thing).

This is fuel for a couple posts so let me save some of it and go with 'child soldier.' Ironically last night while bingeing Expedition Unknown last night at the hotel, Josh Gates was in Cambodia and dealing with adults who were once forced into child soldier molds by the Khmer Rouge (and a museum with pictures of children as young as nine and ten in chains, pictures taken before being executed by the ruling government at that time). One of the men working with Josh had to place land mines back in those days after being made a soldier at age 10 after they killed his parents and took him. His way of dealing with the guilt is he now unearths/detonates as many land mines as they can find (he's over 50K).

That and the conversation got me thinking about are there child soldiers in your story? Who is using them, the good guys or the bad guys or both? Is someone there trying to help them? One of my biggest disappointments in The owl House's early ending (and Dana Terrance's current I never want to revisit this world stance) is we didn't see what happened with Hunter who was a child soldier. Love or Hate Harry Potter, those kids were basically child soldiers as well and before she really went off the rails Rowling tried to at least look at Harry's PTSD (didn't go a good job IMO)

Having an adult, former child soldier, could make for a very interesting, complicated character. I don't currently have one but then again my entire novel that I just finished does have young people battling monsters so maybe, in fact, I do. Something to think about as I do the first round of edits.

OPEN CALL

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Advent Joy
Compliment a stranger on something genuine. I spent all day yesterday doing this with people's cosplay and I'm counting it (as I spoke to almost no one today)

Advent tea Day 6 - Pink Bubblegum rooibos - green rooibos, hibiscus and 'natural bubblegum flavor' whatever that is. the internet didn't know (fruit essence...) reminded me of fruit stripe gum in the best way. This is an herbal I could see drinking.

Day 8 - creme de la berry green tea = green tea, cacao nibs, strawberry. I was worried. I do not like chocolate teas much, they often taste artificial or like super watered down hot chocolate. This was meant to taste like a chocolate covered strawberry. It doesn't just vaguely fruity. Still not a bad green tea.