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2020

Coalway to Hell

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Temperatures are estimated to fluctuate between active panic and total apathy into the next weekend. Main assignments will have a minimum temperature of regret and a complete climate change once editing is complete. Expect treat writing to continue at all free hours unless the dangerous front of procrastination cropping up in the Northeast successful moves into the area, effectively killing the treat storm conditions for the season.

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I would write the sickfic h/c.

I would not make the sickfic at epidemic- or pandemic- level in the setting world. Keep that stuff at a level closer to "oh there's a thing going around"/"yeah Fred had that thing a month ago and it's a nasty one"

I would not use a respiratory illness. (so that rules out cold, flu, whooping cough)

I would not give it commonly death-causing attributes.

Most people don't want poop or vomit in their fic so that excludes GI distress, though if you go the vague route of "can't keep anything down/fever/chills/feels awful" you might be able to swing it.

Injured people can be more whiny and annoying than h/c miserable so that's a take it or leave it. (I say this as a person who gets whiny and annoying when I'm injured.)

Something like strep or scarlet fever are contagious to people who've had them before, so that might be a non-starter if you want lots of gentle physical contact.

Headaches/migraines are pretty common so if you get it wrong and your recip also has migraines it could annoy them.

I'd go with making up a disease like mono or a fictional childhood disease that Comforter has had but Hurtee has not, like an in-universe mumps, chickenpox or measles. Maybe the Local Moms all bring their noisy zoomy children around to catch the lurgy and get it over with? So now Hurtee is exhausted from their sick and completely mentally wiped from helping entertain all the littles.

DA

I would go with fictional mono myself. Lethargy, loopiness or dizziness, feeling achy. It gives you opportunities for cuddling, massages, taking care of things around the house for them, and confessing things they might have wanted to keep secret. No threat of death, and no gross body stuff.

If you want some pining for an established ship or some fake outs, going full mono so they can’t be intimate until the illness passes can lead to bonus UST/pining too.

AYRT Also some people get it and don't have any symptoms (lucky bastards)

DA

I mean, mono is often caused by Epstein-Barr virus, and once you went through an infection, it means you have a higher chance of getting lymphoma later in life, so I'm kind of boggling at the idea of mono of all things as a good example for a consequence-free kind of disease to model your h/c fic after.

(Do I think this should necessarily stop you? No. But it's not a better, and certainly not less controversial option than a simple cold.)

I mean, eating too many bananas also puts you at a higher chance of getting cancer later in life. Living in Nevada puts you at a higher risk of getting cancer later in life. Acute respiratory distress syndrome is likely to kill you a lot faster than an increased chance of lymphoma from having mono.

OP wouldn't be writing random cancer fic featuring the lymphoma the character acquired from having had mono--that would be bad.

The salient thing right now is that mono/epstein-barr is less likely to hit any given recip's sars-cov-2 pandemic-related buttons than pretty much any respiratory-related disease. If they have a specific trigger or squick around epstein-barr then they need to stick that in their DNW.

Plus, it's fantasy mono: Another layer of removal from reality. Fantasy mono doesn't give you cancer because fuck cancer.

If a fic about a common cold or something similar is hitting any triggers, you really need to point it out and stick it in your DNWS when you request sickfic or h/c.

I think actual Covid fic needs to be explicitly opted in. That doesn't mean authors need to be overtly cautious with any other cold/flu/sniffles/disease fic. "X has a common cold and Y takes care of them" is not a plot that will trigger any reasonable recip who requested sickfic.

This comment has reminded me of how much I love sickfic. Thanks coalie.

Re: headaches/migraines - I've written stories where the character gets the exact same kind of migraine that I and my sis get, and have comments telling me I'm "wrong" because that isn't how *they* get migraines. Like, the fact that migraines manifest in more than one way completely escapes some people.

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