Teaching Her A Lesson, Part 23 (Patreon)

Howdy, gang! Here we are, part 23 of my probably-only-two-or-three-parts story concept. Sorry it took me so long (is that long? after that spree I was on for a while there I don't remember). I turned 40 yesterday -- whee -- so I lost a couple days of productivity to existential dread. (I am *not* a birthday person, at least when it comes to my own.) Anyway, we somehow survived, and got the installment finished.

Some musings below, but this is for sure a case of read the story first, so... STOP READING until you've read the story.

MORE MUSINGS (because I think I mused last time, and probably most times)

I didn't expect the investigation to be cut as short as it was, honestly. There's an extent to which I sort of wrote myself into a corner and regret it a bit. It's why for the longest time I avoided any specificity in the timeline, other than "spring" and "near the end of the school year." Now we only have a week and change left (and finals week could make some things weird), and our narrative is about a teacher banging his students. We can't resolve that while he's not a teacher, and even after this installment, he's not actually reinstated, so we still have that hurdle. Being fired, even as a unionized employee, has a way lower threshold of evidence, after all. As to Shipman's conclusions, I had to step back and remind myself that ageism and sexism are real things, alive and well in the criminal justice system, and that it's not the weirdest thing to have a guy dismiss allegations like these on the grounds of "you know how bitches be." Earlier this year I watched Unbelievable on Netflix; not quite the same thing, but not dissimilar? And I for sure believed it in Unbelievable. (They probably got better writers than yours truly, though. That show was freaking good.)

I've said that I've been letting this story free-flow a lot, so it chafes no small amount to have to force it like this, and this quickly. I considered saving the ending bit with Shipman for 24, but it's not really enough to merit its own thing, and I don't want to turn this into any more of a crime procedural than it's already gotten the past few chapters. Still, I think it at least helps redirect us to the more central conflict of the story, resolving how Mr. Canon relates to his students, both as a teacher and as a man, and how do they relate to him. I won't go deeper into my own thought processes along those lines, at least not presently, because I know a lot of you have your own thoughts and feelings and theories about all that, and I don't want to crowd anybody out of them with authorspeak.

Enjoy, and more to come!