There's no other place, PSG. I wish there were. Well, for some types of stories, there is an alternative. But for many types of stories, there's Lit, and there's going commercial on Amazon, Smashwords, or such. There's no real other alternative.
The rule is ‘whatever Laurel feels like on the day / notices.’ I was concerned about having a young girl have her first period in a story. It’s an actual plot element abd - obviously - neither sexualized, nor even referred to save obliquely. But I messaged Laurel about it in advance, explaining the context. Her replying, “That should be fine,” was the last correspondence I have had with her.
Are there? I'm not familiar with the US system other than officially senior year is generally age year 17-18 - meaning you turn 18 in the year you graduate. Where I live it's very uncommon to have kids a year older than the general rule. Maybe one in the year, perhaps 2-3 in the whole school. And even so, not in every school.
It depends on the community what year you are if your birthday is near the end of the calendar year.
Assuming an even distribution of birthdays, and age in September as a cut off*. In June three quarters of graduating seniors would be 18. In August eleven twelfths would be.
This is not specific to the US. Many European countries follow the Prussian model of schooling, where grades are stratified by age.
My only other knowledge is of the UK system (via family) and it’s pretty comparable as to cut offs, but I think they start earlier than Pre-K here.
Well yeah, the weird part from my perspective is that this continues to be the case through high school. And also that seemingly almost no one is held back or skips or for various extraneous reasons is a year behind or ahead.
My son turned 18 two weeks before Christmas and he was far from the oldest in his class. Certainly there were many still 17, but I would estimate 35-40% of the class was 18.
Reports result in an automated system-generated removal of the story. There is no intervention by Laurel.
"Over a decade [ago]" is less persuasive than what's being published now. Lit rules do change over time and there are plenty of "grandfathered" stories around that probably wouldn't be accepted today without some changes.
Well, there was that one time with Nicola...
Here in Oz we have many schools that blur ages in a cohort, to cater for the younger gifted kids. There's often a handful of kids who are "a year young for that Year," matched more by ability than chronology.
That’s sometimes a thing here, too, but usually no more than one or two kids per class of 10-20 who are a year younger. @Z_TheWriter sort of implied that it’s normal for cohorts to mix students in such a way that they are almost evenly split between ages of -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 compared to the supposed baseline, which would basically obviate the whole concept of an age-based grade.
