Voice

[foolishjustice]

I have...something of a strange dilemma. I came here six months after my birthday, and arrived six months ago...but my birthday is in June. Based on actual length of time I've been alive, I just turned nineteen...but my birthday isn't officially for another half a year.

Do you think I should just go ahead and start listing my age as 19, or would it be to confusing for the people who know what time of year I was born? I know I've already told a few people I'm a Gemini, so waiting would be simpler...but it feels a little weird, going an extra half a year between birthdays.

Comments

[notblayde]

... We're fixing this whenever you decide when your birthday's going to be.

[foolishjustice]

Ah? But...you don't even know me.

[foolishjustice]

They already try to ask me on Christmas dates, so maybe the two would get rolled together and I'd only have to deal with it once a year.

[asaqueenshould]

I'd think it would just be twice as obnoxious.

[foolishjustice]

But half the time to hide for.

[despairing_hope]

Does that even matter here? There are people from other places where the age is younger. And I haven’t really seen anything that age restricted particularly. New Years should also be pretty soon too.

[foolishjustice]

There are a lot of people around from Japan, so it might matter to them. I'm not worried about legalities, but...um. Well, I'm not exactly in any exclusive relationships, and 'adult or minor' might make a difference to some people when it comes to dating.

[Or...other things that he's still nervous about admitting he might be considering outside of a romantic context.]

[notblayde]

And?! You still deserve a real birthday party!

[asaqueenshould]

Would that really change the metric if they were worse than usual about it?

[foolishjustice]

Depends on how well I managed to hide or stay busy. Christmas is a busy time for a detective, after all.

[etincelledefierte]

Right? When even a single month felt like a huge deal.

[She nods.]

That makes sense.

[badluckblues]

wait does that mean i'm dying my hair black or i'm dying my hair grey

guess it's flattering either way

[foolishjustice]

Isn't that...a lot of effort to go to for a stranger?

[foolishjustice]

That you're dying some of it black. I know some men will only cover up some of the grey, since they don't want to look too much younger.

[foolishjustice]

And we'd solve arguments based on whose birthday was first, because they were 'older'.

To kids that age, we probably already look old.

[notblayde]

... Maybe, but I get cake at the end of it too.

[asaqueenshould]

There is that, I suppose. I'd find the pile-up of harassment overwhelming.

[etincelledefierte]

Even if they were only a day older, it still counted.

[She chuckles.]

We probably do. When I was little, I thought 15 was old and anything above that was positively ancient.

[despairing_hope]

Isn't it more important to know how much older you are than someone?

[Since he never thought about those issues before they just felt unimportant.]

If we're talking age of concent, isn't that also varied? And really, you can always tell the people who care about when your birthday is chronologically.

No matter what you're old enough to get married so that should be fine, right?

[tookashirototheknee]

Yeah, exactly! Things get even more wonky when you start travelling by wormholes, but that's not actually our tech, so we haven't sorted out all the theories of it yet.

Precisely. If you've had 19 years of time existing in the universe, but the calendar, for whatever reason only says 18 or 17, what matters most is what you've done and experienced.

[foolishjustice]

...Fair enough.

[That does get an audible chuckle out of him.]

[foolishjustice]

Some people...see a very large power divide between minor and adult. Even if the difference is only one year, a nineteen year old might feel more social pressure to do whatever an adult wants than a twenty year old would.

[foolishjustice]

The main difference I deal with is people getting Sae-san to carry presents to me, or occasionally having the nerve to give them to me in person. My job makes it hard for me to be generally unavailable to avoid them.

[foolishjustice]

Wormholes are still theoretical where I'm from, so I wouldn't know how they actually affect temporal relativity.

[foolishjustice]

The world of adults really did seem simple back then, didn't it?