💡🐇 Naughty Thoughts

🕴️💧Age of Minority

This bonus idea is dedicated to Mimic. Thank you for your support!

It's coming up to November again, and I need to start work on a new story. So if you like any of the ideas in this book, or in Plot Babies, or Plot Bunnies, please let me know your favourite!

Set in a world where there's been a lot of debate about the age at which children become adults; whether they should be able to vote at a younger age, and other things, because many people are mature long before the law says they are. Eventually, a political committee funded by large numbers of politically active youths pushes the government to pass something called the "Youth Emancipation Declaration"; which replaces a standard age of majority with a test which includes a civics test, doctor's letter, and an emotional maturity exam from a psychiatrist. Now, some teens as young as fourteen are declared adults, so long as they're mature enough to deal with the responsibility.

The main character was one of the last people to become an adult simply by having her 18th birthday before the new law was passed. Almost a year later, she is now an admin assistant, feeling quite proud of her job even though most of it seems to be busywork. She's starting to get frustrated, but is overjoyed when she is offered a chance to attend a conference with one of her older colleagues. But things just keep going wrong; she must somehow have picked up someone else's hand luggage, so when her colleague accidentally spills a drink on her in the hotel bar she goes to change and finds that she only has slightly-ill-fitting clothes that make her look like an angry, rebellious teenager.

She can't see her colleague now; he's not there when she gets back. And she's starting to feel kind of tipsy, even though she only had a few sips of her spritzer before the spill. She goes to reception and tries to get her room key, so she can go up and see if her suitcase has been delivered to her room; but they have no record of a booking, and haven't heard of the conference. They start to question if she's competent to be staying somewhere on her own. An older woman appears and tells them to mind their own business; the stranger offers her a place to stay as well. Our heroine is feeling very vulnerable, and agrees. Just until she can clear her head and work out what's going wrong.

She doesn't have an emancipation certificate, because she's too old to need one. And hotel security say that because she's so confused, and apparently drunk in the middle of the day, they aren't sure she is mature enough to look after herself. A police psychologist interviews her and says that she clearly isn't competent to be buying alcohol; which is hard to argue with, after she wet herself and started drooling during the interview. She doesn't know what to do; but the woman who tried to help her before offers a solution. She will be released into that woman's custody. She hopes that she can just sleep it off and then get an answer. But she finds herself locked in a holiday apartment with the woman and her husband – who turns out to be the colleague who gave her tickets in the first place. They're challenging her claims of adulthood, saying that her behaviour shows she is still too childlike, even though she figures out now that her supposed colleague invented a fake conference, got the plane tickets, and then spiked her drink to make her appear immature when other people looked at her. But when she is locked in the apartment, with "child locks" on the door to keep her in, and she can't stop them giving her whatever drugs they need... how is she going to prove her maturity, before a court declares her a child again and allows her captors to adopt her?