#which they'd be 25/26 then and that's a good age i think

[transmutationisms]

Hi there! 👋 so there's a lot of discourse surrounding the "mature brain" pop science (eg., the brain doesn't "mature" until 25 and therefore we should move the age of consent, bodily autonomy, etc.. to 26). I have found this being peddled by a lot of kids and young adults. Why, in your opinion, are people so quick to self-infantilize (I really don't want to use that word but I couldn't think of anything better) and to take their rights away? Like it's really weird, I would think they'd want more rights, not less.

you could ask the same question about lots of groups: psychiatrically pathologised people advocating for increased medico-legal control over their own lives, for example—but i think it comes down to a few things:

meaningful coalition-building is often hindered by factors like intra-group racism, transphobia, &c ("there should be more control over Those People, but not me, i'm one of the good ones")

discursive constructions that position children's safety/protection and autonomy/rights as mutually exclusive, such that demands for political liberation are interpreted instead as calls for the group in question to be exposed to total social and economic violence ("so you think kids should be left to fend for themselves on the streets?")

the general disenfranchisement and isolation of kids and teens, which also makes coalition-building extremely difficult

the immanently enforced gap between working scientists and the lay public, which allows certain scientific discourses promulgated by public-facing journalists, ted-talkers, &c to maintain political legitimacy regardless of the strength of any empirical evidence for or against them

and relatedly the problem of such discourses having been already formulated by human beings with certain ideological and theoretical commitments and class interests, such that an assertion like "people are basically brain-children who should have my will imposed upon them until the age of 25" gets a lot more legs than "brains probably change throughout a person's entire life and maturity in this sense is largely socially constructed"

[gendervapor14]

Hi there! Thank you so much for all your wonderful fics. Im slowly making my way through reading all of them and they are all. So. Good. I look forward to my nightly routine of pulling up one of your fics to read before bed : ). Anyways Saw u reblogged that post about undercover corazon meeting marine bellemere. How do you personally think thatd go? Im interested to hear your take!

FBAGBBGEANGSJJSJDG ?? ! ??

thank you so much oh my GOD i'm so touched??? every time i reread this ask a little part of me goes to heaven this is so nice this is curing every illness in my body it's healing my soul it's watering my crops

THANK YOU ♥♥♥ i'm so fucking happy you like my stories... i swear some of the stuff that comes out of my hands is just absurd so i'm unbelievably comforted by this

as for undercover marine corazon meeting bell-mere: this has been plaguing me for as long as i started shipping these two. which was as soon as i joined the fandom lmao. recently i've tried to plan a solid story structure for a potential wip but i'm still drawing blanks:

the issue is on me. for some reason, sometimes i have a difficult time bending canon around, and in order for these two to meet, canon would have to get a little twisted. even if we don't put ages into account, he was in the north blue as a donquixote pirate, and she was in the east blue as a marine, so she wasn't really moving around much, and neither was he? and it's awfully difficult to get from the east to the north. if we're playing strictly canon, she deserted the navy when she was about 20, so rosinante was 19, not even undercover yet.

right now, i think my current plan for them meeting is probably going to be when he's 25/26, so she'd be 27-ish. he'd be on the run with law. maybe he hears about this wonderful hospital in the east blue. they sneak onto some sort of government ship that needs to cross from north to east so they can make that jump. (his devil fruit makes being a stowaway pretty simple) they make it to the east blue. make it to the hospital. unsurprisingly, it's a bust. they hardly have any supplies left, any food. he goes to the nearest archipelago for a meal and some temporary shelter. lands on cocoyashi. and that's probably where they'd run into each other. i think it'd be fun if they had some history, too. maybe i could do this as a follow-up from let me kill your demons. if i decided to give that fic a happy ending XD

otherwise, i'm still trying to concoct another AU where they DO meet while she's a marine. i could just say "fuck it" and ignore the timeline for the sake of a quick, humorous little oneshot. i feel like she'd embody the kombucha girl meme looking at his corazon disguise.

anyway god sorry this is a lot of words THANK YOU SO MUCH for all of this ♥♥♥ sending you my best wishes

[xplrvibes]

do you really think 26-27 is too old to go back to urbex? 😅 i thought the biggest age range for it was like 25-35. it seems like the boys have been extra nostalgic about that time period lately so i was taking that as a hint lowkey that they might return to XPLR days

I mean, I don't think people will laugh off two 27 year olds getting arrested for trespassing the way they laughed off two 22 year olds getting arrested for trespassing 🤣.

For real, though, I don't think that it would be good for their career to go back to doing the xplr stuff the way they used. I just spent the last week seeing drama channels on youtube talking about what assholes they were for kicking a stuffed bear...imagine the videos we'd be getting if they got arrested at this point in time, lol.

They wouldn't be able to actually go running around breaking into shit anymore. They're adults now, with 11 million followers, a shit ton of lawyers, and a lot of eyes on them. So, they'd have to do legal abandoned videos this time, which is fine...but it won't feel the same as the old videos. Trying to recreate nostalgia, sadly, always winds up falling a little flat, and I think they know that.

They can do one off's here and there, like what they did with Chernobyl or that one video with Josh a couple years ago. But I don't think you'll ever see a full return to the actual glory days of xplr.

[faerune]

i’m not sure when exactly diana and steve would wanna get married. i feel like steve would be entirely gungho about it during diana’s later years of her bachelor’s but i think she’d want to at least have her master’s before they get engaged

[morbid-n-macabre]

You probably remember the Jenny Jones Show. In the 90's smutty talk shows were very popular; Jenny's was one of the best rated, ranked right up there with Jerry Springer, Geraldo, Montel, and Ricki Lake. These trashy talk shows ruined more than a couple lives, but we just couldn't get enough of them.

In February of '95, Jenny Jones was searching for guests who had secret homosexual crushes. When a 32 year old Michigan man named Scott Amedure saw this, he called the show.

Scott had a thing for 26 year old Jonathan Schmitz, who he'd met through a mutual friend named Donna Riley. Scott didn't think Jonathan was gay, but what's the harm in trying? Even if Jonathan turned him down, it wouldn't hurt to do the show, right? Worst case scenario they get to visit Chicago for free. And who passes up the opportunity to be on national television?

Jonathan would later say that the JJ producer who called him promised that the person who had this crush on him was a woman. Jonathan was aware that Scott was attracted to him; the day before he left for Chicago, Jonathan asked Scott point blank if he was the one taking him on the show. Scott told him that he was not the secret crush. Matter of fact, Jonathan was so concerned about being embarrassed on tv that the producer actually made a note about it on his file. Jonathan was assured that this would not be one of those episodes. Not that these producers are truthful, I know from experience they will tell you just about anything to get you on that plane. Jonathan convinced himself that his secret admirer was his ex fiancee who he'd been with for years. They'd only been broken up for a few months and he missed her terribly; he told everyone that he was going to marry her if she was there. If it wasn't her, it had to be a cute girl from work he'd had his eye on. Jonathan was so excited that he even purchased brand new clothes for the occasion.

On March 5th of 1995, Jonathan boarded the plane from Michigan to Chicago where he would finally meet this mystery woman.

Scott claimed he had been served alcohol on the plane to Chicago and then there was hard liquor served in the green room while he was interviewed by the show's producers. All of this is another trick under the producer's hat- a ploy to lower the guest's inhibitions so they say and do things they would not do otherwise. And It's easy to forget that everything you say to the producer can and will be used against you on the show, you start to feel friendly with the producer, and you feel like you're sitting and talking with a friend- especially since alcohol is involved. During the private interview Scott blurted out that he'd had sexual fantasies about Jonathan which included a hammock and whipped cream, during the taping of the show you can see that Scott was taken aback when Jenny brought this up. If you've not seen the un-aired taping of the episode (I'll add a link at the bottom) Jenny does what she does best- she pushes for details, not concerned with who she upsets or embarrasses. Which was her job- it makes good tv. Scott said Jonathan had a "Cute little hard body, the kind you want to pick up and put in your curio cabinet, dust him off every once in a while".

The first thing Jonathan said to Scott after he walked out on stage and realized who'd brought him there was "you lied to me", referencing Scott's denial that he was the one bringing him to Chicago. That said, Jonathan seemed to handle it well; he nervously laughed and covered his face with his hands on multiple occasions but never did he seem angry. He said he was flattered, but that he was simply not attracted to men.

Depending on who you ask, after the camera stopped filming maybe Jonathan was much more willing to give Scott a chance than he was wanting to let on. Jenny Jones herself would later say that Jonathan, who was supposed to be flying home alone, asked if he could exchange his plane ticket for the one his friends were taking. There would later be testimony that the trio went out for pizza and plenty of alcohol afterwords; Donna said that Jonathan was talking about the three of them having a menage a trois and Scott's mother would later testify that her son was thrilled, simply glowing because the 2 men had been intimate together that night. Jonathan whole heartedly denies all of this, but it could be that he's embarrassed or ashamed. It's very possible that he hooked up with Scott while inebriated and regretted it later. Whatever the case may have been, it seems that Jonathan Schmitz was super concerned with what others would think of his sexuality.

On the morning of March 9th, just 3 short days after the show's taping, Scott had been out drinking with friends all night long. When he came home, he saw that Scott had been to his house in the night and left a blinking construction sign on his door with a note which read "If you wanna turn this off, you have to use your tool".

When Jonathan saw this, dude just lost his mind. He immediately hopped in his truck, drove to a nearby gun store where he purchased a 12 gauge and buckshot, and by 11 am he was knocking on Scott's front door.

Scott was probably just thrilled to see Jonathan at his house at first, maybe he thought Jonathan liked the cutesy sign. When Scott answered the door, Jonathan asked if he was the one who left the construction sign and note. Scott said yes, it was him; Johnathan walked back to his truck, retrieved his shiny new rifle, and blew Scott away; he was shot twice in the chest. Jonathan then drove to a payphone where he called 911. He toldthe operator that he felt lied to, humiliated on national tv, and harassed since coming home; these were his reasons for taking a man's life.

In 1996 Jonathan was tried for 2nd degree murder. His lawyers said that Jonathan had been dealing with severe mental health issues for years; on top of that, he suffered from Grave's Disease, a thyroid issue that can cause severe rage and mood swings. To say Jonathan cared what other people thought would be an understatement, he was obsessing over it. In 1996 a jury found Jonathan guilty; he was sentenced to 25-50 years. Just last year, at the age of 47, Jonathan was released from prison. He remains on parole.

Jonathan wasn't the only one in big trouble. The Jenny Jones Show caught quite a lot of flack over the murder, especially since they had specifically asked for guests with secret homosexual crushes on people who weren't necessarily gay. This was better for ratings than just 2 gay men. Many of the show's questionable practices were brought to light; the lies which the producers told Jonathan to get him to Chicago, the fact that they didn't even ask whether their guests had any mental health issues, plying guests with alcohol before interviews or tapings, etc. Had the show not done these things, it's unlikely any of this would've happened- or that's what a jury concluded. Scott's mom sued, Jenny Jones and her network were found liable, and Scott's mama was awarded 25 million dollars. This judgment was later overturned.

This case just goes to show how much society has changed in these past 20 years; how far we have come. If i was a betting woman I'd bet money that Jonathan had sexual relations with Scott. You know, in today's society, big whoop if you're gay- most people don't care. Back then it was just different.

Obviously Jonathan was the killer here, but do you think the show was liable?

The never aired Jenny Jones episode that resulted in murder: https://youtu.be/3EvUzzbzFNc