Child Prodigy and Teen Genius, Q&A

If an adult-aged character's background has it that s/he used to be a Child Prodigy or Teen Genius in his/her younger days, does he still count as an example of these two tropes?

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If your talking about things like Detective Conan then I would say so.

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I would say it depends. If the character is one now or there's a significantly sized flashback episode or something, it would be valid. If a character is a genius now, and was back then too, but the past isn't shown in detail, I don't think it matters that much.

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Bump.

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If a character is canonically one of these in the past, then I think it's fine if they are added as examples.

Bumping because I really need the feedback, considering this one example below.

Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion is stated to have acquired a university degree before she appears in the story (in her own words, "last year"); at the time of said appearance in the middle of 2015^note For the record, canon holds that the entire story takes place within said year, with the sole exception of the events of The End of Evangelion movie, which is implied by one Freeze-Frame Bonus to be taking place across a time period that starts a few hours before midnight on 2015's last day and until a few hours into 2016's first day., she's age 13 going on to 14 (Born December 4, 2001). On Characters.Neon Genesis Evangelion The Children, she has Teen Genius as the trope attributed to this, and she has a similar entry on said trope's examples list as well. However, the actual real-life term that would apply to her case is child prodigy, because going by the stated facts, her intellectual giftedness must have manifested well before she reached her teenage years, otherwise we have to make the unwarranted assumption that she somehow managed to cram four years worth of university studies into the approximately half-year that she'd have between having reaching age 13 (in December 4, 2014) and her in-story debut in mid-2015.

With that in mind, I ask the following:

• What exactly is the boundary between Child Prodigy and Teen Genius in terms of age? Is it a hard line between teens and preteens? Or is it something less defined?
• Does the trope Child Prodigy mandate that the character be shown in their pre-teenage years demonstrating their intellectual giftedness, or does a verbal statement from the character (or another character) or Word of God from supplementary materials suffice?
• Can Child Prodigy and Teen Genius coincide in one character? Or are they mutually exclusive?

Please note that the biggest factor in why I'm asking about his is the last line in Child Prodigy's description, which is worded vaguely enough that it seems to preclude cases like the example above.

edited 27th Nov '17 6:41:03 AM by MarqFJA

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I'd set the boundary at 12/13 in terms of age. It might depend a little on how the character is portrayed, since it's fairly common to portray characters as a different age than they technically are, but I wouldn't go off by more than a year anyway.

I mainly see both tropes as about characters in the current time of the work, but I don't see why it wouldn't be applicable in backstories.

Child Prodigy implies Teen Genius, I believe, if it's a backstory thing. In that case I think only one should be listed. It's not quite a sub/supertrope relationship, but it can probably be treated as such for that purpose.

Honestly, I wonder if the tropes can't be merged. They differ pretty much only by age, and any other differences are also related to age. There aren't any specifc requirements that would exclude the other, or even make them different in any significant manner.

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Rather than a supertrope-subtrope relationship, I think they ought to be treated as steps on a ladder, so to speak. It would be similar to, say, Dimension Lord being an intermediary "rank" between Galactic Conqueror and Multiversal Conqueror, where the difference is one of scale and (often implicit) power.

Now that you mention it, the age difference does seem kinda arbitrary. Might be worth seeing how many Teen Genius examples are also Child Prodigy examples, whether it's because they're shown in their childhood to have been geniuses (for a child, at least^note a kid being as smart as an adult of average intelligence is outstanding even if it's still within human ability) or their backstories say so. It would require input from people familiar with the examples, though.

edited 27th Nov '17 9:35:19 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.