The Problem of Underage Heroes

Against the advice on the posters of the Anvils forum, I am making this thread.

I know there are a lot of underage heroes in fiction and they can be pretty well written however as the Child Soldier page can tell that is may not be a good idea. Lets face it, kids and teenagers aren't really as equipped to handle dangerous situations than well trained adults although that is not to say adults cannot feel overwhelmed. I know fiction is fiction but when a fifteen year old becomes a soldier and reaches the rank of sergeant then something is wrong. I know most writers are way older than these characters and kids are not as dumb as you might think but one thing we know for sure, there is no way a fifteen year old can become a sergeant or lead an army. What do you think of this? I am doing this to prevent another thread form getting derailed.

This is one of the reasons I'm in favor of having the Kid Hero be a trainee, and continue to act under orders from older characters so long as he's a trainee. Of course, this means said hero will be overshadowed at times by more experienced characters, but proper Cast Speciation will still allow him to hold a useful role in the group (particularly if the group he's in is unofficial and disorganized.)

edited 28th Nov '11 7:05:03 PM by feotakahari

Or you could show the actual ramifications of giving a child such a role. See Neon Genesis Evangelion.

I personally don't care much for Kid Heroes and the Improbable Age. Mainly due to the fact I am experienced in manners regarding military rank. (I was in the Army ya know.) Unless you are basically running a severe manpower shortage (which likely indicates you are losing a war of attrition) there's no such thing as an NCO under the age of 21 and worse no senior officer (Major or higher) rank under the age of 30. (Junior officers like Second and First Lieutenants can be as young as 22-24. Captain is possible by 25-26 assuming no extenuating circumstances forcing it sooner.)

Granted in the military promotion can be very rapid but do not try to use that as a Hand Wave for why your 17 year old protagonist is a light colonel.

One more thing, underage heroes send particularly Unfortunate Implications, chiefly that people above teenagers are always incompetent or too closed minded or otherwise beset by Plot Induced Stupidity.

edited 28th Nov '11 7:02:23 PM by MajorTom

That sums up my complaints. I mean, I can buy kids being competent. The adults better be competent too, if not more, then.

Even though my specialty is YA, Improbable Age is rare in my mind-space, and Child Soldier is non-existant.

For example, with Manifestation Files, I put the protagonists against conflicts they can solve regardless of life experience. I don't prefer putting my protagonists into the heat of battle, in spy missions, or such (unless they had been trained since birth, but even then, they're in their late teens and show trauma). While I do have problems pitting my more mundane characters against fantasy ones, adults do much of the heavy lifting. The protagonists just get stuck with the one element that can change the course of the conflict.

Depends.

You can in theory have perfectly good non-commissioned officers before the age of eighteen, it's happened in reality with people who lied about their age to sign up. You can have very young officers too. People from 17 to 20 are completely capable of doing a creditable job commanding a platoon or a small naval ship. (And not-so-small; 19-year-olds commanded LST during the Second World War quite often.) The length, effectiveness, and quality of training and experience can cover a multitude of sins. The Royal Navy in the Age of Sail sent midshipmen to sea very young. They grew up aboard ship. Command of a sloop or brig of war by the age of of 20 was entirely possible because they'd already been in the service for eight years. The RN system produced officers of immense competency and confidence.

(Incidentally, Major Tom blew it; the presence of people so young doesn't indicate anything save that you're going through a major effort to expand your armed forces. And that's assuming they operate by our rules, which really only came into existence in the 1800s.)

I'm currently working with a story where the main organization of good guys recruits as young as twelve, and can send you to active duty as young as thirteen. This is reflective of the fact that the skills which make them valuable in a military sense (and dangerous if not taught how to control them early) start to develop around that age or younger. Exceptions or informally deputizing has been done for children as young as nine, and the only solid rule is that nobody younger than eight gets in regardless. Commissioning is denied to those under eighteen by law.

One of my most prominent secondary characters, Carolyn Altima, is 16. She is a Veteran Mage Specialist, which falls somewhere between a corporal and a sergeant in functional rank...though in the internal structure of a Mage Team it does not necessarily place her ahead of anyone in the chain of command. (The various grades of Mage Specialist mostly indicate proficiency more than leadership ability.) Carolyn has been wounded in action several times and nearly killed twice. It has been remarked upon that the system she is a part of places severe burdens on those in leadership positions to attend to the safety and mental well-being of their subordinates, but at the same time it builds remarkably capable and resilient soldiers by the age of twenty.

edited 28th Nov '11 7:57:59 PM by Night

There's no inherent reason why fifteen-year-olds can't be competent soldiers, sergeants, whatever. (There was a quote in someone's sig a while ago to the effect that you don't grow up with the passage of time, you grow up when you're expected to act grown up.) Of course, if this is commonplace, then you have to flesh out the story structure that makes it plausible; Like Reality, Unless Noted won't cut it, because our current society does in fact produce fifteen-year-olds so feckless that they can't do anything worth a damn, and if you don't change that then competent fifteen-year-old NCOs look awful strange.

Indeed, if there's a good justification for why someone young would be capable, it's a different matter. People can grow up fast if necessary.

I've got an extremely competent fifteen-year-old in my own story. She's not the main heroine, but she's a respected trader and glassmaker's apprentice who is frequently mistaken for a someone of twenty by people from other lands, despite looking her age. But that's because she Had to Be Sharp, on account of growing up on a Death Continent.

Importantly, however, she finds herself constantly envying girls her age who had the luxury of growing up more slowly. In the lands where she travels, she's too young to be treated as an adult, no matter how smart she proves she is, and too mature to enjoy gossiping and playing with other teenagers from softer lands. It's a lonely existence when you're forced to mature faster than all the people around you, and I've got a few friends who can attest to that.

On the other end of the scale is a seventeen-year-old from Earth. Also not the main character, but rather vital to the plot. She's decent, but woefully naive, and has the second worst case of Wrong Genre Savvy in the work: she thinks she's in a High Portal Fantasy. (It's Low Fantasy with notes of Cosmic Horror Story on the back burner.) But when things start to get very tough, she learns. Slowly, and with some serious mistakes. But a good chunk of her part of the story is her transition from Wide-Eyed Idealist to Knight in Sour Armor — indeed, her ideals become more important to her as she matures.

edited 28th Nov '11 9:49:53 PM by KillerClowns

I don't have a problem with Improbable Age solely because I think most people that young wouldn't be as competent or knowledgeable as stories make them out to be, especially when the context is relatively similar to our own (i.e. people from a world or context that is recognizably modern in culture or beliefs about when someone is an adult). That bothers me a bit, since I know so many people that age who I wouldn't trust with a dog much less the world. BUT the other problem I have, is that so often somehow it is only the teenagers that either can save the world, or are willing to do what's necessary to save that world. Because that is total bullshit. You (nebulous, general you) mean to tell me that the teenager is the only one who is really bothering to deal with this apocalypse problem we've got here, and all the adults are preoccupied with war or politics or being stodgy fuddy-duddies to bother? Um, no. Also it bothers me that it is so widespread to have teenagers and people in their very early twenties doing this stuff, as if anyone older than twenty five has outlived their usefulness to ancient prophecies or whatever the heck (although prophecies annoy me as well).

edited 28th Nov '11 10:24:59 PM by NoirGrimoir

There are actually a couple. One is brain development: Teenagers' frontal lobes (problem solving, long-term planning, etc) are not yet fully developed. Another is experience: Teenagers have seen fewer actions and their outcomes, and thus have a smaller pool of data to draw from when predicting the consequences of their decisions.

However, it's definitely true that culture is an important factor and teenagers who are expected to act like adults are far more likely to do so. And, naturally, there are always exceptions: Plenty of teenagers have good judgement (and everyone has their moments), and a huge number of adults can't make a wise decision to save their lives. (And, if I need to specify, none of this is a dis on teenagers.)

I've thought about this whole conundrum before. It's true that in real life, anyone under eighteen should absolutely not be fighting in a combat situation unless the situation is extremely dire, and any group that regularly uses Child Soldiers is morally bankrupt.

However, there is a reason it appears in fiction: underage people want to be given a taste of that responsibility and power. Fiction as escapism is about giving the reader/viewer/player a sense of agency and power that they don't experience in ordinary life. Children and teenagers want to be treated like adults because they want the same freedom as adults have, but to a lesser degree they also want the respect adults get. Teenagers want people to think they can handle certain kinds of responsibility, like driving a car or being alone in a house for a while. The fact that underage characters end up doing so much dangerous stuff is just to up the stakes.

I understand perfectly why teenagers are heroes in YA, even though it's incredibly unrealistic. It's that they are so popular in adult fiction as well that irritates me. It feels like people are just trying to recapture their teenage years but cooler or something.

edited 29th Nov '11 3:15:00 AM by NoirGrimoir

Yeah, in adult fiction it does get morally questionable.

Not today, not anymore. These days unless you live in a third world hellhole you're lucky if you can even enlist before you are eighteen.

So unless your setting is say in civil war-torn Somalia there is no plausible way to make an underage officer or NCO in a standing military in modern era or futuristic fiction.

edited 29th Nov '11 4:11:01 AM by MajorTom

What if it involves magical underage heroes? A magical girl such as Sailor Moon would not necessarily need to have military experience or abilities to fight evil. Why should magical ability be restricted to those society deems as being adults? What if that magical ability is needed to defeat evil? Should it not be used simply because the superheroes happen to be underaged? Should preventing the world from destruction have less priority than protecting children who have the magical ability to prevent that destruction?

Personally, I am a BIG fan of the Kid Hero trope, especially when it involves magical girls, so I'm rather biased here. It's one of those tropes I hate seeing turned into depressing "this is why kids shouldn't save the day!" deconstruction scenarios, in fact, people equating Sailor Moon type magical girls with real-life Child Soldiers is a major pet peeve of mine. Not to mention I think it's rather insulting to what real-life child soldiers go through to compare them to anime magical girls who otherwise have normal lives when they're not fighting evil (and Sailor Moon could quit if she wanted to, she's more powerful than the cats who recruited her).

Whoever mentioned wish-fulfillment is precisely one of the major reasons I like this trope, as well as a general love of child/teen characters and a love of seeing those characters in positions of power and strength. I remember being so excited when I saw Sailor Moon because it was the first time I ever saw (or even heard of) a show that was about young girls who were superheroes instead of grown-up men.

For the record, I do understand that most real-life teenagers probably couldn't handle being a superhero, but I think the same would go for many adults. The fact that it IS difficult and scary and all that stuff is what makes those characters, to me, to be even bigger heroes than adult heroes. And no, I don't CARE that it's technically unrealistic, why does fiction have to be realistic anyway? If I wanted to watch/read something realistic I would read a non-fiction book/watch a non-fiction movie/TV show. To me, the appeal of fiction is that things can happen in it that wouldn't happen in real life, such as girls with magical superpowers who save the world. (yes, I also hate the True Art Is Realistic trope)

However, this is all just my opinion, I also completely understand if other people dislike stories that use the Kid Hero trope or if they want things to be more realistic and cynical in their fiction. That's why there's many different kinds of fiction out there, and the world is richer for that variety.

Edit: Is this topic about the Kid Hero trope in general or just child/teenage characters specifically being high-ranking military officers?

edited 29th Nov '11 8:01:55 AM by Rainbow

My opinion of this depends heavily on the context and the style of the media in question. In general, though:

• If it's aimed at kids, teenage or child heroes is generally pretty good simply because that's the target audience, and as mentioned it's sort of a power fantasy-esque thing going on
• If it's trying to be realistic or aimed at adults, then generally no, that's kind of silly, again, because this time it's not matching up with the target audience

From there, it goes on a case by case basis. For example, if the whole point of the story is, say, about someone unusually young forced too grow up through circumstances out of their or anyone elses control, or where the setting is more historical or Fantasy Counterpart Culture of a historical culture, then it can work well (Fire Emblem springs to mind, particularly the ninth and tenth games).

But if there's no decent explanation for it other than Because Destiny Says So (I'm looking at you, Kingdom Hearts), then it tends to strike me as odd: firstly because of all the questions that The Chosen One raises anyway, and secondly because what kind of 'Chooser' picks a 14 year old to slay the forces of evil? I mean, seriously? D:

In general, I try to avoid it: most of my protagonists are in their late-teens to early twenties, or they're not human anyway and so age applies differently (or not at all).

As an example, within my worldbuilding project, the Stellarum, there is group of The Chosen Many (based partially on genetics and partially on a sort of galaxy wide super computer that 'chooses' from amongst that group (and yes, I know this kind of contradicts my earlier statement, :I)) who do all kinds of badass stuff: they wield Wards which double as Nigh-Invulnerable suits of armour and spend their days training, fighting, being diplomatic, saving people etc.

And, as per the norm in these kinds of things their powers activate at (roughly) puberty. Thing is, it only tends to activate in specially sanctioned 'Myriad Worlds' where Ward-Bearers with many years experience and common sense can train them. Obviously a group of hormonal teenagers with badass Morph Weapons running around freely is a bad idea, so most of them have an inhibtor chip implanted into them to prevent them using it till they're older and more sensible.

And here's the kicker: if they want to have permenant access to their Ward, they basically need to finish the Ward-Bearer equivalent of high school and university, just so they can have it reactivated at about 22 or so, and then they have to make do as an apprentice for at least 5 to 10 years of intense, one on one training.

Most Masters become such at about 30 or so, yeeeaaahhh...

edited 29th Nov '11 8:28:38 AM by Eventua

"what kind of 'Chooser' picks a 14 year old to slay the forces of evil?"

Someone who doesn't care who happens to get the superpowers and just wants the threat to be defeated? What are they going to do, wait until the kid grows up, even if it means letting the villains destroy the world/carry out whatever their evil plan is in the meantime?

Imagine if Sailor Moon went like this: Luna is watching Usagi and knows she is the only one who has the ability to become Sailor Moon. However, she thinks that 14 is too young to be a superhero so she decides to wait until Usagi turns 20 (legal age in Japan). Meanwhile, the Dark Kingdom attacks and succeeds in destroying the world because Luna didn't want there to be any "underage" Sailor Senshi.

Or is this someone who actively picks out the "chosen ones" rather than just going to mentor the person who happened to get the powers? If it's that, then maybe there is a certain age by which it's too late to access the powers (like if someone can still be a superhero as an adult but if they don't receive the ability beforehand, they won't get it at ALL)? More cynically, maybe the chooser could purposely seek out superheroes who are easier to mold to their belief system? Perhaps the chooser simply believes that kids make the best heroes since they're more idealistic and don't have jobs and dependent families to abandon?

edited 29th Nov '11 8:49:49 AM by Rainbow

Well I mean Sailor Moon is a series aimed at young girls, so we're saying that for the purposes of the audience that's fine, whatever.

It doesn't make any sense for the forces of good in Generic Fantasy Novel A to pick one teenager to save the world. This seems to show that the forces of good are either weak or stupid. It makes no sense for there to be only one chosen one (especially in Midieval fantasy, where many children would not make it to adulthood anyway), and for that one to be an untrained teenager.

Then again there is that point that you have that you pick children/teenagers because they're easier to shape to your beliefs because they're easier to mold. To be honest, this was kind of the vibe I was getting from Soul Eater.

I still never figured why The Chosen One needs to be a child in the first place? Usually in those situations (such as an evil empire running everything, an evil sorceror, a mad scientist, some horrible plague that turns people to stone etc.) there would be more than enough people who would agree with you.

Many of whom would be noticably older and thus (generally) more capable overall.

And as I said, if something is aimed specifically at kids or teenagers (like Sailor Moon or Power Rangers) than fine, it's inspirational and fun and such.

But if it's aimed at adults or as a generic fantasy novel, it seems somewhat odd to me, is all... :I

Obviously you don't need to agree with me, though. :I

(Sailormoon is the right age for her target audience so I don't actually have a problem with her age, but for the sake of illustrating why your aguement makes no sense I'll use the example you provided)

But why is a fourteen year old the only one with the ability to become sailor moon? The ability to turn into Sailormoon isn't a real, defined thing in Real Life that has these limitations, neither is Usagi/Serena an existing person. This is something completely under the creator's control. The creator chose to have the character at the age of fourteen when the Negaverse struck, she could just as easily have made the character twenty at the time, without breaking from reality at all (because she isn't real to start with). Basically the author has complete control, especially in case like Sailormoon, where it isn't operating under some existing rules that have to conform to reality, as it's a fantasy. This scenario is entirely constructed by the author, and it's the author who made the character fourteen, because they also made the universe the character lives in that is "supposedly" making them have to be fourteen for this story.

This is more of a reconstruction, which would provide a justification in-universe for the character being a child/teen, but for the audience my former argument still stands, the author made it that way themselves, there is no precedent in Real Life for say a magic that only works for children. That doesn't exist. Someone had to make it up and give it those limitations themselves, there is nothing inherent about 'magic' that says it couldn't be wielded by an adult because it doesn't exist in real life in the first place. It's all on the author.

edited 29th Nov '11 12:01:01 PM by NoirGrimoir

I like how Avatar The Last Airbender did the whole chosen one thing. The Avatar is usually chosen/identified at around 16, but before they go around doing their duties as Avatar, they have to master the other 3 elements first. Mastery of the elements would usually take enough years that they would be young adults by the time their training is complete. Aang was more the exception, and not the rule.

Although we get no explanation about the whole 'trapped in an iceberg' thing, whatsoever.

I loved Avatar The Last Airbender, and it makes sense for its target audience to make the kids children, but there is no denying that the ages of the characters was completely contrived by the author.

But again, I perfectly see the reasoning in making kid heroes in shows for kids. What I'm annoyed about is that a lot of things written for adults make the character a teen for no reason that I can see, especially when making them an adult would make more sense.

edited 29th Nov '11 12:16:51 PM by NoirGrimoir

What do you mean? We got a Whole Episode Flashback dealing with how Aang got himself trapped in the iceberg.

The thing about Sailor Moon is, it's a magical girl show. Even if there aren't rules of reality to conform to, the forms must be observed. One of these is that it has to be a girl, not a woman, in the fighting role, because the whole story is supposed to be a coming of age tale; you can't come of age if you're already an adult.

I always kinda liked the original Mobile Suit Gundam's take on the whole thing. : < "Shit! Two thirds of the actual staff of the White Base are dead! We're a bunch of civilians with a skeleton crew in the middle of nowhere! We're all gonna- wait, the Gundam's up and kickin' ass! We might just- holy fuck it's a kid. ._.; ... well, I ain't gonna argue with a good thing if you aren't."

edited 29th Nov '11 12:44:24 PM by FurikoMaru