The Problem of Underage Heroes

In fact, I think the hobbit age of majority is thirty-three, which puts Frodo only just above the subject of this thread at the start (although it's only in the movie that things kick off shortly after the beginning - the book has a Time Skip of 17 years or so).

Unrelated note: it's weird how my Firefox spell-check flags Frodo as a misspelling, but not Bilbo. Huh. For that matter, it's fine with "hobbit" too.

^^ None of the human characters are underage either.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Hell, in the Lord of the Rings movie they made Aragorn out to be a fairly young person when in fact at story start he's eighty years old. Part of which is justified by the fact that being of the blood of Elros makes him live two hundred years, but he should still look closer to 40 than 20, and he really doesn't.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

^ The 87 bit is mentioned in the extended film version.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

@Major Tom, none of the humans are the hero, though.

Viggo mortenson actually was like 40-something when he filmed Lot R, he's just very good-looking (Ufufufufu ~ ♥) so we forget how old he actually is. He's like over fifty now.

SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)

I was distracted by his sexiness.

In a more relevant note, wow, he as supposed to be 87? Damn!

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Distracted by the Sexy indeed.

SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)

Viggo was 40?

—sigh— ;.;

Read my stories!

I honestly can't think of any adult fiction that uses the Kid Hero routine. All exmples of that trope I can think of are targeted at children or young adults.

It's most common in fantasies, I think.

SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)

Necro.

Okay, so far the consensus is that the only reason why underage heroes exist is that either the author is underage him/herself and it is targetted at such demographic. Or is there any logical in-universe explanation?

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Teenager gets super-powers. Teenager wants to be a superhero because he thinks it'll be cool.

edited 5th Oct '12 1:28:58 PM by SalFishFin

Well, it's iffy based on what you base "hero" off of.

In LiteratureLegend, the female protagonist happen to be the top prodigy of the academy who goes after the other (male) protagonist after her brother gets murdered.

Not the best example though, since you can probably guess most of the plot base off this description alone if you're familiar with YA dystopia.

Other reasons include (based on many books that are next to me):

• Is exploited for their ability by antagonistic forces, and they want to redeem themselves.
• Is the devil's daughter.
• Happen to be an outsider of a futuristic society who realizes what's wrong.
• The only one willing to do it, since the adults are more realistic (and of course things go wrong but end better in the end).
• Wants to break societal expectations.
• Happen to not be wearing the mind control rings almost everybody else in the superhero league is wearing when things go down.

...and so on.

Why does there have to be a logical in-universe reason for the hero to be a certain age? The protagonist is in a story, and they do things or have things happen to them, thus getting the story moving. Do things only happen to adults? Do only adults do things?

Not everything needs an in-universe explanation. Most readers (meaning those who don't analyze these things on forums) will be able to accept that a hero is a certain age or looks a certain way without asking for some kind of justification for it. An author shouldn't have to go to the trouble of explaining why a young character is the hero. The author should be telling a story.

edited 5th Oct '12 3:02:47 PM by Lennik

Do the words Willing Suspension of Disbelief mean anything to you?

As chihuahua 0 just demonstrated, there are plenty of possible in-universe justifications for a child or teenage protagonist. Very few of them would work for me, but that's primarily because I'm biased against the whole thing. But to say that justifications aren't even necessary is frankly bizarre.

^^ Look at it this way, a lot of people will be scratching their heads if you make a work about a 16 year old Army Captain. That's a rank where the median age is north of 25.

Unless you're going for period realism circa 1066 or The Crusades or earlier it just doesn't seem right. (Either that or your group is a third world hellhole militia.)

Conversely look another way, how many 13 year olds do you think can be competent firefighters or policemen? Or even do basic algebra? (Japanese 13 year olds don't count, they aren't human.) What do you think the probability is a kid will be Brian Robeson in a plane crash as opposed to wolf or bear chow?

edited 5th Oct '12 4:08:45 PM by MajorTom

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

But now you're just talking about rank. Heroism means different things to different people, and army captains and firefighters and other individuals in official positions like those are hardly the only people capable of being heroes. I fully agree that no sixteen-year-old in a story should be in positions so important, unless there is a very good reason. But again, people in ranking positions are not the only heroes.

Imagine a little boy who becomes a hero in his story because he is the only one able to alert the proper authorities (for whatever reason) when something terrible or dangerous occurs, or he does something extraordinary that saves the day. I would hardly call that an improbable scenario, and I wouldn't say that boy isn't a hero.

edited 5th Oct '12 6:19:16 PM by Lennik

In general, I think when people are discussing "underage heroes", they're talking about those who would fall under the Improbable Age trope. Your example is a realistic way of doing the Kid Hero, but it's not a super-common one.

I'll admit, though, that in a situation like that my comment about justifications doesn't apply as much.

^ This.

Hero is way too generic. A kid who calls 911 because Mommy hit her head on the bannister after tripping on the teddy bear is lauded as a "hero" by media but it's hardly heroic.

That grizzled E-6 *

who goes headlong into enemy artillery fire to pull every wounded man in his squad out back to the L-Z even if he gets hit himself? That's heroic, but not very friendly towards generic audiences that includes kids.

Really, this topic is more Improbable Age concerning ANYTHING than what constitutes the literary definition of "hero".

edited 5th Oct '12 6:32:22 PM by MajorTom

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Most of my characters have usually been in the hero game (so to speak) for a while. I know: The first movie ALWAYS does the origin, but I'm not a fan of that. Some are young, but not excessively so (most of the time around 16-21, no younger).

However, many of them began the hero's journey at a young age (martial arts training/discovered they're a demigod/former child soldier/etc.), so on more than one occasion, some of them have said something along the lines of "I stopped being a kid when I was (whatever their age was when they started out)".

Embroiled in slave rebellion, I escaped crucifixion simply by declaring 'I am Vito', everyone else apparently being called 'Spartacus'.

All my heroes are teenagers, because I write YA.

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

-*shrug*

Of my four most recent (half-finished >.<) projects, the protagonists are late twenties/early thirties to mid-thirties (a Power Trio with one junior member), seventeen (intended for older YA, used the 'exceptional ability' excuse), twelve-ish (younger YA, vaguely early Industrial Revolution-era fantasy with an 'Event' wiping out the adult people who could do the heroing), and middle forties (high fantasy midlife crisis, in a lot of ways ).

I don't see any real reason to limit myself to any specific age group. That being said, kids are fun to write because... I remember a quote that I couldn't cite the source of (Pratchett, maybe?) to the effect of "the world of the child is the world of the adult, writ large." Since kids experience everything so vividly, and have more excuse for doing stupid, impulsive things, they can be quite entertaining to write, heh...

As far as in-universe explanations, perhaps all the adults around said under-aged hero are corrupt, clueless, or incompetent. Or busy with other stuff. Or perhaps events are such that the child-hero hasn't the time or the opportunity to go to any adults for help.

That's not a reason.

I don't know, pandering to the target demographic sounds like a reason.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.