Basic Trope: Children are innocents in need of adult protection and are never evil.
- Straight: Nine-year-old Alice is very naïve and would never think to deliberately harm someone.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice still wears a diaper, speaks in Baby Talk, and is as innocent as a three-year-old until the second she turns eighteen. Then she instantly becomes a worldly adult, and the work treats this abrupt personality shift as normal.
- Every character in the work is, or was, like this.
- All the Adults Are Useless, and/or evil.
- Downplayed:
- At times, Alice seems surprisingly worldly, but there are also those moments which remind you she's still a kid.
- Alice would hurt someone, but not severely, and only for childish reasons.
- Alice is a teenager, but she's still a Naïve Everygirl.
- Justified: Children's minds are still developing, as is their understanding of the world.
- Inverted:
- Alice routinely bullies the other kids.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour
- Adults are portrayed as too wise to be cruel.
- Teens Are Monsters.
- Subverted:
- Alice is an Enfant Terrible who plays the role of a Deliberately Cute Child.
- Alice is a Creepy Child...
- Alice is Really 700 Years Old
- Alice has seen a lot of the adult drama going on around her, and has been forced to "grow up fast."
- Alice's parents are immature and useless. They spend all their time drinking, doing drugs, and partying, or else sleeping off hangovers and arguing with each other. Alice cooks, cleans, and takes care of her younger siblings, as well as her parents.
- Alice is 14 years old, and in her first relationship with a boy a year older than she is.
- Double Subverted:
- This was caused by Demonic Possession and the real Alice is innocent.
- She is only "creepy" because (by virtue of her youthful innocence) she is able to experience and perceive the supernatural in a way that adults and teens cannot.
- But she acts very much like a child, and you'd never guess that she was Really 700 Years Old.
- But she still doesn't fully understand the adult drama she's seen, and it's plain to see that she's not ready for the adult roles thrust upon her.
- She develops problems later in life from having to take on a pseudo-parent role
, when her only job should have been to learn and grow. - Other characters decry the relationship as predatory, because Alice and Bob aren't exactly the same age (even though they are still within their peer group), and because Alice has never been in a relationship before.
- Parodied:
- This trope is applied to a childlike spirit which is Really 700 Years Old.
- Alice is a 36 year old woman but acts like a completely naïve, innocent child.
- Zig Zagged: Alice's innocence is ambiguous — the narrator certainty thinks she's a Deliberately Cute Child, but he's a Unreliable Narrator and very paranoid, so you can't be sure. It could be that Alice really is innocent and he is just suspicious of her because he's suspicious of everyone.
- Averted:
- Alice is no more innocent than the adult characters.
- Alice was Born as an Adult, with all the knowledge and wisdom one would expect from her apparent age.
- Alice is an adult.
- Enforced: "The Moral Guardians will hurt us if we don't make Alice happy and innocent".
- Lampshaded: "How could you hurt Alice, Bob?! She's only nine!"
- Invoked: Carol ensures that Alice stays innocent by only letting her watch G-rated movies...
- Defied:
- Carol trains Alice to be a Little Miss Badass so that she'll be able to fend for herself.
- "Children can be selfish and envious at times, so we're gonna give Alice the Jerkass Ball."
- Exploited:
- Alice deliberately acts cute in order to manipulate adults.
- A pedophile uses his or her status as an adult (and possibly as an authority figure, such as a teacher, coach, doctor, or clergyperson), and experience that Alice is lacking, to take advantage of Alice, and trick her into thinking that what he (or she) is doing to her isn't really wrong.
- Discussed: "We can't let Alice be exposed to this because it'll ruin her development".
- Conversed: "Why is Alice just sitting there when they need as many people as possible to pull on the rope? She should be able to handle that even if she's just a kid". "She thinks they're playing a game and she wasn't invited."
- Deconstructed: Bob knows that Alice is evil and a threat to society, but no one takes him seriously since it looks like he's just picking on an innocent child.
- Bob sheltering Alice from how cruel the world can be to keep her happy, rather than explaining why some things the way they are, makes her more incapable of taking care for herself as she gets older.
- Bob allowing Alice to do rude things out in public and excuse them as kids not knowing any better because they're innocent only makes Alice more bratty and stubborn when she does get scorn from her father.
- Children's innocence and naivety makes them more easily deceived and taken advantage of (and sometimes corrupted) by adults In-Universe.
- Reconstructed: Alice is found to be disturbingly capable of great crimes. She's not considered truly responsible because she's a child and she's successfully rehabilitated through therapy.
- Played For Laughs: Alice says the darndest things.
- Played For Drama: Alice must be protected from a villain who Would Hurt a Child.
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