Discussion Main / Dangerous16thBirthday

• Pennsylvania, despite having it at 16, in practice, has it at 18

Does this mean that you can get prosecuted in Pennsylvania for banging a 17yo even though the law says 16? Or that the law says 18 but a blind eye custom makes it 16 in effect? Or something else?

Is there a supertrope for this; just a dangerous birthday trope in of itself? One covering all those 18th and 13th birthdays?

I think this could use a better name. How about "Sour Sixteen?"

This is probably not an example: the major active peril isn't kicking in on Buffy's sixteenth birthday. In any case please Repair Dont Respond.

• Subverted in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. On Buffy's seventeenth birthday, Spike and Dru almost destroy the world, Buffy loses her virginity and, consequentially, Angel loses his soul. On her eighteenth birthday, her powers are taken away, she is almost killed by an insane vampire, and Giles is fired as Watcher. On her nineteenth, Ethan Rayne rolls back into town and Giles is turned into a demon. On her twentieth, Dawn discovers she is the Key and is taken hostage by an insane hellgod. On her twenty-first, everyone gets stuck in her house by a curse. NOTHING happens on her sixteenth.
  • Um. While they hadn't picked a firm birthday for her yet in the first season, she seems to have already turned 16 before the events of the season start to play out.
  • Maybe at sixteen she burned down that gymnasium full of va- ... asbestos, and got kicked out of school?
    • No, she would have to have been fifteen then. The show starts at the beginning of Buffy's sophmore year. Since all other birthday episodes take place well past the Halloween episode, Buffy must have turned sixteen at some point during the first season.
    • Evidence suggests that Buffy's sixteenth birthday occured a few days before the pilot.
    • Which would give one the impression that on her 16th birthday, she was in the process of moving to the vicinity of the Hellmouth located in Sunnydale.

These are not examples — this one is specific: sixteenth birthdays.

• Subverted in the Made-for-TV Movie The Thirteenth Year. As the title suggest, the main character gradually starts transforming into a merman on his thirteenth birthday. It's doubtful that his sixteenth birthday is going to top that.
• In The Haunting Of Molly Hartley, this happens with the title character's 18th birthday instead, which is when Satan is supposed to come and collect her soul.