#kid protagonist

[chryscheshire]

Writing Prompt #9

“You were born with a gift!”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“With the way you’re acting—”

“I’m just a kid!”

“You’re—”

“Day after day after day, you— you so-called heroes keep knocking at my door, bothering my parents, trying to recruit me to defeat some villain or international threat! Do you think I have time for that?! I HAVE ALGEBRA HOMEWORK!”

“You have the ability to protect this world, and you’re worried about algebra?!”

“Oh, excuse me, Mx. Math Genius, not everyone can understand numbers!”

“Bold of you to assume I understand them either. I don’t know, just get a tutor—”

“Heroes disguise themselves as tutors, and villains keep kidnapping them.”

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

"the magic just goes away when you grow up" is incredibly boring to me tbh. (Or replace "magic" with "the basic ability to interact with the central worldbuilding premise/to be any kind of Protagonist according how this setting works", kind of thing)

Like I 'unno. Maybe I'm coming from the perspective of someone who's 2-4 times the age of the average magical girl protagonist, and maybe it's just because I don't think there's anything aspirational or inherently good about "normalcy", or about bullshit "yeah but consider: The Real World" gotchas. But the idea that interesting things should effectively end when you've completed your life's tutorial phase is just plain wrong.

The objectively worst version of this is stories which begin after you've grown up and it's like "you were magical/a protagonist/whatever as a child, but now you're Grown Up In Your 20-30's and now you Just Have To Deal With Being Normal". Like, yes there's space for "life after adventuring" stories -- there's space for most kinds of story, after all, and I'll certainly forgive it if there's a "twist" that circumstances arise in which they have to take up their old mantle again -- but having the whole thing focus on "it's boring" ain't it, chief.

But a thing that rubs me the wrong way in particular is when it's a hard in-universe limit -- when you have a time limit on how long you can be a hero, and that limit is When You're Grown Up, and if you start out older, you literally have less time to be a hero than someone who started out younger. Fuck off.

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Angry spitfire teenage protagonist fighting furiously against an adult villain who is viscerally uncomfortable with the fact that they're fighting a kid.

Puts 'em off villainy for good, and they go full "parent mode". The kid makes a speech about friendship and determination and the villain is like. "Y'know what, that's really ... you got a point there, kiddo. Maybe friendship is great. Who did you say put you up to this? ... Oh, you ... decided on your own. That's ... great."

Or a more subtle version, where it looks at first glance like the villain is Moved And Persuaded by the kid's speech, but if you pay close attention to the villain's body language, you'll realize what's really going on.