My Friday was… difficult because my stomach was giving me trouble, so I was spending a lot of time grumbling and running to the restroom which is Not Fun. And that’s a shame because I was really looking forward to this weekend? Hopefully I’m much better by the time I get to posting this and you get to reading this.
Anyhow I’ve started “Wrath of the Druids” so I’m exploring Ireland in the Viking Age now. And Discovery Tour comes out next week!
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Have a Reason for Child/Teen Protagonists
I know I’ve talked about this before, but every so often these days I see a post on Tumblr that says something like, “Of COURSE YA stories have teen heroes! That’s the genre! That’s the audience! Any examination of why teens or children are the ones saving the world is just being a stupid nitpick!” And I… well, as you can probably guess from my previous writing on the subject, I strongly disagree with that assertion.
Again, I’m not saying that you can’t have heroes who are children or teenagers, and that they can’t do Cool Action Things, but I think it absolutely has to be addressed in the story. I think if you don’t have an explanation for why grownups aren’t doing this, either explicitly supplied to the reader or implied by the subtext, then you’re in an awkward situation and you could have done this better.
Especially considering that there are plenty of reasons why there would be juvenile heroes completing the tasks! It’s not that hard to come up with an explanation of one sort or another. The three that I came up with in my notebook:
ONE--The Adults are dead/busy/incapacitated. Maybe there are capable grownups in the setting, but they can’t handle it because they’re not around. Spy Kids, Young Justice (the season one finale and all of season two), and Avatar use this one. In a couple of those listed examples, the kids are also required to save the adults--that’s the mission at the end of season one of Young Justice and the first Spy Kids.
I give Avatar: The Last Airbender a lot of leeway here too, because from the getgo we’re told all the adults in the Southern Water Tribe are away at war, and it’s lampshaded plenty of times that these kids really shouldn’t have to be the ones to do this, and they go through plenty of trauma because of it, but they’re the ones who have to. Also the Avatar has to be the one to set the world right.
Percy Jackson has this variation in that demigods tend to not live to adulthood, and so of course that kids are the ones who are prepared to deal with the situation. There are no adults, apparently--other than the gods themselves, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The explanation doesn’t feel quite right because it basically means everyone we get attached to is statistically likely to die. The sequel series is worse about that because it straight-up tells us that the Roman camp has adult demigods, they just don’t care about their children marching to war, I guess.
There’s also Wee Free Men in which Tiffany is the only witch for miles. Miss Tick leaves to go get help, and that help doesn’t arrive until the very end of the story. And Tiffany can’t wait that long! She’s got to go save her little brother, even if he’s a bit obnoxious about begging for candy.
TWO--The Protagonists don’t trust the grownups/the grownups are untrustworthy. Basically, the heroes do it themselves because they can’t tell the adults in the setting. Harry Potter runs on this a lot, especially the first installment. The Trio keeps trying to tell the authority figures around them that they just know that Snape is trying to steal the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone, and none of them believe them because they assert that the protections around the thing are too strong and that Snape is trustworthy. They take it upon themselves to handle it because no one believes the threat is real.
[And to be fair, it turns out that Snape isn’t trying to steal Stone at all, but SOMEONE is and if they’d paid attention they would have been able to deal with it.]
A notable take on this that I really like is the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court in which our main character Antimony doesn’t trust the authority figures in the school, and goes on a mission with her friends to solve the Plot, only to require backup. And Jones, one of the good adults in the Court, straightforwardly tells Antimony that if only she bothered to tell her what was going on, Jones could have helped fix everything a lot faster.
You also have things like The Dragon Prince in which many of the adults in these characters’ lives are normally trustworthy people, but the fact is that they would try to stop these kids on their mission if they knew what was going on. General Amaya is a fantastic aunt, but if she knew that the kids were travelling with Rayla to Xadia to return the egg of the Dragon Prince to his mother, she would turn them right around and march them home, and Callum and Ezran know it. This adds the complexity that the adults mean well but still won’t solve the problem and do what the kids know needs to be done.
And sometimes the adults really aren’t trustworthy for different reasons. I cited Percy Jackson above, and the later books reveal that the gods are too divided to efficiently handle the situation. They take forever to really agree that the Titans are returning and that they should go to war with them. And they spend so much time arguing with each other that most of the minor gods defect to the enemy’s side right as Kronos starts recruiting, and bringing many of their less-appreciated demigod children with them.
THREE--only the child/teenage protagonist is equipped with the powers to handle this. There are adults around, and they would gladly handle it if they could, but they can’t because they don’t have the powers necessary. Avatar again comes to mind--Aang is the Avatar, and so he kind of has to do these things because no one else is capable of bending all four elements and being the human bridge to the spirit world.
Or something like Runemarks, in which Maddie is the only person around with any of the titular runemarks and thus, the capability of learning Aesir magic. At least, she’s the only one with a whole runemark--there are other people and animals in the area with partial runemarks, but she’s got a full one, and it’s what lets One Eye/Odin know that she can do what he needs her to do.
It doesn’t have to be powers, as such. The title character of Artemis Fowl doesn’t usually have any sort of powers, but he is the only one with the connections in the fairy world and the intelligence to handle all of the complicated Plots going on. He’s the smartest one in the setting, so he’s the one who gets to fix things. Ir in the case of the first book, the one instigating the Plot because he starts out as a supervillain.
There are, perhaps, variations on all of these situations, and definitely ways to mix and match them. But the point being, there needs to be a something. Maybe it’s a throwaway line. Maybe it’s a quick explanation. Maybe it’s implied more than explicitly stated. Fine, whatever--but you do need to give a reason as to why the kids are doing The Thing, because otherwise it doesn’t make sense! And I (because my criticism is clearly the only one you should really care about, I think) will sit there wondering why a capable adult isn’t handling the problems.
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