Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Difference between revisions

** In confusing flashbacks and illustrations, Alice {{spoiler|or more accurately, the Will of the Abyss... [[Mind Screw|sometimes...]]}} also does this, displaying [http://dragonempress.net/curious/images/pandora-09-05-03.jpg somewhat unsettlingly flirty behavior] with Jack and being cheerfully vicious with Vincent. Eventually leading to yet more of this trope from {{spoiler|''Gilbert''}}, who tries to strangle her.

* Several [[Child Soldier|characters]] in ''[[Now and Then Here and There]]'', especially Nabuca

* The first time we see Akane Awakusu in ''[[Durarara]]'', she's gleefully chasing down Shizuo with a heavily modified stun gun and shouting "Die!" It turns out that this isn't exactly normal for her, as she was a [[Cheerful Child]] before she [[The Runaway|ran away from home]] and only did it because {{spoiler|Izaya told her that Shizuo was an assassin who would kill her family.}}

* The main cast of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' are well-known for their (usually) [[Hate Plague]] induced paranoia and murder sprees, among many other troubling behaviors. The four oldest characters are only [[Vague Age|about sixteen]], with the youngest being somewhere between nine and twelve.

** Tim and many other people still found him very unnerving even by the time of the reboot, though.

** Minor Batman villain "The General" was a boy-prodigy that was obsessed with military tactics, and used them to gain a foothold in Gotham's criminal world. That place has the worst luck, doesn't it?

* If you are in any way associated with organized crime, [[Kick-Ass|Hit-Girl]] will brutally chop you up and shoot you in the head while cursing like a sailor. [[Little Miss Badass|She's a cute 10 year old.]]

** A short scene in the film [[Inverted Trope|inverts this for a while.]]. Her father is very disturbed that she is acting like a normal girl, until she reveals she's screwing with him.

* ''[[Crossed]]'' children appear to be no less foul-mouthed, kill-happy, or rape-happy than their adult counterparts.

 

 

* The controversial ''[[Hounddog]]'' has Lewellen, its 11-year-old main character, drinking alcohol. This is considered normal in her family.

* ''[[Lilya 4-ever]]'' has its title character drinking, smoking and sniffing glue at the age of 14. Then family troubles (specifically lack of any family) force her to enter prostitution. [[Tear Jerker|It all goes downhill from there.]]

* The sex worker Iris in ''[[Taxi Driver]]'' gives off an aura of grace, poise, and sexually-charged sophistication. She's also twelve. Jodie Foster's performance was by far the most unsettling thing about the film, even overshadowing de Niro.

* ''[[Hard Candy]]'' runs on this alarmingly. The protagonist {{spoiler|tracks downs, incapacitates, tortures, and drives to suicide a pedophile. She's a teenager.}}

* Pretty much the entire cast of kids in ''[[Twelve And Holding]]''.

* River Tam in Serenity. Better than 50% of the on-screen kills are hers. She's a teenager.

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[Gone]]'' , by Michael Grant, has this in spades. The entire cast is aged fifteen and under, and Sam and Lana both dwell on how disturbing it is to see young children drinking, smoking, and doing drugs. Not to mention the plentiful violence.

* The ''[[Redwall]]'' series. Oh, Dark Forest Gates, the ''[[Redwall]]'' series. The titular first installment features a season-and-a-half year old squirrel -- described in the text as a baby and not talking yet -- who is personally responsible for the horrible deaths of ''at least'' ten vermin, and assists in the killing of many others by rolling a hedgehog over them ''in the middle of a battlefield''. He's also given a sharp dagger by a hare who thinks nothing unusual of a kid stabbing people with one hand and sucking the other. By comparison, the young, gangly teenager that goes on to see new friends and an adoptive father/Abbot poisoned to death, kills massive numbers of vermin, faces and decapitates a snake that could eat him alive, and comes plummeting from the top of an Abbey with a bird stuck in his shoulder, all by the age of thirteen seasons, seems almost reasonable. Oh, and gets married and has a son before he's sixteen seasons. Combines with [[Angst? What Angst?]]. This may have been intentional [[Values Dissonance]], as the series is set in pseudo-10th century England {{smallcaps|[[Furry Fandom|WITH FURRIES]]}}, but has been somewhat dialed down in the sequels... which still include the slavery of preteen children and [[Harmful to Minors|the murder of their slavers]].

* ''[[The Alienist]]'': multiple characters all over the novel.

* ''[[The Tomorrow Series]]'': Aside from the fact that the viewpoint characters are only 16 - 17 years old, and essentially learning to become guerrilla fighters as the series progresses, the group of kids living in Stratton are a more depressing version of the trope: by ''The Night Is For Hunting'', when the main characters meet them, they are well-accustomed to gunfights and mugging people in alleyways.

* [[Artemis Fowl]]

* [[Ender's Game|Ender Wiggin]], at ''six'', beats a bully ''to death''. Because he knows that being merciless will let him win. Although his intention wasn't to kill the bully, just to beat him so badly that he and the other bullies would be terrified of Ender from then on, and thus, leave him alone.

** Somewhat justified in that the school he attends {{spoiler|deliberately recruits children who act and think "older" than their age in order to train them to be part of the war machine.}}

* Arya Stark from ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''. Committed her first premeditated murder at age ten. It wasn't her first kill, just the first one she planned out deliberately. Oh, and she's one of the heroic characters.

* In ''[[The Iron King]]'', Meghan is shocked to hear her four-year-old half-brother tell her best friend "Go [[Precision F-Strike|fuck]] yourself!" Justified in that {{spoiler|the kid is actually a changeling. Her real half-brother is a perfectly normal, sweet kid}}.

* [[Robert Westall]]'s ''[[The Machine Gunners]]'' presents some examples of this. The plot of the book involves a group of [[World War II|wartime]] children between 11 and 16 who steal a working machine gun from a crashed plane, hide it from the authorities, construct a bunker and emplacement for it; hiding two of their number from the adults and later a captured German airman in said bunker and open fire on a group of {{spoiler|Polish soldiers}} during what everyone thinks is a Nazi invasion.

* Although [[Deadpan Snarker|Asher]] and [[Wise Beyond Their Years|Otto]] are the worst offenders, ''[[Someone Else's War|Someone Elses War]]'' is full of this. Which is only natural, because it's a story about [[Child Soldiers]] in the [[Truth in Television|Lord's Resistance Army]].

 

 

* In one episode of ''[[Grey's Anatomy|Greys Anatomy]]'', a man is brought into the hospital after supposedly being accidentally shot by his six-year-old daughter, using a gun that had been carelessly left outside. However, scans show that this man has been shot 17 times. When the daughter is questioned about the event, she asks why her father wouldn't just die, since she had shot him so many times. As it turns out, the girl and her mother had been putting up with severe abuse at the hand of the alcoholic father. The girl, seeing her father begin another attack on his wife, grabbed the gun (which had been left in an easily accessible place) and shot her father.

* Parodied in a ''[[Jam]]'' sketch where a man believes he has accidentally killed his friend during an argument. He calls a professional killer/"cleaner" named Maria to dispose of the body, but she turns out to be only six years old. She [[Cluster F-Bomb|uses language that would make a sailor blush]], carries a gun, and when the victim wakes up (revealing that he was only unconscious) she shoots him in the head then hacks him to bits with a saw blade. In the end, the police are called and Maria instantly reverts to a cutesy child act.

* An episode of ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' focused on a series of murders of young children. They turned out to have been committed by a young boy {{spoiler|(the son of their original suspect)}}, who, in his own words, did it "because I wanted to."

* Inverted in ''[[Game of Thrones]]''; Robin Arryn is ten years old and ''still breastfeeding.''

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* Wicked witches in ''[[Witch Girls Adventures]]'' and the comics that spawned it are big on [[Good Smoking, Evil Smoking|Evil Smoking]]. Children aren't an exception.

 

 

* [[Fate/stay night|Illyasviel von Einzbern]] is a... [[Playing with a Trope|strange case.]] At first, she's trying to kill Shirou and Rin... then depending on the route [[Zig-Zagging Trope|she goes to play with Shirou, her "onii-chan", frequently.]] Then it turns out {{spoiler|[[Deconstructed Trope|she's a homunculus created as a vessel for the Holy Grail.]] Finally [[Subverted Trope|it's revealed that she's 18.]]}}

** Plus she also tries to have sex with Shirou at two points in Fate and one in Heaven's Feel. Which is... [[Lolicon|a little disturbing.]]

* ''[[Rule of Rose]]'': Byzantine plotting, power struggles, and even torture are everyday occurrences in the Aristocrat Club of the Rose Garden Orphanage, and depending on the player's interpretation, some of them don't even shy away from murder if they can get away with it. {{spoiler|And manipulating a serial killer to commit murders is definite canon for one of the characters, although that wasn't considered typical behaviour even for her.}}

* The imagery of mock suicide by teenagers (and, in one case, an elementary-school kid) in ''[[Persona 3]]'' is more than a little disturbing, and likely the primary reason for the game's "M" rating in North America.

* Chelsie Warner, the [[Creepy Child]] of ''[[Concession]]''. {{spoiler|She suffers from gender dysphoria, and was born "Charles" until her parents allowed her to start dressing and living as a girl. This itself isn't what's troubling, otherwise we'd be dealing with [[Unfortunate Implications]], but she displays violent tendencies in her very first appearance by stabbing Artie in the eye with a crayon. She then rapes him when he's too delirious to know what's going on. It was later revealed that her hypersexual behaviour was related to a form of bipolar disorder, and she joined a harem of preteen boys run by the practicing paedophile Kate, who specifically seeks out children with this disorder because she believes that allowing them to give in to urges which are already there doesn't count as abuse. The author points out that ''he'' knows that it does count, but Kate does not know that or refuses to believe it. Luckily, the [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]] shows that by the time Chelsie's an adult she's transitioned fully to female and is much more mentally stable under the care of her adopted father, [[Good Shepherd|the local priest Father Tim]].}}

* Namah in ''[[Dreamkeepers]] Prelude'' is a milder version then people on this page, but she still did a [[Slasher Smile]] when she went into the ventilation system, stole knives, poured hot sauce in the eyes of one of her guards. {{spoiler|Considering that she is being kept in her room to prevent knowledge of a secret affair being leaked, it's kinda justified.}}

* The trolls of ''[[Homestuck]]'' do not, as a rule, have much in the way of childhoods - but some of them develop a strong interest in collectible card games or [[Our Vampires Are Different|rainbow drinker]] romance novels, and others begin earnestly studying for a career in law enforcement or become mass murderers by the age of thirteen.

** There's also Alpha {{spoiler|Mom. Like her Beta counterpart, she's a [[Bottle Fairy]]. Unlike her Beta counterpart, she's only fifteen. Of course, she's one of the last two humans on the planet, and was raised by childlike Chess people.}}

* When we see [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Azula]] in a flashback to when she was about 8 years old she engages in typical activities such as teasing her brother and her friend who has a crush on him, doing cartwheels, throwing rocks at animals, throwing fireballs at people, hopefully suggesting that her uncle and cousin might die in battle so her father can inherit the throne, setting dolls on fire, mocking her uncle for leaving a battle after her cousin died, {{spoiler|cheerfully telling her brother and mother that her father has been ordered to murder her brother...}}

{{quote|'''Ursa''': [[Lampshade Hanging|What is]] ''[[Lampshade Hanging|wrong]]'' [[Creepy Child|with that child?]]}}

* As a kid, [[Big Bad Wannabe]] [[Evil Genius]] [[Xiaolin Showdown|Jack Spicer]] asked for knife-throwing lessons. His mom sent him [[Defied Trope|figure skating]]. So he [[Gadgeteer Genius|made a robot]] [[Impossible Genius|out of her juicer]]. As a [[Teen Genius]], he's trying to [[Take Over the World]] with a robot army... with winter sports as a [[Suddenly Always Knew That|surprise skill]].

 

'''Son:''' Why not?

'''Burns:''' See rule #1. (Rule 1 is "it'll suck, and you'll hate me for letting you do it") }}

{{quote|'''Daughter:''' You can't say that word anymore, it's bad.

'''Son:''' Yes I can, boobie.

== Literature ==

* In the classic children's book ''[[Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade]]'', one of the main character's friends decides to hitchhike a ride to a local fair, as she's tired of walking. The rest of the kids are shocked, but go along so as not to get left behind. The hitchhiking adventure ends up having disastrous consequences for the kids. The man drives off away from their intended destination, and the kids jump out of his truck at a red light. But one of them, a 7-year-old, goes back for her purse which she forgot, and the truck drives off with her in it. Looking for a phone so they can call the police, the kids head towards the nearest building they can find: a tavern. Suffice to say everyone in the tavern finds the procession of fifth-graders and the one girl's 3-year-old brother to be a rather strange sight.

* In ''[[His Dark Materials]]'', mention is made of Lyra and Rojer sneaking into Jordan College's wine cellar and trying "the oldest, twistiest bottle they could find". They both end up vomiting all over the place. Rojer questions the sanity of adults who enjoy drinking the stuff, while Lyra stubbornly declares that she ''likes'' it.

 

 

== Web Original ==

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Youngsters]]

[[Category:Subverted Innocence]]

[[Category:Troubling Unchildlike Behavior]]