Vague Age/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character's age is left unclear.

  • Straight: Alice appears to be somewhere in her teens, but her exact age is never made clear.
  • Exaggerated: It is unclear if Alice is elderly, an adult, a teenager, or prepubescent.
    • Alice has no idea how old she is.
  • Justified: Alice is an amnesic shapeshifter who appears to subtly grow younger and older based on circumstances. She doesn't know her true age herself.
  • Inverted: Everyone's age is seen above the heads of everyone thanks to Alice's powers.
    • When Alice is introduced, she is stated to be exactly fifteen years, eight months, twelve days, six hours and seventeen minutes old.
  • Subverted: Alice appears to be somewhere in her teens, but her exact age is never made clear. Until, halfway through the series, she tells Bob she's sixteen.
  • Double Subverted: Alice said she was sixteen, but it's implied that she was lying.
  • Parodied: Alice goes to get her drivers license and gets rejected for being too young. Frustrated she goes to an American bar, shows her ID and orders a drink.
  • Deconstructed: ???
  • Reconstructed: ???
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: ???
  • Enforced: "The marketers wouldn't let us say that Alice is thirteen out of fear of losing one demographic or another."
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: The author was unsure of what age the character was and went with this to help broad audiences identify.
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: "Isn't Jake a bit young to be leading an army?" "I thought he was too old!"

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