![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm reading a series of books where a bunch of teenagers set off and do Epic Quests and probably end up gods or something I don't know I'm only on book 3.
I'm not a big fan of Teenagers Better Than Everyone as a genre concept. I mean, I realise teenagers are going to be a big fan, I'm sure it sells well, but, have you met teenagers?
But every now and then it also bumps along mentioning how old the olds are, who are super old, like, they're probably nearly 40, that's ever so old.
... I don't know which bits of history it's mashing together, but, it's wrong. I'm just, ugh, no, nope. And not just because of my age. Life expectancy at birth is a really depressing graph that might hover around 40 for much of history, but that's super misleading. Once you strip out infant mortality, you can expect to make it to your 60s in most eras, as far as I can find out, which admittedly involves like three google results.
... okay, not my area of expertise, and data is shaky.
But they don't seem to have thought through their demographics at all. The whole village has like 4 young people in it, all the same age. Is it meant to be a comment on the region dying off or did they just invent heroes and their parents and go 'and there's a village' and move on? I don't think there's been a single child between infancy and mid teens. I realise they're probably not relevant to the plot but they generally tend to exist. I mean if you're having all your nobles lined up and terrible things done to them, this will involve a greater age range than seemed evident.
I should do proper studying of history some more. Especially if I'm going to complain about other people's writing. I should have sources to cite and stuff.
... but mostly, it just winds me up when the whole Teen Heroes genre makes them heroic by making everyone else useless, old, and dead. Up your game. Make them special in a crowd even.
I'm not a big fan of Teenagers Better Than Everyone as a genre concept. I mean, I realise teenagers are going to be a big fan, I'm sure it sells well, but, have you met teenagers?
But every now and then it also bumps along mentioning how old the olds are, who are super old, like, they're probably nearly 40, that's ever so old.
... I don't know which bits of history it's mashing together, but, it's wrong. I'm just, ugh, no, nope. And not just because of my age. Life expectancy at birth is a really depressing graph that might hover around 40 for much of history, but that's super misleading. Once you strip out infant mortality, you can expect to make it to your 60s in most eras, as far as I can find out, which admittedly involves like three google results.
... okay, not my area of expertise, and data is shaky.
But they don't seem to have thought through their demographics at all. The whole village has like 4 young people in it, all the same age. Is it meant to be a comment on the region dying off or did they just invent heroes and their parents and go 'and there's a village' and move on? I don't think there's been a single child between infancy and mid teens. I realise they're probably not relevant to the plot but they generally tend to exist. I mean if you're having all your nobles lined up and terrible things done to them, this will involve a greater age range than seemed evident.
I should do proper studying of history some more. Especially if I'm going to complain about other people's writing. I should have sources to cite and stuff.
... but mostly, it just winds me up when the whole Teen Heroes genre makes them heroic by making everyone else useless, old, and dead. Up your game. Make them special in a crowd even.