Rock and stone brother!
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Did I hear a Rock and Stone?!
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I might be very late here, but I think typically this trope exists because it drives forward plot and conflict; if the warriors/wizards/warheros/whatever you have were to actually resolve the issues the world has by themselves, it would be difficult to create conflict for the protagonist to chew and grow on. If the author wants their protagonist to be that young, but also wants them to be involved in that type of struggle, who am I to deny them that? Plus, it’s not necessarily a denominator for bad writing or world building.
I do get that it takes one out of the story a bit, though. It IS quite a weird contrivancy that comes with the writing field and writing what you want to write. In the end, these types of plots/stories are typically aimed more toward people of the protagonist’s age range themselves, in order for them to be able to relate and/or potentially see themselves within these types of heroes/protags. It’s wishfulfillment (not necessarily a bad thing), and who as a teen hasn’t wanted to be something or someone special?
I’m probably looking too deep into this, though.
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I fully agree on the shallow fanservice end. I also have a suggestion if you’d like to watch or read a very good anime/manga I’ve recently found myself incredibly invested in! It’s Slice of Life romance though, so not necessarily for everyone. It does have tropes of course, everything does; but I generally find the story and the characters mostly so likable that it’s (for me) mostly forgivable.
The Anime/Manga in question is “Komi-san can’t communicate”. It’s one of my favorites!
As for tropes I hate in stories, it’s probably the following:
- Fanservice in the form of shallow nudety/semi-nudety as actual romance replacement.
- Protagonist “accidentily” grabs the loveinterest’s body.
- Love triangle played squarely for shallow drama and shallow drama alone.
- “Men and women cannot be friends/stay platonic”, as if gay people or aromantic/asexual people don’t exist, let alone as if said male/female friends don’t have actual types and tastes in their partners that might not necessarily suit traits their friends have.
- All humans are evil/destructive/prejudiced trope.
- All humans will inherently welcome or resent aliens trope.
- Honestly, just the black/white morality and planet of hats tropes combined in general.
- The “kids will do anything to fit in, even cruel acts” trope. Idk about you, but as a kid I still had pretty strong believes and didn’t try to fit in. In fact, I usually tried to ignore everyone as much as possible because no matter what I did it wouldn’t be accepted anyway, so… shrug?
- Cartoonishly evil villains that are evil for evil’s sake and have about the depth of a rainpuddle on the roof.
- The trope where monsters that clearly display human intellect and the capability understand their situations and other characters are still treated as animals by not only the characters themselves but the text/author.
Probably a bunch more that I cannot remember right now, though.
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I actually have a setting for a (still unstarted) story in which children have immense magical power, but it all burns out by the time they’re ~18. Consequently, teenagers would always be the ones who had to save the world, and adults would refuse to help on the grounds that they saved the world when they were young, and nobody helped them then. 
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Harsh…
Sound like you are taking that granny advice : at your age I did…! to a new level! lol
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Yeah the fan service is a cancer. There’s anime I liked that had it but they’d always be better without it. Don’t even get me started on Fire Force.
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oh thats actually a sickass idea!
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If it tapers of gradually that would mean babies and toddlers would be the most powerful…so it would be less teenagers and more kindergartners saving the world then. 
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Honestly, a toddler with that kind of power would be one of the most terrifying things around… My idea was that you probably wouldn’t be able to properly access your powers before you were about 10–12, and at least have some understanding of why exploding people is a bad thing… 
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Has anyone read a story or played a game where you want the villains to win, even if they evil incarnate, just because you can’t stand the protagonist and or the supporting cast?
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Not read or played, but “I hope the monster wins and murders all these people in extremely painful ways, it’s no less than they deserve” was exactly how I felt about 5 minutes into Prometheus all the way to the end.
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And here I thought you’d be going for a South Park esque focus on kindergartners or at least elementary school students with that kind of setup for magic powers. 
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Hm, does Jurassic Park count? I’m always on the mother nature’s side, let her nom nom on idiots lol
Outside of that? In Star Trek: New Generation (The old one with Picard), I really hated Number 1 character (Got nothing against the actor) and wished he would die every damn episode. He never did alas…
But in a game? can’t say I ever did.
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Not my original intention, but now I’m honestly kinda tempted…
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James Cameron’s Avatar.
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I tried to screw over the royal family and their allies in Sword of Rivhania (probably spelled that wrong) on purpose because, outside of Freya, Catalina and my character’s mentor (And Matteo, admittedly - I didn’t mind his big, dirty secret regarding the king because my character didn’t like her dad very much to begin with), I found them all to be horribly insufferable. Brother kept rubbing it in our faces that he was daddy’s favorite, daddy dearest couldn’t be assed to even interact with three of his four kids because he hated our mom so I guess that meant we all had to suffer, oldest sister is a paranoid thug, something about our mom rubbed me the wrong way, and favorite wife was downright conniving by the end, even going so far as to tell me directly that she hoped I would fail at everything I did because she hated my mom, and by extension, me. Then had the gall to turn around and be all, “we could’ve been a happy family, this is all your fault.” Bitch, don’t gaslight me, I haven’t said two words to you this whole game up to now.
Especially when they took a political hostage who was absolutely innocent of the treason they kept trying to accuse him of in every sense of the word, tortured him wrongly, and held him at knife point to keep his sister in line, I stopped having any warm, tender feelings for the psychos.
Hard for me to want to root for the home team when they’re almost all pricks.
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so you are allowed to hate Richard even though he didn’t choose to be favored by his father. But his mom isn’t allowed to wish you to fail after what your mom did to her?
I actually enjoyed the game. Lot of pricks and a big mess lol and now we gotta clean it all up 
That remind me of a trope (At least I think it’s one), where you play say in a world where drug is illegal right? and the 1st thing you hear from a companion is ‘Want some drug? I love drug, don’t you? I do drug every chance I get’
And I’m like WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME? Go away!
Of course that’s an example only, but Bioware for example did that. ‘A mage blew the chantry! Hunt all mages!’’ here come egg head to tell me how he take nap to visit the fade Zoo and talk to Spirits 
Hey I’m pro-mage and anti-chantry, but come on! What’s that supposed to help with? Being pro-mage doesn’t mean I wanna slice my wrist-…actually, nevermind lol that’s what I did back in DA2 
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Well, you don’t brag about it constantly like he does.
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yeah but he is happy, and you are sibling. I mean if he does it in a malicious way I can understand hating his guts. But he doesn’t.
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