I’m writing an R-rated superhero story. My main character gets his powers from chemicals. His boyfriend, who’s older than him (maybe 6-14 years older), is murdered, and he brings his killers to justice. My main character is bisexual, and most of his love interests are 6 to 14 years older than him—maybe some even older. His best friends are in their 20s and slightly older than him too.
Should he be 21 at his “year one” start and 23 be the “year two” part of the story? That way he’s an adult, but he’s still young enough to have that youthful “young” vibe.
If he were 15-16, it wouldn’t work, mainly because, like I said, his friends and love interests are adults who are older than him, and he’s a vigilante whose whole thing is “justice”. That line would get skewed if his love interests were, you know, committing a crime just by being with him, and his adult friends would look complicit and not heroic for allowing it to happen.
If my character is 21-23, while it might be “weird” for him to date older men and women, the older partners don’t deserve to die for being with him, and they aren’t committing a crime because he is a consenting adult, and consenting adults have free will, so him fighting for “justice” won’t get blurry. What do you think?
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Character age is a slippery, weird thing that’s best to avoid if at all possible.
Take this summer’s Superman as a great counter-example. If it’s set in 2025, and the opening crawl is to be trusted, Clark came to earth in 1995 and started superheroing in 2022. He would have been in preschool when 9/11 happened, in high school for the Sandy Hook massacre, and presumably studying in the fortress of solitude during COVID lockdowns…All of which would have distracted from the story.
In contrast, look at Peter Parker and the Fantastic Four. How much older than Sue is Reed? What year of high school did Spider Man get bit? Heck who’s older – Sue, Johnny, or Peter? None of these are answered in the MCU or consistently in comics, and nobody cares. (And let’s not even contemplate the X-Men or Batman and his Robins…)
So, yeah, a 21 year old superhero dating 30-somethings is fine. But you don’t really need to do more than establish that your character is at least 18/21 to lampshade away any squick from your readers.
TL;DR : Yeah, the age is fine. But you can skip mentioning it at all as a genre staple and nobody will care.