Basic Trope: Teenagers are portrayed as rebellious, angsty, or evil.
- Straight: Alice, a 16-year-old girl, becomes a Jerkass who rebels against authority, gets drunk at parties, and picks on her little siblings.
- Exaggerated:
- On top of all that, Alice joins a gang, robs stores, mugs old ladies, kicks several small puppies, and listens to gangsta rap and heavy metal music.
- Alice is the main antagonist of the story; her rebellious and possibly outright sociopathic behavior poses a real and severe threat to those around her.
- Alice and her boyfriend decide to go on a murderous rampage through their high school.
- Alice is a Complete Monster.
- All teens are Always Chaotic Evil.
- Teenage Wasteland
- Downplayed:
- Teens are kinda thoughtless.
- Teens are Jerks With A Heart Of Gold or at least have certain lines they don't cross.
- Teens are apathetic, selfish, cynical, and snarky if not outright cruel.
- Justified:
- Alice is a teenager, trying to transition into being an adult while still being treated like a kid. She rebels against authority to give herself a sense of power and breaks the rules to prove that she can make her own decisions, as she strongly believes in Cool People Rebel Against Authority.
- Teenagers have raging hormones but their pre-frontal cortex is yet to develop.
- Adolescence provides an opportunity to let out one's psychologically repressed and latent behaviours.
- Alice has been abused all her life, and the authority figures won't lift a figure to help her. The trauma eventually builds up and causes her to snap.
- Inverted:
- Alice is a good teenager, always listens to her parents, volunteers at the homeless shelter during the weekend, helps anyone in need, and is a goody-two-shoes in general.
- The teenagers are the only sensible characters in a world of monstrous (and/or useless) adults.
- Recruit Teenagers with Attitude
- Subverted: Alice dresses like a rebel and is always listening to rap and heavy metal music on her headphones, but she does all her chores, takes good care of her little siblings, and is overall a good person.
- Double Subverted: ...While her parents are around. When they're gone, she goes to wild parties, vandalizes street signs, and sets old buildings on fire.
- Parodied:
- All teenagers are evil overlords trying to Take Over the World.
- The teens are literal monsters; once a child reaches the age of 13 they become a bloodthirsty demon until they reach their twenties, when they become somewhat apathetic adults.
- Zig Zagged:
- Alice looks like a rebel, but she listens to her parents and volunteers at her church. But at night, she gets drunk and vandalizes public property. But she feels bad for this the next day and turns herself in and agrees to repair the damage she's done.
- Alice varies between levels of angst. She is definitely rebellious but she has a damn good reason to be and is fighting against evil. Not being rebellious would mean condoning horrible things.
- Teenaged characters are all over the map. Alice is the typical rebellious example. Bob is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who appears to be nice but is actually a bad guy. Charles looks the part but is cheerful, respectful, does good and puts most adults to shame. Daina is certainly rebellious and angsty but is essentially a living saint — most of her angst is related to not being able to help enough people.
- Averted: Alice is neither portrayed as overly nice or naughty. She just tries to get by without attracting too much attention to herself.
- Enforced:
- "We know that teenagers are hard to deal with. Let's create a character that reflects this."
- "We know teens are total bitches. We need a main character that appeals to them."
- Lampshaded: "I'm a teenager! I'm supposed to be a bitch and this is what I will be, BECAUSE I FUCKING CAN!"
- Invoked: Alice acts like a bratty teenager to get what she wants.
- Exploited: The military recruits teens because unleashing them as they are is more effective than having to train non teen soldiers at causing death and destruction.
- Defied: Alice tries her best to be a good daughter for her parents, a good sister for her siblings, a good student for her teachers, and a good friend to her classmates.
- Discussed:
- "She's going through her teen years. We're trying our best to survive."
- "Teenagers scare the living shit outta me."
- Conversed: "My goodness, are all teenagers so horrible like that?"
- Deconstructed:
- Alice is a terrible teenager, never listening to authority, breaking several laws, and never going to any of her classes. She alienates herself from her family and her friends and all of her teachers have given up on her a long time ago. Her behavior causes her parents to kick her out of the house. Without a home or friends to rely on, and without any skills or qualifications to get a decent job, she resorts to a life of crime. She is thrown in prison, where she dies alone.
- If teens are inherently monstrous, that means all the saintly adults in the show were once bullies or violent criminals themselves. As a result, adults are constantly torn up with guilt about the irreparable damage they caused when they were younger. Most everyone has a criminal record, leading to an unemployment crisis. Plus, people are reluctant to have children because of the harm those kids will inevitably do, and the population dwindles.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice discovers that growing up is hard. She's tired of being treated as a kid, so she rebels, which causes her to be treated even more as a kid. Alice eventually learns that growing up means getting along with others, but does not necessarily mean blindly following authority all the time. As a result, she becomes a rebel who learns when it's right to listen to authority and when not to, but is always considerate of other people and will help them out whenever they are in need, even if that means going against authority. Of course, she's still not that much of a nice person.
- Alice acts like a monster, gets caught, punished, and learns not to do that anymore. At least for now...
- Played For Laughs: Alice, the star of a Black Comedy, commits her atrocities in such a ridiculously cheeky manner and talks in such a hilariously outrageous way that it's hard not to laugh at it.
- Played For Drama: Others' lives are damaged, ruined or even lost altogether, with many more left grieving, all due to some out-of-control teens seeking for fun and thrills and a way to revolt against the elders (for example a Wild Teen Party Gone Horribly Wrong).
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