Basic Trope: A Kid Hero has at least as much trouble dealing with social pressures and crushes as with saving the world.
- Straight: Alice is a 14-year-old Action Girl hero who can rescue people from Emperor Evulz without much thought, but has considerable problems dealing with the Alpha Bitch Lynne Lacey and her crush on Bob.
- Exaggerated: Alice can save the world time and again, but the slightest thought of going out on a date with Bob causes her to panic.
- Downplayed: Alice can stop bullies but is a bit of a wallflower.
- Justified:
- Emperor Evulz, for better or worse, is relatively easy to deal with — just beat him up and he's gone. You can't beat up your social problems, though...
- Alice has numerous psychological conditions that make interacting with people difficult but is very powerful.
- Alice only knows how to punch things, and anything that requires a more complex solution is beyond her ability to navigate.
- Nobody knows that Alice is saving the world, so she's got all the stresses of a student life, none of the social or material benefits of heroism, and life-or-death struggles to handle.
- Inverted:
- Alice is an incredibly popular girl who struggles with the "hero" portion of her job because she's so busy going to parties.
- Because of Alice's good publicity, her social life is a breeze. Anyone with a compatible orientation and not already in a committed relationship will date her, she is always welcome at parties, and teachers cut her a lot of slack out of gratitude for defending everyone. She appreciates it greatly because her job is very challenging.
- Wake up, go to school (and wedgie some dorks while you're there), Take Over the World!
- Subverted:
- It seems that Alice is balancing both social life and heroism...
- Alice drops out to be a full time hero with no social life.
- Double Subverted: ...but a particularly hellish week in the world of either throws the balance off again.
- Parodied:
- "Emperor Evulz has taken over a space station." "No sweat." "Dracone has kidnapped the President and is holding him for ransom." "Piece of cake." "Also, you've got a date tonight with Bob Editor." "...Uh..." "And Lynne Lacey is holding a party where your date's at." "...CAN YOU SHUT UP!?"
- Alice is presented at first as a Mary Sue who can solve unrelated problems on the other side of the world with a wink. Then her Weaksauce Weakness is revealed: small talk with boys!
- Zig-Zagged: Alice's level of control over her life varies from time to time.
- Averted: Alice decides to drop out of school or get a GED so she can pursue the hero thing full-time.
- Enforced: "We've got teenage heroes, right? That means we show them struggling with social lives!"
- Lampshaded: "OK, so saving the world I can do. But don't ask me to go to prom."
- Invoked: Alice's handlers chose her to play superhero because her social awkwardness would leave her enough free time to fight Emperor Evulz.
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz studies Alice's high school life and gives her an unusual ultimatum: she has to go on a date with Bob and make amends with Lynne Lacey, or the world is destroyed.
- Defied:
- Alice blows off the social aspects of high school life as inconsequential and somewhat petty due to her experiences dealing with Saving the World. Indeed, she can barely be troubled with the academics.
- Or she blows off the hero aspects of her life as such.
- Alice makes sure her world-saving is well-renumerated.
- Discussed: "Seriously, Alice, you just saved the world from alien invasion. This party can't be that big a deal after that."
- Conversed: "What is with teenage characters who risk their life on a regular basis having so much trouble with social issues?"
- Deconstructed:
- Fighting the forces of sadistic evil turns out to be much worse than dealing with social problems.
- Alternatively, the forces of evil find out about Alice's social life and go after the people she loves.
- Alice's handlers decide that her social life might get in the way of foiling Emperor Evulz, and decide to either leave her or make her hero life a full-time position.
- Anyone can save the world, so it becomes so mundane that Alice can still be the target of bullying at school.
- Having to save the world is why Alice has social problems. All the horrors and tragedies she's witnessed have taken their toll on her, inflicting psychological scarring.
- Alice inadvertently leads The Empire to her school, which then gets destroyed.
- Reconstructed:
- It's difficult, but Alice finds a way to balance both heroism and a social life.
- Her friends resolve to support Alice any way they can, knowing how much she puts on the line to protect them. They grow even tighter as a result.
- Alice is forced to save the world alongside one of the bullies; they learn to appreciate each other as a result, and may even be friends afterwards.
- The school's destruction pulls her surviving friends and teachers together in the face of evil.
- Implied: Alice is a peripheral character who is laughed at as a loner, then the next day she's commended for bravery in a traumatic event.
Wake Up, Go To School, Visit TV Tropes.
