<Snipped quote by Shorticus>
I don't mind playing teen characters - in fact, I do like exploring that psychological-emotional aspect where a teen's mindset is somewhere between a kid and adult, having to juggle between developing a sense of maturity and the unwillingness to lose their innocent childish side. Sure, adults in their later years who have been through all sorts of hell can contribute to their (overly) complicated background, but who says that can't be applied to a teen who will go through the psychological and emotional turmoil before they enter the world of an uncertain adult life? Also, unlike a "mature" adult who knows how to stand their own ground, a teen may be more easily influenced by their environment and peers, inciting cases of impulsive moments and forced to make difficult choices, which can change them for the better...or worse.
Don't forget, the teen years do make up a part of an adult's backstory, and also hold importance in developing the adult to who they are by then.
I get all this. As I said, I've had both good and bad experiences with them. But most folks emphasize romance, or else REALLY want to push a high school slice of life setting (in which romance inevitably happens). There are twists and tweaks on it, but most folks don't RP anything beyond what I'd call a typical perception of the teenage experience.
Now, the teenage years are very important. But the rest of life is important, too, equally so. But we don't see people RPing about being outright kids very often, nor do we often see folks RPing about being old men and women or even middle-aged unless they're already getting on in years. I feel like the reasons for teenaged and early twenties characters being the focus of most people's roleplay has a lot to do with the romantic and sex appeal of such characters (besides the typical "power fantasy" stuff). Old people are "squicky" in this context and a lot of roleplayers are on the younger (30 years or younger) side - certainly not all roleplayers, mind you.
Child characters... I figure most people find playing a kid to be weird or beneath them or maybe would just rather play a character whose interests can realistically involve sex. Plus, child characters come loaded with a crapton of limitations we don't want to deal with when we roleplay, like having to listen to to their parents, like having curfews, like having to do homework, like being unable to fight the big bads, like being pretty much disadvantaged in a ton of ways while also having a few unique options available to them. Basically, a child character makes you
weaker, and there's a very real want for roleplay to give us a feeling of power or independence. Roleplay can be very self-expressive.
As for romance, I do agree that it's overdone - no offense to romanticists or people who simply can't move the plot forward without all the juicy romantic/lustful actions, but not everyone wants to pursue a lovey-dovey relationship in their teen years. Even if the teen has a crush on someone, it's 50-50 whether they will act on that feeling, or simply push it aside and prioritize other things in their life (studies, peer pressure, family, other personal interests, etc).
Word.
When I was in high school, I was... very busy with everything. I was socially active, had lots of tabletop games I was involved in, had online gaming sucking my time away, was working on personal stories, was the football team's waterboy, competed frequently in the school's academic contests, worked on the school newspaper, helped the Student Council collect cardboard boxes for some charity thing or another, etc. I was mildly interested in ladies, but frankly? I was too busy to think about them, and I learned AFTER high school that a couple girls had actually been interested in me throughout high school and I just was too absorbed with everything else to notice. I was a busy guy.
Point being: I never into the whole lovey-dovey thing.
And some people are just not very sexual beings. I mean... Myself? I think about sex and I think "Eh." There's nothing especially exciting about it to me. I don't spend very many, if any, waking hours thinking about the subject. I love the idea of romance and having someone be very close to me and sharing my feelings with them. I'd love to wake up next to that someone, certainly. But the idea of sex itself just
bores me, and I've never been all that enthused by amorous acts. I frankly don't
get the sex drive a lot of people have. So, when people want to roleplay about sex sex sex, I honestly have no enthusiasm for the subject matter at all and have zero interest in getting involved in that. And... well, a lot of RPers that want to RP about "romance" throw in words like "mature" and want some saucy typing. It's not my cup of tea, and it's especially not my cup of tea when we're dealing with teenagers.
(In fact, I once wound up leaving a gaming group because I was playing a female character and everyone just assumed my character should be romantically involved with one of the male ones. It got pretty stifling.)
