Competence Zone/Playing With

Basic Trope: Certain characters in a work are only competent if they're in a given age range.

• Straight: Alice, Bob, Charlie, Dylan, and Erika are a Five-Man Band of twenty-somethings and are expert robot pilots. Freddie, a 12-year-old, and George, a 52-year-old, are both considered incompetent for whatever reason.
• Exaggerated: The Five-Man Band are all 24 years of age. The instant they turn 25, they become incompetent - and they were considered incompetent before their 24th birthday.
• Justified: The Competence Zone exists for a reason. Freddie is too young to be a skilled pilot, and George's older body is too frail to handle the strains of robot piloting.
• Inverted: Everyone in the twenty-something age range is useless, and saving the day falls to Freddie, the Kid Hero and George, the Cool Old Guy.
• Subverted: Henry shows up. He's outside of the zone, but he proves to be more than competent enough.
• Double Subverted: ...For a while, anyway. He ends up needing to be rescued by the Five-Man Band.
• Parodied: "Well, Bob, it's your 30th birthday! Time to leave the team!" "But I can still..." "No you can't! Now leave!"
• Deconstructed: Emperor Evulz is Genre Savvy enough to realize that all twenty-somethings are dangerous and wipes all of them out. Since they were the only ones who stood a chance, he's able to Take Over the World.
• Reconstructed: However, the remaining pilot candidates remind Emperor Evulz that there's a huge gap between "very competent" and "incompetent", and show that they have the skills necessary to reclaim the world from him.
• Zig Zagged: Henry shows up. He's outside of the zone but has the skills to succeed...except the Five-Man Band has to bail him out. But he still shows up every now and then and can hold his own.
• Averted: Everyone, regardless of age, has an equal chance of being a competent robot pilot.
• Enforced: "We want twenty-somethings to watch this show, so let's make it to where only twenty-somethings can be heroes!"
• Lampshaded: "You'd think you'd want some new blood! Or maybe someone with some experience!"
• Invoked: The Headmaster of the Robot Forces realizes that twenty-somethings make the best pilots, so he decides to only accept them.
• Defied: Freddie and George get their chance to shine...and boy, do they ever.
• Discussed: "My birthday is next week. Here comes my demotion."
• Conversed: "Isn't it convenient that the median age of the robot pilots is the same range as the demographic for this show?"

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Go back and edit Competence Zone, but only if you're between the ages of 15 and 35.