Useful, Infuriating Adults
Been thinking about using adults in the way they show up in Buffy and slightly more mundane teen stories, and how that can serve the principles.
* adults care about you and neglect you, randomly
* adults mean well, but their interventions are blind
* adults sometimes disregard the PCs’ boundaries and the rules of the world of their peers as secondary or trivial concerns
* important adults (parents, the principal) can easily apply pressure that forces PCs to hold steady, just by weight of their authority: they are powerful gatekeepers of acceptance. (The weird duality of teenaged life: you can’t go out and fight vampires tonight, you’re grounded.)
* accordingly, adult authority figures are great at putting PCs together or pulling them apart: the principal grabs two mutual enemies, innocent of any crime, and has them spend two nights’ detention scrubbing their supposed graffiti off the gym wall. Mom forbids you from talking to that Samantha girl (she seems depressed.. she’s not good for you).
Yup! And don’t forget a touch of adult drama happening to parents/mentors that’s hard for teens to really wrap their heads around – debt, infidelity, addiction go well with closing the world in darkness.