People wanna feel something when reading fiction. Sex is a shortcut, so is anger. The kinds of things that rile you up like injustice, sadness, bullying, etc. are kinda depressing and hard to see overall. If you aren’t indulging in that “oh man I missed out on school romance and teen love” market then it’s probably pretty hard to sell people on watching early teen characters do anything. They’re dumb, ugly, awkward, un not too charming.

So all you get is the bland self-insert feeling things for the first time as a standin