Full comic : https://i.redd.it/cjd72t46nl291.png
That's unfair to the original series. Han Solo and Chewbacca were just some guys.
The original series was the least egregious, although I guess you could make the argument that the prequels barely ever pretended Anakin wasn't the specialest of special boys.
The sequels really were the worst offenders
Oh shit it looks like the bad guys went out and bought a six pack of death stars, how will we ever solve this one????
Hey now, it's different because this time the Death Star is EVEN HUEGER!!1
"What if the special boy was evil?" could have been a fun subversion of the trope. But the prequels were so horribly Disneyfied, even before they got bought out, that we lost the plot in all the tropes.
Incidentally, one reason why Heir to the Empire was good, too. Mara Jade's whole motive is the belief that Special Boys destroy the balance of the Force. She also implies that Anakin fulfilled the prophecy to bring balance by doing Jedi Jenocide.
By the end it was 2 Sith and 1 Jedi.
But also there were a bunch of Sith cults in the Extended Universe. And even in the core movie series, you had multiple different Sith apprentices being juggled by Sidious.
I wish they had gone way deeper into Lucas-brain for them. Literally just quadruple the fuck down on midi-chlorians and make it about the Whills. The Force as just mystical vibes-driven telepathy powers is way less interesting than that stuff being a minor side-effect of a galactic ecology where human life sits on the big-stupid-resources-factory end of a harmonious symbiotic relation with a microbial superintelligence, like Dune but we're the sandworms now.
Yeah I've had a rebuttal rolling around my head in defence of the OG trilogy, really all those characters are technically Just Some Guys, it's not like they planned to always have a chosen one who is a Skywalker from the beginning, and Luke wasn't even a prophecy child like all his forebears, if it weren't for Leia looking for Obi-Wan, Luke would probably be in spacefash academy training to be a pilot and none the wiser about his origin
THIS. THIS FUCKING TROPE.
I find it strange that so much of anime is about the power fantasy of improving yourself, often with the help of some externality, until the protagonist can become self reliant. Then it turns out they are the ancient ubermensch and they can just clap everyone in existence. Maybe it was always about the power fantasy of complete domination for these otaku/weebs? :thinkin-lenin:
in a way, there is a lot of destiny and prophecy around there. But the super special magic people are cursed, men get magical madness, women must endure politics.
The first book manages to never have a woman POV. The second book starts right after EverythingWasFine, turns out nothing was fine actually. Didn't really got into it.
Yup, I was annoyed at a lot of little things, the protagonists are all a different type of idiot, but there were more things that kept me interested enough to keep on reading. And you need to really like reading since this is a marathon.
Are they actually worth reading? The Eye Of The World is probably one of the worst fantasy novels of all time.
Not all of them no, it really starts to pick up speed by the third book but he kinda loses the plot at the end but manages to rally in his last book, Brando Sando then does an ok job wrapping it all up.
I feel like they codified "Plot Armor" with the idea of being Ta'varn. Sort of like how Elden Ring explains the respawn mechanic by saying you're Tarnished. But it wasn't Special in a "you're from a better bloodline". More a materialistic special, in so far as you're in the right place at the right moment to shape history.
Also, plenty of non-Special heroes in WoT. The book was overflowing with characters to the point where you had a twenty page index of names by the end.
You think they're dumb poo people, but wait till one of them puts on a cool scary mask
Oh no, it's a poopoo rebellion! And this is bad for...reasons. :scared-fash:
Arcanum was such a cool setting in this regard since high fantasy magic existed alongside technology but they were mutually exclusive. For example, a wizard would have to ride at the very rear of a train so that their magic wouldn't interfere with the physical laws which allowed steam to power the engine.
Oh the of Steamworks and Magick obscure game. Yeah that's a cool concept, kinda wish I played the game.
Now that Microsoft owns the IP with the blizzard deal we're probably within a decade of them forcing Bethesda to use the setting for a modern RPG so you probably will wind up playing a slightly disappointing version of it.
:liberty-prime-cool:
Fallout 3 redux
Arcanum is the spiritual successor to Fallout (1 & 2) too so there's deeeep parallels.
This could have been Harry Potter, if tech actually got a seat at the table.
Ok, this has been driving me crazy for seven movies now, and I know you’re going to roll your eyes, but hear me out: Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
Here’s why:
Think about how quickly the entire WWW III (Wizarding-World War III) would have ended if all of the good guys had simply armed up with good ol’ American hot lead.
Basilisk? Let’s see how tough it is when you shoot it with a .470 Nitro Express. Worried about its Medusa-gaze? Wear night vision goggles. The image is light-amplified and re-transmitted to your eyes. You aren’t looking at it – you’re looking at a picture of it.
Imagine how epic the first movie would be if Harry had put a breeching charge on the bathroom wall, flash-banged the hole, and then went in wearing NVGs and a Kevlar-weave stab-vest, carrying a SPAS-12.
And have you noticed that only Europe seems to [have] a problem with Deatheaters? Maybe it’s because Americans have spent the last 200 years shooting deer, playing GTA: Vice City, and keeping an eye out for black helicopters over their compounds. Meanwhile, Brits have been cutting their steaks with spoons. Remember: gun-control means that Voldemort wins. God made wizards and God made muggles, but Samuel Colt made them equal.
Now I know what you’re going to say: “But a wizard could just disarm someone with a gun!” Yeah, well they can also disarm someone with a wand (as they do many times throughout the books/movies). But which is faster: saying a spell or pulling a trigger?
Avada Kedavra, meet Avtomat Kalashnikova.
Imagine Harry out in the woods, wearing his invisibility cloak, carrying a .50bmg Barrett, turning Deatheaters into pink mist, scratching a lightning bolt into his rifle stock for each kill. I don’t think Madam Pomfrey has any spells that can scrape your brains off of the trees and put you back together after something like that. Voldemort’s wand may be 13.5 inches with a Phoenix-feather core, but Harry’s would be 0.50 inches with a tungsten core. Let’s see Voldy wave his at 3,000 feet per second. Better hope you have some Essence of Dittany for that sucking chest wound.
I can see it now…Voldemort roaring with evil laughter and boasting to Harry that he can’t be killed, since he is protected by seven Horcruxes, only to have Harry give a crooked grin, flick his cigarette butt away, and deliver what would easily be the best one-liner in the entire series:
“Well then I guess it’s a good thing my 1911 holds 7+1.”
And that is why Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
Hey yall, let's imagine something different! What would a writer that was interested in more liberatory, justice based, social-istic (at least) themes do for a setting?
Like Xanth, everybody gets a unique talent but most are pretty useless? A story that starts off like the pic, but the pov characters are all the normals and they help lead a revolution to a more just world?
Magic should be presented as universal, with everyone having access. Class position and education may affect your ability to effectively utilize it. In my book I treated it like literacy.
In my novel nothing stops any character from learning magic (better thought of as being based on chi but I've not picked a word) but some of the most powerful characters are able to inscribe chi "shortcuts" into people with no chi practice/ skills allowing them to use magical abilities without any formal understanding or awareness of chi.
or how about magic is taught as something that comes from bloodline but in reality is just something anyone can learn to do
Ooh that's a good inversion. You could have a magic kropotkin give up the royal secrets ans teach the masses magic lol
In the setting for my book, everyone starts out human but during puberty they become a magical race based on their material conditions. Everybody assumes that the long-lived, super smart and extremely fast Elves are the best race that the best kids become when they get the best education, but the deep lore is that that's what you turn into when you have a giant pile of money and those assumed advantages are the result of hundreds of years of propaganda and the only real difference being an elf makes is just that you consume three times as much as everybody else and live longer.
I have a magic system that makes people feel an inherent attachment to the world and people around them. The same way you would feel hungry if you don't eat, you'd feel a natural disgust with yourself if you tried to hoard resources. Work is rewarding and being an adventurer solving problems is a lifestyle that you choose, retire from, or do casually.
In the continent of interest there are two different communes and one kingdom. The kingdom only lays claim to the land that they can reliably provide food for. Taxes are modest. Yet the existence of the inherent hierarchy disgusts the leaders of the communes. So when word gets around that the kingdom is raising an army, the leaders of the communes go through extralegal means to assist a vigilante, his friends, and a diaspora to attack the kingdom. Both communes decide to not intervene to keep the peace as a treaty demands and they look the other way as adventures fight in conjunction with the vanguard (e.g. "I don't conscript them, how am I going to give them commands?!")
No chosen ones, communes get plenty of screentime, and the main character develops from wanting to be a proud, pious knight for the kingdom into a drug smoking traveler who just wants to help solve the existential crisis facing the continent. There are lots of instances where people highlight how differently one could consider being part of a society like not paying for basic food and shelter. Tilling the fields in volunteer work and a popular excuse to exercise mana. BEEG BEEG LIBRARIES. People will only try to maim each other at worst during wartime and avoid carrying escalating weapons like swords and spears because they don't want to kill each other (which highlights how dramatic it is to say you want to kill someone).
I like it! The main character of my book is a cat-person, and while she has been told all her life that that means she's supposed to be dexterous conniving and flirtatious, she ended up being a 6'10" brick shit house of a woman who is super straightforward and physically imposing. One of her hangups is that she has still internalized her racial stereotype and feels bad for not living up to it, but over the course of the book she realizes that the magical phrenology she was taught growing up is all fake.
Is this a published book or still something you're working on? I haven't read fantasy in a while and this sounds interesting. Also I'd much rather buy a book from a comrade than some publishing company.
Still working on. I'll definitely be posting about it here when I've got the first draft done.
If you happen to enjoy lib brainworms, the Mistborn saga from SandersonIndustries(TM) is something like this. But extremely lib.
The main character in Mistborn is literally the most special special person, tho.
I feel like the answer to this is more The Boys, where normies paramilitarize to confront Magical Corporate Fascists.
Alternatively, if you don't mind kid drama, The Rescuers Down Under or An American Tale. Or even just 101 Dalmatians.
Stories about little guys and underdogs standing up to old corrupt establishments.
The second era has some industrialization and capitalism and the inklings of worker solidarity in that there are strikes and riots over the conditions. Still full of lib brainworms in it's handling of course.
After the three first books with the whole reset of the universe by God himself? They already had monarchic capitalism and workers revolts, and in the second book there is le evil gommunist taking over a whole city, but luckly our heroes prove they were evil and make them see the Kauskyite light, yet of course, the bestest system remains a parlamentarian monarchy with a rich dipshit special emo boy as king because reasons.
Not really?
The second book is the one where the socdem monarchist boy realizes that the capitalist elite will band with the nobles in order to keep their capital even when there's a massive war coming. The answer to this? Fuck them, eliminate their entire power and install an absolute monarchy/roman dictatorship where at least the king is kind of ok.
Then the third book has the ebil comunist mind controlled guy. Which really sucked.
I'm mixing them up then. Still, I remember some cool worker class guy all enraged by having to put as monarch the emo dipshit instead of killing them all.
exactly, after the reset I wanted to read more about the riots and the demands of the common folk but the books are about some boring noble who looks to be going a class traitor route but just ends up like Batman, going after the common criminals.
Really? c'mon, God reseted the fucking world and everything was exactly the same but with less ash? At least the previous MCs are fucking dead
it is lampshaded in the book, god himself shows some regret about how he arranged things, so it's not like Brando isn't a bit aware, it would just be much better if he was more aware.
Don't forget how he created some petroleum, which is why there's gasoline in the second trilogy and probably cars in the next one.
That's right, God planted those dinossaurs there.
Those common criminals are backed by the nobility and the magical Illuminati, thought.
In my book's setting, anyone can learn magic, but the time, teaching, and practice required isn't allotted equally. Different learning styles and material conditions mean that people who would be talented sorcerers end up doing mundane work augmented by magic.
One part of the history though is that there's been a history of laborers who used magic derived from servitude to cause a class-based revolution. The nobles who practiced fancy complex magic were few in number and lacked the experience to fight a long war with farmers who water crops by hauling thousands of gallons at once or cleaners who can sweep a castle with a single wind spell.
The tools of their oppression (being railroaded into service-based magic) became their liberation. Centuries later, that informs policy on magic and how it's accessed.
But given it's not hereditary and powder guns and scifi shit was very lethal, it felt balanced. But yes, the Amon situation is never resolved, and highly hinted in the post-comics of AtLA
it is hereditary did you not notice that the people with magic always have at least one magic parent
and for example the fire nation royal family seemed very sure that their kids would have magic
I'm not gonna say incest but I get a feeling if the ATLA was written by a more serious writer the fire nation royal family would be like the Habsburg minus the jaw.
Then make the jaw bigger! Jaw that pierces the heavens! Jawgelion!
A victim of monarchist brainwashing also. After all, one is not born a noble but made one through the system they are emplaced in.
Yes, but bending still pops among non benders and viceversa. But yes, royal families do eugenics
Her mom wasn't a bender, she lied that she was to protect Katara as a child
On the other hand, we saw some identical twins in Book 1 of ATLA where only one was a bender
I wish Korra actually showed that life was worse for non-benders. Other than the one scene with the gangsters Korra fights in episode 1, we don't see at all how benders are the ruling class. We should have had scenes of proles walking to work while waterbenders surf past on a magic wave and drench them all in slime water. We should have seen non-benders struggle for warmth in their apartment that doesn't have power, while a firebender lights a cigarette outside. Or a bricklayer breaking their back while an earth bender walks by and casually tosses it aside as a joke. Instead it seemed like most benders tooks care of most public utilities: metal police, electricity bending power grids, water bending healers. Give the Equalists a good reason to fight, don't just cop out with "there are gangsters who bend."
benders made up the entire police force & the governing body. even in the text of the show unsympathetic to the equal-guys those conditions are textbook intolerable. fuckssake the avatar's son whose tribe is all of 6 people got an equal say to the earth, water, and fire people
But we don't see any affects of that. The Metal Bending police aren't shown oppressing non-benders. The Council isn't shown making decisions that favor benders. They aren't shown doing anything really other than responding to the Equalists. It's a purely liberal understanding of government where representation is all that matters, aesthetics.
For instance the victory for non-benders is shown to be having an (I think elected) non-bender president. But what actually changes from that? Metal Benders are still the police, benders are still the military. My complaint is that they only show the surface level, which is why the Equalist movement feels so hollow.
Equalist techniques would've been actual good ways to detain benders safely. But instead they do super brutal techniques like hurling rocks at people.
So that checks out for policing in the world.
It's Book 1.
Book 2 is "The Foreigner Magical Specials have gone too far!"
Book 3 is how revolutionaries are too cool and good to not be evil actually.
I'm loving all these posts about writing.
And I'm pretty ambivalent to any magic system now where you're born with it or you're not, or there's no way to learn magic. Avatar is the exception.
I like how in Avatar it’s basically random on who gets it, also it’s a checkbox. There aren’t people who are just STRONGER at bending in a “they have the pure blood.”
Toph is a strong bender but it’s shown to be due to hard work. Aang is kind of mid as a bender, but can use all 4 and no one has fought an airbender in living memory so that’s his advantage.
Also bending is cool, but not all powerful, you can still get punched.
Aang is kind of mid as a bender,
Aang was a prodigy as an Airbender, he became a master at the age of twelve and invented new techniques. He was mid at the other 3 because he hadn't had time to practice.
But I do agree with your overall point. Animes are usually good on this trope because they love the idea of training super hard. That has it's own tropes of bootstrapping, but I love how in the DBZ verse you can just do martial arts hard enough and learn to fly.
I don’t think Aang was the best airbender, Henry Rollins was a much better fighter, and tenzin has a lot of techs.
Korra also wasn’t the best waterbender. High level, but not super human, just “Olympic athlete” tier.
Anime - at least recent stuff from webnovels seems to be characters have a OP combo that seems weak.
Sokka and Suki are regularly shown to be the strongest and smartest of the gang and they are just normal peeps with a boomerang and a tsudnere they stan.
Obviously the difference is purely the medium, since jrpg are very much video game anime a lot of the time, but those are anime, not jrpgs.
Fair. I think jrpgs tend to be worse for this than anime since it's a rule of thumb thst video game plots have to explain why the protagonist is uniquely capable of going on the main quest, and the easiest explanation is "they're just a special being, okay?"
The protagonists tend to be special to some degree because by the end of the game they're expected to Kill God. But the "special"-ness is as often a product of the intro as some inherited bloodline. Look at the Persona series, for instance. Or Chrono Trigger or Earthbound or Mario. As often as not, the protagonist is just some everyman who gets hit in the head with the Magic Rock of Destiny and finds himself on an unexpected adventure.
I feel like i see this mostly in fantasy aimed at children and teens, but typically magic-powers stories don't treat the powers like a social class
Korra is the major exception, except that it takes place in a society with a real capitalist class that includes non-benders, and the critiques of "bender supremacy" as presented by the season's villain (intentionally) don't make any sense.
the legend of Korra is just ideologically incoherent like that.
Every time a writer does this it's like the biggest tell - you can see the moment where they realized they were describing the antagonist trying to change the world to the way things should be but then had to catch themselves and say "shit! We can't show that! make bad guy blow up a hospital or something!"
Another example being the...lol..."Flag Smashers" from Falcon and WS. They were trying to give medicine and food to starving people, but because that's cool and good, they had the main character literally bomb a hospital and say "that's how you get through to these people" like ok disney we get it you hate the poors
Strong Dark Knight rises vibes. Getting rid of rich people and police means also getting nuked. The ony thing keeping us from nuking ourselves is that it would destroy capital.
It's not a good fantasy if you don't exclude
all the people who were mean to me in high schoolsome people.The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin is the only fantasy story I've read that handles this trope correctly.
(Being written by a woman of color probably helps a lot).
