I wonder how much Harry Potter had to do with the trend, cause superficially, that’s Harry’s story. It’s a good implementation of the trope, though, because it’s subverted rather quickly, and by the end of the seeies it’s a core theme: Everyone WANTS to treat him like he’s inherently special, and he’s really not. It’s his CHARACTER that makes him special.
Yes one of the main themes of Harry Potter is that it doesn’t matter what you’re born as it matters what you are inside. Funny that
It’s incredibly heavy handed though. Evil characters are evil because they are evil and good characters are good because they are good.
People are born this way in the Harry Potter universe and nobody ever changes.
People are born this way in the Harry Potter universe and nobody ever changes.
With the caveat that anybody ‘good’ who is doing evil is just under such horrible circumstances! (pearl clutching shrieking) They aren’t bad, they just have horrible backstories. Poor snapeypoo was being bullied for half muggleness, and the girl he loved was so mean to him!
Characters change a lot.
Dumbledore used to be aligned with a dark wizard who was his lover.
It’s revealed in the books that in school, James Potter and his friends were massive assholes who bullied Snape. Snape was pushed towards evil, but when when saw the consequences of that evil, he changed his ways and became a hero, while one of Potter’s best friends (Peter) turned out to be a cowardly villain. And then Peter ended up dying to save Harry later.
Malfoy’s family were racists and loved the idea of Voldemort returning and them being on the inner circle. But the reality of that was terrible, and in the end, they just wanted to escape.
What does YA stand for?
Young Adult
Same reason why the Mulan remake is shit. Original story is about a person who finds strength and perseveres despite her being physical weaker than men. In the remake they made her a Mary Sue, strong and magical straight from the beginning of the story and no explanation given.
I had a thought about this sometime ago. This really undermines the “we are all equals” narrative of the french revolution and kindly re-establishes the premises for aristocracy.
I’m trying not to give any spoilers, but if you want a fantasy series where everybody being equals is an underlying premise of the story, try the witchfire series by james clemens (which I think is a pen name, if I remember correctly; the guy wrote sci-fi and didn’t want to be associated with fantasy).
My college English professor absolutely hated the narrative device of “fate.” He felt it was a lazy excuse authors use to signify a character as “special” without having to work hard to justify it. Why work on character development to turn an average character into someone worthwhile, when you can just say they were born to be special? You can still use tropes like the refusal of the call to round out a protagonist and give them some illusion of choice, but ultimately the stamp of “fate” can only go one way.
The Owl House
Luz Noceda travels to the demon realm because she didn’t want to go to summer camp, and she discovers glyph magic because she has a smartphone with a camera. She’s the opposite of born special, she doesn’t even have a magical bile gland in her heart.
Magic comes from the heart!
Great, I have to read the same stuff as my kid for the next two decades… At least I’ll have motivation to keep reading.
I remember City of Ember being pretty good for a kids series. There’s no “special powers” or anything, just some kids trying to escape what’s basically a city sized bomb shelter that’s semi-self-sustaining. I haven’t read it in decades but I’m pretty sure it’ll hold up as a book for your kids.
Some books I enjoyed when I was a kid that didn’t fit the trips above:
- The Contender
- The Tripod Series
- Call It Courage
Writing this down for later
I remember enjoying that book when I was younger, good stuff.
Try Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Sequence.
The Amulet of Samarkand
The Golem’s Eye
Ptolemy’s Gate
The Ring of Solomon
Thanks, making notes!
Those books are so goddam good. I need to find copies and reread them.
That’s still better than the Japanese/Korean version: “I’m powerful because I don’t know to look both ways before crossing the street.” (Or for the c/fuckcars crowd, “I’m powerful because society still hasn’t fixed its motor vehicle violence problem.”)
Actually that’s one thing I like from eastern entertainment literature, be it shounen anime or cultivation, they need to train. Train hard. Even if they are born a special snowflake many protagonists still train until that snowflake is a buff snowball!
Ah truck-kun, we hardly knew ye…
I like those versions though, because they’ve given us some real bangers. There’s one I was reading where the angel who was supposed to hit the soon-to-be hero with a truck starts getting truck-blocked by a character from the fantasy world because he’s tired of the no-effort heroes coming through and beating the crap out of him because he’s the worf.
The reason is Star Wars. A whole generation of kids saw Star Wars where Luke is the hero, and then the sequels where you find out that he was a nepobaby all along, and then they went on to write stories teaching the next generation that your parentage matters much more than anything else you can do in life.
Also, all the manosphere idiots are obsessed with Joseph Conrad because of this and have a big hissy fit when stories don’t conform to the hero’s journey, even though it is demonstrably not the only valid story form.
Then with the Force Awakens and the following movies they pull the same shit over again. Rey was a nobody who became force sensitive after interacting with Luke’s lightsaber and… just kidding she’s dead Palpatine’s granddaughter, somehow.
And in the prequels you find out Annakin is Space Jesus/Herakles. Btw younger people seriously need to stop pretending the prequels aren’t dogshit.
she’s dead Palpatine’s granddaughter
Wasn’t Luke also Palpatine’s grandson because he caused Anakin’s mother’s pregnancy?
i read that that was only a fan theory and never canon
I slept-watched through the last two movies. Was there any logical (in the world of the movie, that is) explanation behind the granddaughter thing, or just a forced shift that had nothing to do with previous plotlines?
I wasn’t sure either but i found this reddit thread
Just a note for people looking deeper into it:
Joseph Conrad is the author of Heart of Darkness, the book Apocalypse Now is based on. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad
Joseph Campbell is the author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is where the hero’s journey, monomyth idea comes from. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell
Oh yeah, I er, meant Campbell. I’ve even read Heart Of Darkness.
I think the premise just makes people happy. The books that follow that premise get picked up faster and are more popularized. There has always been trash in young adult/teen fiction, and you have to dig for the good books.
As a recommendation, the novels aimed at kids by Brandon Sanderson are generally excellent. The superhero series even has a kid who, through use of training and his wits, takes on people with superpowers. The sci-fi novels have a touch more of ‘special because of who I am,’ but it’s not a big thing, just a pain point for the protagonist.
And I distinctly remember The Chosen One being a cliched trope before Harry Potter. This is certainly not a new trend at all. Feels like the same folks grumbling about hundreds year old language shifts, like being upset about “literally.”
The Earthsea books play heavily on both born in attributes and acquired skills, and I’d even say the interplay between those two concepts. Really great books for youth and adults.
