Aaaugh thank you, I’ve been trying to find this for like a year.
you have as much agency over being born with “a magic power greater than any special” and being born “the descendant of a SUPER Special Royal Family”
Ugh star wars
I also dislike when the underdog genuinly starts off as an underdog and is just given a cheat code which is played off as “hard work and determination”.
Like the main character of My Hero Academia. A person born without super powers born in a world full of super heroes. You get excited at how he will overcome his limitations… and the answer to that is be given the strongest power in that world and get even more super powers on top of that.
It is especially annoying how the surrounding characters act like it isn’t a cheat code.
Funny thing is in that universe there is a character called Lemillion who had powers with drawbacks and had to learn to take advantage of them. A true underdog making the most of the cards he was dealth with. He should have been the MC of the show.
Spoken like a true nighteye
Mind you I am not saying Lemillion should have been given one for all. Just see that he should have been the main character. One for all could be a mcguffin for the heroes to keep out of the hands of the villains instead of using it like a cheat code.
This central idea is why I hate dune.
Having a so called prophesied savior capable of insane things coming from a distant royal family of some space empire is too stupid to believe in.
You can’t be both the underdog and the king at the same time, especially when your own supporters treat themselves as expendable.
You can’t be both the underdog and the king at the same time
So, you hate the New Testament, too?
I mean, that’s the point of Dune? The ‘prophesies’ aren’t real, they’re seeded by the Bene Gesserit, the same group that spent millennia breeding the ‘savior’. And, he’s not meant to really be a savior, but their catspaw.
But also, he’s definitely not actually a savior, on account of all the death he brings. It’s complicated, but overall a deconstruction of white savior narratives and similar stories.
Have you ever actually read it? The prophecies were deliberately spread over the universe by the Bene Gesserit. The department that does that is called the Missionaria Protectiva, they do that all over the universe so their members can manipulate the locals to be safe wherever they end up. This isn’t supposed to glorify those prophecies, it’s demystifying them to the point where religion as a whole is showcased as a mere tool to control the masses in later books. It’s supposed to criticise the thing you’re criticising.
OP is why we can’t have nice things. Because people will ignore things that should be obvious. So we’re left with everything softball pitched to the lowest common denominator
Wasnt he like a test tube baby bred specifically to be the Messiah tho.
The tail end of a selective breeding program, but yes. The Bene Gesserit were (according to some internal hypotheses) belived to have been manipulated to expect the outcome later down the line, featuring an Atraides–Harkonnen child. But they were wrong.
This captures why I don’t enjoy Harry Potter (in addition to JKR being a shitter)
In the fanfic sequel the poo people are kept addicted on magic-suppressing opioids and mind-dulling cigarettes provided by the Special owned industrial pharmaceutical companies. It’s been this way so long
Eveyone knows people who don’t smoke can’t be trusted. The temple priests say so every Sunday service.
Captain Picard drops by, breaks the opioid machine, peaces out.
deleted by creator
Modern efficiency has streamlined it to around forty minutes.
This comic brought to you by the National Heritage Foundation.
Where my shitfolk at? Poo Nation rise up ✊
No, no, you see, because she grew up as a Poo Person she now understand the world from their point and realizes how much they’ve been abused, so she pledges to lead and create a new society because it all turns out to have been a big misunderstanding. Then Poo People learn magitek and we get a sequel with the spin that now they are the oppressors, followed by a movie adaptation that completely ends up killing a cult classic.
Can confirm, am poo person.
The opposite of this is when Useless Loser Salaryman Was Born into The Other World As A Financial Consultant And Took It Over Using Only His Accounting Powers?!
Sasaki and Peeps… Would not recommend. Anime is sus af
On occasion we have that story, where just some basic high school algebra and chemistry levels up the tech of the good guys enough to turn the tide of war.
Heh, Korra is literally this, but being royal was a total coincidence. And I guess you could say she “reset” the reincarnation bloodline.
And Ozai played with this too, deliberately marrying the descendent (Ursa) of a super special Poo Person (Avatar Roku) in hopes of producing superior children. And it kind of worked.
at least they explored the power dynamics, like yeah if some people are just mundane, some people can fucking shoot fire from their hands or make the ground swallow you whole, and ONE person is effectively just a god, then it makes sense for a lot of the mundane people to just want this all to stop because that’s fucking terrifying.
But also there are (were?) things in the avatar universe that mitigate the power imbalance, like the avatars being raised to recognize that they have an extreme responsibility to use their powers wisely, and thanks to the whole reincarnation thing it’d presumably be difficult for the avatar to suddenly become evil since every previous avatar would screech at them and for all we know they could just force the avatar state to send the body to its death and exiting the avatar state just before death.
thanks to the whole reincarnation thing it’d presumably be difficult for the avatar to suddenly become evil since every previous avatar would screech at them and for all we know they could just force the avatar state to send the body to its death and exiting the avatar state just before death.
There’s an ATLA comic that kind of refutes this, where Aang just straight up shuts out Roku. It’s… not the best comic.
Anyway, I think the idea is that the Avatar is fundamentally the same soul reincarnating, the same empathetic petty thief that stood up for anyone that was oppressed. That’s just part of their nature, sometimes to a fault. Even Avatars with a screwed up childhood like Kyoshi and Korra turn out that way.
The mitigation is often the plot, where their power isn’t particularly useful to solve their problems. A poignant example is when Korra just turns herself into Zaheer to save the Air Nomads, fully expecting to die (though the gravity is not very explicit since it’s a kids show, as is true across both TV shows).
, and ONE person is effectively just a god,
Another thing I find amusing is that “common” people just treat the Avatar as some random joe, with lines like “Avatar, huh? We still have one of those?” or Bolin’s grandma who clearly holds more reverence for the Earth Queen than the Avatar.
As far as fantasy series go, I think it does a good job of making all the Beautiful Special People feel mundane.
Imagine living in a world where some people could flatten entire cities.
Gotta make people accept that rich dynasties owning everything is valid.
Once upon a time in a magical land of soviets people realized that dynasties owning everything was never valid.
And nothing went wrong.
and nothing has gone wrong in the rest of the world either, definitely do not look at the quality of life in america, ignore the fact that a significant amount of americans are illiterate.
I genuinely think the main ideological function isn’t even as much to promote that, as it is to focus personal dreams and fantasies towards wanting to become a part of the “winners”. Not that it isn’t part of it, just by normalising it as status quo even within fantasies, but I think even more powerful is to have people fantasise about being one of the chosen ones eventually.
Quick reminder that stuff like this is not planned like in some conspiracy, but just a result of dynamics happening (almost exclusively, rare exceptions) unconsciously the way ideology springs from the material base.
Skull-with-sunglasses Shaun did a whole thing about Harry Potter as neoliberal high fantasy - arguably arguing that it stems from the tribalist worldview that hierarchies are inevitable and all we can do is shuffle around who goes where. Harry becomes a wizard-cop because he’s the right kind of person to wield power. Things are good because he does them. To people in that conservative mindset, asking why he didn’t question that power structure is like asking an apple why it didn’t fall up.
