What writing-related hills would you die on?

I disagree. No one makes authors justify the presence of white, straight, whatever characters nor over-scrutinizes these characters’ quality whether they would be fleshed out or not by the same standards all diverse characters are judged by. Diversity necessitates no extra reason. People can just exist sometimes without it being made into a headache. What does organic diversity mean honestly? Are diverse characters vegetable gardens (pun intended) that they can only grow where they are planted by some grand, artificial orchestration even in fiction? For that matter, how does one determine oh, this author wrote this character for X diversity points? When is the invisible quota reached? What qualifies under said quota and where’s the cut-off for not being diverse enough?

Perhaps a character’s background is underdeveloped or perhaps the world-building is lacking, but that doesn’t make the presence of a certain race or religion or whatever else the inherent and disproportionately large issue. Loads of mediocre to heinous world-building and underexplored characterization is present with mainstream characters and settings too as you pointed out in your second thing about European conglomeration countries. How many generic and lacking in substance European countries does it take before all the weakly constructed whiteness is considered a quota to win conformity points, I wonder? Why must diverse characters alone be magnum opuses before being allowed their identities in good faith (assuming they are not offensive which is its own problem, but merely blah)?

I make a bland, background and personality-less straight, white girl traveling in roughly fantasy equivalent India: she is criticized for being boring, and that’s about it. I make that same bland girl happen to be a lesbian, and whoops, now she’s a social commentary and everyone goes back and forth arguing why she should or should not be into women, why that is or is not fitting for my made up world, and why she is or is not a massive political statement or an example of pandering or or or or.

Why must there be a logical thought line for why a not-reality doesn’t look like our reality, anyways? In fact, why shouldn’t there instead be a logical thought line for why a not-reality does look like our reality even though it literally isn’t real? I always thought that was somewhat silly and far too limiting as a standard, like basing what aliens out in space must have to survive on Earth’s functioning. Who’s to say aliens can’t breathe helium and drink acid? Who’s to say they need to breathe or drink at all? Not everything is our world. Similarly, I feel fantasy settings do not need to mirror most real life systems if any–especially since that mirror is almost never being universally imposed on practically anything except, yup, whether diversity is acceptably included or not. “Based on” is not synonymous with “similar in the ways I as a reader have arbitrarily decided are correct to be and dissimilar also only in ways I have decided are fair”. I can have unexplained mermaids in a magical castle, an entire realm appearing and disappearing in closets mystically, planets that have no gravity or two purple colored suns because they can, matter creating machines which is impossible according to our known physics, and swords that weirdly clang when pulled out of sheaths due to cultural movie expectations so why not. But different skin colors or women being allowed jobs not having a whole elaborate background story every time they appear is where we should be drawing the line of plausibility or suspended disbelief’s end? Building on but a little distinct from that, we’re not allowed escapism?

Jumping back to an earlier point: It’s rarely seen as an achievement just because a character is considered diverse in anything beyond the media in my experiences. Even then, I find it’s mainly the clickbait-y titles and buzzwords (ex: Wonder Woman being called a “Feminist Victory” or something), rather than the actual article or talking points on the character itself, which lead people to argue these characters illustrate how society hands out brownie points for filling a diversity quota. Diversity is simply a bonus if the character is strong. In all my life, I have met not a single person who loves a character solely because they are Korean-American or use a wheelchair, etc. Rather, they love characters they considered amazingly written more because they can see themselves in them. (Ex: Avatar the Last Airbender is praised for its writing first and foremost, and its diversity second) Yet, there’s still two kinds of people in the collective discourse that always come up: a character is either mainstream default so white, straight, able-bodied usually men or else they arguably fall under “diversity for its own sake” as in everything else.

Writers do not nor will they ever need to have reasons for why they’re making diverse characters simply be there. Especially in fantasy. Whether there’s parallels or not isn’t that important. Reality, historical or otherwise, is far less uniform than many make it out to seem anyhow. “Realism” is used as a description for whatever circumstances people individually determine are right and sensical based on their own narrow experiences. Getting married in 3 weeks of knowing each other is considered an extreme reach to many, and yet, I know a couple who did and were happily married until death too. I bet if I wrote down my actual life with absolutely zero embellishments and then put it in a fiction category, people would claim that was unrealistic as well. The word unrealistic means almost nothing in terms of writing at this point. Any writing has separate rules entirely from reality to begin with. It always has. Life has no true conventions of which to follow or subvert, but writing does.

We can write amazing stories, average stories or stupid stories, and the people can look like anything and have any background without that needing to be the end all be all that’s under the microscope instead of the actual story. It doesn’t matter. The only time it matters to varying degrees is when it’s specifically supposed to be like real life, as in historical fiction, contemporary, etc. Even then, life was and is a lot wilder and more colorful than people make it out to be.

This is something I frequently use to summarize my feelings on conversations surrounding what fantasy animals should be like, but the core idea applies here too: don’t try to write class lectures on the required anatomy of a dragon. There is no such thing as Dragonology. There’s only preference, not a standard by which everything should be aligned.

I want to note though, a lot of this was just me getting on my roll because this is a hill I would die on and have died on in other conversations. Not directed towards you, but a reflection on my thoughts on the subject in general.

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To start this I’d like to thank you for the reply breaking down what I said as hopefully it will help me clarify what I said, add new information as to exactly what I’m trying to say and help us both understand the other’s perspective since I enjoy looking at another’s reasoning for their opinion, or maybe none of that will happen because I’m not exactly the brightest bulb(if my writing prowess[lack thereof] wasn’t evidence of that) and am not the greatest at articulating my words. Secondly, id like to apologize and thank any who decide to read this, as I realize reading my rambling/ranting writing style can be a bit of a chore but it took me way too long not to post it. Third, I’d like to apologize for not understanding how to properly work the quote systems as I feel that’d help me be clear as to what parts I’m responding to. Lastly I realize that with most of your points you probably aren’t addressing me personally, rather using my points as a vehicle to help deliver your own, but I still addressed them personally as a conversational method helps form my thoughts to a degree, still doesn’t stop them from being a jumbled mess. My clarifi onward with the response.

For the first point I’d like to tackle is to the idea people don’t call out when a white person’s inclusion doesn’t make sense, even though with Matt Damon in ‘the great wall’ it didn’t make sense and only existed to give a historical-fantasy action movie that appealed to China so people called it on that(though China loved that movie) where something like Tom Cruise in ‘the last samurai’, is trying to be historically accurate to a timeframe when America was forcing western concepts and technology on Japan, kick starting japan’s imperialist quest for domination, and is about a captain deciding that trying to preserve them and their way of life is better than forcing them to become like western society so while both feature a white savior type character in Asia one is widely seen as the better story. For the next point, and I’m going to try and broach this in as sensitive a way that I can, point to most cultural contexts, historically, where heterosexuals are the norm mostly due to biological reasons, in most historical contexts a homosexual relationship couldn’t conceive, so from that context it’d make more sense for them to be rarer or “closeted” but say we have it in a fantasy setting where magic exist that say, could transmute the sperm or egg cells of two or more parties into viable young, or something akin to cloning I suppose, then, in an inheritance and feudal based society there would be absolutely no justification, in-world, to deny homosexuals the right to be equal and it’s a neat little inclusion in the world’s lore on how certain Magics can work. to a degree I believe the same train of thought could be taken in terms of how transitioning works for transsexuality could be handled in lore, and more since magic be what it is. I understand the former is partially controversial take as there is a great amount of validity in deciding to adopt but I’m saying that from a strictly inheritance and genetics point of view there would be no cultural validity for any different treatment in that world so then it doesn’t cause the mind to wonder about it since it makes sense. Third, one could easily, in many stereotypical Europe fantasy settings, since there is often a church or pantheon of gods, you can easily have as a small thing mentioned in reference to the church‘s holybook say that,” god liked paint their creations in all colors and genders, that made sense to their wisdom, to help create prosperity on earth,” could justify it no problem since gods are often fact in fantasy ; then according to in world lore you could have actually “colored” people( meaning like blue or maroon) thus increasing diversity past what exists on earth. And by organic, I understand you were likely joking but I am very pedantic about this, in this context I thought it would be obvious i meant naturally occurring, like you, more often then not, WON’T see a ninja in king Arthur’s court without a at least some justification like he came from japan to serve a just and noble lord that was somehow divined and he was the one told about it or in that interpretation of the Arthurian mythos one of the countries of Britain is essentially japan in customs and aesthetic, either way you decide to take it there’s an explanation as opposed to “huh, a whole lot of people in this very European place in geography are miraculously a different skin tone then what would be naturally occurring,” and ,”despite some people literally still smearing shit with herbs on wounds as the leading medical tech, there’s a surprising amount of people concerned with what gender they get perceived as in a world where men and women, for all intents and purposes, are treated the same.” Look I understand it may not seem like much but it helps build the world around as a real, living world where there is reasonable cause and effect relationship pushing events forward as opposed to a place that’s just clearly Europe without as many white people with no explanation as to why the type of person that, historically speaking and whose skin was scientifically proven to be adapted over time to deal with less sunlight from living in those environments so long, would inhabit that land in greater number aren’t there. I’m not even saying all lore and references be shoe horned in without regard to the flow of the story but I’m saying if it has a flow of logic throughout, the work will generally be better and why not be a little creative in handling something like that in a world with magic? I feel like One of the reasons such diversity gets such bad faith is how the advertising treats it, where,” come watch X, because it supports women,” and, “don’t like this then you’re an -ist or -phobe of some sort,” then deliver products that don’t really deserve praise

Your second paragraph doesn’t really conflict with what I say, in fact I agree that a character fulfilling a demographic isn’t an issue at all as long as it is done well, I was just pointing out how it often gets portrayed and executed. I think writers often do a disservice by focusing on the stereotypical fantasy type settings too much with no extrapolations into the other types of cultures existing in that world, game of thrones and d&d setting guides do an alright job at making the world seem actually diversely populated, though in terms of COG type stories the heir of Daria trilogy(I forget the actual name and am not gonna spend the 10 second looking for it so I can use that time to explain that I’m not doing it), which handles the diversity of the different sub-humans, as they’re called if I remember correctly, and the different types of humans really well. So does my previous example of elder scrolls, but that and d&d have teams at this point managing lore but George, love him or hate him, at least is writing those thick tomes himself, regardless of how much needless detail he puts in them.

For your fun example of the bland white girl in India, there are many such as,” is it being portrayed as a historical or realistic depiction of India and if not, how?” but as long as her reasoning for being there(say it’s during colonial rule so she’s some limey who was raised there by her father who was given a plot of land there due to nepotism or she was brought there by her husband who was on the Silk Road to trade with China then died, leaving her stranded in India, are these examples perfect, H no, but it only took me a couple of seconds to think of them) then there’s no problem her being white the issue would still her being bland. If she becomes a lesbian it becomes a question of how it’s handled, like is playing to any stereotype, or if she’s still a really bland character, her sexuality doesn’t change much if she’s still handled poorly or comes across bland, it’s just a cherry on top to some who already see it as a forced or pandering move to try to appeal to more people focusing instead of on quality.

You realize arguing for no logic when talking about trying to establish something written as a reality makes no sense. unless you think many stories should take place in Alice in wonderland type worlds where nothing truly makes much sense, but even that has an internal logic/consistency to it and usually adheres to that logic unless something else is introduced that affects that reality‘s logic, in which case it proceeds along with the new logic. Most stories written try to portray themselves as realistic or in a world similar enough to ours that could exist; so shouldn’t it be safer to assume that there aren’t fantastical elements until introduced or if something is introduced should we then Immediately assume anything is possible? Meaning, why should I assume it makes sense to see a hunk of tofu running around killing stuff in a zombie outbreak when every other character is a human with no explanation and the game takes itself fairly seriously? My example there has a reason, it was an unlockable minigame after you complete the end game reward in resident evil 2 so it has no affect or bearing on the plot(besides maybe what hunk eats after his mission). That was not a great example. I guess my point is that I feel by the logic of that argument you should forgive a lot lazy writing because it appeals to what you like about diversity with little more than a character filling X real world cultural quota box, by people who don’t want to take the extra few hours to think of creative ways of handling something that could mean a WORLD of difference(shitty world building pun intended). People often find when something makes sense, as established to be in world, they are more satisfied when the conclusion makes sense, in world, and is consistent with previously established elements. I don’t think having aliens breathing helium and drinking acid or mermaids having magic castles, conflicts in any way with my point of view, in fact it bolsters it. because if something plays a major role in Building a world, like an alien well first are they even biological in nature? If yes, then yeah, they developed on another planet with a likely different atmosphere, of course they’d breathe something different, statistically speaking that is more likely than not. And if not then, depending on how soft the sci-fi is, it could still possibly make sense but then if it ever tries to anywhere close to a hard sci-fi it would be often seen as a strange and inconsistent with that rule, I guess you could do something in a hard sci-fi where those things essentially excrete ship fuel since mass effect had their generators fueled by helium but they put far more effort and time into figuring out how to implement sound logic based on certain scientific theories, then I will into explaining here. I suppose my point here is that as long as there are ramifications for things such as that being included in the world it will result in more satisfactory payoffs and we properly understand the stakes. But that’s the thing, if you actually take the time and effort to build your world you will create a world that someone would want to escape to, only because they like what’s there but also because it seems like a real world you COULD inhabit. you’d create a reasonable reality that if some one would want to be isekaied to it wouldn’t just seem as another generic fantasy, it is it’s own world

I agree with your points here except that it has become quite clear many recent major media projects, especially movies and television, are just trying to cash in on those willing to try anything with a diverse cast with how there is often nothing to their diverse characters more than stereotypes and what they look like/identify as.

I don’t necessarily believe you have to justify a “diverse” character but without a reasonable explanation as to why such diversity exists unfettered then it’s nothing more than lip service, especially when it’s in a written form; when all it takes is writing,” they have dark skin,” and that’s the only reason they’re black is to be black and have black people present, or trans or just about any other label you want to put. I see that as tokenism, especially when they often don’t even get characterized enough to be anything more than their labels

I agree that amazing stories don’t have to apply real world logic and rules, but when there is a connection to such consistency it helps sell the world as real. Because without logic what’s to stop next time you’re consuming a story that is portrayed to be a gritty and dark western from having the earth cave beneath the protagonists randomly as gremlins crawl from the earth to wreak havoc During the last 1/5 of it without it ever being referenced as a possibility; it’s creative, I guess, but if it wouldn’t necessarily be good because it has seemingly no cause that you are aware of, it could make sense in world but that was information you weren’t privy to until it suddenly happened

I agree with that idea of dragonology to a degree but, if all that is established leads you to conclude dragons can breath only fire and one starts shooting acid at you, you’ll start wondering what else you don’t know, but if it isn’t addressed then you are left wondering why everyone believes dragons only breathe only fire when you still have the caustic burns to prove otherwise. So if we are lead to believe that a country geographically and culturally are similar to real world Europe only for an unexplained “x” label to appear inexplicably, with no context as to why they are there other than they just are, then it just seems forced just for the sake of saying it’s inclusive and diverse

I’ve spent hours since I got your reply working on this like a madman in his manifesto but I’m just out of energy on this now so I’ll leave it here. I’m not sure if I’ll come back to this since I tried my hardest to lay my perspective out as best I could at the moment, but I’ll be the first to admit I probably didn’t do the best job at points and I guarantee I’ll be kicking myself later for not thinking of a point, example or analogy sooner. either way thank you for addressing me in a fairly respectful manner because a part of me honestly feared that the only response I’d get were people trying to convince me that I was wrong for having the perspective I have. I’m a very tolerant person towards others but when I feel I am disrespected simply for thinking differently I tend to react in a very emotional way and I’d rather keep things relatively civil on this forum since I have a lot of respect for the art medium we all come to this forum to appreciate, so I very much appreciate the manner you addressed me. Regardless of my tolerance or immaturity, thank you to any who takes the time to read another rant by me, as I know in the grand scheme my long winded tirades mean nothing but at least someone took the time to try and decipher my message

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I will respond to that in private messaging when I finish reading it and write out my thoughts as I’d prefer not to go back and forth even civilly. That, and because I’m pretty sure it’s not allowed after a while anyways. Last time I responded to the same person with some frequency the Discourse system told me to try speaking with someone else or letting others have a turn, lol.

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I’m a big fan of the Leonard maxim: leave out the parts people tend to skip. That said, “Don’t be boring,” is my best advice, to myself mainly. Because, if you achieve that, I think you can get everything else wrong. I enjoy my favorite writers even when they’re padding word count.

Since I bend toward comedy, I have kind of a funny-first philosophy. Sure, things should move forward and the characters should be compelling and every other thing. But I consider entertainment to be the first promise to deliver on with fiction.

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Explaining the main character’s LI’s motivations for doing bad/questionable/reprehensible things to them for “good reasons” doesn’t justify what they did. I’m still salty about Rhysand’s exposition, like, I found parts of it kinda cool, but my god Feyre, hE DRUGGED YOU. WHY ARE YOU NOT QUESTIONING THIS.

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I’m very much against nations that are archetypically good or evil in any context. No matter how hard you try to make it different, it always ends up being identified by someone as a metaphor for the eternal Manichaean conflict between America and the free world against Ronald Reagan’s “axis of evil.”

These kinds of black/white dichotomies in popular fiction is what get us the unreal amount of malicious radicals in the US. All nations are just looking out for their interests, folks. Everyone’s just doing their best.

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I mean, if you’re going to start policing how you write or what you read on the basis of how certain people might interpret it, you might as well give up the craft of writing altogether. Because, no matter how hard you try, someone will always interpret your writing a way you might not agree with. Don’t get me wrong, if that’s just a personal decision of yours, more power to you, but if it’s specifically because of how someone might view your work, I think that’s the wrong way to go.

For example, I don’t like the glorification of villains in fiction nowadays. Depending on the villain, it can border on creepy for me. But, obviously, it’d be a mistake for me to cut villains out of my stories altogether. It’s just a reality of writing fiction.

As long as you make sure you’re not promoting something you don’t agree with, more people than not will generally take away the message you’re hoping for.

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That was just an example to show the possibly negative coding implicit in the trope, besides that, I honestly just find it unrewarding to write an inherently evil geopolitical entity. There’s nothing there to say about it, no depth, no complexity - it’s just glorifying us vs them narratives in the worse possible way.

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I’m not sure I entirely agree with this sweeping statement. I was searching my mind for an example where I found this trope of innately good faction vs innately evil, and my thoughts fell on Star Wars. There are definitely exceptions to how good the Jedi/Republic is and how bad the Empire is, but it’s clear that the forces are basically good versus evil throughout the series.

Even if you take away the exceptions and make it solely good versus evil, I think it can still be interesting, particularly if you focus on the individuals growing up in these situations. When I was much younger, I used to write fanfictions about growing up as an elite Sith and how they’d figure out what is good when they are surrounded by evil, taught that it is good. While it probably wouldn’t lessen the writing if the Empire wasn’t written as straight up bad in this case, only alter the theme, I still think it’s something interesting to explore: how would people react if they did grow up in a purely evil nation?

Sure, it can have negative coding, but in this case I think that’s an issue of the writer more so than the content, considering what I’ve offered above.

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I guess it’s down to what you consider interesting - I was never a big fan of Siths being pure evil.
And truth to be told their philosophy isn’t “be evil”, it’s just characterized this way - ambition is evil, striving for power is evil etc.
I don’t think Lucas ever envisioned Star Wars to be a giant franchise, he just wanted to make a movie about space wizards fighting on LED swords with space nazis. It was never supposed to be deeper than that.

If you’re American you might already know :joy:
That was just me being cheeky, but yeah this is the problem with characterizing a nation as evil - politics is way more complex then that.

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I’d like to hear some examples of this. I personally haven’t noticed this sort of thing played straight to a degree more today than in the past.

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I agree that I don’t like all Sith being pure evil, which is why I think it’s interesting to explore growing up in the Empire (a technically separate entity) which is unequivocally evil.

My point was less about the Sith and more so the nation that they mostly reside in, since the original topic was about if there’s any merit in writing about inherently evil nations. I used the Empire as an example of where it can be interesting—a clash between individual morals and a personal, spiritual belief (Sith) and the oppressing values of an undeniably evil organization (sacrificing a sense of self for the sadistic Empire), if you will.

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I understand what you’re saying, but if a nation has people who can question whether their country is good or evil, it’s ultimately not purely evil, no?

I mostly enjoy Star Wars as the saga of religious wars between competing denominations of the same faith family. The good/evil aspect is actively off-putting to me, so mostly I just like the franchise as a metaphor for peoples’ relationship with divinity.

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No. Making this connection between the actions of individuals within a nation and the actions of the nation implies that each individual can truly influence the actions of the nation, which isn’t practically true. For example, the Empire has a horrible system of slavery; the individuals can question it, but may not necessarily be able to change it. The individual is good. The Empire, a governmental body, is still responsible for inhumane practices. Your main point was about writing

I still contend that the Empire, as a geopolitical entity, is inherently evil because it is built on the concept of power over others (hence the “Empire” part,) and they follow through on that in every sense—imperialism, slavery, literally destroying planets, etc. And more importantly, I think our conversation is a testament that there is something interesting to be found in writing an inherently evil geopolitical entity. We can agree to disagree on whether or not my example of the Empire was good, but if a writer were to shift some things that we did agree that the Empire is just bad, then there’s still an interesting narrative there: are individuals responsible for the bad actions of their nation, and how can they learn to be better if the very education system tells them that evil is actually good?

Obviously you don’t need to use such an extreme example as an “inherently evil geopolitical entity,” but the question wasn’t about whether it’s needed, but whether or not there is nothing there to say about it.

I suppose this is the hill I will die on :sweat_smile:

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The chosen one trope (as well as the whole fantasy quest stuff that often comes with it) is dull, has always been dull, and rarely makes for a compelling character or story. It almost always follows the same, uninspired pattern of a likely orphaned teenager with a mysterious, magical past they must rediscover to unlock their “true potential,” before going on to defeat some equally as childish bad guy. I hate it.

And even when not following that pattern, it still feels cheap and hollow. Everyone else in the story becomes devalued, defined more so by their relations to the chosen one’s “destiny” than by that character’s own individual path, motivation, or whatever. Similarity, the narrative becomes simplistic and, frankly, just boring. If everything’s set for this one special character to do something particularly impressive by the end, I lose interest. I don’t care about mythic, prophesied heroes. No one in life is destined to be anything, and I prefer stories that reflect that rather than trying to shoehorn escapist drivel that says nothing and means nothing to real, living people. Give me honest human beings, with all their messy, complicated, meandering, nonsensical, ugly lives.

And yeah, that was all a bit more ranty than I expected it to be…

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Yeah, you’re not going to escape that any time soon, unfortunately. That’s the hero’s journey mixed in with a couple of common modifiers, and it’s become one of the single most ubiquitous tropes in fiction.

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the idea that the cast of a story needs to be demographically representative of the setting they’re in, otherwise it’s unrealistic.

yes, my story takes place in a majority white fictional town in the actual whitest part of the real-life country it is in. and yes, my story is mostly about a bunch of the people of color living there. and what :laughing: this hill is very comfortable, i’ll happily die here

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I actually love the concept of destiny. It should and would affect everyone in some way though; if not, that appears to be a writing problem over favoring the main character. It’s so much more than one single bland white boy being forced into some strangely solitary quest, lol. In my mind at least it means something bigger than oneself that we’re all connected to each other through which I do believe in. I also think destiny as a trope is best used when it is clear we create it ourselves how the fantasy stories I enjoy define it as. So maybe I’m on a completely different page with what it even is here.

I don’t see a problem with the “chosen one” per se either, but there again, it’s probably that I see someone being chosen as wider than mystical prophecies where absolutely no one else is relevant. If your main characters aren’t special or don’t have anything going on in their lives in any way, then you’re wasting my time writing about them. The grander a story gets, the grander the events occurring to the main character and their stakes will be as a natural result. There is such a thing as real people who lead lives beyond the average whether because of their unique talents and personality, their environment, their luck, being chosen or a mix of all the above. Perhaps everyone lives extraordinarily in a sense; there is no such thing as a normal life when it comes down to it.

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Also, I think it opens up some interesting character relationships that you wouldn’t get if they were connected through their “own individual path, motivation, or whatever.” Let’s say someone is found to be “the chosen one” halfway through their life—how do their friends and family grapple with this massive shift in their circle? How does that individual deal with it?

And the thing about your comment that this doesn’t fit the rawness of real life is that writing doesn’t have to actually reflect real life experiences to be good. Sometimes the best part about writing is exploring things that are extreme or never going to happen, and I think this especially shines when you take improbable or impossible scenarios (i.e. the chosen one) and use them to explore real emotions, like alienation from old friends, my aforementioned example.

I mean, what about a chosen one trope, but it’s after the big adventure? How do they cope with fulfilling their destiny and, in the eyes of “the universe,” their purpose in life? I think themes questioning destiny versus free will can be interesting and still maintain that raw humanity you enjoy.

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Thanks for the explanation, let’s agree to disagree, then. It’s clear that we have different understandings of the terminology involved here, and if I understand what you’re saying I mostly agree, but I’m not sure it’s really directly antagonistic against what I’m saying.

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