I have grown to hate this trope with a passion. Like okay I get it, True Blood came out when gay marriage wasn’t legal in the US. So something something allegory. If you actually had vampire/werewolf/farie powers, you wouldn’t be a persecuted minority. We wish we could turn people gay by biting them, but that’s not how it works. If gay people could fly and lift trucks, they would have never been in the closet in the first place.
My point is True Blood was at least tolerable for a few seasons. And my tolerance for this shit has worn out. Being non-white isn’t like being in X-Men. The trope is always about white characters feeling persecuted for having super powers. In reality, if white people had special abilities, they’d immediately use it to justify white supremacy and go around killing people without powers. Like they do now with their non-super power.
“Wow I’m so different I can turn people into frogs and shoot fucking lightning from my eyes and the world just can’t handle someone like me who exists outside the non-ability paradigm an—” no shut the fuck up. Fucking worthless writers and their chosen one bullshit sysysyaidisiebajaassaasdbabvxuwisondnkd
I used to be quite a fan of the X-Men series, but around the time the soap opera dragged on and on between Jean, Scott, and Logan, I started to step away, and any time I peeked in, the stories went more and more in a “woe is us, we have awesome powers and the inferiors resent us for it” instead of the older metaphor of “we were born different and many of us don’t want to hide anymore or feel afraid” which was actually a great metaphor for LGBTQIA+ struggles that somehow got lost in the power fantasy sauce over time.
“Wow I’m so different I can turn people into frogs and shoot fucking lightning from my eyes and the world just can’t handle someone like me who exists outside the non-ability paradigm an—” no shut the fuck up. Fucking worthless writers and their chosen one bullshit sysysyaidisiebajaassaasdbabvxuwisondnkd
One of the most demoralizing things about contemporary writing for me is knowing that I put so much effort and thought into what I put out there and what I typically see actually getting exposure from algorithmically-driven online publishers is “little did Mary CuteButAwkward know that she was the LAST OF THE STARSEEKERS™ and she has a DESTINY which involves a DANGEROUS BUT HANDSOME PROTECTOR to guide her through a very special world of special people that are better than the inferiors” YA slop.
Then you get to the isekai harem slop that infests anime and manga. It’s what sells (merchandise especially), so for every decent show there’s like a dozen “chosen one gets sent to a magic world where he’s overpowered and big tiddy waifus fight over his affection.”
For some reason it especially disgusts me how those incel-pandering treats offer magical escapist worlds without the burdens and suffering of contemporary capitalism… then almost always the isekai protagonist brings the burdens and suffering of contemporary capitalism to that magical escapist world.
There’s often layers of “everyone but the isekai protagonist is NPCs so all the cruelty and suffering is okay for real” too.
“What if you were better than everyone else and that made you so special that the bad people persecuted you for your specialness?”
I can see why Elon musk might gravitate towards it
Me too.
I have grown to hate this trope with a passion. Like okay I get it, True Blood came out when gay marriage wasn’t legal in the US. So something something allegory. If you actually had vampire/werewolf/farie powers, you wouldn’t be a persecuted minority. We wish we could turn people gay by biting them, but that’s not how it works. If gay people could fly and lift trucks, they would have never been in the closet in the first place.
My point is True Blood was at least tolerable for a few seasons. And my tolerance for this shit has worn out. Being non-white isn’t like being in X-Men. The trope is always about white characters feeling persecuted for having super powers. In reality, if white people had special abilities, they’d immediately use it to justify white supremacy and go around killing people without powers. Like they do now with their non-super power.
“Wow I’m so different I can turn people into frogs and shoot fucking lightning from my eyes and the world just can’t handle someone like me who exists outside the non-ability paradigm an—” no shut the fuck up. Fucking worthless writers and their chosen one bullshit sysysyaidisiebajaassaasdbabvxuwisondnkd
I used to be quite a fan of the X-Men series, but around the time the soap opera dragged on and on between Jean, Scott, and Logan, I started to step away, and any time I peeked in, the stories went more and more in a “woe is us, we have awesome powers and the inferiors resent us for it” instead of the older metaphor of “we were born different and many of us don’t want to hide anymore or feel afraid” which was actually a great metaphor for LGBTQIA+ struggles that somehow got lost in the power fantasy sauce over time.
One of the most demoralizing things about contemporary writing for me is knowing that I put so much effort and thought into what I put out there and what I typically see actually getting exposure from algorithmically-driven online publishers is “little did Mary CuteButAwkward know that she was the LAST OF THE STARSEEKERS™ and she has a DESTINY which involves a DANGEROUS BUT HANDSOME PROTECTOR to guide her through a very special world of special people that are better than the inferiors” YA slop.
Then you get to the isekai harem slop that infests anime and manga. It’s what sells (merchandise especially), so for every decent show there’s like a dozen “chosen one gets sent to a magic world where he’s overpowered and big tiddy waifus fight over his affection.”
For some reason it especially disgusts me how those incel-pandering treats offer magical escapist worlds without the burdens and suffering of contemporary capitalism… then almost always the isekai protagonist brings the burdens and suffering of contemporary capitalism to that magical escapist world.
There’s often layers of “everyone but the isekai protagonist is NPCs so all the cruelty and suffering is okay for real” too.