Star wars a new hope started out with Luke as an everyman. But since then it’s all become about the bloodline. Rise of Skywalker is especially bad, tearing down the anyone can be special and saying you can only be special because of your bloodline.
The issue with the Star Wars story is that it can’t end. This means Luke cannot have been very effective, because the same issues have to repeat historically to promote an endless cycle of protagonists and antagonists and battles that relate to the previous fan-favourites (because nostalgia sells).
Therefore Luke must simultaneously be an awesome hero, and also just some loser that didn’t really do anything that worked.
I think legends handled it okay, that the battle of yavin was the tipping point, but the empire still had remnants that needed to be countered by the New Republic. And the New Republic has its own problems, but faces an entirely different threat than the empire too.
Whereas with the new movies, they just hit the reset button back to episode four, rather than developing on the trajectory in interesting ways, which would have given Luke’s actions and the original trilogy more weight.
The point of a successful Disney media franchise is not to provide nuance and provoke thought, but instead to sell merch for profit.
As if Lucas didn’t create star wars for that sole purpose.
Homie was a film school nerd who took a gamble that paid off. People that ONLY want to make money don’t take such huge risks or put so much pretentious thought into pulp. He made it to make a ton of money because it literally couldn’t happen any other way. How else do you get rich people to invest that much money?
A new hope started with blood line. It was established out of the gate that Luke’s father was a Jedi knight and a good friend of Obi Wan.
Force Awakens and Last Jedi seemed to go in the direction that Rey and Snoke are unrelated to previous blood lines, but nope, it’s all Palpatine.
How about this story about a young English boy that gets bullied by the poo people, until he finds out he is actually super special. And then he fights the super specials that want society to be structured around birthright, because he has a special born fate to stop them. All while the super specials have used their amazing magical powers, able to literally mold reality to their whims, to create their own version of liberal capitalism.
And after all that our bloke decides to become a copper.
that was the most disappointing part of the whole thing
Can confirm, am poo person.
How bout something in reverse? In Tales of the Abyss, the protag is set up to be someone special born in royal family, but turn out he’s just a clone of an actual royal person and he have to learn to fight and accept this conflicting feeling for the rest of the game
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.
Gotta make people accept that rich dynasties owning everything is valid.
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.
Wait, it’s all just Arthurian legend? 🌍👨🚀🔫👨🚀
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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.
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?!
Where my shitfolk at? Poo Nation rise up ✊
Is there fantasy that isn’t like this
The basic options for magic are:
- Sorcerers: Magic blood line or other innate gift of birth. Basically magic aristocracy.
- Wizards: Usually anyone can be a wizard, its the magic equivelent of studying hard in college.
- Warlocks: Anyone can be a warlock if they’re willing to make a deal with the devil; the magic equivelent of dropping out to become a stripper.
Pretty much every fantasy has the magical aristocracy but the latter two are available to regular people in a lot of fantasies too, though wizardry is often gatekept and magical pacts tend to be for villains only.
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Sorcerers and Witches, those who practice magic without a license from the religious establishment, often consulted by the poor and underprivileged since the undesirables can’t simply walk into Oz without the right fancy dress.
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Thieves, shunned by all since stealing is a greater sin than murder or human sacrifice (mostly because it’s a lower-class crime), but are clever enough to activate wands, identity herbs and potions and use practical household magic, just from ad-hoc experience and fiddling around.
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I love comparing becoming a warlock to becoming a stripper
While it’s definitely PRESENT in Lord of the Rings, one could argue Frodo himself is a subversion of it. Giving the ring to someone powerful would almost inevitably result in corrupting them and (depending on just how powerful they were) would just make a new big bad. Hobbits work as ring bearers explicitly because they’re not “special”.
I’ve been listening to the Andy Serkis reading it lately. First experience since I was a kid. It’s surprisingly nuanced for something so old and so baked into the popular culture. It’s kind of amazing how flattened my memory of it from childhood is.
Dune as well. And Snowcrash too
Snow Crash is satire, though. And not exactly high fantasy.
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.
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
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.
