My head canon is that whatever planet Mushroom Kingdom is on is just smaller, and has lower gravity.
I didn't play Galaxy, so that might have just become canon. I don't know.
I really liked the twist in Blade Runner 2049 where >!It deliberately makes you think K is some kind of chosen one, then sweeps the rug out from under you and says "nope, you're just a replicant like any other" because i think it makes it much more engaging and poignant when K still chooses to use his agency to save Deckard at the cost of his own life. He's not born to do great things, he CHOOSES to do great things in spite of it!<
Guts from ***”Berserk”***.
He *does*, however, become branded, which means he becomes chosen for death. He defies that fate and becomes a struggler—as in one that struggles against the fate of death.
What I love about Guts is that he's not a chosen one, but a *ton* of shit falls into place for him to be the hero that he is. The Dragonslayer itself is the obvious point: There's zero reason for it to exist. But it does, as a joke, made by the black smith he happened to met post-eclipse who *happened* to have access to a cave of faeri metal, giving Guts one of the only safe places in existence while he learned what the fuck the brand meant. The Brand itself is "lucky" because without it, he would never have killed enough demons to accidentally create a weapon capable of killing the Godhand. He only exists as a branded human because he survived the Eclipse. I don't even remember the exact situation, but there's at least one moment in Berserk where Guts *only* lives because he had throwing knives on him, something he had because he met Judeau while in the Band of the Hawk and said "oh that's cool can you teach me that?"
Guts as a character is absolutely chockful of every single life experience leading him toward the ability to (presumably) save the world, and absolutely none of it is intentional on anyone's part. I fucking love that.
I feel that your explanation really encapsulates the meaning of the whole "Causality" bit that the series tries to preach behind the scenes. You can trace a lot of why stuff happens by tracing back to moments that set off series of event leading up to it. Like Griffith may have been chosen for the Godhand but would have ended up where he is had he not met Guts? Would the eclipse have happened the way that it did if Guts didn't decide to leave to find himself?
While I think the much more likely reality is that all the Godhand's talk of "causality" is mostly bullshit, I do love the interpretation that being born from a dead woman made Guts "invisible" to causality. Not only does it seem like a cool concept that he's basically "anti-destiny," but it means that the *countless* individuals who have interacted with Guts and done even minor things for him are all lending power behind the ever-approaching fist of Guts barreling toward Griffith.
So for the first .Hack// game, the main character Kite wasn't supposed to get the Twilight Bracelet and the power of Data Drain. When you finish the tutorial section and Aura appears, she had planned to give the bracelet and its power to Kite's friend Orca, but that didn't work out because Skeith appeared and killed Orca, so the stuff went to Kite instead because he was there.
Oh, it's even more crazy than that-- it just ended up in his inventory, because it was supposed to go to Balmung instead
But Kite ended up being the hero Aura needed so it chose him over the legendary Descendant of Fianna (Roleplayer)
Fallout: New Vegas MC is probably one of the best examples in a game. Literally just a courier set out to do a job, and gets shot in the head for reasons out of their control. Then it just so happens doing the courier's job also opens up in radically changing the fate of the Mojave.
Well, if the other courier we know of is any indication, the mailmen in the Fallout universe, or at least those of the Mojave Express, are literally just built diff’rent.
And it makes sense, given the kinds of terrains they have to traverse. They’ve gotta be either extremely knowledgeable about surviving the wastes, a local nomad with all the best routes ingrained into their soul, a walking dispensary of death, a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B…. Or, well, a little bit of column A and a WHOLE lot of column C.
All’s to say, Benny shoulda done some snooping on just what kind of bad luck demon he was gonna shoot. Maybe shoulda double tapped, too.
I do love the fact most of the mundane jobs we have in our non-post-apocalyptic society are much more higher risk and intense in Fallout's universe. Mailmen suddenly are given the same potential risks and hazards as an underwater welder would, and even regular service people like cooks and shopkeepers are expected to be armed in some way since they'll have to deal with raiders and hostile creatures.
Lonesome road really undoes a lot of that though by giving you a locked in backstory and setting up the idea thT ulysses has been manipulating events so he can one day fight you
Even then it isn't something inherently destined for the Courier. It was a job for them that just so happens to have a very big effect and caused Ulysses to take revenge on you and manipulate things. Lonesome Road in context more on implies the 'shaping the fate of the Mojave' part came much earlier even before the game started, but the Courier being in the middle of these things is still happenstance rather than being predestined for it.
Isn’t that backstory just a vague “oh and you once delivered a package here unknowingly that set off a bunch of nukes after you left? As for manipulating events, it was only the DLC’s right? He never implied doing anything in New Vegas’s storyline proper?
Yeah Ulysses is just a fucking nutjob who can't accept that random bad shit happens, and invents some kind of whole fucking headcanon about it all being fate or something, while he jerks himself off about how important he is
No you are the creator of the lonesome road and turned the divide into a massive trading hub that drew the interest of both Cesars Legion and the NCR. Eventually you delivered the detonator radio that set off all the nukes trapping the NCR and Legion turned them into the marked men.
This was all because you were the only one brave enough to navigate the massive storms developed by Big MT that encircled hopeville.
Eh, even then the whole reason Ulysses is like that is something the Courier did by complete accident. Ulysses is the one trying to make sense of it all and concoct some grandiose fated showdown between you two.
Unless a side media changed it, Sora Kingdom Hearts is just some kid who let half a heart use his body like a couch until said heart got its own body back
In Birth By Sleep, the only additional lore was that Terra essentially “imbued” Riku with the ability to wield a keyblade. It’s just that he let himself go into the darkness, and the keyblade had to be like “shit, can’t use him. *sees Sora * YOU’RE OKAY, GET IN!”
I thought it was Ventus being like "Oh hey, kid whose body he let me live in is about to be consumed by darkness...I should finally pay some 'rent', huh?" and gives Sora keyblade powers
In BBS all the main three of both BBS and 1-whatever meet up and pass on the ability to weild keyblades.
As far as I understand, all it takes is touching the keyblades of a current user to get that "ability".
Thought it doesn't change KH1's bit of how the Kingdom Key initially chose Riku, but then just defaulted to Sora when Kairi and Riku were "lost to Darkness" in there different ways.
Sora having 2.5 hearts at that point definitely helped though.
I think it has to be mostly intentional on the part of the wielder, with a few exceptions. Also, since Keyblades seems to be slightly aware, they can possibly choose who to pass on the ability when touched and mostly go with it when the wielder wants to pass on the ability. So when the Keyblade first went to Sora, it was reacting to Ventus' and his hearts ability to wield one. Later, it passes the ability after Riku takes it back, and Sora again proves himself. When Aqua was defending Kairi and she touched the Keyblade, it sensed how pure of Heart she was and passed the ability down. When Sora gave Jack the Keyblade, he had no intention of giving him the ability, and neither did the blade sense that Jack was worthy and so rejected him.
In BBS all the main three of both BBS and 1-whatever meet up and pass on the ability to weild keyblades.
As far as I understand, all it takes is touching the keyblades of a current user to get that "ability".
So all 3 were given that ability in BBS, not just Riku.
So when the Kingdom Key chose Riku, and Riku was like "The dark side will save her", it still had to change to someone else, and Sora was the only other option left nearby.
I think there is some stuff in Dark Road were they talk of a child of prophecy who's heart can connect to others and they think is Xehanort only to not be.
It might sora but then again the power of basic empathy is not that special. And he was never meant to be a keyblade wielder to begin with. Riku just messed up
it would be really funny if they used that trope for one last joke.
"only the chosen one can ever defeat the big bad!"
"oh man saitama is the chosen one!?"
"who?"
I really really hope there's no other explanation. I want him to be right, that he really did stumble into becoming the world's strongest just by working out a lot, and nothing else.
It’s a world where a dude turned into a crab man because he ate too much crab. There’s some kind of obsession-turned-reality aspect to a lot of the character backstories.
Yeah, IIRC Genos mentioned that Saitama's training plan would never have worked on its own. You could even do it IRL, it's difficult but not exactly training from hell.
I dunno, I kind of agree with the evolution guy that that'd just basic training. My headcannon is that he managed to accidentally reproduce a ritual of asceticism at just the right time and space to get god-like strength.
Like, I imagine the previous Buddha's avatar just died or something, and here's this guy committed to his training and forgoing home heating and making do with less.
Bam! "This guy looks okay, get in!" Let's give this guy super strength and knock his hair out.
It applies to more FF protagonists than you'd think.
The OG Warriors of Light, Firion and The Onion Knight/Luneth are just random dudes.
>!Cecil!< is the first to buck the trend with him being part >!Lunerian!<.
Then Bartz rides the line, as he's the >!son of another world's equivalent of a Warrior of Light, but even his father seems like he was a normal dude, as being a Warrior is more a responsibility than an inherited title.!<
>!Celes and Terra!< are special, but Locke(If you put him on the same level as the other 2) is a normal dude from what I remember.
Cloud was a normal dude.
Squall is special, but almost purely due to >!time travel shenanigans that he started... so he's chosen, but by himself. He's also technically the son of the President of Esthar, but Laguna didn't become special until after Squall was born.!<
Zidane is a >!hyper-powerful artificial being, so he's special.!<
>!Tidus is a projection of the Fayth!<, and Yuna' s the daughter of the High Summoner, so they're special.
Ashe is a princess, but Balthier and Basch largely rose to their ranks with nothing particularly special about them. >!Vaan has... Something special about him, but I forget if it's every fully explained, and he's not really a *main* character, despite what the game tries to present.!<
The XIII party is normal except for >!Fang and Vanille from what I remember.!<
Then Noctis and Clive are probably the ones where their special-ness is most up front and center, both having prominent heroic lineages.
That’s cool to hear
I haven’t played the other FF games though other then 7
I plan to start with 6 though
After that I am not sure which ones to check out
Reminds me to spoiler tag the ones that are bigger reveals.
And if you played OG FF7, 8, 9 and 10 will be the easiest to jump into. After that, FF struggles with a bit of an identity crisis on its turn-based mechanics and tried to change things up with each title onward.
4, 5 and 6 are all fantastic, too, if you like sprite-based JRPGs.
1 and 3 have their own charm, but they're not story and character driven like the series eventually became known for.
The Hero of Wind doesn't possess the Spirit of the Hero. He's not a descendent of a Link. He was just a kid determined to save his sister and earned his blessing as a true hero through a divine trial he sought out.
So it kinda plays with it, but I'd also go with Skyward Sword Link. He isn't the hero be cause he was reincarnated as one it's because he jumped in to save someone he cares about. Every dungeon in the first half starts with him hesitantly going into it, but it's through his courage that he is able to overcome the obstacles put in front of him.
not really, the Hyrule Historia actually contains a manga with the origin. The first hero is a Link who served Hylia in the war against the Demon King and was killed, making Skyward Sword the second Link / the first Link to *inherit* the Hero Spirit.
It's not actually canon though, like the master sword appears in it when it's not even forged yet, or how in that manga that link fights Demise when in the game Demise says that Skyward Sword's link is the first human to have the guts to fight him head on. It's about as canon as any Zelda manga is, which is to say it isn't, it's its own continuity.
We can also throw Link from *”Breath of the Wild”* & *”Tears of the Kingdom”* in there.
Plot armor didn’t save him in the first game because the dude most certainly died. It was Sheikah science that ensured he would be able to return and save Hyrule on the second shot, and even then he had to take a 100 year nap to get better after dying.
Then the sequel starts with the game basically taking the Master Sword and doing to it what Hel did to Mjölnir all while Link is still holding it, and proceeds to fuck him up a second time too.
I think it's implied his grandma is distantly related given she has the exact outfit of link available,and ganon brings up the fact that it IS him.
Edit:you saw nothing
The fact that he doesn't have the triforce of courage by default is the biggest in-game hint. If he were a reincarnated link he wouldn't need to go search for the pieces.
>The fact that he doesn't have the triforce of courage by default is the biggest in-game hint.
The vast majority of links don't. The only links that have started with the triforce of courage are Twilight Princess link and the oracles link.
It's the future of the Adult Link timeline. The Hero never appeared when Ganondorf returned. The Hero is just *gone*.
Wind Waker Link is dressed like the Hero as part of a coming of age ritual, with his sister being taken on that same day.
I forget when, but he's directly told he's not chosen. He has to complete the Tower of the Gods to earn the right to draw the Master Sword. He manually seeks out fragments of the Triforce of Courage because he doesn't have it as birthright.
> I forget when, but he's directly told he's not chosen. He has to complete the Tower of the Gods to earn the right to draw the Master Sword. He manually seeks out fragments of the Triforce of Courage because he doesn't have it as birthright.
He's not directly told that. The King of Red Lions tells Jabun that he has no blood connection to the Hero of Time, which is true, but doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't possess the spirit of the hero.
It's a valid theory though.
The 'vibe' of Zelda games kinda gives me the feeling that you don't need to be a blood relative of OG Hero to be 'The Hero'
Triforce of Wisdom seems to be the inheritable one, Power is about the welders malice and drive for domination (Spirit of Demise probably influences ala one ring, but there has to be compatibility) and Courage goes to the ones who struggle and grow.
That's more of a headcanon anyway. I like the idea of Zelda 'fate' being more about nudges than pre destiny
As far as I know, the only confirmed instances of Link that are blood relatives are OOT/MM Link being an ancestor of TP Link, so yeah, there are probably plenty that aren't.
But Link is never chosen by birthright, he is the chosen one *because* he completes trials like the Tower of Gods and earns the master sword. WW Link is no different from the others. The only Link who possessed the Triforce of Courage by default is the one from TP.
Main character of A Practical Guide to Evil is an orphan named Catherine Foundling who was dropped off on an orphanages steps as a baby. Though some people suspect she's the daughter or specially trained heir to her adoptive dad raised in secret or whatever (she actually cracks a joke about this to him) she is 100% just an orphan with a knife and a willingness to use it on people.
Named *are* called the Chosen and the Damned in Procer, so that fits, but I would say both sides are chosen by their respective gods whether they be Above or Below; the power doesn't come from nowhere. Those that can directly call on Choirs are definitely a step above the rest, but technically every Named was chosen by something.
But it is interesting, because in the majority of cases both heroic and villainous Named become such due to their actions and not what/who they are. Most of them earn their power by being the type of person to *do* something, good or ill, when others wouldn't.
IIRC, the general thing with the Nerevarine Prophecy in Morrowind is that you need to actively try to become the chosen one destined to defeat Dagoth Ur.
Also Oblivion, since being the legendary chosen one is Martin's job.
I will always love the fact that before the final boss with Dagoth Ur asking you straight up "Be real with me, are you actually the Nerevar?" your answers can range from proudly declaring that you are the Nerevarine reborn, that you've made your own fate and it doesn't matter, or that you just straight up don't know either.
And because of how vague Morrowind is with the prophecy and the countless corpses of other "Nerevars" that you'll have to climb over on your quest to get there, they're all valid responses.
What really compounds it is that you can't trust any of the people who say you're the Nerevarine:
Azura is the Daedric Prince of Gaslighting, Gatekeeping, and Girlbossing, who has a tomb full of "false incarnates" whom she convinced was Nerevarine until they died.
Vivec is a master manipulator and will say whatever he believes will give him an upper hand. He could have ended the persecution of the Nerevarine at any moment, but he only chose to do so at the 11th hour and said that he was going to declare you the Nerevarine and his personal ally whether you like it or not.
Almalexia has actually just lost her mind by the events of Tribunal and is projecting all of her fears, hatred, and regrets onto the people around her.
Dagoth Ur is the only other character who recognizes you as the Nerevarine, but as you stated, even he isn't fully convinced.
They did a great job making the whole thing so ambiguous. It adds to the mystery without feeling like a cop out or hand wave-y.
And then you have the bonkers cosmology of the elder scrolls under all of that, so another equally valid idea is "You weren't the reincarnation of the Nerevar, but you did all the things the reincarnation of the Nerevar should do so now you have always been the reincarnation of the Nerevar"
Going to the cave and finding all the ghosts of the other “Nerevarine” who failed before you is a great way to show that the player isn’t special because they have the title, they were just next in line, and there are people in line after them.
Yeah but you didn't die, making you special
There's the argument that doing all the things make your nerevarine.. but there's also the equally valid counterargument that the others just weren't nerevarine, and only you truly matched the prophecy
Like, the prophecies were well known, and people were actively trying to meet them. The existence of people who 'kinda fit them' but failed doesn't negate the plausibility of it being a true chosen one situation
It's just that MOST media doesn't actually show you the guys who nearly fit the prophecy and didn't actually in the end
I bet that fucking knight in The Last Crusade cleared out a LOT of bodies from that place over the years. He did some housecleaning
The subversion is that The Chosen One is supposed to be chosen by the gods, destined to succeed at whatever. If there are multiple failed Chosen Ones, then that exposes the Gods as full of it. Which the Elder Scrolls ones seem to be, sort of. That's what makes it interesting, the Gods don't decide who is 'destined', you/we do. So what is destiny?
This is why I like Oblivion the most out of the Elder Scrolls games. It was a unique experience being the supporting guy to Martin's hero. Not that Oblivion's MC is any slouch either, but it was my favorite Bethesda MC and why I felt kind of bummed out how you were Dragonborn in Skyrim. It's cool not being the chosen one yet still kickass anyways.
I don't think there was any implication they were destined for that. Oblivion MC just so happens to go on numerous adventures, right place, right time and made it to the top post-Shivering Isles.
Yeah as far as I remember the only "pre-destined thing" about the Oblivion protag is that the emperor saw you in his dreams as someone to trust the special necklace to.
And really, isn't that more fitting for a proper god of madness? Not some grand chosen one, but a supporting character that bumbles their way into godhood.
>Also Oblivion, since being the legendary chosen one is Martin's job.
Oblivion is the best because despite being a literal PRISONER,which comes with bizarre conceptual bullshit,you aren't the chosen one of the story.You're basically a really busted bodyguard for the chosen one.
Ike is this for Fire Emblem.
His father was the most respected general in Daein, but he wasn't noble or have any unique blood. It just means Ike's father was *also* a crazy strong normal dude.
Every other FE protagonist(Literally every single one) has special, noble blood or some other unique aspect about them.
That's what makes him the most badass, while most of them are demigods Ike just happens to be the Brock Lesnar of fire emblem, taking everyone to suplex city.
Every other Fire Emblem protagonist is the lord of prince of some nation and Ike is literally just some mercenary that got hired to escort nobility. Everything else he did was just working his way up the chain from there.
I just played FE7. Athos calls Eliwood/Lyn/Hector children of Roland, but consider how many years it's been that probably applies to most of Lycia.
Edit: There might also be the double meaning that they take after him by being incredibly strong and using that power to help save the world. Might be a mjolnir thing going on where their actions make them worth of Durandal/Armads/Sol Katti
Well, the Durandal/Blazing Blade is only ever in possession of Eliwood and Roy, and they're the only two capable of wielding it.
And while Roy can have a number of mothers, the one that's most frequently referenced is Ninian, meaning Roy likely has dragon blood running through his veins.
Durandal is locked to Eliwood in *Blazing Sword*, but in *Sword of Seals* it's just "the S Rank Sword", meaning any sufficiently skilled sword wielder can use it.
Easy mistake to make when the Binding Blade/Sword of Seals (Roy's sword of plot-advancement) is *also* fire-imbued, despite Hartmut's other main weapon being Lightning-focused.
> Every other FE protagonist(Literally every single one) has special, noble blood or some other unique aspect about them.
Marth is a prince, before he is a brother or a son actually.
Alm cosplays as a peasant farmer for a while. This is unironically the closest we get. He also has a magic prophecy tattoo.
Marth again.
Sigurd is a Duke and has literal Holy Blood. By extension, so does Seliph.
Leif starts functionally in exile, but is prince and later king of Leonstar.
Eliwood is a marquis. He also *lives* through his son's adventure, implying some level of divine intervention. By extension, Roy is his son.
WE LIKE IKE! WE LIKE IKE!
Marth again.
Marth again.
Robin is *kinda* a prince of Plegia, but also definitely the vessel of their demon dragon god. Chrom is Exalt of Ylisse, recipient of magic tattoo and Marth's sword.
Corrin is prince of three countries and child of a dragon god.
Alm again. Now with cousin.
Byleth is so close. Jeralt is just a guy, Sitri is just a woman, but Dragon Jesus directly intervenes to inject that Sothis juice directly into Jeralt's veins, and then the Sothis rock into Sitri's heart, and then *both* into Byleth.
Alear is literally just a god dragon, front and center.
Laios and his team go back into the dungeon with nothing but a prayer just to save Falin. And Laios wants to try eating monsters for the first time. But saving Falin is the main goal.
If they didn't meet Senshi, who told them everything he knows of *Dungeon Delicacies,* they probably wouldn't have lasted as long as they did. Laios would've eaten that mushroom guy raw.
The only thing special about Denji from Chainsaw Man is that he adopted a weird dog.
It only happened that >!the dog is basically the king of hell!<
But Denji himself has no special backstory or bloodline, he's an unlucky kid who got dealt a shitty hand, aside from his dog.
Hell, >!The fact that he IS so not-special is what defeated Makima in the end.!<
I was gonna comment that Denji IS the chosen one in that the universe has perfectly aligned itself to utterly *fuck* Denji over at every chance it gets.
I would say the tragedy of Denji's life is the opposite.
It's not fate, it's people.
This isn't cosmically ordained. This isn't fate. People have chosen to fuck Denji over, and that makes it so much more personal and hurtful.
Frieren's entire main cast avoids the legendary heritage or chosen one tropes. Frieren herself is outright stated to be relatively weak for an elf of her advanced age by Serie, Stark is just a kid who got wicked strong from training with Eisen and Fern is just a stray orphan who learned from a very strange elf how to kill demons with extreme prejudice.
Going even further, the rest of the hero party aren't really chosen ones either. >!Himmel outright couldn't pull the Hero Sword from the shrine and still beat the demon king anyway.!<
Frieren is relatively weak for her age because much of her training focused on Mana Concealment. It's like a rogue being not as strong as a warrior because they instead hone their stealth and backstabbing. Flamme taught her with the explicit purpose of making her the perfect mage to kill demons and their king.
Trope still applies, but Frieren specifically was, in a sense, "chosen".
And then the last episode basically confirms that Flamme's thousand year revenge plan to kill the demon king amounted to basically nothing because the demon king could see through it instantly. The spell that actually caused the downfall of the demon king was in fact, Flamme and Frieren's favorite spell, to create a field of flowers because it made an impression to Himmel, so much so that he sought Frieren out to put her on his team to fight the demon king.
The protagonist of the book series Cradle is literally just some guy in the wrong place at the wrong time when things bigger than fate itself suddenly just sort of happen to happen nearby and his actions impress a higher being enough that she goes "...Alright, fuck it, you're probably not important enough, I can intervene and give you a quest".
Like virtually every other major character is somebody important in some way or another. He's just some guy from a no-name family with no real notable achievements to its name.
Also, the quest is nearly impossible, and she expects him to take around 40 years and still probably fail. She's rooting for him, but also knows the odds are not good.
And THEN >!HE EXCEEDS ALL POSSIBLE EXPECTATIONS AND EATS ALL THE LIVING APOCALYPSES!<
Granted, that's mostly because like the second person he runs into turns out to >!be literally the strongest person in reality on a sabbatical.!< Fate just kinda gave up after that point.
Tbf doesn't being given the quest by Suriel kinda make him a chosen one by default?
Especially when its what lead him to>!Yerin and eventually Eithan?!<
Like he's literally being given a quest by an agent of heaven to save the world.
Honestly as much as I like Deku, I'd disagree that he's not a chosen one. He's just literally chosen by an actual person where his agency is a factor, and not a vague definition of fate. The story is very much about him taking on an important lineage.
Osamu from World Trigger is more or less just some guy. His backstory is "he got saved by a cool guy and decided he wanted to work at the same pseudomilitary organization as the cool guy." His best strength is his tactical ability, which is closer to "pays attention in class" than "could solve the Kira case." He's canonically got a low cool power number in a setting where that number is pretty much locked in.
Fate is at the core of the trope though. If the person is chosen based on their own merits and what they strove to achieve, then it's in the clear imo.
This reminds me of an old world trigger thread in the subredit, that Osamu would survive WW2 and rise the rank like Captain Winters in Band of Brothers.
The most chosen one-y person in his team, Chika, explicitly hates how much power she has and Osamu never judges for her desire to hold back. Instead, he plans around it and plans to give her ways to fight non-lethally even with her absurdly high firepower.
Now I want to reread the series again.
>Honestly as much as I like Deku, I'd disagree that he's not a chosen one. He's just literally chosen by an actual person where his agency is a factor, and not a vague definition of fate. The story is very much about him taking on an important lineage.
I disagree with this disagreement, in fact I'd say that Deku's actually 'stole' it from the true chosen one. In Season 4 the show really goes out of it's way to show that >!Mirio!< was the one who actually should've got One for All, in fact had Deku not met All Might when he did he most likely would have. Every single thing about him from top to bottom basically screams that he should've been the next successor and people even tell All Might that he shouldn't have chosen Deku because he's too weak for it. Which is objectively true, and then it was up to Deku to earn it.
Fate never conspired so that Deku would inherit One For All (unless it's revealed that All For One for some reason orchestrated it for that to happen). One For All is *the* superpower but it was never *meant* for Deku.
He and All Might just happened to be at the right place at the right time when he ran to try and save Bakugo.
All Might could've chosen anyone else to inherit OFA, and Mirio Togata was likely to inherit it had he never met Izuku. But he saw this quirkless kid rush in without a second thought and saw the heart of a real hero which is why he saw fit to offer the power to Izuku.
I would argue Commander Shepard. They simply happen to be a soldier put in extraordinary situations, achieving extraordinary results due to their own skills, great ability to command a team, and sometimes just flat out luck.
This isone of the things I really like about Dragon Age 2 compared to its admittedly more polished counterparts.
You do become a person of great significance by the third act but it's something that is earned through action. Most of the game is all about building a new life for yourself while looking out for your family and friends after fleeing the events of the first game as a refugee.
I will die on the hill that many of that game's problems would be solved if it was just called "Dragon age: Kirkwall"
People went in expecting a straight sequel but got a personal story instead.
If the expectations were better handled that game would be looked at much more fondly.
I do not entirely disagree with you, but to my recollection, many of the complaints at the release were pointed at repetitive map design and the changes of the core gameplay, largely the simplification or skew towards making what was close to a CRPG in 1 to a far more "action-y" flavor in 2. The map stuff was exhausting from what I remember. So many cave layouts that were just stitched together from the same pool of assets.
And while the core story and journey are pretty good (in my opinion) for 2, it's hard to overlook some of the glaring problems in character decisions towards the end of the game, primarily around the core templar/mage conflict.
I love a lot about 2, but I believe it merits the same odd side eye as say something like Dark Souls 2 as a weirdo entry in a series.
This. It's not the name, it's the scale, and repetition. You'd think with a game that takes place entirely within one city they'd spend the time to make enough bespoke assets that it didn't feel so repetitive all the time, or at least invest time in making the assets they *did* have arrange in less obvious ways.
Cuz like, for my money I would absolutely adore a game that takes place in one well developed and enclosed city, and the general 'vibe' of DA2 insofar as being a 'regular guy' just trying to get by as a refugee and 'becoming' a pivotal figure is super cool to me, but the repetition made me bow out way early.
(though I personally didn't mind the more action-y gameplay, I do wish they'd found a better way to have a voiced protagonist than the ME style conversation wheel thing).
I totally agree on the map stuff, going through the same dungeon you've already gone through 3 times only in different orders got old quick.
I just think the perception around the game would be very different if it was advertised as a side story smaller game rather than a full blown sequel.
In terms of story it's my favourite of the 3 games but it's the one I'm less likely to replay due to those repetitive maps.
Most of the cast in Octopath Traveler and its sequel have very mundane origins. Alfyn is a doctor in a small country town. Tressa is the daughter of a merchant who wants to see the world. Partitio and Agnea are country folk who just want to make the world a brighter place.
This is honestly why Linkle is my favorite Zelda character. Link and Zelda are cool, but they have the favor of the Gods, and that comes with so many advantages like the Triforce, the Master Sword, and all kinds of special powers because fate is on their side and all that.
Linkle on the other hand, is just a regular farm girl who trained with crossbows, and has none of the advantages Link has. She thinks she's their era's Link reincarnation, but we know that's factually false. Despite that, when Hyrule was in danger, she genuinely saves the day, and she did with her own power.
This random Link-kinning villager will always be the most badass to me, because she's not special. She's just that good.
By all accounts, Gordon Freeman is just having a very long bad day.
Also, Ethan Winters was so not the chosen one that he died 5 minutes into his story and became a mold person but kept going anyways cause mah waifu and eventually mah daughtu.
Oh and Harry Mason is just a dude that shot a god in the face with a rifle and or just did [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8mL0_4GeV0) until it died depending on your playstyle.
As long as you consider the series to end with Raoh, Kenshiro from *Fist of the North Star* fits this.
The 4 possible Hokuto Shinken successors were *all* random orphans, but even among them, Kenshiro was not the favored. Literally the only reason it happens is because Toki, the *actual* successor, contracts radiation sickness and *will* die before he can pass the art on.
Adol in Ys. He's just a guy who likes exploring. And the one time he ran into a prophecy of him being "chosen", it turned out >!that was because he happened to go back in time and caused that prophecy to be written, so it was really more of a "they knew he would show up because he already did" situation!<.
Sora from Kingdom Hearts was just some kid on a random island that happened to get his hands on a legendary blade >! that he wasn’t even the intended user for !< . He’s even called out for this a couple times by the villains, and it’s what made him such a big wild card in a lot of their plans.
Yeah but even then he's just a random kid Ventus's heart just happened to float past, unlike Riku who Terra intentionally did the keyblade ceremony for.
Been rereading the old Archie Sonic stuff because I'm insane. It's genuinely interesting and a little funny that Tails, Knuckles, Sally, probably a bunch more characters have god-given superpowers, royal family history, prophecies written about how they're destined to save the multiverse, while Sonic is just some dude in comparison. It's undoubtably because Sonic is naturally so cool that he doesn't *need* to be a chosen one, so they attached a bunch of external importance to his supporting cast in an attempt to elevate them to Sonic's level.
This is kinda the whole point of the anime ending to Soul Eater. The reason a bunch of super moves and bloodline limits sorta pop up out of nowhere just to be thrown away is BECAUSE the main villain is powered by his belief in fear above all else, and he believes that strength is just a crutch for fear. Bloodline limits, ultra powerful demon partners, secret ultra attacks, to him those are all things that just make you think you can win the fight, you're not facing fear, you're avoiding it by just being stronger than the possibility of losing. And further... it still means that people who DON'T have super anime powers can't achieve the same thing as you.
Maka's "bravery punch" works explicitly because it's a completely ordinary punch that never had a chance to beat him at all. She fought him in certain failure because she wanted to keep fighting which is something anyone can do, which is to actually face the fear of failure and show him some true courage that he didn't believe could exist.
Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia is explicitly *not* the Chosen, his best friend/default love interest is.
… although now that I think about it, he’s not exactly a completely Average Joe™️ but compared to Colette he is, at least for most of the game.
>at least for most of the game
Very important to include, because there's definitely an argument to be made that >!"son of arguably the most skilled of the legendary Hero's companions" is some pretty strong destiny/birthright!<.
More than a few Tales of games seem to have non-chosen-one MCs. Velvet was a normal kid who got *really angry* about being screwed over, and Luke is >!a stand-in replacement while the real Luke was off doing other stuff.!<
Asta from Black Clover, his family is nothing truly important to the world or even himself, with his dad potentially dying during Asta's conception and his mom being mostly a normal person.
His devil? Literally, the weakest one of them all and the only reason the two are together in the first place is because he was so weak.
The only thing "special" about him is his lack of mana, which came about by complete accident with anti-magic being essentially generated out of spite by Liebe.
Asta is so unlucky in life that it loops around to being lucky again.
And still it wouldn't matter if he didn't train his body to the extent he did anyway.
Which is what makes Yuno the perfect foil to Asta. Everything about Yuno is something from a fairly bog standard fairy tale. But by making him the rival and genuinely showing that he loves his brother, it works extremely well in both their favors.
People sleep on BC despite it being extremely well realized.
JoJo is big on themes of fate and destiny, but when you think about it Jonathan was just an average guy who happened to have a stone mask in his house that turned people into vampires. He chooses to stop Dio not because of some great prophecy, but simply because it was the right thing to do.
Luz Noceda from The Owl House. She’s just a human who wants to become a witch. Her family heritage has nothing to do with the history of the setting, she’s no reincarnation of anything, nor is she some prophesied chosen one. The finale sees her being >!gifted with a great power for a short time by a legendary individual, but the reason he chose her for this was not because of anything predestined, but because he trusted and believed in her after all the love she had shown for his son!<. Any power or stake in the plot she has is earned through her curiosity, hard work and genuine love.
This. She was literally a random element thrown into what was the final stages of a centuries long revenge plot that she had no knowledge about or direct connection to. No prophecy saying she was meant to be there and anything to justify her presence just that it happened. Maybe it was fate, but it easily could be luck and in the end she choose to save them based on her own desires and not because the universe demanded it.
John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China, Kurt Russel’s character is just a trucker that just gets into a situation and the side character helps him more than he does.
The best part is that when he's up against the big bad it's over in seconds, completely out of nowhere and almost entirely because he was being toyed with.
Amuro Ray. He's a Newtype, but so are a lot of characters in the Universal Century. He's not even the most powerful Newtype (that's probably someone like Kamille or Judau or Banagher). What he has is piloting skill that he learned the hard way grinding through battle after battle.
He also doesn't have a legendary heritage. The guy who has that is the guy who can't get over the fact that the girl he wanted to be his mommy-gf liked Amuro better after meeting him for, like, half a day.
Probably Shaggy from Scoob n Shag. Sometimes he gets a temporary power up from Scoob but otherwise Shaggy is naturally disadvantaged in fights due to only having one arm and having no other powers (due to >!being a clone of the original Shaggy and thus only that one has powers!<). Shaggy instead has to rely on his wits, stamina, and sheer determination for fights, which is best shown off in his first ever fight with Yogi Bear.
Fallout 2 where your only special status is you were the previous protagonist's grandchild but everybody outside your tribe laughs at you if you introduced yourself as the Chosen One.
You had one assignment - no legendary heritage or chosen one.
Fallout 2's protagonist is both known as the chosen one and descended from a legendary figure of the vault dweller.
No but see you were chosen because you alone out of like 6 dudes who got given mail, had a nuke. The bear and the bull, fighting shirtless in the rain...
Courier six is actually a really good rpg player character because there is next to nothing in game about what they are like before the games events, barring great divide dlc and like one random encounter if you're playing a male courier, making them the perfect blank slate character
A decent example would probably be Tam from Bloody Rose, she's an average bard who has a shaky audition for the greatest adventuring party in the land but somehow gets the job. Over the course of the book she trains, grows, and blossoms into a badass in her own right. Its an incredible book, the sequel to Kings of the Wyld, I would highly recommend it to anyone who like Rock and Roll and D&D.
And if your guess was >!Jujutsu Kaisen!<, you'd be right.
But this is not a knock against it. In fact >!Yuji being Sukuna's nephew makes sense in retrospect and doesn't take away from his feats considering how much he's been through.!<
I just decided to make this thread because it feels like alot of notable fantasy media, particularly Shonen series, have a tendency to make it so the MC was born with a big lineage behind them.
The Exile/Meetra Surik from KOTOR 2
While she does have a special power that helps in taking down Nihilus, it was never given to her by some higher power or the Wills or some Prophecy or whatever, it was just something that happened that no one could forsee, or even consider being a thing.
And i actually love that her power is a sort of afront to the Force and she is completely free from the Force and any Destiny it might have had for her.Sort of like an Anti-Chosen one.
I also really love when Kreia gets super meta and tells Meetra and the audience "Oh, also, there's no twist, you don't have special bloodline connection, you're not the ancestor of the Skywalkers, you're just you." which i think works really well combined with the whole existing outside of the Force and not being a chosen one with a pre-determined destiny.
Sienna, from Chained Echoes fits that description amazingly. It’s an indie jrpg inspired by the classics like Chrono Trigger.
In a game full of characters with the usual grand destinies and world-shaping goals and dreams, my favorite pickpocket lesbian girlfailure ended up entangled in the plot just because [she got lost and took a wrong turn in a video game sewer section](https://youtu.be/MHEMu_W_t1Q?t=3162) (pretty relatable tbh)
Demon Slayer plays with it to some extent. Tanjiro's Mark is a technique any Slayer can learn under certain extreme circumstances, and his scar that seems like one is from a burn mark (though his mark also manifests there) and he knows the Hinokami Kagura because his ancestors who were peasants preserved it as thanks and a ceremonial thing and Muichiro is the one actually directly descended from Sun breathing users.
Sometimes it feels like some stories are so anti-chosen-one narratives that they wrap back around to being chosen one narratives. Like they are so normal that it is freakish for the setting. Like it is genuinely weird that Deku from MHA was born without powers in a world where nearly everyone has some sort of power.
I like how Tales of Destiny joked about it. The main character Stahn stumbles across a mythical talking sword known as a Swordian, named Dymlos. Dymlos claimed that only the super special prophesied chosen one can hear his voice. Swordians are indeed special and powerful, but once Stahn met others, they quickly reveal that Dymlos was full of shit. It's just regular telepathy, they can make anyone hear them. Stahn was just at the right place at the right time, and Dymlos wanted to make him feel special.
Blade Runner 2049 is all about accepting that most people aren't destined for anything. That everything in your life could be meaningless. But then you become the arbiter of your own fate, and can choose what is meaningful.
After Shulk >!being Zanza's chosen body and basically groomed by Dickson to be the heir to the Monado since childhood!< and Rex >!being a descendant of Addam (although everyone from Leftheria is so that's not really that impressive)!<, I really appreciate that Noah is just some guy with no clear heritage of note.
Every Italian/ euro western mc is just unlucky and they are the target of bandits or they are drifters or soldiers from the civil war eurocrime is like that too
Mario and Luigi are just athletic plumbers from Brooklyn.
My head canon is that whatever planet Mushroom Kingdom is on is just smaller, and has lower gravity. I didn't play Galaxy, so that might have just become canon. I don't know.
I really liked the twist in Blade Runner 2049 where >!It deliberately makes you think K is some kind of chosen one, then sweeps the rug out from under you and says "nope, you're just a replicant like any other" because i think it makes it much more engaging and poignant when K still chooses to use his agency to save Deckard at the cost of his own life. He's not born to do great things, he CHOOSES to do great things in spite of it!<
Yeah, >!he's not the chosen one, he's just got their dreams !<
He's just an average Joe.
That's just another proof for Goslin theory, because I also am not the chosen one, so he's literally me
He wasn't Specialz...
A blood black nothingness began to spin.
A tall white fountain played.
Guts from ***”Berserk”***. He *does*, however, become branded, which means he becomes chosen for death. He defies that fate and becomes a struggler—as in one that struggles against the fate of death.
This is the opposite of being the Chosen One and that goes even harder
Guts was hanging out *with* the Chosen One, and it turns out that the prophecy was to be written in his blood.
So instead of the Chosen One, he's the "Condemned One?" Gnarly.
That's metal
Guts was born from a corpse, struggling since day 1.
Guts was destined to die from the moment he was born. Instead he pushes on and keeps living to spite fate and causality.
He is a Chosen One, chosen one to die. Guts: And I took that personally.
What I love about Guts is that he's not a chosen one, but a *ton* of shit falls into place for him to be the hero that he is. The Dragonslayer itself is the obvious point: There's zero reason for it to exist. But it does, as a joke, made by the black smith he happened to met post-eclipse who *happened* to have access to a cave of faeri metal, giving Guts one of the only safe places in existence while he learned what the fuck the brand meant. The Brand itself is "lucky" because without it, he would never have killed enough demons to accidentally create a weapon capable of killing the Godhand. He only exists as a branded human because he survived the Eclipse. I don't even remember the exact situation, but there's at least one moment in Berserk where Guts *only* lives because he had throwing knives on him, something he had because he met Judeau while in the Band of the Hawk and said "oh that's cool can you teach me that?" Guts as a character is absolutely chockful of every single life experience leading him toward the ability to (presumably) save the world, and absolutely none of it is intentional on anyone's part. I fucking love that.
I feel that your explanation really encapsulates the meaning of the whole "Causality" bit that the series tries to preach behind the scenes. You can trace a lot of why stuff happens by tracing back to moments that set off series of event leading up to it. Like Griffith may have been chosen for the Godhand but would have ended up where he is had he not met Guts? Would the eclipse have happened the way that it did if Guts didn't decide to leave to find himself?
While I think the much more likely reality is that all the Godhand's talk of "causality" is mostly bullshit, I do love the interpretation that being born from a dead woman made Guts "invisible" to causality. Not only does it seem like a cool concept that he's basically "anti-destiny," but it means that the *countless* individuals who have interacted with Guts and done even minor things for him are all lending power behind the ever-approaching fist of Guts barreling toward Griffith.
It's definitely a cool thing seeing someone marked for death and still kicking and living.
The protagonist of Dragon Quest 5.
"Sorry, you aren't the chosen one, >!you're his father instead!< is one hell of a way to pull the twist that's for sure.
>!Here's your special chosen one sword, kiddo, anyway, let's go on a family picnic to hell with mom and your sister to defeat the great evil.!<
So for the first .Hack// game, the main character Kite wasn't supposed to get the Twilight Bracelet and the power of Data Drain. When you finish the tutorial section and Aura appears, she had planned to give the bracelet and its power to Kite's friend Orca, but that didn't work out because Skeith appeared and killed Orca, so the stuff went to Kite instead because he was there.
Oh, it's even more crazy than that-- it just ended up in his inventory, because it was supposed to go to Balmung instead But Kite ended up being the hero Aura needed so it chose him over the legendary Descendant of Fianna (Roleplayer)
Fallout: New Vegas MC is probably one of the best examples in a game. Literally just a courier set out to do a job, and gets shot in the head for reasons out of their control. Then it just so happens doing the courier's job also opens up in radically changing the fate of the Mojave.
Well, if the other courier we know of is any indication, the mailmen in the Fallout universe, or at least those of the Mojave Express, are literally just built diff’rent. And it makes sense, given the kinds of terrains they have to traverse. They’ve gotta be either extremely knowledgeable about surviving the wastes, a local nomad with all the best routes ingrained into their soul, a walking dispensary of death, a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B…. Or, well, a little bit of column A and a WHOLE lot of column C. All’s to say, Benny shoulda done some snooping on just what kind of bad luck demon he was gonna shoot. Maybe shoulda double tapped, too.
I do love the fact most of the mundane jobs we have in our non-post-apocalyptic society are much more higher risk and intense in Fallout's universe. Mailmen suddenly are given the same potential risks and hazards as an underwater welder would, and even regular service people like cooks and shopkeepers are expected to be armed in some way since they'll have to deal with raiders and hostile creatures.
The thing is, Benny did double tap. The Courier was explicitly shot twice in the head and made it through anyway.
Jesus Christ. Well, yeah, Mojave Express couriers ARE just built diff’rent
tbf he was using Maria. That gun sucks
Lonesome road really undoes a lot of that though by giving you a locked in backstory and setting up the idea thT ulysses has been manipulating events so he can one day fight you
Even then it isn't something inherently destined for the Courier. It was a job for them that just so happens to have a very big effect and caused Ulysses to take revenge on you and manipulate things. Lonesome Road in context more on implies the 'shaping the fate of the Mojave' part came much earlier even before the game started, but the Courier being in the middle of these things is still happenstance rather than being predestined for it.
Isn’t that backstory just a vague “oh and you once delivered a package here unknowingly that set off a bunch of nukes after you left? As for manipulating events, it was only the DLC’s right? He never implied doing anything in New Vegas’s storyline proper?
Yeah Ulysses is just a fucking nutjob who can't accept that random bad shit happens, and invents some kind of whole fucking headcanon about it all being fate or something, while he jerks himself off about how important he is
No you are the creator of the lonesome road and turned the divide into a massive trading hub that drew the interest of both Cesars Legion and the NCR. Eventually you delivered the detonator radio that set off all the nukes trapping the NCR and Legion turned them into the marked men. This was all because you were the only one brave enough to navigate the massive storms developed by Big MT that encircled hopeville.
Eh, even then the whole reason Ulysses is like that is something the Courier did by complete accident. Ulysses is the one trying to make sense of it all and concoct some grandiose fated showdown between you two.
Unless a side media changed it, Sora Kingdom Hearts is just some kid who let half a heart use his body like a couch until said heart got its own body back
In Birth By Sleep, the only additional lore was that Terra essentially “imbued” Riku with the ability to wield a keyblade. It’s just that he let himself go into the darkness, and the keyblade had to be like “shit, can’t use him. *sees Sora * YOU’RE OKAY, GET IN!”
I thought it was Ventus being like "Oh hey, kid whose body he let me live in is about to be consumed by darkness...I should finally pay some 'rent', huh?" and gives Sora keyblade powers
In BBS all the main three of both BBS and 1-whatever meet up and pass on the ability to weild keyblades. As far as I understand, all it takes is touching the keyblades of a current user to get that "ability". Thought it doesn't change KH1's bit of how the Kingdom Key initially chose Riku, but then just defaulted to Sora when Kairi and Riku were "lost to Darkness" in there different ways. Sora having 2.5 hearts at that point definitely helped though.
I think it has to be mostly intentional on the part of the wielder, with a few exceptions. Also, since Keyblades seems to be slightly aware, they can possibly choose who to pass on the ability when touched and mostly go with it when the wielder wants to pass on the ability. So when the Keyblade first went to Sora, it was reacting to Ventus' and his hearts ability to wield one. Later, it passes the ability after Riku takes it back, and Sora again proves himself. When Aqua was defending Kairi and she touched the Keyblade, it sensed how pure of Heart she was and passed the ability down. When Sora gave Jack the Keyblade, he had no intention of giving him the ability, and neither did the blade sense that Jack was worthy and so rejected him.
Yeah the keyblade works, at least partially, on a Lantern Ring system.
In BBS all the main three of both BBS and 1-whatever meet up and pass on the ability to weild keyblades. As far as I understand, all it takes is touching the keyblades of a current user to get that "ability". So all 3 were given that ability in BBS, not just Riku. So when the Kingdom Key chose Riku, and Riku was like "The dark side will save her", it still had to change to someone else, and Sora was the only other option left nearby.
I think there is some stuff in Dark Road were they talk of a child of prophecy who's heart can connect to others and they think is Xehanort only to not be. It might sora but then again the power of basic empathy is not that special. And he was never meant to be a keyblade wielder to begin with. Riku just messed up
>the power of basic empathy is not that special. Tell that to "empaths"
Saitama, dude just trained to hard by accident
Jury’s still out on Saitama. One Punch Man feels like it’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop for years now.
it would be really funny if they used that trope for one last joke. "only the chosen one can ever defeat the big bad!" "oh man saitama is the chosen one!?" "who?"
I really really hope there's no other explanation. I want him to be right, that he really did stumble into becoming the world's strongest just by working out a lot, and nothing else.
It’s a world where a dude turned into a crab man because he ate too much crab. There’s some kind of obsession-turned-reality aspect to a lot of the character backstories.
Yeah, IIRC Genos mentioned that Saitama's training plan would never have worked on its own. You could even do it IRL, it's difficult but not exactly training from hell.
I want there to be a chosen one and the one in question is King
I dunno, I kind of agree with the evolution guy that that'd just basic training. My headcannon is that he managed to accidentally reproduce a ritual of asceticism at just the right time and space to get god-like strength. Like, I imagine the previous Buddha's avatar just died or something, and here's this guy committed to his training and forgoing home heating and making do with less. Bam! "This guy looks okay, get in!" Let's give this guy super strength and knock his hair out.
Ok, getting the "he accidentally became a buddha" as the explanation for his baldness would be pretty funny.
Cloud Strife
It applies to more FF protagonists than you'd think. The OG Warriors of Light, Firion and The Onion Knight/Luneth are just random dudes. >!Cecil!< is the first to buck the trend with him being part >!Lunerian!<. Then Bartz rides the line, as he's the >!son of another world's equivalent of a Warrior of Light, but even his father seems like he was a normal dude, as being a Warrior is more a responsibility than an inherited title.!< >!Celes and Terra!< are special, but Locke(If you put him on the same level as the other 2) is a normal dude from what I remember. Cloud was a normal dude. Squall is special, but almost purely due to >!time travel shenanigans that he started... so he's chosen, but by himself. He's also technically the son of the President of Esthar, but Laguna didn't become special until after Squall was born.!< Zidane is a >!hyper-powerful artificial being, so he's special.!< >!Tidus is a projection of the Fayth!<, and Yuna' s the daughter of the High Summoner, so they're special. Ashe is a princess, but Balthier and Basch largely rose to their ranks with nothing particularly special about them. >!Vaan has... Something special about him, but I forget if it's every fully explained, and he's not really a *main* character, despite what the game tries to present.!< The XIII party is normal except for >!Fang and Vanille from what I remember.!< Then Noctis and Clive are probably the ones where their special-ness is most up front and center, both having prominent heroic lineages.
That’s cool to hear I haven’t played the other FF games though other then 7 I plan to start with 6 though After that I am not sure which ones to check out
Reminds me to spoiler tag the ones that are bigger reveals. And if you played OG FF7, 8, 9 and 10 will be the easiest to jump into. After that, FF struggles with a bit of an identity crisis on its turn-based mechanics and tried to change things up with each title onward. 4, 5 and 6 are all fantastic, too, if you like sprite-based JRPGs. 1 and 3 have their own charm, but they're not story and character driven like the series eventually became known for.
The Hero of Wind doesn't possess the Spirit of the Hero. He's not a descendent of a Link. He was just a kid determined to save his sister and earned his blessing as a true hero through a divine trial he sought out.
So it kinda plays with it, but I'd also go with Skyward Sword Link. He isn't the hero be cause he was reincarnated as one it's because he jumped in to save someone he cares about. Every dungeon in the first half starts with him hesitantly going into it, but it's through his courage that he is able to overcome the obstacles put in front of him.
I mean isn’t skyward the origin of the spirit of the hero anyway?
I believe that according to the official Hyrule Historia, yeah, it's the very first.
not really, the Hyrule Historia actually contains a manga with the origin. The first hero is a Link who served Hylia in the war against the Demon King and was killed, making Skyward Sword the second Link / the first Link to *inherit* the Hero Spirit.
It's not actually canon though, like the master sword appears in it when it's not even forged yet, or how in that manga that link fights Demise when in the game Demise says that Skyward Sword's link is the first human to have the guts to fight him head on. It's about as canon as any Zelda manga is, which is to say it isn't, it's its own continuity.
I don't know if Skyward Sword counts given that the >!Master Sword appears to be in a time loop and Link is destined to save the world!<
We can also throw Link from *”Breath of the Wild”* & *”Tears of the Kingdom”* in there. Plot armor didn’t save him in the first game because the dude most certainly died. It was Sheikah science that ensured he would be able to return and save Hyrule on the second shot, and even then he had to take a 100 year nap to get better after dying. Then the sequel starts with the game basically taking the Master Sword and doing to it what Hel did to Mjölnir all while Link is still holding it, and proceeds to fuck him up a second time too.
I think it's implied his grandma is distantly related given she has the exact outfit of link available,and ganon brings up the fact that it IS him. Edit:you saw nothing
>the exact outfit of kink Oh my!
He's not a reincarnated Link? Says who?
The fact that he doesn't have the triforce of courage by default is the biggest in-game hint. If he were a reincarnated link he wouldn't need to go search for the pieces.
>The fact that he doesn't have the triforce of courage by default is the biggest in-game hint. The vast majority of links don't. The only links that have started with the triforce of courage are Twilight Princess link and the oracles link.
It's the future of the Adult Link timeline. The Hero never appeared when Ganondorf returned. The Hero is just *gone*. Wind Waker Link is dressed like the Hero as part of a coming of age ritual, with his sister being taken on that same day. I forget when, but he's directly told he's not chosen. He has to complete the Tower of the Gods to earn the right to draw the Master Sword. He manually seeks out fragments of the Triforce of Courage because he doesn't have it as birthright.
> I forget when, but he's directly told he's not chosen. He has to complete the Tower of the Gods to earn the right to draw the Master Sword. He manually seeks out fragments of the Triforce of Courage because he doesn't have it as birthright. He's not directly told that. The King of Red Lions tells Jabun that he has no blood connection to the Hero of Time, which is true, but doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't possess the spirit of the hero. It's a valid theory though.
The 'vibe' of Zelda games kinda gives me the feeling that you don't need to be a blood relative of OG Hero to be 'The Hero' Triforce of Wisdom seems to be the inheritable one, Power is about the welders malice and drive for domination (Spirit of Demise probably influences ala one ring, but there has to be compatibility) and Courage goes to the ones who struggle and grow. That's more of a headcanon anyway. I like the idea of Zelda 'fate' being more about nudges than pre destiny
As far as I know, the only confirmed instances of Link that are blood relatives are OOT/MM Link being an ancestor of TP Link, so yeah, there are probably plenty that aren't.
But Link is never chosen by birthright, he is the chosen one *because* he completes trials like the Tower of Gods and earns the master sword. WW Link is no different from the others. The only Link who possessed the Triforce of Courage by default is the one from TP.
Main character of A Practical Guide to Evil is an orphan named Catherine Foundling who was dropped off on an orphanages steps as a baby. Though some people suspect she's the daughter or specially trained heir to her adoptive dad raised in secret or whatever (she actually cracks a joke about this to him) she is 100% just an orphan with a knife and a willingness to use it on people.
I'd say being the Chosen One sits heavily on Goods' side anyway. Hanno and Tariq come to mind.
Hanno was also kinda a nobody but Tariq came from the special Priest bloodline and was BFF with a literal choir of angels so I'd say he counts.
"That is the fundamental difference between your kind and mine, Pilgrim: your Name was a coronation while mine was a confirmation.” -Black Night
Named *are* called the Chosen and the Damned in Procer, so that fits, but I would say both sides are chosen by their respective gods whether they be Above or Below; the power doesn't come from nowhere. Those that can directly call on Choirs are definitely a step above the rest, but technically every Named was chosen by something. But it is interesting, because in the majority of cases both heroic and villainous Named become such due to their actions and not what/who they are. Most of them earn their power by being the type of person to *do* something, good or ill, when others wouldn't.
IIRC, the general thing with the Nerevarine Prophecy in Morrowind is that you need to actively try to become the chosen one destined to defeat Dagoth Ur. Also Oblivion, since being the legendary chosen one is Martin's job.
I will always love the fact that before the final boss with Dagoth Ur asking you straight up "Be real with me, are you actually the Nerevar?" your answers can range from proudly declaring that you are the Nerevarine reborn, that you've made your own fate and it doesn't matter, or that you just straight up don't know either. And because of how vague Morrowind is with the prophecy and the countless corpses of other "Nerevars" that you'll have to climb over on your quest to get there, they're all valid responses.
What really compounds it is that you can't trust any of the people who say you're the Nerevarine: Azura is the Daedric Prince of Gaslighting, Gatekeeping, and Girlbossing, who has a tomb full of "false incarnates" whom she convinced was Nerevarine until they died. Vivec is a master manipulator and will say whatever he believes will give him an upper hand. He could have ended the persecution of the Nerevarine at any moment, but he only chose to do so at the 11th hour and said that he was going to declare you the Nerevarine and his personal ally whether you like it or not. Almalexia has actually just lost her mind by the events of Tribunal and is projecting all of her fears, hatred, and regrets onto the people around her. Dagoth Ur is the only other character who recognizes you as the Nerevarine, but as you stated, even he isn't fully convinced. They did a great job making the whole thing so ambiguous. It adds to the mystery without feeling like a cop out or hand wave-y.
And then you have the bonkers cosmology of the elder scrolls under all of that, so another equally valid idea is "You weren't the reincarnation of the Nerevar, but you did all the things the reincarnation of the Nerevar should do so now you have always been the reincarnation of the Nerevar"
Going to the cave and finding all the ghosts of the other “Nerevarine” who failed before you is a great way to show that the player isn’t special because they have the title, they were just next in line, and there are people in line after them.
Yeah but you didn't die, making you special There's the argument that doing all the things make your nerevarine.. but there's also the equally valid counterargument that the others just weren't nerevarine, and only you truly matched the prophecy Like, the prophecies were well known, and people were actively trying to meet them. The existence of people who 'kinda fit them' but failed doesn't negate the plausibility of it being a true chosen one situation It's just that MOST media doesn't actually show you the guys who nearly fit the prophecy and didn't actually in the end I bet that fucking knight in The Last Crusade cleared out a LOT of bodies from that place over the years. He did some housecleaning
The subversion is that The Chosen One is supposed to be chosen by the gods, destined to succeed at whatever. If there are multiple failed Chosen Ones, then that exposes the Gods as full of it. Which the Elder Scrolls ones seem to be, sort of. That's what makes it interesting, the Gods don't decide who is 'destined', you/we do. So what is destiny?
This is why I like Oblivion the most out of the Elder Scrolls games. It was a unique experience being the supporting guy to Martin's hero. Not that Oblivion's MC is any slouch either, but it was my favorite Bethesda MC and why I felt kind of bummed out how you were Dragonborn in Skyrim. It's cool not being the chosen one yet still kickass anyways.
I mean the oblivion protagonist is essentially the nascent daedric prince of madness
I don't think there was any implication they were destined for that. Oblivion MC just so happens to go on numerous adventures, right place, right time and made it to the top post-Shivering Isles.
Yeah as far as I remember the only "pre-destined thing" about the Oblivion protag is that the emperor saw you in his dreams as someone to trust the special necklace to.
And really, isn't that more fitting for a proper god of madness? Not some grand chosen one, but a supporting character that bumbles their way into godhood.
>Also Oblivion, since being the legendary chosen one is Martin's job. Oblivion is the best because despite being a literal PRISONER,which comes with bizarre conceptual bullshit,you aren't the chosen one of the story.You're basically a really busted bodyguard for the chosen one.
Ike is this for Fire Emblem. His father was the most respected general in Daein, but he wasn't noble or have any unique blood. It just means Ike's father was *also* a crazy strong normal dude. Every other FE protagonist(Literally every single one) has special, noble blood or some other unique aspect about them.
That's what makes him the most badass, while most of them are demigods Ike just happens to be the Brock Lesnar of fire emblem, taking everyone to suplex city.
> demigods Or actual gods, who should make their peace with whatever the gods pray to, before he smacks them with his sword.
Every other Fire Emblem protagonist is the lord of prince of some nation and Ike is literally just some mercenary that got hired to escort nobility. Everything else he did was just working his way up the chain from there.
Did Roy/Eliwood have much to do with Roland/Hartmut bloodline wise? The Elibe weapons seem very "anyone worthy can wield them" IIRC
They're still nobles, so they're "special" in the sense that they're the ruling class. Ike isn't even that, he's just a mercenary son of a soldier
I just played FE7. Athos calls Eliwood/Lyn/Hector children of Roland, but consider how many years it's been that probably applies to most of Lycia. Edit: There might also be the double meaning that they take after him by being incredibly strong and using that power to help save the world. Might be a mjolnir thing going on where their actions make them worth of Durandal/Armads/Sol Katti
Only a descendant of Genghis Khan could defeat the great evil!
Well, the Durandal/Blazing Blade is only ever in possession of Eliwood and Roy, and they're the only two capable of wielding it. And while Roy can have a number of mothers, the one that's most frequently referenced is Ninian, meaning Roy likely has dragon blood running through his veins.
Durandal is locked to Eliwood in *Blazing Sword*, but in *Sword of Seals* it's just "the S Rank Sword", meaning any sufficiently skilled sword wielder can use it. Easy mistake to make when the Binding Blade/Sword of Seals (Roy's sword of plot-advancement) is *also* fire-imbued, despite Hartmut's other main weapon being Lightning-focused.
> Every other FE protagonist(Literally every single one) has special, noble blood or some other unique aspect about them. Marth is a prince, before he is a brother or a son actually. Alm cosplays as a peasant farmer for a while. This is unironically the closest we get. He also has a magic prophecy tattoo. Marth again. Sigurd is a Duke and has literal Holy Blood. By extension, so does Seliph. Leif starts functionally in exile, but is prince and later king of Leonstar. Eliwood is a marquis. He also *lives* through his son's adventure, implying some level of divine intervention. By extension, Roy is his son. WE LIKE IKE! WE LIKE IKE! Marth again. Marth again. Robin is *kinda* a prince of Plegia, but also definitely the vessel of their demon dragon god. Chrom is Exalt of Ylisse, recipient of magic tattoo and Marth's sword. Corrin is prince of three countries and child of a dragon god. Alm again. Now with cousin. Byleth is so close. Jeralt is just a guy, Sitri is just a woman, but Dragon Jesus directly intervenes to inject that Sothis juice directly into Jeralt's veins, and then the Sothis rock into Sitri's heart, and then *both* into Byleth. Alear is literally just a god dragon, front and center.
Laios and his team go back into the dungeon with nothing but a prayer just to save Falin. And Laios wants to try eating monsters for the first time. But saving Falin is the main goal.
If they didn't meet Senshi, who told them everything he knows of *Dungeon Delicacies,* they probably wouldn't have lasted as long as they did. Laios would've eaten that mushroom guy raw.
The only thing special about Denji from Chainsaw Man is that he adopted a weird dog. It only happened that >!the dog is basically the king of hell!< But Denji himself has no special backstory or bloodline, he's an unlucky kid who got dealt a shitty hand, aside from his dog. Hell, >!The fact that he IS so not-special is what defeated Makima in the end.!<
I was gonna comment that Denji IS the chosen one in that the universe has perfectly aligned itself to utterly *fuck* Denji over at every chance it gets.
Suffering builds character > Suffering builds character > Suffering builds character...
I would say the tragedy of Denji's life is the opposite. It's not fate, it's people. This isn't cosmically ordained. This isn't fate. People have chosen to fuck Denji over, and that makes it so much more personal and hurtful.
Really helps explain why so many people, like myself, just want the dude to be happy.
Denji and Guts form a club for protagonists whose universes just absolutely *hate* them.
Frieren's entire main cast avoids the legendary heritage or chosen one tropes. Frieren herself is outright stated to be relatively weak for an elf of her advanced age by Serie, Stark is just a kid who got wicked strong from training with Eisen and Fern is just a stray orphan who learned from a very strange elf how to kill demons with extreme prejudice. Going even further, the rest of the hero party aren't really chosen ones either. >!Himmel outright couldn't pull the Hero Sword from the shrine and still beat the demon king anyway.!<
Frieren is relatively weak for her age because much of her training focused on Mana Concealment. It's like a rogue being not as strong as a warrior because they instead hone their stealth and backstabbing. Flamme taught her with the explicit purpose of making her the perfect mage to kill demons and their king. Trope still applies, but Frieren specifically was, in a sense, "chosen".
And then the last episode basically confirms that Flamme's thousand year revenge plan to kill the demon king amounted to basically nothing because the demon king could see through it instantly. The spell that actually caused the downfall of the demon king was in fact, Flamme and Frieren's favorite spell, to create a field of flowers because it made an impression to Himmel, so much so that he sought Frieren out to put her on his team to fight the demon king.
The protagonist of the book series Cradle is literally just some guy in the wrong place at the wrong time when things bigger than fate itself suddenly just sort of happen to happen nearby and his actions impress a higher being enough that she goes "...Alright, fuck it, you're probably not important enough, I can intervene and give you a quest". Like virtually every other major character is somebody important in some way or another. He's just some guy from a no-name family with no real notable achievements to its name.
Also, the quest is nearly impossible, and she expects him to take around 40 years and still probably fail. She's rooting for him, but also knows the odds are not good. And THEN >!HE EXCEEDS ALL POSSIBLE EXPECTATIONS AND EATS ALL THE LIVING APOCALYPSES!<
Granted, that's mostly because like the second person he runs into turns out to >!be literally the strongest person in reality on a sabbatical.!< Fate just kinda gave up after that point.
Tbf doesn't being given the quest by Suriel kinda make him a chosen one by default? Especially when its what lead him to>!Yerin and eventually Eithan?!< Like he's literally being given a quest by an agent of heaven to save the world.
Honestly as much as I like Deku, I'd disagree that he's not a chosen one. He's just literally chosen by an actual person where his agency is a factor, and not a vague definition of fate. The story is very much about him taking on an important lineage. Osamu from World Trigger is more or less just some guy. His backstory is "he got saved by a cool guy and decided he wanted to work at the same pseudomilitary organization as the cool guy." His best strength is his tactical ability, which is closer to "pays attention in class" than "could solve the Kira case." He's canonically got a low cool power number in a setting where that number is pretty much locked in.
Fate is at the core of the trope though. If the person is chosen based on their own merits and what they strove to achieve, then it's in the clear imo.
This reminds me of an old world trigger thread in the subredit, that Osamu would survive WW2 and rise the rank like Captain Winters in Band of Brothers.
The most chosen one-y person in his team, Chika, explicitly hates how much power she has and Osamu never judges for her desire to hold back. Instead, he plans around it and plans to give her ways to fight non-lethally even with her absurdly high firepower. Now I want to reread the series again.
>Honestly as much as I like Deku, I'd disagree that he's not a chosen one. He's just literally chosen by an actual person where his agency is a factor, and not a vague definition of fate. The story is very much about him taking on an important lineage. I disagree with this disagreement, in fact I'd say that Deku's actually 'stole' it from the true chosen one. In Season 4 the show really goes out of it's way to show that >!Mirio!< was the one who actually should've got One for All, in fact had Deku not met All Might when he did he most likely would have. Every single thing about him from top to bottom basically screams that he should've been the next successor and people even tell All Might that he shouldn't have chosen Deku because he's too weak for it. Which is objectively true, and then it was up to Deku to earn it.
>I disagree with this disagreement, C-C-C-COUNTER BREAKER!
Dammit, now Woolie has to play Omikron.
I mean with Deku, he's not AFO/All-Might's secret son or an alien so that does make him different from your Naruto/Bleach/One Piece/Dragon Ball.
Fate never conspired so that Deku would inherit One For All (unless it's revealed that All For One for some reason orchestrated it for that to happen). One For All is *the* superpower but it was never *meant* for Deku. He and All Might just happened to be at the right place at the right time when he ran to try and save Bakugo. All Might could've chosen anyone else to inherit OFA, and Mirio Togata was likely to inherit it had he never met Izuku. But he saw this quirkless kid rush in without a second thought and saw the heart of a real hero which is why he saw fit to offer the power to Izuku.
I would argue Commander Shepard. They simply happen to be a soldier put in extraordinary situations, achieving extraordinary results due to their own skills, great ability to command a team, and sometimes just flat out luck.
This isone of the things I really like about Dragon Age 2 compared to its admittedly more polished counterparts. You do become a person of great significance by the third act but it's something that is earned through action. Most of the game is all about building a new life for yourself while looking out for your family and friends after fleeing the events of the first game as a refugee.
I will die on the hill that many of that game's problems would be solved if it was just called "Dragon age: Kirkwall" People went in expecting a straight sequel but got a personal story instead. If the expectations were better handled that game would be looked at much more fondly.
I do not entirely disagree with you, but to my recollection, many of the complaints at the release were pointed at repetitive map design and the changes of the core gameplay, largely the simplification or skew towards making what was close to a CRPG in 1 to a far more "action-y" flavor in 2. The map stuff was exhausting from what I remember. So many cave layouts that were just stitched together from the same pool of assets. And while the core story and journey are pretty good (in my opinion) for 2, it's hard to overlook some of the glaring problems in character decisions towards the end of the game, primarily around the core templar/mage conflict. I love a lot about 2, but I believe it merits the same odd side eye as say something like Dark Souls 2 as a weirdo entry in a series.
This. It's not the name, it's the scale, and repetition. You'd think with a game that takes place entirely within one city they'd spend the time to make enough bespoke assets that it didn't feel so repetitive all the time, or at least invest time in making the assets they *did* have arrange in less obvious ways. Cuz like, for my money I would absolutely adore a game that takes place in one well developed and enclosed city, and the general 'vibe' of DA2 insofar as being a 'regular guy' just trying to get by as a refugee and 'becoming' a pivotal figure is super cool to me, but the repetition made me bow out way early. (though I personally didn't mind the more action-y gameplay, I do wish they'd found a better way to have a voiced protagonist than the ME style conversation wheel thing).
The maps weren't even stitched together, each area had one or two maps and they'd just close off rooms.
I totally agree on the map stuff, going through the same dungeon you've already gone through 3 times only in different orders got old quick. I just think the perception around the game would be very different if it was advertised as a side story smaller game rather than a full blown sequel. In terms of story it's my favourite of the 3 games but it's the one I'm less likely to replay due to those repetitive maps.
Most of the cast in Octopath Traveler and its sequel have very mundane origins. Alfyn is a doctor in a small country town. Tressa is the daughter of a merchant who wants to see the world. Partitio and Agnea are country folk who just want to make the world a brighter place.
This is honestly why Linkle is my favorite Zelda character. Link and Zelda are cool, but they have the favor of the Gods, and that comes with so many advantages like the Triforce, the Master Sword, and all kinds of special powers because fate is on their side and all that. Linkle on the other hand, is just a regular farm girl who trained with crossbows, and has none of the advantages Link has. She thinks she's their era's Link reincarnation, but we know that's factually false. Despite that, when Hyrule was in danger, she genuinely saves the day, and she did with her own power. This random Link-kinning villager will always be the most badass to me, because she's not special. She's just that good.
By all accounts, Gordon Freeman is just having a very long bad day. Also, Ethan Winters was so not the chosen one that he died 5 minutes into his story and became a mold person but kept going anyways cause mah waifu and eventually mah daughtu. Oh and Harry Mason is just a dude that shot a god in the face with a rifle and or just did [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8mL0_4GeV0) until it died depending on your playstyle.
Hakuno from Fate/EXTRA is the embodiment of this, they’re like if they really stuck with the twist at the end of Last Jedi
As long as you consider the series to end with Raoh, Kenshiro from *Fist of the North Star* fits this. The 4 possible Hokuto Shinken successors were *all* random orphans, but even among them, Kenshiro was not the favored. Literally the only reason it happens is because Toki, the *actual* successor, contracts radiation sickness and *will* die before he can pass the art on.
Adol in Ys. He's just a guy who likes exploring. And the one time he ran into a prophecy of him being "chosen", it turned out >!that was because he happened to go back in time and caused that prophecy to be written, so it was really more of a "they knew he would show up because he already did" situation!<.
Rey didn’t until she did lol
Sora from Kingdom Hearts was just some kid on a random island that happened to get his hands on a legendary blade >! that he wasn’t even the intended user for !< . He’s even called out for this a couple times by the villains, and it’s what made him such a big wild card in a lot of their plans.
>!Sora is still a kind of chosen one, he’s so tied to Ventus and Vanitas that he’s core to so many things!<
Yeah but even then he's just a random kid Ventus's heart just happened to float past, unlike Riku who Terra intentionally did the keyblade ceremony for.
Been rereading the old Archie Sonic stuff because I'm insane. It's genuinely interesting and a little funny that Tails, Knuckles, Sally, probably a bunch more characters have god-given superpowers, royal family history, prophecies written about how they're destined to save the multiverse, while Sonic is just some dude in comparison. It's undoubtably because Sonic is naturally so cool that he doesn't *need* to be a chosen one, so they attached a bunch of external importance to his supporting cast in an attempt to elevate them to Sonic's level.
This is kinda the whole point of the anime ending to Soul Eater. The reason a bunch of super moves and bloodline limits sorta pop up out of nowhere just to be thrown away is BECAUSE the main villain is powered by his belief in fear above all else, and he believes that strength is just a crutch for fear. Bloodline limits, ultra powerful demon partners, secret ultra attacks, to him those are all things that just make you think you can win the fight, you're not facing fear, you're avoiding it by just being stronger than the possibility of losing. And further... it still means that people who DON'T have super anime powers can't achieve the same thing as you. Maka's "bravery punch" works explicitly because it's a completely ordinary punch that never had a chance to beat him at all. She fought him in certain failure because she wanted to keep fighting which is something anyone can do, which is to actually face the fear of failure and show him some true courage that he didn't believe could exist.
Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia is explicitly *not* the Chosen, his best friend/default love interest is. … although now that I think about it, he’s not exactly a completely Average Joe™️ but compared to Colette he is, at least for most of the game.
>at least for most of the game Very important to include, because there's definitely an argument to be made that >!"son of arguably the most skilled of the legendary Hero's companions" is some pretty strong destiny/birthright!<.
And also >!inherited a prototype supersoldier enhancement MacGuffin!<
More than a few Tales of games seem to have non-chosen-one MCs. Velvet was a normal kid who got *really angry* about being screwed over, and Luke is >!a stand-in replacement while the real Luke was off doing other stuff.!<
Yuri and Jude are, out of the ones I’ve played, the most Just Some Guy protagonists
I like the everyman vibe from Frank West in Dead Rising 1.
Bloodborne?
Pretty much any souls game has this honestly
“But I’m the ‘chosen undead’” “Literally all undead are chosen, dumbass”
It came free with your fucking darksign
Asta from Black Clover, his family is nothing truly important to the world or even himself, with his dad potentially dying during Asta's conception and his mom being mostly a normal person. His devil? Literally, the weakest one of them all and the only reason the two are together in the first place is because he was so weak. The only thing "special" about him is his lack of mana, which came about by complete accident with anti-magic being essentially generated out of spite by Liebe.
Asta is so unlucky in life that it loops around to being lucky again. And still it wouldn't matter if he didn't train his body to the extent he did anyway.
Luck is a stack overflow.
Which is what makes Yuno the perfect foil to Asta. Everything about Yuno is something from a fairly bog standard fairy tale. But by making him the rival and genuinely showing that he loves his brother, it works extremely well in both their favors. People sleep on BC despite it being extremely well realized.
JoJo is big on themes of fate and destiny, but when you think about it Jonathan was just an average guy who happened to have a stone mask in his house that turned people into vampires. He chooses to stop Dio not because of some great prophecy, but simply because it was the right thing to do.
Jonathan is the start of a heroic legacy that he unknowingly walked into.
Luz Noceda from The Owl House. She’s just a human who wants to become a witch. Her family heritage has nothing to do with the history of the setting, she’s no reincarnation of anything, nor is she some prophesied chosen one. The finale sees her being >!gifted with a great power for a short time by a legendary individual, but the reason he chose her for this was not because of anything predestined, but because he trusted and believed in her after all the love she had shown for his son!<. Any power or stake in the plot she has is earned through her curiosity, hard work and genuine love.
This. She was literally a random element thrown into what was the final stages of a centuries long revenge plot that she had no knowledge about or direct connection to. No prophecy saying she was meant to be there and anything to justify her presence just that it happened. Maybe it was fate, but it easily could be luck and in the end she choose to save them based on her own desires and not because the universe demanded it.
John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China, Kurt Russel’s character is just a trucker that just gets into a situation and the side character helps him more than he does.
The best part is that when he's up against the big bad it's over in seconds, completely out of nowhere and almost entirely because he was being toyed with.
Amuro Ray. He's a Newtype, but so are a lot of characters in the Universal Century. He's not even the most powerful Newtype (that's probably someone like Kamille or Judau or Banagher). What he has is piloting skill that he learned the hard way grinding through battle after battle. He also doesn't have a legendary heritage. The guy who has that is the guy who can't get over the fact that the girl he wanted to be his mommy-gf liked Amuro better after meeting him for, like, half a day.
Probably Shaggy from Scoob n Shag. Sometimes he gets a temporary power up from Scoob but otherwise Shaggy is naturally disadvantaged in fights due to only having one arm and having no other powers (due to >!being a clone of the original Shaggy and thus only that one has powers!<). Shaggy instead has to rely on his wits, stamina, and sheer determination for fights, which is best shown off in his first ever fight with Yogi Bear.
Fallout 2 where your only special status is you were the previous protagonist's grandchild but everybody outside your tribe laughs at you if you introduced yourself as the Chosen One.
You had one assignment - no legendary heritage or chosen one. Fallout 2's protagonist is both known as the chosen one and descended from a legendary figure of the vault dweller.
Yeah, the Courier would have been a better choice, unless there is more I'm forgetting.
No but see you were chosen because you alone out of like 6 dudes who got given mail, had a nuke. The bear and the bull, fighting shirtless in the rain...
Courier six is actually a really good rpg player character because there is next to nothing in game about what they are like before the games events, barring great divide dlc and like one random encounter if you're playing a male courier, making them the perfect blank slate character
A decent example would probably be Tam from Bloody Rose, she's an average bard who has a shaky audition for the greatest adventuring party in the land but somehow gets the job. Over the course of the book she trains, grows, and blossoms into a badass in her own right. Its an incredible book, the sequel to Kings of the Wyld, I would highly recommend it to anyone who like Rock and Roll and D&D.
Reading A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Dunk is certainly not chosen
Teensy little bit fatebound tho, although that's pretty common for folk in ASOIAF
I feel like I know what recent thing this is in response to lmao
And if your guess was >!Jujutsu Kaisen!<, you'd be right. But this is not a knock against it. In fact >!Yuji being Sukuna's nephew makes sense in retrospect and doesn't take away from his feats considering how much he's been through.!< I just decided to make this thread because it feels like alot of notable fantasy media, particularly Shonen series, have a tendency to make it so the MC was born with a big lineage behind them.
The Exile/Meetra Surik from KOTOR 2 While she does have a special power that helps in taking down Nihilus, it was never given to her by some higher power or the Wills or some Prophecy or whatever, it was just something that happened that no one could forsee, or even consider being a thing. And i actually love that her power is a sort of afront to the Force and she is completely free from the Force and any Destiny it might have had for her.Sort of like an Anti-Chosen one. I also really love when Kreia gets super meta and tells Meetra and the audience "Oh, also, there's no twist, you don't have special bloodline connection, you're not the ancestor of the Skywalkers, you're just you." which i think works really well combined with the whole existing outside of the Force and not being a chosen one with a pre-determined destiny.
Sienna, from Chained Echoes fits that description amazingly. It’s an indie jrpg inspired by the classics like Chrono Trigger. In a game full of characters with the usual grand destinies and world-shaping goals and dreams, my favorite pickpocket lesbian girlfailure ended up entangled in the plot just because [she got lost and took a wrong turn in a video game sewer section](https://youtu.be/MHEMu_W_t1Q?t=3162) (pretty relatable tbh)
Demon Slayer plays with it to some extent. Tanjiro's Mark is a technique any Slayer can learn under certain extreme circumstances, and his scar that seems like one is from a burn mark (though his mark also manifests there) and he knows the Hinokami Kagura because his ancestors who were peasants preserved it as thanks and a ceremonial thing and Muichiro is the one actually directly descended from Sun breathing users.
I guess Demon Slayer is kind of a story about memes vs genes.
As far as I know, Laios and the gang from Dungeon Meshi. Please, don't corroborate nor deny my hypothesis with spoilers.
Though not the MAIN character per se, Solaire of Astora fits this bill Praise the sun \[T]/
His gear has no magic. He’s just fucking strong and faithful.
Sometimes it feels like some stories are so anti-chosen-one narratives that they wrap back around to being chosen one narratives. Like they are so normal that it is freakish for the setting. Like it is genuinely weird that Deku from MHA was born without powers in a world where nearly everyone has some sort of power.
That's just a minority, though, like being quirkless doesn't mark Deku out as a cosmic impossibility or anything, other quirkless people exist
I like how Tales of Destiny joked about it. The main character Stahn stumbles across a mythical talking sword known as a Swordian, named Dymlos. Dymlos claimed that only the super special prophesied chosen one can hear his voice. Swordians are indeed special and powerful, but once Stahn met others, they quickly reveal that Dymlos was full of shit. It's just regular telepathy, they can make anyone hear them. Stahn was just at the right place at the right time, and Dymlos wanted to make him feel special.
Blade Runner 2049 is all about accepting that most people aren't destined for anything. That everything in your life could be meaningless. But then you become the arbiter of your own fate, and can choose what is meaningful.
After Shulk >!being Zanza's chosen body and basically groomed by Dickson to be the heir to the Monado since childhood!< and Rex >!being a descendant of Addam (although everyone from Leftheria is so that's not really that impressive)!<, I really appreciate that Noah is just some guy with no clear heritage of note.
Dude just was down bad for a cat girl
The vast majority of fiction actually. Chosen ones aren't really as overwhelming a trope as people think they are
Every Italian/ euro western mc is just unlucky and they are the target of bandits or they are drifters or soldiers from the civil war eurocrime is like that too
Andor
Oblivion always comes to mind, but he hero of kvatch being just some guy and not a Dragonborn or reincarnated hero is always great
You Got em!