Yes, I’m venting again, though today’s pet peeve isn’t as irksome as Monday’s.
I am not bothered by the Chosen One trope where someone is marked by Destiny to be a hero (or a villain for that matter). Superman, hurled away from Krypton to greatness on Earth. Harry Potter, marked at birth as Voldemort’s nemesis. Buffy Sommers, born to be a Slayer. Tom Taylor, forged as a weapon against the Cabal in Unwritten (though he’s less chosen than press-ganged into it). The trope gets over-used but in itself I’m fine with it. What I hate are stories where someone seems to have earned their heroic status, then we get a Big Reveal that they were Chosen all along.
Case in point, Brian Braddock. In his first story he’s desperate to save his friends from the international criminal known as the Reaver. Roma and Merlin (not yet named as such) give him a chance and tell him to choose either a medallion or a sword. As a man of peace, he chooses the former and so becomes … Captain Britain.
That’s a classic heroic set-up. Brian becomes a hero because he help people, makes the right choice on how to do it — we learn later that choosing the sword would have been sub-optimal — and then grows into the role. At the end of Alan Davis’ run on the strip, however, we discover it was never something Brian had to earn. His father was one of Merlin’s guardsmen in Otherworld so Brian was fated to become something more than ordinary.
Ditto Carol Danvers. A woman capable of becoming Cape Kennedy’s security chief back in the 1960s is by definition exceptional, but it 
turned out a few years ago that her awesomeness is at least partly because she’s half-Kree. Then there’s the reveal in the final Middleman graphic novel that Wendy Watson’s father was a Middleman before her — it was always her destiny to become a Middleman.
For me this feels a bit like a bait and switch. As I wrote on my own blog way back when, a hero can be born great, achieve greatness or have greatness thrust upon them. All three approaches can work. But if I admire a character for their achievements — mastering Captain Britain’s powers, training with Sensei Ping — and then discover they really didn’t achieve it by human hard work and personal courage, I feel disappointed.
It’s a minor dislike of mine, but it’s there.
#SFWApro. Covers top to bottom by Yuko Shimizu, Alan Davis and I’m not sure (what a funny name!).
The Chosen One irks a lot of people. You and me may be the only ones Chosen to be Unirked.
I thought Carol was half-Kree because the accident that gave her powers fused her with Kree DNA or something? She was always half-Kree? Really?
Can’t say about Middleman; I’ve never got my hands on the comics (but I’ve seen the series and loved it).
No, she’s not genetically half-Kree, she’s half-Kree by ancestry. As she still had to get her powers from that accident with the Kree tech I don’t know what good it is.
I just finished the series, then reread The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse which wraps up most of the plot threads (Manservant Neville, Lacey/MM, etc.). I highly recommend it. Next week I reread the Pan-Universal Parental Reconcilation which deals with Wendy’s dad and has the tv and original comics versions butt heads.
If you read the Pan-Universal Parental Reconciliation, you know that the “I’m not sure” artists of the cover are Les McClaine (the comics version of Wendy and the Middleman) and Armando Zanker (the TV versions), against a background of random pages, probably from McClaine.
I”m not fond of Last jedi as a film but I do like some of the ideas: that it really doesn’t matter who Rey’s parents are. Then the last film came along and was like just kidding, you are Palpatine’s granddaughter.
How did I forget that one? Yes, it’s a perfect example.
That was one thing I liked about Burroughs’ “A fighting man of Mars.” Every other book is about John Carter, his kids or Ulysses Paxton (another Earth transplant); this one shows you don’t have to be a Carter or anyone special to have exciting adventures on Mars. Which is just what it should be like.