Bittercon: "I'm So Special"

[intertext]

For those on my flist not able to join oursin and brisingamen at Wiscon, or who did not go and have fun at Kalamazoo (or even those who did!) but who would like to participate in a Con panel, there is lively discussion at papersky, sartorias and katenepveu and others coordinated in the community bittercon. Here's my panel topic:

"I'm So Special" - Wish Fulfillment Fantasy and Science Fiction

From Harry Potter to Heroes, there's a whole sub-genre of SF in which the "outsider" suddenly discovers that he or she is not an outsider but a member of some elite class of beings (wizard, superhero, Herald). There is a sub-genre of this trope in which the person becomes special by being CHOSEN by some kind of sentient animal - think particularly of the works of Mercedes Lackey and Anne McCaffrey.

My question is not so much about the popularity of such a class of novels - I think the attraction is fairly obvious - but whether any of these authors, or others, have dealt with the notion of being the one NOT chosen. J K Rowling never really allows her characters to interact with "normal" Muggles, only the dreadful members of Harry's family - I'd love to read something from the perspective of such a character. There are several Pern novels in which some of the suspense is derived from the viewpoint character not being chosen by a dragon when expected to be so, but I believe that all of them end up with that character being chosen in the end.

I've often thought of writing something called "The Unchosen" from the perspective of someone in that position who feels, perhaps, bitter (hey - Bittercon!) and excluded. Do any works exist in which the main character is "normal" within a society such as I've described and comes to terms with it?

A related question is that these, with the possible exception of Harry Potter, seem to fall into the category of "guilty pleasure" reading - basically not terribly good books that are nevertheless fun escapism. Are there any "good" works, by which I mean books that you don't have to apologize for reading, that fall under this category? And if not, why not?

Comments

[diony.livejournal.com]

I can't, exactly, think of any novels that both focus on the unchosen and allow them to remain unchosen by the end.

What springs to mind instead is a very good anime series I saw last year (based on a series of Japanese novels, but they haven't been translated into English yet, so I can't say how much similarity there is), in which two girls get teleported to a magical world yadda yadda, one of them is The Chosen One, and the other one isn't, and thinks she should be, and is manipulated by various people due to this belief until she eventually comes to the realisation that, no, she really isn't the Chosen One and would be much happier if she went back home and made friends and generally tried to be a reasonable human being. This is depicted as the hard-won result of painful personal growth and absolutely a victory for her.

Come to think of it, later in the same anime there's a story arc focusing on two other women, one of whom thinks all of her problems would go away if she was a Chosen One, the other of whom was the daughter of a Chosen One who screwed things up so badly that he got killed & thus his family became ordinary again. Both of them have to go through sufficient personal growth to understand and accept that they have meaningful choices and personal power and lives of their own without needing to be Chosen.

Eventually all the novels will be translated and I'll read them and then I'll know if they count.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

That sounds absolutely perfect - exactly the sort of thing I was wanting. What is the name of the series?

[diony.livejournal.com]

The Twelve Kingdoms. All of the anime is out on DVD with English subtitles, and the first of the novels is available in translation.

The series starts pretty slowly and I was tempted to give up a few times, but I hung in there through the sloggy bits and was amply, amply rewarded.

[ginger-blue.livejournal.com]

Oh, I *adore* Twelve Kingdoms-gorgeous, gorgeous anime. Taiki is absolutely fascinating in this context, too, as both a Chosen one, and in the position of having choose someone else. And there are social pressures that the adults around him bring to bear (mostly without knowing it) in a process that, as a child and a newcomer to the world, doesn't make a lot of sense to him.

Mild spoilers (you already know this by the time this character's arc starts):

And then there's whatever happens to him in between the end of his arc and where we pick up the story with Youko. Whatever happened there to take him back out of the world of the 12 Kingdoms to Japan, being a Chosen One dropped back into his former life has clearly not been a happy experience.

not to be too obscure or anything

[solarbird]

she eventually comes to the realisation that, no, she really isn't the Chosen One and would be much happier if she went back home and made friends and generally tried to be a reasonable human being. This is depicted as the hard-won result of painful personal growth and absolutely a victory for her.
In a context I can't really talk about for reasons that would make sense if I could go into detail I can't, I have seen people in real life come to a strikingly analogous realisation. And what's interesting and relevant was that in this case, as in the anime you describe, it was very much a case of personal growth and was rather a personal victory. It didn't make anyone feel better because they thought they were, say, losing a fifth wheel; everyone was happy and congratulatory because one individual's particular truth had been found.

So linking to another previous commenter's thought, here's a case where you can spend a lot of time on that - and possibly on telling that story - and not have it be depressing at all. It certainly wasn't in this real-life example.