Wednesday, December 2, 2015

New Genre Wednesdays: The Not Chosen One

In the first act, an apparently normal teen discovers that unlike pretty much every other teen, they don't have any special ability, mutant power, magic destiny, eldritch lineage, extradimensional familiar, or the like.

In the second act, this apparently normal and also actually normal teen, who is fortunate enough to be untroubled by the numerous ethical, emotional, physiological, logistical and ontological supernormal problems facing most of this teen's peers, in relation to their abilities, powers, destinies and so forth, untroubled by supernormal problems including, but certainly not limited to, the existence of various nemesis figures with approximately equal although different supernormal abilities, powers, destinies and so forth, and who is fortunate enough to be instead troubled only by a range of normal problems, many of which can be rapidly be teased out by in a quick account of the teen's geography, legal situation, physical and mental health, wealth, sociological class, gender, education, race, religion, sexuality, familial and wider care context, and other such identity characteristics, finds that they are able, through having been so curiously skipped by all supernormal attributes, to actually work wonders upon the world, wielding quite extraordinary influence, and imposing their will by a variety of incrementally accumulating mundane means, and generally eventually improving the lives of everybody in the universe, and the lives of those closest to the teen, and their own personal life, probably either in that order of priority, or the reverse.

In the third act, it becomes apparent that this teen's power is actually "the power of having no power at all," which brings with it an attendant set of ethical, emotional, physiological, logistical and ontological supernormal problems, more-or-less undoing all the gains which were made in the second act, such that the lives touched by the teen are eventually restored to about the level they were at the opening of the short novel, and then, within the very last one or two chapters, start to slide into a still worse condition.

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