196

The issue with the Star Wars story is that it can't end. This means Luke cannot have been very effective, because the same issues have to repeat historically to promote an endless cycle of protagonists and antagonists and battles that relate to the previous fan-favourites (because nostalgia sells).

Therefore Luke must simultaneously be an awesome hero, and also just some loser that didn't really do anything that worked.

A new hope started with blood line. It was established out of the gate that Luke’s father was a Jedi knight and a good friend of Obi Wan.

Force Awakens and Last Jedi seemed to go in the direction that Rey and Snoke are unrelated to previous blood lines, but nope, it’s all Palpatine.

They tried to fix it in the last Jedi, but the fans had too much of a tantrum.

And after all that our bloke decides to become a copper.

That can be attributed to X-men and Harry Potter

But I'm sure there are more

It's all just the new testament. Before you fuck with poor people and nail them to a cross, make sure they aren't just slumming it, and actually have a very powerful father.

Captain Picard drops by, breaks the opioid machine, peaces out.

While it's definitely PRESENT in Lord of the Rings, one could argue Frodo himself is a subversion of it. Giving the ring to someone powerful would almost inevitably result in corrupting them and (depending on just how powerful they were) would just make a new big bad. Hobbits work as ring bearers explicitly because they're not "special".

The basic options for magic are:

• Sorcerers: Magic blood line or other innate gift of birth. Basically magic aristocracy.
• Wizards: Usually anyone can be a wizard, its the magic equivelent of studying hard in college.
• Warlocks: Anyone can be a warlock if they're willing to make a deal with the devil; the magic equivelent of dropping out to become a stripper.

Pretty much every fantasy has the magical aristocracy but the latter two are available to regular people in a lot of fantasies too, though wizardry is often gatekept and magical pacts tend to be for villains only.

There must be.

Haven't read it, yet, but I have high hopes for the Earthsea books.

From what I remember of the Neverending Story (the book), Bastian Balthazar Bux is just some kid with a good imagination, and he ends up as essentially their god; so.

I genuinely think the main ideological function isn't even as much to promote that, as it is to focus personal dreams and fantasies towards wanting to become a part of the "winners". Not that it isn't part of it, just by normalising it as status quo even within fantasies, but I think even more powerful is to have people fantasise about being one of the chosen ones eventually.

Quick reminder that stuff like this is not planned like in some conspiracy, but just a result of dynamics happening (almost exclusively, rare exceptions) unconsciously the way ideology springs from the material base.

Once upon a time in a magical land of soviets people realized that dynasties owning everything was never valid.

at least they explored the power dynamics, like yeah if some people are just mundane, some people can fucking shoot fire from their hands or make the ground swallow you whole, and ONE person is effectively just a god, then it makes sense for a lot of the mundane people to just want this all to stop because that's fucking terrifying.

But also there are (were?) things in the avatar universe that mitigate the power imbalance, like the avatars being raised to recognize that they have an extreme responsibility to use their powers wisely, and thanks to the whole reincarnation thing it'd presumably be difficult for the avatar to suddenly become evil since every previous avatar would screech at them and for all we know they could just force the avatar state to send the body to its death and exiting the avatar state just before death.

This, or the humble royalty, is most fictional hero storylines. I unironically believe capitalism uses these tropes to condition the people into believing feudalism, authoritarianism, and genetic divinity are justifiable.

Remember! The rich are rich because they're better than you! Not because them or their ancestors were murderers, slave owners, exploiters, criminal sociopaths, etc.

Have you ever actually read it? The prophecies were deliberately spread over the universe by the Bene Gesserit. The department that does that is called the Missionaria Protectiva, they do that all over the universe so their members can manipulate the locals to be safe wherever they end up. This isn't supposed to glorify those prophecies, it's demystifying them to the point where religion as a whole is showcased as a mere tool to control the masses in later books. It's supposed to criticise the thing you're criticising.

I mean, that's the point of Dune? The 'prophesies' aren't real, they're seeded by the Bene Gesserit, the same group that spent millennia breeding the 'savior'. And, he's not meant to really be a savior, but their catspaw.

But also, he's definitely not actually a savior, on account of all the death he brings. It's complicated, but overall a deconstruction of white savior narratives and similar stories.