The Tapestry and the Chosen One

 I actually planned a different Note altogether, and did a few ideas in the notebook, about basically I saw a screenshot of a tweet that kind of bugged me? Basically the gist of the would-be Note is: No, your mainstream part of the political party, Left or Right, is not the Rebel Alliance, is not Dumbledore’s Army, or whatever resistance group from mainstream fiction you would like to think you are.

But you know, I thought, maybe, a less overtly political Note would be better. Probably. So. Back to The Tapestry.

Anyway I’m getting into Ghost of Tsushima and having fun! I have a nice straw hat. And also a not-so-nice straw hat that has holes in it, so it doesn’t keep the rain out. 

The Tapestry and the Chosen One

Have you heard of The Tapestry series by Henry H. Neff? Probably not. I don’t see that many conversations about it. I saw it mentioned somewhere as a book series for middle grade readers that deals with Irish mythology, so I put it on a to-read list. It’s not bad–it’s kind of cool, with great action, neat creatures, and the author illustrated each of the books himself. But I’m kind of bugged by its Chosen One angle, or rather, the way it handles it.

Spoilers ahoy!

Let’s back up and talk a bit about Chosen One narratives.

So Chosen One narratives often go like this: our protagonist is the Chosen One, selected by prophecy or by the gods or what have you to be the one to solve the world’s problems. He or she is often given special powers to deal with it, or an artifact that only works for one person, and a mentor to help control those powers and point the way. This form has kind of gone out of fashion in the last few years, mainly because the over prevalence of it in fantasy led to a backlash.

[The absolute worst version of the Chosen One story, to me, was the movie Pan, which was amusing in its own way but so by-the-numbers in its approach to the story.]

That’s not to say that the Chosen One story is bad. It’s not, especially when it’s done well. Look at Luke Skywalker, Aang, or Aloy. There are a ton of ways it really works–for starters, it gives the audience a clear idea of who to root for, because this person is the center of the story. That sounds easy, but you’d be surprised how many writers, in an attempt to subvert expectations, make the story about someone who doesn’t really have much reason to be there doing these things.

In The Tapestry, it seems from pretty early on in the series that our main character, Max McDaniels, is the Chosen One. And the second book pretty much confirms it–he’s the son of Lugh, he’s the reincarnation of Cu Chulainn, and he’s an ace combatant at thirteen years old. But it’s that last one that kind of hits me the wrong way. Because we see at the beginning of the second book that he’s doing combat training at his magic school against, basically, high school seniors, and was beating them. He’s basically only on equal footing with fully-trained agents of Rowan, and even then he’s about as good as them.

Guys, he’s thirteen.

Towards the tail end of the second book, he is magically aged and leveled up in Faerie by getting some crazy training from Scathach, but even before then he’s shown to be an exceptional fighter.

His roommate is also the only sorcerer of their generation, and so has untold magical power. Basically not only does everyone want the two of them on their side for their power, but they are really the only ones who can do jack squat in the actual Plot. Max’s roommate is allowed to do unsupervised occult research in Rowan’s secret archive and when the final battle comes he’s the only one capable of magically raising the defenses. Likewise, Max is the only one who can really fight off the enemy’s forces.

[Also his love interest is a girl two grades above him? I don’t know why this bugs me, but when he starts the series he’s twelve and I don’t think a fourteen-year-old is really that interested in dating a twelve-year-old. But I could be wrong, I don’t know.]

Guys, this is insane.

People get on Harry Potter’s case for this, but that’s not really how that series shakes out. Harry himself is never shown to be any more capable, magically speaking, than any other character. Many times the grown-ups DO have to bail him out of trouble. Harry’s Chosen One status is acknowledged, in-universe, as arbitrary, and the reason it’s all about him is because Voldemort declared it to be.

Or if we want to stick with mythology-based heroes: Percy Jackson. He’s sort-of the Chosen One of his story, but again, he’s not always the most capable person in the room, at least not in the original series. He explicitly could never beat his nemesis Luke in combat–and he never does, even by the series’s end. And though he’s facing off against gods and monsters throughout the series, he’s not actually better than most of them. He beats Ares in the first book not by actually being more powerful or skilled, but because he makes Ares lose his temper. And it’s clear that Ares COULD have killed him, quite easily. And he does try by revealing his true form–Percy just has the smarts to close his eyes.

It helps that Ares was often undone like this in the myths. The Greeks thought of him as kind of a loser (despite what Wonder Woman would have you think).

In fact, most of Percy beating more experienced foes isn’t about out-fighting them–it’s outwitting them, playing on their weaknesses, their ignorance, or their stupidity.

And so, watching Max McDaniels, who’s a bit like a combination of Percy and Harry (he’s a demigod reincarnate, goes to a magic school) and he’s apparently the greatest fighter in the series, as a thirteen-year-old, I’m going to call shenanigans. It’s absurd. It’s more than a little silly.

The Chosen One narrative can let you get away with a lot, but it will only take you so far. You need to have some sort of limits to how your character works, and I don’t exactly love the idea that he’s the center of the fictional universe. I will not buy that a thirteen-year-old, on pure skill alone, is going to be a better fighter than people who are significantly better trained and older than him. Nor that he and his friend are the only ones who can do anything at all to stop the advance of evil, and everyone else just shrugs and gives up without them. No. Not going to believe that. I don’t care if he’s the reincarnation of Doom Guy.

Actually no, that sounds Awesome.

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