Specialness (Campfire Brain Dump)

Something I always try to avoid in my writing is the idea of “specialness”. Or, more accurately, fate driven specialness. I've never really liked it because it always just felt kinda cheap to me. The idea of a “chosen one” or that is was “destiny” for a particular character to take some action, or for a particular event to take place, always seemed to detract from the actual character's choices. This is largely since it essentially removes free will. If a character was always fated to defeat the big bad, then it wasn't actually very brave of them to go through all the trials and tribulations it took them to get there.

That being said, similar to what I discussed in Brain Dump: Magic Systems, with real gods existing, there are bound to be some that pay favour to a particular mortal, or who have a plan for how they want things to play out. And while I still don't think I'm really gonna go for a complete “fate” route, I think I would be amiss if I didn't explore some situations where gods, for one reason or another single out a individual or group of mortals and imbued them with some sort of special ability, powers, strength, etc.

That being said, I do still want to avoid having an entire world exist pretty much just for one person, or a small group of people to do their thing. I want to make sure that every world I make will actually be alive, and not just serve as a backdrop for one particular story to take place. So even in situations where there is a “chosen one”, there will still be other major things going on in the world while they off doing their thing. Additionally, while one god may choose to threat one particular person special, a different god may have a different random person that they've chosen, within the same world.