Hello, and welcome to Nadi Abdi’s blog on Writing, Reading, and Politics. I’m your hostess, Nadi Abdi, author of Power of the People: The Demon Cleaner book one.

Today, we’re talking about two tropes: reluctant hero, which I dislike, and found family, which I like. 

Getting into reluctant hero. When it’s paired with a superpower and that person is an adult, I find it to be tiresome and outdated. We need to do better as writers.

One of my biggest issues with the trope on its face is that it relies on the hero/heroine experiencing some sort of trauma for them to get involved. Like, you couldn’t just care that people were suffering? The suffering had to touch you first? You had to lose a child or spouse before you could empathize with those who’d already lost more? Hm…OK.

Also, the reasons to not get involved are often wildly illogical. You don’t want to get involved in a fight because you want to be there for your children, but your children live on the same planet that’s about to be destroyed. I need to see your work to find out how you heard the problem and decided the answer was to do nothing.

All of this applies to adults with powers only. With kids, I expect kids to be kids. Adults with no powers, I understand. That would just be weird for someone to come out of the blue and decide you need to join them on a joyride to fight evil. Like, I don’t know who WE is, but good luck to you with that. However, I expect adults with powers to know better and have a better understanding of deeper issues that require more forethought. Like, if group A is in trouble, you’re in trouble, too, my dude. The Their-problem-to-my-problem pipeline is short and narrow. We realize you’re out of vacation days at the bank, but we’re not just knocking on random people’s doors in the neighborhood. You have the power of fire. Get in the car.

Anyway, it’s just one of those tropes I find particularly annoying because it’s usually whole city/whole planet in danger type shit. And the hero’s like, I can’t help you. I have the bar exam tomorrow. Like, really? Of all the things you could be right now, please be fucking for real.

I feel like my last straw with this trope was Eternals when they go to ask Phastos for help and he’s all, “Nah, I’ma stay and take care of my son.” Sir! Did you hear what they said? The planet  is about to be destroyed. What do you think will happen to your son if you have no planet?

Now, if you’re on some, “If we die, we die,” shit, cool. Say that. But to act like you just can’t be bothered to save the planet where your family lives is obscene, absurd, insane, and illogical. What are you doing?

The sky is literally falling.

“Yeah, but I gotta make pancakes. Y’all be easy.”

Please, fellow writers, I beg you. Stop this shit. 

That’s a trope I dislike. A trope I very much like is “found family.” 

Even if the character has a family, sometimes you need more people who understand you differently. These are friendships that bloom into something more. People see you, they see your friend. They see your friend, they see you. People just assume you’re related. 

I come from a big family. Lots of siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins. I’m close to most of my family. I also have friends that I’m close to who have known me since I was a teenager. (Been kicking it since ‘99). These friendships have been instrumental in making me who I am. 

I deal with a lot of characters who have some sort of power or magic or something like that. They may or may not have their bio family. In fantasy, it’s common for the MC to lose their entire family, which leaves them wide open for the world to do anything and everything to them. Without the insulation of “found family” a lof of these characters grow up to be Homelander. Immoral. Unbalanced. No human connection at all. Nothing but apathy wrapped in power. 

And sure, anyone can grow up that way (Affluenza kid. Musk. Trump.) for me, when I’m working with characters in fantasy, because my stories tend to be relationship and character driven, who’s related to whom, who knows who becomes important in building my characters’ character.  If you don’t have family, who raised you? Who will be proud of you? Who will be ashamed of you? 

I’m Black American. So, I can only speak for the Black American community, but I can recall growing up and having aunties, uncles, and cousins who weren’t related to me, but were so close to the family that I couldn’t call them anything else. (I imagine this has been the experience for other cultures, but I’m not going to speak on them.) This makes the “found family” trope familiar. Once you become so close, what else would you be but family? And not in a weird Olive Garden kind of way. LIke, if you pull up at any time, you are responsible for getting your own food out the fridge because you know where the kitchen is.

Found family is also really easy to write. I don’t know if I find it easy to write because I enjoy it and it just makes sense to me, or if it’s really easy to write. All I can say is, I don’t struggle with pairing characters or groups. People either get along or they don’t. And we go from there. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Come back next week. We’ll discuss more about writing, reading, publishing, and everything in between. I’m Nadi Abdi. See you then.

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