Chosen One vs. "Not like Other Girls."
Someone in my Sandman Facebook group, in in a conversation about Jim Henson's Labyrinth, asked about the prequel comics. When I said I didn't like them because it relied on the "Not like other girls trope." the person tried to imply that I'm a self-loathing misogynist by saying "So not like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker or all those others?" No, not like that. That's a "Chosen One" trope, not a "Not like other girls" trope.
When I say "Not like other girls (or women) I mean it goes out of its way to depict most women as subservient and submissive / passive and with limited to no personality while this character is "special" because she's strong and assertive, not a "chosen one." But just strong-willed.
The story is about Jareth's mother and her experiences in The Labyrinth and "Not like other girls" is NOT the same as "Chosen One" trope.
Buffy (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), Emma (Once Upon a Time), = Chosen one.
Girl with a personality = "Not like other girls."
Note the subtle and offensive difference.
A Chosen one is a hero destined for greatness because of some matter of how they were born or a prophecy, or they have a special power that no one else does, that sort of thing. Any one of any gender can be a Chosen One hero if the plot calls for it. With Buffy The Vampire Slayer it was said that in each generation there would be a slayer. Buffy happened to be it.
In Once Upon a Time Emma was "The Savior." The adult daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming raised in our world and destined to save her people from The Dark Curse.
In Harry Potter, Harry's mother died saving him from Voldemort and there was a prophecy that only Harry could truly destroy Voldemort.
"Not Like Other Girls" trope = Sexist idea that women are usually inferior and the girl / woman has actual personality traits that the writer obviously only associates with men.
Chosen One = A traditional "Only you can save the day" Hero.
There IS a difference, guys!
By the way, no, I do not like the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot.
I love Phoebe in Ghostbusters: Afterlife and I loved Kylie in Extreme Ghostbusters. I don't like the ones in the 2016 movie. For starters, unlike the original Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2, instead of using actual parapsychology terms they make up terminology that contradicts even theoretical physics. i.e. a device that destroys ghosts instead of capturing them. Energy cannot be destroyed, only changed or transferred.
Then you have the "intellectual one" licking her nutrina wand / proton blaster after use. According to the movie's own lore the blaster is the tail end of a nuclear accelerator, it literally fires a stream of charged atomic particles. Do you know what that could do to your tongue? They also came off as rather mean spirited and had far too much slapstick. I, as a little girl, could relate to Egon, I can't relate to whats-her-name in the 2016 film. And yet I loved Phoebe in Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
I brought up Ghostbusters 2016 because the last time someone suggested I hate female protagonists or other women it was 2017 or so and someone in my Gothic Horror group literally called me a self-loathing misogynist for not liking the 2016 Ghostbusters movie and I never quite got over it.
Sarah in the original Labyrinth would have been special for solving the Labyrinth as a boy or a girl. She was more of a chosen one. However Jareth’s mother is a “Not like other Girls.” In fact several characters literally kept saying how she’s not like other girls. Simon Spurrier has a bad habit of writing his women characters like that, as if most women are inferior lifeforms but these particular ones are not. He even did that with Dora in his 2018 Dreaming comics.
