| rdfs:comment
| - A trope with its base in Rags to Royalty. It takes an Ordinary High School Student (or elementary school student) and whisks them off to meet their real family, whose lives are always more glamorous, dangerous, and full of adventure than the dull foster family the hero has been living with, and delighted to meet this stranger who happens to be a blood relative. This may involve going Down the Rabbit Hole if not hopping cities or countries. Compare Escapist Character, Ascended Fanboy, Rags to Riches. It's also a component of The Hero's Journey, especially when a Farm Boy is involved.
|
| abstract
| - A trope with its base in Rags to Royalty. It takes an Ordinary High School Student (or elementary school student) and whisks them off to meet their real family, whose lives are always more glamorous, dangerous, and full of adventure than the dull foster family the hero has been living with, and delighted to meet this stranger who happens to be a blood relative. This may involve going Down the Rabbit Hole if not hopping cities or countries. Or, more rarely, they have been living with the unusual parents all along, who are pulling off an elaborate Masquerade to keep the truth from them until the time is right. If the two families are not the same, the foster family is usually a cartoonishly abusive and unloving bunch. They tell the hero that they'll never amount to anything, and they had better not think about royalty or magic. Most shows won't even bother revisiting the foster family after the first episode, except (maybe) to have them show up as minor dupes of the Big Bad later. The plot has obvious appeal for any teen who has ever felt unloved. (Piling on the Glurge is optional.) They may even have an Orphan's Plot Trinket to signify their heritage. Compare Cinderella Circumstances, where the main difference is that the heroine is always worse off and doesn't have to be switched, if the parent fell on hard times and remarried. In both television and other media, this is an increasingly Subverted Trope. The most common subversion is for the adventures to be so dangerous that the hero decides I Just Want to Be Normal. The second most common is for the real family to be unpleasant people, possibly even the Big Bad. Perhaps this is due to the greater acceptance of adoption today. It used to be extremely taboo and "shameful" to discover that one was adopted. Nowadays the Changeling Fantasy is evolving into dualism; with the main character having one foot in both worlds. Yes, they have a fantastic lineage; but it's their down-to-earth family that ultimately shaped their values. Compare Escapist Character, Ascended Fanboy, Rags to Riches. Often overlaps with Moses in the Bulrushes and/or Switched At Birth and very often I Just Want to Be Special. Related to Door Step Baby aka Foundling, and Separated at Birth. Muggle Foster Parents is a specific subtrope. You may be looking for the Darker and Edgier version known as Changeling Tale, which is the source of the name. A changeling is an elf/troll/gremlin/etc. baby that gets swapped for a human baby and ends up being raised by humans (or the baby is merely abducted and raised by elves). It's very common in medieval folklore. Examples of fairy abduction should go there, not here. It's also a component of The Hero's Journey, especially when a Farm Boy is involved.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)