I hate so-called "cool, calm, and collected" characters being presented as superior beings that are shown being correct so often that the consumer take-away message is that being emotionally cold and abrasive makes them smart too. :reddit-logo: worshiped characters like that pretty much since Digg collapsed and also LARPed as being the same way in their own self-descriptions. The "misanthropic genius asshole flattered by the script and by total screen time" cliche is related to this too.
I'd love a reverse chosen one, where "Some Guy" who put in the work beats the lazy asshole magical prophecy team one by one. They're not secretly the chosen one after all, the gods are actually kind of pissed about it, they just did the readings.
This is more or less the appeal of preptime god Batman as a powerfantasy. There's the unlimited money and resources as a crutch to be sure...but everyone loves to see someone put in the work and mop up the top tiers.
Its good when Batman is shown doing the preptime(or assuming the preptime makes sense given the timeframe and history of a fight, like the classic Batman vs Superman one), but that takes up time and space for shit that isnt fighting so a lot of the time he seems to just make stuff appear or be prescient.
Check out Sir Apropos of Nothing.
this looks great and I'm definitely reading it
One Punch Man! Is about a random dude who trained and inexplicably became the strongest