I get what you're saying. Sometimes contrived works for me though, or at least I don't care. All fiction is at least a little bit contrived, isn't it?
I do like stories about characters after the craziness is over and they're adjusting to normal life (the only original I can think of is RED, which isn't quite the same thing as we're talking about, but it's similar at least in my mind). It's hard to pull off in original fiction, I think, because of all the plot-necessary information about the past. And there's no exposure for it, so authors don't think about it as a plot they can do.
I don't really think of Narnia as having a Chosen One plot. Maybe it's just been too long since I read the books, but I remember the prophecy being vague enough that it could be about any daughters of Eve and sons of Adam (cue fic where they're not the first kids to get sucked into Narnia and try to defeat Jadis, the others just died before they succeeded, and their parents all have to deal with dead/missing/extremely traumatized children).
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I do like stories about characters after the craziness is over and they're adjusting to normal life (the only original I can think of is RED, which isn't quite the same thing as we're talking about, but it's similar at least in my mind). It's hard to pull off in original fiction, I think, because of all the plot-necessary information about the past. And there's no exposure for it, so authors don't think about it as a plot they can do.
I don't really think of Narnia as having a Chosen One plot. Maybe it's just been too long since I read the books, but I remember the prophecy being vague enough that it could be about any daughters of Eve and sons of Adam (cue fic where they're not the first kids to get sucked into Narnia and try to defeat Jadis, the others just died before they succeeded, and their parents all have to deal with dead/missing/extremely traumatized children).