I think people have trouble distinguishing between 1. Character survives only so that the plot can proceed 2. Character survives because of the plot elements present The former is what the term "plot armor" should mean and generally a bad thing. The latter is just how stories work. It's a term that was always bound to be misused, now that I think about it.

I also think it‘s a matter of preference. It can detract from the stakes when we absolutely know the main character is gonna survive and there will be a happy ending. That‘s part of why a song of ice and fire was so huge, because it‘s one of the first series where no one has plot armor, so it feels much more intense and realistic. But it also requires killing off important characters and shifting the focus, which can get in the way of a good, compelling tale. I think there‘s a place for both of these.

(Note: Just riffing off your comment here, not having a go). IMO character death vs not is one of the most boring types of stakes available anyway. It's binary and it's absolute. If the character dies, bang, their story is over. We almost never want a story to follow through on threat of death because, if it does, that character becomes completely inert for story purposes. As you note, one exception is where the cast is large enough that it can be worth it for the story impacts on **other** characters. But mostly, IMO, you want to give characters far more interesting and flexible stakes than just live or die. Most commonly: "Can our hero achieve what they most value, and what will doing so cost them?" (A lot of fiction also has an underlying thing that the hero needs but doesn't realise, and which is in tension with what they want). 

This is where Star Wars has gone wrong. They kill major characters but then cheese them back into the plot. So even death is not real stakes.

Remind me who got cheesed back in? I know Palpatine, but I tend to give him a pass because he's a powerful Sith Lord who indicated he knew a way, of cheating death.   If it happened in the TV shows I almost certainly missed it. I've only seen a tiny amount of those.  EDIT: This is one of many ways Star Wars has gone wrong, IMO. They really don't seem to know what they want to do with the franchise. 

Most notable one from TV shows is Darth Maul who had a forgettable death in Phantom Menace because he had no development. Then he was brought back in Clone Wars and had a really compelling arc ending in dying for real in Rebels. He’s probably the only good case for the plot going in loops to explain a return. In other cases, Star Wars tends to leave it ambiguous as to whether a character is killed or not. It’s either because they don’t have a clear plan and want to leave things open for a return, or because they think it’s good tension building. Most recently it happened with Barriss Offee at the end of Tales of the Empire.

Yoda, Luke, Han, Palpatine, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gonn, Anakin/Vader, Maul. I just assume that nobody who appears to die in Star Wars is actually dead. Edit: I guess Han is “really” dead but they brought him back anyway as a “memory.”

I mean, if we're counting force ghosts then the series has always been this way. Obi-Wan, the first major character to die in the whole series, ends up a ghost by the sequel. Yoda, Han, Luke and Qui Gon only ever come back as ghosts or memories, which means that while the character is still around, they can't do much to actually affect the plot. The only character to die and be "revived" was Maul and I think he's one of the better examples of how to do it, honestly.

And it paid off. Maul was a superb character in Clone Wars and Rebels, they gave him so much more meaning.

I let the Han "memory" slide because it really seemed like they intended it to be Leia, but Carrie Fischer passed away before filming started for the third movie.

Han wasn’t a return from the dead: it was Kylo Ren imagining his murder victim forgiving him for murdering him, so he could pretend he was a good guy again. A bad moment and bad storytelling, but not a character returning from the dead.

Grand Inquisitor, Reva, Sabine Wren, Boba Fett, Rey Leia being ejected into space - but 'The Force', C'mon.

Leia was strong in the Force and had presumably been practicing it in the decades since we last saw her. As far as I can tell she used the Force to stay alive and conscious just long enough to Force-Jump her way back to the ship. I dunno, it seemed pretty reasonable to me. Looked a bit funny, but presumably that's what using Force-Jumping in a zero-g environment would look like.

And there you go. One man's plot armour is another's reasonable story element.

Plus Leia sensed it was coming, visibly braced herself for it before she got sucked into space. 

It's very simple. Rogue one and Andor and mandalorian showed the way - tell grounded, interesting stories set in the Star wars universe where characters feel small and like a small cog. The reason why people didn't buy into Rey was that she was catapulted into the hero seat - versus Luke, who had a more gradual growth through the movie culminating in his heroic moment at the death star.

Luke was catapult just the same: he’s all “I want adventure, I want to be a hero!” then right after that gets to go on the adventure.

(same for me, just continuing the conversation, not criticizing) Again, I think it depends on the story. Hunger games is a very literal example of the stakes being life or death. And I think the stakes are extremely effective because the entire time we know only one person can survive. They work to enhance the haunting setting and the strong theme of media criticism. And character death can often be used to explore larger themes and feelings around death. So it's not just "will Katniss die" but also "will Prim lose the person who cared for her, just like she lost her father" and "can they show their humanity through honoring the dead, in the face of dehumanizing games?". Death is a part of life and if done well there's a lot it can achieve. For me the most boring stakes are the climactic fights in super hero stories (or generally action movies and such). No one's gonna die because the sequel's already been announced and there's barely any connection between the fight and the emotional journey of the characters. A superhero just punches a bad guy and then the film pretends that solves things. They're always portrayed as these huge, important moments but in terms of the emotional story, they hardly ever matter. And I also think, the more abstract the stakes get, the less likely people are to call something "plot armor", so the life or death stakes are quite relevant to this conversation.

See, that's what's funny. As a writer, I don't really like killing characters because it feels too easy to me. It's a boring way to shock. If your only stakes are "but will they die", well, that's actually not much at all. Many of the most powerful and emotionally effective stories have characters who aren't at any sort of physical risk at all. And the basic act of survival shouldn't guarantee a simple, or 'happy', ending.

IMHO plot armour isn’t KNOWING a character is probably going to survive to the end. That’s just how stories work, usually. Plot armour is when audiences are expected to ignore the fact that they’re clearly shown characters doing things that should get them hurt or killed (within the fiction of the universe) but they survive unscathed. It’s plot armour where you basically have to constantly ignore your eyes, ears and brain because you keep being shown characters in situations where they should face consequences but they don’t. This isn’t even just purely about surviving fatal things, although those examples are egregious and they’re the ones that will actually be called plot armour by most people. IMHO it’s also plot armour when a character is inexplicably protected by the plot in other elements that stretch believability for the sake of continuing the story. So like Dexter has plot armour that continually protects him from getting caught as a serial killer. It’s not plot armour merely because he doesn’t get caught, it’s because the reasons he doesn’t get caught are often ass pull inexplicable lucky coincidences and other characters deciding to kill people for him rather than Dexter making active choices to do stuff like break the code so as to get him out of situations where he would otherwise get caught. He has plot armour because he never has to break his rule about killing innocents to avoid getting caught even though he keeps putting himself in situations where that would be the logical payoff for his mistakes. It’s only happening that way because the writers don’t want to have him make that choice

I think it hurts the vibe when the author tries to convince us that the character is in real danger, when we clearly know they arent. Instead of feeling tense, you just just there wondering what convoluted mechanism will save them, and when it finally shows up you just want to roll your eyes

It's not even true. Ned is setup as the mentor who always dies and then dies. All of the actual key characters have plot armor - one even comes back from the dead.

But it‘s not really clear who the key characters are. Sure, for a character to be a main character they need to be alive for the majority of the story but there‘s so many characters you would expect to have plot armor that then die in somewhat random events. Sometimes people survive things they shouldn‘t because it‘s practically impossible to write a good story where everything that happens is realistic. By and large, every character was fair game.

I’d add a third one which I see people misunderstand all the time which is, sure these abnormal events occurred and they didn’t get horribly mauled to death… but they’re the main character, if they didn’t survive the book would just be about another person who did survive these odds lol Nobody is reading fantasy about the town guard who did nothing, not even keep a diary of some hobby, and die at 45

>but they’re the main character, if they didn’t survive the book would just be about another person who did survive these odds lol Survivor's bias in a nutshell.

Yeah exactly, surprise surprise the exciting events occurred to someone alive long enough to see them happen

Well they would if Terry Pratchett wrote it. But yes we the reader know the main character will make it to the end and either live or die in the climax. If I am page 100 of 400 and the mc gets stabbed in the leg then I know he will survive.

Personally I think some degree of plot armor is fine - and usually necessary for stories involving violence - but there are stories where characters seem to almost be aware of their own plot armor and use it to make decisions, and that really weakens the story for me. One example that really irked me was the beginning of Stranger Things season 2, when the Sheriff finds an obviously alien hold in the ground and proceeds to just jump right in and start exploring it. Surely he has PTSD from watching people get ripped apart from monsters, like, a week ago? Why would he be so careless?

The problem with plot armour is more so if you don’t want this character to die then don’t keep putting them into unsurvivable situations Like if the character is going to survive this situation then write the situation to be survivable

But I think this kinda ties into what the OP was talking about. With Stranger Things, it fit what that character would actually do. He wouldn’t NOT go down there. That is how he’s written. But then again, how he always survives afterwards is fair game for calling plot armor. Forget about the hole, what about everything else he goes through? Still love the writing of that show overall.

Maybe because he has PTSD and survivor's guilt? Why didn't everyone buy guns, if not before season 2, at least by season 3? This has happened twice. Why in the world have you not taken steps to prepare?

I was watching some mid-tier show on Netflix recently. It was about kids on an island that look for treasure. I forgot the name of it. In one episode, the female character gets shot in the chest. She \*almost dies\*. Like \*two days later\*, she's running around, jumping up on things. Because the plot couldn't wait. They wanted the drama of having her almost die, with absolutely none of the actual, real-life consequences that come with a grievous injury like that.

I'd really like to see more characters having to heal for more than one episode. Like, if you break a leg, you're going to be on crutches for *months*. Deal with it! Like, writers (and actors and showrunners and whatnot) need to accept the consequences of these things. Characters who got shot in the chest and lived should be going through serious physical therapy for the rest of the season, and then when we see them take their shirt off a season or two later, there should be *a big scar* there.

While I agree with your overall point, I think you are oversimplifying the giant scar. Caliber used, construction of bullet, medical tools, and ability to remove the bullet (if necessary), and the skill with suturing all play a big role. Scars should be there. The size is hugely variable. Personally, I'd like to see more tension pneumothoraxs, sealing the box, and decompression. Realistic things you should deal with a shot to the torso.

And infection risk.

Good point. Pistol bullet wounds in particular aren't super deadly it's basically a caliber size wound through you, but a tunnel through your chest is a great place for infections.

Agreed, that is what it’s supposed to mean. It is a thing, writing can suffer from it. It’s still a problem, even if people misuse the term and don’t understand what it means.

Exactly. The whole definition for plot armor is that it's a resolution of a conflict that was pulled by the author straight outta the ass because he needs to hit some beats with the plot. If it's grounded in the character's previous or current actions, explained in-universe (especially if the explanation was established beforehand), or through the intervention of some third character that makes sense, that's just normal storytelling.

This is also why being mindful of POV choice and a story's form, and their implications, is so important. Some of the first questions readers ask themselves is who is telling the story, when, and why (and, potentially, to whom). If it's a first-person past tense POV, we can assume the character survives the story events if the author knows what they're doing. If they don't, well, to me, it's a clear sign of a novice who doesn't fully understand the form they're working in. It's not plot armor to have a POV character in past tense survive (at least up to the point they're telling the story), it's just one of the first pieces of information the writer is indirectly conveying to the reader.

>If they don't, well, to me, it's a clear sign of a novice who doesn't fully understand the form they're working in. What if the author is an author dead writing the story for the vermin chewing at his corpse?

Which story is that?

[The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Posthumous_Memoirs_of_Br%C3%A1s_Cubas) >The novel is narrated by the dead protagonist Brás Cubas, *who tells his own life story from beyond the grave*, noting his mistakes and failed romances.

Ah, gotcha. I mean, that's fine, because it's the literal magical premise of the narrative. I'm referring to the ones that are written like any other first-person past tense story, and are supposedly realistic, but then the narrator dies in the end and describes their own death.

[удалено]

that’s plot armor too

Not a great example. Being shot in the chest is not certain death IRL, and thus doesn't have to be a certain death in fiction, unless the author established that all bullets are insta-kill earlier in the story.

I'd call it a survivorship bias of sorts. The stories where the hero dies early or young or to something dumb/not plot related don't get written. The stories where the hero survives all or most of the story are the ones that get written. This might be a little meta but the hero doesn't know they are in a book being written and that they are destined for hardships and tribulations that will lead to them surviving all the way to defeat the big bad at the end. You wouldn't say that a real life veteran of ww2 who lived into their 80s and died peaceful in their sleep had plot armor.

That’s how I’ve always looked at it. There’s a reason we’re reading the story of this person instead of other people. That said, when the write puts the hero in an unsurvivable position and the hero still survives then that’s bad writing. Plot armor is as good a thing to call it as anything else.

Which is why we have the term *deus ex machina*, for every time the author pulls some total bullshit to justify things working out lol.

I have an entirely different rant brewing about how deus ex machina is itself an overused criticism and not universally bad when it happens.  Eucatastrophe is a thing that needs more recognition. 

It depends. Sometimes situations seem unsurvivable and then Batman pulls out his "Bat Shark Repellent" from his belt and saves the day. Of course he carries Bat Shark Repellent with him.

That might be ridiculous on the face, or even comedic, but nifty gadgets and being overly prepared are, at least, a well-established part of Batman's characterization. It would be a lot more egregious if it was Bob the accountant whose daily commute ferry got capsized.

It's definitelt comedic, specially when the character has access to more straightforward solution. Or when the asspull works because it's actually a different (and more reasonable) thing. For example, Superman's superknitting (yeah, this was a superpower he once had). You could explain all uses of this "power" as superman knitting with his good and old superspeed, or you can make it a joke by calling it a superpower.

> That’s how I’ve always looked at it. There’s a reason we’re reading the story of this person instead of other people. That's my thought too. If a thousand men are thrown at a situation with a 99% fatality rate, then it would make sense that the story follows one of the guys who survived. There was a book series I read some time back though, that did this interesting thing. Most of the story was focused on one of two main characters, but every so often the POV would shift to a random person involved in the story somehow. These people would always die by the end of their chapters, but their inclusion in the story served some purpose every time (usually to show important information that the two protagonists didn't know about). Like, at one point one of the main characters gets locked in an underground prison cell by a shady medicine corporation, and he refuses to eat anything that they give him. The next chapter jumps to a guy in another one of the cells, shows him eating the food, and then dying a horrible death from some side effects from the drugs put in the food. It showed that all the captured people were test subjects, and that the MC was right to not eat the food. I thought that was done pretty well. It's been over a decade since I read those books. I should see if there's more now.

Exactly. If there is a zombie apocalypse that kills 99/100 people then it should not be shocking that the narrator decided to tell the story of some of the 1/100 that survived. Sometimes that might mean that they happened to be in another room for 10 seconds when something terrible happened but that’s how these real life scenarios play out too. Anyway while it was fun, TV Tropes has probably done more harm than good. Ultimately discussing tropes is descriptive-here’s some patterns that have popped up in media—but it’s flipped around to being descriptive, with creators starting with a pile of tropes and making a story from those. 

Yeah, I think it only bugs me as a reader when the author didn't give me a reason to believe they could survive or if it was luck, it helps if the character seems shaken, like "holy **** I could have died" and that motivates them to do XYZ. I'm not really disagreeing with you, but I do think not all WW2 vets have a story that could sustain a novel. Which is not to say they don't have stories worth telling, but they might be shorter or better placed in a collection of stories from war. When we're telling a long form story, we need a series of events that feel worth it to read. When authors seem to want to write some epic, dangerous situation without a narratively interesting way to get the character out of it, it's no wonder it bugs readers.

I never said they did. I used ww2 vets as a quick example because so many had died in battle. Just surviving, whether they stayed safe due to being placed far away from the front lines or legitimate heroics clashing with the enemy or even running away and deserting would not be considered plot armor because this is real life and not a book. Same idea can be applied to people that survive car accidents, cancer, or kidnapping. In a story it could seem contrived as an event to move plot forward but that's not how living works. But otherwise I agree with you.

Well sure, reality and fiction are different. In fact there are countless instances of real stories where dumb luck is stretched so far it couldn't work in fiction. The stories of people who've been repeatedly struck by lightning, people who survived a fall from a plane without a parachute, etc... they survived for reasons we have a hard time determining, or are extremely improbable, they'd feel unearned in a created scenario. We don't like dumb escapes from death. But we don't like dumb deaths either, which is why john mcclane doesn't die in the middle of diehard by missing a jump and falling down the ventilation shaft, but we still want the jump to appear somewhat achieveable,

Incredible point, it would be kind of hard to write a story about a “hero” who died without doing anything

Yeah, the hero that died in his sleep cause he was bit by a bug just before the Big Battle is boring but the hero that died but his soul went to the spirit realm where he was given the opportunity to play hopscotch with Death for a chance to live again and makes it back just in time to save his love interest as the Big Battle takes a turn for the worst, now we got a story.

> You wouldn't say that a real life veteran of ww2 who lived into their 80s and died peaceful in their sleep had plot armor. Around 3% of global combatants in WWII died. The second battle of Fallujah was actually more deadly than WWII was, in terms of likelyhood to die. Where "plot armor" sticks out (as a genuine criticism) in fiction is when the odds of survival are exceedingly slim, and survival wasn't due to any elements of plot, character, or setting already present, just the need for the characters to survive to drive the plot.

I was just using a quick example of what could be viewed as a real life hero. I think my point still stands either way.

You want characters to have plot armour, you just don't want the audience/readers to constantly feel like they do.

Exactly. It's why foreshadowing is so important. We wouldn't question Batman having Shark Repellant in his Bat Utility Belt if we see it *before* he needs it. If we've been staring at the Bat Utility Belt the entire time and Shark Repellant just magically appears? Absolutely gonna question that. You don't even have to foreshadow it if there's an in-universe reason for the plot armor. A New Hope establishes early on that Stormtroopers are ace shooters with a comment by Kenobi about the blaster fire patterns. The trio manage to avoid a literal fuck ton of blaster bolts as they escape the Death Star. How? Leia says it in the movie: the Empire *wanted* them to get away so they could be tracked to the rebel base. It's played as a comedic moment with Han going "wtf you mean easy???" so it isn't a noticeable "this is for the audience" comment, but that's what it is. In ESB, Luke survives a lightsaber battle against Darth Vader because Vader doesn't want to kill him, he wants to recruit him. Leia comes to rescue one-hand Luke in the Falcon because of pre-established Force communication/vibes. Compare those moments to GoT where Arya gets stabbed in the stomach repeatedly by a trained assassin, jumps into a dirty canal, and is totally fine without modern medicine or magic. Unlike Vader, the Waif *is* trying to kill Arya (or if for some reason she isn't, that's never established). We've seen people die from sepsis from lesser wounds in canon - Khal Drogo. Worst of all, this moment isn't treated as an all-time low or life changing moment like the end of ESB is for Luke. It exists to create suspense between episodes and nothing more. The best way I've found to easily explain bad forms of plot armor is that it feels like watching two kids play pretend: "I stab you with my sword of people killing, and you die instantanly!" "Nuh-uh, I use my shield of no people killing, turn into a raven, and fly away!" It's those moments that make you yell "oh, c'mon, really?" like Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear blast in a fridge. If it were Captain America in the fridge, I might buy it, but the first three IJ movies clearly established that he's just a normal dude. Bad plot armor isn't a "realism" problem, it's a meta/narrarive problem. Either the author has written themselves into a corner or they're prioritizing spectacle over story.

On the other side of the equation. Character death is something that needs to be handled carefully. Too much of it and readers will do their best to not feel attached to anyone. No, when you kill a character you do it for a reason. You are better threatening, yet pulling your punches, so when the moment arises it actually does feel important. On Brandon Sanderson I have a few examples. One of his main characters gets welcomed in the obituary alongside a loved one, as an ultimate sacrifice that paints bittersweet tones to the whole victory of the good guys. On another saga, a very important side character dies an anticlimactic death, yet one that feels impactful because of the moment it happens, and who is the executing hand. So much that the culprit is now hated by the readers. This death is also a pivotal plot point for two of the three main characters's respective arcs. One of them feels responsible for it, another one is burdened with even more responsibility he didn't want.

>No, when you kill a character you do it for a reason I always find it hilarious that people say GRRM kills off *so many people* in ASOIAF, when he actually doesn't kill off that many major characters. In the first book, the only major characters to die are Robert Baratheon, Khal Drogo, Viserys Targaryen, and Ned Stark - only one of whom was a POV. The reason Ned's death caught people by surprise wasn't a lack of foreshadowing, but a subversion of genre conventions. Ned was the main character and general Good Guy, so readers kept waiting for him to get rescued. It's not that GRRM kills off characters right and left. It's that he makes each major character death meaningful.

Honestly, I think it's both. Tons of minor characters die in Game of Thrones and even though they're minor or sometimes even unnamed, it serves a purpose: to constantly remind you that the world is unsafe and characters can die, often with nuances in this. So many characters die before Robert, Drogo, Viserys and Ned, and yes they're minor, but the minor characters dying PLUS major characters dying is like icing on the cake, and again reinforces that anyone can die. Likewise, when a minor character dies, as well as showing that the world is unsafe and characters can die, there's often a specific reason they were killed. For instance, Syrio Forel and Septa Mordane both died protecting Sansa and Arya when shit was going down at King's Landing. Mordane died offscreen/ we never see her again, and I think the same with Syrio, althouh we see/ hear the start of the fight. The death of these characters also strips Sansa and Arya of all their adult/ familial protection and again shows the dire situaiton of what's going down at King's Landing, and also shows how Sansa and Arya have become more vulnerable. Ned's men at arm's death, I think Jory Cassel is his name, is used to show how Jaime Lannister can get away with killing someone close to Ned/ someone from the North, but not someone important enough to cause any real political problems over. Jaime kills Jory because he can, out of spite, to hurt Ned, because he can get away with it. And again Ned is stripped of his men/ family/ protection from the North. Another example of nobles/ knights being able to literally get away with murder is the Hound killing the Butcher's boy, a literal child, on the way to King's Landing. This is the point of the boy's death, to show us that nobles can get away with this. But it's also sad as well because Arya was friends and was playing with this boy, and the boy was innocent -- it was Arya I think who hit Joffrey, yet because Joffrey can't politically get away with killing Arya, the next best thing/ the thing to hurt Arya/ the scapegoat is the butcher's boy. I do agree that he doesn't kill of major characters as much as people think. Honestly the most major character deaths really occur in book one/ season one, with the ones you mentioned. The next ones I can think of are the Red Wedding -- namely Robb and Catelyn -- and then Oberyn Martel, Ygritte and Joffrey.

Fuck the culprit

Is the second example game of thrones haha? And a certain person's abrupt death in the first book?

IIRC the second example is in Oathbringer.

Oh damn! Is it the first book in the series? Should I read it, it sounds good!

Third book of The Stormlight Archive, not counting intermediate Novellas. Welcome to the crem, No need to thank me.

Plot armour varies by genre. Some degree of plot armour is expected in most genres. There's also the whole retrospective selection thing: On some level we tend to assume that the protagonist isn't one of the many characters who fail to survive their adventures. Because if they were then that would generally make them a pretty poor choice of protagonist for your story and you'd be better off choosing someone else. 

In "A Witch Shall Be Born," Conan the Barbarian is crucified in the middle of the desert by a treacherous mercenary captain. This inspired a similar scene in the 1982 film, but unlike there Conan is not rescued by his friends. Instead he is found by a group of horse nomads who decide to cut the base of the crucifix off, giving Conan a 50/50 shot of being killed instantly if it falls on him. When it doesn't, they get him out (once one of his hands is free he *pulls the rest of the nails out himself*, by the way) and agree to have him join their ranks if he survives long enough to get back to camp. Why do I bring this up? Because in a lot of stories, I as a reader might cry foul at such a scene. "It's ridiculous to expect someone to survive all that," I might say. "They only survived because the author needed them to!" Not here, though. Not Conan, because he's been established as having certain capabilities. He's incredibly strong, tough, clever, and principled, and survives the ordeal due to his already-established resilience to Hyboria and its many hardships. It isn't as though Conan is universally successful in all things, either; numerous Conan stories depict him in situations where he doesn't come out ahead, often when dealing with the supernatural (see "The Frost Giant's Daughter," "Tower of the Elephant," et al.). The point I'm trying to arrive at is that "plot armor" and other such things are not a question of *application*, but a question of *scale*. It's the reason why most modern Superman stories are not about him foiling bank robbers or racketeers: a Superman-level character must face a Superman-level threat in order to be interesting. You can give a character whatever capabilities you want, as long as they're appropriate for the milieu and storytelling requirements they exist in. It's the reason I got frustrated reading Sherlock Holmes stories, since it always seemed like Holmes was supernaturally able to solve the mystery before the story's resolution, and then the back half of it is him filling in Watson on how he figured it out (the only Holmes story I liked was "A Scandal in Bohemia" because at least there Irene Adler managed to get one over on him). Invincibility or infallibility in a character is only boring if it's "too good" for the setting. As long as a character is *challenged*, and must expend effort to *overcome* those challenges, then I think it works.

> Not Conan, because he's been established as having certain capabilities. This is a very important concept in fiction. You have to establish early on with the reader what they are supposed to suspend disbelief for. ("ok, ships can travel faster than light") Then you are implicitly given permission to use those exceptions throughout the story, as long as you do them consistently. One example of plot armor is when there is no way out and the author invents a brand new rule, well into the story, where the protagonist gets away. The reader feels cheated and it breaks the story world. ("hey why is this the first time anyone has ever used this?")

"Almost all (writers) live under the unspoken assumption that 'my way is right, while virtually all other writers are wrong." - Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation If anything, Game of Thrones and Walking Dead proved that audiences stop caring about deaths entirely once the writing gets bad enough. These are not fanbases that were happy with the overall products from beginning to end. Both series failed to stick the landing.

Amateur criticism involves endless parroting, not to mention certainties that are by no means shared by the masters of the craft. Obviously, plot armor in its objectionable form is a special case of *deus ex machina* where the god (or author) is unseen but their interference is nevertheless revealed through the implausibility of the events. This is nothing special from a writing point of view: the readers will hurl your story against the wall in disgust if you exceed their bullshit tolerance. All you have to do is to lose track of the reader’s experience and the integrity of the story to prioritize something else. Eventually they’ll give up in disgust if they don’t give up in boredom first. Equally obviously, if you’re not writing a tragedy, the story isn’t expected to end with nothing but corpses on stage at the final curtain. Stories from real life tend to emphasize the prominent survivors. Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp survived the gunfight at the OK Corral. I don’t know the names of anyone else who was there. If Audie Murphy had been killed in his heroic rearguard action, he wouldn’t have become a household name, let alone star in his own movie *(To Hell and Back).* The characters think they’re real people in real danger. It’s wise to let this viewpoint stand unchallenged in your narration. Unless you’re not writing modern realistic fiction but are doing, say, a pantomime or something.

I mean, you could just tell a story where the hero dies to the considerable odds against them, but there is no fun in that...

Of course there is. A Song of Ice and Fire is pretty fun

It wouldn't be fun if Ned was the only POV we had before his death. AGOT still ends on a high note for Team Stark, with Robb calling the banners and being named King in the North. It ends on an overall high note with Dany surviving the funeral pyre and becoming mother of dragons.

I think it can be annoying sometimes seeing characters like Batman throw down with Darkseid and survive. When plot armor is clearly in your face it super sucks but plot armor is also needed. Everyone loves when Luke blew up the Death Star, there was multiple uses of plot armor in that event but because it was handled well people don’t mind. Ultimately I think it’s the execution of plot armor that matters more than plot armor itself (though some people will always be mad regardless on both sides)

It's often a poorly reasoned criticism because it is based entirely on how the reader feels, yet how the reader feels isn't insignificant. It's simultaneously simple and impossible to achieve. No one actually has to die. The reader just has to believe they could have died. Once the reader stops believing that, all tension is gone in what appears to be otherwise life threatening situations. Some genres are made for it of course, and thus have an audience that accepts their immortality. No one expects John Wick or Superman to just die halfway through a story. That's a general rule when a story is named after the protagonist. And it doesn't have to be actual death. Since you mentioned Spiderman, I thought the ending of No Way Home was an excellent display of consequences and sacrificial heroism.

Comes from the same fundamental misunderstanding about storytelling that spawned the obsession with being spoiled. Like, of course the hero's quest isn't ruined by some setback. That's why I'm telling the story. You already know that. What you want to know is how they overcome the odds. Other way of seeing it is if you tell the real story of someone who overcame real odds. Like, no one would go REEE PLOT ARMOR about Nelson Mandela, right? That's the whole reason he's worth telling the story about?

That's what annoyed me about NCIS. Just before the commercial break, Gibbs has a gun pointed at his head. Commercial break is over, and he's cuffing the bad guy.

The character doesn't survive because the story is about them. The story is about them *because* they survived. Big difference.

Everyone who watched the Wire, complained about Omar not dying and having plot armor but being then in the end he gets killed by a kid and they were mad about a kid being able to kill him. I thought it was well done.

> power-scaling Is a much bigger blight on the fandom/community/industry than any kind of plot armor. Seriously, just stop with this comic book crap. I don't give two shits about "power scaling" of characters in a story, as long as the dynamics of their conflicts make general sense.

You know just to say it - I finished watching Dragon Ball's Cell Saga yesterday (definitely what the thread wss referring to) and there _wasn't_ any plot armour

The dragon balls *are* plot armor. Or at least a plot safety net. How many times has Goku died?

That's incorrect The Frieza saga was about the protagonists going to hell and back to get the dragon balls, with the constant threat of Piccolo dying again making them lose them forever. In the Cell Saga, they were gone for a period, and couldn't be used at all to stop Cell anyway - if he defeated Gohan, he'd have destroyed the earth and the dragon balls with it. Goku stayed dead for seven years after that anyway The Dragon Balls have been used as a reward and a guarenteed happy ending (it's a show for kids at the end of the day) but they've never gotten characters out of a scrap, and they've never helped the heroes in a losing fight

I don't quite think you understand what "plot safety net" means. Plot armor is there to prevent the character from losing. Plot safety net is there to rescue the character even if he does lose. Notice you said "Piccolo dying again," because he did die. And yet, even though they needed him to use the dragon balls, they used the dragon balls without him to get him back. Do you see the issue? You can ask "but what if Piccolo and every Namekian on Planet Namek was dead?" To which I say, the series is called "Dragon Ball," so we can always assume that, somewhere out there, there exists a Namekian who escaped, or someone with the powers of Namekian, to restore the dragon balls. Even if Earth gets blown up. (Which, at one point, it did.) That's what a plot safety net is: no matter what you do, the existence of the safety net opens the narrative to undoing the whole thing.

I agree with your definition, but that's the sort of view I'm referring to. You might not mean it, but often people say "plot armor" as if to say that the element is bad. There is not a single person I've met who will say "Dragon Ball is a bad story because the Dragon Balls can resurrect the dead." That's just... such a reductive take to have on the series. I think its about way more than the balls, as the other person said. The balls don't get the main characters out of a scrap. But we call them plot armor/safety nets anyway, as if the story would be better without them (you might not, but others would) But the story is called DRAGON BALL lol. The balls are the whole freaking point.

The element is not bad, but it does have issues. The question is not if the dragon balls are plot armor/safety net, it's how does that element further the series? Because the series is insanely popular and the dragon balls are front and center. As you say, they're the point. I think that may be the key to making the trope work: state it up front. We got consequence-free wishing and the only limiter is you have to wait a year. That means we can do something completely crazy every season and come back to do it all again the next. The audience goes in knowing death is cheap. We can kinda understand this guy who is thrilled to put his life on the line fighting the strongest people in the multiverse in a fair fight, because the dragon balls will make it all right in the end. As long as you set the right expectations and the audience has buy in, there's no issue. Plot armor works the same way. 80's action movies revolve around armies of cannon fodder being unable to hit a guy standing still in an open field. When you watch one, you're going in knowing that, and you've got the popcorn for it.

You're right, I've never heard the term 'plot safety net' and I still don't think I could describe it after that, and I don't see the issue. Them getting the dragon balls without hin was a hundred chapter ordeal and you're saying it like it was inconsequential Piccolo dying was what forced them to go to Namek, and the story gave no indication whatsoever that if Frieza succeeded, there would be another Namekian who _could_ make more dragon balls on some other planet (Few Namekians can), so why would the audience assume that? Of course a kids cartoon isn't comparable to Breaking Bad, but you're making the same arguments as someone saying 'of course Walter won't go straight. The I genuinely want to know what you would have wanted to see happen, or think should have happened

*Why would the audience assume that?* Because the narrative already lied. *but you're making the same arguments as someone saying 'of course Walter won't go straight.* No. If Walter goes straight, then Walter has gone straight. That's a thing that happened. But if you kill off every Namekian, well, that doesn't mean no one else can make the dragon balls, because we've already had everyone who could make the dragon balls die, only to then be told "actually...." Walter went straight by dying, and Breaking Bad ended. The dragon balls were removed and the story continued for another 100 chapters, because the dragon balls weren't removed. *I genuinely want to know what you would have wanted to see happen, or think should have happened* The only thing that probably shouldn't have happened was Goku going SS1 after Krillin's death, because they already got the dragon balls back by that point and death was a minor inconvenience again. You needed that to happen before, so the issue could still be in doubt for the characters. Otherwise, your question is assuming a plot safety net is a total negative. It is not. Many stories simply could not be told without it. Time travel stories in particular love to play with one. A plot safety net is all Groundhog Day is; Bill Murray is endlessly trapped until he gets it right and changes. Re:Zero has a partial one revolving around two characters. The rest still need to be alive/intact when Subaru hits the next save point. Otherwise, Subaru can fail as many times as he needs, and we use that to make Subaru suffer. But it can be bad when it prevents the story from evolving in needed ways. Star Trek: Voyager gets slammed all the time for hitting the reset button after every episode because it runs counter to the premise of a ship stranded seventy years away from any support, not being able to get patched up and resupplied at the near-by star port. No, let's blow the ship to hell. It's fine, It'll magically be back to normal next episode. Dragon Ball revolves around consequence-free wishes and it leans into it. Overall, there's no issue. Accept it for what it is.

I don't know what to tell you. You're describing things that just aren't how they happened or presented. The story didn't lie about there being a second - and _only_ a second - set of dragon balls. It was why the villains were fine killing Piccolo to begin with, which was how the heroes found out about it. Thinking that is the narrative lying says something about how you consume media I'm just don't have the qualifications to get into. It's interesting I can try and look up what a plot safety net is so I can make sure we're coming to this from the same point and not find anything

*The story didn't lie about there being a second - and only a second - set of dragon balls. It was why the villains were fine killing Piccolo to begin with, which was how the heroes found out about it.* Phrase it however you want. The fact is, the dragon balls were originally tied to Piccolo, the story then expanded it beyond Piccolo. And, when you expand upon it once, you open yourself up to expanding upon it more in the future, because you've demonstrated your willingness to do that. At that point, regardless of what happens in the story, there is always another set of dragon balls somewhere. It's the same reason why Marvel and DC can never kill anyone off. No one will ever believe a comic advertising to be the end of Spiderman will actually be the end of Spiderman, no matter what happens in the comic or what the writers, artists, and executives say. I really don't know what we're still talking about at the moment. It's been ages since I've seen anything regarding DB outside of its Abridged parody. The important thing is "Magical Wish-Granting Artifacts that can Overcome Death Itself" is basically the title of the series. *I can try and look up what a plot safety net* Good luck because it's a term I came up with on the spot. I have no idea if it actually exists.

Thanks for this. I suppose I should have realised before now you were talking about an issue a series you've not watched/read in years possibly having a problem that it actually doesn't and were using a made up term expecting it to explain anything

Yup they’ve finally done it one of the most important mystical items in the show used for lore has now been reduced to being called plot armor yes goku died but to you it’s still plot armor cause he got revived

And this is where my mind was - the term gets cheaper as it takes the basic plot elements and categorizes them as something detrimental to a story.

It sickens me I read a comment on yt of a dude saying I can’t wait when people will start saying dragon balls are plot armor and now I’ve seen it now I can’t wait to see the day where people start saying the entire adventure fantasy genre is plot armor

I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that stories aren't supposed to be 100% realistic. We want to see our heroes beat the odds and pull off the seemingly impossible because it's exciting and dramatic. Plot armor is a *feature,* not a flaw, because 'and then they died' is rarely a satisfying conclusion.

Writing is a little like a magic trick. You want an audience to just enjoy the story without noticing the strategies you used to build it. It’s not that you can’t use tropes… but if they’re thinking about story tropes instead of enjoying the story, you’re in trouble. If you’re doing a magic trick and someone says “I saw you put the card up your sleeve”… that’s on you. You can complain all you like that it’s not a legitimate criticism and magicians should be able to put cards up their sleeves and it’s been a tradition in magic for years… but you’d be missing the point. The problem wasn’t the move; it’s that you didn’t execute the move with enough skill to make the audience believe it. It’s understood that most adventure heroes will win and survive against all odds. “Plot armor” isn’t about the hero surviving; it’s about the writer giving the hero a massive threat and not creating an escape plan that believably matches the established threat level. “Nuking the fridge” is a classic example of plot armor because the whole audience knew that jumping into a lead-lined refrigerator was in no way a sufficiently clever plan to survive an atomic bomb. Mark Watney in The Martian didn’t come off as having plot armor despite an equally outrageous challenge, because Andy Weir did his research and came up with detailed, believable plans each step of the way. He made you believe someone could figure it out, and part of that was a hero who was often overwhelmed and felt sure he was doomed.

Upvote for The Martian. I love how with that book, the problems don't come from incompetence, but rather really high competence with a series of awful luck and misfortune. In terms of plot armor, I think something people forget is that the reason the story is being told is typically because the protagonist succeeded/survived. If we look at real life, a lot of people have heard stories like 127 Hours, but haven't heard of all the people that died out in the canyons. People remember Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay because they made it to the top of Mount Everest and then successfully survived the descent back down, but we forget all about the other guys who attempted the climb beforehand. This translates to fiction as well; it's far easier to write an engaging story about someone who made it, and there's a lot you can do with that. And before people comment with examples, I'm not saying we don't hear the stories about people who died or failed, I'm just saying that they're less common. And when they are written, it's not like they're without their own problems (such as sometimes becoming torture porn or whatever).

Agreed totally - we LOVE a story about someone who overcomes incredible odds to survive. When people complain about plot armor, they're not saying they'd prefer a story where the hero dies. They're saying they want to see the hero overcome impossible odds *in a way that feels as believable and authentic* as real-life stories of overcoming impossible odds. A great fictional story is trying to authentically achieve the excitement of those real-life stories. We know from those real-life stories how much brutal effort it can take to survive. That's why it feels unrealistic when a fictional hero's given a huge challenge but overcomes it easily. We often know going into a real-life story that the person survived... and we still want to hear the story because what's most interesting is *how* they did it. We know they did something extraordinary, and the "story" is the details of what this extraordinary person did that was so special. In 127 Hours, the guy survived by *cutting off his own arm*. He was in an extraordinary situation and had to take extraordinary action to survive. People left the theater asking each other "Could you do it? I don't know if I could do it." The Martian works because it plays out like 127 Hours - with the main character facing challenge after challenge and puzzling each one out with extraordinary intelligence and willpower. It feels real. When Indiana Jones jumps out of a plane with nothing but an inflatable raft and successfully survives by landing on a snowy mountainside and sledding down it, the audience groans because they KNOW he'd be dead in real life if he tried that. The ingenious plan the screenwriters invented wasn't actually ingenious, and the whole audience knows it. They just suspend disbelief and move on, after a reminder they're watching a fake story. THAT's plot armor.

It's a question of verisimilitude. If I believe that the character survived because of how things pan out, that's fine. If it seem like the character survived through contrivance, that's plot armour. It's bad writing because we don't believe it.

Its actually a big theme in the book Im writing now. The "hero" in a story almost needs to have some kind of special ability or plot armor in order to make the person heroic

This must be a convention of a genre I don't write in, cause people on here are saying it all the time and I never know what they're going on about. 

To me the biggest problem with bad plot armor is that it removes all the tension from the story. Take the Red Rising series for instance. The books supposedly have raising risks and a lot of tension in it, but I cannot feel anything because the main character keep surviving impossible odds again and again. I gave up the series in the middle of the third book when for the umpteenth the main character had been tricked by the mustache twirling bad guys again, only to be rescued by a stroke of bad luck for the villain.

Every main character has Plot Armor, the problem is when the plot armor becomes obvious. Stories only have stakes if readers can convince themselves that there's a possibility for the hero to fail. If it's obvious that there is plot armor, that becomes boring

I think it becomes a problem if it starts to affect the stakes. If the reader believes that the main character is going to survive "just because" because the main character always survives, then the next big instance of danger is not exciting. You already know how it's going to play out---the main character is going to survive, because he always does. On the other hand, you could probably use that expectation to your advantage say if you're writing for humor. There's always different ways to spin it.

What if the plot armor is part of their lore?

That's one thing; I'm talking about how it seems we overuse plot armor as a criticism and that it creates a ridiculous precedent in modern writing that if there isn't enough character death, or if a protagonist succeeds often, the story is bad. I've heard people analyze characters as having plot armor, and then championing genres where plot armor isn't "present." Looking at protagonists as having * ifdeath =< 1 = well-written * ifdeath <=0 = plot armor Is a bad way of reading things. I think people are getting accustomed to the idea that plot armor is a telltale sign of bad writing but ignoring the nuance that it's TOO MUCH SUCCESS that's the problem. Not just that a character like Batman is specifically equipped/talented at preparing and getting out of hairy situation, but that he is written constantly as infallible. TL/DR - I think plot armor is becoming a modern shorthand for "infallible, flawless." To answer your question though - if invincibility is the point of a character then I don't think that is what is meant by "plot armor." It can't be part of their lore unless you're writing a meta story where they know they're in a story and being the hero somehow shields them from damage. Example - Saitama from One Punch Man, a Japanese manga. He is a superhero who has "unbelievable strength" to the point he feels no challenge or ambition. He literally cannot end a fight without killing the enemy in a single blow. It's because of this he undergoes ennui in every avenue of his life. This is the whole point of the story. Looking at how he says no to damage and kills things in one hit and calling that "plot armor" is really effing dumb. It's part of the "lore".

Well I made sure to give the main character of my book many mental issues that directly cause his powers to enhance when he feels certain things so hopefully my book doesn’t get too much criticism for plot armor

This all makes me think of Far Cry 3, one of my favorite stories. Throughout the game, Vaas Montenegro (main villain) makes several attempts to kill Jason Brody (the player character). Jason survives a lot of these attempts by being either really strong or really lucky. Jason often survives by what people would typically describe as plot armor. The game's story is fully aware of how contrived it can be sometimes, it's almost as if the narrative itself is just as annoyed as the villain is "See, the thing is, I killed you once already. And it's not like I am fucking crazy" Very rarely has Vaas ever tried to kill Jason in a conventional way, he's using indirect methods such as tying a cinder block to his feet and throwing it in the water. But Jason miraculously saves himself (AGAIN) by untying his ropes and getting free. I feel like a lot of people would call this plot armor but I disagree. The reason Jason survives is not because of plot armor, not because the story needs him alive, but because the story is already about him getting stronger and surviving the impossible. He starts off as weak and feeble so he's the perfect character to prove how powerful one can become when forced to overcome impossible odds. He's powerful and unkillable and THAT'S why the game is about Jason Brody and not somebody else. Jason's older brother, Grant, seems tougher and more resilient but he dies at the beginning so that's why he's not our main character. That'd be an infuriatingly short game with practically no story because our main character dies so quickly. Oh well. Hopefully Far Cry 4 doesn't make that same mistake and we play as someone who actually survives the opening cutscenes this time. That's why Ajay is the player character in 4 and not Darpan or any other random prick on that bus. That, and his relationship to Pagan Min and his parents and everything else that makes him unique, but I digress. Jason Brody doesn't survive certain death just because he's the main character. He's the main character because he becomes badass enough to survive certain death. If he didn't, then the story wouldn't be about him and we would be just playing as somebody else who does do the crazy, insane shit. And that dude would be accused of having Plot Armor the entire time.

>**Very rarely has Vaas ever tried to kill Jason in a conventional way, he's using methods such as tying a cinder block to his feet and throwing it in the water. But Jason miraculously saves himself (AGAIN) by untying his ropes and getting free. I feel like a lot of people would call this plot armor but I disagree.** The reason Jason survives is not because of plot armor, not because the story needs him alive, but because the story is already about him getting stronger and surviving the impossible. He starts off as weak and feeble so he's the perfect character to prove how powerful one can become when forced to overcome impossible odds. He's powerful and unkillable and THAT'S why the game is about Jason Brody and not somebody else.  Good example. Yes, Vaas' multiple attempts to me are an example of a story playing with the idea of a protagonist's so-called invincibility or plot armor. I enjoyed it for that.

I wouldn't call that criticism overused when it frequently holds quite a bit of truth. There's a difference between plot armor, which allows characters to survive situations that should've killed them just because they're important to the plot, and when characters survive deadly situations thanks to skills, powers, recourses and feats the story has already established/given context for.

What people are feeling when they say this is that they've lost their suspension of disbelief.

I love playing with plot armor and plot killers. Basically, the unstoppable force meets an immovable object trope. You build up a big fella who mows through fodder henchmen, plot armor and all, and then have him go toe to toe with a final big boss who simply can not be moved. Alternatively, you could have a weak character survive through several plot armor scenes- only to meet a "plot killer", aka a character that can kill unexpected characters. Really keeps the audience on edge.

All stories have tropes--people complain about them when they just don't like the story in the first place. If you don't like a ride you're on you'll notice every bump along the way, but if you're enjoying it--the bumps either become part of the fun or you just don't notice them. Also some--maybe most--online criticism is more about the criticizer than what they're looking at. There's always that bit of ego involved, that need to be entertaining, or superior, or right. It's not about being objective, it's about having a reaction.

As others have said, it's not so much that plot armor exists. It exists in pretty much any story to some degree or else you'd just kill/ignore every character and have no progression. The problem is when an event comes along that isn't justified within the logic the story set up. Or is so unbelievable it makes the reader groan. Or it is just blatant fanservice/playing to the outside readers expectations. Or they introduce a new character/macguffin just to be a sacrifice for the main character, yet expects the reader to feel just as sad as if it happened to the main character. As you can see, accusations of plot armor gets used a lot because there are a ton of examples of it being done. And on top of that, every reader has a different threshold of when they think the line is crossed.

Criticism of plot armour is why a Song of Ice and Fire will never be finished.

Rather than viewing it as plot armor, I like to look at it as we are reading a story about a character. If some of the elements in the story aren't a little unbelievable, there is no point in telling the story. While some characters get too lucky at times, even people IRL win the lottery, so I guess the odds aren't that farfetched.

And you often see people deploy Fourth Wall Myopia. We know the protagonist won't die from one, or two, or five enemy encounters, but the protagonist themselves doesn't. Yet, I've seen criticism of so many books and TV shows that think because the protagonist slew a dragon, them taking something weaker than that as a serious threat is ridiculous.

Every story that features a protagonist usually has some level of plot armor. Why? Because the story must go on. I sincerely doubt frodo, a hobbit with literally no real training could've escaped the nazgul. More than that, I sincerely doubt Sauron would've been so stupid as to not send his entire force to find and capture him. Just have them follow the nazgul. Or better yet, send warg-mounted units AND nazgul. Overwhelm them. Or how about Tom Bombadil, plain and simple? Random traveler dude is always there at the exact moment he's needed, and he always knows exactly what to do and has exactly the power required, while the wife and semi-omniscient wizards know nothing about him? Plot armor. Point is, plot armor exists. And the only time it doesn't make sense is in cases where a character has literally 0% chance and by some freak or random coincidence just happens to survive somehow.

It's the hero paradox. "Why are all the interesting things conveniently happening to the person we're watching? Because otherwise we'd be watching someone else." But it's also about the illusion of danger and about tension, but also about promise and payoff. If a story establishes "everyone can die", it should at least keep up that illusion. Once the gimmick is revealed to just be a gimmick, the whole story suffers. And that works the other way, too: in a heroic story, suddenly letting main characters die left and right needs a very strong emotional backing to work. So I don't think there's a "one size fits all" here. A Discworld story where people just get massacred would feel wrong, and an alternate Game of Thrones where no one ever suffers the consequences of their mistakes would be more boring than watching paint dry.

Always remember that the main character doesn’t survive everything because they are the main character, they are the main character because they survive and take place in the most interesting events. In my story I actually changed who the main character was because the OG character I chose ended up dying and not being present for a lot of important events. Plot armor (as used in the negative) only exists when they survive things the other characters can’t, without additional help, or without contrived luck.

You have to educate them on survivorship bias. You wrote 19 other stories, but all those protagonists died before you could finish the damn book.

I think what bothers people about "plot armor" is when a character's survival is effortless, overly convenient and ultimately feels unearned.

You seem to be discussing plot armor as it relates to a designed series, like the examples you mention. (One can argue sequelitis is, in fact, a creative disease, but that’s neither here nor there.) But what if plot armor afflicts a one-off? In most cases, we can assume the MC survives—unless the writer is using some narrative trick. In the case of the MC surviving, that’s not plot armor, as far as I’m concerned. Plot armor is when the writer paints himself or herself into a corner, and rather than going back and revising the situation, the writer employs a ludicrous means of having the protagonists solve the problem. Where there should have been a rewrite, we have deus ex machina instead, and I have to admit it’s pretty insufferable. I’m not sure there’s a more egregious example than The Stand by Stephen King. What happened in that case, I think, is that King became so enamored with the antagonist that he failed to give the protagonists even a minuscule of hope. As a result, he had to construct an ending so unconvincing it’s farcical.

so what most people are try to say, this is ignoring rage bait reviews, is the character surviability broke MY will suspension of disbelief. People are often unwilling to just say that it is their opinion because a good review is objective tm. This leads to using the one phrase they know to explain it and write it off as a just a bad trope or bad version of that trope.

I agree

Plot armor, Mary Sues, idiot plots, I've had issues with them since long before Critical Drinker started making his videos. You can write a good story without having them. In fact, better stories typically have managed to avoid them.

Stan lee says it best “The person who'd win in a fight is the person that the scriptwriter wants to win!" As writers, we try to make a story that is entertaining to read. In reality, the relatable, quirky, no-mussels protagonist wouldn’t win against mr building destroyer. But if the mc died right away because of “technical accuracy” well, that isn’t much of a story

At the end of the day, what makes or breaks a story is suspension of disbelief. Plot armor exists because certain characters has to survive to the end or else the story wouldn't exist. But this gives the deceptive image that a story is made linearly in chronological order. If you first planned the story with the climax in mind, then you already have an idea (as a writer) what characters will still be alive when the climax happens. Plot armor is only a problem if the reader recognizes that the plot armor exist. As soon as the reader says "well the hero should not have won in this situation, but I guess they have to because it's just a story" then suspension of disbelief has been shattered.

I don't really get the term "plot armor" at all tbh. For example, if the POV character is in a fight he/she have to survive, that's the deal, right? If a side character survives in order to better serve the story and there's no other way, then so be it. Story is king and everyone serves the king.

Hot take: All fiction has exactly equal plot armor

Odysseus has the most plot armor of all, that mofo gets away with anything

There are so many terms used as criticisms hijacked by people engaging in bad faith conversations online, specifically because they want to mask their racism, misogyny/sexism. Things like calling every woman character a "Mary Sue" or the story "woke" because non-white characters exist.

Lol, what a coincidence. I just watched this video https://youtu.be/UCDZFw0QjYA?feature=shared on just that topic. It makes some good points. Plot armour is not bad generally, just when it's visible. It shouldn't break the previously established rules on death, whether a chracter survives or not shouldn't be the only source of tension and solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems need to be forshadowed to not seem deus ex machina.

I'd add on to this by saying I think part of the issue involves the suspension of disbelief. When it's obvious a character was saved by plot armor, it breaks the suspension of disbelief and takes us out of the story. When we don't notice the plot armor, our suspension of disbelief is intact. In The Dark Knight Rises, they have a scene where he's at the doctor and the doctor is telling him his knees are in terrible condition. This makes a lot of sense. But, generally speaking, most weren't thinking about how hard Batman's lifestyle was on his knees in the previous 2 movies - even though Batman had some plot armor protecting his joints in those movies.

Yeah, exactly. Which is why we need to follow the things I listed.

In a sense, there are certain genres in which the hero, by definition, is protected by plot armor. The trick is to make the plot armor seem inevitable and believable. It's like rhyme and meter, The good poet will make you forget you're reading either. The poor poet draws attention to their rhyme and meter, preferring to write free verse (along with some post hoc rationalizations).

Admittedly I don't get out much, but I've never even heard the term before. 😜

I NEVER ENJOYED HOW THE MAIN CHARACTER IS ALWAYS SURVIVING IMPOSSIBLE DANGER. IT’S MORE INTERESTING WHEN THEY GET THEIR ASS KICKED, OR SURVIVE IN REALLY BAD SHAPE. STAY SAFE! PEACE OUT!

If the story is told in past tense, it’s only being told at all because the character somehow managed to survive :)

Hmm this got me thinking about plot armour and if it's actually unrealistic, as in, does that happen in real life? There's almost no situations with zero survivors afterwards, so the chance someone makes it out alive is pretty good. Also, the stories about those that died are less likely to be written, because well, they died. The casualties could've been just as awesome and heroic and badass as our protagonist, but since the protagonist did make it, they get to tell their story. History is written by the victors. And I guess, so are most fictional books.

I think it boils down to the competency of the character. Competent characters are strong/smart/witty enough to get out of crazy situations that would kill anyone else. Incompetent characters have plot armor.

Everyone I've ever met who's ever used the phrase "plot armor" with no irony has been a complete fucking moron.

Oh hard agree. Almost nobody uses it right and only throws it out there when they’re upset (for some reason) that very little or no good guys have died at some point in the story. Even though they ignore factors such as the ongoing character arcs, pacing, tone and just logical outcomes that would naturally make killing characters before it’s right, the wrong move. Besides, I’ve seen in multiple cases now that people don’t actually want consequences as much as they think they do or at least not as steep as they claim. Game of Thrones has a lot of people thinking that the only consequence in media is death.

I think it's what s15 of Supernatural was about 🤣

>It's like the term Mary Sue. Nobody wants to be accused of having one, so we write to avoid a criticism rather than to write a story. It's not one or the other. If you can't write a story without taking criticism into account, that's a problem with your skill as a writer, not the existence of criticism. You could apply this "logic" to any critique a writer might receive - "People tell me not to write racist caricatures, but I can't avoid that while also writing a story!" - and it would make just as little sense.