Hey Tim, I would love to buy your first book on Worldbuilding but can't seem to find it anywhere except on Amazon and Ebook. Save the writers who love a good paperback, please.
I think I remember Brandon Sanderson saying in his writing course..."No one cares if coincidence gets your characters into trouble, but it always feels cheap if it gets them out of trouble." Plot armor is when your character gets out of trouble that should've had some sort of consequence based on the rules you set up. Great stuff dude! Thanks for the videos!
@@eduardmanecuta5350 it's a series of videos here on UA-cam. Brandon Sanderson gives a course on creative writing in his old university and films it and puts it in his own UA-cam account for everyone to see.
Plenty of stories have been ruined for me by letting coincidence get the protagonist into trouble (for the 20th time in the last few hundred pages). There is clearly a limit.
My favourite example of plot armour is Reiner from Attack on Titan. It was really clever, actually. Make a suicidal character and deny him death every single time.
His worst plot armor is the whole transfer my consciousness bullshit that happened once. So frustrating to know how important he is later but know that he should have died right then.
Very similar to Kaladin from the Way of Kings. Using plot armor to induce survivor’s guilt is a great way to have stakes while keeping key characters alive
Better Call Saul is a perfect prequel in that sense. You know that most of the main characters will survive since they're alive in Breaking Bad, but at what cost will they survive? How morally broken will they end up, will they lose their close ones who are not protected by the plot armor?
Is that really plot armor though? Did my great grandpa have plot armor for surviving WWII? Or were all his stories just made up? Cuz that is too much 'plot armor' imo. He survived so much stuff, you'd be complaining the hero has way too much plot armor Or maybe stories are just told from the survivor's perspective.... because if we told them from that guy that died during his first battle, the story would be over pretty quickly
@@pyropulseIXXI If your grandpa says he was stabbed a dozen times in the stomach and thrown onto sewer water, then yeah, I'd call bs. It's not about just surviving or not, but how the story is told and how likely it seems.
@@patafix534 That isn't what plot armor is, do you realize that ? I gave an obvious example, and yet you still responded with something that made no sense. According to your fcked up logic, if I know how a story ends, then that is plot armor. lmao, people are so fcking d*mb, it is honestly sad
@@patafix534 My question was rhetorical, because the answer was obvious... that it wasn't plot armor. And yet you responded with "that is exactly plot armor." I almost feel sorry for your lack of intelligence Plot is the cause and effect of a story; if the story leads to someone dying, but that person doesn't die, because they are needed for the plot later on, then that is plot armor. Plot armor is never good because it is a contradiction. It is always bad writing. What this youtuber is describing as 'plot armor' is not plot armor. Coincidences are not plot armor; too many obviously break the immersion, but that is something else entirely But people that survive world wars tend to survive things that someone would say is plot armor (ironically, exactly like you did) if it were told in a story. But it cannot possibly be plot armor if it is a real story... of something that actually happened; there is no writer, and second, they survived via pure chance of real life. Hence, the fact you answered as you did should only warrant a simple respond of an insult, but I took the time to explain why you are wrong
I always loved how in ATLA while the fire loaded was a huge threat the whole series, the last few episodes were not about will Aang win but will he need to kill Ozai in order to win. If they hadn’t done that it would’ve had zero real tension
I think that question might be closer to "CAN Aang beat Ozai, AND can he do it without killing him." Because I remember there being a ton of tension in the lead up. We know the Avatar state is Overpowered, but even then Ozai gets his power up from the comet so there's at least a legit question if he'll be able to win. And while Aang is a pacifist, the internal tension is great. Basically it uses every way it can to build tension AND resolves them in one conflict. Excellent example and writing.
@@S1leNtRIP yeah I mean it tried but it’s a cartoon on Nickelodeon and the series finale. Of course he is going to beat Ozai. How is the bigger question and where the greater tension lies. Without that the ending would’ve just felt like spectacle.
I wish they would have made Aang's fear of Ozai and the tension between the two characters feel more rational and real. I mean sure, it's understandable that Aang would be worried about fighting such a powerful bender and such a ruthless man, but to be personally SCARED of him to the point of having nightmares about him makes no sense for Aang in the context of the story.
@@colinplaisance4274 i like how your comment has nothing to do with plot armor but it has to do with ATLA so I guess this channel has to accept it? Lmao
Like everything in writing, plot armour is a tool. It being "good" or "bad" entirely depends on the writer's skill. For example, Wheel of Time has in-universe plot-armour for some characters explained through the concept of Ta'Veren. Basically, reality bends around some people because they have a purpose to accomplish in the grand Pattern of Ages. This concept is used to great effect, showing that having plot-armour as a mechanic characters acknowledge can lead to interesting conflict: what do you do when you just want to live a peaceful life but the universe keeps throwing you into life or death battle because that's your "purpose" ? Or... What do you do when you just want to die and the universe won't allow it ?
See but then it's in universe so it's no long plot armor, it's just the story. It's like saying my character is a skilled fighter so novices not beating him is plot armor.
@@upg5147 it is not an activ skill though, it is mostly passiv reality bending around them to keep them alive. . . Or in one extreamly funny case force a character that tries to run from a battle to participate and accidently lead it. It is a tale in a tale that aknowlages that no matter how insane the odds look, the character will end up in a certain place.
@@SingingSealRiana But it's still an in universe ability. It's like if a character can come back to life if they stop their heart right before they die. It's not plot armor if you set it up like that earlier. It can lead to some lazy writing since you wrote such an easy out.
On the topic of tools I'd argue some tools are either 1) easier to use in a bad way or 2) more obvious and apparent to the reader/viewer when used badly. Otherwise nice comment 👍
If arya was stabed once or twice and left to die I could give that the benefit of the doubt but being stabed 20 times and pushed into shit water in a world that doesn't have proper medical treatments is not something that can be overlooked easily.
Not like it would have been hard to write the same scene in a more believable way either: Arya catches the knife in her non-dominant arm at the last second, and then escapes down an alley or something instead of diving into sewage. Easy. But damn they loved them some cliffhangers, so writing got tossed out the window.
And lets not forget how out of character she behaved right before that, just starring and smiling out to the sea?! So they actually had to contrive an unrealistic scenario to get her almost killed JUST to use plot armor to get her out of that very scenario. Holy shit.
GoT having "zero plot armor" is great for a couple of seasons, but once it developed a core cast of characters that the story was about, they couldn't just kill them with no consequence. If Jon, Daenarys, and Cersei all died in season 5, the story would have nowhere to go. Ergo, the writers suddenly needed to use more plot armor.
That is fair - you certainly can't keep switching main characters right up until the end! The problem was more that it kept putting those characters in ridiculously dangerous situations and sometimes not even bothering to explain how they survived. Like, if Arya got stabbed multiple times in the gut and then survived because a super-competent surgeon or someone with healing magic found her...cool. But she survives just...because.
@@PirateQueen1720 I think a good character example would be Sansa; a character tossed around by misfortune like a rag doll but never killed due to others finding her insignificant or a reasonable amount of luck. But towards the Battle of the Bastards you get a sense that she's learned from those harsh lessons and understands how to move when playing 'The Game.' I don't think it would have been too hard to reflect that growth in other characters.
I personally love Rincewind's plot armor in the Discworld books, where it's a canonical thing that not only makes sure he survives everything he goes through, but also constantly draws him into the nearest batch of nonsense.
I think that part of that is enabled by Pratchett playing it for comedy. Like how in the cartoon Milo Murphy’s Law, since everything around him constantly goes wrong and always has he makes certain to be prepared for everything no matter how unlikely or preposterous and as a result manages to deal with and endure whatever happens.
7:02 I actually found myself in this very same problem just a few days ago! I was writing a fic in which a character had to fight another that got changed into the perfect killing machine. It was all going perfect until I realized… she was going to fight the perfect killing machine. I didn't want to try to force her to lose, because it didn't make sense for her to do so. Instead, this character was being controlled by a necklace, and I needed that necklace gone. What I did is that this character is capable of dodging bullets, but the necklace is just hanging. And the protagonist is an expert markswoman. What I did is… not have them fight at all! Instead I had the protagonist ambush the other character and shoot at them, counting on them dodging the shot. They move out of the way, but the necklace falls behind, because inertia XD It separates from the body, the bullet passes right through it, and destroys it, solving the conflict. It was so satisfying to have solved that, because it sounded like an impossible battle that I'd have to force my protagonist into surviving. And I didn't have to!
I love how on every “on writing” video uses Avatar or Korra as examples of good writing. It’s just so amazingly good (season 2 of Korra excepted). We are truly lucky to have gotten it in our lifetimes
The show where one of the villains kills himself because the writer didn't know how to solve a solid point the villain had after being discredited because of his reputation That said I still think it's a somewhat good show
@@johnniefinney3266 dude, Arcane is THE tv show. Trust me when I say you won't be disappointed if you try it. Or actually, don't even do that. Just look up the reviews. Fucking fire masterpiece. 🔥🔥🔥
The “consequences don’t have to mean death” thing is a great thing to remember. I’ve got a character that’s immortal, absolutely cannot die, and at the climax she and a handful of others get trapped in a building by a horde of necromancer-controlled undead. Immortal says something about how much what’s going to happen next is going to suck, and one of her friends says something along the lines of “babes, you can’t die though.” And immortal just responds with “yeah, so now I get to watch everyone else die while also being ripped into teeny tiny pieces and possibly eaten. But at least I’m going to be alive for the whole thing, I guess.” You can narratively give someone the ultimate form of plot armour and still give things stakes, you just need a bit of lateral thinking.
I've always seen immortality as something worse than death. Imagine, you are a mortal who was on a quest with your friends and, to reward you, the gods decide that you join their pantheon. You become immortal and you have divine powers but you can't do anything to help your friends who remained mortal and who are attacked by monsters because of the Divine Laws which forbid any gods to intervene directly. You can only watch them fight, and eventually die, while you, on your brand new throne, stand helpless despite your ability to destroy an army with the snap of your fingers. And no matter what, when your family and friends go to the afterlife, you can never join them, it's the worst thing ever...
Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars Trilogy and Anakin in the prequel trilogy are characters that the writers refuse to kill off for obvious reasons but they’re still capable of losing to the point where they each have permanent physical reminders of their defeats. (Luke lost his hand to Vader and replaced it with a metal prosthetic whereas Anakin has both a scar and a prosthetic hand to remind him (and us) that he’s capable of sustaining lasting damage. )
Christian McKeltar in the fever series is rendered immortal and becomes the unseelie fae, Death. However when the hag gets him and starts using his guts for her knitting, I think he would have preferred to be able to die.
They could have just had Arya avoid the assasination better. She caught on at the last second, tried to dodge got a nasty swipe accross her sword arm, and manages to escape. In the next scene, we see it is harder for her to use her sword arm, and especially when running from the waif, it seems extremely stiff. Byt hey, she was trained by the faceless men, and she was already pretty ambidextrous. So it was the character who was underestimating Arya more than the audience.
@@petrsevcik5044 Also possible. She hides well enough that it takes a week or so to find her, and steals proper medicial supplies. Though the stabs would have had to not hit anything vital. Which is possible if the waif was leaning more towards cruelty than efficiency, which she seemed to be. Arta just standing there flailing would be something most people would do, but Arya should have reacted quicker
I think the writers on GoT got addicted to the narrative power of main character death. They built up a faith with viewers that death in this story was realistic and that actions had consequences, but all the praise they got for it sort of went to their heads. They started using the threat of death as a crutch for easy tension, and ♪ kind of forgot ♪ that other sources of tension even existed.
Plot armor is fine as long as there are consequences. I think the best example of this is the show "Silicon Valley". The stakes are never life-threatening but for every solution they create, there are anyways unforeseen consequences that help carry the momentum from episode to episode. This is the only comedy I know that doesn't build tension based on romance.
Another story that drives itself from consequences would be "The good place". It changes it stakes almost every episode, especially in the later seasons, purely because of the decisions of characters and sometimes circumstance, that rarely involves the romance aspect of the show.
@@pyropulseIXXI In the context of a comedic story, yes it is. On SV, Pied Piper should have "died" many times or the main characters should be in jail or bankrupt or dead but they continue to fail upwards. It's okay to have random solutions if it drives the narrative. In GoT, Arya gets stabbed and survives...but it adds nothing to the story. During the Long Night, there is absolutely no reason for Jamie and Brienne to BOTH survive. Their story arcs are done. If Brienne had died, it gives a narrative reason for Jamie to return to Cersei. If Jamie had died, it gives narrative reason for Arya to kill Cersei using Jamie's face.
The coolest use of plot armor I've ever seen was in A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony. The premise of the book is that the main character is exiled from his town for having no magic, and travels across the land to try and find it to return home. Though he had been lucky in escaping dangerous situations throughout the book, towards the end he winds up in a duel with a powerful magician, and luck won't be able to save him this time. The big reveal is that luck continues to save him every time the magician tries to hurt him - that his magical talent is the inability to be harmed by magic. And then after that, the tension is maintained because the magician realizes this and continues the duel by attacking with a mundane sword! Great stuff
That isn't plot armor................ This comment section just proved that 99% of people have no idea what is going on; they don't know anything; they just regurgitate stuff they've heard, like "coolest use of plot armor I've ever seen...." and then you proceed to not list a single example of plot armor. Plot armor is never good; it is a massive error in writing; an in universe ability is not plot armor, ffs
I find it fascinating the way plot armour changes with tone and genre. Though one thing that I like to consider in this topic is Squid Game. I heard complaints that the main character had plot armour or that it was unrealistic that the main character would survive such a deadly game (Similar to Katniss in the Hunger Games) Instead of plot armour or the main character surviving to the end because he's the protagonist, he's the protagonist because he survived. Reframing deadly situations in that sense can help adjust perspective on plot armour
The most imported thing to keep tension and the viewer/reader buy into your reality is often consequences. Plot armor fatigue does not happen because your character is overly competent or nothing ever happens to them, but when something happens to them, there are no consequences. If you let them get injured, commit to that or give a really good excuse that did not come out of nowhere but makes atleast when rereading sense. You do not need to kill people all the time, but when you do, make it count. Fullmetal alchemist (brotherhood) expertly showed how a more or less sidecharacter death can still be relevant near the end of the series just by going realisticly through the consequences. People grief, people remember, if you play your cards right you get immense tension out of it without overdramatising and needing to threaten the whole damned world every weak. If you revive people, do something with that, like the horror that is berics existence or well in fmab. . . . People do survive the unlikeliest things, just do not be careless with it. Honestly the biggest apeal for me in got wasy the psychological realism grrm gave hiss characters. No matter if they survived something or whatever, everything that happens had realistic consequences
And i big aspect of people buying into something is the explanation given. FMAB sets up the rules of the world early and doesn't break them. In real life people do survive the weirdest things for reasons that are basically pure chance or sheer determination, and its ok to leave the explanation at that. (Say a character gets shot in the gut and left for dead, they can still crawl if they really need to do something before passing out from the pain) In his example from game of thrones, getting stabbed in the gut and falling in the sewer means definite infection, theoretically she could stumble around for a bit but without modern or super magical medicine she's probably going to die. (And in either case thats atleast a week in the hospital for the infection alone and a few more weeks for the stab wound recovery and taking it easy. Alot can happen during such a recovery period, but my understanding of the GOT universe is that she's dead unless she gets super lucky fighting for her life against that infection.) And something Tim didn't mention is the inversion of plot armor, plot curse, which is where a character is going to die and nothing can be done about it and most likely its a stupid death. (Not that stupid deaths don't happen IRL but ironman isn't going to die by tripping down the stairs and hitting his head, it just doesn't happen in fiction)
For me, a big opposite issue exists: A character dies to a fatal blow and I wonder: Why didn't they use Healing magic? Why don't they cast Raise Dead/Resurrection? It ruined a lot of magic settings for me. You have Regenerate. Your main cast is wealthy and has divine providence... but people die to a random spear to the gut? High Magic settings should not have issues caused by "I got stabbed." In high magic settings, if someone dies, they should stay dead because they lost their will to live or were given great reward in afterlife - rejecting resurrection.
2:50 These are close to the rules *explicitly* described for the God-Tier immortality that some characters in _Homestuck_ get: you can't die from unimportant stuff; you death must be Heroic (self sacrifice for good), or Just (you are evil and get killed). At one point John Egbert gets stabbed in the back by a teleporting enemy that he had no chance at stopping at that time, dies, and resurrects a couple of minutes later because it wasn't in either category.
If you haven't already, you should absolutely read the manga "Ajin" (do not watch the anime though). Its characters' (well most of them), literally can't die (that's the starting point of the story), immediately establishes all the rules of the universe (how death works, how reanimation works. Etc) and goes absolutely batshit insane with how creative they play within the rules, especially the villian. All while having absolutely incredible tensions for literal fates worth than death for the main character and for ordinary civilians
Huh. I wasn't able to really engage with the anime. Can't tell you why, this many years after I watched the thing, but I know that the character and plot developments felt like they were driven by edge more than substance, and I wasn't invested in the series' sense of morality. The latter half of the plot felt pretty weirdly structured to me, too, or maybe it was just pacing... at least, I remember being disappointed and disengaged and knowing I was supposed to feel tension. Considering some of the things I thought the anime was trying to say, it's possible the manga's better, especially if they re-arranged the plot. But I got some strong doomer, "humanity is worthless" vibes from the anime that I really wasn't vibing with.
@@Amanda-C. the anime started and ending before the mangas end so they likely had no idea where it was going to go. Additionally, some of the scenes in the manga were cut from the anime even though they were out at the time it was produced. One was likely for gore despite it being the most interesting use of the reanimation power. The second one was likely for.... cultural sensitivity let's say.
@@muntu1221 agreed, just because something doesn't follow its source doesn't make it bad. However the ending had no idea it was doing, they removed some of the best scenes from the early manga, including most importantly how creative their use of the regeneration mechanic can be, and the animation was really, really hard to get over.
The "yes, but" is also known as "failing forward", and is related to the "success at a cost". There's so very many things that can be effectively used as stakes - and most of them can actually be /lost/ and still have the story progress. Which can be particularly effective when the thing that's lost is something that the character would gladly have died to protect.
Got to protest against using Luke as an example of inconsistent behaviour - it isn't inconsistent at all. In fact, it's exactly in line with the journey Luke goes on, mirroring Anakin's except for the fact that Luke 1) realises the Jedi were fundamentally wrong about attachments (and this is what caused Anakin's downfall) 2) Luke is able to see what he'll become if he does kill his father. Luke does not go on a kill-crazy rampage slaughtering sand-people in an act of genocidal vengeance. He DOES use the force for defense, and not attack. To stop himself from killing his father at the last moment after giving in to his rage is ENTIRELY consistent with his established arc and journey. Otherwise, I love the video.
An excellent example of the tension being something other than survival: Dan Wells' "I Am Not a Serial Killer" It's told from the first person perspective with commentary showing at least some benefit of hindsight. Thus we have a pretty good idea that the protagonist, a teenager named John Wayne Cleaver is going to survive: he's here telling his story, sounds like he made it out in one piece. But that's not the problem. The problem is the title of the book. Who actually feels the need to make that declaration? "I am not a serial killer" is not a phrase one tends to say if one is not at the very least under suspicion of being a serial killer. Furthermore, we know from fairly early on that John has antisocial personality disorder. As he points out, because of his age, it's technically just conduct disorder, but he fits the ASPD profile so perfectly that it's hard to see him growing out of it. He is, furthermore, obsessed with serial killers. He points out that he's named after a serial killer (because "John Wayne" couldn't be a reference to any famous person other than John Wayne Gacy), his father is named Sam thus making him the Son of Sam (another high profile serial killer of 20th century America) and his surname is a murder weapon (which, y'know, enough people are weirded out by cleavers that I'll grant that it's not totally off the wall to the name as a murder weapon first and a butcher's tool second). He's very determined at the start of the book to not be one. He does his level best to remember moral behaviours. He has rules designed to keep him from going down a path that will lead him to violence. So that's the tension: does he succeed. Does he manage to stick to the moral high ground he's clinging to, or does he become the thing he doesn't want to be? And if you're now invested in this question, you're gonna have to read it, or look elsewhere online for spoilers.
I feel like when it comes to PLOT ARMOR one of my favorite aspects of it, is when they just SHATTER that armor entirely. I think you can indeed build up that armor, make some character seem impenetrable, then...SURPISE MF. When well written, that can send shock waves through a fandom. Yu-Gi-Oh did this very well in the Waking the Dragons arc. The Pharaoh from Yu-Gi-Oh had a GREAT amount of plot armor....UNTIL the waking the dragons arc when HIS OWN PRIDE cost him something DEARLY. Yugi's Soul. Since then much like Korra he is on a MENTAL battle. This man just BREAKS. He doesn't really fully recover until the end of the season. And the reason why he lost is believable because WE'VE SEEN him go too far because of Pride. He nearly kills a man because of his pride. How far fetched is it that he'd be willing to risk his own soul over it? And you start to wonder just how well do you know this person you've spent SEASONS getting to know? It also shows the Pharaoh ISN'T infallible. He screws up. He might have been a mighty king but now....he's just a man....he's just human. And to err is human.
This! And it works super well because Yugi is the main character, but Pharoah technically just possesses his body using the Millennium Puzzle. It shows that he’s got some great characteristics about him (he doesn’t try to steal Yugi’s body, is wise quite often, is extremely smart, and is cautious when in unfamiliar territory), but is arrogant when it comes to Duel Monsters. And that costs Yugi. And him.
@@jamesalexander5025 Yep. The Pharaoh was also always seen as having those perfect strategies, he was always able to help Yugi. And he always knew when to let Yugi take the lead. So to see him SCREW UP so BADLY....God as a kid I'll never forget that wide shot of the Pharaoh on his knees screaming for Yugi to come back. It was all my friends and I talked about for DAYS.
Interesting thing I just realized w the CW shows - a lot of the stakes (at least in the better seasons) are more emotional than physical. It’s not “will Sara be gone forever” because no, she is never permanently dead that’s just an in-universe rule at this point. It’s “look at Sara emotionally suffering from the effects of her trauma”. We never *really* wonder “will supergirl die?” Because she won’t. She’s supergirl, she may be weakened or injured but it’s always temporary and soon enough she’ll be back to being literally bulletproof. It’s her *emotions* that suffer long term damage. Just an interesting note on how (again, in the shows/seasons with better writing) the shows place their tension on the emotional state of the characters instead of their physical state
Regeneration or advanced healing skills can be great for this type of balance between threat, realism & tension. Like... the main character just got a limb torn off, and they're greatly weakened... but if they get away, there's a great chance of coming back swinging. You need to be careful not to overdo it, though, or your main character might as well be a Terminator, and that's even duller. Like even Wolverine sometimes has his healing factor overloaded & have to take things safer for a while. That sort of things.
I think the Old Guard is another good example for healing factor. The main characters are immortals who’ve been around for like eons and fought in various wars. They could walk off anything that hits them but one thing they’re really afraid of is when their ability to heal stops without warning which happened to a friend of theirs centuries prior resulting in their death. The healing process also takes time whenever they get hit by explosives.
@@edmontonboy99 One of the most restrained & thus drama preserving ones I've seen, is in Dresden Files. Mild spoiler: In that series, Wizards have a SLOW~ healing factor. They basically heal just like you or me, but their bodies don't KEEP scar-tissue. So a wizard will, EVENTUALLY, even do stuff like regrow limbs. But it takes years or even decades, and healing magic is one of the hardest there is in that setting. It's a neat way to both keep up the drama, and not have every little scrape & wound be forever, and what a nightmare for continuity that is.
In "Stranger Things", it's become increasingly obvious with every passing season that the writers are afraid to kill off major characters like Steve, Max and Hopper, instead opting for one of the lovable side characters. At this point, the stakes aren't as high as they once were, since you know that the main heroes will ultimately be protected via Plot Armour.
I hope this is intentional, you know? Like, they could be doing that for us to think exactly what you said, that the major characters will never die. So if they do die in the next season, we would be twice as shocked
@@PacMonster0 I agree mostly with what u said but Hopper sacrificing himself at season finale just to be like... Naw I got out of the way off screen and nobody tried to search for bodies... THAT is plot armour
@@PacMonster0 I think this is a really good response that helps clarify the ideas in the video, but I also agree with the main point that stranger things characters have plot armor. hopper died, and him surviving is bullshit. Steve should've definitely bled out by now. Bringing max back to life made no sense and also diminished eleven as a character for me. I will admit I love steve and hoppper and don't mind it at all I love them too much 😭
Ooh, ooh. There's an anime I LOVED from the 80's that was really interesting with how it played with character death and plot armour. Legends of Galactic Heroes had character death (quite a lot, and it could also be quite surprising), but the characters we followed were commanders in their armies instead of regular rank and file soldiers, so they weren't necessarily written to be in much danger. Thus, when danger did come to them, it was always intense and out of left field (betrayals, terror attacks, just plain bad luck getting their fleets blown up).
Just ordered both volumes and I am so excited! Your videos have had an unbelievable impact on how I approach my stories and worldbuilding. You're doing amazing work 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Happy to see the commentary on legend of Korra’s writing here. The development Korra went through felt so layered and earned because of the myriad of ways that her identity were challenged.
Plot armour can should be used in subtle ways. For instance in firefights, a bullet can land in a person shoulder then bounce off a bone and to their heart and kill them. A writer can have that bullet just pass through, aslong that non lethal damage is dealt with consistency.
Shoulder shots are quite common non-lethal wounds in fiction, but I'm pretty sure in real life there's a massive artery that runs through the shoulder and you can bleed out in two minutes if a bullet cuts through it.
My favourite example of plot armour done well is just King in OnePunch Man. His whole character is basically based around this impregnable "bubble of narrative invulnerability", to the point it's just an integral part of the plot. If King *didn't* have ridiculous plot armour, the story just wouldn't be as good.
I always go back and forth between forgetting I'm subscribed to you and binging your content. Now that I have come to stay, I have to say you run probably one of my favorite channels. I'm not much of a writer, but your content is some of the most interesting I've ever seen. I wish I was better at writing because you're super inspiring to me whenever I try to craft a story. Only one way to get better though. Keep up the great work!
I love stories where the tension doesn't come from whether the protagonist will live or die, but on their morality: a great example is Kaladin from Stormlight archive, even the characters believe he won't die but over and over again I worry for him as he fights his personal battle related to hoping for a better life and a better world, constantly urging him to not give up.
I think my least favorite form of plot armor is when the villain has it. Like, if the protagonists actually tried or did anything intelligent, the villain would just lose. There is just no tension because the main antagonist can’t be taken down in the first couple episodes of a series, but the writers didn’t want to power up the antagonist to be an actually believable threat. Like Heather from Total Drama Island. Or most of the episodic Flash antagonists. The Boys has been doing this to an extent. Why do the people who have been trying to kill the 7 keep stopping trying to kill them, just to go back to trying to kill them?
This reminds me of the show Inuyasha and the part of Rin's arc that intersect with Sesshomaru, his mother, and what is basically hell/the afterlife. That big shock that happens when Sesshomaru has to confront, and not just acknowledge, that Rin is human. She will age. And since she's been resurrected once, she can't be brought back again. I loved that scene when he learns that he doesn't have that resurrection power as as backup if he somehow can't save her from harm.
Hey, just wanted to say this random thing: Your outro sequences where you succinctly and cleanly go back over all the content in the video one more time are fantastic and honestly the best part of your videos. It helps to remind me of and reinforce the lessons you've put forward. Such a small detail helping so much with ensuring my brain does that extra small step needed, associating all the throughlines properly. I find myself remembering the lessons of your videos so much better than others' as a result. Thank you.
the ending sound always cheers me up. I love the videos, and I imagine anything I have to say has been said, so I wanted to point out a point of light through the past years. thanks
That first example of the protagonist being stuck in space reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where Ford and Arthur are only saved because of the infinite improbability drive. Hilarious subversion.
I think *ARCANE* serves as a really good example for this: Since the series serves as an origin story for much of it's cast, their survival is all but assured. But but the sources of tension (Vi&Jinx' relationship, the fate of Zaun...) are removed from that, and, as both the show and meta-knowledge the viewer might posess hint at, all of those are headed towards a grim outcome. This works because unlike knowing that nothing bad will happen, knowing that something bad WILL happen doesn't decrease, but rather increase the tension in a knife-twisting way if done correctly.
My favorite approach to Plot Armor is in Pulp Fiction where it is actually addressed by the characters and made into a plot point itself. There is meta, and then there is meta surpassing its own meta-ness.
My favorite example of plot armor comes from the Gate fanfic “Here We Go Again”, in which an Abrams tank goes up against a flame dragon. Sure, the dragon can claw up the armor, and it could probably roast the crew if it had the chance, but few things can stand up to an armor-piercing tank round to the chest. The tank ends up tearing up one of its wings, and blows off an arm, but when the crew tries to make the killing blow, the round suddenly jams/duds. It’s a very real phenomena that happens in real life tank battles, and it adds tension to the conflict, since now the success/survivability of the protagonists is uncertain. Obviously the dragon gets away, but now it’s crippled, and the tank crew survive by their allies, but now their prominently-battle-scarred tank makes it a lot more difficult to keep a low profile whenever their battalion is seen by the locals.
I think one of the best examples from a movie where literally everyone in the audience knows what’s going to happen but somehow when you get to the big moment when the catastrophe happens you’re seriously still wanting the characters on the screen to avoid it, is Titanic. That action sequence when they spot the iceberg and then you see everyone from the top of the ship to the boilers working as hard as they can to turn the ship is the best scene in the movie. And especially when they shut the water tight doors very quickly and the workers in the boiler rooms are running to escape before they close. (Although I know historically they actually had other escape methods too). But it’s so fricking amazing. You can cut the tension with a knife. Plus actually knowing in advance that literally everyone you’re seeing on screen in that sequence is going to die makes it even more dramatic. For example all the men in the boiler rooms-probably 99.9% of them are doomed no matter what.
The All Guardsman Party, a story you can read online, has an interesting rate of character deaths. It markedly does not have plot armour, as main characters do die fairly often, sometimes without having had any real character development or arks, but this is almost always at the hands of a major enemy or big bad. Never at the hands of goons or mooks. What makes this interesting is the all guardsman is a narration of a high-lethality rpg campaign. It’s interesting how some aspects of plot armour - like characters never dying to mooks, manifest in an rpg system which uses random chance to determine events, while other aspects, like characters rarely dying before their character ark, do not manifest.
The anime Kaiji (haven't read the magna yet) is an interesting case. In the anime at least, the stakes are not always death. Sometimes it's personal freedom, sometimes it's serious but non fatal injuries, sometimes it's a lot of money. This makes so that the protagonist can lose, and lose quite often. This, ironically, makes the show so much more tense than if it were just his life on the line.
Thank you so much for covering this. Too many times I have seen people complain about plot armour being bad in one scene in a movie, and completely fail to acknowledge the plot armour in every other scene that they were perfectly fine with. I'm not saying that they're criticising movies wrong... But they're criticising movies wrong.
A good example of this is Reinier from Attack on Titan, the shifters have natura regenerative abilities....he can get messed up a lot and heal from his wounds.
Major characters will have plotarmor in the reader's mind, but there are tricks we can pull to make the reader feel the character is in more danger than they are. The two that come to mind immediately are kinking the armor, and death flagging. Death flagging, is whena character resolves their arc, finishes the contribution to the narrative, deals with their biggest regret in life or otherwise completes their tale. In FF14, thancred in Shadowbringer, and Urianger in Endwalker are great examples of this. The other technique commonly used is kinking the armor. Putting the character in a lethal situation and letting them miraculously walk it off, although it leaves them changed. The narrative often goes out of it's way to tell us the survival was a fluke. Aan example here would be Frodo surviving being stabbed by the blade of one of the ringwraith as a result of an abuse of the one ring. This in turn makes us believe Frodo may not survive when he abuses it again in mount doom.
I had this feeling about The Expanse show(haven't read books yet) with none of the crew dying despite the situations they were in but then I realized that it was more about how the crews actions fucked up the lives of everyone else in galaxy and how they had to cope with not being able to save everyone whilst doing what they thought was right.
Vague Spoilers for Star Wars Rebels (especially the last season): I think it is cool how they have an almost "reverse plot armor" ending for one if the major character. It's not an outlandish death, and if your are already a Star Wars fan you logically know it's coming (still manages to hurt though) but it is a moment where in an earlier season they probably would have made it out ok. The think that really stands out for plot armor discussions is how one of the other characters in the aftermath basicly calls out feeling like the group was always going to be safe before, but that promises is now gone. Rebel's story just needs more attention and love, it's really good.
I agree, that character ending was perfect. But Rebels wasn't without its plot armor flaws either, and by that I'm mostly talking about the WBW. To me that was one of the biggest moments that breaks the established laws we know about the Star Wars universe and how it works. I am a person who actually enjoys when Star Wars gets weird, but that felt like it was crossing the line a bit
@@TheSuperRatt I too love the deeper metaphysical aspects of SW, I actually like the concept of WBW, but I don't like how it was used. SW made a big deal about accepting death as a natural continuation of life, so having a character magically survive what should have been a deathly situation feels like it breaks that theme. I'm fine with dark siders pulling tricks like that because they are defying nature, the point with them is that they're wrong for doing so, but having a light sider do the same, especially without having any consequences doesn't feel right to me. It also would've been a great ending for that character imo. That being said, I hope the future shows would change my mind. I'm trying to stay as open minded about it as I can, and I'm giving them a chance to justify it.
Looking forward to watching this! Before I do my initial thoughts are it can be nice if you’re trying to subvert expectations. Obviously you can’t kill of a main character in a show (usually) but if you give the characters no consequences then it just comes off as lazy
If there are any fellow One Piece fans out there, a good example would be Ace and a bad example would be Kinemon. I’m not saying go kill off all characters but to have meaningful (and even some senseless) real time deaths here and there especially when the stakes of a story are high make it more believable
Also having the main character lose and make mistakes gives the side characters a chance to shine. Like imagine Return of The King if Frodo was a Gary Stu and was never swayed and never gave in. Having him slowly collapse and give into the ring gave Sam a reason to be the hero.
One thing with the got plot armor in s7 & 8 is that those situations happen so often and quickly after another (as you said in the video). But if they just didnt rush the show and did like 3 more seasons, you could have the exact same plot armor situations and it wouldnt be as noticable because there would be more time inbetween.
One of my favorite anime plot armor is in Fairy Tail. Like all anime you know that the main characters are going to face ever more impossible odds and some how win. In Fairy Tail they actually address it and give a story reason. The first master protects the guild and won't allow any of them to die. Immediately after this information is given the protection is broken. This added tension to what would otherwise be a normal anime fight. The protection is restored after that and plot armor returns. The next big conflict isn't a fight for their life but for honor. After that it's a fight to save the country, even if they live they can lose. The next arch they win the battle but the guild is disbanded and the characters lose everything, family, friends, home. In the final battle of the series that protection is again removed early on and the stakes are sky high. No one is safe and it's the end of the show, anyone could die at that point.
Plot armor is great when you need examples of bad writing in order to fill space on a rambling video so you can advertise your books and paywalled videos.
Not gonna lie, I love the idea of this video but I also loved how you touched on other medias/shows that I feel like I don’t normally see you touch on with your opinion, namely Daredevil and (subtly) 7DS. Love your video subjects, thank you for your thoughts and writing analysis contributions !
My solution to Plot Armor: If a character survives a fatal blow, make it believable that they survive. Make the audience/readers say: "Oh, that's why. It makes sense" And also, don't make them get up and start kicking ass immediately like it was nothing. No. Make their recovery slow so everybody feels that the battle/war was serious. And lastly, if you put a character against someone who they can't compare, well... Don't make them fight in the first place. Don't put Batman against Darkseid or Superman, if he doesn't have a special armor or weapon.
If there's an in-universe answer as to how a character survived then the character wasn't saved by "plot armor", but by that in-universe thing. Of course, the audiance needs to know about saig answer beforhand. At least that's how I understand "plot armor"
For me, a big opposite issue exists: A character dies to a fatal blow and I wonder: Why didn't they use Healing magic? Why don't they cast Raise Dead/Resurrection? It ruined a lot of magic settings for me. You have Regenerate. Your main cast is wealthy and has divine providence... but people die to a random spear to the gut?
DC has put Batman against Darkseid and Superman. I think it's stupid, especially when he can supposedly go toe to toe against Darkseid but still can't beat the Joker.
I have an interesting subversion of video game plot armor coming up. As it can very well be argued that the way our video game protagonists can shrug off bullet wounds is a form of plot armor. Well I've had in mind that I'm going to finally play and finish GTA5, but install a few mods. 1st the mod that makes weapons sound realistic, second a mod to improve enemies reactions to being hit, the third a mod to make enemies less accurate shots and last a mod that makes the player characters stagger like NPC's do when shot.
Tim have you seen Attack On Titan? I think you'd really really really like it from the POV of someone who can appreciate a tightly woven plot. AoT's narrative is far beyond almost anything else out there in storytelling on TV or Hollywood.
My volumes 1 & 2 of On Worldbuilding keep getting into arguments over which elements are most imporant. I could really use a volume 3 eventually to act as a mediator and maybe finally get some moments of peace. The real trouble though is that my volumes' respective plot armor is greater than my own personal plot armor...
9:40 you talk about failure in the small moments to set up a win in the big ones. I just wanted to make a comment in praise of the opposite too. Characters that have a winstreak early on and take a massive defeat at some point- like aang being shot by azula. It wasn't the biggest stage yet, but it was the biggest one at that point, and it was beautiful
I have this excuse in my head about plot armor which doesn't ruin all the shows with plot armor for me. I force myself to think that stories are told about those who managed to escape risky situations and not about the npcs that died. But when it is used too often I think it is stupid. I do not know if it's a true story but I think there was a man who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which if you make a movie about that it just seems really stupid.
Quite a lot of real things are things which we wouldn’t accept in our stories. A man named Hitler having a second in command named Himmler for instance. Not to mention things like Hitler betraying Stalin thus forcing himself into a war on two fronts or Stalin killing off Russia’s doctors such that it was difficult for him to get the medical treatment he needed before he died are things which if done by the villains of our stories would elicit all too familiar complaints about villains making foolish mistakes enabling their defeat. Things being realistic do not always lend themselves to good stories.
Like everything in all fiction ever, it has to make sense, and not feel like being pulled out of the author's ass at the last moment. I respect authors taking the time to establish things up in a way that you get blown away at how much sense it makes, because it's surprisingly difficult.
I have the problem where it gets really hard to 'kill' anyone lol. Idk, I can't bring myself to make some convoluted nonsensical situation like "Oh wow, all the sudden there's this magic seal that made that immortal guy not immortal anymore!" Or "Oh hey, maybe I'll make this relatively normal IQ person go do something incredibly stupid and out of character that will definitely get them killed for no reason!"
Chainsawman did the whole Plot Armor thing in a very entertaining way by having the character Kobeni survive all sorts of dangerous situations where everyone else but her dies.
I remember people theorising at the time, that she was baiting the Waif. Pouch of lamb's blood, and she'd use her skills and subterfuge to win. What could’ve been, eh?
Yeah, everyone was scrambling for theories because of how assinine Arya's behavior was (why is she just taking a stroll through the city when she knows the Faceless Men are after her??), and how improbable her survival. It had to be a ruse. I liked the theory that she was staging her own death and used a pig's bladder stage prop she stole from the play. Would still be a bit contrived since it required the Waif to kill her precisely with a stab to the guts, but it at least would've been plausible. Bonus points if they had set up that the Waif's m.o. was gut stabbing (proving the Waif is not no one, because she has a personality/preferences). Then in the finale, Arya could've ambushed the Waif when she came to kill Lady Crane. Or they just could've written anything else.
If tension arose only from the question of, 'Will they survive?' then every story would be a life or death story, and something as tame as a romance would have zero tension. The question should always be, 'Will they fail?'
Bro i read bridge to terabithia over ten years ago in grade school and completely forgot about its existence. i legit teared up at you wrenching it from the depths of my subconscious like removing some kind of ten year old splinter i didnt know i had
To be fair Maul only lost his legs and dick. And the wound was sealed dou to the heat. So he had all of his important organs in check. But fucking inquisitor girl gets stabed in the chest... TWICE and lives. Now thats plot armor. Oh guess what. It heals in like a day. Man fuck this show.
My dude, you are brilliant! I love you videos, you make me a better writer! And to those waffleing on weather or not to get this man's books: DO IT! The reference is invaluable! Have a wonderful day everyone!
i think arcane has one of the best examples of good plot armor, especially for how many many characters in the show get it. If you watch the show and know anything about LoL, youll probably know that most of characters in arcane are champions and therefore will most likely survive, since arcane is loosely meant to be a prequel story. However despite a large chunk of audience being aware of that inherent plot armor, the show doesn't let you see it because it continues to break the characters down and make them lose. For example, jinx is one of the main characters and one of the most recognizable champions, so its all but guaranteed she'll survive. however by the end of first season she has lost almost everything about herself that made her herself, her family, everyone she loved, her mind, and even her body to some extent, and she does have a very near death experience where almost everyone was really questioning if she was dead or not. Arcane asks the question of not if she'll survive but at what cost will she survive. And it does this with most of characters. Arcane also benefits from having an incredibly immersive world and story so that the audience really cares about the characters and wants them to succeed, which arcane then does everything in its power to prevent and that keeps the tension in the story really high.
I feel like the question of 'will they die or not' is similar in some ways to 'will the world end or not'. Sometimes it just takes me right out of the story. Sometimes, people having to live with the consequences of the villain's victory is far more terrifying than just being killed or the whole planet exploding. It's far worse in end of the world storylines though.
One of best ways I ever saw a writer create tension was in my favorite book series, "The Unknown Assassin" by Allen Zadoff: I was never worried about whether the main character was going to survive or not, because he can kick butt and freaking narrates the story; plus I wouldn't care even if he did die because the book does a very good job and making you hate him and feel like he deserves every ounce of personal suffering he can get. Instead, I was more worried about everyone around him, because I knew that those characters, despite their mistakes, were good people and deserved second chances, but I always knew the main character wouldn't show such mercy. At the end of the day, it made for one of the most profound and emotionally investing stories I've ever read.
Probably my favourite use of plot armour is in Chainsaw Man. There’s a character named Kobeni that ends up surviving the whole manga but at the cost of her being more and more miserable through constant suffering and pain for laughs.
That example you gave of a protagonist floating through space is kind of a funny one, because that happens in Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He wrote himself into a corner-he knew how incredibly unlikely it was for them to get rescued. The solution? A ship appears that *literally works by manipulating chance*, and it becomes central to the story.
The problem with the Arya incident was that they didn’t translate the scene well from the book. Actually, she’s never even stabbed in the book. D&D added a lot of ridiculous content to up the drama or excitement, and lower the IQ level of the story. They didn’t rely at all upon logic.
That scene in the show was later in the timeline than anything released from the books. It couldn't have been translated unless GRRM specifically told them Arya would get stabbed at some point.
That scene hasn't occured in the books yet. It may or may not. We don't know. In the books, Arya's story has proceeded up to her getting her eyesight back.
@@BrandonVout If the story goes exactly as depicted in the show, then of course I can see why GRRM hasn't bothered finishing the series! He knows everyone will fucking HATE it!
@@TheSuperRatt i doubt it. the show split fromt he books after like season 4-ish? there were issues witht he first few seasons fromt he bookks but it was a better representation. while the seasons after 4 are off rail almost completely. and fully off rail after s6
@@MalonzeProductionsGaming I’d say it fully went off the rails at the end of season 4, the omission of the Tysha confession ruins everything. Season 5 and everything onwards is just fanfiction.
I think the reason Batman is so popular, is because of plot armor. We love how a mortal can stand toe to toe with gods and solve to toughest of situations through his intelligence, but really, that shouldn't really work.
But one of Batman's chief charateristics is his being an ace chessmaster strategist that rivals the top most greatest in the world and being crazy prepared (he has files on all Justice League members that catalogs all their strengths and weaknesses in the event one goes rogue, he even keeps kryptonite in the Batcave just in case Superman goes bad). He worked for his plot armor.
Is H.F.M the only thoughtprovoking Channel you watch? What about the 'Issue-listing Type' of Channel? What about Some-More-News and Second-Thought? They sure list Issues, having by-now Vidoes about Uvalde, Roe W Wade, Crops, LGBT and much more.
Personally for Arya I would’ve killed her off when she reunited with Nymeria. Her whole thing in her character arc is about identity of self, and when she officially became no one she should suffer the consequences of doing so. Nymeria killing her would be a testament that she is killed by her former identity as Arya Stark.
I agree it's important for characters to lose, I think it's important for them to win as well. If the protagonists lose too much or too badly, they risk becoming pathetic, and the story around can seem pointless. On another note, the show Leverage had an interesting story mechanic: one of their recurring antagonists, Jim Sterling, could not lose. In every scenario in which they encountered him, he somehow came out on top. The challenge for the characters was how to work around this law of the universe and still prevail. It always made for fun stories.
![On Writing: Dark Lords! [ Sauron | White Witch | Voldemort ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/UfVDkW0bqIA/mqdefault.jpg)
![On Writing: Prologues [ Game of Thrones l Harry Potter l John Green ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qv9qcTbwAiw/mqdefault.jpg)
plot armour is bad (almost all the time) - what's the WORST example you've ever seen? comments/like/shares really help!
And what about shipping teases?
Hey Tim, I would love to buy your first book on Worldbuilding but can't seem to find it anywhere except on Amazon and Ebook. Save the writers who love a good paperback, please.
The problem isn't that plot armour exist, it's the fact that you the author is allowing me to see plot armour cause your writing is shaky.
Plot armor is like any other literary device. It needs to be earned to be accepted. (foreshadowing helps)
Help, I've completely sealed my main character in Plot Armor and now they can't see, hear or move (They are also completely invincible)
I think I remember Brandon Sanderson saying in his writing course..."No one cares if coincidence gets your characters into trouble, but it always feels cheap if it gets them out of trouble."
Plot armor is when your character gets out of trouble that should've had some sort of consequence based on the rules you set up.
Great stuff dude! Thanks for the videos!
This quote has ruined a lot of books for me.
What's his writing course called? It's a book?
@@eduardmanecuta5350 it's a series of videos here on UA-cam. Brandon Sanderson gives a course on creative writing in his old university and films it and puts it in his own UA-cam account for everyone to see.
Plenty of stories have been ruined for me by letting coincidence get the protagonist into trouble (for the 20th time in the last few hundred pages). There is clearly a limit.
@@catherinebustos6386 Thank you. I will search it now.
My favourite example of plot armour is Reiner from Attack on Titan. It was really clever, actually. Make a suicidal character and deny him death every single time.
To be fair, it was fun seeing him not get the death he always wanted
His worst plot armor is the whole transfer my consciousness bullshit that happened once. So frustrating to know how important he is later but know that he should have died right then.
Bruh iseyama the only guy who uses plot armour to spite someone
Very similar to Kaladin from the Way of Kings. Using plot armor to induce survivor’s guilt is a great way to have stakes while keeping key characters alive
@@gibosgibnon7909 lmao
Better Call Saul is a perfect prequel in that sense. You know that most of the main characters will survive since they're alive in Breaking Bad, but at what cost will they survive? How morally broken will they end up, will they lose their close ones who are not protected by the plot armor?
Is that really plot armor though? Did my great grandpa have plot armor for surviving WWII? Or were all his stories just made up? Cuz that is too much 'plot armor' imo. He survived so much stuff, you'd be complaining the hero has way too much plot armor
Or maybe stories are just told from the survivor's perspective.... because if we told them from that guy that died during his first battle, the story would be over pretty quickly
@@pyropulseIXXI That is exactly plot armor. Because it is a story, you know your grandfather survives. He has plot armor.
@@pyropulseIXXI If your grandpa says he was stabbed a dozen times in the stomach and thrown onto sewer water, then yeah, I'd call bs. It's not about just surviving or not, but how the story is told and how likely it seems.
@@patafix534 That isn't what plot armor is, do you realize that ? I gave an obvious example, and yet you still responded with something that made no sense.
According to your fcked up logic, if I know how a story ends, then that is plot armor. lmao, people are so fcking d*mb, it is honestly sad
@@patafix534 My question was rhetorical, because the answer was obvious... that it wasn't plot armor. And yet you responded with "that is exactly plot armor." I almost feel sorry for your lack of intelligence
Plot is the cause and effect of a story; if the story leads to someone dying, but that person doesn't die, because they are needed for the plot later on, then that is plot armor.
Plot armor is never good because it is a contradiction. It is always bad writing.
What this youtuber is describing as 'plot armor' is not plot armor. Coincidences are not plot armor; too many obviously break the immersion, but that is something else entirely
But people that survive world wars tend to survive things that someone would say is plot armor (ironically, exactly like you did) if it were told in a story.
But it cannot possibly be plot armor if it is a real story... of something that actually happened; there is no writer, and second, they survived via pure chance of real life.
Hence, the fact you answered as you did should only warrant a simple respond of an insult, but I took the time to explain why you are wrong
I always loved how in ATLA while the fire loaded was a huge threat the whole series, the last few episodes were not about will Aang win but will he need to kill Ozai in order to win.
If they hadn’t done that it would’ve had zero real tension
I think that question might be closer to "CAN Aang beat Ozai, AND can he do it without killing him." Because I remember there being a ton of tension in the lead up. We know the Avatar state is Overpowered, but even then Ozai gets his power up from the comet so there's at least a legit question if he'll be able to win. And while Aang is a pacifist, the internal tension is great. Basically it uses every way it can to build tension AND resolves them in one conflict. Excellent example and writing.
@@S1leNtRIP yeah I mean it tried but it’s a cartoon on Nickelodeon and the series finale. Of course he is going to beat Ozai. How is the bigger question and where the greater tension lies. Without that the ending would’ve just felt like spectacle.
I wish they would have made Aang's fear of Ozai and the tension between the two characters feel more rational and real. I mean sure, it's understandable that Aang would be worried about fighting such a powerful bender and such a ruthless man, but to be personally SCARED of him to the point of having nightmares about him makes no sense for Aang in the context of the story.
@@colinplaisance4274 but by the same logic (ATLA being a nickelodeon cartoon) it was also pretty clear that he wouldn't kill him.
@@colinplaisance4274 i like how your comment has nothing to do with plot armor but it has to do with ATLA so I guess this channel has to accept it? Lmao
Like everything in writing, plot armour is a tool. It being "good" or "bad" entirely depends on the writer's skill.
For example, Wheel of Time has in-universe plot-armour for some characters explained through the concept of Ta'Veren. Basically, reality bends around some people because they have a purpose to accomplish in the grand Pattern of Ages.
This concept is used to great effect, showing that having plot-armour as a mechanic characters acknowledge can lead to interesting conflict: what do you do when you just want to live a peaceful life but the universe keeps throwing you into life or death battle because that's your "purpose" ?
Or... What do you do when you just want to die and the universe won't allow it ?
See but then it's in universe so it's no long plot armor, it's just the story. It's like saying my character is a skilled fighter so novices not beating him is plot armor.
Reiner relates to that last part
@@upg5147 it is not an activ skill though, it is mostly passiv reality bending around them to keep them alive. . . Or in one extreamly funny case force a character that tries to run from a battle to participate and accidently lead it. It is a tale in a tale that aknowlages that no matter how insane the odds look, the character will end up in a certain place.
@@SingingSealRiana But it's still an in universe ability. It's like if a character can come back to life if they stop their heart right before they die. It's not plot armor if you set it up like that earlier. It can lead to some lazy writing since you wrote such an easy out.
On the topic of tools I'd argue some tools are either 1) easier to use in a bad way or 2) more obvious and apparent to the reader/viewer when used badly.
Otherwise nice comment 👍
If arya was stabed once or twice and left to die I could give that the benefit of the doubt but being stabed 20 times and pushed into shit water in a world that doesn't have proper medical treatments is not something that can be overlooked easily.
Hell at the very least have her be incapacitated and delirious with fever afterwards
Not like it would have been hard to write the same scene in a more believable way either: Arya catches the knife in her non-dominant arm at the last second, and then escapes down an alley or something instead of diving into sewage. Easy. But damn they loved them some cliffhangers, so writing got tossed out the window.
@@doverin5732 or stops the knife but gets dumped into the sewer.
And lets not forget how out of character she behaved right before that, just starring and smiling out to the sea?! So they actually had to contrive an unrealistic scenario to get her almost killed JUST to use plot armor to get her out of that very scenario. Holy shit.
@@ThePunikaTV Lmfao when you put it that way it seems even dumber than I already thought it was (and I already thought it was pretty fucking dumb).
GoT having "zero plot armor" is great for a couple of seasons, but once it developed a core cast of characters that the story was about, they couldn't just kill them with no consequence. If Jon, Daenarys, and Cersei all died in season 5, the story would have nowhere to go. Ergo, the writers suddenly needed to use more plot armor.
Cersei shoulda died before the end of season 7 and I will die on that hill (hopefully with cersei)
That is fair - you certainly can't keep switching main characters right up until the end! The problem was more that it kept putting those characters in ridiculously dangerous situations and sometimes not even bothering to explain how they survived. Like, if Arya got stabbed multiple times in the gut and then survived because a super-competent surgeon or someone with healing magic found her...cool. But she survives just...because.
Yeah, some is needed... just done properly
@@PirateQueen1720 I think a good character example would be Sansa; a character tossed around by misfortune like a rag doll but never killed due to others finding her insignificant or a reasonable amount of luck. But towards the Battle of the Bastards you get a sense that she's learned from those harsh lessons and understands how to move when playing 'The Game.' I don't think it would have been too hard to reflect that growth in other characters.
Yeah i agree, but then don’t put your characters into situations where they wouldn’t have survived if they weren’t a main character
I personally love Rincewind's plot armor in the Discworld books, where it's a canonical thing that not only makes sure he survives everything he goes through, but also constantly draws him into the nearest batch of nonsense.
I think that part of that is enabled by Pratchett playing it for comedy. Like how in the cartoon Milo Murphy’s Law, since everything around him constantly goes wrong and always has he makes certain to be prepared for everything no matter how unlikely or preposterous and as a result manages to deal with and endure whatever happens.
7:02 I actually found myself in this very same problem just a few days ago! I was writing a fic in which a character had to fight another that got changed into the perfect killing machine. It was all going perfect until I realized… she was going to fight the perfect killing machine.
I didn't want to try to force her to lose, because it didn't make sense for her to do so. Instead, this character was being controlled by a necklace, and I needed that necklace gone. What I did is that this character is capable of dodging bullets, but the necklace is just hanging. And the protagonist is an expert markswoman. What I did is… not have them fight at all! Instead I had the protagonist ambush the other character and shoot at them, counting on them dodging the shot. They move out of the way, but the necklace falls behind, because inertia XD It separates from the body, the bullet passes right through it, and destroys it, solving the conflict.
It was so satisfying to have solved that, because it sounded like an impossible battle that I'd have to force my protagonist into surviving. And I didn't have to!
I love how on every “on writing” video uses Avatar or Korra as examples of good writing. It’s just so amazingly good (season 2 of Korra excepted). We are truly lucky to have gotten it in our lifetimes
Season 1 is pretty disappointing as well.
Now everyone should use Arcane. I love ATLA but it's been replaced in my mind.
@@brittvaughn9447 is arcane a tv show
The show where one of the villains kills himself because the writer didn't know how to solve a solid point the villain had after being discredited because of his reputation
That said I still think it's a somewhat good show
@@johnniefinney3266 dude, Arcane is THE tv show. Trust me when I say you won't be disappointed if you try it. Or actually, don't even do that. Just look up the reviews. Fucking fire masterpiece. 🔥🔥🔥
The “consequences don’t have to mean death” thing is a great thing to remember. I’ve got a character that’s immortal, absolutely cannot die, and at the climax she and a handful of others get trapped in a building by a horde of necromancer-controlled undead. Immortal says something about how much what’s going to happen next is going to suck, and one of her friends says something along the lines of “babes, you can’t die though.”
And immortal just responds with “yeah, so now I get to watch everyone else die while also being ripped into teeny tiny pieces and possibly eaten. But at least I’m going to be alive for the whole thing, I guess.”
You can narratively give someone the ultimate form of plot armour and still give things stakes, you just need a bit of lateral thinking.
I've always seen immortality as something worse than death.
Imagine, you are a mortal who was on a quest with your friends and, to reward you, the gods decide that you join their pantheon.
You become immortal and you have divine powers but you can't do anything to help your friends who remained mortal and who are attacked by monsters because of the Divine Laws which forbid any gods to intervene directly.
You can only watch them fight, and eventually die, while you, on your brand new throne, stand helpless despite your ability to destroy an army with the snap of your fingers.
And no matter what, when your family and friends go to the afterlife, you can never join them, it's the worst thing ever...
Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars Trilogy and Anakin in the prequel trilogy are characters that the writers refuse to kill off for obvious reasons but they’re still capable of losing to the point where they each have permanent physical reminders of their defeats. (Luke lost his hand to Vader and replaced it with a metal prosthetic whereas Anakin has both a scar and a prosthetic hand to remind him (and us) that he’s capable of sustaining lasting damage. )
@@icecreamconewithacap5697 if there’s an afterlife you can just chill with them. At that point death is meaningless for all involved
Christian McKeltar in the fever series is rendered immortal and becomes the unseelie fae, Death. However when the hag gets him and starts using his guts for her knitting, I think he would have preferred to be able to die.
They could have just had Arya avoid the assasination better. She caught on at the last second, tried to dodge got a nasty swipe accross her sword arm, and manages to escape. In the next scene, we see it is harder for her to use her sword arm, and especially when running from the waif, it seems extremely stiff. Byt hey, she was trained by the faceless men, and she was already pretty ambidextrous. So it was the character who was underestimating Arya more than the audience.
That would have made sense and been interesting.
At about that point in GOT, common sense and interesting story was being excised from the show.
@@speakingwithoutnet Yes it was so sad to see it crumble with such confidence
Or just make the recovery longer and more dificult. With her training, she could reasonably survive the stabs, just not be alright after a nap.
@@petrsevcik5044 Also possible. She hides well enough that it takes a week or so to find her, and steals proper medicial supplies. Though the stabs would have had to not hit anything vital. Which is possible if the waif was leaning more towards cruelty than efficiency, which she seemed to be.
Arta just standing there flailing would be something most people would do, but Arya should have reacted quicker
I think the writers on GoT got addicted to the narrative power of main character death. They built up a faith with viewers that death in this story was realistic and that actions had consequences, but all the praise they got for it sort of went to their heads.
They started using the threat of death as a crutch for easy tension, and ♪ kind of forgot ♪ that other sources of tension even existed.
Plot armor is fine as long as there are consequences. I think the best example of this is the show "Silicon Valley". The stakes are never life-threatening but for every solution they create, there are anyways unforeseen consequences that help carry the momentum from episode to episode. This is the only comedy I know that doesn't build tension based on romance.
Another story that drives itself from consequences would be "The good place". It changes it stakes almost every episode, especially in the later seasons, purely because of the decisions of characters and sometimes circumstance, that rarely involves the romance aspect of the show.
That isn't plot armor.....
@@pyropulseIXXI In the context of a comedic story, yes it is. On SV, Pied Piper should have "died" many times or the main characters should be in jail or bankrupt or dead but they continue to fail upwards.
It's okay to have random solutions if it drives the narrative. In GoT, Arya gets stabbed and survives...but it adds nothing to the story. During the Long Night, there is absolutely no reason for Jamie and Brienne to BOTH survive. Their story arcs are done. If Brienne had died, it gives a narrative reason for Jamie to return to Cersei. If Jamie had died, it gives narrative reason for Arya to kill Cersei using Jamie's face.
The coolest use of plot armor I've ever seen was in A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony. The premise of the book is that the main character is exiled from his town for having no magic, and travels across the land to try and find it to return home. Though he had been lucky in escaping dangerous situations throughout the book, towards the end he winds up in a duel with a powerful magician, and luck won't be able to save him this time. The big reveal is that luck continues to save him every time the magician tries to hurt him - that his magical talent is the inability to be harmed by magic. And then after that, the tension is maintained because the magician realizes this and continues the duel by attacking with a mundane sword! Great stuff
And since EVERYTHING where he’s from is magic, his magic is constantly putting him into weird/embarrassing scenarios.
That isn't plot armor................ This comment section just proved that 99% of people have no idea what is going on; they don't know anything; they just regurgitate stuff they've heard, like "coolest use of plot armor I've ever seen...." and then you proceed to not list a single example of plot armor.
Plot armor is never good; it is a massive error in writing; an in universe ability is not plot armor, ffs
@@pyropulseIXXI love it when people gatekeep art ,👀
I find it fascinating the way plot armour changes with tone and genre. Though one thing that I like to consider in this topic is Squid Game. I heard complaints that the main character had plot armour or that it was unrealistic that the main character would survive such a deadly game (Similar to Katniss in the Hunger Games) Instead of plot armour or the main character surviving to the end because he's the protagonist, he's the protagonist because he survived. Reframing deadly situations in that sense can help adjust perspective on plot armour
The most imported thing to keep tension and the viewer/reader buy into your reality is often consequences. Plot armor fatigue does not happen because your character is overly competent or nothing ever happens to them, but when something happens to them, there are no consequences. If you let them get injured, commit to that or give a really good excuse that did not come out of nowhere but makes atleast when rereading sense. You do not need to kill people all the time, but when you do, make it count. Fullmetal alchemist (brotherhood) expertly showed how a more or less sidecharacter death can still be relevant near the end of the series just by going realisticly through the consequences. People grief, people remember, if you play your cards right you get immense tension out of it without overdramatising and needing to threaten the whole damned world every weak.
If you revive people, do something with that, like the horror that is berics existence or well in fmab. . . .
People do survive the unlikeliest things, just do not be careless with it.
Honestly the biggest apeal for me in got wasy the psychological realism grrm gave hiss characters. No matter if they survived something or whatever, everything that happens had realistic consequences
And i big aspect of people buying into something is the explanation given. FMAB sets up the rules of the world early and doesn't break them. In real life people do survive the weirdest things for reasons that are basically pure chance or sheer determination, and its ok to leave the explanation at that. (Say a character gets shot in the gut and left for dead, they can still crawl if they really need to do something before passing out from the pain)
In his example from game of thrones, getting stabbed in the gut and falling in the sewer means definite infection, theoretically she could stumble around for a bit but without modern or super magical medicine she's probably going to die. (And in either case thats atleast a week in the hospital for the infection alone and a few more weeks for the stab wound recovery and taking it easy. Alot can happen during such a recovery period, but my understanding of the GOT universe is that she's dead unless she gets super lucky fighting for her life against that infection.)
And something Tim didn't mention is the inversion of plot armor, plot curse, which is where a character is going to die and nothing can be done about it and most likely its a stupid death. (Not that stupid deaths don't happen IRL but ironman isn't going to die by tripping down the stairs and hitting his head, it just doesn't happen in fiction)
For me, a big opposite issue exists: A character dies to a fatal blow and I wonder: Why didn't they use Healing magic? Why don't they cast Raise Dead/Resurrection? It ruined a lot of magic settings for me. You have Regenerate. Your main cast is wealthy and has divine providence... but people die to a random spear to the gut?
High Magic settings should not have issues caused by "I got stabbed." In high magic settings, if someone dies, they should stay dead because they lost their will to live or were given great reward in afterlife - rejecting resurrection.
2:50 These are close to the rules *explicitly* described for the God-Tier immortality that some characters in _Homestuck_ get: you can't die from unimportant stuff; you death must be Heroic (self sacrifice for good), or Just (you are evil and get killed).
At one point John Egbert gets stabbed in the back by a teleporting enemy that he had no chance at stopping at that time, dies, and resurrects a couple of minutes later because it wasn't in either category.
If you haven't already, you should absolutely read the manga "Ajin" (do not watch the anime though). Its characters' (well most of them), literally can't die (that's the starting point of the story), immediately establishes all the rules of the universe (how death works, how reanimation works. Etc) and goes absolutely batshit insane with how creative they play within the rules, especially the villian. All while having absolutely incredible tensions for literal fates worth than death for the main character and for ordinary civilians
Oh i saw the anime on netflix a while ago and liked it, do know you where i could read the manga?
Fuck that, watch the anime too. It's still good and has great action sequences. Just because it doesn't follow the manga doesn't mean it's not good.
Huh. I wasn't able to really engage with the anime. Can't tell you why, this many years after I watched the thing, but I know that the character and plot developments felt like they were driven by edge more than substance, and I wasn't invested in the series' sense of morality. The latter half of the plot felt pretty weirdly structured to me, too, or maybe it was just pacing... at least, I remember being disappointed and disengaged and knowing I was supposed to feel tension.
Considering some of the things I thought the anime was trying to say, it's possible the manga's better, especially if they re-arranged the plot. But I got some strong doomer, "humanity is worthless" vibes from the anime that I really wasn't vibing with.
@@Amanda-C. the anime started and ending before the mangas end so they likely had no idea where it was going to go. Additionally, some of the scenes in the manga were cut from the anime even though they were out at the time it was produced. One was likely for gore despite it being the most interesting use of the reanimation power. The second one was likely for.... cultural sensitivity let's say.
@@muntu1221 agreed, just because something doesn't follow its source doesn't make it bad. However the ending had no idea it was doing, they removed some of the best scenes from the early manga, including most importantly how creative their use of the regeneration mechanic can be, and the animation was really, really hard to get over.
The "yes, but" is also known as "failing forward", and is related to the "success at a cost". There's so very many things that can be effectively used as stakes - and most of them can actually be /lost/ and still have the story progress. Which can be particularly effective when the thing that's lost is something that the character would gladly have died to protect.
Got to protest against using Luke as an example of inconsistent behaviour - it isn't inconsistent at all. In fact, it's exactly in line with the journey Luke goes on, mirroring Anakin's except for the fact that Luke 1) realises the Jedi were fundamentally wrong about attachments (and this is what caused Anakin's downfall) 2) Luke is able to see what he'll become if he does kill his father. Luke does not go on a kill-crazy rampage slaughtering sand-people in an act of genocidal vengeance. He DOES use the force for defense, and not attack. To stop himself from killing his father at the last moment after giving in to his rage is ENTIRELY consistent with his established arc and journey. Otherwise, I love the video.
An excellent example of the tension being something other than survival: Dan Wells' "I Am Not a Serial Killer"
It's told from the first person perspective with commentary showing at least some benefit of hindsight. Thus we have a pretty good idea that the protagonist, a teenager named John Wayne Cleaver is going to survive: he's here telling his story, sounds like he made it out in one piece. But that's not the problem. The problem is the title of the book. Who actually feels the need to make that declaration? "I am not a serial killer" is not a phrase one tends to say if one is not at the very least under suspicion of being a serial killer. Furthermore, we know from fairly early on that John has antisocial personality disorder. As he points out, because of his age, it's technically just conduct disorder, but he fits the ASPD profile so perfectly that it's hard to see him growing out of it. He is, furthermore, obsessed with serial killers. He points out that he's named after a serial killer (because "John Wayne" couldn't be a reference to any famous person other than John Wayne Gacy), his father is named Sam thus making him the Son of Sam (another high profile serial killer of 20th century America) and his surname is a murder weapon (which, y'know, enough people are weirded out by cleavers that I'll grant that it's not totally off the wall to the name as a murder weapon first and a butcher's tool second).
He's very determined at the start of the book to not be one. He does his level best to remember moral behaviours. He has rules designed to keep him from going down a path that will lead him to violence. So that's the tension: does he succeed. Does he manage to stick to the moral high ground he's clinging to, or does he become the thing he doesn't want to be?
And if you're now invested in this question, you're gonna have to read it, or look elsewhere online for spoilers.
I feel like when it comes to PLOT ARMOR one of my favorite aspects of it, is when they just SHATTER that armor entirely. I think you can indeed build up that armor, make some character seem impenetrable, then...SURPISE MF. When well written, that can send shock waves through a fandom. Yu-Gi-Oh did this very well in the Waking the Dragons arc. The Pharaoh from Yu-Gi-Oh had a GREAT amount of plot armor....UNTIL the waking the dragons arc when HIS OWN PRIDE cost him something DEARLY. Yugi's Soul.
Since then much like Korra he is on a MENTAL battle. This man just BREAKS. He doesn't really fully recover until the end of the season. And the reason why he lost is believable because WE'VE SEEN him go too far because of Pride. He nearly kills a man because of his pride. How far fetched is it that he'd be willing to risk his own soul over it? And you start to wonder just how well do you know this person you've spent SEASONS getting to know? It also shows the Pharaoh ISN'T infallible. He screws up. He might have been a mighty king but now....he's just a man....he's just human. And to err is human.
This! And it works super well because Yugi is the main character, but Pharoah technically just possesses his body using the Millennium Puzzle. It shows that he’s got some great characteristics about him (he doesn’t try to steal Yugi’s body, is wise quite often, is extremely smart, and is cautious when in unfamiliar territory), but is arrogant when it comes to Duel Monsters. And that costs Yugi. And him.
@@jamesalexander5025 Yep. The Pharaoh was also always seen as having those perfect strategies, he was always able to help Yugi. And he always knew when to let Yugi take the lead. So to see him SCREW UP so BADLY....God as a kid I'll never forget that wide shot of the Pharaoh on his knees screaming for Yugi to come back. It was all my friends and I talked about for DAYS.
Interesting thing I just realized w the CW shows - a lot of the stakes (at least in the better seasons) are more emotional than physical. It’s not “will Sara be gone forever” because no, she is never permanently dead that’s just an in-universe rule at this point. It’s “look at Sara emotionally suffering from the effects of her trauma”. We never *really* wonder “will supergirl die?” Because she won’t. She’s supergirl, she may be weakened or injured but it’s always temporary and soon enough she’ll be back to being literally bulletproof. It’s her *emotions* that suffer long term damage. Just an interesting note on how (again, in the shows/seasons with better writing) the shows place their tension on the emotional state of the characters instead of their physical state
Let's get this engagement ball rolling
Regeneration or advanced healing skills can be great for this type of balance between threat, realism & tension.
Like... the main character just got a limb torn off, and they're greatly weakened... but if they get away, there's a great chance of coming back swinging.
You need to be careful not to overdo it, though, or your main character might as well be a Terminator, and that's even duller. Like even Wolverine sometimes has his healing factor overloaded & have to take things safer for a while. That sort of things.
I think the Old Guard is another good example for healing factor.
The main characters are immortals who’ve been around for like eons and fought in various wars. They could walk off anything that hits them but one thing they’re really afraid of is when their ability to heal stops without warning which happened to a friend of theirs centuries prior resulting in their death. The healing process also takes time whenever they get hit by explosives.
@@edmontonboy99 One of the most restrained & thus drama preserving ones I've seen, is in Dresden Files.
Mild spoiler:
In that series, Wizards have a SLOW~ healing factor. They basically heal just like you or me, but their bodies don't KEEP scar-tissue.
So a wizard will, EVENTUALLY, even do stuff like regrow limbs. But it takes years or even decades, and healing magic is one of the hardest there is in that setting.
It's a neat way to both keep up the drama, and not have every little scrape & wound be forever, and what a nightmare for continuity that is.
In "Stranger Things", it's become increasingly obvious with every passing season that the writers are afraid to kill off major characters like Steve, Max and Hopper, instead opting for one of the lovable side characters. At this point, the stakes aren't as high as they once were, since you know that the main heroes will ultimately be protected via Plot Armour.
I hope this is intentional, you know?
Like, they could be doing that for us to think exactly what you said, that the major characters will never die.
So if they do die in the next season, we would be twice as shocked
@@PacMonster0 While you aren't wrong, in Stranger Things it's becoming plot armor. Especially with this latest season...
@@brenosantos5579 I fully expect some big deaths for the final season but I don't know if they can do it.
@@PacMonster0 I agree mostly with what u said but Hopper sacrificing himself at season finale just to be like... Naw I got out of the way off screen and nobody tried to search for bodies... THAT is plot armour
@@PacMonster0 I think this is a really good response that helps clarify the ideas in the video, but I also agree with the main point that stranger things characters have plot armor. hopper died, and him surviving is bullshit. Steve should've definitely bled out by now. Bringing max back to life made no sense and also diminished eleven as a character for me. I will admit I love steve and hoppper and don't mind it at all I love them too much 😭
Ooh, ooh. There's an anime I LOVED from the 80's that was really interesting with how it played with character death and plot armour. Legends of Galactic Heroes had character death (quite a lot, and it could also be quite surprising), but the characters we followed were commanders in their armies instead of regular rank and file soldiers, so they weren't necessarily written to be in much danger. Thus, when danger did come to them, it was always intense and out of left field (betrayals, terror attacks, just plain bad luck getting their fleets blown up).
Just ordered both volumes and I am so excited! Your videos have had an unbelievable impact on how I approach my stories and worldbuilding. You're doing amazing work 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Happy to see the commentary on legend of Korra’s writing here. The development Korra went through felt so layered and earned because of the myriad of ways that her identity were challenged.
Avatar is amazing.
@@KevinDoval incorrect :)
@@KevinDoval you’re not making much sense. This video shows evidence that goes against what you’re saying
Plot armour can should be used in subtle ways.
For instance in firefights, a bullet can land in a person shoulder then bounce off a bone and to their heart and kill them. A writer can have that bullet just pass through, aslong that non lethal damage is dealt with consistency.
Shoulder shots are quite common non-lethal wounds in fiction, but I'm pretty sure in real life there's a massive artery that runs through the shoulder and you can bleed out in two minutes if a bullet cuts through it.
@@runningcommentary2125
Subclavian
My favourite example of plot armour done well is just King in OnePunch Man. His whole character is basically based around this impregnable "bubble of narrative invulnerability", to the point it's just an integral part of the plot. If King *didn't* have ridiculous plot armour, the story just wouldn't be as good.
I always go back and forth between forgetting I'm subscribed to you and binging your content.
Now that I have come to stay, I have to say you run probably one of my favorite channels.
I'm not much of a writer, but your content is some of the most interesting I've ever seen. I wish I was better at writing because you're super inspiring to me whenever I try to craft a story. Only one way to get better though.
Keep up the great work!
I love stories where the tension doesn't come from whether the protagonist will live or die, but on their morality: a great example is Kaladin from Stormlight archive, even the characters believe he won't die but over and over again I worry for him as he fights his personal battle related to hoping for a better life and a better world, constantly urging him to not give up.
The examples the comments contain are really something! This is a great place to come for suggestions for cool shiz I've never heard of before
I think my least favorite form of plot armor is when the villain has it. Like, if the protagonists actually tried or did anything intelligent, the villain would just lose. There is just no tension because the main antagonist can’t be taken down in the first couple episodes of a series, but the writers didn’t want to power up the antagonist to be an actually believable threat. Like Heather from Total Drama Island. Or most of the episodic Flash antagonists. The Boys has been doing this to an extent. Why do the people who have been trying to kill the 7 keep stopping trying to kill them, just to go back to trying to kill them?
the boys was really badly written this s
The Joker has as much plot armour as Bats
I like the fake deaths in one piece. I feel like they are part of a rule that the story is about feeling good and laughing despite the action.
Dude! I love Artemis Foul and the fact that it’s on your shelf makes me happy.
This reminds me of the show Inuyasha and the part of Rin's arc that intersect with Sesshomaru, his mother, and what is basically hell/the afterlife.
That big shock that happens when Sesshomaru has to confront, and not just acknowledge, that Rin is human. She will age. And since she's been resurrected once, she can't be brought back again. I loved that scene when he learns that he doesn't have that resurrection power as as backup if he somehow can't save her from harm.
Hey, just wanted to say this random thing: Your outro sequences where you succinctly and cleanly go back over all the content in the video one more time are fantastic and honestly the best part of your videos. It helps to remind me of and reinforce the lessons you've put forward. Such a small detail helping so much with ensuring my brain does that extra small step needed, associating all the throughlines properly. I find myself remembering the lessons of your videos so much better than others' as a result. Thank you.
100% agree.
This video is the one that FINALLY convinced me to sign up for Curiosity Stream & Nebula…well played sir, well played🤘
the ending sound always cheers me up. I love the videos, and I imagine anything I have to say has been said, so I wanted to point out a point of light through the past years. thanks
That first example of the protagonist being stuck in space reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where Ford and Arthur are only saved because of the infinite improbability drive. Hilarious subversion.
Immersion really helps. I didn’t realize Reiner’s plot armor until I watched a video about it. I was just too into the story.
I think *ARCANE* serves as a really good example for this:
Since the series serves as an origin story for much of it's cast, their survival is all but assured.
But but the sources of tension (Vi&Jinx' relationship, the fate of Zaun...) are removed from that, and, as both the show and meta-knowledge the viewer might posess hint at, all of those are headed towards a grim outcome.
This works because unlike knowing that nothing bad will happen, knowing that something bad WILL happen doesn't decrease, but rather increase the tension in a knife-twisting way if done correctly.
My favorite approach to Plot Armor is in Pulp Fiction where it is actually addressed by the characters and made into a plot point itself.
There is meta, and then there is meta surpassing its own meta-ness.
My favorite example of plot armor comes from the Gate fanfic “Here We Go Again”, in which an Abrams tank goes up against a flame dragon.
Sure, the dragon can claw up the armor, and it could probably roast the crew if it had the chance, but few things can stand up to an armor-piercing tank round to the chest.
The tank ends up tearing up one of its wings, and blows off an arm, but when the crew tries to make the killing blow, the round suddenly jams/duds. It’s a very real phenomena that happens in real life tank battles, and it adds tension to the conflict, since now the success/survivability of the protagonists is uncertain.
Obviously the dragon gets away, but now it’s crippled, and the tank crew survive by their allies, but now their prominently-battle-scarred tank makes it a lot more difficult to keep a low profile whenever their battalion is seen by the locals.
I think one of the best examples from a movie where literally everyone in the audience knows what’s going to happen but somehow when you get to the big moment when the catastrophe happens you’re seriously still wanting the characters on the screen to avoid it, is Titanic.
That action sequence when they spot the iceberg and then you see everyone from the top of the ship to the boilers working as hard as they can to turn the ship is the best scene in the movie.
And especially when they shut the water tight doors very quickly and the workers in the boiler rooms are running to escape before they close. (Although I know historically they actually had other escape methods too).
But it’s so fricking amazing. You can cut the tension with a knife.
Plus actually knowing in advance that literally everyone you’re seeing on screen in that sequence is going to die makes it even more dramatic. For example all the men in the boiler rooms-probably 99.9% of them are doomed no matter what.
The All Guardsman Party, a story you can read online, has an interesting rate of character deaths. It markedly does not have plot armour, as main characters do die fairly often, sometimes without having had any real character development or arks, but this is almost always at the hands of a major enemy or big bad. Never at the hands of goons or mooks. What makes this interesting is the all guardsman is a narration of a high-lethality rpg campaign. It’s interesting how some aspects of plot armour - like characters never dying to mooks, manifest in an rpg system which uses random chance to determine events, while other aspects, like characters rarely dying before their character ark, do not manifest.
Dark heresy in the comments section? What a small world
Congrats on all the books sold. Currently 30k words into my first novel. I got both yours, well deserved keep it up king! 👑
The anime Kaiji (haven't read the magna yet) is an interesting case. In the anime at least, the stakes are not always death. Sometimes it's personal freedom, sometimes it's serious but non fatal injuries, sometimes it's a lot of money. This makes so that the protagonist can lose, and lose quite often. This, ironically, makes the show so much more tense than if it were just his life on the line.
Thank you so much for covering this. Too many times I have seen people complain about plot armour being bad in one scene in a movie, and completely fail to acknowledge the plot armour in every other scene that they were perfectly fine with. I'm not saying that they're criticising movies wrong... But they're criticising movies wrong.
A good example of this is Reinier from Attack on Titan, the shifters have natura regenerative abilities....he can get messed up a lot and heal from his wounds.
Major characters will have plotarmor in the reader's mind, but there are tricks we can pull to make the reader feel the character is in more danger than they are. The two that come to mind immediately are kinking the armor, and death flagging. Death flagging, is whena character resolves their arc, finishes the contribution to the narrative, deals with their biggest regret in life or otherwise completes their tale. In FF14, thancred in Shadowbringer, and Urianger in Endwalker are great examples of this.
The other technique commonly used is kinking the armor. Putting the character in a lethal situation and letting them miraculously walk it off, although it leaves them changed. The narrative often goes out of it's way to tell us the survival was a fluke. Aan example here would be Frodo surviving being stabbed by the blade of one of the ringwraith as a result of an abuse of the one ring. This in turn makes us believe Frodo may not survive when he abuses it again in mount doom.
I had this feeling about The Expanse show(haven't read books yet) with none of the crew dying despite the situations they were in but then I realized that it was more about how the crews actions fucked up the lives of everyone else in galaxy and how they had to cope with not being able to save everyone whilst doing what they thought was right.
Vague Spoilers for Star Wars Rebels (especially the last season):
I think it is cool how they have an almost "reverse plot armor" ending for one if the major character. It's not an outlandish death, and if your are already a Star Wars fan you logically know it's coming (still manages to hurt though) but it is a moment where in an earlier season they probably would have made it out ok. The think that really stands out for plot armor discussions is how one of the other characters in the aftermath basicly calls out feeling like the group was always going to be safe before, but that promises is now gone.
Rebel's story just needs more attention and love, it's really good.
I agree, that character ending was perfect.
But Rebels wasn't without its plot armor flaws either, and by that I'm mostly talking about the WBW. To me that was one of the biggest moments that breaks the established laws we know about the Star Wars universe and how it works.
I am a person who actually enjoys when Star Wars gets weird, but that felt like it was crossing the line a bit
@@asooakeel Eh, I can forgive it because I love the deeper metaphysical aspects of Star Wars, and the character who got plot armored.
@@TheSuperRatt I too love the deeper metaphysical aspects of SW, I actually like the concept of WBW, but I don't like how it was used. SW made a big deal about accepting death as a natural continuation of life, so having a character magically survive what should have been a deathly situation feels like it breaks that theme.
I'm fine with dark siders pulling tricks like that because they are defying nature, the point with them is that they're wrong for doing so, but having a light sider do the same, especially without having any consequences doesn't feel right to me.
It also would've been a great ending for that character imo.
That being said, I hope the future shows would change my mind. I'm trying to stay as open minded about it as I can, and I'm giving them a chance to justify it.
Looking forward to watching this! Before I do my initial thoughts are it can be nice if you’re trying to subvert expectations. Obviously you can’t kill of a main character in a show (usually) but if you give the characters no consequences then it just comes off as lazy
If there are any fellow One Piece fans out there, a good example would be Ace and a bad example would be Kinemon. I’m not saying go kill off all characters but to have meaningful (and even some senseless) real time deaths here and there especially when the stakes of a story are high make it more believable
Reading the title of this video in the recommended from the corner of my eye was an emotional rollercoaster. Well done sir.
Also having the main character lose and make mistakes gives the side characters a chance to shine. Like imagine Return of The King if Frodo was a Gary Stu and was never swayed and never gave in. Having him slowly collapse and give into the ring gave Sam a reason to be the hero.
One thing with the got plot armor in s7 & 8 is that those situations happen so often and quickly after another (as you said in the video).
But if they just didnt rush the show and did like 3 more seasons, you could have the exact same plot armor situations and it wouldnt be as noticable because there would be more time inbetween.
Usually I don't prefer plot armor, but I think if it's done in a way to create more stakes or increase the tempo of the plot, then it CAN be good
One of my favorite anime plot armor is in Fairy Tail. Like all anime you know that the main characters are going to face ever more impossible odds and some how win. In Fairy Tail they actually address it and give a story reason. The first master protects the guild and won't allow any of them to die.
Immediately after this information is given the protection is broken. This added tension to what would otherwise be a normal anime fight.
The protection is restored after that and plot armor returns.
The next big conflict isn't a fight for their life but for honor. After that it's a fight to save the country, even if they live they can lose.
The next arch they win the battle but the guild is disbanded and the characters lose everything, family, friends, home.
In the final battle of the series that protection is again removed early on and the stakes are sky high. No one is safe and it's the end of the show, anyone could die at that point.
When is plot armour good Tim?
Plot armor is great when you need examples of bad writing in order to fill space on a rambling video so you can advertise your books and paywalled videos.
Not gonna lie, I love the idea of this video but I also loved how you touched on other medias/shows that I feel like I don’t normally see you touch on with your opinion, namely Daredevil and (subtly) 7DS. Love your video subjects, thank you for your thoughts and writing analysis contributions !
My solution to Plot Armor:
If a character survives a fatal blow, make it believable that they survive.
Make the audience/readers say: "Oh, that's why. It makes sense"
And also, don't make them get up and start kicking ass immediately like it was nothing. No. Make their recovery slow so everybody feels that the battle/war was serious.
And lastly, if you put a character against someone who they can't compare, well... Don't make them fight in the first place. Don't put Batman against Darkseid or Superman, if he doesn't have a special armor or weapon.
If there's an in-universe answer as to how a character survived then the character wasn't saved by "plot armor", but by that in-universe thing. Of course, the audiance needs to know about saig answer beforhand. At least that's how I understand "plot armor"
For me, a big opposite issue exists: A character dies to a fatal blow and I wonder: Why didn't they use Healing magic? Why don't they cast Raise Dead/Resurrection? It ruined a lot of magic settings for me. You have Regenerate. Your main cast is wealthy and has divine providence... but people die to a random spear to the gut?
DC has put Batman against Darkseid and Superman. I think it's stupid, especially when he can supposedly go toe to toe against Darkseid but still can't beat the Joker.
I have an interesting subversion of video game plot armor coming up.
As it can very well be argued that the way our video game protagonists can shrug off bullet wounds is a form of plot armor.
Well I've had in mind that I'm going to finally play and finish GTA5, but install a few mods.
1st the mod that makes weapons sound realistic, second a mod to improve enemies reactions to being hit, the third a mod to make enemies less accurate shots and last a mod that makes the player characters stagger like NPC's do when shot.
Well, in Lost, a lot of the characters have plot armor, it is explained as the island wanting them to survive.
Tim have you seen Attack On Titan? I think you'd really really really like it from the POV of someone who can appreciate a tightly woven plot. AoT's narrative is far beyond almost anything else out there in storytelling on TV or Hollywood.
Agreed, AoT is a masterpiece imo. One of my favourite stories ever.
I'm grateful the thing under the bed is finally getting recognition.
4:30 That could have been an episode.
3:18 I'm glad I'm not the only one who cried in the episode where Appa was left alone and suffered thru many hardships
My volumes 1 & 2 of On Worldbuilding keep getting into arguments over which elements are most imporant. I could really use a volume 3 eventually to act as a mediator and maybe finally get some moments of peace. The real trouble though is that my volumes' respective plot armor is greater than my own personal plot armor...
I love that you are making so many videos now
I think you forgot to explain when it's actually good... probably accidently swapped that clip with another ad to your book, woops.
9:40 you talk about failure in the small moments to set up a win in the big ones. I just wanted to make a comment in praise of the opposite too. Characters that have a winstreak early on and take a massive defeat at some point- like aang being shot by azula. It wasn't the biggest stage yet, but it was the biggest one at that point, and it was beautiful
I have this excuse in my head about plot armor which doesn't ruin all the shows with plot armor for me.
I force myself to think that stories are told about those who managed to escape risky situations and not about the npcs that died. But when it is used too often I think it is stupid.
I do not know if it's a true story but I think there was a man who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which if you make a movie about that it just seems really stupid.
Quite a lot of real things are things which we wouldn’t accept in our stories. A man named Hitler having a second in command named Himmler for instance. Not to mention things like Hitler betraying Stalin thus forcing himself into a war on two fronts or Stalin killing off Russia’s doctors such that it was difficult for him to get the medical treatment he needed before he died are things which if done by the villains of our stories would elicit all too familiar complaints about villains making foolish mistakes enabling their defeat. Things being realistic do not always lend themselves to good stories.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi, after surviving Two nukes, lived a full life and died at the age of 93, born 16 March 1916, died 4 January 2010.
Like everything in all fiction ever, it has to make sense, and not feel like being pulled out of the author's ass at the last moment.
I respect authors taking the time to establish things up in a way that you get blown away at how much sense it makes, because it's surprisingly difficult.
I have the problem where it gets really hard to 'kill' anyone lol. Idk, I can't bring myself to make some convoluted nonsensical situation like "Oh wow, all the sudden there's this magic seal that made that immortal guy not immortal anymore!" Or "Oh hey, maybe I'll make this relatively normal IQ person go do something incredibly stupid and out of character that will definitely get them killed for no reason!"
Chainsawman did the whole Plot Armor thing in a very entertaining way by having the character Kobeni survive all sorts of dangerous situations where everyone else but her dies.
When Arya got stabbed, I had the theory she really died and got replaced by a faceless assassin. Sadly wasn’t the case.
Or the Lord Of Light brought her back, he knew she would kill the NightKing
That would be actually something.
I remember people theorising at the time, that she was baiting the Waif. Pouch of lamb's blood, and she'd use her skills and subterfuge to win.
What could’ve been, eh?
The wost part about that is that with her training there was a reasonable chance she'd survive, but they just made it too easy.
Yeah, everyone was scrambling for theories because of how assinine Arya's behavior was (why is she just taking a stroll through the city when she knows the Faceless Men are after her??), and how improbable her survival. It had to be a ruse. I liked the theory that she was staging her own death and used a pig's bladder stage prop she stole from the play. Would still be a bit contrived since it required the Waif to kill her precisely with a stab to the guts, but it at least would've been plausible. Bonus points if they had set up that the Waif's m.o. was gut stabbing (proving the Waif is not no one, because she has a personality/preferences). Then in the finale, Arya could've ambushed the Waif when she came to kill Lady Crane.
Or they just could've written anything else.
If tension arose only from the question of, 'Will they survive?' then every story would be a life or death story, and something as tame as a romance would have zero tension. The question should always be, 'Will they fail?'
Your channel really is one of the best on this platform, I always enjoy learning from you :)
Thank you :D
~ Tim
@@HelloFutureMe thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and knowledge with us!
Bro i read bridge to terabithia over ten years ago in grade school and completely forgot about its existence. i legit teared up at you wrenching it from the depths of my subconscious like removing some kind of ten year old splinter i didnt know i had
Star wars does this the worst. you can get cut in half and fall down an almost bottomless pit but if you're angry enough your right as rain.
To be fair Maul only lost his legs and dick. And the wound was sealed dou to the heat. So he had all of his important organs in check. But fucking inquisitor girl gets stabed in the chest... TWICE and lives. Now thats plot armor. Oh guess what. It heals in like a day. Man fuck this show.
My dude, you are brilliant! I love you videos, you make me a better writer! And to those waffleing on weather or not to get this man's books: DO IT! The reference is invaluable!
Have a wonderful day everyone!
i think arcane has one of the best examples of good plot armor, especially for how many many characters in the show get it. If you watch the show and know anything about LoL, youll probably know that most of characters in arcane are champions and therefore will most likely survive, since arcane is loosely meant to be a prequel story. However despite a large chunk of audience being aware of that inherent plot armor, the show doesn't let you see it because it continues to break the characters down and make them lose. For example, jinx is one of the main characters and one of the most recognizable champions, so its all but guaranteed she'll survive. however by the end of first season she has lost almost everything about herself that made her herself, her family, everyone she loved, her mind, and even her body to some extent, and she does have a very near death experience where almost everyone was really questioning if she was dead or not. Arcane asks the question of not if she'll survive but at what cost will she survive. And it does this with most of characters. Arcane also benefits from having an incredibly immersive world and story so that the audience really cares about the characters and wants them to succeed, which arcane then does everything in its power to prevent and that keeps the tension in the story really high.
Now this is something I haven't seen folk talk about. You got me interested
I feel like the question of 'will they die or not' is similar in some ways to 'will the world end or not'. Sometimes it just takes me right out of the story. Sometimes, people having to live with the consequences of the villain's victory is far more terrifying than just being killed or the whole planet exploding. It's far worse in end of the world storylines though.
One of best ways I ever saw a writer create tension was in my favorite book series, "The Unknown Assassin" by Allen Zadoff: I was never worried about whether the main character was going to survive or not, because he can kick butt and freaking narrates the story; plus I wouldn't care even if he did die because the book does a very good job and making you hate him and feel like he deserves every ounce of personal suffering he can get. Instead, I was more worried about everyone around him, because I knew that those characters, despite their mistakes, were good people and deserved second chances, but I always knew the main character wouldn't show such mercy. At the end of the day, it made for one of the most profound and emotionally investing stories I've ever read.
sounds quite interesting. thanks for the description!
Probably my favourite use of plot armour is in Chainsaw Man.
There’s a character named Kobeni that ends up surviving the whole manga but at the cost of her being more and more miserable through constant suffering and pain for laughs.
That example you gave of a protagonist floating through space is kind of a funny one, because that happens in Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He wrote himself into a corner-he knew how incredibly unlikely it was for them to get rescued. The solution? A ship appears that *literally works by manipulating chance*, and it becomes central to the story.
The problem with the Arya incident was that they didn’t translate the scene well from the book.
Actually, she’s never even stabbed in the book.
D&D added a lot of ridiculous content to up the drama or excitement, and lower the IQ level of the story. They didn’t rely at all upon logic.
That scene in the show was later in the timeline than anything released from the books. It couldn't have been translated unless GRRM specifically told them Arya would get stabbed at some point.
That scene hasn't occured in the books yet. It may or may not. We don't know. In the books, Arya's story has proceeded up to her getting her eyesight back.
@@BrandonVout If the story goes exactly as depicted in the show, then of course I can see why GRRM hasn't bothered finishing the series! He knows everyone will fucking HATE it!
@@TheSuperRatt i doubt it. the show split fromt he books after like season 4-ish? there were issues witht he first few seasons fromt he bookks but it was a better representation. while the seasons after 4 are off rail almost completely. and fully off rail after s6
@@MalonzeProductionsGaming I’d say it fully went off the rails at the end of season 4, the omission of the Tysha confession ruins everything. Season 5 and everything onwards is just fanfiction.
You just unintentionally convinced me to re-watch Korra season 1 and to actually try and finish season 2 and 3
I think the reason Batman is so popular, is because of plot armor. We love how a mortal can stand toe to toe with gods and solve to toughest of situations through his intelligence, but really, that shouldn't really work.
As huge Batman fan I do think over time I’ve realized that Batman really is walking Plot Armor at least on some occasions
@@uchihabomber1296 hahaha
Other way around.The reason why why he survives situation he logically shouldn't is because he's popular.
But one of Batman's chief charateristics is his being an ace chessmaster strategist that rivals the top most greatest in the world and being crazy prepared (he has files on all Justice League members that catalogs all their strengths and weaknesses in the event one goes rogue, he even keeps kryptonite in the Batcave just in case Superman goes bad).
He worked for his plot armor.
I love how you used Korra in the "allow characters to lose so that when they do win, it's more satisfying" part. Thank you!!
Is H.F.M the only thoughtprovoking Channel you watch? What about the 'Issue-listing Type' of Channel? What about Some-More-News and Second-Thought? They sure list Issues, having by-now Vidoes about Uvalde, Roe W Wade, Crops, LGBT and much more.
Comment for the algorithm.
Yay, it's a crazy-Tim episode!
Personally for Arya I would’ve killed her off when she reunited with Nymeria.
Her whole thing in her character arc is about identity of self, and when she officially became no one she should suffer the consequences of doing so.
Nymeria killing her would be a testament that she is killed by her former identity as Arya Stark.
Oooh, dark, I love it
Heartbreaking but it would definitely work.
@@AshleeKnowsNot unfortunately for Arya stark as a character that’s the most appropriate way to end her character
Lame
lame, grimdark bullshit
shock or darkness for the sake of it is not good writing, zack snyder
The thing under my bed tells me to wash my socks…
It’s right, but I’ll never listen.
"Tis but a scratch"
I agree it's important for characters to lose, I think it's important for them to win as well. If the protagonists lose too much or too badly, they risk becoming pathetic, and the story around can seem pointless.
On another note, the show Leverage had an interesting story mechanic: one of their recurring antagonists, Jim Sterling, could not lose. In every scenario in which they encountered him, he somehow came out on top. The challenge for the characters was how to work around this law of the universe and still prevail. It always made for fun stories.