Plot Armor, Suspension of Disbelief, Tension, and how we interact with fiction

[Fiery Diamond]

Something that's been on my mind lately: Plot Armor. Specifically, how plot armor, suspension of disbelief, tension, and emotional investment in fictional characters intersect and how our preferences regarding the presence or absence and degree of plot armor are the result of the ways in which we, individually, interact with fiction (and what our preferences say about how we interact with fiction as a result).

Plot armor, at it's broadest, is the protection a fictional character has from negative consequences simply because they are an important character to the narrative. Slightly narrower, it's the protection from harm because of that. At it's narrowest, it's the protection from death because of that.

Suspension of disbelief is something that a consumer of fiction engages in: I think this website has a good description of what and why it is. If a work of fiction goes "too far" into what we personally find unbelievable, it strains or even breaks the suspension of disbelief, pulling us out of the story.

Here's the thing: different people have different preferences when it comes to the prevalence of plot armor, as should be fairly obvious just from examining different works of fiction and the presence (and varying degree) or absence of plot armor in those fictions. Take Game of Thrones, and the books on which the show is based. That's an example where there is minimal, if any, plot armor for the vast majority of characters, and people are encouraged to know that going in. Some people feel that this is a breath of fresh air from stories where "you know they'll make it through okay." Other people (such as myself) are completely turned off from the story because of it.

But... why do people have such different preferences? Personally, I think it has a lot to do with just how we interact with fiction - and the emotional state of the reader/viewer.

Some points to consider:

* Different people have vastly different levels of emotional investment in the fiction they consume

* The current emotional state and general emotional health/stability of a person interacts heavily with their emotional investment in things, both real and fictional

* People with little emotional investment and great emotional stability are less likely to be severely affected by something like the death of a favorite character than people with large emotional investment and less emotional stability

* Different people look for different things in the fiction they consume (this should be pretty obvious)

* Different people have different things "automatically included" in their suspension of disbelief

* To elaborate on the previous point, the expectation of the presence of some measure of plot armor could be as basic a part of someone's suspension of disbelief as any other story convention or break from realism, providing a level of comfort that certain potentially emotionally damaging things will not happen

* Contrariwise, for others the knowledge that plot armor definitely exists in a work of fiction can break suspension of disbelief and rob the story of tension

* What a person is looking to get out of a story (and what they are investing into it) can make a world of a difference in how the presence or absence of certain things in the story (such as plot armor or, conversely, "anyone can die") affect their ability to enjoy a work of fiction


I'll give a hypothetical example of how two people could react in an opposite manner to the presence or absence of plot armor (and the knowledge of that presence or absence) in a scene. Take these two people - Alvin and Bryan - who each have different preferences: Alvin heavily invests himself emotionally in fiction that he reads and has a history of emotional/mental health issues, such as depression; Bryan doesn't get very attached to the characters he reads about, tending to look at things from a more critical perspective, and doesn't have such a history. As a result, Alvin prefers that characters in stories he reads have some measure of plot armor, while Bryan does not.

Scene: Very tense, emotionally charged story event where lives are at stake.
Scenario A: Plot Armor exists. The reader, aware of this, knows that nobody will actually die, at least from the characters present that they care about.
Scenario B: Plot Armor doesn't exist. The reader, aware of this, knows that anybody could end up dead by the end of the event, even among major characters.

In Scenario A, Alvin is happy. He, as part of basic suspension of disbelief, can allow himself to act as though the risk of death is still there, while still being secure in the actual knowledge that it isn't. The tension is undiminished by the presence of plot armor, and he can safely immerse himself in the dramatic moment.

In Scenario B, Alvin is on edge, and not in a good way. Because he knows that anyone, even the characters he cares about, might die, it isn't tension he feels: it's discomfort and dread. Instead of "how will they get out of this?" it becomes "oh ****, please don't kill off anyone I like..." Should someone he cares about die, depending on his current emotional state, he could end up anywhere from just upset to temporarily devastated.

In Scenario A, Bryan is mostly just annoyed. Without the real threat of characters losing their lives, the scene is completely robbed of any sense of tension. Unlike Alvin, he can't fool himself into feeling the tension when he already knows that the characters will make it out okay; that's not part of his suspension of disbelief.

In Scenario B, Bryan is engaged. Since the threat is real, so is the tension, and what good is a dramatic scene like that without tension? If someone dies, he might get upset if he liked the character, but he won't be sent in any kind of emotional turmoil.


In conclusion,
--the way we engage with fiction (both emotionally and in terms of what's included in suspension of disbelief) affects our preferences regarding plot armor
--plot armor is, therefore, neither objectively good nor objectively bad, but rather good or bad depending on the individual engaging with the fiction and what they want out of the fiction

Spoiler: Alvin is

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largely based on how I, personally, engage with fiction.

Spoiler: Bryan is

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based on my perception of some others I have spoken to on the topic of plot armor

Spoiler: My belief is

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that both "Alvin" and "Bryan" are fairly common, and that neither is overwhelmingly more common than the other.

[Mechalich]

Here's the thing: different people have different preferences when it comes to the prevalence of plot armor, as should be fairly obvious just from examining different works of fiction and the presence (and varying degree) or absence of plot armor in those fictions. Take Game of Thrones, and the books on which the show is based. That's an example where there is minimal, if any, plot armor for the vast majority of characters, and people are encouraged to know that going in. Some people feel that this is a breath of fresh air from stories where "you know they'll make it through okay." Other people (such as myself) are completely turned off from the story because of it.

The thing about plot armor is that beyond how it influences the audience there's also how it influences narrative function. A Song of Ice and Fire is indeed notable for it's lack of plot armor, it's also notable for the fact that it cannot be completed. And one of the reasons it cannot be completed is that the lack of plot armor has removed characters from the board and/or placed characters into untenable positions from which they cannot take the actions necessary in order to produce any sort of viable ending. From this we can note that most traditional forms of storytelling, horror being perhaps the biggest exception (and sometimes not even there), require at least a modicum of plot armor for the story to even function. A story that operates according to true historical reality, wherein mild wounds can cause gangrene and death, or characters age 40+ can just suddenly drop dead from heart attacks or strokes have problems with building coherent, satisfactory narratives. Some of the big long-term historical sagas that map to actual events fairly closely expose this problem when some important character just vanishes from the narrative because they died untimely in history - Zhuge Liang famously dies in such a fashion in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, leaving everything he attempted unfinished, and you can practically hear the author's teeth grinding as the narrative frustratingly moves on without him.

As such there's a sort of minimum amount of accepted plot armor necessary to keep the story going and to achieve a viable resolution (and at least in Anglophone contexts 'the world ends, everyone dies' is an extremely hard sell), and evaluation is more about how well this plot armor is concealed, rather than that it exists.

[Rynjin]

Plot armor is, IMO, inherently bad as a concept.

NOT, as you might think, because "anyone can die" should be the norm in fiction.

No, it's because IMO the perception of plot armor is in itself a detriment. It's strongly tied to suspension of disbelief.

A good writer is able to get you to suspend your disbelief pretty easily. And part of this includes creating the ILLUSION of danger, even if there isn't any.

It's the oldest narrative trick in the book, and an important one. If the main character is in no danger, and the audience knows they are in no danger, there is no tension. On the inverse, if the character is in danger, and the audience knows they're in danger...weirdly I think there is ALSO less tension.

It's all about the push and pull of hope and despair.

The problem with Game of Thrones and other grimderp "anyone can die" settings is that after a while, the audience just kind of accepts this as a status quo, and thus does not form a proper emotional bond with any of the characters, since they could be gone in a chapter anyway.

Similarly, the problem with a lot of fiction is that the audience has in the back of their head "there's no way this doesn't go okay, or the series would be over and the creator would lose their job".

Walking that tightrope and carefully managing STAKES is the important part. If the stakes are too high, then the chance of failure go down, at least in an ongoing series. If the main character dies (in a setting with no resurrection), or fails to stop the villain trying to destroy the universe...then the plot ends. Anticlimactically and unsatisfyingly. So of course it won't happen.

Meanwhile, if a series lowers the stakes to the point that the possibility of real harm becomes more feasible...there is tension even if deep down the audience is pretty sure the creator would never pull that metaphorical trigger.

For a specific comparison, look at the difference between types of shonen manga, and situations in them.

In a standard battle shonen (something like Naruto or One Piece) there is a sense that similarly to superhero comics, the main character must always win. Because the stakes are too high not to, starting at death and scaling up from there. If the hero is fighting the main villain or someone willing to kill, there is less tension, because the main character simply is not going to die (or stay dead). There can still be some tension, in the form of grievous injuries (dismemberment, partial blinding, etc.) but you can only do that so many times.

By contrast, and part of the reason tournament arcs are so popular in this genre is that there are rules, and one of them is almost always "no killing". "No killing" means there are believable stakes. The main character can (and often DOES) lose these tournaments, at least the first time around. There is more hype because there are lower stakes, paradoxically.

And that brings us to the underappreciated subset of shonen manga: sports. Because when it comes to sports, losing is always an option. Nobody's gonna die...usually (See: A****a no Joe) but disappointment is on the table. Failure, processing the idea of loss, losing the respect of peers, or income, etc. are all believable stakes that the principal characters can recover from. Hell, one of my favorite manga of all time (Hajime no Ippo, a series about boxing) has taken the absolute BALLSIEST possible route and actually had the main character retire from professional boxing, due to a pair of back-to-back losses and fear of irreversible brain trauma...but the series hasn't ended, only shifted focus to the main character settling into a new role as a trainer and second.

I do not think there is a binary of "Plot armor" or "anyone can die", and the latter approach is in many ways the result of laziness as a creator, not being willing to walk that thin line and come up with creative stakes and consequences for failure.

[Fyraltari]

Plot armour is ultimately unavoidable, for the simple reason that no author is going to kill a character before they're done telling that character's story. Of course the character's death may be part of the story.

The question is whether it is handled well or not. There need to be an illusion of actual stakes, but illusion is everything in storytelling.

What stakes and how strong an illusion depends on the tone you're going for.

People keep bringing up ASOIAF as a story with no plot-armor, but that's not true. It's just very good at hiding which characters have it. We thought Ned was the protagonist who would spend the entire series nabigating treacherous politics, but he was more of a walking inciting element. Other characters do have plot armor. Look at Davos Seaworth: during the battle of the Blackwater, in which his side gets trounced, his ship catches on fire, he nearly drowns and end up on a barren rockin the middle of the sea. But he survives because the narrative isn't done with him. He himself considers his own survival a literal miracle. Likewise we're told he was executed in book 4, but book 5 reveals that as a trick.
Likewise, even before the TV-series confirmed his survival, most people guessed that Jon Snow would survive his death at the end of book 5, because his story is clearly far from over.

[Brother Oni]

Plot armour is ultimately unavoidable, for the simple reason that no author is going to kill a character before they're done telling that character's story. Of course the character's death may be part of the story.

Example, the Overlord anime:

Spoiler: Adventurers

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Overlord has a number of characters (adventurers mostly) who are introduced with a believable backstory, aims and motivations, only to encounter some overwhelming force (be it the antagonist, or the protagonist's security team) and die with their stories incomplete.

The first adventuring party deaths add motivation for the protagonist (and a great deal of satisfaction for the viewer when they get their comeuppance later), while later on, it serves to reminder the viewer that the protagonist is still an evil ruler, only though the medium of show, not tell.

[Rynjin]

Honestly, that exact thing led me to dropping Overlord in season 2.

Spoiler

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I'm fine with villain protagonists to an extent, but they need to have a little something to them to make them more interesting than those around them; see Light Yagami, Lelouch Lamperouge. Or to at least be the evil that works againsta greater evil, like Alucard.

Ultimately I found the lizardfolk more interesting as characters, so their genocide by Ainz was...eh. I couldn't root for him anymore like in the first season, and I couldn't really bring myself to watch anymore.

[Sapphire Guard]

Yeah, ASOIAF sells you the illusion that there is no plot armour, but it's not really the case. Of the POV characters, by the end of ADWD, the amount of them who have died is

Spoiler

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One and a half. Ned Stark and Cat, who comes back as Lady Stoneheart. Jon Snow is stabbed in the last scene, but will probably be back.

It pulled it with Ned once, and have been selling itself on that ever since. As for Ned, he dies to motivate his children, which is super common to kick off a story, we just spent more time than usual with him.

Raymond Feist is not known for lacking plot armour, but characters have died in random crossbow accidents and from falling off horses.

Plot Armour can work, invincible characters can still have dramatic tension. Saitama is invincible, that's not the point, because his emotional journey is more important.

Batman and Superman are not going to die, but they may not save the hostages or stop the bomb from going off, so the story still has stakes.

John Wick is not going to die, but he goes through hell and can't actually get anything he wants through killing people, just getting sucked deeper and deeper into a world he wants no part of. So there are still stakes regardless of whether the character is at risk.

Spoiler: Nier: Automata

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On the other hand, after Yorha was destroyed in this game I lost all interest, because I don't care about the main characters if everyone else is dead. Having nearly everyone but the lead die is nearly guaranteed to annoy me.

On the other other hand, we have the Mandalorian, who is immune to the blaster in a setting nearly everyone's primary weapon is the blaster and there's not much by way of stakes other than his life, which is safe inside its armoured shell.

That's literal armour, so does it count as plot armour if it's justified by the plot?

In Steven Seagal movies he doesn't have plot armour, but he is guaranteed not to fail even slightly, so there is virtually nothing at stake.

Like everything else, execution is key.

[Glorthindel]

People keep bringing up ASOIAF as a story with no plot-armor, but that's not true. It's just very good at hiding which characters have it. We thought Ned was the protagonist who would spend the entire series nabigating treacherous politics, but he was more of a walking inciting element. Other characters do have plot armor. Look at Davos Seaworth: during the battle of the Blackwater, in which his side gets trounced, his ship catches on fire, he nearly drowns and end up on a barren rockin the middle of the sea. But he survives because the narrative isn't done with him. He himself considers his own survival a literal miracle. Likewise we're told he was executed in book 4, but book 5 reveals that as a trick.
Likewise, even before the TV-series confirmed his survival, most people guessed that Jon Snow would survive his death at the end of book 5, because his story is clearly far from over.

Its also worth pointing out that a dramatic shift in the amount and obviousness of plot armour within a single work can be jarring and leave everyone disappointed. The final series of Game of Thrones get a lot of greif, and I mostly blame that on the series breaking its own established rules, and one of them being the sudden appearance of (quite extensive and visually-obvious) plot armour. There are several instances, but the Battle of Winterfell is particularly egregious, given that the fight was a literal meatgrinder, where to all appearances, the survival rate amongst the defenders was in the low percents, but quite literally every named character walked away without a scratch. Sure, important people did die in the final series, but every one served its narrative purpose, and there was next to no surprising/senseless deaths.

[Fyraltari]

Yeah, ASOIAF sells you the illusion that there is no plot armour, but it's not really the case. Of the POV characters, by the end of ADWD, the amount of them who have died is

Spoiler

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One and a half. Ned Stark and Cat, who comes back as Lady Stoneheart. Jon Snow is stabbed in the last scene, but will probably be back.

Spoiler: Some more POV deaths

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You've forgotten the prologues/epilogues viewpoints, Arys Oakheart, Quentin Martell and, going by the preview chapters for book 6, Damphair is a goner too.

It pulled it with Ned once, and have been selling itself on that ever since. As for Ned, he dies to motivate his children, which is super common to kick off a story, we just spent more time than usual with him.

It's a bit more than just Ned. Viserys and Khal Drogo were propped up as the main antagonist until they were killed off before they could do anything. Something similar happened with Renly Baratheon and Balon Greyjoy. And of course there the (in)famous Red Wedding.

Its also worth pointing out that a dramatic shift in the amount and obviousness of plot armour within a single work can be jarring and leave everyone disappointed.

Consistency is the keystone of willing suspension of disbelief.

[Mechalich]

Yeah, ASOIAF sells you the illusion that there is no plot armour, but it's not really the case. Of the POV characters, by the end of ADWD, the amount of them who have died is

The absence of plot armor in ASOIAF is represented not by physical character death, but by characters becoming dead to the plot. GRR Martin allowed his characters to go wherever he thought their motives and circumstances would take them. The problem is that, given the chaos injected by the massive war, they scattered to the four winds, in several cases to the point where it was no longer clear that they had any role at all in what was to come. In the aggregate this created the issue that no characters remained to stop the Extinction-level-threat bearing down on them throughout the series. The reason everyone predicted Jon Snow's return from death was that without him annihilation is effectively certain, though Martin's lack progress since is in no small part a consequence of his inability to figure out a reasonable path to anything other than 'ice zombies, everyone dies' without indulging in the kind of cheese the final two seasons of the show accepted.

And the thing is, while endings where everyone dies and the world is destroyed do exist, such extreme downer endings have all sorts of problems, especially in terms of mass appeal, doubly so when they aren't some kind of obvious warning/allegory. In the specific case of ASOIAF, the allegory angle is dubious because awareness of the ice zombie threat is very low and it's not clear, in the books, how they get past the Wall (the show cheated and wrote in a paradox to allow this).

Overall it's a good example of how plot armor doesn't just mean protection from physical harm, it also means manipulation of the course of events so that the main characters will remain main characters. This can most easily be seen in cases where a character's ability to function in the story is dependent upon some kind of position. Captain Jack Aubrey will always eventually find his way back into command of a ship, the crew of the Serenity will never make enough money to not be desperate for the next job, etc.

[Murk]

I think a bit of plot armour is mandatory for a good story.

Suspension of disbelief gets mentioned a lot, but on the other side of that coin is an unwritten agreement between author and audience that the story will have a satisfying conclusion. I'm sure there's a word for that agreement too.

When I read a book or watch a movie, I trust the author. I trust that - in some way - the protagonist is special. Otherwise, why would I be reading this book?

It's more realistic for the protagonist to die an unsatisfying death. Most people die unsatisfying deaths. Most people do not come to epiphanies, do not save the world; most people live perfectly ordinary lives (and that's fine).
But I don't want to read stories about perfectly ordinary lives.

So before I even start reading a book I need to trust the author that - in some way - the protagonist is not ordinary and that their lives aren't ordinary, and that they won't die a sudden, unsatisfying death.
That doesn't mean the protagonist can't die, but if they die it needs to be a meaningful, satisfying event. Which is a kind of plot armour too, right?

I think it was indeed Martin who once mentioned Indiana Jones - how preferably, you wouldn't be wondering how Indiana was going to survive but if he was going to survive.
And I disagree: it would be utterly unsatisfying if Indiana Jones died, and if I spent the movie wondering whether it will have a satisfying ending, that would be a clear sign I didn't trust the author.

[Fyraltari]

The reason everyone predicted Jon Snow's return from death was that without him annihilation is effectively certain

I would say it's more because the five books have kept harping on the mystery of his parentage, and he's only character still alive with any reason to care.

it's not clear, in the books, how they get past the Wall (the show cheated and wrote in a paradox to allow this).

Spoiler: Winds of Winter theory

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There is actually a rather foreseeable path for it to happen. The wildlings searched in vain for an artefact called the Horn of Joramun who is supposed to have the power to shatter the Wall. Samwell ended up finding and keeping a very old bronze hunting horn. The narration keeps reminding us he has it and he's now staying in Oldtown near the Hightower. A... tower that is very high. So high, you can allegedly see the Wall from it. Advancind towards Oldtown is Euron Greyjoy, noted madman who wants to "break the world" to become some sort of god. He says he wonders if he could flynif he'd jumped from the right tower. So there's good odds that Martin's plan is for Euron to get the horn and blow it from the roof of the Hightower, destroying the Wall.

[DigoDragon]

Plot armor itself isn't a bad thing. While I know Geralt in The Witcher isn't gonna get killed off in the middle of the series, the story is pretty convincing that he *might* get killed, or at least seriously maimed. And most people around him don't get that kind of protection, so there's still plenty of tension to draw upon.

[GloatingSwine]

See, the thing is that "plot armour" and "suspension of disbelief" are actually the same thing.

Plot armour is a perception in the reader's mind that arises when their suspension of disbelief starts to waver and they see the hand of the author ensuring the "correct" events transpire.

Unless the author intends to kill everyone in the story by the end (and you can spot that when you see a name like Yoshiyuki Tomino or Gen Urobuchi on there), someone the reader is introduced to has plot armour and will be around at the end of the story (even if the end of the story is them dying in the appointed way), but if the author does a good job of making the reader believe in the reality of the character's situation and their survival until the end comes as a natural result of that reality (things they can do, resources they have, etc.) then they won't notice it.

[warty goblin]

There's also enjoyable suspense to be had in seeing how a character escapes some perilous predicament, even when you know they will escape it. I think we've kinda lost sight of this, as characters with clearly defined, themed powersets have become the norm, the answer is nearly always "they use their powers." This answer is boring, especially in light of series that last for decades and huge numbers of installments because we will have seen it before. Probably several times.

[NRSASD]

There's also enjoyable suspense to be had in seeing how a character escapes some perilous predicament, even when you know they will escape it. I think we've kinda lost sight of this, as characters with clearly defined, themed powersets have become the norm, the answer is nearly always "they use their powers." This answer is boring, especially in light of series that last for decades and huge numbers of installments because we will have seen it before. Probably several times.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. My big issue with genres where the plot armor is overt is the overwhelming sense of stasis that conveys. I don’t enjoy watching people fail, but when I know any set back I see will be undone by the end of the next installment because the status quo must be maintained, I am thoroughly bored.

That, and I’m heartily sick of chosen, special protagonists who are unique for plot reasons. Combine those two tropes and you have superheroes, so… sucks for me to be a movie fan I guess.

[Tyndmyr]

Plot armor is, IMO, inherently bad as a concept.

NOT, as you might think, because "anyone can die" should be the norm in fiction.

No, it's because IMO the perception of plot armor is in itself a detriment. It's strongly tied to suspension of disbelief.

A good writer is able to get you to suspend your disbelief pretty easily. And part of this includes creating the ILLUSION of danger, even if there isn't any.

I'd agree with this. In many cases, I know full well that the main character is not likely to die. For instance, perhaps it is the first book of a series of many. It would be quite unusual for the main character to be killed off in such a series.

And yet many people will read such books, and often praise them. So, it is not that we actually want any character to die at any time. That is...interesting in ASOIAF because it is unusual, surprising, and appropriate to the world...and yet it is not inherently the only way to approach things or even a very common way.

In many cases the protagonist is portrayed as in danger, even if there is no intent to kill them off. That's fine. Heck, death isn't even the only danger. Perhaps we fear that a relationship will be broken, a trust betrayed, a friend lost, a character hurt in some way that carries weight...a confrontation has to have stakes for it to matter, but the stakes can be almost anything.

Now, I'll flip this around and say that when a character always loses, it is as boring as when a character always wins. I truly hate shows that just dump on the main character ceaselessly, and they constantly lose whatever they have gained for no real purpose. Sacrificing for a cause, cool, but just bad luck endlessly ruining everything is as lame as a character who constantly lucks into success with no effort. There needs to be variation in what is happening and how it happens, and there should be at least some sense of story progression.

Heck, look at Dresden Files, which routinely beats up Dresden quite badly along the way. It's hardly a hard-realism series, but many of the conflicts remain interesting because they have stakes, and conflicts are not usually resolved by ridiculous luck or something similar, which would drain the tension from them, but by some variation of cleverness, determination, and paying the price.

And the thing is, while endings where everyone dies and the world is destroyed do exist, such extreme downer endings have all sorts of problems, especially in terms of mass appeal, doubly so when they aren't some kind of obvious warning/allegory. In the specific case of ASOIAF, the allegory angle is dubious because awareness of the ice zombie threat is very low and it's not clear, in the books, how they get past the Wall (the show cheated and wrote in a paradox to allow this).

That could probably be arranged by human treachery or betrayal, the most common of inciting causes in Martin's works. Perhaps someone unwisely believes they can use the zombies to distract an adversary. Perhaps the "ignoring the threat" gets turned up to 11 and the watch is ordered elsewhere. It is something of a pickle, and I don't love the show's solution to it, but I think it *could* be handled.

The big problem is that the looming threat has been foreshadowed for so long that it *has* to be immense, and yeah, everyone is wildly disunified and should lose as a result. That's...rough. Especially if you want to throw in something like a Targaryen madness as an additional obstacle.

[DataNinja]

In many cases the protagonist is portrayed as in danger, even if there is no intent to kill them off. That's fine. Heck, death isn't even the only danger. Perhaps we fear that a relationship will be broken, a trust betrayed, a friend lost, a character hurt in some way that carries weight...a confrontation has to have stakes for it to matter, but the stakes can be almost anything.

That's generally my view of it. I know that it's unlikely that the protagonist will die in an unsatisfying way, and am glad for that (since I've often gotten attached). The stakes of it are what they might lose other than their life. What's getting in the way of a happy ending, and if they'll get that at all.

[Brother Oni]

Honestly, that exact thing led me to dropping Overlord in season 2.

Spoiler

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I'm fine with villain protagonists to an extent, but they need to have a little something to them to make them more interesting than those around them; see Light Yagami, Lelouch Lamperouge. Or to at least be the evil that works againsta greater evil, like Alucard.

Ultimately I found the lizardfolk more interesting as characters, so their genocide by Ainz was...eh. I couldn't root for him anymore like in the first season, and I couldn't really bring myself to watch anymore.

I understand - it's hard to stay invested in a series when the main character behaves like that.

Spoiler: MMO Murder hobo

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That said, there might be some prejudice in his behaviour - he's keeps on flip-flopping between the NPCs being real people and MMO xp/loot punchbags. The lizardfolk would most certainly have been been the latter ingame, so he may be still seeing them as such.

Ainz is setting himself up to be the evil tyrant that rules over everything, so he's different from Light Yagami, who thinks he's ridding the world of evil, or Alucard, who's been tamed to kill vampires for the side of good, (I don't know enough about Lelouch Lamperouge to judge). Ainz is just a straight up villian, who is conquering the world because he can, not to achieve some greater good.

There are some things that keep me watching; Ainz still respects certain NPCs and treats them honourably - his duel with Gazef for example - so he strikes me as the sort of Lawful Evil overlord character type that I find interesting.

And the thing is, while endings where everyone dies and the world is destroyed do exist, such extreme downer endings have all sorts of problems, especially in terms of mass appeal, doubly so when they aren't some kind of obvious warning/allegory.

I feel that depends on the culture in question and the story. Everybody dies in the Chushingura, but that hasn't stopped it being enduringly popular in Japan.

The ending of Hero with Jet Li, wouldn't have been as effective, if the King had let Nameless go (and if you know a bit of the background, you realise that the King can't let him go, without undermining his whole system of rule, but to do so means that he has to order the death of one the few people who understands that the King is trying to be more than a brutal tyrant).

Personally, I find stories where the protagonist suffers between the choice of doing their duty and doing the right thing/choosing happiness, to be interesting. These sort of stories tend not to happen very often in Western media, where the maverick rule-breaking protagonist (normally a cop or other LEO) just simply ignores their duty and does the right thing, very often with very little repercussions for their actions.

[Glorthindel]

Now, I'll flip this around and say that when a character always loses, it is as boring as when a character always wins. I truly hate shows that just dump on the main character ceaselessly, and they constantly lose whatever they have gained for no real purpose. Sacrificing for a cause, cool, but just bad luck endlessly ruining everything is as lame as a character who constantly lucks into success with no effort. There needs to be variation in what is happening and how it happens, and there should be at least some sense of story progression.

Its why I struggled with Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy; the main character just gets dumped on mercilessly and relentlessly, and for me I found it too miserable to press on beyond the three Assassin's books, despite how well regarded as an author she is.

Maybe the viewpoint of the work has an influence on how much of such things someone can take - when dealing with a first-person work, the hits are going to feel more punishing, and without the greater context that a multi-viewpoint work provides, can seem more punitive and unfair (imagine how miserable ASOIAF would be if it was the first-person story of Rickon Stark for example!). Plus, obviously having more focus characters means you can invest a little less in any one, and can cope if a couple are lost in the course of the story.

[Mechalich]

I feel that depends on the culture in question and the story. Everybody dies in the Chushingura, but that hasn't stopped it being enduringly popular in Japan.

The ending of Hero with Jet Li, wouldn't have been as effective, if the King had let Nameless go (and if you know a bit of the background, you realise that the King can't let him go, without undermining his whole system of rule, but to do so means that he has to order the death of one the few people who understands that the King is trying to be more than a brutal tyrant).

Personally, I find stories where the protagonist suffers between the choice of doing their duty and doing the right thing/choosing happiness, to be interesting. These sort of stories tend not to happen very often in Western media, where the maverick rule-breaking protagonist (normally a cop or other LEO) just simply ignores their duty and does the right thing, very often with very little repercussions for their actions.

There's a difference between stories where all of the characters die and stories where the human race is rendered extinct or even more extreme, the universe itself ceases to operate. There are plenty of Western origin stories were all the characters die, Hamlet being a rather notable example, and audiences are usually reasonably accepting of this outcome assuming none of the characters are intended to be sympathetic. Destroying the human species - especially doing it seriously and not as farce - tends to freak out the audience. They still exist, ex. I Have no Mouth and I must Scream or the anime Gilgamesh, but such stories are super dark and struggle to find any sort of widespread appeal and in some cases people with any tendency towards depression have to be warned to avoid them.

The relationship to overall stakes here is that if you raise the stakes such that the human race will be annihilated if the protagonists fail to achieve objective X, Y, or Z then they're failure becomes vanishingly unlikely because willingness to commit to such abject annihilation is extremely rare. In general as the stakes rise the likelihood of a Downer Ending falls - many of the most famous Downer Endings involve a mere handful of individuals.

One of the things about fantasy and science fiction is that they conceal within them the possibility for Downer Endings beyond the capability of reality as it is understood. For example, losing to Tyrant A in the real world or some historical setting might be really bad, but said tyrant will eventually die and there will be an opportunity for reform/rebellion. Fantasy, however, can have immortal undead overlords or demon kings, while science fiction often has immortal AIs or god-like trans-dimensional entities. This leads to a danger, in those genres, of accidentally raising the stakes to the point where they impact suspension of disbelief because the big bad has such attributes.

[Fiery Diamond]

There's a difference between stories where all of the characters die and stories where the human race is rendered extinct or even more extreme, the universe itself ceases to operate. There are plenty of Western origin stories were all the characters die, Hamlet being a rather notable example, and audiences are usually reasonably accepting of this outcome assuming none of the characters are intended to be sympathetic. Destroying the human species - especially doing it seriously and not as farce - tends to freak out the audience. They still exist, ex. I Have no Mouth and I must Scream or the anime Gilgamesh, but such stories are super dark and struggle to find any sort of widespread appeal and in some cases people with any tendency towards depression have to be warned to avoid them.

The relationship to overall stakes here is that if you raise the stakes such that the human race will be annihilated if the protagonists fail to achieve objective X, Y, or Z then they're failure becomes vanishingly unlikely because willingness to commit to such abject annihilation is extremely rare. In general as the stakes rise the likelihood of a Downer Ending falls - many of the most famous Downer Endings involve a mere handful of individuals.

One of the things about fantasy and science fiction is that they conceal within them the possibility for Downer Endings beyond the capability of reality as it is understood. For example, losing to Tyrant A in the real world or some historical setting might be really bad, but said tyrant will eventually die and there will be an opportunity for reform/rebellion. Fantasy, however, can have immortal undead overlords or demon kings, while science fiction often has immortal AIs or god-like trans-dimensional entities. This leads to a danger, in those genres, of accidentally raising the stakes to the point where they impact suspension of disbelief because the big bad has such attributes.

While nothing you've said was false, I do feel that the final sentence indicates that you missed part of my initial point: that whether the existence of plot armor interferes with suspension of disbelief depends on the consumer of that fiction - it doesn't automatically do so for everyone. For some people (myself included) knowing that the stakes are artificial doesn't make them feel artificial, because that's part of what's already encompassed in the base level suspension of disbelief of those people.

In other words, it's not a danger or a trap, like you indicate: for some people, it's not a problem at all.

[Anteros]

That's generally my view of it. I know that it's unlikely that the protagonist will die in an unsatisfying way, and am glad for that (since I've often gotten attached). The stakes of it are what they might lose other than their life. What's getting in the way of a happy ending, and if they'll get that at all.

Yes. It doesn't have to be death, but there needs to be some stakes for the story to be interesting. A lot of the time when people complain about plot armor it's not because the character survives, but rather that the author won't allow the character to suffer any meaningful defeat or setback. Or if we do get setbacks they're informed rather than actually having any detrimental effect on the character.

Like, a story might have their character collapse after a big fight because they used too much energy or got injured, but since it never actually effects anything it's not meaningful.

[Callos_DeTerran]

I understand - it's hard to stay invested in a series when the main character behaves like that.

Spoiler: MMO Murder hobo

Show

That said, there might be some prejudice in his behaviour - he's keeps on flip-flopping between the NPCs being real people and MMO xp/loot punchbags. The lizardfolk would most certainly have been been the latter ingame, so he may be still seeing them as such.

Ainz is setting himself up to be the evil tyrant that rules over everything, so he's different from Light Yagami, who thinks he's ridding the world of evil, or Alucard, who's been tamed to kill vampires for the side of good, (I don't know enough about Lelouch Lamperouge to judge). Ainz is just a straight up villian, who is conquering the world because he can, not to achieve some greater good.

There are some things that keep me watching; Ainz still respects certain NPCs and treats them honourably - his duel with Gazef for example - so he strikes me as the sort of Lawful Evil overlord character type that I find interesting.

Spoiler: Overlord: Murder Skele-man

Show

There's also the fact, and this is definitely a spoiler in what's coming in the series but...

Spoiler: Overlord spoiler

Show

Ainz is not in a video game.

He is in a fantasy world, sure, and he's made the assumption that he's in a video game world because all his powers still work like they did in the game that he's from but there's numerous hints that he is not trapped in an MMO like he assumes. First being that if he was trapped in an MMO, he would probably recognize the world that he's in but he doesn't. Second is the fact that the world moves very regularly without any kind of input on his part, no events, very little interaction on his part, etc. The 'NPCs' have motivations and designs that don't even include him. Third is there aren't any other players, there should be if it was an MMO that he was trapped in. After all, what are the odds he was the only person who decided to stay on that game as it shut down?

For further proof, we have the fact this fantasy world actually existed BEFORE Ainz. It used to be ruled by dragons in control of wild magic before a group of mysterious beings (player characters from an MMO) somehow appeared and used a magical item to force their games' magic system onto the world that they found themselves in. This upended the natural order and lead to the overthrow of the dragon. Who where these beings and why haven't you heard about them in the anime? Well..you have. They are the gods mentioned by the common, everyday people. That is how they remember these legendarily powerful beings.

Combine this with the fact that Ainz is very obviously not who he used to be. For as much free will as he has, Ainz still suffers under the effects of being an undead..which means his emotions are slowly being suppressed and removed. Remember how there would be a flash of light whenever he got especially emotional and then he'd suddenly calm down? Yeah, that was his undead body shutting down his emotions. Notice how those flashes have become less an less common? Yeah, that's cause he's barely human anymore because being an ungodly powerful lich will do a number on someone's actual humanity. Combine this with what you said above about how he seems unsure about how to view the people around him as NPCs or not and you have a terrific recipe for an increasingly evil and moral-less protagonist and a fascinating character to follow. Its kind of notable because with Ainz most recent actions in the anime (the giant massacre of the enemy army by CGI goat monsters), the light novels drew a lot of attention to the fact that the man Ainz used to be died in that moment.

[Dire_Flumph]

Its why I struggled with Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy; the main character just gets dumped on mercilessly and relentlessly, and for me I found it too miserable to press on beyond the three Assassin's books, despite how well regarded as an author she is.

I seriously wondered if Hobb really hated FitzChivalry by the end of the Assassin trilogy. But I can recommend at least proceeding through the Tawny Man books, where he goes through a lot of satisfying development and stops being fate's punching bag. The final trilogy isn't nearly as well written, but knowing everything he'd been through, one particular moment of open acceptance and warmth in those books got me misty eyed.

[GloatingSwine]

Spoiler: Overlord: Murder Skele-man

Show

There's also the fact, and this is definitely a spoiler in what's coming in the series but...

Spoiler: Overlord spoiler

Show

Ainz is not in a video game.

He is in a fantasy world, sure, and he's made the assumption that he's in a video game world because all his powers still work like they did in the game that he's from but there's numerous hints that he is not trapped in an MMO like he assumes. First being that if he was trapped in an MMO, he would probably recognize the world that he's in but he doesn't. Second is the fact that the world moves very regularly without any kind of input on his part, no events, very little interaction on his part, etc. The 'NPCs' have motivations and designs that don't even include him. Third is there aren't any other players, there should be if it was an MMO that he was trapped in. After all, what are the odds he was the only person who decided to stay on that game as it shut down?

For further proof, we have the fact this fantasy world actually existed BEFORE Ainz. It used to be ruled by dragons in control of wild magic before a group of mysterious beings (player characters from an MMO) somehow appeared and used a magical item to force their games' magic system onto the world that they found themselves in. This upended the natural order and lead to the overthrow of the dragon. Who where these beings and why haven't you heard about them in the anime? Well..you have. They are the gods mentioned by the common, everyday people. That is how they remember these legendarily powerful beings.

Combine this with the fact that Ainz is very obviously not who he used to be. For as much free will as he has, Ainz still suffers under the effects of being an undead..which means his emotions are slowly being suppressed and removed. Remember how there would be a flash of light whenever he got especially emotional and then he'd suddenly calm down? Yeah, that was his undead body shutting down his emotions. Notice how those flashes have become less an less common? Yeah, that's cause he's barely human anymore because being an ungodly powerful lich will do a number on someone's actual humanity. Combine this with what you said above about how he seems unsure about how to view the people around him as NPCs or not and you have a terrific recipe for an increasingly evil and moral-less protagonist and a fascinating character to follow. Its kind of notable because with Ainz most recent actions in the anime (the giant massacre of the enemy army by CGI goat monsters), the light novels drew a lot of attention to the fact that the man Ainz used to be died in that moment.

Overlord is a good example of when the wrong type of conflict can make you feel like a character has plot armour. Ainz is never in a position where he might lose in a character vs. character or character vs. nature conflict, because he's too powerful. So he can only lose in a character vs. self conflict (can he hold on against the degeneration of his humanity enforced by his new body), but the series doesn't elevate that conflict to being the main stakes.

[Tyndmyr]

One of the things about fantasy and science fiction is that they conceal within them the possibility for Downer Endings beyond the capability of reality as it is understood. For example, losing to Tyrant A in the real world or some historical setting might be really bad, but said tyrant will eventually die and there will be an opportunity for reform/rebellion. Fantasy, however, can have immortal undead overlords or demon kings, while science fiction often has immortal AIs or god-like trans-dimensional entities. This leads to a danger, in those genres, of accidentally raising the stakes to the point where they impact suspension of disbelief because the big bad has such attributes.

Eliezer Yudkowsky(the Harry Potter and Methods of Rationality guy) did a relatively short sci-fi tale along these lines. It resulted in humanity deciding to split the difference with every alien species they meet, with them adopting roughly half of our DNA/traits/whatever and us the same for them. Basically, humanity becomes eradicated due to cultural interchange repeated many times. I believe he thought this was the happy ending.

Strange choice.

But yes, whenever I hear of a story of the ultimate evil that will end all things that has been sealed for a thousand years and is now loose, well...I am not too worried about the outcome. The Goody Good guys will defeat the supreme ultimate evil for sure. This was something of a weakness in Bright, despite it otherwise having some interesting modern fantasy elements. Such a tale is only interesting if you have gotten creative in the how, because the what is surely predetermined.

[warty goblin]

You can have stakes and consequences in stories with ultimate reality eating bad guys as well, they just need to impact the characters. It's completely obvious in Lord of the Rings that Sauron won't win - the book literally spoils itself at a few points - and yet the story is still gripping and emotional, because it's clear that victory will have costs, some of which are clear early on, some of which are not. Because we care about the characters and places of Middle Earth, those sacrifices matter.

But Lord of the Rings has two key advantages here, it isn't a story that measures character growth by the acquisition of more personal power and badassery (really quite the opposite), and it ends. It also has the integrity to have permanent negative consequences that matter. Strip those away and you end up with one of those painfully endless series where Bob Protagonist gets more powerful with every installment but they mash the reset button at the end because the audience shows up for Bob Protagonist and sidekicks beating the evil guy de jur and if anything bad permanently happens the hyper-stans will throw an internet fit, so damnit we're going to keep making up new ever more ridiculous bad guys until the audience stops showing up or the sun explodes.

And then it's time for a reboot.

[Thrudd]

IMO, The awareness of plot armor in a narrative is inversely proportional to the suspension of disbelief achieved by the author/writer. Yes, we are all aware that when you're writing a book about characters, most of the book is going to be about those characters, which means they will be present for all or most of the story. But if the narrative is well crafted, it will flow naturally and the reader won't be alerted to the fact that the author chose to allow a character to survive in bad situations (at least until the end). It's really just a question of the quality of the writing. If the characters seem to survive via pure luck and obvious deus ex machinas over and over again, that may be considered symptoms of a poorly thought out plot (unless those lucky things happening are actually addressed in the plot, like in "Ringworld"). Some people have higher tolerance for this type of writing than others.

I would really only even call it "plot armor" when it is noticeable in a bad way. That term doesn't apply to a character surviving in difficult situations when the situations play out in ways that don't take me out of the narrative. I prefer fiction to be immersive, not only on the character/personality level but also on the narrative level. SO, a story with a really well written and interesting character, but with a plot that is full of inconsistencies and nonsense, does not get a "pass" from me...you need to do both, and the fact that I like the character doesn't forgive the use of "plot armor" to force them through a hamfisted narrative.

[Whoracle]

For me, plot armor is not something that is granted to a character by the plot, but against the plot - If the plot seems like the character should die by the internal logic of the universe, but SOMEHOW survives and the survival is badly explained or not explained at all. Suspension of disbelief leads me to accept that most likely a protagonist will survive, but it is shattered when they take e.g. a Death Star shot to the face.