kufothewriting

[kufothewriting]

I can't put into words how unspeakably selfish it was for Mark to make the conscious decision to sit by and  do nothing as his alt versions wrought havoc across the world. Was it understandable that he was concerned about Eve, and was it realistic that he cared more about her than the myriad people whose safety he only ambiguously cared for? Yes.

But that does not excuse his inaction in the face of a series of mounting dangers that only he could effectively stand against. There's concern, and there's carelessness, and Mark made the conscious decision to leave everyone else out to dry, and then just feel bad about it after. I love Invincible (guy and show), but it feels so insane watching him time and again choose himself over other people. The decision he made was fundamentally selfish, and it underscores the reason that Mark isn't the paragon he's considered himself to be (pre season finale). He's a good person, but a flawed one, and when he makes the decision to pick and choose his fights based on how he feels, people suffer for it. He's available only on condition.

Mark is someone who wants to do good, someone brave and bright and strong, but his altruism ends where his emotions begin. Mark's journey is about becoming a hero, but unfortunately for the people of earth during the Invincible war, he's not one yet.

.

[kufothewriting]

The fun thing about being me is reading or consuming a story I really like and immediately thinking to myself, “Man, this story is so good. I love it a lot. I should alter my plot and characters and magic system to emulate this one even though that wouldn’t make sense within the context of my story at all and would set me back an inordinate amount of time.”

[kufothewriting]

Vash is his people's greatest fan

and I love that. He is not just the city, he also cares about his people far above the value they can offer. He knows them by their names, not their jobs or titles. Whenever he interacts with them, he is genuinely kind and supporting.

I bet he is the kind of god that gets giddy over everywork his people do, whatever it is. A great open air performance of an epic? He is somewhere watching that. Every evening, even the rehearsals. Some child scribbling down a rhyme? He absolutely adores that! Some fishmonger plying their trade? Fascinating! They are calling out so loudly, moving so efficiently!

I like to think that Vash is the kind of guy that would love to take images of his people and all their crafts, great or small, high or low, and stick them to his fridge. (If he had a fridge. But. I think the concept is clear.)

[kufothewriting]

So, You Took Away Your MC's Powers

So, you took away your protagonist’s powers.

First of all, congratulations. Really. 

If you’ve gotten to the point of permanently depowering your story's central figure, it more than likely means you've reached or are approaching the end of your story and deliberately chose that specific option as the best way to wrap up an important conflict or plot point.

So let's talk about it.

Your protagonist, through some turn of fate, lost their power. 

An enchanted item, a bloodline trait, an inherited power—whatever it was that made the protagonist special or incredible or uniquely able to complete the plot has now gone away. Whether it was a deliberate decision made in the interests of the greater good or an unfortunate consequence of a dangerous decision that backfired or had unforeseen consequences, the result remains that the protagonist is no longer special. At least, not in the way that they were before.

As someone who’s been online a lot longer than he should, I can say first and foremost that it seems that there’s a lot of ill-will for this trope. Some people seem more than willing to scream from the rooftops that it’s bad writing and makes for a poor ending and that anyone willing to depower their character is in the same realm of cruelty as people who call online strangers slurs and then say they're joking when they get flak for it.

Is that true?

I’d personally disagree. It’s hardly that simple. In my opinion, few tropes are just bad or good, cut and dry. Stories are complicated, endings are tough, and when trying to decide how to wrap your narrative, sometimes it can be a difficult task to defeat the villain or solve the overarching conflict without having your hero take desperate measures. 

The depowering of a character can come in many different flavors, depending on the medium. For more battle-focused stories (cough cough shonen), a hero can lose their powers to an enemy’s tactic or in service of defeating a villain far too physically overwhelming for them to overcome by ordinary means. 

In some narratives, the protagonist’s power could be the cast’s power, and it might be the case that this power or its source is actually a major contributing factor to the reason behind the story's driving conflict. 

In that case, it would seem strange to solve the plot without directly addressing the core issue. If the power itself is the problem endangering our heroes’ way of life, then it stands to reason that taking out the problem would solve the issue in a neat little wrap, no ifs, ands, or buts.

So what’s the issue? Why do so many people seem to hate this ending?

Well, keep in mind this is all conjecture. But let’s start with a premise.

People consume fiction for a variety of reasons. Personally, I’ve been enamored with the creation of worlds, characters, ideas, and belief systems for as long as I can remember. Consuming fiction is something I doubt I could ever give up, and consuming fantasy is something you couldn’t pay me to. A protagonist with the ability to summon light or fire from their hands or transform into a dragon is just a certain type of wish-fulfillment alternate-reality hijinks that tickles my brain just the right way, you know?

Seeing a super-powered protagonist navigate through an unfamiliar world full of strange and incredible abilities is gratifying in a way that’s difficult to describe. I keep finding myself returning to these stories time and again. 

It’s not something based on age or maturity, but some inherent curiosity inside that asks, what if the world was like this? What if people were like this? What would it look like if these kinds of people, with these different abilities and emotions and ambitions, shared the same space? How would it change them, and how would it change the world around them? 

Even if you don't consider something like that fun to think about, I at least think that it’s interesting to lose yourself in the fantasy of a world so different from our own, where people are incredible in a way that feels so utterly divorced from our reality. At least, that’s my viewpoint. Whether or not you consider that escapist or not is up to you.

But when it comes to stories that have the protagonist lose their power in the end, there comes a sudden, staunch divorce from our immersion. The story that previously said, "Hey, look at this cool person and the cool thing they can do!" at its beginning turned around at the end and said, "Actually, this cool person and this cool thing they can do? We won't be having that anymore."

A gross oversimplification, but you probably get my point. Depowering a protagonist as the solution to the plot can feel deeply jarring, especially if that power or its source is something deeply connected to the protagonist’s character or something that in some way saved them, whether salvation was from a mundane life or a brutal murder in some backstreet alleyway.

Losing what makes you special can feel deeply hurtful, like a betrayal of trust. By no means is it a negative trope wholesale—I personally feel that the depowering of a character, though often unsatisfying, can be a good way to wrap up a narrative conflict or story arc previously infused with escalating stakes perpetuated from increasingly arcana or overwhelming abilities that most characters likely can’t realistically match with conventional means.

Still, for a lot of stories, a protagonist left depowered in the wake of a major event while all their allies and friends and even remaining enemies get to retain their abilities feels a bit like a gut punch. All they did for the world and for others, and in the end, they lost the thing that made them special. Regardless of how they feel about it, whether they hated their power or cherished it, unless the protagonist truly suffered as a result of their ability, it can feel like a sad thing to see them let it go. 

Depowering a protagonist isn’t a bad writing decision, but I feel like at its best it runs clearly into the bittersweet territory. Despite its narrative credence, it can feel unsatisfying, and for many, an ending with a character resolution (especially a protagonist's character resolution) that feels unsatisfying might as well be a bad ending. 

If a viewer walks away from a story thinking, "That shouldn’t have happened," it can be tough to woo them over with arguments of foreshadowing or sacrifice or skillful full-circle narratives the author established by going that direction. It’s tough both for creator and consumer, and I think that’s part of why the “depowered protagonist” ending is a bit of a sore spot for many people (And that’s not even getting into the gender dynamics of the “depowered” trope usually affecting more powerful, plot-relevant women than men).

It’s an interesting trope. I don’t think it’s bad at all—in its best form, I think an ending that depowers a protagonist in service of solving the major plot problem says that, yes, this new reality may not be ideal, but it was one that they reached after fighting and clawing and bleeding to make it through. It was an outcome born of struggle and perseverance and potentially, loss, but in the end, had they not done what they did, the world would be all the worse for it.

In stories where the protagonist loses their powers, the result that arises from that power loss is typically one that’s leagues better than what would occurred without it. And, in a way, that’s emblematic of real life. To create something, you have to give something up. To build a bond with someone, you have to give up time. To create an item, you have to give up materials. 

And to protect the things you care about? Well, you might have to give up what makes you special.

[kufothewriting]

I really like those analytical moments in battle scenes where a character has their internal monologue wherein they state a definitive rule of the magic/power system that cannot be broken or circumvented under any circumstances and then from that point of logic deduces that the enemy has to be using some kind of strategy or trick within the bounds of the power/magic system's logic, because the alternative is actually impossible.