The way that i judge plotarmor has always been to ask this question "did they survive because they are the protagonist or are they the protagonist because they survived?" And there you have it.
I think of a "plot armor" as a survival bias. Say my grandfather told me he was in a war which 99.99% didn't survive, and then proceeded to tell me his story. I wouldn't find this unlikely, because some people **did** survive against all odds, and those are the people telling the story...
yeah, exactly. In fairness, this theory does work better with single-perspective narratives; I recognize that multi-perspectives have more leniency to kill...but it's just not that death is always the most interesting things.
@@Bookborn The way I always think of it is like, in more basic narratives character deaths tend to be less interesting because those characters basically just cease to exist but in something like ASOIAF whenever an important character is killed off they still continue having heavy narrative presence
It's funny, I am just now re-listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl and I was thinking about this exact issue. Carl nearly dies several times in that first book. So you might think he has plot armor (in a bad way). But the other way to look at it is that we're following his viewpoint because he IS the one who survives. If we followed the viewpoint of Yolanda or any of the other millions of people who die, the story would be cut short and we wouldn't know what happens. So we have to follow the viewpoint of a character who is going to make it. (Similarly, in the Hunger Games we have to see the story from Katniss's point of view. If we saw it from Rue's perspective we wouldn't get the full story.) Now, in a book with multiple viewpoints (like ASOIAF or the First Law series), the same principle doesn't apply. A viewpoint character could die and you'd still get to see the rest of the story through the other characters' perspectives.
yes, exactly! And...is it so bad that we WANT to see those characters survive? lol sometimes it's fun and nice to have someone you like survive until the end
This reminds me of the "Anthropic principle" in cosmology. Conditions appear to be "fine tuned" for life, because we're around to observe it. It's selection bias. Same can be applied to a novel. If the hero died when things got tough, there would be no story for us to read.
Why can't more authors just let the hero die if they write themselves in an absurd situation. I for one would love to see more stories explore how the crisis was overcome even without the Messiah. The idea of just a single party or individual saving the day always felt a bit silly to me, often than not it's multiple factions who aren't necessarily always united at first or till the end that eventually get the job done. Someone should just make a fantasy plot based on Indian independence, how in the end they got their freedom but then the nation split in two. Mahatma Gandhi was killed before independence one of his "own" and in retribution the people murdered everyone that belonged to the supposed killers cast (whether or not he was actually the killer , I guess the sources vary). The muslims and Hindus never saw eye to eye but still tried to contribute to the independence and so did so many other factions with countless sacrifices but.... all of it was for the most part unnecessary since the uk already lost its hegemony to the US and and colonies no longer sustainable + the Atlantic charter?. Then the bitter-bitter ending with partition and how the dispute of territories to this day remains unresolved.
“If the hero died when things got tough, there will be no story for us to read” ASOIAF is quite popular and the story goes on after the heroes dropping like flies
@@nont18411 Makes me wonder who you think the heroes of ASOIAF are. It seemed pretty obvious that at least half a dozen characters would survive all the way, or until the very end (last few episodes if we're talking about the show). I'm talking about Jon, Arya, Sansa, Tyrion, Cersei, Jaime, Danaerys, Bran.
Thanks for another really well written and presented essay. I am always impressed by your crisp editing. You create a clean flow while retaining a very conversational feeling. Well done.
I love your deep dives like this. I appreciate how much you work to sight sources and the way you bring levelheaded reason into emotionally charged topics. Thank you! Keep being awesome.
Time and time again, it needs to be said that there is no such thing as a bad trope but a bad writer. Edit: Also want to add that its ridiculous that anyone would say George of all writers uses plot armor (as defined in this video). Kind of stupid how people want him to kill characters constantly just because he has subverted genre convention. Ned’s death works not just because it’s surprising to see a main character die but also because its direct consequences of his actions and sets the rest of the story in motion.
As someone who generally doesn't care that my books are hyper realistic, and prefers to come out of a book feeling happier, I like plot armor. Killing the main character rarely works for me.
I loved this discussion and this channel because you explore conventional topics in ways that don't always end with the typical answer and have a lot of nuance.
Top notch as always. Your video essays are the best thing going 😊 Funny how Disney Star Wars has taken plot armor to the next level - shocking deaths of crucial characters only to have them be fake-out deaths. Again... and again... and again...
One thing about "Dungeon Crawler Carl" that defies this trope as the books go on is that the side characters can die. Carl might survive, but the people around him die and those are his stakes. You know he will survive because he's the protagonist, but he will grieve and feel pain for those that don't. I agree about your thought about other stakes being important. I think "plot armor" is a more important trope to be mindful about for side characters than for the main. But also, sometimes I want the hero to survive, and I find comfort in knowing it's a story where the characters I bonded with will be okay.
You reminded me of a book I read as a teenager. It was an urban fantasy, told from a 1st person perspective and the MC died in the most stupid way possible (a train accident non-related to her quest, only that this things happen) half way into the book. The second part of the book was her perspective as a ghost. To this day I remember how shocked I was that a MC could actually die.
But she still had to be there as a ghost, so did she really DIE??? idk lmao it would be crazier if it was suddenly from a different character's perspective. There's a very famous YA series where the protagonist dies at the end and like every body hated it lol sometimes it just doesn't work to kill your main character...
hot take, and really well said. stories have an obligation to be stories. 'movie logic' exists because movies are stories and they have to be coherent. killer blazer, too
I think Superman is an interesting example with plot armor because there was that one time with The Death of Superman comic where he lost his plot armor. And it was a huge bestselling comic I think one of the best selling for Superman ever. But then they weren't willing to commit to it and it came back to bite them as everyone felt like it was cheap. So I do think for those stories with plot armor for the main characters during the story to really surprise readers and let some main characters die and have that huge epic moment. Mistborn I think is one that did this well as you had this strong plot armor for Vin and Elend right up until the end where you get this shocking death. Similarly the Wheel of Time also did that with some of the character deaths in the last book where you have a big impact because there have just not been deaths before that for main characters. But just having the death be impactful and big can make it a good moment in a way an earlier death won't quite have.
And Vin and Elend's deaths were both essentially part of the happy ending. I can't really imagine how either of those two characters could have built a normal life after everything that went down in that series. They gave everything they had to ensure that humanity survived... I don't think they could have taken the rebuilding of civilization, too. As Sazed says, best to let them rest.
Wonderfully said! I always enjoy your deeper dives into topics. Thank you for taking the time to research and share your thoughts! I've seen some people complain that Sanderson's characters all have plot armor, which makes me think they haven't read many of his stories. 😅 But I think you hit the nail on the head when saying that character deaths should be significant for reasons other than shock value. I don't expect everyone to survive, and I don't even expect happy endings all the time, but I do want individual events to matter to the greater story.
@Bookborn Haha, right?! I was like, "I don't want to give spoilers but have you read.. ?" True that those often come at the end, but even so, his character deaths usually serve the purpose of the larger story (and Cosmere!)
Also my main reason for reading fiction/fantasy is for escapism! I want my favourite characters to get out of some crazy scenarios even when you don't think they will be able to.
I’m not a fan of this take. Plot armour isnt just “when. Character doesn’t die” I know Daniel Greene made a similar argument. I think plot armour is only a useful definition when it talks about immersion breaking. When the in world logic of the story breaks in order to keep a character alive (armour) solely because of their need to continue on living for the sake of the plot. The artificialness breaks internal story logic & the plot protects the character rather than the character surviving due to in world reasons. So I don’t think what you are talking about (the need for the main character to live) is plot armour. Good writing maintains the logic of the story & world & keeps characters alive by the existing logic. Not immersion breaking plot armour keeping them alive.
I think we actually agree lol. I changed the definition because i don't like the definition that's given "officially". I don't think the term plot armor is actually used how it's definition is stated - like connotation vs denotation. My point is that it's ALWAYS used negatively, but as strictly defined, it's a very normal thing. But also I'd push back at the end- my point was that sometimes there might be "immersion breaking" survival - because in life, some people survive when they absolutely shouldn't. Thus, like Mark Twain said - stories must have some internal logic that we expect...meaning at times, plot armor as defined is very necessary. Anyway, ultimately, it's all quibbles over definitions that don't really matter but are fun to debate 😂
Agreed. I find that arguing against the laziest uses of X-trope as a pejorative is not a hard argument to make. I kinda feel like half the video is just the observation that for whatever reason, today's internet loves a 'gotcha' and will apply tropes where they don't belong as some kind of Cinema-Sins-y bash on media. If the author wants a character to survive, they need to convince me that it makes sense that they did. If they are rescued at the last minute, I better be able to believe that the rescuers were both able to be present and willing to help. It all circles back to stories needing to make sense. The full Mark Twain quote mentioned in the video even highlights that stories are bound more tightly to logic than the real world. Just because it conceivably could happen doesn't mean the reader will find it plausible.
I could write a paragraph agreeing with you but instead I'll say something random and unrelated: I agree with you about that character in book 5 lol, as sad as that may be. It makes sense thematically if you zoom out of the story a bit and could even be foreshadowing. It would also pave the way for a certain theory I'm gonna keep to myself because I could just be utterly wrong in my instincts. Cool topic!
@@BookbornI hate to disappoint but I'm afraid I just meant that I agree with you that he is sadly, not returning with us. When I mentioned how it makes sense thematically, I meant look at the actions (and probable results) of House Martell. It would make sense narratively as well, given that the contenders for the throne (which includes consorts) must be narrowed in order to conclude the story. At least in theory lol.
@@boromirstark9 My theory is that Jon's actions have indeed had consequences, like those of so many Starks before him, and that he's really dead. He may live on in Ghost, but it would be very GRRM to let the character that he's set up as a hero from the beginning die, now that he's screwed up as egregiously as Ned and Robb did.
I agree that the idea of a protagonist wearing plot armor usually only matters in bad writing. And, well, isn't there much more bad writing around now than, say, 30 years ago? Not because of writers being worse than they were before, but now everyone can "publish" for example fanfiction, and with the streaming services there are so much more shows out there than ever before. More output means less editorial polishing even with professional writing, not mentioning amateur writing which is now readily available.
It's a thing I've tried to contemplate/cover again and again, and it's so hard to tell. There's certainly MORE content. Is a greater percentage of it bad? Or is the same percentage of it bad, but since there's more, it seems worse? That said, based only on feeling and zero evidence, it does feel like there are a lot more bad stories. Quickness is pushed above all else.
It could also be due to shifts in writing such as A Song of Ice and Fire with shocking deaths. This along with the internet that allows for everyone to hear and see terrible things that happen in life, people's expectations around books have changed such that they expect bad stuff happens including people dying and people living is no longer as believable.
I think you hit the nail in the head with this one. There’s a movie that came out a long time ago called Requiem for a dream that’s considered one of the most tragic and sad movies ever made, and I was shocked when I actually watched it that it follows a number of main characters and not a single one of them dies at the end. It opened my eyes, a bit to the fact that there are fates much worse than death for your characters and fiction. So plot armor isn’t really a big deal if death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to them. Also, death is kind of boring because it just takes out a character that you (hopefully) care about. If you care about them, you’re sad, and you probably will like the story less going forward unless it enhances the story for the characters you like.
I just had the thought that maybe it started because longer fantasy series(where characters survived) became popular. Meaning for a few decades since LOTR I think fantasy got a bad rap in "polite society", but things like WoT picking up steam (knife of dreams came out 2004), and the massive success of the HP books, and LOTR movies brought fantasy into popularity with more masses and the "educated" people who looked down on fantasy came up with new ways to criticize it. And then because A Song of Ice and fire was also coming out and DID have some people die, people started comparing and thinking the IP they loved was better than the IP someone else loved. lol. Also, the invention of the internet around the same time. I'm just spit balling here. But I myself looked down on fantasy throughout my adolescence. It wasn't until i saw the 1st movie trailer as a junior in HS that I finally decided to give it a try(quickly became obsessed). I had a subscription to entertainment weekly back then, and I remember Steven King wrote an article just tearing Rowling's writing apart. It upset me, lol.
You know, I was also playing with the idea that ASOIAF was actually a reason plot armor came into usage as well. Perhaps his shake up of the genre inspired people to be more critical of the opposite. I also love the theory that that's when longer fantasy picked up steam, and thus by necessity having characters survive for longer and longer periods of time.
Speaking of Stephen King, would a single character ever survive a single one of his books without some form of plot armour? I'm fine with it, because it's obviously not supposed to be happening in our version of reality. The same with most fantasy. JRR Tolkien has been one of my favourite writers for over 30 years now, and I have no problem with the characters in LOTR having plot armour, because it's written as a nearly mythic tale, and the stakes are so high that it's a comfort when most of the important characters make it out alive. I think the trend toward more "grimdark" feeling fantasy (thanks GRRM!) and dystopian teen novels has left a lot of young cynics too quick to call "plot armour" simply to feel "edgy", or what have you. Whereas in the hands of a talented writer like George RR Martin, the question becomes silly. Characters die when it is necessary, and not just for shock value, which is something that too many readers don't understand. As for what Stephen King had to say about a certain writer's work, I'm going with an unpopular opinion here, and siding with the man who has won more awards for his writing than I can list here over a decades long career, and even taught a popular creative writing seminar at Yale, over a one-hit children's author who has based her identity in hate for a certain minority group. I know that sentimental attachments exist, but some writers are simply better than others.
If “plot armor” appeared in the late 2000s then it probably surfaced from Game of Thrones season 1 shaking up peoples expectations. I do agree with your assessment, the criticism comes in when your protagonists plot armor becomes visible to the reader
Well, GOT season1 wasn't released until 2011, so the terms definitely predates it. But I wouldn't be surprised if ASOIAF as a series in general influenced the term. I wish we knew more!
@@Bookborn I think the term mainly came from Harry Potter. Because no matter what happens, Harry just can’t die. There will always be some magical macguffin to save him from danger (for example, he survived getting killed by Voldemort the first time because his mom loves him so much. He survived getting killed by Voldemort the second time because he’s a horcrux) while the other characters who are not “chosen one” like him didn’t get the same privilege.
This reminds me of something Brandon Sanderson says a lot in his lectures on writing: It's not a problem if your story IS contrived - as all of them are, by definition - it's only a problem if your story LOOKS contrived. Basically, it's only a problem if it's so obviously authorial intervention that it reminds the audience that nothing happening here is real.
I've talked to a friend who is an author who writes supsense / thriller books. She once mentioned a conversation with either her editor or a reader, who felt that it was getting a bit unrealistic that the characters in a series were always getting into weird random dangers. My response was, "its a suspense series, what do you expect?"
Harry Potter and LOTR came out in early 2000's, so maybe they are what inspired or kicked off the "plot armor" trope. I don't really notice or think much about plot armor until, like you said, the writing is bad. Thanks for another great video!
I agree plot armor complaints are more about bad writing rather than the hero surviving. It usually becomes an issue when the hero repeatedly unrealistically survives situations. It’s generally the worst in the thriller genre. So many times those plots have a villain who never misses a shot and can snipe people from a mile away, but when he goes to shoot the hero he suddenly has the aim of someone whose never fired a gun before.
To me it also depends on the size/length of the property, in a standalone book/film it’s fine as you still have the tension throughout as it’s not built up the reputation yet. But if it’s an epic like ASOIAF or Stormlight then by book 4 if no one ever dies and they always get out of the most ridiculous situations it loses its tension as there’s no fear
Preface: I am a HUGE Sanderson fan, particularly of Stormlight. Kaladin though, is my definition of Plot Armor. Seriously, I can't think of any other character that's been beaten, tortured, brought to the brink of death, only to have Plot Armor swoop in and not just let him survive, but usually thrive without any sort of real consequence. I think that's what "negative" Plot Amor refers to , at least for me. I mean, think of all the times we got "He couldn't go any further, this was the end... then (Choose one: he said the words, Dalinar clapped his hands, The Storm Father froze time, he found a lucky penny, a magic frog ate the Parshendi, he realized he can pull stormlight out of the planet's core, he went back in time, he was his brother all along...). Some of those are made up to avoid spoilers :) Anyway, when I hear someone say "Plot Armor" I think of Kaladin, and I HATE that, because he really is one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite series, but I can't deny that's how I feel about the increasing unlikelihood he won't survive literally ANYTHING. Generally speaking, I also think of the characters in Wheel of Time. Jordan seemed utterly incapable of killing a single one of his 50,000 characters (at least for more than a book or two before bringing them back). That's less about plot armor and more about a specific author's quirk.
Plot armor is kinda why I can't read Sanderson. I liked a lot of The Way of Kings, but Kaladin's plot armor bothered me. Once I know an author has marked a character for survival, I don't really want to read scenes of them in mortal danger. Because I know the outcome. I'd rather read scenes with interpersonal stakes, because that could still go in any direction.
@@Troelski I think that's why Kaladin is one of my faves, because there is a lot of inner struggle and character growth/development for him and I'm invested in his story. He just has the annoying habit of getting into "life or death" situations, even though we know he can't die (at least not before this next book!). He wouldn't even have to die, but every single time he "almost" dies, instead of consequences or at least lessons learned, he just levels up and is more powerful than he was before, so the next near-death thing has to be even more outrageous than the last one. Imagine Kaladin at the end of book 2 doing a bridge run (which nearly killed him several times in book 1)! He could've carried it by himself while literally flying across the plains! Anyone want to bet when a Herald undoubtably almost kills him in book 5 he'll gain the ability to shoot lasers out of his eyes? 😆
@@CharlesBHamlyn Lol. I think the Bridge stuff in book 1 worked fairly well for me because I felt like other people's lives were at stake a lot of the time -- but yes will be interesting to see the next upgrade!
I would disagree that Kaladin has negative plot armor. Certainly there's plot armor there in terms of him surviving. But I think Kaladin's story has had stakes and consequences throughout the books. He's lost numerous people he's tried to protect. He's failed and his actions have gotten others hurt. And I think I'd draw that distinction between good plot armor and bad plot armor, does the story still have stakes and tension and consequences for failure. And with Kaladin's storyline I think those elements are still there. Same thing with Wheel of Time too though I think he pushed it too far without any casualties. But for the main characters there were still failures, and stakes, and consequences for their actions.
@@tadious9415 That just proves Kaladin's friends and family DON'T have plot armor 😉 My definition for "bad plot armor" is when the character themselves are put into impossibly dangerous situations, but the plot armor makes it so there's never any real fear of them actually dying (or in Kaladin's case even really being physically harmed). I 100% agree with you that Kaladin is an amazingly deep character with major flaws and trauma to overcome. That's why we all love him. But the dude is unkillable, so anytime Brando puts him into an dangerous situation there's no tension (for me). Again, just talking about Kaladin's safety. Of course most times his friends and family are also put into harms way and that's great, because they don't have plot armor 🙂 I give Jordan a lot of crap, but in his defense I literally inducted myself into fantasy by reading Lord of the Rings, then A Song of Ice and Fire, then Wheel of Time. So anytime he killed a character I was like "FINALLY! Just like ASoIaF, no one is safe!" but then they'd come back! So it was just my expectations were not where they should've been. That's totally just a me thing.
What's interesting about the "plot armor" discussion in Game of Thrones is that, like you said, at some point they need to live for there to even be a story at all. On top of that, when one of the plot threads is that there is a god who lets people live/revives them for a later purpose, it's hard to call it "plot armor" when it's literally "god armor" in the context of the story lol
It’s bullshit you can kill more characters since grrm quickly introduced new POVs and then have us follow those POVs Ala killing Jon and dany in winds and showing us how this story isn’t about prophecy or whatever is about the wheel about vengeance all the way down ad we follow even more cynical people
I think up until the last book, Harry Potter is a great example of plot armor done right. Yes, Harry survives a seemingly impossible threat at the end of each book. But, also, within the logic of the book, she wrote it in away that sort of made sense. Book 1, he survives by luck and the whole Voldemort not being able to touch him. Book 2, yeah, it was luck, but also a lot of help from a magical bird and magical tools. Book 3, he survives because the perceived threat wasn't actually targeting him. Book 4, he survives because the villains literally wanted him to, and then the twin cores. Sure, the twin cores was something maybe a bit "we need a way for him to live," but it also was something you could see being a super niche thing people didn't know of because the specific circumstances needed to trigger it. It was only book 7 where it felt she said "he needs to win somehow," because the whole wand lore and true master and the thing with Malfoy was pretty convoluted. An example where I think plot armor doesn't work so well is with Greg Iles' Penn Cage series, especially the latest book (spoiler alert). The main characters are in a desperate situation with no real chance of survival. The main character, now pretty old, suffering health issues, already in bad shape from being shot, chooses to sacrifice himself to save his daughter and love interest, giving them a chance to get out. However, because Iles wants to keep him around in case he wants to write another book, the special forces medics arrive just in time to save him after he says goodbye and passes out. The sacrifice was very good and emotional and a chance to maybe pass the series' torch to another character if the author wants to keep writing, but having him live just felt cheap after that.
I'm such a wand lore lover (because wand lore started as early as book 1) but it's such a common complaint, I know so many people didn't really disliked it, so I getttt it 🤣 But your second example is PERFECT. There was a reason for that character to die, AND him NOT dying, completely reduces the sacrifice and thus completely undermines the emotional crest of the novel.
Wand lord itself was interesting, which is why I think the plot armor use in book 4 worked well, at least to me. I think it could’ve worked in the last book, but the logic she used was just a bit convoluted and I think a clash of ideals, Harry’s relationship and reliance on his friends vs Voldy’s concern only for himself, Harry being willing to sacrifice for his friends while Voldemort wants himself to live forever, Harry’s defensive magic vs Tom’s aggressive attack magic, etc., would’ve made more sense than the specific train of that wand passing to Harry because he took a different wand from Draco. However, I do agree with your larger point. Plot armor is just a thing, neither good nor bad, and generally necessary in a story, especially a series. What makes it good or bad is the writing. If it undermines plot points or if the author can coat it with something that’s a stretch but at least works within the story’s logic to some degree, that’s what makes it a good or bad thing. Also, how often it’s used, which I would contend actually is down to the quality of the writing. Like, Mistborn Eras 1 and 2 spoilers, but Vin survived many times when she realistically should’ve died but needed to live for the next book. Then, he let her actually sacrifice herself in the end and didn’t Kelsier her death (a return that I think made sense for that character, but not for many others). Wayne using his healing to survive but eventually finding a situation when he couldn’t, the healing was really plot armor with a coat of plausibility paint but he recognized when it would be going too far
"It's bad writing that is bad"....this goes for everything...tropes aren't bad, bad writing is bad....vampires aren't bad, bad writing is bad.....zombies aren't bad, bad writing is bad....unique punctuation choices aren't bad, bad writing is bad....firstperson/secondperson/thirdperson/ isn't bad, bad writing is bad....etc
My theory as to why the term plot armor became the trope it has at the time it had comes down to the resurgence of gore horror films. as special effects got better and slasher films morphed to gore based shock horror, death in those stories became about the death itself and characters surviving these insane gore focused horror films push the trope to forefront.
I feel like there's huge difference between having an expectation that a character survives and then "plot armor". You can write a Jason Bourne like character who gets into 100 close calls with death over 5 books -- assassins, bombings, car chases, plane fights etc. - and you can write each of those close calls in such a way that the main character gets out alive through their own wits, skill or a previously set up narrative device. The fact that the MC survives 100 close calls isn't plot armor. Nor is the expectation that they will survive plot armor. Plot armor is in the HOW the author makes the character survive. I feels like to me your argument isn't so much that plot armor is good, but that you (sometimes) don't mind it. Like in James Bond. or Harry Potter. Like how we sometimes don't mind plot holes, or bad CGI if the overall story grabs us. But I'm not sure anyone would argue plotholes and bad CGI is "good, actually." I'm also not sure I totally buy that "plot armor isn't bad, bad writing is bad" because plot armor is by the Bookborn definition what I think most people would consider "bad writing". Plot armor is not just "an expectation that the main character will survive all 11 books". It's breaking rules you yourself set up in an unreasonable way because you couldn't think of a clever/believable way to get your protagonist out of a sticky situation. Apply good writing to that situation and you negate the need for plot armor in the first place. But maybe I'm missing something. Maybe if someone could give me an example of "the unreasonable preservation of a main character in order for the plot to continue" that they would consider "good writing" I'd be closer to understanding. Sorry for the novel.
Thanks for the video! I think plot armor is absolutely fine as long as, like you said, it's well written. If the plot armor event is a HUGE change from how physics/ magic/ etc. has worked so far, it can be jarring and take the reader out of it.. But if it's a normal part of things, who cares!? If it's totally absurd, but is the same through the whole story, that's great!
I agree with you completely. (Usually) only the people who survive can tell their stories, so I'm not bothered by a protagonist being one of them. I tend to get more annoyed by characters being killed off without reason or impact on the narrative. For example: (1) a protagonist's close friend is killed off (because someone needs to die to show the stakes) and the death doesn't impact the narrative (no grief, friend is never mentioned again) or (2) the friend survives due to dumb chance when a hundred people around him don't and suffers from survivor's guilt afterward. Usually, I think (2) the more interesting story.
Totally agree that plot armour isnt a bad thing. I feel like GRR Martin started with an amazing subversion on this trope, but then it also became so popular that it became a shock value - so it continued after the first book to the red wedding etc., and then i feel it got really difficult to keep telling the story while also maintaining the shock value. In this regard, I really liked Arcane, the fantasy show - where in the first arc we see an important character die, but this is only so the two other characters can emerge as MCs, and we never expect either to die till the end of the story, neither does it take away anything from the brilliant storytelling.
Adding to the previus comment, based on your definition of the term, it is plausible that the fictional character during the narrative development of the story requires to be preserved in an irrational way. And this can be achieved through the abrupt appearance of an external element allowing the continuity of the protagonist, but here we would be facing a different concept, namely: "deus ex machina" over "plot armor".
I think plot armour comes out of gaming circles and not from film or books. And there it makes sense, especially in games that have nothing but the life of the characters at stake, and thus being capable to get through the game without the character option to die makes them boring. Thus I would say, when the games in the 80s and 90s had been rather lethal and hard, with the 2000s more and more games happened that where more focused on narratives and that felt wrong to the old guard of gamers.
I wanted to say (as you mentioned) sometimes plot armor works really well and is almost the point of the story. I think the Kingkiller Chronicles are a great example of this. Kvothe is telling the story, so we know he survives, but it's the cleverness (or the cleverness of his account at least) of HOW he survives that is the entertaining part of the story, at least for me.
To be fair, to be that character with the plot armor such as Carl, that situation is used for the stakes. "How much of us is left in the end?" Won't go too far into it, but being the survivor is a lot weight, starts making more sense in DDC 3
Well exactly! I brought up that one of the issues where plot armor is noticeable is if there are no stakes. DCC is a great example of having stakes outside of death
@@Bookborn You know the funniest thing is that I even watched your review of DCC when it came out, LOL. It was a quick one so I forgot that I had watched it. Are you going to continue the series?
@@Bookborn My last comment, because I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I hope you really enjoy the next books so we can get one of those Bookborn obsession rants :)
Love the video and the james bond reference as a big bond fan. I only wish you talk about it slightly more which would help your points even more because of the outrage from fans. If you know you know☺️
Strictly speaking about hypocrisy from fans. Like if you kill X game of thrones character are fans mad? Are they all ok with just accepting death? But then when or if it happens on someone that's not supposed to die then people get so pissed hahaha
Plot armour is, like so many other things in storytelling, something that should be present but largely unseen. Of course, some people go looking for it, and they will always see it. The issue is when it jumps in your face, and that is usually due to other writing flaws, like when a storyteller tries very, very hard to convince you that the protagonist is definitely dying this time and you should really care
Very nice and nuanced discussion. I was probably using Usenet before you were born! But I don't recall that particular forum. Actually there was a TV show predating all of these, though still late 20th century, that was noted for killing off important characters to maintain realism. I want to say Babylon-5, but maybe another sci-fi show (certainly not Star Trek, where red shirts famously functioned as anti-plot-armor). It could also be used deliberately for humorous effect, as in the Adam West Batman TV show of the 1970s, where the supervillains always devised incredibly elaborate ways to kill Batman after capturing him, inevitably giving him enough time to escape. A great breaking of plot armour occurs in the first Kingsman movie (SPOILER Alert!), where Samuel L. Jackson the supervillain just shoots and kills Colin Firth one of the the good guys, saying something about this not being a dumb spy movie (maybe he says James Bond, I forget). Cheers from Montreal!
I recently read a book where the premise is that the protagonist tells the story to someone in world. So we know for a fact that she survives. While I had some problems with the book that was not one of them. There were a lot of other stakes and at the book club I read it for no one said anything about plot armour.
I love this take overall and the nuance to it. I believe in a big rule of cool. But definitely written poorly the writer will pull the reader from that suspension of disbelief. An author that did this really well is Christopher Ruocchio. Just when you think you have him figured out-he throws you.
The funny thing is how she uses superman as an example for not dying but he died in the beginning for a few episodes in this season of superman and lois, her example still holds it's just ironic.
I love plot armor. If a writer is going to have awesome character development and make me cheer for and relate to a character, I'm PRAYING they have plot armor. IMO it's way worse when a writer kills a main character just because of some rule where you need to kill characters to keep it real. Edit: As far as RR Martin, YES it crushed me when he kills loveable characters, but I feel we wouldn't know just how brutal a world Westeros actually is without it. Killing Ned actually makes things more real and visceral.
I know you haven't seen the show and/or aren't planning on it, but the creators of Game of Thrones relied so heavily on plot armor when they ran out of source material, it all became so silly, like Jon running into an entire army alone, surviving a rainstorm of arrows and being ridiculously outnumbered during the battle of the bastards... which was only season 5, the later seasons I won't even mention...
There was a lot of plot armor in the show, but there was also a lot of plot armor in the books. Tyrion especially has an absurd amount of plot armor when you think about it. He survives multiple attacks while prisoner on the eastern road, a random sellsword beats the the captain of the guard in a trial by combat, survives the road back to the Riverlands by uniting the mountain clans to fight for him, and he survives a battle in the vanguard as an unskilled warrior where his unit is meant to be cannon fodder and bait the Starks in. All that is just in the first book! He doesn't have quite the same level of plot armor in the other books, but there are numerous events where he gets out of scenarios where death seemed imminent. The difference is well written plot armor vs poorly written plot armor.
Like with any trope, it’s down to the execution rather than the idea of it; in ASOIAF, very few of the recurring POV characters have actually died, and of those only Catelyn (who came back as Lady Stoneheart) actually had those chapters in more than one book. Whereas Ned and Quentyn each had an arc across a single book, because their respective roles had thematic significance. I also consider it very bad if an author tries to disprove the idea of plot armour by killing a swathe of characters in the conclusion of their story; Harry Potter is a problem in that Rowling could off as many people, removing all the pieces because they weren’t needed for the story after the last book. Contrast GRRM who kills a handful of named characters in the Red Wedding, and the tragedy is that even if we only had a few scenes with most of them the sheer callousness and loss of their potential is really the point… And George very much realised that he couldn’t up himself after the Wedding, which is *also* why a lot of fans disproportionality feel like the story has lost steam; after such big moments we need breathing room in which things are trying to stabilise before another bloodbath. But for many folks… yeah. Also think of how much of a fad it became to say, make a new show in which you set up a “main character” in the first episode to throw off the audience; it can be done, but you can’t do it just because as it won’t feel authentic. Or for a different idea: “Caprica”, the prequel to the 2000s reboot of “Battlestar Galactica” pulls a trick in its first (and only) season by killing off its main character who was set up as the young version of the BG protagonist in the finale… Which it turn revealed that the guy we THOUGHT would be him, actually was the *older brother* of somebody not yet born who would be given the exact name of his late sibling. Urgh…
The term "plot armor" may be relatively recent, but I think that similar ideas have been around a lot longer. People have been making observations along the lines of "no matter how much the bad guys shoot at the hero, they can never hit him" for a long time. Anyway-some kinds of "bad" plot armor that bother me and make it harder for me to suspend my disbelief: 1. When the different characters don't all seem to be playing by the same rules, such as the protagonists being seemingly immune to dangers that wipe out their opponents. 2. When the protagonist takes lots of unnecessary risks, as though they KNOW they have plot armor and can't be killed. 3. When ALL of the protagonist's escapes from danger are as narrow as possible. It's one thing to be able to predict that Our Hero will escape whatever danger they face; it's another to be able to predict that Our Hero can ONLY escape at the very last second.
i think the rise of plot armor coming in the late 2000s is probably from anime/manga; there’s a bunch of battle focused ones that have characters fighting extremely often and these fights usually have high stakes so the author has to balance plot with the established magic system and power levels
Writing this first section before watching the video, may or may not be relevant to what you say. Plot armor is necessary to tell a story, but if the reader/viewer can tell that certain things are only happening/not happening because of plot armor it detracts from the story. Obvious example of this is in Band of Brothers there is a soldier (real person so I don't want to call them a character) who is obsessed with getting a Luger pistol. In episode 8ish he gets his pistol, which had to happen because there was no point in having that person get screen time if he didn't. You can also probably figure out what happened to them shortly afterward. That was a clear case of plot armor messing with the events of the story. About 2/3rds of the way through, seems we are on more or less the same page. Only watched the first 6 seasons of GoT and totally agree. The spoiler is the fulcrum on which the series balances, at least while it is good. If nothing much had changed after the event it would have been incredibly disappointing since the shock of it would have been rendered meaningless. As for why the late 2000s had the term take off/be created, that was the era of the internet where angry reviewers were popular like AVGN and The Nostalgia Critic, and a lot of idiots, like me, who want to know how stories work and what makes them good or bad. Things like plot armor were identified and because you really only notice plot armor when it is done badly the term got a negative connotation despite it being totally neutral. Wedge Antillies has plot armor in Star Wars and he has maybe a dozen lines in the whole trilogy.
Oh ABSOLUTELY. sometimes a death hits soooo good. When the author knows why and how to do it there’s almost nothing more emotionally devastating. But I’ve also read books where a death feels so stupid lol
Plot armor to me is when something unknown or unexplainable within the universe miraculously comes down to save the protagonist although it’s never been revealed or alluded to before. Or the villain breaks out in a monologue instead of killing the protagonist immediately giving them time to foil their plans. It’s not plot armor if the villain has a good reason to keep the protagonist alive, torture, prisoner trade, important information. It is plot armor when there’s no necessity to keeping the prisoner alive and it’s just done so they can escape and win.
Genuinely asking, what characters are said to have 'plot armour' in ADWD? The only one i can think of is Tyrion to an extent, though he has a history of surviving through dangerous situations from the first book onwards (though admittedly suffering extensively for it, which is maybe what people are referring to). Jon certainly doesn't have plot armour (clearly), nor Quentyn. So who? Theon? Dany? Davos?? I guess you could argue these, but i have to say it's not ever something that's crossed my mind when reading the book. Curious to hear what people think
Tyrion is the biggest one I personally saw complaints about in my comments, although I've seen a few for other characters through other books in the series. Like I said, it's ironic that so many people still want Quentyn to be alive, when I think he's the biggest proof that not everybody gets the armor! Besides, Tyrion dying would do very little for the story, imo.
Yeah your definition of plot armor changes things. If it's unreasonable survival that's where I get annoyed, but other than that I'm not really expecting my main characters to die in general lol. So like you said, bad writing is bad, not any specific trope or literary device is bad.
I just think that *should* be the definition based on the way it’s used (always negatively). The way it’s currently defined, I don’t think it should be used the way it is! Very connotation vs denotation.
I think it's more a movie than a book issue. James Bond goes into dangerous situations like he is aware of his plot armour. It's like a computer player in "god mode", exciting for a while, but soon boring. In contrast, Inspector Clouseau is not aware of his plot armour, as he is not even aware of the dangerous situations he is going in. That makes it much more fun to watch.
In my humble opinion, plot armor starts to become intrusive when situations that have been established as dangerous for a previous character are suddenly trivial to later characters. If, for example, Jon Snow took Ice's valerian steel blade to the back of his neck, then just stood up and strolled on out, we would all see a massive problem. And, too much plot armor can make the sacrificial lions death retroactively feel cheap or unnecessary
I had to take a break in one of Alison Croggon's Pellinor books because ... well RAFO. So, yeah plot armor isn't *that* bad. Better to have tons of plot armor like Robin Hobb's Fitz, then have readers stop reading because of it. I liked how Veronica Roth did it, and i didn't see it coming...
With GRRM, i think his issue isn't plot armour but fake out deaths. The fade to black at the end of pov then alive 6 chapters later gets a bit wearing. Not plot armour issue though because it's always believable and justified through character motivations etc
This is one of those "hidden hand" things for a writer. Plot armor is clearly required but the writer needs to try their best to hide it lest it break the ever-important immersion of the audience. Another interesting topic might be how verisimilitude has become "immersion" in our modern lexicon.
Plot armor doesn't super bother me unless its egregious. to me, that's when outrageous, improbable things happen constantly in order to keep a character alive. especially if its a character that feels like the author wants you to love. This is magnified if its not the character's own actions that are keeping them safe. If the character magically is alive in horrible situations and their decisions had no bearing on why they're alive, that is also a situation that feels unsatisfying to me. To me, that really is one of the core things about plot armor: it feels like the narrative/author is keeping them alive, not the character's own actions
It rarely bothers me. If there's a battle where there are few survivors or we are following a tournament of course the story isn't about the people eliminated in the first round
The only times I can think of being frustrated a character lives are situations where I'm already not liking the book and I think a death would make it more interesting 🤣
This probably has happened thousands of time in real life 🤷♀️ idk I get that people think George used fake outs to end too many chapters - I’d actually agree in adwd - but it was clear none of them were supposed to feel like a character was going to die except perhaps two
The Walking Dead is probably the poster child for a large part of this discussion. The shows willingness to throw away otherwise plot relevant characters for a cheap thrill, is a representation of the bad writing, and short sightedness of the show runners.
I havent watched James Bond in a while, so I may be remembering wrong. But wasn’t the problem more so that he survived in an uninteresting way? Of course I expect James Bond to survive crazy situation, that’s what I wanted. But I remember feeling cheaped out by something like I was expecting him to come up with a cool way to get out of a situation but in the end he gets saved by luck. What do you think about that?
*If anything, GRRM instead gives "plot armor" to the antagonists, especially the Lannister, in the earlier books.* In AGOT and ACOK, Robb deals several crushing blows against the Lannisters. But somehow at the last minute, the Tyrells decide to save them, despite the fact that they are clearly losing the war HARD. Instead, a marriage pact between Robb and Margaery would have been the most realistic outcome (as a way to oppose Stannis). Meanwhile, Rodrik cassel loses all his braincells in ACOK and gets outplayed by Theon and Ramsay in that order. I mean, why did he let his guard down when he saw the Bolton army approaching Winterfell? He had just fought against them a few weeks earlier... Urgh it makes no sense... Oh, and let's not talk about Cersei's insane plan to kill Robert... 1) Robert goes hunting 2) Get Robert REALLY drunk... but like more than usual 3 ??? 4) PROFIT
Many fans do demand ETERNAL plot armor for the central characters of their favorite stories. Even when that character's story has come to an end. I can think of three movies that are (from my perspective) extremely well made but are intensely hated by some hard core fans. All three featured either the character's final story or at least the final story for this iteration. Death would be a logical possibility, but tell that to certain hard core fans who watched No Time to Die, The Last Jedi, or Halloween Ends.
I think the most shocking story I've ever read was the diary of anne frank Because yeah you find out this is actually the diary of someone who did not survive world war 2
DCC is the best thing i think ive read since Words of Radiance the 1st time, for completely different reasons, and if Carl ever dies MONGO WILL BE APPALLED!!!!!!!!!!!!
The way that i judge plotarmor has always been to ask this question "did they survive because they are the protagonist or are they the protagonist because they survived?" And there you have it.
Simple. Elegant. Love it.
@@reydarouaghi6288 I love this.
That's exactly how I look at it
could u expand more on this i feel like it could just be subjective for everyone else no?
Jjk fan?
I think of a "plot armor" as a survival bias.
Say my grandfather told me he was in a war which 99.99% didn't survive, and then proceeded to tell me his story.
I wouldn't find this unlikely,
because some people **did** survive against all odds, and those are the people telling the story...
yeah, exactly. In fairness, this theory does work better with single-perspective narratives; I recognize that multi-perspectives have more leniency to kill...but it's just not that death is always the most interesting things.
That’s how I think about that!
@@Bookborn The way I always think of it is like, in more basic narratives character deaths tend to be less interesting because those characters basically just cease to exist but in something like ASOIAF whenever an important character is killed off they still continue having heavy narrative presence
"don't get excited I'm not writing anything" too late. you crushed my hopes and dreams
Trust me, ya'll did NOT want to read what I was writing. It was: not good.
“I just thought of killing characters to make my readers sad”
-Bookborn 2024
I stand by it 😌
It's funny, I am just now re-listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl and I was thinking about this exact issue. Carl nearly dies several times in that first book. So you might think he has plot armor (in a bad way). But the other way to look at it is that we're following his viewpoint because he IS the one who survives. If we followed the viewpoint of Yolanda or any of the other millions of people who die, the story would be cut short and we wouldn't know what happens. So we have to follow the viewpoint of a character who is going to make it. (Similarly, in the Hunger Games we have to see the story from Katniss's point of view. If we saw it from Rue's perspective we wouldn't get the full story.)
Now, in a book with multiple viewpoints (like ASOIAF or the First Law series), the same principle doesn't apply. A viewpoint character could die and you'd still get to see the rest of the story through the other characters' perspectives.
yes, exactly! And...is it so bad that we WANT to see those characters survive? lol sometimes it's fun and nice to have someone you like survive until the end
This reminds me of the "Anthropic principle" in cosmology. Conditions appear to be "fine tuned" for life, because we're around to observe it. It's selection bias.
Same can be applied to a novel. If the hero died when things got tough, there would be no story for us to read.
This is the 200 IQ answer and I'm stealing it.
Perfectly stated
Why can't more authors just let the hero die if they write themselves in an absurd situation. I for one would love to see more stories explore how the crisis was overcome even without the Messiah. The idea of just a single party or individual saving the day always felt a bit silly to me, often than not it's multiple factions who aren't necessarily always united at first or till the end that eventually get the job done.
Someone should just make a fantasy plot based on Indian independence, how in the end they got their freedom but then the nation split in two. Mahatma Gandhi was killed before independence one of his "own" and in retribution the people murdered everyone that belonged to the supposed killers cast (whether or not he was actually the killer , I guess the sources vary). The muslims and Hindus never saw eye to eye but still tried to contribute to the independence and so did so many other factions with countless sacrifices but.... all of it was for the most part unnecessary since the uk already lost its hegemony to the US and and colonies no longer sustainable + the Atlantic charter?. Then the bitter-bitter ending with partition and how the dispute of territories to this day remains unresolved.
“If the hero died when things got tough, there will be no story for us to read”
ASOIAF is quite popular and the story goes on after the heroes dropping like flies
@@nont18411 Makes me wonder who you think the heroes of ASOIAF are. It seemed pretty obvious that at least half a dozen characters would survive all the way, or until the very end (last few episodes if we're talking about the show). I'm talking about Jon, Arya, Sansa, Tyrion, Cersei, Jaime, Danaerys, Bran.
"Everything I do now circles back to ASOIAF"
Welcome to the club, Bookborn!
Happy to be here 😌
@@Bookborn We're glad to have you!
Thanks for another really well written and presented essay.
I am always impressed by your crisp editing. You create a clean flow while retaining a very conversational feeling.
Well done.
Thank you 🙏
I love your deep dives like this. I appreciate how much you work to sight sources and the way you bring levelheaded reason into emotionally charged topics.
Thank you! Keep being awesome.
Thank you very much 🥰
Time and time again, it needs to be said that there is no such thing as a bad trope but a bad writer.
Edit: Also want to add that its ridiculous that anyone would say George of all writers uses plot armor (as defined in this video). Kind of stupid how people want him to kill characters constantly just because he has subverted genre convention. Ned’s death works not just because it’s surprising to see a main character die but also because its direct consequences of his actions and sets the rest of the story in motion.
I think it's the craziest take to say about George RR Martin lmao like... I'd honestly love if he had a little more plot armor 😭😭
As someone who generally doesn't care that my books are hyper realistic, and prefers to come out of a book feeling happier, I like plot armor. Killing the main character rarely works for me.
I loved this discussion and this channel because you explore conventional topics in ways that don't always end with the typical answer and have a lot of nuance.
Bookborn, the TEDTalk is TEDTalking lmao!
LOVE the channel!!
Love your videos your the reason I started ASOIAF thank you so much!! Just finished book 3 and it was amazing 10/10
Sorry to spark no additional conversation, but I think I agree with you completely,
Great video, thank you!
Top notch as always. Your video essays are the best thing going 😊
Funny how Disney Star Wars has taken plot armor to the next level - shocking deaths of crucial characters only to have them be fake-out deaths. Again... and again... and again...
Very few fake outs deaths are done well. THERE I SAID IT lmao
One thing about "Dungeon Crawler Carl" that defies this trope as the books go on is that the side characters can die. Carl might survive, but the people around him die and those are his stakes. You know he will survive because he's the protagonist, but he will grieve and feel pain for those that don't. I agree about your thought about other stakes being important.
I think "plot armor" is a more important trope to be mindful about for side characters than for the main.
But also, sometimes I want the hero to survive, and I find comfort in knowing it's a story where the characters I bonded with will be okay.
You reminded me of a book I read as a teenager. It was an urban fantasy, told from a 1st person perspective and the MC died in the most stupid way possible (a train accident non-related to her quest, only that this things happen) half way into the book. The second part of the book was her perspective as a ghost. To this day I remember how shocked I was that a MC could actually die.
But she still had to be there as a ghost, so did she really DIE??? idk lmao it would be crazier if it was suddenly from a different character's perspective. There's a very famous YA series where the protagonist dies at the end and like every body hated it lol sometimes it just doesn't work to kill your main character...
The Goosebumps book "The Ghost Next Door" did this. And I remember as a kid, it blew my mind the first time I read it.
love that DCC got some Bookborn love! I literally left my house this morning without my plot armor. Wish me luck.
hot take, and really well said. stories have an obligation to be stories.
'movie logic' exists because movies are stories and they have to be coherent.
killer blazer, too
Excellent deep dive! I’m surprised to see it’s such a new term. I guess it makes sense with gritty, realism being in taste these days.
Also, Bush knocked down the towers.
I think Superman is an interesting example with plot armor because there was that one time with The Death of Superman comic where he lost his plot armor. And it was a huge bestselling comic I think one of the best selling for Superman ever. But then they weren't willing to commit to it and it came back to bite them as everyone felt like it was cheap. So I do think for those stories with plot armor for the main characters during the story to really surprise readers and let some main characters die and have that huge epic moment.
Mistborn I think is one that did this well as you had this strong plot armor for Vin and Elend right up until the end where you get this shocking death. Similarly the Wheel of Time also did that with some of the character deaths in the last book where you have a big impact because there have just not been deaths before that for main characters. But just having the death be impactful and big can make it a good moment in a way an earlier death won't quite have.
And Vin and Elend's deaths were both essentially part of the happy ending. I can't really imagine how either of those two characters could have built a normal life after everything that went down in that series. They gave everything they had to ensure that humanity survived... I don't think they could have taken the rebuilding of civilization, too. As Sazed says, best to let them rest.
Relatted is also Tone Armor, where how much injuries/threats matter varies based on tone / style of the story.
(see osp video on it)
Wonderfully said! I always enjoy your deeper dives into topics. Thank you for taking the time to research and share your thoughts!
I've seen some people complain that Sanderson's characters all have plot armor, which makes me think they haven't read many of his stories. 😅 But I think you hit the nail on the head when saying that character deaths should be significant for reasons other than shock value. I don't expect everyone to survive, and I don't even expect happy endings all the time, but I do want individual events to matter to the greater story.
I feel like so many people die in Sanderson stories ☠️ Maybe it's because sometimes he waits until the end so people feel like it's not as bad
@Bookborn Haha, right?! I was like, "I don't want to give spoilers but have you read.. ?"
True that those often come at the end, but even so, his character deaths usually serve the purpose of the larger story (and Cosmere!)
Okay but... the jacket is sick
Also my main reason for reading fiction/fantasy is for escapism! I want my favourite characters to get out of some crazy scenarios even when you don't think they will be able to.
I’m not a fan of this take.
Plot armour isnt just “when. Character doesn’t die”
I know Daniel Greene made a similar argument.
I think plot armour is only a useful definition when it talks about immersion breaking. When the in world logic of the story breaks in order to keep a character alive (armour) solely because of their need to continue on living for the sake of the plot. The artificialness breaks internal story logic & the plot protects the character rather than the character surviving due to in world reasons.
So I don’t think what you are talking about (the need for the main character to live) is plot armour. Good writing maintains the logic of the story & world & keeps characters alive by the existing logic. Not immersion breaking plot armour keeping them alive.
I think we actually agree lol. I changed the definition because i don't like the definition that's given "officially". I don't think the term plot armor is actually used how it's definition is stated - like connotation vs denotation. My point is that it's ALWAYS used negatively, but as strictly defined, it's a very normal thing.
But also I'd push back at the end- my point was that sometimes there might be "immersion breaking" survival - because in life, some people survive when they absolutely shouldn't. Thus, like Mark Twain said - stories must have some internal logic that we expect...meaning at times, plot armor as defined is very necessary.
Anyway, ultimately, it's all quibbles over definitions that don't really matter but are fun to debate 😂
Agreed. I find that arguing against the laziest uses of X-trope as a pejorative is not a hard argument to make. I kinda feel like half the video is just the observation that for whatever reason, today's internet loves a 'gotcha' and will apply tropes where they don't belong as some kind of Cinema-Sins-y bash on media.
If the author wants a character to survive, they need to convince me that it makes sense that they did. If they are rescued at the last minute, I better be able to believe that the rescuers were both able to be present and willing to help.
It all circles back to stories needing to make sense. The full Mark Twain quote mentioned in the video even highlights that stories are bound more tightly to logic than the real world. Just because it conceivably could happen doesn't mean the reader will find it plausible.
I could write a paragraph agreeing with you but instead I'll say something random and unrelated: I agree with you about that character in book 5 lol, as sad as that may be. It makes sense thematically if you zoom out of the story a bit and could even be foreshadowing. It would also pave the way for a certain theory I'm gonna keep to myself because I could just be utterly wrong in my instincts. Cool topic!
Ok but drop the quentyn theory nothing is stupid at this point in the theorizing cycle
Just saying, I have plot armourless theories about an even more unexpected death in book 5...
@@thing_under_the_stairs share yours and I'll discipline my brain into cohesively explaining mine.
@@BookbornI hate to disappoint but I'm afraid I just meant that I agree with you that he is sadly, not returning with us. When I mentioned how it makes sense thematically, I meant look at the actions (and probable results) of House Martell. It would make sense narratively as well, given that the contenders for the throne (which includes consorts) must be narrowed in order to conclude the story. At least in theory lol.
@@boromirstark9 My theory is that Jon's actions have indeed had consequences, like those of so many Starks before him, and that he's really dead. He may live on in Ghost, but it would be very GRRM to let the character that he's set up as a hero from the beginning die, now that he's screwed up as egregiously as Ned and Robb did.
I agree that the idea of a protagonist wearing plot armor usually only matters in bad writing. And, well, isn't there much more bad writing around now than, say, 30 years ago? Not because of writers being worse than they were before, but now everyone can "publish" for example fanfiction, and with the streaming services there are so much more shows out there than ever before. More output means less editorial polishing even with professional writing, not mentioning amateur writing which is now readily available.
It's a thing I've tried to contemplate/cover again and again, and it's so hard to tell. There's certainly MORE content. Is a greater percentage of it bad? Or is the same percentage of it bad, but since there's more, it seems worse?
That said, based only on feeling and zero evidence, it does feel like there are a lot more bad stories. Quickness is pushed above all else.
It could also be due to shifts in writing such as A Song of Ice and Fire with shocking deaths. This along with the internet that allows for everyone to hear and see terrible things that happen in life, people's expectations around books have changed such that they expect bad stuff happens including people dying and people living is no longer as believable.
@@Bookborn If professional editing accounts for better quality, then there must be more bad PUBLISHED writing...
8:34 Too late. Super excited to read your work!
LOL. My little baby attempts at fantasy. All fantasy readers do it at some point, right?
I think you hit the nail in the head with this one. There’s a movie that came out a long time ago called Requiem for a dream that’s considered one of the most tragic and sad movies ever made, and I was shocked when I actually watched it that it follows a number of main characters and not a single one of them dies at the end. It opened my eyes, a bit to the fact that there are fates much worse than death for your characters and fiction. So plot armor isn’t really a big deal if death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to them. Also, death is kind of boring because it just takes out a character that you (hopefully) care about. If you care about them, you’re sad, and you probably will like the story less going forward unless it enhances the story for the characters you like.
I just had the thought that maybe it started because longer fantasy series(where characters survived) became popular. Meaning for a few decades since LOTR I think fantasy got a bad rap in "polite society", but things like WoT picking up steam (knife of dreams came out 2004), and the massive success of the HP books, and LOTR movies brought fantasy into popularity with more masses and the "educated" people who looked down on fantasy came up with new ways to criticize it. And then because A Song of Ice and fire was also coming out and DID have some people die, people started comparing and thinking the IP they loved was better than the IP someone else loved. lol. Also, the invention of the internet around the same time. I'm just spit balling here. But I myself looked down on fantasy throughout my adolescence. It wasn't until i saw the 1st movie trailer as a junior in HS that I finally decided to give it a try(quickly became obsessed). I had a subscription to entertainment weekly back then, and I remember Steven King wrote an article just tearing Rowling's writing apart. It upset me, lol.
You know, I was also playing with the idea that ASOIAF was actually a reason plot armor came into usage as well. Perhaps his shake up of the genre inspired people to be more critical of the opposite. I also love the theory that that's when longer fantasy picked up steam, and thus by necessity having characters survive for longer and longer periods of time.
Speaking of Stephen King, would a single character ever survive a single one of his books without some form of plot armour? I'm fine with it, because it's obviously not supposed to be happening in our version of reality. The same with most fantasy. JRR Tolkien has been one of my favourite writers for over 30 years now, and I have no problem with the characters in LOTR having plot armour, because it's written as a nearly mythic tale, and the stakes are so high that it's a comfort when most of the important characters make it out alive. I think the trend toward more "grimdark" feeling fantasy (thanks GRRM!) and dystopian teen novels has left a lot of young cynics too quick to call "plot armour" simply to feel "edgy", or what have you. Whereas in the hands of a talented writer like George RR Martin, the question becomes silly. Characters die when it is necessary, and not just for shock value, which is something that too many readers don't understand.
As for what Stephen King had to say about a certain writer's work, I'm going with an unpopular opinion here, and siding with the man who has won more awards for his writing than I can list here over a decades long career, and even taught a popular creative writing seminar at Yale, over a one-hit children's author who has based her identity in hate for a certain minority group. I know that sentimental attachments exist, but some writers are simply better than others.
If “plot armor” appeared in the late 2000s then it probably surfaced from Game of Thrones season 1 shaking up peoples expectations.
I do agree with your assessment, the criticism comes in when your protagonists plot armor becomes visible to the reader
Well, GOT season1 wasn't released until 2011, so the terms definitely predates it. But I wouldn't be surprised if ASOIAF as a series in general influenced the term. I wish we knew more!
@@Bookborn I think the term mainly came from Harry Potter. Because no matter what happens, Harry just can’t die. There will always be some magical macguffin to save him from danger (for example, he survived getting killed by Voldemort the first time because his mom loves him so much. He survived getting killed by Voldemort the second time because he’s a horcrux) while the other characters who are not “chosen one” like him didn’t get the same privilege.
This reminds me of something Brandon Sanderson says a lot in his lectures on writing: It's not a problem if your story IS contrived - as all of them are, by definition - it's only a problem if your story LOOKS contrived. Basically, it's only a problem if it's so obviously authorial intervention that it reminds the audience that nothing happening here is real.
I've talked to a friend who is an author who writes supsense / thriller books. She once mentioned a conversation with either her editor or a reader, who felt that it was getting a bit unrealistic that the characters in a series were always getting into weird random dangers. My response was, "its a suspense series, what do you expect?"
Harry Potter and LOTR came out in early 2000's, so maybe they are what inspired or kicked off the "plot armor" trope. I don't really notice or think much about plot armor until, like you said, the writing is bad. Thanks for another great video!
I agree plot armor complaints are more about bad writing rather than the hero surviving. It usually becomes an issue when the hero repeatedly unrealistically survives situations. It’s generally the worst in the thriller genre. So many times those plots have a villain who never misses a shot and can snipe people from a mile away, but when he goes to shoot the hero he suddenly has the aim of someone whose never fired a gun before.
To me it also depends on the size/length of the property, in a standalone book/film it’s fine as you still have the tension throughout as it’s not built up the reputation yet. But if it’s an epic like ASOIAF or Stormlight then by book 4 if no one ever dies and they always get out of the most ridiculous situations it loses its tension as there’s no fear
Preface: I am a HUGE Sanderson fan, particularly of Stormlight. Kaladin though, is my definition of Plot Armor. Seriously, I can't think of any other character that's been beaten, tortured, brought to the brink of death, only to have Plot Armor swoop in and not just let him survive, but usually thrive without any sort of real consequence. I think that's what "negative" Plot Amor refers to , at least for me. I mean, think of all the times we got "He couldn't go any further, this was the end... then (Choose one: he said the words, Dalinar clapped his hands, The Storm Father froze time, he found a lucky penny, a magic frog ate the Parshendi, he realized he can pull stormlight out of the planet's core, he went back in time, he was his brother all along...). Some of those are made up to avoid spoilers :) Anyway, when I hear someone say "Plot Armor" I think of Kaladin, and I HATE that, because he really is one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite series, but I can't deny that's how I feel about the increasing unlikelihood he won't survive literally ANYTHING.
Generally speaking, I also think of the characters in Wheel of Time. Jordan seemed utterly incapable of killing a single one of his 50,000 characters (at least for more than a book or two before bringing them back). That's less about plot armor and more about a specific author's quirk.
Plot armor is kinda why I can't read Sanderson. I liked a lot of The Way of Kings, but Kaladin's plot armor bothered me. Once I know an author has marked a character for survival, I don't really want to read scenes of them in mortal danger. Because I know the outcome. I'd rather read scenes with interpersonal stakes, because that could still go in any direction.
@@Troelski I think that's why Kaladin is one of my faves, because there is a lot of inner struggle and character growth/development for him and I'm invested in his story. He just has the annoying habit of getting into "life or death" situations, even though we know he can't die (at least not before this next book!). He wouldn't even have to die, but every single time he "almost" dies, instead of consequences or at least lessons learned, he just levels up and is more powerful than he was before, so the next near-death thing has to be even more outrageous than the last one. Imagine Kaladin at the end of book 2 doing a bridge run (which nearly killed him several times in book 1)! He could've carried it by himself while literally flying across the plains! Anyone want to bet when a Herald undoubtably almost kills him in book 5 he'll gain the ability to shoot lasers out of his eyes? 😆
@@CharlesBHamlyn Lol. I think the Bridge stuff in book 1 worked fairly well for me because I felt like other people's lives were at stake a lot of the time -- but yes will be interesting to see the next upgrade!
I would disagree that Kaladin has negative plot armor. Certainly there's plot armor there in terms of him surviving. But I think Kaladin's story has had stakes and consequences throughout the books. He's lost numerous people he's tried to protect. He's failed and his actions have gotten others hurt. And I think I'd draw that distinction between good plot armor and bad plot armor, does the story still have stakes and tension and consequences for failure. And with Kaladin's storyline I think those elements are still there.
Same thing with Wheel of Time too though I think he pushed it too far without any casualties. But for the main characters there were still failures, and stakes, and consequences for their actions.
@@tadious9415 That just proves Kaladin's friends and family DON'T have plot armor 😉 My definition for "bad plot armor" is when the character themselves are put into impossibly dangerous situations, but the plot armor makes it so there's never any real fear of them actually dying (or in Kaladin's case even really being physically harmed). I 100% agree with you that Kaladin is an amazingly deep character with major flaws and trauma to overcome. That's why we all love him. But the dude is unkillable, so anytime Brando puts him into an dangerous situation there's no tension (for me). Again, just talking about Kaladin's safety. Of course most times his friends and family are also put into harms way and that's great, because they don't have plot armor 🙂
I give Jordan a lot of crap, but in his defense I literally inducted myself into fantasy by reading Lord of the Rings, then A Song of Ice and Fire, then Wheel of Time. So anytime he killed a character I was like "FINALLY! Just like ASoIaF, no one is safe!" but then they'd come back! So it was just my expectations were not where they should've been. That's totally just a me thing.
I will be sending this to my friends whenever they brazenly call a plot armor foul! Also gotta commend your stellar fashion.
What's interesting about the "plot armor" discussion in Game of Thrones is that, like you said, at some point they need to live for there to even be a story at all. On top of that, when one of the plot threads is that there is a god who lets people live/revives them for a later purpose, it's hard to call it "plot armor" when it's literally "god armor" in the context of the story lol
It’s bullshit you can kill more characters since grrm quickly introduced new POVs and then have us follow those POVs Ala killing Jon and dany in winds and showing us how this story isn’t about prophecy or whatever is about the wheel about vengeance all the way down ad we follow even more cynical people
What kind of armor does Arya have? GRRM's wife sayd if he kills Arya before the end of the last book, sie will leave him.
I think up until the last book, Harry Potter is a great example of plot armor done right. Yes, Harry survives a seemingly impossible threat at the end of each book. But, also, within the logic of the book, she wrote it in away that sort of made sense. Book 1, he survives by luck and the whole Voldemort not being able to touch him. Book 2, yeah, it was luck, but also a lot of help from a magical bird and magical tools. Book 3, he survives because the perceived threat wasn't actually targeting him. Book 4, he survives because the villains literally wanted him to, and then the twin cores. Sure, the twin cores was something maybe a bit "we need a way for him to live," but it also was something you could see being a super niche thing people didn't know of because the specific circumstances needed to trigger it. It was only book 7 where it felt she said "he needs to win somehow," because the whole wand lore and true master and the thing with Malfoy was pretty convoluted.
An example where I think plot armor doesn't work so well is with Greg Iles' Penn Cage series, especially the latest book (spoiler alert). The main characters are in a desperate situation with no real chance of survival. The main character, now pretty old, suffering health issues, already in bad shape from being shot, chooses to sacrifice himself to save his daughter and love interest, giving them a chance to get out. However, because Iles wants to keep him around in case he wants to write another book, the special forces medics arrive just in time to save him after he says goodbye and passes out. The sacrifice was very good and emotional and a chance to maybe pass the series' torch to another character if the author wants to keep writing, but having him live just felt cheap after that.
I'm such a wand lore lover (because wand lore started as early as book 1) but it's such a common complaint, I know so many people didn't really disliked it, so I getttt it 🤣
But your second example is PERFECT. There was a reason for that character to die, AND him NOT dying, completely reduces the sacrifice and thus completely undermines the emotional crest of the novel.
Wand lord itself was interesting, which is why I think the plot armor use in book 4 worked well, at least to me. I think it could’ve worked in the last book, but the logic she used was just a bit convoluted and I think a clash of ideals, Harry’s relationship and reliance on his friends vs Voldy’s concern only for himself, Harry being willing to sacrifice for his friends while Voldemort wants himself to live forever, Harry’s defensive magic vs Tom’s aggressive attack magic, etc., would’ve made more sense than the specific train of that wand passing to Harry because he took a different wand from Draco.
However, I do agree with your larger point. Plot armor is just a thing, neither good nor bad, and generally necessary in a story, especially a series. What makes it good or bad is the writing. If it undermines plot points or if the author can coat it with something that’s a stretch but at least works within the story’s logic to some degree, that’s what makes it a good or bad thing. Also, how often it’s used, which I would contend actually is down to the quality of the writing. Like, Mistborn Eras 1 and 2 spoilers, but Vin survived many times when she realistically should’ve died but needed to live for the next book. Then, he let her actually sacrifice herself in the end and didn’t Kelsier her death (a return that I think made sense for that character, but not for many others). Wayne using his healing to survive but eventually finding a situation when he couldn’t, the healing was really plot armor with a coat of plausibility paint but he recognized when it would be going too far
"It's bad writing that is bad"....this goes for everything...tropes aren't bad, bad writing is bad....vampires aren't bad, bad writing is bad.....zombies aren't bad, bad writing is bad....unique punctuation choices aren't bad, bad writing is bad....firstperson/secondperson/thirdperson/ isn't bad, bad writing is bad....etc
i always love a great Mark Twain saying
9:06 Allow me to introduce Hajime Isayama, Attack on Titan...this man had me caring for characters I met a chapter ago.
😢 I can't even look at potatoes without crying
My theory as to why the term plot armor became the trope it has at the time it had comes down to the resurgence of gore horror films. as special effects got better and slasher films morphed to gore based shock horror, death in those stories became about the death itself and characters surviving these insane gore focused horror films push the trope to forefront.
I feel like there's huge difference between having an expectation that a character survives and then "plot armor". You can write a Jason Bourne like character who gets into 100 close calls with death over 5 books -- assassins, bombings, car chases, plane fights etc. - and you can write each of those close calls in such a way that the main character gets out alive through their own wits, skill or a previously set up narrative device. The fact that the MC survives 100 close calls isn't plot armor. Nor is the expectation that they will survive plot armor. Plot armor is in the HOW the author makes the character survive.
I feels like to me your argument isn't so much that plot armor is good, but that you (sometimes) don't mind it. Like in James Bond. or Harry Potter. Like how we sometimes don't mind plot holes, or bad CGI if the overall story grabs us. But I'm not sure anyone would argue plotholes and bad CGI is "good, actually."
I'm also not sure I totally buy that "plot armor isn't bad, bad writing is bad" because plot armor is by the Bookborn definition what I think most people would consider "bad writing". Plot armor is not just "an expectation that the main character will survive all 11 books". It's breaking rules you yourself set up in an unreasonable way because you couldn't think of a clever/believable way to get your protagonist out of a sticky situation. Apply good writing to that situation and you negate the need for plot armor in the first place.
But maybe I'm missing something. Maybe if someone could give me an example of "the unreasonable preservation of a main character in order for the plot to continue" that they would consider "good writing" I'd be closer to understanding.
Sorry for the novel.
First the side parting and now this…. She’s killing with these looks! 🔥🫠😍
Thanks for the video! I think plot armor is absolutely fine as long as, like you said, it's well written. If the plot armor event is a HUGE change from how physics/ magic/ etc. has worked so far, it can be jarring and take the reader out of it.. But if it's a normal part of things, who cares!? If it's totally absurd, but is the same through the whole story, that's great!
I agree with you completely. (Usually) only the people who survive can tell their stories, so I'm not bothered by a protagonist being one of them. I tend to get more annoyed by characters being killed off without reason or impact on the narrative.
For example: (1) a protagonist's close friend is killed off (because someone needs to die to show the stakes) and the death doesn't impact the narrative (no grief, friend is never mentioned again) or (2) the friend survives due to dumb chance when a hundred people around him don't and suffers from survivor's guilt afterward. Usually, I think (2) the more interesting story.
Totally agree that plot armour isnt a bad thing. I feel like GRR Martin started with an amazing subversion on this trope, but then it also became so popular that it became a shock value - so it continued after the first book to the red wedding etc., and then i feel it got really difficult to keep telling the story while also maintaining the shock value. In this regard, I really liked Arcane, the fantasy show - where in the first arc we see an important character die, but this is only so the two other characters can emerge as MCs, and we never expect either to die till the end of the story, neither does it take away anything from the brilliant storytelling.
Adding to the previus comment, based on your definition of the term, it is plausible that the fictional character during the narrative development of the story requires to be preserved in an irrational way. And this can be achieved through the abrupt appearance of an external element allowing the continuity of the protagonist, but here we would be facing a different concept, namely: "deus ex machina" over "plot armor".
I think plot armour comes out of gaming circles and not from film or books. And there it makes sense, especially in games that have nothing but the life of the characters at stake, and thus being capable to get through the game without the character option to die makes them boring. Thus I would say, when the games in the 80s and 90s had been rather lethal and hard, with the 2000s more and more games happened that where more focused on narratives and that felt wrong to the old guard of gamers.
I do love the shade you dropped on a certain froggy boy's truthers.
I think it might have been a colder, more major character who is currently dead that she was talking about, but honestly, either one works for me!
Sorry Preston
I wanted to say (as you mentioned) sometimes plot armor works really well and is almost the point of the story. I think the Kingkiller Chronicles are a great example of this. Kvothe is telling the story, so we know he survives, but it's the cleverness (or the cleverness of his account at least) of HOW he survives that is the entertaining part of the story, at least for me.
I always think that the story wouldn't exist if the hero didn't live, so for me it's survivor bias.
To be fair, to be that character with the plot armor such as Carl, that situation is used for the stakes. "How much of us is left in the end?" Won't go too far into it, but being the survivor is a lot weight, starts making more sense in DDC 3
Well exactly! I brought up that one of the issues where plot armor is noticeable is if there are no stakes. DCC is a great example of having stakes outside of death
We need one video per Fire and Blood chapter!!!!
It's not *not* on the table
Now we need the Bookborn review of Dungeon Crawler Carl!
I’ve already reviewed it on my channel lol!
@@Bookborn You know the funniest thing is that I even watched your review of DCC when it came out, LOL. It was a quick one so I forgot that I had watched it. Are you going to continue the series?
@@spectreharlequin Yeah! I actually think I might get to the second one next month
@@Bookborn My last comment, because I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I hope you really enjoy the next books so we can get one of those Bookborn obsession rants :)
Love the video and the james bond reference as a big bond fan. I only wish you talk about it slightly more which would help your points even more because of the outrage from fans. If you know you know☺️
Strictly speaking about hypocrisy from fans. Like if you kill X game of thrones character are fans mad? Are they all ok with just accepting death? But then when or if it happens on someone that's not supposed to die then people get so pissed hahaha
Plot armour is, like so many other things in storytelling, something that should be present but largely unseen. Of course, some people go looking for it, and they will always see it. The issue is when it jumps in your face, and that is usually due to other writing flaws, like when a storyteller tries very, very hard to convince you that the protagonist is definitely dying this time and you should really care
Very nice and nuanced discussion. I was probably using Usenet before you were born! But I don't recall that particular forum. Actually there was a TV show predating all of these, though still late 20th century, that was noted for killing off important characters to maintain realism. I want to say Babylon-5, but maybe another sci-fi show (certainly not Star Trek, where red shirts famously functioned as anti-plot-armor). It could also be used deliberately for humorous effect, as in the Adam West Batman TV show of the 1970s, where the supervillains always devised incredibly elaborate ways to kill Batman after capturing him, inevitably giving him enough time to escape. A great breaking of plot armour occurs in the first Kingsman movie (SPOILER Alert!), where Samuel L. Jackson the supervillain just shoots and kills Colin Firth one of the the good guys, saying something about this not being a dumb spy movie (maybe he says James Bond, I forget). Cheers from Montreal!
This brings to mind an anime called One Punch Man, it's basically if that show watched this vid, then said to you: "Plot Armor you say? Hold my beer"
I recently read a book where the premise is that the protagonist tells the story to someone in world. So we know for a fact that she survives. While I had some problems with the book that was not one of them. There were a lot of other stakes and at the book club I read it for no one said anything about plot armour.
I love this take overall and the nuance to it. I believe in a big rule of cool. But definitely written poorly the writer will pull the reader from that suspension of disbelief.
An author that did this really well is Christopher Ruocchio. Just when you think you have him figured out-he throws you.
The funny thing is how she uses superman as an example for not dying but he died in the beginning for a few episodes in this season of superman and lois, her example still holds it's just ironic.
I love plot armor. If a writer is going to have awesome character development and make me cheer for and relate to a character, I'm PRAYING they have plot armor. IMO it's way worse when a writer kills a main character just because of some rule where you need to kill characters to keep it real. Edit: As far as RR Martin, YES it crushed me when he kills loveable characters, but I feel we wouldn't know just how brutal a world Westeros actually is without it. Killing Ned actually makes things more real and visceral.
I know you haven't seen the show and/or aren't planning on it, but the creators of Game of Thrones relied so heavily on plot armor when they ran out of source material, it all became so silly, like Jon running into an entire army alone, surviving a rainstorm of arrows and being ridiculously outnumbered during the battle of the bastards... which was only season 5, the later seasons I won't even mention...
Arya getting shanked then jumped into a shitwater
@@nont18411 😭😭
There was a lot of plot armor in the show, but there was also a lot of plot armor in the books. Tyrion especially has an absurd amount of plot armor when you think about it.
He survives multiple attacks while prisoner on the eastern road, a random sellsword beats the the captain of the guard in a trial by combat, survives the road back to the Riverlands by uniting the mountain clans to fight for him, and he survives a battle in the vanguard as an unskilled warrior where his unit is meant to be cannon fodder and bait the Starks in. All that is just in the first book! He doesn't have quite the same level of plot armor in the other books, but there are numerous events where he gets out of scenarios where death seemed imminent. The difference is well written plot armor vs poorly written plot armor.
@@CodyPatrick103 i agree!
Great video.
Soilers for ASOIAF:
I love how you put Ned Stark in the thumbnail of a video about plot armor.
hehe I knew exactly what I did
Like with any trope, it’s down to the execution rather than the idea of it; in ASOIAF, very few of the recurring POV characters have actually died, and of those only Catelyn (who came back as Lady Stoneheart) actually had those chapters in more than one book. Whereas Ned and Quentyn each had an arc across a single book, because their respective roles had thematic significance.
I also consider it very bad if an author tries to disprove the idea of plot armour by killing a swathe of characters in the conclusion of their story; Harry Potter is a problem in that Rowling could off as many people, removing all the pieces because they weren’t needed for the story after the last book. Contrast GRRM who kills a handful of named characters in the Red Wedding, and the tragedy is that even if we only had a few scenes with most of them the sheer callousness and loss of their potential is really the point… And George very much realised that he couldn’t up himself after the Wedding, which is *also* why a lot of fans disproportionality feel like the story has lost steam; after such big moments we need breathing room in which things are trying to stabilise before another bloodbath. But for many folks… yeah.
Also think of how much of a fad it became to say, make a new show in which you set up a “main character” in the first episode to throw off the audience; it can be done, but you can’t do it just because as it won’t feel authentic. Or for a different idea: “Caprica”, the prequel to the 2000s reboot of “Battlestar Galactica” pulls a trick in its first (and only) season by killing off its main character who was set up as the young version of the BG protagonist in the finale… Which it turn revealed that the guy we THOUGHT would be him, actually was the *older brother* of somebody not yet born who would be given the exact name of his late sibling. Urgh…
The term "plot armor" may be relatively recent, but I think that similar ideas have been around a lot longer. People have been making observations along the lines of "no matter how much the bad guys shoot at the hero, they can never hit him" for a long time.
Anyway-some kinds of "bad" plot armor that bother me and make it harder for me to suspend my disbelief:
1. When the different characters don't all seem to be playing by the same rules, such as the protagonists being seemingly immune to dangers that wipe out their opponents.
2. When the protagonist takes lots of unnecessary risks, as though they KNOW they have plot armor and can't be killed.
3. When ALL of the protagonist's escapes from danger are as narrow as possible. It's one thing to be able to predict that Our Hero will escape whatever danger they face; it's another to be able to predict that Our Hero can ONLY escape at the very last second.
i think the rise of plot armor coming in the late 2000s is probably from anime/manga; there’s a bunch of battle focused ones that have characters fighting extremely often and these fights usually have high stakes so the author has to balance plot with the established magic system and power levels
never looked at plot armor that way. interesting points.
Writing this first section before watching the video, may or may not be relevant to what you say. Plot armor is necessary to tell a story, but if the reader/viewer can tell that certain things are only happening/not happening because of plot armor it detracts from the story. Obvious example of this is in Band of Brothers there is a soldier (real person so I don't want to call them a character) who is obsessed with getting a Luger pistol. In episode 8ish he gets his pistol, which had to happen because there was no point in having that person get screen time if he didn't. You can also probably figure out what happened to them shortly afterward. That was a clear case of plot armor messing with the events of the story.
About 2/3rds of the way through, seems we are on more or less the same page. Only watched the first 6 seasons of GoT and totally agree. The spoiler is the fulcrum on which the series balances, at least while it is good. If nothing much had changed after the event it would have been incredibly disappointing since the shock of it would have been rendered meaningless.
As for why the late 2000s had the term take off/be created, that was the era of the internet where angry reviewers were popular like AVGN and The Nostalgia Critic, and a lot of idiots, like me, who want to know how stories work and what makes them good or bad. Things like plot armor were identified and because you really only notice plot armor when it is done badly the term got a negative connotation despite it being totally neutral. Wedge Antillies has plot armor in Star Wars and he has maybe a dozen lines in the whole trilogy.
A well written death can make a book for me (*wanted to reference examples here, but spoilers spoilers spoilers 😂).
Oh ABSOLUTELY. sometimes a death hits soooo good. When the author knows why and how to do it there’s almost nothing more emotionally devastating. But I’ve also read books where a death feels so stupid lol
Plot armor to me is when something unknown or unexplainable within the universe miraculously comes down to save the protagonist although it’s never been revealed or alluded to before.
Or the villain breaks out in a monologue instead of killing the protagonist immediately giving them time to foil their plans.
It’s not plot armor if the villain has a good reason to keep the protagonist alive, torture, prisoner trade, important information.
It is plot armor when there’s no necessity to keeping the prisoner alive and it’s just done so they can escape and win.
Ive always reasoned that we are looking at the story of somone succeeding. If they failed we wouldnt be watching a tv show about them
Julius Caesar had plot armor IRL. until he didn't
I think George Washington had real-life plot armor. And there are probably plenty of other historical examples.
@@Steve_Stowers with all the diseases that man had? That immune system was plot armor
Genuinely asking, what characters are said to have 'plot armour' in ADWD? The only one i can think of is Tyrion to an extent, though he has a history of surviving through dangerous situations from the first book onwards (though admittedly suffering extensively for it, which is maybe what people are referring to).
Jon certainly doesn't have plot armour (clearly), nor Quentyn. So who? Theon? Dany? Davos?? I guess you could argue these, but i have to say it's not ever something that's crossed my mind when reading the book. Curious to hear what people think
Tyrion is the biggest one I personally saw complaints about in my comments, although I've seen a few for other characters through other books in the series. Like I said, it's ironic that so many people still want Quentyn to be alive, when I think he's the biggest proof that not everybody gets the armor! Besides, Tyrion dying would do very little for the story, imo.
Yeah your definition of plot armor changes things. If it's unreasonable survival that's where I get annoyed, but other than that I'm not really expecting my main characters to die in general lol. So like you said, bad writing is bad, not any specific trope or literary device is bad.
I just think that *should* be the definition based on the way it’s used (always negatively). The way it’s currently defined, I don’t think it should be used the way it is! Very connotation vs denotation.
I think it's more a movie than a book issue. James Bond goes into dangerous situations like he is aware of his plot armour. It's like a computer player in "god mode", exciting for a while, but soon boring. In contrast, Inspector Clouseau is not aware of his plot armour, as he is not even aware of the dangerous situations he is going in. That makes it much more fun to watch.
In my humble opinion, plot armor starts to become intrusive when situations that have been established as dangerous for a previous character are suddenly trivial to later characters. If, for example, Jon Snow took Ice's valerian steel blade to the back of his neck, then just stood up and strolled on out, we would all see a massive problem. And, too much plot armor can make the sacrificial lions death retroactively feel cheap or unnecessary
I had to take a break in one of Alison Croggon's Pellinor books because ... well RAFO. So, yeah plot armor isn't *that* bad. Better to have tons of plot armor like Robin Hobb's Fitz, then have readers stop reading because of it. I liked how Veronica Roth did it, and i didn't see it coming...
With GRRM, i think his issue isn't plot armour but fake out deaths. The fade to black at the end of pov then alive 6 chapters later gets a bit wearing. Not plot armour issue though because it's always believable and justified through character motivations etc
This is one of those "hidden hand" things for a writer. Plot armor is clearly required but the writer needs to try their best to hide it lest it break the ever-important immersion of the audience.
Another interesting topic might be how verisimilitude has become "immersion" in our modern lexicon.
Plot armor doesn't super bother me unless its egregious. to me, that's when outrageous, improbable things happen constantly in order to keep a character alive. especially if its a character that feels like the author wants you to love.
This is magnified if its not the character's own actions that are keeping them safe. If the character magically is alive in horrible situations and their decisions had no bearing on why they're alive, that is also a situation that feels unsatisfying to me. To me, that really is one of the core things about plot armor: it feels like the narrative/author is keeping them alive, not the character's own actions
Plot nakedness! Let’s go!
It rarely bothers me. If there's a battle where there are few survivors or we are following a tournament of course the story isn't about the people eliminated in the first round
The only times I can think of being frustrated a character lives are situations where I'm already not liking the book and I think a death would make it more interesting 🤣
8:25 wait but… Sam Tarly? He literally survived drowning by someone just being there at the right time to pull him out if the water
This probably has happened thousands of time in real life 🤷♀️ idk I get that people think George used fake outs to end too many chapters - I’d actually agree in adwd - but it was clear none of them were supposed to feel like a character was going to die except perhaps two
The Walking Dead is probably the poster child for a large part of this discussion. The shows willingness to throw away otherwise plot relevant characters for a cheap thrill, is a representation of the bad writing, and short sightedness of the show runners.
Did you try TV Tropes?
I havent watched James Bond in a while, so I may be remembering wrong. But wasn’t the problem more so that he survived in an uninteresting way? Of course I expect James Bond to survive crazy situation, that’s what I wanted. But I remember feeling cheaped out by something like I was expecting him to come up with a cool way to get out of a situation but in the end he gets saved by luck. What do you think about that?
"Extremely influential" = a generation of fantasy authors killing main characters for no freaking reason 😂
*If anything, GRRM instead gives "plot armor" to the antagonists, especially the Lannister, in the earlier books.*
In AGOT and ACOK, Robb deals several crushing blows against the Lannisters. But somehow at the last minute, the Tyrells decide to save them, despite the fact that they are clearly losing the war HARD. Instead, a marriage pact between Robb and Margaery would have been the most realistic outcome (as a way to oppose Stannis).
Meanwhile, Rodrik cassel loses all his braincells in ACOK and gets outplayed by Theon and Ramsay in that order. I mean, why did he let his guard down when he saw the Bolton army approaching Winterfell? He had just fought against them a few weeks earlier... Urgh it makes no sense...
Oh, and let's not talk about Cersei's insane plan to kill Robert...
1) Robert goes hunting
2) Get Robert REALLY drunk... but like more than usual
3 ???
4) PROFIT
Many fans do demand ETERNAL plot armor for the central characters of their favorite stories. Even when that character's story has come to an end. I can think of three movies that are (from my perspective) extremely well made but are intensely hated by some hard core fans. All three featured either the character's final story or at least the final story for this iteration. Death would be a logical possibility, but tell that to certain hard core fans who watched No Time to Die, The Last Jedi, or Halloween Ends.
I think the most shocking story I've ever read was the diary of anne frank Because yeah you find out this is actually the diary of someone who did not survive world war 2
DCC is the best thing i think ive read since Words of Radiance the 1st time, for completely different reasons, and if Carl ever dies MONGO WILL BE APPALLED!!!!!!!!!!!!
this fit is fire tho
You need plot armor but you’ve got to disguise it well.