Blessed With Suck - Television Tropes & Idioms

Borderline in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shinji Ikari always believes that his job as an Eva pilot causes him nothing but pain, but many of the characters, most notably Kensuke Aida, believe that being a pilot of an Evangelion is really amazing, and can't understand how he gets so upset about piloting. Of course, those who do understand what's going on know otherwise.
Subverted in Ah! My Goddess: Keiichi Morisato is granted a wish by a goddess, which promptly gets him kicked out of his dorm, and leaves him with said goddess and her sisters as dependents and being harassed by everyone except the goddess and his sister. Despite all this, he is still happy with his wish, and makes this clear at several points.
At the very beginning of Bleach, it would seem that Ichigo is blessed with suck, because even though he can see ghosts and acquires a means to defend against them, the ability draws soul-devouring monsters, Hollows, to him, his friends, and family.
Several people in Mushishi appear to be genuinely blessed after being infected with mushi that gives them special powers (prophetic dreams, the ability to see while blind, etc.) Unfortunately, mushi has a nasty tendency to grow in power and get beyond its user's control, which usually results in disaster for the infected individual and the people around them.
Practically every Geass power granted in Code Geass starts off sounding pretty cool... until it becomes uncontrollable and makes its user's life hell (unless it already had a terrible drawback to begin with). Examples:
- Lelouch: The power to issue absolute orders. Drawback: The orders given under the geass cannot be taken back, and his geass becomes permanently active partway through the first season, just in time to trigger accidental genocide. How... unfortunate.
- Mao: Telepathy. Drawback: Always active, isolating him and eventually driving him insane from being bombarded by the thoughts of everyone within a 500 meter radius.
- Rolo: The power to stop perception of time. Drawback: It also stops his heart, putting a serious time limit on its usage. This is what eventually kills him, when he consciously overuses his geass to save Lelouch.
- Pre-immortality C.C.: Love-magnet. Drawback: Always active (and growing more and more powerful over time), making it impossible to tell where people's true feelings started and geass-generated love-brainwashing began and causing C.C. to become jaded and cynical about love.
- Suzaku: Thanks to Lelouch's command to "live", whenever he is in a tight situation, it kicks in and helps him to fight and survive. On the downside, he wants to atone through death, making this the last thing he wants, and even worse, he ends up nuking millions of people involuntarily because doing so was an action which saved his life. And in the Grand Finale... well, let's say that he was given a Fate Worse Than Death. God, it sucks to be Suzaku!
Kurau in Kurau Phantom Memory benefits greatly from her Rynax-powers in her job as an agent, but it causes her some trouble too. She gets separated from her father at a young age and goes through years of loneliness, because she has to hide her powers and the Rynax she merged with has to miss its "pair". Once her pair appears, she has to run from the authorities, while being more vulnerable as she has to defend her "little sister" as well. Still, flying, being able to phase through walls and disintegrate massive objects is pretty cool.
Gene and Jim of Outlaw Star inherit one of the most advanced ships in the galaxy after one of their clients kicks the bucket. This would seem like a good thing, until the two realize that it's going to cost them an arm and a leg to dock, maintain, and arm the damn thing. Not to mention that it effectively paints a big fat target on Gene's head for the Kei pirates to strike at. Gene puts it best when he says, "We sure inherited a big pain in the ass."
The titular heroines from Gunslinger Girl get saved from death and gain enormous strength and agility through cybernetic implants. Alas, this comes with severe mental conditioning (including enormous emotional dependence on their "Handlers") and an immensely shortened lifespan, so the girls will likely die before reaching adulthood.
In The Law Of Ueki, kids are granted powers by candidates gunning for the position of God, who must then fight in a tournament. One power in particular seems unbeatable (The power to turn ideals in to reality), until you find out that it takes away a year of your life to use it. An even worse example is the kid who can turn his forehead in to a diamond, but only when his hands are in his pockets. This trope is pretty much the focus of the entire series.
- Ueki Kosuke, who has the power to turn trash into trees. Although he does find some extremely interesting and practical uses for this power in battle, he is helpless without any rubbish.
  - That is, until it turns out that he can use a piece of tree to create another tree.
  - Also, the piece of trash has to be small enough to fit completely inside one or both hands.
- Seiichiro Sano, who can turn his towels into iron, but only as long as he can hold his breath.
- Ai Mori, who can later on make her opponent really, really love glasses. The effect is immensely powerful, but before it can be activated the opponent must strike a rather specific girly "Squeee!" pose, making the power practically useless.
- Robert Haydn, who has the aforementioned power of making ideal objects (for examle, a cup that will never spill a drop even if turned upside-down) at the cost of one year of his lifespan.
- Marco Maldini, who can change tomatoes into magma. I'm sure by now you get the point.
  - If any of them hit a non-powered person with their power they lose one of their innate talents, and losing all your talents causes you to be struck out of existence. Welcome to the suck.
Yakumo of School Rumble is an empath who hears the thoughts regarding her from any guy who has any interest in her. Her being a Yamato Nadeshiko, that usually means all guys — it comes as a surprise when she can't hear anything from the male lead (because he's purely in love with someone else, her older sister) — and people don't help her because she looks too perfect to need it. The blaring thoughts of the Stalker With A Crush don't help her situation, either.
Zelgadis Graywords from Slayers wants to become strong, so his great-grandfather makes him strong. By turning him into a 1/3 rock golem, 1/3 blow demon chimera with blue skin and wire hair. He then devotes his life to finding a cure for this condition.
- He's nigh invulnerable and his appearance doesn't seem to cause panic amongst the normal people. Where's the suck?
- Most of the time we see him he's hanging around the rest of the cast or has himself covered in clothes head to foot. Also showing the effects of his appearance beyond it being funny is not particularly on the show's agenda. There's also been rumored a solo story about Zelgadis on his own that basically got scrapped because it was too dark and serious for the usual Slayers tone. But put in some imagination (given how most people react to someone who looks weird) and the fact he sinks in water, his hair can get stuck in wood etc and there's plenty there that sucks.
  - In the new series, Slayers Evolution-R it's shown in a flashback how children Zelgadis used to play with start to consider him a monster after his change - oddly, considering that they also used to play with wolfman Dilgear and fishman Noonsa with no reaction to their monstrous appearances. It seems that Zelgadis only became serious about finding the cure after it became clear to him that Rezo was only using him as a tool, and didn't change him because he cared about him, as he claimed.
The five Signers of Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds consider their power to range from a mere inconvenience to a dire curse.
Wangan Midnight has the Devil Z, a heavily tuned Nissan Fairlady Z (S30, which was sold as the Datsun 240Z in North America). For a car from the 1970s, you'll be amazed at how fast this badass mother can go. The tradeoff? It's extremely hard to control, and thus has a long history of accidents involving the deaths of its past owners. In fact, it's believed to be possessed; one chapter has the protagonist Akio exclaiming that his foot is stuck on the pedal as if it was being pushed down.
Chise in SaiKano is turned into the ultimate weapon, which makes her invincible and she becomes absurdly strong as well. Comes at a very steep price: Using her powers hurts her directly, and its slowly taking away her humanity. Oh, and she can't control her powers very well, leading to her destroying several cities.
To Aru Majutsu No Index: Touma has what he calls "Imagine Breaker", a right hand that can absolutely cancel any esper/magic power it touches (even, according to him, miracles from the gods), which is useful considering the extremely powerful trouble he attracts starting with the first episode. If the power hits some other part of his body first, though, he's screwed. His hand also cancels his luck, meaning pretty much every day is a bad day for him and probably the reason why he's attracting such deadly trouble in the first place; causes him to be classified Level 0 because his power can't be detected; and isn't of any use in mundane situations, either.
- It also has the problem of not being able to be turned off - so if he doesn't want, for example, to permanently remove the powers of an enchanted artifact (like Index's Walking Church), he's rather out of luck.
The twelve members of the zodiac in Fruits Basket, who turn into animals when they become weak or are hugged by someone (outside of the Zodiac) of the opposite gender.
Ixpellia from StrikerS Sound Stage X of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has the ability to cause the Mariages to arise, whereupon they would immediately sally forth into battle. Great when you have to fight in a war. Not so great when you neither need nor want to fight anymore and your undead warriors with one track minds won't stop no matter how much you beg them to.
Nishijou Takumi the real one from Chaos Head awakened unparalleled Gigalomaniac powers at age 10, which allow him to alter reality to match his thoughts. However, using his powers also gives him progeria (rapid aging); the more power he uses the older and sicker he gets, and he can't use his powers to fix the problem. When the series opens, the real Takumi is close to death, having used a great deal of power to create the protagonist.
In Chrono Crusade, it's implied that all of the Apostles have side-effects that go along with their holy powers. For Joshua, he has the ability to heal, but along with it comes an Incurable Cough Of Death and seizures, which his powers can't heal. Azmaria also has the ability to heal others, but she believes it brings misfortune since many of the people she was close to in the past died, often because of people wanting to use her powers. Mary Magdalene can see the future (and various other things), but she's seen so many visions of other people's lives that she's lost her own memories in the shuffle. The anime also has Rosette, who is blessed with stigmata, but that only brings her constant pain, makes her a target for Aion to brainwash and control, and she later ends up using her powers to wound Chrono, which kills him in the end.
Dragon Ball Z. In the movie Bardock, Father of Goku, Bardock is "blessed" with the gift of prophecy by the natives of his most recently conquered planet. The problem being that the only vision he gets is of Frieza destroying Planet Vegeta, and nobody will believe him. Note to self: do not tick off psychic aliens.
- Of course, it's not the only vision: He gets to see that his son will grow up to be a good warrior, and will fight Frieza one day...
One of the most obvious cases of blessed with suck EVER must be from Code Breaker, where people can get awesome elemental powers, seriously who wouldn't wanna control lightning?, but in the end your powers will turn on you and consume you.
The pactio cards in Negima!? (not to be confused with Negima!) have suck written all over them. When the pactio is activated it randomly triggers one of three cards - the null card, the cosplay card or the armour card. The armour card is for maximum offense, the cosplay card is a powerup but it isn't as strong and the null card turns the recipient into a chibi animal which can't actually fight. So that's a 1 in 3 chance of being useless in a fight. To top it off, regardless of which card is activated, when it wears off (after a very short time) the person is both tired and very hungry. So if it runs out before the fight is over you are in even more trouble.
In Soul Eater, Crona's blood is a sentient being named Ragnarok which offers very strong capabilities in offense, defense, and maneuverability. He does this by hardening to stop attacks or turning into a sword, needles, or wings. Unfortunately, the process of getting said powers as a child was stressful enough that Crona is hardly ever in a state of mind that isn't depression or insanity. Also, Ragnarok likes to bully Crona constantly and, being initially huge and musclebound, is able to easily overpower his partner. Factor in the fact that Ragnarok appears by violently and painfully ripping out of Crona's back and you have a very undesirable (but still fun to watch) power.
Gaara from Naruto had sand-related powers given to him at birth which, by automatically blocking any attacks, make him virtually unkillable. Unfortunately, this power has also made everyone around him want him dead. He was deprived of any sort of love as a child, which brought him great grief (he tried and failed to slit his wrists when he was like five years old for Christ's sake!) and made him become a psychotic killer who believed that he was meant to kill every living being in the world. In part II of the story, he reforms, accepts the love of his siblings, and becomes the leader of his country. He is then kidnapped, robbed of his powers, killed, revived at the expense of another character, and excluded from the rest of the story so far. Poor Gaara.
Raid from Mahoujin Guru Guru is a formidable Magic Knight. His magic is powerful - however it has the drawback of requiring really stupid dance moves to cast. Worse yet, his attempts to remedy this have backfired because he was so focused on style he ignored the effects and twice cast recovery spells on his opponent.
Brook from One Piece ate the Yomi Yomi no Mi, which brings the Devil's Fruit user back to life. Once. And makes no distinction as to what state of decay the user is in when they're brought back, which left him in a skeletal state upon revival.
- Your Mileage May Vary on that part, as Brooke is pretty badass. The BWS part comes in when you realize that after you eat the Yomi Yomi no Mi, he was given no readily apparent supernatural abilities as well as all the drawbacks that come with standard DF powers.
  - Brook may be badass, but the Suck goes even beyond the drowning curse. When you're that horrifically disfigured, well let's just say he's lucky he's so charismatic for a dead guy and they're headed into a part of the world where looking freaky isn't THAT big a deal. He's still been told he's disgusting and has no place in the world and probably should have just killed himself, and that wasn't exactly wildly incorrect. (His inner monologue while losing to Ryuuma indicates he's not as happy-go-lucky about being a skeleton as he acts, either.)
The Ginzouishou of Sailor Moon is the most powerful object in the universe and it kills you if you use it's full potential. Even if you don't use all the power it offers, it weakens you to use it at all in most cases.
- Not to mention every single Inner Senshi is rejected for their skills before meeting Usagi. Ami is shunned for being a genius, Rei for being psychic, Makoto for being abnormally strong, and Minako for being a senshi before anyone else. The Outers don't fare much better. Michiru and Haruka are strong, intelligent, and mature and they have to stop the end of the world. Hotaru has the power of death but is sickly and possessed because of it. Setsuna controls time, but must be alone and live much longer because of it. Basically, being a senshi sucks when you think about it.
The Diclonii from Elfin Lied are considered a new species of human, destined to supplant Homo sapiens, are more resilient than H.sap and have deadly psychic powers. They are also easily identified from the horns with which they are born and the ones that are not outright killed are taken into custody before their powers can manifest and have spent their short lives being brutally tortured and treated as experimental animals (at the same time).
Grove Marcus in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Grove can astral project himself into a virtually unstoppable being of pure energy, but he requires an injected serum to do so, and his power seems to have left him a bedridden invalid.
In Speed Grapher The protagonist, Tatsumi Saiga, gained the power to destroy anything that he takes a picture of. Which is cool but not only does he need a camera to use his power but he can't turn that power off. That means that he can't take pictures without killing anyone. Oh and Every time he uses his power, he weakens his eyes and eventually loses his sight.

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Despite the perks of his powers, Spider-Man has always viewed them as a burden and responsibility, rather than a blessing, because of the bad guys who've been pulled toward his family and friends because of them, and the problems that have cropped up when he chooses not to use them.
- This only got worse when Spidey briefly had cosmic powers. The responsibility that comes with his normal powers is bad enough; the responsibility he felt when he had cosmic-level powers was crushing.
Likewise, mutants (especially X-Men) in the Marvel Universe are Blessed With Suck, thanks to the outcast status that their power brings, even if they look and act completely normal. Besides the social issues, many mutants have little or no control over their powers, especially right after they first manifest. Force-fields that don't turn off, energy powers that lash out randomly, involuntary telepathy, etc.
- Rogue gets a double-whammy. Yes, technically the ability to copy other mutants' powers by touching them makes her very adaptable, but draining people's life energy whenever she touches them is about as sucky as it gets. Not to mention being affected by her victims' memories, in one case permanently.
  - Not to mention the fact that she's incapable of not draining whoever she touches. That's always been portrayed as the ultimate suck for her: she can never touch another person without running the risk of killing them.
- Illyana Rasputin (Sister of Colossus) has a true double set. She was dreamed up as a mutant and a sorceress, specifically a demon sorceress. As a direct result of her plotlines, she was raised under and by a corruptive heartless bastard from age six to sixteen, at least one alternate team of X-Men has DIED trying to help her, she's blessed with dimension-spanning powers that threaten to erase her soul and let the Elder Gods loose, and she's already died twice.
- Unus the Untouchable, a villain in the X-Men books, could repel objects. Beast built a gun to amplify it in order to defeat him, in an example similar to Midas. His powers eventually grew so strong they repelled air and he suffocated to death. Yet somehow he managed to father a child with similar powers beforehand...
  - Beast built the device so that its effects could be reversed — he was using it to blackmail Unus into surrendering in order to save his own life. Henry McCoy is fricking hardcore.
- There is a character in New Mutants Vol. 2 who is called Wither. Guess what his power is?
  - And when his power manifested, he happened to be touching his father at the time, thus killing Dad and turning Wither permanently into an Emo Teen who tends to Wangst quite a lot.
  - He's also cursed with incompatability. The one mutant at the school who has a crush on him, whose body is wholly, pernamantly liquid metal, and Whither doesn't care for her. I don't recall his Wiki article explaining why, just that he rejected her affections and was later arrested for killing his dad. Oh, and M-Day didn't work on either of them.
  - He was already in love with Wallflower, who wasn't immune to his powers. When he thought he was cured on M-day, he grabbed her to show it, and crippled her hand in the process. This, among other things, finally drove him to run away from the Institute. OTOH, it seems like he's finally met someone compatible... Selene, a millenia old mutant sorceress with life draining powers, the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and a recurring foe of the X-men.
- Cyclops is another classic case, with his destructive eyebeams that, again, don't turn off without special glasses or shutting his eyes. His brother Havok has sometimes also needed special equipment to control his own powers.
  - RetConned as not actually an innate part of his power, but the result of brain trauma. Still sucks, though.
- Chamber of Generation X has energy powers allowing him to gank anyone this side of Juggernaut. The catch? His powers first manifested themselves so violently, they blew his upper torso and lower jaw off, leaving a glowing maw of energy and burnt flesh. So naturally, he gets doubly screwed on M-Day when his powers get permanently turned off. He doesn't fare much better in alternate realities: In the Age Of Apocalypse universe he had a hole drilled into his chest to allow his power to vent.
- There's a guy in one issue of Ultimate X-Men whose entire mutant power is the dissolution of all living tissue within a ridiculous distance of him. He kills 385 people the day he hits puberty, and has to be taken out discreetly by Wolverine because if his existence ever got out mutants would be rounded up and stuck in camps faster than you can say Franklin Richards.
- There was a mutant whose power was to evaporate into air. Which is another way of saying to die. Lucky for him, House of M happened.
- Sally Floyd's baby had the "power" to age backwards until she died.
- The short time X-man Marrow was born with (or at least has them since a very early age) the power to have bone plates and blades painfully growing out of her body. So unlike most mutants she didn't even had a normal life before becoming a mutant. Only thanks to a Healing Factor she is still alive nowadays. This troper thinks it's somewhat understandable that she went Axe Crazy over that. Also, so much for "next step of evolution".
The specials in Rising Stars all get treated pretty badly over the course of the series due to the public's fear of them, but a few of them have especially sucky powers.
- Peter Dawson is almost completely invulnerable due to an invisible shield that lines his skin and the inside of his lungs and stomach. The shield let things like oxygen through, but kept out anything toxic. However, because nothing can actually touch his skin, he's completely numb. He can, however, taste things, so he eats a lot and becomes very obese. This disqualifies him from any law enforcement job where his power might be useful, and he ends up working a minimum wage job at a service station. He's killed by having a plastic bag duct-taped over his head while he's asleep. The killer knew he'd never feel it, and he quietly suffocated.
Several Nigh Invulnerable characters are said to have little or no sense of touch — Diamond Lil of Alpha Flight, Hardbody of the Next Men, Alea of Wildcore, etc.
The Incredible Hulk is another Marvel example (they really seem to love this trope.) The difference here is that it might be more justified as a lot of people do hate and hound him (especially the army), and having multiple personalities is never fun. All that, and his wives keep on dying.
And let's not forget Mister Immortal, Craig Hollis. His one and only power: he can't ever stay dead. He discovered it by trying to commit suicide when his girlfriend did the same. And while all the loved ones around him died. And continued to die. He will, according to reliable sources, outlive things like stars, planets, and Galactus.
- On the upside, the guy who was killing his friends was fired by Death. Now the guy in charge of the whole "prepare you for an eternity alone" bit is one of his closest friends. Yay?
  - One panel of him standing alone in a ruined landscape, surrounded by silhouettes of the corpses of his friends, is unusually bleak in a series that tends to play death for black humour.
Jukko of Stormwatch: Team Achilles has powers which literally cause him nothing but pain— he can feel the pain of every being within a four mile radius.
Deadpool had terminal cancer so he turned to the Canadian government's Weapon X program for help. Good: He won't die of cancer. Bad: His cancer is now supercharged on Healing Factor and constantly destroys and rebuilds his entire body, including his brain, leaving him with a face that... has the consistency and appearance of a hamburger patty, and made him just plain crazy, and very, very funny. At least his fans love him. Moral of the story? Canadian healthcare ain't all it's made out to be.
While most of the Fantastic Four embraces their powers, the Thing genuinely believes that his superpower is a curse, and who can blame him? Even though he possesses super strength and near invulnerability, it doesn't change the fact that he's been turned into a hideous rock monster that scares the shit out of anybody who sees him, and destroys his chances of living a normal life. He was also forced to quit his job as a test pilot because he was too big and heavy to fit in a plane. Oh yeah, and did we mention that he was turned into a hideous rock monster?
- He seems okay with it now. It did take a while...
  - As Reed said once, "He has his good days and his bad." Ben will never really be at peace with his monstrous form. For every writer who gives him a break from the angst, there's one who brings it back because it's so central to his character. Mark Waid's recent run is a good example of the latter.
- This Troper believes that this is also upset by the fact that Ben Grimm is one of the most absolutely loved heroes in the Marvel Universe. No hero has as many friends and is as respected and genuinely loved by other heroes. Laying the smack down on Ben Grimm in front of the Avengers is a wonderful way to get some Asgardian hammer driven repeatedly into your face.
The Boulder, who made one appearance in Avengers: The Initiative (which, again, is a Marvel Comic, demonstrating just how much they are in love with this trope), has the superpower of total Invulnerability. He's impervious to harm, can't be worn out, and is otherwise invincible. Sounds great, until you realize he's forever stuck in the body of a slow, weak, overweight teen who's incapable of losing weight or getting any stronger, making him pretty much worthless as a superhero.
- Oh, it gets worse. When one of his team-mates offers to have sex with him, he tells her that there's no point - his invulnerability not only prevents him from feeling pain, but from feeling pleasure, too. Pretty damn rough when you consider that he's going to remain a teenager forever...
- Another character in Avengers: The Initiative who fits this trope is Trauma, who possesses both telepathic and metamorphic powers, and can therefore transform into whatever a person is most afraid of. Often, he will give this attack a nightmarish twist; if you're afraid of death, he'll morph into a mutilated corpse, if you're afraid of spiders, he'll turn into a spider about the size of a T. rex, and so forth. He started off with a horrible case of Power Incontinence, as his powers are triggered by strong emotion. If someone near him was upset or scared, he would spontaneously transform into something horrible. Unlike most people on this list, Trauma did eventually learn to control his powers — but the damage, sadly, had been done. A recent issue of Avengers: The Initiative revealed that his family does not want anything to do with him. Even worse, in the very first issue, we're told that his mother is in a mental institution...
  - During Secret Invasion guys wich he was fighting Skrulls were so afraid that one of them could be Skrull, that their fear made him chance into one. While his buddies beated him, real Skrulls caught them. He's no teamplaeyr at all.
  - Trauma was recently revealed to be the son of a dream manipulating demon named Nightmare, thus explaining why he has his powers and why they suck so much.
  - His powers started to suck much more when he really wanted to scare somewho really pissed him off. Unlucky for him it was badass magician.
Yet another Marvel character who belongs here is Black Bolt, king of the Inhumans. This guy can produce a destructive force with his voice. If he so much as whispers, he'll destroy the landscape around him. Black Bolt has a bad case of Power Incontinence — and the only way he can avoid destroying everything around him is by not vocalizing (talking, laughing, crying, etc.). An old Fantastic Four comic revealed that Black Bolt had spent his childhood in an isolation chamber until he had learned the discipline to stay forever silent. And he killed his parents with an ill-timed utterance.
- Also, the reason why Bolt's brother Maximus is an insane supervillain is that BB used his vocal powers too close to him once, and that shattered his sanity.
And yet another Marvel character, Adam Warlock, whose Soul Gem gives him various spiritual powers, up to and including the ability to rip someone's soul from their body. As the souls taken then go to a miniature paradise dimension contained within the gem, this doesn't seem too bad... until you learn that the gem is sentient and has a nasty tendency to try and break free of his control to steal souls on its own. Also, during the soul stealing process, Warlock has to relive every single one of the victim's memories. Now think about the fact that at one point, the only way to save the universe was to soul steal about 10,000 or so enemy black knights at once.
An (apparently) rare DC example is the interpretation of The Flash given by the song The Ballad of Barry Allen, by Jim's Big Ego. In the song, it is explained that because The Flash's perception is so much faster than normal, he is isolated from the rest of humanity, unable to form true connections with other people and tormented by the continual boredom of the rest of the world being so slow. As the lyrics say, "And I'll be there before you know it, I'll be gone before you see me, And do you think you can imagine, Anything so lonely?"
- So he's a superspeed version of Dr. Manhattan? He's probably belong here too, if not for the near-total indifference caused by his powers.
- Speeding Bullet of the series Common Grounds is unable to enjoy movies because they were far too slow for him, essentially a series of still frames. He learned to lip-read so that he could fast-forward them with the sound off. That led to the problem of him having read every decent book and seen every film ever made to the point of boredom, and being unable to even enjoy sex due to it taking a subjective week or two for him if slowed down to human speed - and friction burns being involved for his partner if he actually allowed himself to move at a comfortable pace. Yeowch. The only thing that makes life worthwhile is the thought that as a superhero, he can improve the lives of others and make a lasting impression.
- It's basically a canon interpretation for Marvel's Quicksilver, who once told someone they would be short-tempered too if everyone else was like that one slow person in the checkout line.
- Wally West has often expressed similar sentiments, and Bart Allen's hyperaccelerated childhood made the "slow" world almost unbearable for him for years.
Another DC example, though not canon, was Larry Niven's essay, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", in which he makes a convincing argument that pre-crisis Superman can never make love to Lois Lane (or any human, for that matter.)
Vertigo example: in Fables, Bigby Wolf has to constantly smoke in order to keep his super-sensitive sense of smell from inhaling the millions of scents from all over Manhattan. Not to mention all the noise...
- Another example from the third issue of the Spin Off series Jack of Fables, in which Jack learns that his overbearing lust for adventure has cursed him with being the center of all stories, including the ''Sword in the Stone"- where he plays the stone, after getting Excalibur shoved through his chest.
Death of the Endless example: One story features a superheroine (a "real", albeit minor one) whose power is that her body can take on different elements in order to protect her (IE diamonds to deflect bullets, etc). However this power is (naturally) involuntary and now she desperately wants to die but she can't. Enter Death....
The title character in Empowered derives her powers from a hypermembrane that grants her superhuman strength, invulnerability, the ability to generate powerful energy blasts, various optical enhancements, and other abilities not yet shown. Unfortunately, it tears easily, at which point much of her power goes away. She's also incredibly self-conscious, and the hypermembrane doesn't work if she's wearing anything over it. Considering it fits like a coat of body paint (but thinner), this is a definite problem. And to top it all off, it's all but stated that the suit's faults and frailties are all her own creation, her poor self-image and chronic self-doubt sabotaging her powerhouse potential.
- And to top it all off, she is the only one for whom the blasted thing works at all. A more selfish soul would ditch the thing in a heartbeat rather than deal with the problems it has, but all Emp ever wanted was to be a superhero...
- Another character called Cinderblock is implied that his current form (a man with cinderblocks for his head and hands) doesn't have the normal bodily functions. His ability is to manipulate concrete and stone - but he doesn't like using it because of the massive collateral damage it causes.
Gwen Raiden (see {Angel below) gets a mega-massive dose of this in Angel: After the Fall when having found a cure for her electrical...ness, she uses the opportunity to get close to another person for the first time. Then everything goes to Hell and the electrical doohickey keeping her powers suppressed breaks... and she deep-fries her new friend.
Rick Sheridan, from the 1990s Marvel Comics series Sleepwalker ends up having to share his head with the titular alien hero, who can only come out when Rick sleeps. Sleepy's presence causes no end of trouble for Rick in his social life, up to and including putting Rick in a coma when Sleepwalker tries to force his way out while Rick is still awake. At least Peter Parker got some cool powers to balance things out...
One of the few examples of this trope who is also a Badass Normal comes from (where else?) Marvel Comics in the form of Michael Van Patrick, aka MVP. Long story short he went through a diet and exercise regimen (starting from infancy it seems) devised by his grandfather who had worked on the Super Soldier program that created Captain America. On the plus side, it made MVP a human being whose physical abilities were on par with Captain America himself, without Super Serum. The downside? Hoo boy. When it was discovered that his grandfather worked on the project, school officials suspected that MVP's abilities weren't natural, so he got booted off his high school sports team. Then he got drafted by the Initiative because they also believed he had Super Serum in his veins. While he adjusted well enough, he and his fellow recruits took part in an ill advised live fire exercise on their first day. End result? To quote the Sniper from Team Fortress 2, "Pow! Headshot." It didn't end there.
Jhiaxus in IDW's Transformers comics gains immortality as a result of being on the border between two universes, and so cannot die. This would be fine if it weren't for the hyperviolent Arcee using this to take her revenge against him. So she kills him again, and again, and again, and again...
Steve Rude and Mike Baron's hero Nexus is Horatio Hellpop, who has vast powers granted to him by a Sufficiently Advanced Alien. The problem is that he never asked for these powers, and said alien forces him to spend his life executing mass murderers—including his own father. Many of his targets are, of course, utter monsters who arguably deserve death, but others are penitents who just want to live a quiet life and put their sins behind them. Horatio is a good and decent man who hates being burdened with this task and frequently tries to escape it.
In "Sleeper", the main character's power is kind of this way; he "absorbs" his pain without experiencing it, but also has most physical pleasures muted to little or nothing (I don't recall the details). However, the real Suck Stick Hammering got applied to his off-again love interest, Miss Misery. She literally gets physically ill from engaging in virtuous acts, and can only relieve her condition through sadism and sociopathy! Talk about being trapped in the villain role! She can't even get Wangsty about it; she has to be genuinely evil or she'll WITHER AND DIE. And as far as I know, there's no upside to this "power". So glad am I not to live in THAT universe....
Iron Man built his first armour to keep himself alive — the powers were just a bonus to help him escape his captors. Ever since, his dependence on the suit has been a recurring plot element. For a long time, it kept his heart running (he could basically never take off the chestplate, and running out of power was a deadly problem); then that was fixed, but Tony was shot and paralyzed below the waist, unable to walk without his armour; still later, the chip that cured Tony's paralysis went on to sabotage his nervous system, and he couldn't control his body at all without a special Iron Man suit. Most recently, Tony was nearly killed gaining the power of Extremis, which lets him control machines — this too is a power with serious downsides, as it makes him feel detached from humanity and allows smart enough enemies to attack his vital systems electronically. And now Extremis has been removed (or at least shut down) thanks to Skrulls, meaning his current armour can't be used any more because it's far too complex for a normal human brain can use.
Multi-man, introduced in the "Joker: Last Laugh" miniseries, has two super powers. One is a relatively normal super power like flight, or x-ray vision or what have you, but temporary and based around his second power. The other super power is of the suck variety: any time he ~~dies~~ is killed, he comes back to life with a new super power. This leads to him being killed repeatedly by both villains and "heroes" until he has a super power that fits their current needs. What makes it worse for him is that he's not really a supervillain, he's only being held in Arkham because of the potential of his Blessed With Suck and is considered a "model prisoner".
Parodied in Marvel's The Hood comics, when Parker offer his cusin to try his flying shoes.
John: No fuckin' way! Who knows what makes that shit work, Parker. Those things'll probably steal your soul or… or give you nut cancer.

Close Comic Books

In X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, the main character grants himself x-ray vision. While he obtains some benefits from it - including the ability to cheat at cards - his vision gradually increases in power until he can see through his own eyelids, through reality itself and into the swirling madness beyond.
- That by itself is Nightmare Fuel. What cranks it to the next level is the deleted ending. At the very end of the movie, the protagonist rips out his eyes to save himself from the pain and suffering. The movie ends abruptly — because the last line was deemed too horrific. What was cut? The protagonist, screaming out, "I CAN STILL SEE!" Still gives this troper the shudders thinking about it...
In The Butterfly Effect the protagonist gains the power to go back in time and change key events in his childhood. But whatever he tries to fix he just ends up messing up his life and that of his friends even more.
This is basically a theme found in all four Indiana Jones films, but most notably in The Last Crusade. In Crusade, drinking from the Holy Grail grants the drinker immortality, but the power is limited to the cave it is stored in; the Grail cannot be taken out of the cave.
In The Ring, Sadako Yamamura was born with extraordinary psychic abilities, which gave her clairvoyance, psychography, and astral projection that enabled her personality to endure after death and in the books, her abilities are powerful enough to allow her genetic manipulation of people and viruses. Her mother was also shown having similar abilities. Instead of fame and recognition, these powers led to both of them being scorned, driven away and persecuted by society, leading to Sadako's mother throwing herself into a volcano, and Sadako herself being killed and thrown down a well, where her spirit will linger forever.
- The American remake posits that Samara Morgan had the innate ability to imprint images and visions in the minds of other living things; unfortunately, the power manifested at birth, and she was never able to control it, leading both her mother and adoptive mother into complete madness.
Godzilla. It's his own radiation that ends up being the cause of his own death in one movie. Yes, we're talking about the SAME radiation that allows him to spew nuclear plasma and destroy his enemies.
Arguably the ruby slippers in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz. Sure, their magic is very powerful, but aside from the fact that Dorothy can't get rid of the blasted things, since they won't come off her feet as long as she's alive, she's also got a homicidal Wicked Witch of the West after her, determined to get the slippers at all costs. Thanks a lot, Glinda...
It's no fun being a Scanner, mostly because of all that Power Incontinence. Also, hearing the thoughts of everyone around you gets noisy and distracting.
How about Sky High? One of the main plot points involves how all the people with the awesome powers go into the Hero class, the What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway characters are stuck as "sidekicks".
- At least until every "useless" power in the movie comes in handy, and people learn An Aesop about not judging people by how powerful their superpowers are.
While Darkman is impervious to pain, he had to burn nearly to death to get that way, and to undergo a dubious surgical technique which left him subject to uncontrolled rage and mood swings. Plus, with no sense of pain, he can't even tell if he's injuring himself until he actually looks.

Close Film

In The Inheritance Trilogy, the main character, Eragon, literally blesses a character with suck. He blesses a baby with a spell that he thinks will shield her from harm, but a grammatical error in the magical language makes her a shield for everybody else from harm - a trouble magnet. (The author has said that he hadn't planned for the child to have such a major role in the plot. This editor suspects it was a Ret Con when he caught the mistake. Really, who else was going to notice?)
The Invisible Man is a classic example. A power many dream about becomes a terrible burden without an off switch. In most film and TV adaptations of the book, the titular Invisible Man goes crazy.
- In the original H.G. Wells story, he was already a sociopath before he was invisible. In fact he set out to become invisible so he could wreak havoc and dominate the world. But this still fits the trope. The very first invisible day he has to strip naked to become totally unseen - in London in wintertime. And as he's freezing to death, the usual crowd of Londoners going about their winter shopping business almost trample him to death, since they don't realize that he's there.
The Picture Of Dorian Gray is an arguable case, as while Dorian actually gets something desired by most people, eternal youth, he misuses it so badly that it eventually becomes a torture for him.
Ella Enchanted is based entirely on this, as a fairy - who believes she is giving a blessing - curses Ella with complete obedience. Said fairy, despite everyone else's horror, never understands that she has blessed Ella with suck.
- That is, until the fairy is tricked into blessing herself with suck.
- She never understands it in the ''movie'', in the book...as mentioned in the first double indent.
Stephen R. Donaldson seems to love this trope, judging from the cases of several characters in the Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant:
- Lord Mhoram's precognition serves mainly to give him horrible dreams about the future he can do nothing about.
- The Healer of Morinmoss can heal practically anything, but she has to share the pain of her patient. She became a hermit for the reason of not being able to take it anymore.
- Later on, Linden's health-sense means that she's in pain whenever her surroundings are warped by evil magic, which is the case pretty much constantly for long periods of time.
- Seadreamer has a very powerful second-sight type ability that cannot be turned off, but he has trouble communicating what he sees, since the horror of it has struck him permanently mute. This results in other people being worried because Seadreamer is so miserable, but continuing on their doomed course anyway, since they don't know what trap they are walking into. Seadreamer's tragedy is that he never took a level in mime.
- As for Covenant himself, he has trouble using his own power of wild magic while it makes him central to the machinations of a superintelligent Evil Overlord.
In JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth stories, human mortality is described as "the gift of death". Err, thanks?
- That's because things like elves and dwarves, (not hobbits, they're a subtype of men) never have their souls leave Arda. They never get to directly know Illuvatar (i.e. go to heaven). The gift isn't so much that they die (even elves die, albiet not of old age) but rather what happens to them *once* they die. Take Our Word For It.
In the Dragonlance series, Raistlin Majere was "gifted" with metallic golden skin by Fistandantilus during his Test. Though simply meant to be a cool appearance trait at the time, it was later retconned into providing some measure of protection against fire magics. Before the Test, Raistlin was described as fairly handsome, if frail; afterwards, the strange appearance makes him nigh unapproachable by anybody except his brother and closest ~~friends~~, err... ~~companions~~, err...tolerated company. Not that his winning personality helped matters any...
- Although, Crysania does somehow manage to fall in love with him during the Twins Saga...
- Not to mention the hour-glass pupils he received during his Test of Wizardry too. They allowed him to "see time as it affects all things". While it may have helped him view the time streams in his later role as "The Master of Past and Present", it meant that Raistlin was constantly forced to see everyone grow old and die before his eyes; food would rot, trees become leafless and bare, even stone would slowly crumble and erode if viewed long enough. Needless to say this didn't improve his mood or mental health. (The Hourglass Eyes were indeed initially meant as a sort of curse by the allegedly good archwizard who gave them to Raistlin, to "teach him humility and compassion". Raistlin later took revenge on him for that.)
  - Which begs the question...◊
  - And what about this one?◊
- Dalamar, on the other hand...
One of our favorite examples comes from the later Oz books by L. Frank Baum. One of the books assures us that while you are in the land of OZ, you can't die. This information comes after characters in the books have been chopped into pieces, beheaded, melted, and so forth and it's mentioned that you could be transformed into an inanimate object, turned into sand, and buried. Even so, you'd still be alive and presumably conscious. Forever. Thankfully the series never goes in that direction, but this troper read that idle speculation decades ago, and is still shuddering.
- This plot point was later retconned into the Tin Man's origin story. After his cursed axe cut off his own head, he replaced it with a tin one. The original head is still alive and very bitter about it.
- In some of the later Oz books, (such as The Magic of Oz) the villainous Nome King considers chopping up the denizens of Oz, then tossing the pieces into a powerful river in order to scatter them forever. Baum was aware of at least some of the truly dreadful applications this immortality could have.
Every single character in Xanth has a power. Naturally, not all of them are going to be winners. The first books gives us a doozy in the form — forms, rather — of a woman named Chameleon. Sometimes she's ugly, nasty, and smart (She goes by "Fanchon" when she's like this). Other times, she's pretty, sweet, and dumb (And she goes by Wynne when she's like this. In the middle stage she goes by Dee). (And since the obvious implication is that smart women aren't pretty or nice — and the transformation happens on a monthly schedule — at all times she's offending the heck out of the female readers.)
- In a later book, after Bink marries Chameleon, it mentions that while she always has qualities he finds attractive no matter what stage she's in, he prefers when she's in her "Dee" stage because she's attractive enough to still be a physical turn on, but smart enough that he's not turned off by the fact that she can't tie her shoelaces without a map to find her ass. Still a bit sexist, but surely better than the obvious answer.
  - Of course, it does mention this alongside pointing out that he's trying to keep his head down at the moment because right now she's A) Fanchon, B) pregnant, and therefore C) excessively aggressive and moody, and literally chewing the walls of their cottage cheese.
Quite a few of the aliens in Animorphs have powers. Taxxons have a pretty twisted take on the Extreme Omnivore ability: their ability to eat nearly anything stems from their instinctive and nearly psychotic hunger which can almost never be sated. Everything they can eat, they will eat, no questions. Which is to say, if you are a Taxxon and you get a paper cut in front of your crewmates, goodbye.
- The Animorphs themselves qualify. They are given the power to turn into any animal they touch, but with it they are given the responsibility to use it to fight against the Yeerk invasion (not to mention the risk of losing their shapeshifting power and being stuck in animal form forever if they go over the time limit). The war ends up being very traumatic for all of them.
- A few of the books also go into how traumatic changing into some animals can be. In one of the spin-off books, an Andalite morphs into a Taxxon and is repulsed by the sheer depth of their hunger - another one of them gets trapped in that form and becomes fairly suicidal as a result. The Animorphs also harbor extremely bad memories of a few morphs, most especially the time they turned into ants (and subsequently nearly lost themselves in the sheer mindless mechanical power of the ant minds). When a later plan's brainstorming session comes up with turning into bees, the response is instantly, emphatically, and unanimously no.
  - Not to mention the Yeerks themselves (some of them, at least). Such is the curse of the parasite with the ability to grow a conscience.
  - Any yeerk who isn't completely sadistic, conscience or not, would be eventually worn down by a voice almost constantly screaming for freedom in their head (at least for a while, and every so often after that), releasing memories and unfiltered emotion directly into the yeerk's nervous system. Considering the other species they had enslaved, it's easy to wonder how few actually preferred a human host over being a barely-mobile slug. (There's also the whole "sensation" thing - the more vivid and useful a host's senses, the more likely a yeerk would be to become addicted to feeding said senses.)
  - You've also got the Hork-Bajir, who are effectively living meat grinders and, as such, were forced into becoming soldiers for the Yeerks. Really, the Animorph universe is a Crapsack World for just about everyone.
  - Also, for those who haven't read the series, the Hork-Bajir are completely vegetarian. All the blades are for peeling bark and climbing trees. Great for their diet and (original) lifestyle, terrible because of body-hijacking parasites and frightening anyone who hasn't seen them outside of their body-controlled, stormtrooper role.
Will Parry in His Dark Materials may be the king of this trope. He is destined to be the bearer of the Subtle Knife, which can slice through the barriers between worlds. Gaining it mutilated his left hand, the "sign of the Bearer". On top of this, every single time he uses it, for good or ill, he creates a hole into which Dust drains out of the world, and through which more Spectres are unleashed.
Henry in The Time Travelers Wife is another very extreme case, sitting very comfortably in the realm of Deus Angst Machina. Sure, he can time-travel - but he doesn't have any control over it. His ability targets the most memorable places, people, and events in his life - the traumatic ones even more so than the positive ones. For every time he gets to visit his wife as a teenager or his infant daughter as a ten-year-old, he has to watch his ex-girlfriend kill herself over him or see his mother die for the fiftieth time. And on top of all this, the story takes place in an Eternist Universe. Basically, everything that has ever happened, good and bad, was supposed to happen the way it did, and Henry can't do a damn thing about it. It doesn't take him long to wonder if the Universe is actively f***ing with him. (Indeed, the only way his time-traveling would have been more Blessed-With-Suck-worthy would have been if the author had remembered to factor in the different positions of the Earth throughout time.)
A very strange short story in one of the Flight anthologies centers around a little girl who constantly hovers about a foot off the ground. The tale recounts all the myriad ways that she is made miserable by this power, building towards the finale where a massive flood leaves her the only person alive!
In Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Jesuit archaeologist Father Dure is... given a "cruciform" parasite by the aboriginal Bikura tribe, which grants them the ability to regenerate from death. The bad news is that it gradually turns the host into a genderless moron, and punishes them with crippling pain the farther they go from the Bikura village.
- It gets worse for him. After the cruciform's "turn you into an idiot" flaw is fixed he gets combined with the local version of the Space Pope and is declared the "anit-pope". The effect is that every time the Pope dies Dure gets resurrected and the Pope's supporter shot him in the head in order to get the Pope back.
A story in Ursula K. Le Guin's Changing Planes describes a race of humanoid aliens called the Gyr in which about one in every thousand sprouts wings in young adulthood, which carries several disadvantages. Firstly, the wing-growth process takes a year and is very painful and incapacitating. Secondly, winged people develop lightweight hollow bones which make them more vulnerable to injury. Worst of all, those who attempt flight have a tendency to suddenly lose control of their wings and crash — if it isn't fatal, they're stuck with useless, cumbersome wings. And trying to remove the wings surgicially causes slow, painful death. Hence, most winged people don't even try flying, and those who do are considered eccentric and foolish.
Floyd Jones, the driving character (though almost never the viewpoint character) of Philip K Dick's The World Jones Made can see a year into the future. Too bad his future sight is actually made of memories broadcast by his future self to his past self, essentially stripping him of free will.
Stephen King's The Green Mile: John Coffey blesses Paul Edgecomb with an extremely long life (He's 104/108 at the time of the book/movie) and immunity to most diseases. Which sounds really, really, great...until you realize that almost everyone he's ever loved has died before him.
- Making it even worse, though, is that a mouse similarly blessed by Coffey lived at least ~~fifty~~ sixty-four to sixty-eight years, and the average lifespan of a lab mouse is about two years. If Paul similarly lives at least 25 times an average lifespan, he might have upwards of 2,000 years of increasing physical decrepitude in a lousy nursing home to look forward to.
- The titular character of King's Carrie also qualifies for this. Although her mother is probably so crazy that she would have tortured her anyway, the fact that she sees her daughter as a witch because of her psychic powers probably doesn't help. Later in the book, she dies because she overuses her power. Of course, by that point, she has already crossed the Moral Event Horizon and kept going for a while, but it's still not a very happy ending.
- Johnny Smith's psychic abilities in The Dead Zone would probably qualify, as well.
- Charlie McGee's pyrokinesis, and her father's ability to "push", in Firestarter.
The short story "All You've Ever Wanted" by Joan Aiken concerns a girl living with her aunts and getting a nice birthday card each year from her fairy godmother with a greetings card type little wish. Problem was they always came true. When it said 'Each morning make another friend / Who'll be with you till light doth end', that year turned into a gruelling social whirl with not one single day sitting quietly at home. When it wished she could enjoy fresh air knowing her friends were nearby, she was forced to go on hours long hikes, watching her new friends flash past in cars, never offering her a lift. When it wished that flowers might follow in her footsteps, flowers literally grew up after her, and she had to move into the shed and ended up with a permanent cold. She spent her entire youth looking forward to her 21st birthday when she could meet her fairy godmother and ask her to please stop.
In A Fistful Of Sky by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Gypsum LaZelle finally comes into magical power...and she inherits the power of curses. She has to curse people, FREQUENTLY, or she dies. She manages to work out solutions to this pretty well, though.
Quite a number of characters in the Whateley Universe, sometimes for very different reasons. The academy has an entire residence set aside for students whose powers make them too dangerous around others or who can't otherwise live even a nominally normal life, such as Fubar, who's arguably the most powerful psychic at school...and can't leave his pool in the basement except via astral projection because he's stuck with the body of a giant anthropomorphic squid. There's Puppet, who spends all her time hooked up to life support and whose blood is so toxic that few if any people can enter her room without sealed environmental suits and biohazard protocols in full force. And just in general, the more powerful a mutant's powers are, the greater is the risk that they'll one day keel over and die from spontaneously 'burning out'.
Ben and his dog Ned in Castaways of the Flying Dutchman are given eternal youth and the understanding of all Earth's languages so they can be agents for the side of good on Earth. Unfortunately, they constantly have to move on as soon as they've finished this book's adventure to avoid people getting suspicious, they're always haunted by nightmares of the Flying Dutchman, and there is the risk that the ship will actually find them. And that's not even getting into the fact that Ben was fourteen at the time he was granted this "blessing". Eternal youth is fine, but eternal puberty?
- This troper was literally Blessed With (Self) Suck at 14, and would take eternal puberty any day.
  - Maybe, but Ben was apparently the only person ever to be "pure of heart" enough by fairly old-fashioned Christian standards to be made immortal in the first place, so one imagines that even if he shares that ability it wouldn't hold quite the same appeal for him ... And I believe either he, Brian Jacques, or most likely both are Catholic, so he doesn't even have the option of committing suicide.
Doli of Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles comes from a family with the power of invisibility and is infuriated by the fact that he cannot do it. When he finally is granted the power by Prince Gwydion, he is called to use it so often by his companions that he becomes sick of it. Then again, he complains about everything.
- Also, Fflewddur Fflam is blessed with a harp by the Chief Bard Taliesin that practically plays itself, but its strings always need repair after he "colors the facts."
In Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman, Kamala's powers as a Magister end up being Blessed With Suck considering what it takes to fuel them.
In The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, there are naturally-born human telepaths. However, Mother Nature is a fickle bitch and so just as many are born with the opposite ability: they constantly involuntarily broadcast their thoughts to everyone around them, and are unable to hear others' thoughts in return.
Thomas Raith (hell, all the White Court) in The Dresden Files. He's close to immortal, immensely strong, can seduce almost anything... but can't touch the woman he loves (or anything she makes him) without it hurting him, and for a long time can't hold a job because his co-workers keep trying to get into his pants. Also has to fight the hunger of his inner incubus if he doesn't 'feed' regularly — and if he truly feeds off anyone he can hurt or even kill them.
- Harry himself has this, in the form of the Sight. It allows him to see what a person/thing really is, beneath all illusion and glamor. The price? He can never forget what he sees. Ever. He sees some pretty terrible things over the course of the series, and his memory of them will never fade as long as he's alive.
Arithon S'Ffalenn, and to a lesser extent other royal heirs, from Janny Wurts' War of Light and Shadow. The sorcerers picked the defining virtue of the ruler of each kingdom - e.g. passion for justice, courage, or foresight - and gave them to their descendants. Arithon is descended from two families, so he gets foresight, the ability to see all the consequences of his actions, and compassion, the ability to empathise with everyone. And he doesn't get a choice. So he sees exactly how his actions hurt other people, and feels their pain as his own. Thanks a lot.
Nathan Brazil, the lead character in Jack Chalker's Well World series is effectively immortal and is arguably God or the Steward of God though he does not consciously realize it. He remarks that no matter what the disaster, he has been a survivor, no matter how awful the event was.
- Brazil also has a tendency to bless other characters with suck, usually as a karmic retribution for something they've done
Finnikin of the Rock. Oh God, Finnikin of the Rock... The major Blessed With Suck is Evanjalin/Isaboe, whose power is not empathy, as everyone thought. She 'walks the sleep'- that is, when she sleeps, she reads the thoughts of others who sleep- of her people, Lumaterans. That is, she becomes witness to everything that's happened to them- she feels their pain for everything. This is in a country where 100% of the population have been or have had a family member tortured, raped, killed, or something equally awful. And this kid witnessed every bit of it, through not only witnesses and victims, but through the people who did it. And did I mention the people dying of fever, hunger or being worked to death? Just thinking about it makes this troper cry, and it made Finnikin cry too, when he said, "If I could have a gift, it would be to tear from her mind such depravity. Sweet Goddess, how I wish it," and then he cries and beats himself up for not being able to help her.
Sonora, of Princess Sonora And The Long Sleep, a story based on Sleeping Beauty, has Sonora receiving the gift of "Brilliance" from the fairies— that is, being ten times as smart as anyone else in the world. So, to get a picture of that,take the isolation and maladjustment William James Sidis experienced and multiply it by ten.
In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Deus Encarmine, Arfio appears as the re-incarnation of the primarch Sanguinius after he wields the Spear of Telesto. Shortly after, being told that those who object to it are dying, which must be an omen, he says that he would much rather be an ordinary Blood Angel, standing beside his sibling Rafen.
Winter Celchu (introduced in the Star Wars Expanded Universe Thrawn novels) has a perfect memory, which leads to a curious case of both Blessed With Suck and Cursed With Awesome: the pain of such horrible things as the destruction of Alderaan never fades, but in her work as an Intelligence agent her ability to remember conversations verbatim and maps with a single glance (just for a start) was doubtless of endless use.
"The Chocolate Touch", by Patrick Skene Catling, tells the story of a candy-loving boy who gains the power to turn everything that he puts in his mouth into chocolate. At first he revels in eating chocolate oranges and chocolate milk (and chocolate gloves), but after a while he gets sick of the taste, and even ends up turning his mother into chocolate by kissing her.
Subverted in Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians and sequels. The repertoire of Smedry "Talents" consists entirely of annoying everyday human traits (clumsiness, accidentally breaking things, inability to arrive on time). The twist comes in when it turns out that Smedries can crank the strength of these Talents all the way Up To Eleven. The main character's grandfather arrives late for gunshots and the pain of being tortured, and, in fact, has been arriving late for his own death for over a decade. The protagonist meanwhile, breaks guns and crossbows that are aimed at him from a distance ... as well as kitchens and most of the weapons he tries to handle. The downsides of the Smedry Talents still apply, they're just overshadowed by the advantages.
Nails of The Lonely Winds. After being killed by his father and returning to the world as an angelic warrior he’s got super-strength, super-speed, hefty durability and a bunch of other neat powers. So what’s the drawback? It turns out that his “body” is now his actual soul made physical, and while he is pretty powerful, if he is ever actually “killed” it means complete and utter oblivion for him.
A couple of Tom Holt characters get put through this wringer. Paul Carpenter is, among other things, a powerful natural scryer, but his career in the novels starts with being sold by his parents to a wizarding company and goes downhill from there. An even more straight example is the star of Barking, who was born slightly out of phase with the rest of the world and as ~~suck~~ such can only be killed by someone else who's out of phase, but not only does this render him unable to do maths that fits in with everyone else's maths, but someone is trying to use the law to keep from dying, and wants to shut him away to fail to do her post-mortem accounts for the rest of his lycanthropy-extended life.
In P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles Of The Kencyrath series, the powers of the magically gifted (or cursed) Kencyr, the Shanir, are just as likely to suck as to be beneficial, or may do both at once. Being followed around by a swarm of mind-linked insects, for instance, or being only able to consume blood, milk and honey, or being afflicted with magical clumsiness that can be passed to others.

Close Literature

River Tam from Firefly (and its sequel movie, Serenity) is an obvious case. Government experiments gave her vaguely portrayed mind-reading abilities and Waif Fu ... the side effect? She's traumatized and schizophrenic.
Non-superpowered example: In New Tricks, Brian 'Memory' Lane is a brilliant detective with an instant-recall Photographic Memory that allows him to rattle off not only the details of long-unsolved crimes but also the full career histories of the investigating officers involved and makes him a near-flawless investigator... if not for the crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that it stems from, which if he doesn't adequately medicate himself leaves him a manic depressive and obsessive paranoiac who is almost entirely unable to function, and even when fully medicated at the best of times renders him an anti-social and anal (if essentially decent) pedant.
Very similarly, Adrian Monk from Monk is a brilliant detective, but suffers a moderate case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder {and many, many other problems). Unlike Brian, he does not need medications to function normally, but must overcome or circumvent issues that directly interfere with his need for everything to be clean, sanitary, and perfectly arranged by shape, size, and color. Monk fulfills the Blessed With Suck trope in that, if he does take medication to suppress his OCD, his investigative brilliance goes with it.
- Not to mention his brilliant detective skills made him an enemy, resulting in the death of his wife, the only thing in life that ever really made him happy.
A similar thing happens to House MD. If he does anything to take away the pain in his damaged thigh muscle, he loses his brilliant diagnostic ability.
In Buffy The Vampire Slayer being the Slayer has granted Buffy incredible levels of physical strength and endurance to the point where she's almost a superhero at times - however, the duties that come with being the Slayer have destroyed any chance she has of living a normal life and almost guarantee that she will die a premature and most-likely painful death at the hands of her enemies.
- In the Buffyverse, the vampire soul can be seen as a form of meta-Blessed With Suck; its acquisition is the cause of Badass Decay, after all.
- Willow's magical and sexual empowerment is what leads her directly into becoming a Psycho Lesbian. After all this time, this troper is still sick about it.
  - It's not really the magic or the sexuality that turns Willow evil, it's Willow herself. She abuses her power, but the power itself doesn't make her turn evil. If "evil" is the right word. When she kills Warren, several charcters wonder alone wheather or not Warren had it coming (turns out he's Not Quite Dead, anyway), and she tries to destroy the world to end all suffering. The only act Dark Willow attempts that is truly selfishly evil is attempting to murder Jonathan and Andrew, and they aren't exactly innocents.
If you consider the superpowers in Heroes to be blessings (which, given the almost divine nature of evolution in the series, may very well be literally true), a lot of people get the short end of the stick:
- Nikki/Jessica is possessed by a Super Powered Evil Side.
- Ted uncontrollably emits deadly radiation when feeling emotion, which results in the death of his wife. He could also destroy an entire city, the aversion of which becomes the main plot of season one.
- Peter is one of the few (well, two, the other being Hiro) Heroes who knew how his power had the potential to help people...until it's revealed that being able to absorb so many powers could make him unstable and explode. He then becomes another Blessed With Suck believer.
- Heck, having any superpower means that it's only a matter of time before either Sylar or Primatech Paper tracks you down, so anyone without truly awesome powers to fight them off has been royally Blessed With Suck.
- Speaking of Sylar, you'd think that someone who got to pick their powers would be able to avoid this, but no, he saddled himself with super-hearing, giving him a crippling weakness to loud noises. Despite the fact that the woman he took it from told them what a nuisance she found it, he still chose to blow his cover stealing it.
  - Whether or not it was intentional we'll never know, but the note below about season 3 actually rationalises away the Idiot Ball. Clever.
- In Season Two, we meet Maya and Alejandro. Maya's ability is, essentially, to kill everyone within ten feet of her if she gets upset. She once kills a whole town when he power first manifests. At a wedding. Alejandro's ability somehow reverses this... sometimes. A few fans have therefore dubbed them the "Blessed With Suck Twins".
- Adam's power seems to be Blessed With Suck as well given that he's immortal and can't die, and in the second volume finale Hiro left him inside of a buried coffin, despite the fact that Hiro originally planned to chop off Adam's head (which would have killed him for real). Just more proof that you should Beware The Nice Ones.
- Season 3 reveals that Sylar's original powers fit here as well. It turns out that his power to instantly understand how something works also comes with a hunger to understand things. For Sylar, this means being obsessed with Mega Manning as many powers as possible, fitting right into With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. Seems just about every power has some Suck to it.
- Or how about Hiro himself? In the first season, he can handle freezing time okay - but takes an insane amount of concentration or a good motivation, but he was unable to teleport WITHOUT accidentally travelling in time as well.
Jack Bauer of 24 could qualify despite not having a superpower (other than the power to be Bad Ass). He's an incredibly talented CTU agent, the best in the field, the goto guy for every problem concerning National Security. At the cost of his family, friends and co-workers getting killed, being a wanted man by terrorists and foreign nations, and virtually having no chance at a normal life because when he tries, he always gets sucked back in.
James Heller: "You're cursed, Jack. Everything you touch, one way or another, winds up dead."
Speaking of touching and death, the main character of Pushing Daisies has the power to return the dead to life with a touch... but, he can't ever touch them again if he doesn't want them Killed Off For Real. Of course, since he brought his true love back from the dead, this is sort of problematic...
- And if Ned doesn't re-kill someone again with a second touch within one minute, someone else nearby has to die in their place.
- Don't forget that Ned's ability also caused him to accidentally kill both his mom and the dad of his childhood sweetheart.
- On top of all this? He can never eat his own pies, which he makes by buying rotten fruit on the cheap, "reanimating" it, and making it into filling without touching it again.
- Not to mention that he is, out of necessity, a vegetarian...
Sam from Reaper started out Cursed With Awesome, but after the first couple of episodes wound up Blessed With Suck.
Sam Winchester from Supernatural could be considered Blessed With Suck. As one of a group of psychic children, some of whom have powers such as super strength, mind control, telekinesis, and the ability to electrocute people with a touch, he gets uncontrollable, painful visions of violent deaths. As one of the other psychics put it: "Dude, sucks."
The fact that Telepaths are Blessed With Suck is a major plot point of Babylon 5. Telekinetics have it even worse; the majority are clinically insane, and the rest aren't too stable either.
John from New Amsterdam saves the life of an Indian woman, who in return grants him eternal life and youth until he finds his soul mate, who he will know by feeling it in his heart. Unfortunately, this means he suffers a heart attack that would normally be fatal once he gets near her.
In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Tommy Oliver joined the team as the Green Ranger and was considered the strongest ranger at first. However, due to manipulation of his powers by the villains, his powers were weakened and had to be constantly recharged.
Gwen Raiden of Angel has a massive dose of this. Sure, her ability to manipulate electricity makes her a fearsome weapon, gets her in a lot of places she could never otherwise go, and makes her oodles of money as a professional thief...but at the expense of even the smallest human intimacies and any semblance of a normal life. Not to mention the trauma of getting regularly struck by lightning and accidentally injuring and killing people who are actually nice to her.
- Doyle also of Angel suffers crippling headaches due to his visions which are never very clear to begin with.
  - Cordelia gets these later, and they nearly kill her. She becomes part demon to survive, rather than giving them up.
  - Hell, even Doyle being half-demon can count as Blessed With Suck. He is stronger in demon form and can survive having his neck broken, but he can't cope with being half-demon, leading him to be very distant from both humans and demons, and leading him to basically have a pretty crappy life.
In Early Edition, a TV series where a magical mysterious (but otherwise normal) cat delivers tomorrow's newspaper (a Chicago Sun Times) today, Gary Hobson views it as a curse rather than a blessing. He feels morally obliged to stop tomorrow's bad news, and similarly morally obliged to not to look up tomorrow's lottery numbers and stock tips. Subverted in one episode where a man from New York who gets tomorrow's newspaper from a parrot lives rich and happy, and has employees doing his work for him.
- It later turns out that they are officially Blessed With Suck when The guy with the parrot tries to unload some stocks that would crash the next day, but only because he had sold them, thus bankrupting the small inventing company Gary was supposed to have saved and throwing the entire future into turmoil.
Some of the returnees in The 4400 are Blessed With Suck. While some get cool abilities like healing and seeing the future, others get lame powers (talking to plants) or horrible afflictions (Sherilyn Fenn's character grows toxic spores all over her body which kill everyone who comes near her.)
The Greatest American Hero had a comical example of Blessed With Suck. Granted, it's technically Ralph's fault for losing the instructions to his supersuit in the first place. Just imagine having unlimited power at your command... and you can't even figure out how it works! There's this, and also the embarrassment of having to wear what looks like red pajamas out in public.
Ralph: I mean, I could kill the guy that designed this suit! Why couldn't it have narrow lapels and a cutaway jacket? Why'd it have to be long johns and a cape?
Stargate SG-1 has Daniel Jackson who gets ascended to a higher plane of existence. Tha catch? He is not allowed to do anything to interfere with our level so he must sit by and watch the series' actual Big Bad (actual because the show takes Evil Power Vacuum to its extreme logical conclusion) destroying his home galaxy. He decides to get better (worse?) then. At the cost of losing ~~all~~ most of his memories about his time ascended.
Tommy Dawkins from Big Wolf On Campus falls under this trope. Sure, being a werewolf does have its benefits... but not when one also has to deal with cravings for chicken, transformations for reasons OTHER than a full moon, and the fact that everyone else (save for his two best friends and a few monster allies) thinks he's an evil monster.
As a Time Lord, the Doctor of Doctor Who has a potential lifespan of millenia and can view the flow of time, "everything that is, was, will be, can be and can't be" (paraphrased), the former causing Who Wants To Live Forever (especially as he's the only Time Lord still around) while the latter means he is both obligated to interfere when the timeline is screwed with and can't stop disasters that are meant to occur.
Dead Last focuses on a band that is blessed with the ability to see ghosts thanks to a magical amulet, thus forcing them to accomplish their various Ghostly Goals. They are rarely ever happy to discover that the person who's existence they just acknowledged is actually a ghost.

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One of the earliest examples is the Greek myth of King Midas. Everything he touched turned to gold. When he tried eating, he discovered the downside.
- The Dinosaurs Comics version of Midas is even worse.
- Shel Silverstein also sent up this trope in his poem Squishy Touch:
Everything King Midas touched
turned to gold, the lucky fellow.
Every single thing I touch
turns into raspberry Jell-O...
Cassandra got the power of prophecy as a gift from Apollo... but when she spurned him, he declared that — though she was always right — no one would ever believe her.
Sir Gawain's strength increases with the sun, making him nigh invincible about noon. Unfortunately, it also decreases with the sun, leaving him sapped of energy later in the afternoon and unable to work nights.

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Just how pervasive is this trope? Well, recently on Homestar Runner, StrongBad got an email asking what he would do if he had the ability to transform. StrongBad immediately assumes that he'd have to somehow be Blessed With Suck:
"If comic books, cartoons, and Sci-Fi Original Movies have taught me anything, it's that shapeshifting comes with a bunch of boring rules and restrictions that limit its potential Turn-Into-A-Bulldozer-Whenever-I-Wantity. You can turn into a machine gun but not bullets, contemporary jazz turns you back to normal, you can only turn into presents your grandma's knitted for you. Crap like that. For example, let's say I could turn into any species... OF BALLOON ANIMAL!!??"
The trait positive girls from lonelygirl15 have a significantly longer lifespan than the average person due to the number of ribozymes in their blood which catalyse their own synthesis. Unfortunately, there are some people would like to take that blood for themselves, so, essentially, to be trait positive is to be forever on the run from people who want to kill you.

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Paladins in Dungeons And Dragons are sometimes depicted as being such Slaves To PR as to have little free will. Thus, they must do the most obvious "lawful good" action to any situation, even if the end result will obviously be bad, or else lose their powers or worse. Many have called this interpretation "Lawful Stupid."
- 4th Edition averts this by only requiring that Paladins hold the same alignment as their parton deity, which opens up the door for Unaligned or even Chaotic Evil Paladins (Though good luck finding Channel Divinity feats for your unholy warrior of Vecna in the Player's Handbook).
Commit an evil act in the Ravenloft setting, and you may be subject to a Powers check. Fail one, and the Dark Powers "reward" you with a nice perk to your capabilities, along with a trivial penalty such as a small, but creepy change in appearance. Fail another, and you get a slightly smaller perk and a marginally more harsh penalty. Keep it up long enough, and you'll be getting slammed by heavy defects with negligible benefits... oh, and you'll become an NPC darklord, trapped forever in a domain that makes you Extra-Blessed With Megasuck.
The Harrowed in Deadlands fit this to a proverbial "T". Not many people get a second shot at life, even if it is in the "crawling your way out of the grave" sort of way. Being harder to kill (again) and manifesting some of the game's strongest powers sounds great...until your personal demon takes over, often resulting in deaths among your posse. The only player character type that has more power has even more suck: vampires.
Psykers in Warhammer 40000, especially amongst humans. The fate of the overwhelming majority of psykers in the Imperium is to die at their hands of their fellow humans, who hate and despise them. And if they're lucky, said death will just be a bullet through the brainpan or being burned at the stake. And if they aren't caught and killed (or controlled by the Imperium, not a nice fate either), they usually go insane. Or worse.
- Similarly, the followers of Nurgal get all sorts of "gifts" from their patron, that often take the form of diseases. They prefer to see it as Cursed With Awesome, however, as because they are permanently in pain, they can't feel any other pain. So they keep fighting until you kill them.
  - Chaos gifts in general are like this. They can grant you great power, but mutate your form with each upgrade. The careers of Chaos followers ultimately end at one of two destinations: as a Daemon Prince that transcends mortality, or as a gibbering Chaos Spawn, whose body and mind has been warped beyond recognition.
- Mages from Warhammer don't get off much better, the people generally fear and hate them but at least the government isn't out to get them. This is really only the case in the Empire though, in most other regions mages are honored and respected; especially the Elves and Lizardmen.
- Just going insane is actually pretty lucky for a 40K Psyker (and Warhammer Mages, for that matter); the reason the Imperium is so hard on psykers is because, if they're not trained properly, they get their soul eaten by a Daemon, who then borrows the body for a bit of a rampage. There are occasional references to whole worlds being destroyed because of one unportected psyker - either because of a daemonic infestation, or because the Imperium used Exterminatus (destroying all life on the planet) to halt it.
- One of the "better" fates for a ''40K" psyker is to be "recruited" by one of the Black Ships that patrol the Imperium looking for low-level psykers, to be taken to Terra to power the Astronomican, the great psychic navigational aid. Sure, the process devours the psyker's body and soul, but at least they're being useful.
Being a supernatural creature in the World Of Darkness is quite often a blessing with suck:
- Vampires have great power, but they're also locked in an eternal war with their Superpowered Evil Side, which they almost all lose eventually. This along with the blood-drinking and the sun burning you to ash. Oh, and boredom. Lots and lots of boredom.
- Werewolves are brutally powerful... and locked in a war with the spirit world and half of their own race. Not to mention the Unstoppable Rage that, even when successfully directed away from innocents, causes a subtle aura that creeps out/drives off Muggles... and the consequences of mating with their own kind.
- Prometheans define Blessed With Suck - despite their supernatural strength, their mere presence turns the world miserable and drives humans insane, they're hunted by Pandorans (twisted entities made when an attempt to create a Promethean fails) that long for their flesh, and the only way out is To Become Human.
- Changelings in the new World of Darkness are the only group that have it worse - magical abilities are a cold gift when you can never be sure The Fair Folk won't show up one day and drag you back into Arcadia to serve the wretched life of a slave.
- Being a Mage isn't, in and of itself, a bad thing. The world the Awakening opens up, however, is a different matter. The world you knew was a Lie, created by dark gods. Its rulers want the world's magic all to themselves. There's a gaping hole in the universe that's inimical to all existence. And then there are the Banishers, mages who blame magic for everything that's wrong with the world, and seek to eliminate it whenever they can...
- At this rate, God help the Hunters.
  - The Hunters, oddly enough, might be considered to have it easiest; most of them are ordinary mortals without any superpowers. The catch? They get to go up against all of the above supernatural creatures... without any superpowers. Then there's the toll hunting can take on an ordinary life. Oh, and there's the risk of turning into the antagonist in a Slasher Movie, too. Those few Hunters who do get superpowers often find things don't get any easier...
  - And, of course, Hunters can be used as antagonists in order to further outline the Blessed With Suck side of being a supernatural...
- Now it's a matter of seeing how the Geists and Sin-Eaters get screwed...
In White Wolf's other RPG, Exalted, the entire world is blessed with suck. While every imaginable wondrous phenomenon is a possibility there, the presence of so many strong, unwavering wills with different opinions is destined to break out in a devastating conflict. 1st ed. canon has this conflict resolved in the creation of the above-mentioned World Of Darkness, and that's one of the best possible outcomes.
In the world of Paranoia, this is used on a number of levels. Firstly, due to problems in the cloning vats everyone in Alpha Complex is a mutant, with powers ranging from super-strength and the like, to the truly sucky like having a perpetually runny nose. However, because the crazed computer that runs the complex refuses to accept that its methods cause mutations, being a mutant means you're assumed to be a spy and are subject to immediate termination from the computer or (more likely) your teammates (who, as mentioned are also mutants), if ever someone notices that you are using your power. Machine Empathy is a particularly suck to be blessed with, as the computer immediately notices it, and execution is immediate. Finally, for every mission in the game, you are assigned equipment to use including futuristic weapons such as tangler guns and plasma rifles, but also crappy things such as Heisenberg uncertainty projectors, personal force shields working on a fusion reactor kept stable by a hand crank, robots with obnoxious personalities, and small useless boxes with loads of different buttons, dials and LEDs. These items are usually very valuable, and financial responsibility, of course, falls on the clone the equipment is assigned to. Characters are frequently denied access to documentation for the devices with the explanation that the character is not of a high enough security clearance to view the manual. The purest-essence of Blessed With Suck comes when the team is given a mutant-detecting device... since everyone is a mutant, the only thing that results is non-stop beeping and a heightened chance of being shot.
Being a Shadowrun cyberzombie does present some advantages. Because Cybernetics Eat Your Soul, you can only get so much cyberware before you're clinically dead, but with some advanced science and powerful magic, your soul can be bound to your body long after your dead, and now you're magic-resistant and nigh-invulnerable to boot. But wait. This is a procedure that involves you dying. If you can get past that, then you'll eventually have to face the fact that no matter what you do, you're body, mind and soul intrinsically know that something is wrong, and all the fancy medication you take can only stop your body from failing and you going mad for so long. Additionally, the magic used causes you to be able to perceive the astral plane, a shocking experience for most. As well as your spirit going insane in your cursed husk of a body, the procedure is very expensive.

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Tsukihime's protagonist has this, as he has the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, which allow him to perceive the nature of death itself in the form of lines and dots on everything. However, they also drastically shorten his lifespan, even more so when he pushes his power to the limits—the human brain is not meant to comprehend death, thus creating an enormous strain for him. He would have gone insane long ago from seeing a world that could crumble at a touch had he not been given glasses that sealed his power when worn—and eventually, his eyes will become too strong for those to contain. For obvious reasons, this ability is usually seen as both Blessed with Suck and Cursed with Awesome at the same time.
- Arcueid has this as well; she is easily the most powerful character in the game, able to summon a phase of the moon that will only happen 1000 years in the future into present reality. Anybody who she gets serious against will not last long. Problem: she has to use over 70% of her power to hold back her vampiric blood-lust from taking over and massacring everything.
- Don't forget the infamous Tohno Gland. How many of the people affected by it are actually stable individuals, anyway? ...Hisui. Akira Seo. Ciel, kinda, even though she tries to kill him once or twice. Ok, let's cut Ciel out then. When we get a Tsukihime 2 they'll just add more love interests capable of destroying the city he lives in if he doesn't like them enough!
Another Nasuverse example: Fate Stay Night's Emiya Shirou has an incredible power to "trace" objects out of thin air, but there are three big catches. First, he doesn't know he can do this at first; he starts out with reinforcement magic, which doesn't touch his real potential. Second, he doesn't have a Magic Circuit — his workaround for this problem requires intense concentration and could kill him if he ever slipped up. (Rin helps him with this one, but strong magic is always very risky for Shirou.) And third, his tracing ability is heavily specialized in sword-making. Useful in the Grail War, but virtually nowhere else.
- Aside from the specialization (and the fact that using the full extent of his powers damages his body), most of this is more easily attributable to How Do I Shot Web
Zasalamel in Soul Calibur III finds a way to render himself immortal, allowing him to reincarnate with all of his past memories and personality intact after each death. However, this also robs him of a peaceful death, and his soul gets eaten away by dark forces after each death and rebirth, forcing him to search for the game's Mac Guffin in order to break the cycle.
Fortune in Metal Gear Solid 2 lost her father and her husband in quick succession, and the stress caused her to miscarry her unborn child. She was suicidal, but discovered she could not die: no matter how improbable, events conspired to keep her alive, cursing her with good luck. Explosives are duds, and bullets miss. At first, this ability came from a device on her that she didn't know about, and a shot actually hits its mark once Ocelot removes it, but right before she dies, she invokes the power naturally to save the Snakes and Raiden from Ocelot's Metal Gear RAY assault.
- In the first Metal Gear Solid, we got Psycho Mantis, He outright stated in his death speech that as a kid he was unable to shut off his powerful Mind Reading ability (learning that his father hated him, ouch), and that apparently looking too deep in too many minds of Serial Killers drove him off the deep end. Apparently he still couldn't completely shut off his Telepathy since he asked for his mask back to block the voices out, and complained about "How everyone thinks of only [[Squick one thing]]. No wonder he became a Psycho!
Pokey (Porky) the Big Bad of Mother 3, has a device known as the "Perfectly Safe Machine" which he enters after being defeated by the heroes. The machine works exactly as promised, by not allowing him to escape it after activation. And since he can never die as a side effect of repeatedly time travelling, he's destined to spend the rest of eternity in a small box only slightly bigger then himself.
- It is also implied that, while immortal, his abuse of time-travel has left his body withered and left his mind in a warped, child-like state (See Enfant Terrible).
- Porky's fate isn't too bad for him, though, because it's exactly what he wanted. The epilogue even states he's happy.
In the Suikoden series, possessing a True Rune stops the character from aging any further and comes with a whole host of really spiffy abilities besides. Sounds great...but True Runes also seem to possess a will of their own, and tend to "force" their bearers into conflict. On top of that, there are many cases where even using (or unlocking) a True Rune's full power causes an additional nasty side-effect. Some examples:
- In Suikoden IV, the Rune of Punishment can be used to dismantle entire enemy fleets...but it drags its bearer a step closer to death each time it's used in this way.
  - Not to mention that it's implied that the Rune itself orchestrates events around the bearer, so that they're FORCED to use it's power. Mostly in the form of making huge armies or powerful monsters attack the home of the bearer and easily threatening to kill everyone the bearer knows and loves. It only stops doing this if it goes into it's "Forgiveness phase" (as the Rune of Punishment governs both punishment AND forgiveness), but this is apparently an exceedingly rare event.
- The Rune of Death in Suikoden earns its name by causing people close to the wearer to die and then eats their souls. On the plus side, the Soul Eater allows its user more powerful abilities every time it does so.
- Suikoden V's Sun Rune causes mental instability along with wielder-willed climate change.
  - This is not an inherent trait of the Rune, though, but is instead the result of an incident in the game's backstory that also resulted in the creation of the Dawn and Twilight Runes. Consequently, possessing all three runes mitigates the side effects of bearing the Sun Rune. Too bad that the Dawn Rune had been stolen before the start of the game...
- The Blue Moon Rune turns its bearer into a vampire. It takes a few years to get their bloodthirsty instincts under control, by which point they'll more than likely have killed a lot of people.
- The Rune of Beginning is usually split into its two component halves, the Bright Shield and Black Sword Runes, which are usually borne by two close friends. The two Runes will compel their bearers to put them back together again by slowly draining their lives. To be merged back into the Rune of Beginning, the bearer of one must kill the bearer of the other and take their Rune. That's right, the Rune of Beginning will basically force its bearer to kill their own best friend.
- Remember Luca Blight? It's very subtly implied that one of the reasons he was so Ax Crazy was because of the influence of the Beast Rune, which governs over "passion and bestial rage".
- The elemental Runes actively attempt to cause their bearer to lose control of them. We don't know what happens with the other four, but when this happened with the True Fire Rune, it caused a massive explosion that wiped out both armies in the conflict it was being used in at the time and continued to burn for seven days and seven nights.
- The Night Rune currently takes the form of a talking sword. It's also rather arrogant and mouthy, and is prone to attacking its own wielder over real or imagined slights.
- The King of the Sindar is the current bearer of the Rune of Change. As a result, the entire race is incapable of settling in one location for very long.
- Conversely, The Circle Rune is in the hands of the Holy Harmonian Empire's High Priest Hikusaak has the powers of order and stagnation. Yeah, they've had centuries of peace and prosperity, but a decent chunk of their human population are little more than slaves, and the non-humans should be so lucky.
In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Michiah's "Sacrifice" ability is hyped in the storyline up as being unique and magnificent. However, in an example of Gameplay And Story Segregation, in-game the ability is only useful for level grinding and healing status effects as it uses up her HP. Combine this with the fact that she is already has difficulty taking a hit and you get a very bad ability.
- However, when coupled with Edward's Wrath or Tauroneo's Resolve, Micaiah becomes an untouchable, double-attacking, always-criticalling power machine, making it a case of Cursed With Awesome.
- All people who have one laguz and one beorc parent are examples of this. You age slowly, gain various abilities, etc. - oh, and you are an absolute pariah in both societies. And either you can go to the Laguz (who can sense you, and probably age even slower) or the Beorc (where you have to move around every few years) societies to live. There are quite a few of these in the list of main chatacters.
And of course, who can forget Planescape: Torment? The main character can rise up from the dead every time he is killed (Which is even used in a few quests to your advantage), but loses his memory of his previous life (except for the incarnation you control, but that's because of external phlebotinum), and every time he comes back form the dead, someone else dies in his place. Oh, and he also brings tormented souls to him, which are caught in a cycle of tragedy. The fact he did this to correct something he did which is causing the Multiverse to slowly die means the attempt has backfired spectacularly.
In God Hand, the main character Gene loses his right arm while saving Olivia's life, and is rewarded with having his arm replaced by the God Hand, a severed arm of a legendary fighter that grants Gene superhuman fighting skills. Unfortunately for him, the God Hand is extremely desirable to the villains, and Olivia has a bad habit of constantly sending Gene out to do her dirty work.
Oswald the Shadow Knight from Odin Sphere is the wielder of the Belderiever, an extremely powerful magic sword that gains power from killing and allows him access to a near-unstoppable shadow form. Unfortunately, the sword is cursed and the shadow knight power-up came from having Oswald's life and soul sold to the Queen of the Dead (and to make matters worse, Oswald himself didn't get any say in the matter; his foster father did it to him without his consent). Not only is he loathed by literally every living being on the planet and plagued by weakness as the dead pull on his soul; he cannot let the Belderiever out of sight or the shinigami will hunt him down, kill him and drag his soul to the underworld where he'll be the Queen of the Dead's plaything for all eternity.
Ted Taylor, aka "Man-Bot", from Freedom Force was blasted by a massive dose of Energy X that causes his body to constantly generate the energy in large doses. This renders him the potentially most powerful superhero in existence, but his body is wracked by constant pain by the enormous amounts of energy that build up inside his body. In addition, he has to wear a specialized containment suit powered by his own energy emissions or the build-up of energy leads to irregular and painful detonations capable of killing people and leveling buildings. The suit is also limited in its durability, which means he's never truly able to cut loose and use his full potential either. To add to all that, he inadvertently killed his brother with one of his blasts by hesitating in taking up the suit, giving him a massive guilt complex as well.
John Morris of Castlevania Bloodlines is somehow related to the Belmonts, and as a result, is able to use their Vampire Killer whip. The catch? It drains his life energy, to the point where sometime after Bloodlines and before Portrait of Ruin (the direct sequel to Bloodlines), he dies.
In Final Fantasy III, Noah gave one disciple the gift of magic, another the gift of dreams, and the third the "gift" of mortality.
- Any guesses as to which of these goes bug-fuck insane and tries to unleash the game's eventual Big Bad on the world? First two don't count.
Metroid Prime 3 has Hypermode, a Limit Break in which Samus becomes very powerful and invincible. But, it involves Phazon, so excess use of it will cause Samus to get slowly corrupted, and if corrupted far enough she will become terminally corrupted, leading to a Nonstandard Game Over.
Tales Of Symphonia Colette's powers as the Chosen gives her pretty hard light wings and a cadre of powerful & useful Angelic Attacks. However she loses some aspect of her humanity every time she gains another power including the ability to taste, sleep, and eventually her voice. She eventually loses her soul but luckily she loses the bad side of this without having to lose the cool angel powers.
In later Pokemon games, certain natural Abilities can function this way. Klutz, for instance, makes them completely incapable of holding all but a few specialized items.
- And Pokemon Mystery Dungeon makes it so Pokemon know ALL of their possible Abilities — good and bad — AND makes several once-decent Abilities worse. So now Klutzy Pokemon can't hold ANY items, even the few they could before... Run Away makes a low-HP Pokemon panic and go into an uncontrollable retreat... and so on and so forth.
  - Lucario comes to mind. In the main games he either gained speed when flinched or was immune to flinching. In Mystery Dungeon, the first ability is completely nerfed by the second.
- Non-Ability wise, we have Absol. Absol have the extraordinary ability to sense impending natural disasters, and naturally try to warn humans who are in danger. Humans end up thinking that Absol cause the disasters and hunt them down for it.
There are a few things like this in World Of Warcraft, but a particularly interesting one is the case of Sir Zeliek, a paladin so strong in faith that even after a necromancer killed him and raised him as a Death Knight, he retained his own mind, will, and even his paladin powers. Problem is, the necromancer does control Zeliek's body, so while most of those who became Death Knights unwillingly (itself considered a Fate Worse Than Death) are obliviously Brainwashed And Crazy, he is a fully-aware puppet who begs forgiveness whenever he kills a player.
Brandon "Beyond the Grave" Heat, the protagonist of Gungrave. The necrolization process bestowed him with vast strength and agility, as well as the ability to regenerate from most wounds almost instantaneously. And he has not lost any of the skills with firearms he learned while alive. However, necrolization has completely ruined his memories, leaving them fragmented "snippets", and he has lost a great deal of his ability to feel emotion. And because his body is not much more than a reanimated corpse (albeit a powerful one), his whole body needs fresh blood perodically. In the game continuity, Mika uses her own blood to maintain Grave's body, as she and Grave share the same blood type. The strain of having to keep Grave sustained has weakened Mika and made her anemic.
In The Elder Scrolls series of games, there is a sword, Umbra, of which is debatably the best sword in the game, doing large amounts of damage and trapping the souls of enemies you fight, but it seems that if you would use this weapon long enough, it erodes your sanity, causing you to be aware of Umbra's hunger, and eventually the line between sword and wielder blurs. The character you receive Umbra from in Morrowind and Oblivion both refer to themselves as Umbra.
Shanoa, the protagonist of ''Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia", has this in spades. Her ability to command Glyphs gives her incredible power, including the ability to command the Dominus glyphs that each contain a piece of Dracula's power, thus giving her the ability to destroy Dracula. (Like he's not used to that by now...) Sweet, huh? Unfortunately, the ritual that GAVE her the ability also took away most of her memories and emotions. Not to mention the fact that the ritual to destroy Dracula, which involves using the Dominus Union, instantly drains the user's soul...
Silent Hill has the horrific example of Alessa. She was born with vaguely-defined psychic powers that included a link to the supernatural and "doing things" with her mind. As a result, she was tormented and abused by her peers and her mother, burnt alive as part of some unexplained ritual at the age of seven, then spent the next seven years in unending agony from burns that wouldn't heal, all for the purpose of summoning a being that would plunge the world into darkness. Even when she finally dies, she's merely reincarnated into another body so the ritual can be completed, with the implication that this will continue forever.
Etna issues the titular Prinny a special scarf that stops him from exploding like Prinnies are known to do when tossed or handled recklessly - and then demonstrates it by kicking him into a wall. Sounds neat, right? THEN she drops this little beauty...
Etna: You've got until tomorrow morning. Understand? If you don't bring me the Ultra Dessert by then, well... you'll be begging me to let you explode! Capiche!?
In Runescape, Zanik is truly Blessed With Suck- she's a Dorgeshuun goblin, a tribe that fled beneath the earth when their god, Bandos, ordered them to fight a war they couldn't possibly win for fun. Zanik is the Chosen Commander of a prophecy, who will lead goblins to victory all over the world. However, the Dorgeshuun have become learned pacifists, so to fulfill the prophecy, Zanik would effectively get her tribe and thousands of other goblins killed. The entire quest 'The Chosen Commander' involves the player helping Zanik to escape this destiny, and after the two defeat Bandos, Zanik's friend Juna, a giant snake who is a Guardian of Guthix (god of balance), ends their friendship because of Zanik's defiance of her destiny (Juna says that since Bandos brought the goblins to Runescape, they were his, so Zanik should have gone along with him), which makes Juna a really nice "friend".
Alyssa from Clock Tower 3 could be considered this. She has a powerful bow that only works when she frees a certain spirit, is repeatedly dragged into other dimensions and chased by supernatrual monsters, and is the target of her insane grandfather who wants to drink her blood so he can live forever.
A certain enemy of Final Fantasy X comes to mind. A reborn form of a previous boss you encounter has the always present Zombie status. The Zombie status makes it so that all spells and items that would heal you would hurt you instead, but gives you increased defenses. However, there is a spell called Life that brings a character back to life with full health. Zombie reverses healing moves to cause damage. Healing spells can be cast on enemies. Granted none of the team members you have can use Life at that point in the game under most circumstances, but then there's also the item Mega Phoenix which has the same effect as Life.

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In Haru-Sari elves can use magic better than humans, but are considerably less sane and die when they're about 30.
Several characters from Gunnerkrigg Court.
- Zimmy has reality-altering powers. And she has terrifying hallucinations—not a good combination. The only way she knows of to control either is to hang out with Gamma, who acts as a living Power Nullifier.
  - When it manifests on a rooftop and drags Antimony (and, they later learn, one of the boys they're with) along for the ride, Antimony suggests the possibility of learning to control it... at which point Zimmy explodes at her. Later, though, Zimmy reassures Annie that "it's only as real as you let it be"-implying that, for once, denial is an effective coping mechanism.
- Coyote gave Reynardine the ability to possess others' bodies, then return to his own. Coyote himself could use this ability harmlessly, but for reasons that Coyote implies he doesn't know, Reynardine invariably and unintentionally kills his host upon leaving their body.
- Coyote gave Ysengrin powerful arms made of wood, and with them, the power to manipulate trees. The downside is that they're apparently arthritic. Coyote freely admits that he screwed up, but Ysengrin insists that he has no complaints.
The titular character of Dominic Deegan started out as a mere seer, but as the story got deeper and darker, his powers seem to have made him Blessed With Suck. He keeps constantly getting into conflicts that he wanted nothing to do with, all because he's the only one with the visions that can save everyone. This recently lead to a nervous breakdown, proving his powers now seem to be more of a curse than a blessing.
- An even better example would be the Resistants. A Resistant is a person who is born with complete immunity to any and all magics. This initially sounds like an incredible blessing (given how most of the Dominic Deegan world revolves around magic), but remember that this means that healing magic is just as useless to a Resistant as offensive magic, meaning that if they're seriously injured, the normally live-saving White Magic won't help them at all. In addition, most people who use magic to attack will find a way to attack a Resistant indirectly, such as in the Snowsong arc, where the titular villain, upon finding that her ice magic wouldn't work against Dex Garrit, simply froze the ground he was standing on, causing him to slip and reducing his usefulness. Failing that, a magic user can just hit a resistant with something very very sharp...
Quentyn, the main character from Tales Of The Questor, is (while drunk) accidentally "bonded" to a magic sword. While this normally conveys some few advantages (noone but he can use the sword, he can normally locate it wherever it is by "feel" and even, under the right circumstances, summon it to himself), it is outweighed by the considerable number of drawbacks — first, it is implied that in the wrong hands the sword could become a magical conduit back to himself, second, noone else can use the sword 'even if he wants them to;' third, separation from the sword beyond a certain distance causes him chronic and growing discomfort and anxiety; and as a final kicker, the sword itself, while being quite magically potent, is something of a flawed design — its magical effects, when drawn, are 'entirely random....' varying from incredibly deadly to wildly uncontrolled to comically useless.
- For the Duke he helps, this tropes happens to him when Quentyn's defeat of a Fae Princeling leads to the villain's entire treasure trove being literaly poured into the Duke's castle. Though one might welcome having their place literally flooded with money, the Duke anticipates correctly that this will be the cause of considerable trouble in the future.
Possible example from the Order Of The Stick prequel book, Start of Darkness. Xykon was... slightly less Ax Crazy as a human, before discovering that becoming a lich cost him his sense of taste. Apparently, killing minions is the only pleasure that compares to a good (or really bad) cup of coffee.
One of Aylee's many forms in Sluggy Freelance had the ability to give off an electromagnetic pulse, disabling any electronic device in the area. However, she couldn't stop herself from give off these EMP burst, and when one of them erased Bun-Bun's Baywatch tapes, it almost got the entire cast killed.
Elliot and Ellen of El Goonish Shive are developing magic powers. The downside is pretty severe Power Incontinence, which is especially bad for Elliot, as he has to transform into a girl multiple times per day - a prospect he is not happy about. Said Power Incontinence will eventually wear off, and there have been debates as to how bad they have it anyway, but Word Of God states that the suck outweighs the blessing for now.
Darren Danforth of Penny And Aggie makes every girl (or at least every heterosexual girl) see in him her dream of the ideal lover. Since he's really a dim good-natured klutz this sets them both up for disappointment.

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Borderline in The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee. As the Te Xuan Ze, June has extraordinary abilities... and is physically incapable of leaving her hometown, meaning that all of her life's dreams are basically out of reach. Fortunately, the show doesn't harp on this fact too much, preventing Wangst.
Both Terra and Raven of Teen Titans The Animated Series have incredible kinetic abilities. The downside of this is that the actual control of each character's power is directly tied to their current emotional state, so when rage or panic overtakes them, chaos inevitably erupts. This was such a large problem for Terra that she eventually opted for high school instead of heroism.
- It gets worse for Raven... when she loses control, she's liable to turn into a reasonable simulation of a Cosmic Horror (just ask Dr. Light, if you can get him to put his experience in words). And, oh yeah, she was born to be a tool through which her demon lord father can kill everyone on earth, then take it over. Luckily, she gets better after that.
- This trope seems to be the main reason Jinx picked villainy; with her powers of bad luck, at least as a villain she could be respected by her peers for destroying things.
  - Considering the sheer, mindboggling amounts of collateral damage the Titans can do (Cyborg using a building as an improvised weapon, anyone?)...
The Spectacular Spider Man's Electro is amazingly powerful, but suffers from extreme Power Incontinence, particularly when angry, rendering electrical devices inoperable or destroyed by power surges. He has to wear a suspiciously ineffective insulation suit at all times to avoid harming others, and can't even eat without discharging electricity. Small wonder that he freaks out and goes on a rampage.
Cheetarah of the Thundercats actually states that she considers her clairvoyant ability to be more of a curse than a blessing, due to the physical drain it puts on her body.
The version of Metallo on Superman The Animated Series gains super strength, immunity to disease, and Nigh Invulnerability, but loses all his senses of taste, touch, and smell in the process. The constant detachment from reality gradually drives him insane.
In the XMen classic cartoon Jean Grey was often unable to use her psychic powers. It was common to see her passing out after trying to use them, saying that "she can't do (whatever she is trying to do) because her powers aren't as strong as Dr. X's", probably an action from the writers to not let her be too powerful or the others would be rendered useless. Of course, not including her Phoenix-embodiment form.
Ron of Kim Possible was briefly "blessed" with the ability to destroy anything he touched. Only he couldn't turn it off. They had to put him in a bubble that neutralised his curse before he killed anyone in an attempt to high-five them. Indeed, the only good news Hego had was "hanging around Ron will be a...blast? *meek smile".
In Batman Beyond, one villain used a belt that induced intangibility to phase through matter, which, as an opportunistic reporter, he used to discover Batman's secret identity and thus gain fame. Unfortunately for him, the more he used it, the more it effected him, and, eventually, his body became intangible without the belt. So intangible, in fact, that he could not stand or hold onto things, and he eventually fell through the ground to presumably die of either a fiery death in the earth's mantle, or asphyxiation. Or not.
Averted in a segment of Batman: Gotham Knight, in which an anime-looking Bruce Wayne tests out a personal force-shield as part of his Batman gear. When it deflects a ricocheted bullet into the body of a gang thug, putting the man in the hospital, Batman decides that the shield is Blessed With Suck and discontinues using it, rather than risk having deaths on his conscience.
According to Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July, Rudolph's glowing nose was caused by the magic of the northern lights and serves as a means to defeat the evil Winterbolt, though the glowing nose did cause him to have a crappy childhood...
Ace from the DCAU is one of the most tragic examples this troper has ever seen. Her incredible Psychic Powers accidentally drove her parents insane, she was treated as a government experiment her entire life, she was used by a madman, and to top it off, when her powers evolved to the point of altering reality, they also caused her to have a fatal aneurysm.

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Jonah Falcon (local troper JAF1970), the man with the world's biggest penis, and is still single until now.
- Isn't that more a Blessed With Selfsuck?
There was a study in Russia of a man (left unnamed, referred to as Mr. X in the study) who was born without the ability to forget anything. Phone numbers, bank accounts, scripts and books, snippets of conversation, emotions both good and bad, sensations both good and bad... well, you get the picture. He was almost normal until his mid-20s, when the information overload started getting to him. He committed suicide at the age of 32.
- Jill Price is famous for having the same ability as the man above. It's great to remember important things, but she also remembers ever hurtful thing any one has ever done or said to her with absolute clarity. Puts a new spin on 'forgive and forget.'
  - There was an article in a magazine about both her and the man who can never form any new memories. Ever. He's completely lost the ability to form long-term memories. He's had that going on for years and years, and still thinks it's the same moment it was when he lost his memory. He doesn't know it's lost. He forgets from moment to moment - when he looks at a newspaper he doesn't remember how a sentence started when he reaches its end. Still, he seems happy and doesn't seem to mind all the strangers appearing around him. The nice thing about having no ability to form memories is that he's blissfully unaware of it. Just as well.
- To go back into fiction, this is a downside of "Wizard's Sight" and soulgazing in The Dresden Files. Harry gets to see the other side of reality and remember the things he sees with perfect clarity. The problem is, given the line he's in and the people he often confronts, Harry has seen some awful, disgusting things that he will never, ever forget.
- The story "Funes, the Memorious" by Jorge Luis Borges describes a similar condition.
Cells in the body can only divide X number of times; this is essentially why we die. But some cells are blessed with the ability to keep dividing forever! The downside? Well, this does make them cancer cells...
Rich people can buy anything they like but they usually have trouble getting along with others.
Al Yageneh went from one store-front to a nation-wide franchise when his delicious soups were featured in an episode of Seinfeld. Unfortunately, because of that same episode, Al Yageneh will forever be known as the Soup Nazi. It's apparently turned him into a semi-recluse.

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