Cursed With Awesome - Television Tropes & Idioms

Ranma 1/2. While it's never officially stated that Ranma Saotome has some sort of "May You Live In Interesting Times" curse on him, it's a fair assumption to make in order to explain his status as a Weirdness Magnet. However, Ranma himself has no complaints about this curse, at least in abstract- it draws strong (if weird) martial arts challengers and beautiful girls to him like flies to honey. He complains when they personally get out of hand, but not about the situation itself. Many fans consider his Nyanniichuan curse to be a case of Cursed With Awesome too, but to Ranma it's more a case of Blessed With Suck.
- It's implied that at least a few Jusenkyo springs can bestow this as well. Pantyhose Taro fell into a spring where a yeti that was riding an ox while carrying a crane and an eel drowned, and consequently transforms into a sort of giant flying minotaur when he gets wet. Perhaps because of this curse's mixed up nature, he's later able to assimilate a Drowned Octopus curse for Combat Tentacles. A character named Rouge fell into a Spring of Drowned Ashura, becoming a demon/goddess with three faces and six arms, a form in which she can fly, breath fire, and hurl lightning bolts.
Ataru Moroboshi of Urusei Yatsura seesaws somewhere between this and Blessed With Suck in regards his Accidental Marriage to Cute Monster Girl Lum. On the one hand, she is a beautiful alien princess who genuinely does love him and sees his better qualities, and a lot of his protestations seem to be rooted in his being a particularly lustful example of The Leisure Suit Larry who doesn't seem to realise how lucky he is. On the other hand, Lum does have her legitimate bad points, including having a bad temper and little tolerance for jealousy, being somewhat ditzy, enjoying higher levels of food spice than humans are comfortable with, and, of course, her ability to generate electricity... not only does she use this to discipline him when he goes skirt-chasing, but she sometimes loses control of this when trying to cuddle him, giving him a painful shock (particularly early on, when she is the unofficial villain). And, on the meta-level, there's the fact he was originally supposed to marry Shinobu Miyake (who ended up crushing on Mendou after he was first introduced, then hooking up with Inaba, anyway), until Lum became the Ensemble Darkhorse.
Subverted beautifully in Kajika, where young Kajika appears to have an awesome curse which multiplies his speed, strength, and toughness while giving him many special powers. Despite this, he works endlessly hard to break this horrible curse. Why, you ask? Because it's a downgrade from his normal form, which is even more powerful.
In XXXholic, Watanuki constantly bemoans the fact that he is always stuck with Domeki Because Destiny Says So. Considering that Domeki has saved him from falling to his death (badly injuring his arm in the process), spent ten hours in the rain trying to pull him away from the brink of Hell, saved him from getting mauled by a possessed girl and her box cutter, gave his blood to save his life, and keeps him from being mauled by spirits on a daily basis just by being around him, you would think Watanuki would be a little more grateful — even if he does have to make Domeki lunch once in a while.
- This is a Justified Trope in that the The Heartless are apparently cursing Watanuki into being a bitch about it. That's kinda petty for The Forces Of Darkness™ but whatever.
- Watanuki's actually suicidal because he knows that he's not supposed to exist, being a time travel duplicate and he believes that his existence is causing those around nothing but misery. He's wrong.
Gundam SEED: Kira Yamato, a mostly pacifist young kid, is a Coordinator, allowing him exceptional mental abilities, reaction time, and such. It is these abilities that allow him to pilot the eponymous Gundam, but also draw him into a war between the genetically altered Coordinators and the Earth-born Naturals, both sides of which have friends of his fighting for them (which, naturally, he'll come into conflict with). For the first half of the series, he's well aware that he's one-half of all that's keeping his friends from being killed by ZAFT, to the point that he literally begins living in his cockpit so as to be ready at a moment's notice should they come under attack.
Played straight in The Slayers, with Zelgadis Greywords. His great-grandfather, under the influence of a fragment of the world's ultimate Big Bad, cursed him into becoming a chimera: one-third golem, one-third blow demon, one-third human. This gives him Nigh Invulnerability, superior reserves of magical energy, greatly augmented strength and speed, a much lower requirement for food, and tremendous stamina. However, he also has blue stone skin, rocky protrusions (which look vaguely like scales) all over his body, and weighs more than some boulders. Despite all the awesome powers, though, he just wants to be human again.
- Even though Zelgadis spends most of the series trying to find a cure to his affliction, this doesn't stop him from taking advantage of his powers every chance he gets.
  - It doesn't stop everyone else from taking advantage of his powers either. Lina once used him as an anchor, for crying out loud.
Tenchi Muyo GXP plays with this trope. Protagonist Seina Yamada is cursed to be a Weirdness Magnet, with his mere presence causing accidents to harm himself and anyone else in the general area. His curse seems to reach new heights when he gets shanghaied into the Galaxy Police, and attracts a horde of space pirates almost as soon as he leaves orbit. But when he's rescued, it's brought to his attention that his curse led to one of the biggest blows against piracy in history — and he becomes determined to take the chance to have his luck serve a purpose for a change. Of course, the curse also leads to an Unwanted Harem... 'nuff said.
The "yaka" in Sola closely resemble vampires minus the need for blood: immortality, super strength and agility, regeneration, ability to resurrect people by turning them, and sometimes other awesome unique powers, with only the vampire-like extreme weakness to direct sunlight (and the 'curse' of immortality) as a drawback. Another character has a unique body that overcomes even that, but he spends all his time angsting over not being a real boy. The ending highlights how unappreciated these abilities are by those who have them.
Inu Yasha features Miroku, who is cursed by the series' Big Bad with the Wind Tunnel - essentially a gaping black hole in his hand that sucks in everything in front of it with phenomenal force. Eventually, we're told, it will rupture and draw himself in without warning, along with any friends or loved ones that might be nearby... except that he's capable of keeping it closed until necessary. And he's capable of repairing the slow expansion of the hole. Eventually at some point in time the Wind Tunnel will kill him, but until then, Miroku's nemesis has essentially handed him a superweapon.
- A superweapon Naraku swiftly learns to neutralize via poisonous insects that swarm Miroku, clogging the Wind Tunnel and stinging him painfully on the way in. In fact, the thing is pretty damn useless most of the time (thus being something of a subversion).
- Kinda justified since well it is a Story Breaker Power if played straight. It would be kinda lame if for every youkai they meet all they have to do is call Miroku for clean up duty.
Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke gets cursed by a boar demon, which manifests itself in a gradually increasing nasty-looking scar which will eventually kill him, and turn him into a demon. (He comes pretty close to the deadline). The curse also grants him awesome powers, like super strength, which comes in very handy among all the hostility he gets faced with.
Allen Walker from D Gray Man was born with a deformed left arm that made his parents abandon him. After his adopted father died, Allen unknowingly had the Millennium Earl turn him into an Akuma, who then cut Allen's left eye and cursed him. Allen's arm can turn into an incredible weapon for destroying Akuma, and his left eye can see the soul bound to them, making him the only person on the planet who can tell which "people" in a crowd are Akuma. A few other Exorcists are Cursed With Awesome too, particularly Krory (who was bitten by a plant and started drinking the blood of what he thought were humans at first) and Miranda (a perpetual loser who can now stop time). Miranda started as full-fledged Blessed With Suck until she was able to control it, though.
- Remember, though, that when Lavi briefly saw an Akuma the way Allen always does, he declared it to be High Octane Nightmare Fuel and said he'd rather be looking over his shoulder all the time than have to deal with that.
  - On the other hand, something else that Allen can see that no other exorcist can is the souls bound to the Akuma being released when the Akuma is destroyed. To everyone else, the Akuma can easily be seen as simply monsters that need to be destroyed, but Allen gets a truer idea of what's really at stake.
In Naruto, the character is the "can" part of Sealed Evil In A Can because he houses an evil spirit inside him. Said spirit becomes the major reason for his extreme powers because its huge stock of Applied Phlebotinum supplies the energy to all his strongest attacks. Oh, and he stops angsting about the demon after the first episode.
- Don't forget the nigh-immortal levels of regeneration.
  - Though using said regeneration rapidly erodes his lifespan... so it's literally killing him.
- Most of the other hosts aren't as lucky: Gaara was ostracized even more from his village while the thing tried to take over his mind when he slept (so he doesn't) and hosts 2-7 were all killed by Akatsuki. However, the 8-Tails host, Killer Bee, has it even better than Naruto: he's able to control his beast and use it however he wants (that might have been something he needed to learn how to do) and his village actually respects him.
Jun in Special A laments about his problem with girls, which explains why he stays away from relationships. When Sakura kisses him, he wakes up - Turns out his shameful secret is that he's got a Casanova Split Personality inside him. The split personality realizes how awesome this is, but the "outer" Jun fails to see this.
Mahou Sensei Negima has Setsuna, a half-Tengu demon girl with albinism. This made tengu "Bird Tribe" demons shun her as "unlucky" since she has... wait for it... white wings. Her friends think this is awesome. (Particularly amusing is how Asuna can't help but grope and fondle and... er... smell Setsuna's wings every chance she gets.) For her behavior to make any sense human mages had to have shunned her as well; but we've never seen anyone say an unkind word in her direction, so it could just be her personality.
What the Gorgon Sisters want their adoring Amazon subjects to believe they are in One Piece: their story is that they slew some monsters and were cursed with their powers and "Medusa Eyes" on their backs as punishment. That the Amazons don't know about Devil Fruit and that everyone the Gorgons fight turn to stone probably helps their story a bit.
- Also, every Devil Fruit curses the eater with a total inability to swim or, indeed, function at all in water. At the same time, it gives the eater amazing superhuman powers that far outweigh the downsides. Except for a few of them.
In Witchblade Masane tries to remove or destroy eponymous implant/symbiont... that is, docile piece of jewelry transforming her at will into Stripperiffic death machine capable of ripping tanks apart and surviving its explosion. Naturally, poor thing deigns to notice these efforts only when she's about to hurt herself, instantly wrecks an offending power tool and returns to its nap. To be fair, she saw Superpower Meltdown of its Evil Knockoffs and so has a good reason to suspect it's Deadly Upgrade as well, though otherwise it seems to be "merely" dangerously fatiguing.
While it also goes to show some of the really gruesome downsides of immortality, Baccano! explicitly lampshades its Cursed With Awesome status: Discovering that most of the Martillo and Gandor family gangsters mistook the two bottles of the elixir of life for some celebratory wine, Maiza attempts to apologize for dragging them into "the harshness of having to live for eternity." Their response is summarily summed up as, "Are you kidding? This is awesome." Considering the title of the episode ("Both those who are immortal and those who are not enjoy life equally"), it doesn't look like they're meant to be proven wrong.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Edward and Alphonse once attempted a very stupid thing, trying to bring back their mother, and this sets off the plot. Ed lost his leg, Al lost his body and then Ed sacrificed an arm to attach his soul to some armor. They both want their normal bodies back. Getting Al a normal body back makes sense because he can't feel, mentally age, taste, experience normal human contact or pretty much anything like that. Plus, in the manga, he'll explode eventually. But Ed? Ed gets automail (which a lot of other people have, so it's not especially weird), making him stronger, able to transmute his limbs, doesn't mar his appearance if he doesn't want it to, can use his limbs as shields and repair them as needed (though not terribly well without aid from his mechanic) and he can transmute without a circle, though he'd keep that ability even if he got his arm back. Not to mention that automail is Fetish Fuel for his major love interest.Granted, 'get our bodies back' eventually turns more to 'stop the evil Big Bad and get Al's body back' mostly (in both anime and manga media), but still.
- From the very start, it was always Al who focused on restoring Ed's lost limbs. Ed always quite logically considered restoring Al's body the important thing.
In Code Geass, Suzaku is Blessed With Suck in the form of the Geass command "live", which subverts his Death Seeker mindset by forcing him to survive by any means necessary. This is flipped in Turn 22, when Suzaku is suddenly using the command to make himself a better fighter, at the same time ignoring every negative side effect the command is supposed to have.
- Which might be justified in that the Geass could be keeping him from even thinking about death, considering his rather suicidal tendencies.
Most of the Contractors in Darker Than Black are either Blessed With Suck or Cursed With Awesome, largely depending on their remuneration. April can cause rainstorms and absolutely loves her remuneration (drinking beer). Louis, on the other hand, has gravity powers but has to break his fingers every time he uses them.
Mr. Fujisawa in El Hazard considers his fantastic strength to be this: Yes, it's very useful, and yes, it's great to have, but he can only reach his full power if he doesn't drink or smoke. As the astute reader will have guessed, he's a chain smoker and drinks heavily.
Barajou No Kiss. Just...Barajou no Kiss. "Is this the punishment you were talking about, Dad?"

Spider-Man is one of the biggest comic book examples. His powers seem to always attract foes who try to take out his family and loved ones. He also bemoans how being a super hero pulls him apart from said loved ones.
- In issue #100 of The Amazing Spider-Man, Spidey takes a serum to remove his powers. This leads to a messed up ~~acid trip~~ dream sequence. When he wakes up, he finds that he has instead grown four extra arms. Good job on that one, Petey.
Subverted with Juggernaut from the X Men. Those who are bestowed with the power of the god Cyttorak through his ruby gem are also compelled to do evil, regardless of their previous nature. However, Cain Marko is a natural sociopath, and doesn't need much prodding.
- Natural sociopaths don't often reform... more likely, he was just a jackass. And when he did his Heel Face Turn, the subversion un-subverted itself, as Cyttorak was none too pleased with the change in matters. On the other hand, he did get to sleep with (a) She-Hulk...
  - But his powers were massively downgraded. He later cut a deal with Cyttorak to defend Charles Xavier from the Hulk, and has become evil again because of it.
In its early history, the X-Men themselves tended to have attractive heroes who felt awkward about their powers, while villains who reveled in their powers were ugly. This trend was reduced with the introduction of the Morlocks, who were bizarre but kind, plus the general escalating public fear of mutants because they could look just like anyone else.
- The first X-Men movie in many ways reflected this; the heroes were all extremely gorgeous people with cool powers played by people like Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and James Marsden, whilst the bad guys - with the notable exception of Ian McKellen - were all freaks. The later movies began to balance this out a bit more with the inclusion of characters such as Nightcrawler.
  - Hello, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as Mystique? With the blue skin, she's the hottest actress in that movie.
- Also, some of the mutants who've wished to be cured over the years (and over the adaptations) have been mutants who looked human and didn't suffer from any lack of control.
- This point's been lampooned in Toyfare's Twisted Toyfare Theater comic, with a villain exclaiming "rich teenagers with superpowers? Yeah, I WISH I had your problems!"
Deadpool was cursed by Loki to have Tom Cruise's face until his father forgave him. Deadpool was not happy at all.
- Course, this was before Tom Cruise's name became a dirty word. Who knows? Mebbe Deadpool can see into the future too?
- Deadpool gets this again, in a sort of subversion. In Deadpool #64, Thanos curses him with immortality. Where's the curse in that? Well, they both love Death, so Deadpool would actually be pretty happy being killable. Torn between Cursed With Awesome and Blessed With Suck - the curse only won out because that was Thanos's original intention.
Thor's foe the Flame believes he is horrendously ugly in addition to having superstrength, fire control abilities, indestructible armour and a BFS. Of course, he is horrendously ugly by fire demon standards which makes him extremely handsome by human (or Asgardian) standards, but the Flame refuses to believe this.
This is the premise behind the Golden Age DC superhero Mister Terrific. A child prodigy genius, self-made millionaire, and athletic champion winds up nearly committing suicide because life holds no challenges. Luckily he finds a purpose at the last minute as a crimefighter.
- And, as an issue of Starman points out, a mediocre crimefighter at that. Blessed with mediocrity!
The Thing in The Fantastic Four. Super-strong & nigh invulnerable. Sure he's not the best looking guy around, but despite this he's had several women attracted to him, Alicia Masters, Thundra, the second Miss Marvel, heck even Tigra seemed interested with him. Boo-hoo, poor Ben.
- Although, this is pretty heavily subverted now. Ben doesn't hate his looks and is actually quite happy to be the "Ever-lovin' Blue-Eyed Thing", as it's brought him great success and many new friends.
- The most irrational thing he complained about was how he thought the first of these women would flee him if she were not blind. Dude, she has a pretty good idea that you are not normal-looking because your skin feels more like an animate pile of rocks than anything outwardly human.
Thunderfoot, a homage to the character of Watership Down, is cursed in the Vertigo comic book series FABLES by a dark magician hare to change into a horrendous, disgusting form of a monster until he gets the love of a pretty hare. Actually Thunderfoot is the most awesome lad the readers may have seen. Ever. But his attempts to convince a hare of his awesomeness are constantly thwarted by their fearful cries of "MONSTER! Monster!"
Hellboy:
- Johann Krauss and his wife died during the Chengdou disaster; fortunately he was in the "Astral Plane" at the time. Now he's an effectively immortal cloud of mist, as long as he can find an empty "body" to inhabit. The Movie shows him pondering the difference between him and clockwork Implacable Man Kroenen.
- Abe Sapien was a human scientist who, while exploring an undersea ruin in the 1800s, became Touched by ~~Vorlons~~ an Eldritch Abomination after finding a mysterious "egg" that turned him into a fishman. Subverted in that he doesn't feel cursed. Usually.
In the comic Timespirits, Our Heroes encounter a dinosaur-descended space pirate who has supernatural luck. She can never fail to do anything she tries. And when Our Heroes offer to remove the "Curse of Success" she jumps at the chance. Because, as she puts it, "I am so incredibly bored!". So she gets her luck extracted and has the ordinary chance of success and failure of anyone else - which she considers a blessing.
Northstar from Alpha Flight. On the upside he gained superspeed, flight, and met his long lost twin sister. On the downside he’d trained from a small boy to be the best downhill skier he could and dreamed of winning championships and medals and gaining superpowers made all those long years of effort worthless and forced him to give up the sport he loved.
This certainly happens to Dr. Manhattan. Being the only person with god-like powers in the entire known universe is a plus. But he lost his humanity, not really caring about anything but science.
The Ghost Rider, nigh invulnerable, awesome bike, hellfire powers, serious, what's not to like? Oh, there's that.
Played with in Sillage. You would think that in a setting where everyone but the protagonist has psychic powers, to the point that she was not recognised as a person at first, that might be a bad thing. Turns out it means she's an excellent spy/special agent, because she cannot by psychically detected like everyone else.
Jessica Drew AKA Spider Woman can glide, shoot out bio electric blasts, attract guys with her pheromones, has super strength thanks to the uranium radiation given by her father since she was a child. Nice? Except for that uranium to work (otherwise she dies), she has to be aged much more rapidly. Oh and those pheromones? Thanks to that, women hate her instead. Only after training to control her powers does things start getting better...
How come Wolverine and his adamantium skeleton have not been mentioned yet?
In All Star Superman, Lex Luthor endangers a space fight, forcing Superman to fly too close to the sun in the process of rescuing them. The damage to his body leaves him with one year to live. On the upside, it boosts his powers and intelligence, and renders him immune to kryptonite, which helps him deal with all his final year's problems.

Wingfic (in which a character grows wings, wangsts about it and gets reassured by his Slash Fic partner) invariably causes Angst Dissonance because most readers think that having wings would be incredibly cool.

The 1999 version of The Mummy. Okay, Imhotep got eaten alive by scarabs and had to slumber for a few thousand years, but once released he became an immortal, invincible badass.
- And, the people who cursed him, and their descendants, were then forced to spend those thousands of years guarding his tomb, waging war on anyone who tried to open it, to prevent the badass from coming out. They thought the Egyptian afterlife was too good for him, but really, it would have been much easier to just kill him. The protagonists even directly state "cursing people just seems to make them stronger, why not just kill them?"
- On the other hand, the DVD reveals that Imhotep was apparently conscious the whole time, in eternal agony because the pain from having his flesh eaten by scarabs never went away. Ouch.
- In The Mummy Returns, the Scorpion King is cursed to serve the god Anubis for eternity. And as part of this curse, he becomes a humanoid scorpion, only killable by a certain weapon, and 5000 years later is set to revive and conquer the world unless stopped.
- This was averted in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. The Emperor already had superpowers while he was alive, the curse just turned him into a terracotta corpse.
The main character from Shallow Hal is hypnotized to see a person's inner self. While everyone around him is baffled that he starts hitting on unattractive women, they appear as supermodels to him.
The premise for Phenomenon. John Travolta's character gains extraordinary mental powers as well as telekinesis all caused by a brain cancer that activates normally dormant regions of the brain. His first big problem is finding out why he got this power—since it scares the locals, it makes his personal life harder than it used to be (he's from a small town). Once he finds out, he takes it much better—yes, he takes a brain cancer that kills him in less than two years, and the inconveniences that go with treating such a cancer, much more peacefully than ostracism.
In all three Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man is constantly whining about how "cursed" he is. In fact the only time he isn't whining about something is when he has the Symbiote suit, which enhanced his powers and made him far more badass, and therefore, cool. After he loses it he seems to be even more whiny and grating.
- With Spidey, his resentment isn't so much about having superpowers themselves, but rather that he resents the responsibilities he feels he has to constantly live up to. Plus it really only kicks in when the rest of his life is going down the drain too. At the start of the third movie, he's keeping his life well balanced and as such, he actually enjoys being Spider-Man.
In the classic Disney film Beauty and the Beast the Beast is constantly whimpering about how ugly he is. This troper can come up with a million cool things that a 250 cm 300 kg bear with buffalo horns could do.
- It may be awesome for him, but what about all the servants who are turned into anthropomorphic furniture and knicknacks?
- Doesn't the intro state that Beast was very vain as a human? The curse was being turned into some ugly creature. Also, he feels he has no chance of breaking the curse in time.
Pirates Of The Caribbean has a crew of unkillable zombie pirates. They spend the entire movie trying to become killable again. This is fortunate for our heroes, who want to kill them.
- Because they're completely trapped in their pain. They can't satisfy their hunger, thirst or any other needs. You know how you feel when you haven't eaten all day? When you've just gone on a hike and are seriously tired and dehydrated. When you've just held your breath for as long as you can? Well, multiply that by a thousand, then imagine feeling that for eternity.
Jason Bourne in The Bourne Series has had mad assassin training and can read every map, drive every vehicle, speak every language, fire every weapon, can enter anywhere and kill anyone with anything. All that for the little price of his free will, however.
At the end of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, out of all the bad kids Violet is let off the most easy. She's pleased to find that she's much more flexible after becoming a blueberry and then getting juiced. Only her mother is bothered that she's still blue.
The plot of Monsters vs. Aliens revolves around this trope.

In Christian folklore, the Wandering Jew is ostensibly "cursed" with eternal—or at least unnaturally long—life for taunting Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion.
- For Christians, this is a curse because the after-life is a pretty cool place to be if you're a Christian, and the whole point of Christianity is coming back from the dead anyway. Undeath is different than eternal life in this sense; the Wandering Jew is cursed because Earth can be a pretty crappy place to stay, and he never gets to go to Heaven.

Vampirism is often an example of Cursed With Awesome, depending on how Your Vampires Are Different. Potential upsides: immortality, super-strength, shape shifting, hypnotic powers, or sometimes just open-ended Functional Magic. Potential downsides: parasitic dependency, social isolation, inability to endure daylight, addictive cravings and/or psychotic need to kill, various Kryptonite Factors, demonic or even decayed appearance, and loss of one's soul (whatever that may mean in your reality). Whether one is merely cursed or actually Cursed With Awesome depends on how much from Column A you get relative to Column B.
- The webcomic Sluggy Freelance spoofs this (and Anne Rice's vampires in specific) in this exchange◊.
- The comedy Love At First Bite also ends with Cindy Sondheim agreeing to become a vampire because it was pretty awesome. Also, she fell in love with Count Dracula.
- Interestingly, in Christopher Moore's You Suck, a woman loves being a vampire because she no longer has to be afraid of other people, whereas her boyfriend, whom she turns into one to be with her, realizes he hates having to suck blood and not being able to go out during the day.
  - It's even better when you realise why they take it so differently: the girl had been a living accessory to rich, powerful men all her life, with no real skills, ambitions or capabilities. As a vampire, she is finally important and powerful by default, which is like a dream come true. Her boyfriend, however, despite being a 100-pound-nothing weakling, always knew what he wanted to be and had the guts to leave his home (with his family's blessing) and strike out on his own, taking most things that happen to him with pretty good humour. So vampirism really has nothing to offer to him, it just takes away the things he already had and liked.
- The vampires in Twilight "suffer" this to the extreme. Yeah, they have to drink blood and they can't go out in sunlight, but they also get Super Strength, Super Speed, super-attractiveness, skin as hard as diamonds, and the only the way they can be fully destroyed is by tearing them apart and burning the pieces. Oh, and the reason they can't go out in sunlight isn't because they'll burn up... it's because their skin sparkles. If they live in an area where the weather is usually overcast, like the Olympic Peninsula, they can go outside whenever they feel like it. And the blood they drink doesn't have to be human blood... the Cullens subsist on animal blood.
  - And hey guys, Twilightverse vampirism doesn't affect your sperm viability!
  - SMeyer fails at science, among other things.
The same thing could go for werewolves, though again, Your Mileage May Vary.
- Similar to the vampires above, the werewolves in Twilight (who are actually not "true" werewolves, but shapeshifters who can only take a wolf form) actually don't have a bad deal at all. They gain increased height and musculature for their age, heal super fast, and don't grow old as long as they "phase" into their wolf forms regularly. In return, all they have to do is keep their tribe's territory safe from vampires. Their only disadvantage seems to be difficulty controlling their phasing into wolf form at first.
  - Leah, the only female werewolf in the history of the Quileute tribe, has her own specific awesome curse. In Breaking Dawn she complains that her werewolf transformation has made her "20 and menopausal." So...wait. She has all the positive effects of the birth control pill with none of the negative effects, with the added bonus that she heals super-fast and can turn into a Big Badass Wolf whenever she wants?
  - Actually its more about the fact that according to Sam (her ex-boyfriend) imprinting is for reproduction and since he imprinted on her cousin and left her, she assumes that he didn't imprinted on her because she won't be able to reproduce and that also no one else will ever imprint on her. So its not about the menopausal but her broken heart. Her fans hope that Sam will be proven wrong about this on next installments.
  - Allow us to clarify: she complains about a simple lack of a period as if it were menopause. Because clearly life is awful unless you involuntarily bleed from your uterus every month.
  - Of course, the werewolf's pack-continuation scheme will probably restart her period as soon as she imprints. (Saves eggs that way.)
Quite a few characters inflicted with Animorphism will bemoan their fates so Wangstily when they are turned into things like swans, bears, or dragons, you wonder how they'd react if they were turned into worms.
Let us not forget the Animorphs themselves. Tobias flat out calls Morphing "the Andalite's Curse". After a while it seems as though anyone who has a power is bound and determined never to enjoy it. Then again, they are consequently involved in a lonely war against alien invaders, and Tobias's lifespan is greatly shortened in his hawk form (though he always has the option of Mode Locking himself in human form).
In the Legend of the Five Rings fiction, Bayushi Tangen lived his life in shame because of what he viewed as a curse. What was the curse you ask... he was so lucky, the Gods would smile on him and allow even the most poorly thought out, suicidal plan to work perfectly. At one point, he defeated an entire enemy army because a tower fell on their archers, and a bolt of lightning struck their general just as he was about to kill Tangen. There is a drawback - nothing he ever does will be his accomplishment, because his luck does everything for him.
- This ability sort of gets passed on to his students, the Bitter Lies swordsmen, to the point that enemy armies are more afraid of facing a single Bitter Lies samurai than a Scorpion Clan army.
You would think that an item that made every woman in the world want to tear off your clothes and have you take them would be a blessing. Read the beginning of The Woad to Wuin, the second book in the Sir Apropos Of Nothing trilogy, and disavow yourself of that notion.
- That depends... can you turn it off? If not, that would be the Midas curse.
- A far better example is the main plot to the second half of the book, where Apropos gains a gem in his chest that makes him indestructible... and gives him delusions of grandeur that turns him from an Anti Hero to a full-blown Big Bad.
In George Macdonald's pretty fairy tale The Light Princess, a vengeful witch curses a baby, upon her baptism, to have no gravity — she is completely weightless, gets to pretty much levitate whenever she pleases, and, as a baby, causes many awkward explanations on the part of her parents. However, in an interesting twist, she thinks that the curse is a rollicking good joke — another aspect of the curse is that she also loses her mental gravity and is unable to take anything seriously. The very fact that she can't comprehend sadness, of course, makes her parents even more miserable.
In I Want To Go Home by Gordon Korman, Rudy is a kid who can do anything easily and perfectly. This makes him terminally bored with everything they make him do at summer camp.
The title character of A Nameless Witch is cursed to be beautiful, unaging (undead), and has magic powers. But since she's a witch, she goes around in disguise looking as ugly as she can manage. Bad side effect: she's so good looking because the curse makes her a literal man-eater... or at least, she desperately wants to eat anyone she loves.
In the Tamuli trilogy by David Eddings, the Delphae are cursed by their God with a horrifically gruesome death touch, and a glow that warns others not to touch them. Since both also come with an off-switch, and since the power eventually evolves into greater magical abilities, the Knights are a bit stumped as to why it's called a "curse", until the Behelliom explains that there's a literal difference between a blessing and a curse- a blessing's radiance makes those blessed easily detected by anyone who could sense magic, but curses are, by their very nature, concealing, and actually dampen the "sound" of magic near them. Since the Delphae are trying to hide from the rest of mankind a curse was the most suitable. ...which kinda makes it a curse In Name Only.
Garion in The Belgariad. He's The Chosen One, and he spends most of the series asking "Why me?" He is a sorcerer- sorcerers work by using the Will and the Word (they direct their will at something and speak the word to make it happen.) Although it's pretty awesome as to what he can do, in Queen Of Sorcery, he believes himself to be a Complete Monster after he burns the killer of his parents to death using sorcery.
Tuck Everlasting 's premise is about what a curse it is to be immortal. Granted, the family does seem pretty upset about it, but that's because they're not taking advantage of it.
Similar to the above, The Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges also argues that immortality would lead its possessors to become apathetic: in an infinitely long life everyone does everything and becomes everything, so why do anything?
People descended from the Meyerdahl Beta wave of genetic modification in the Honor Harrington verse (including the eponymous protagonist) are faster, stronger and gain an intelligence boost, but anytime it comes up the heroine seems to fixate on her increased need for food (from the enhanced metabolism) and the fact that approximately a 3rd of them don't regenerate well (which is only an issue for the main character because she has a propensity towards getting mutilated in the line of duty).
- She doesn't really fixate on her need to eat a lot that much. In fact it's clearly shown as having upsides too. But it is one of telltale signs of being a "genie" (genetically modified human) and being known as one isn't career-enhancing, even in Manticore (where all the monarchs were genies) because of certain events of the Final War.
- And it was a problem. When Harrington was captured by The Bad Guys, she was kept on ordinary rations. They didn't know of her special metabolism, so while she was imprisoned, she was slowly dying of malnutrition.
You'd think that having a marked tendency to break—accidentally—every third thing you touch would count as a curse. The protagonist of Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians certainly does. But what if you learned this "curse" extended to breaking doors that you need to get through, or your grandfather's restraints, or that gun the villain is about to shoot you with ...
Winter Celchu (introduced in the Star Wars Expanded Universe Thrawn novels and subsequently featuring in the X-Wing comics) has a perfect memory, which leads to a curious case of both Cursed With Awesome and Blessed With Suck: 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, but the pain of such horrible things as the destruction of her homeworld Alderaan never fades. She's very pragmatic about the ability, though.
Erast Fandorin was Born Lucky, and so always wins at gambling games. He utterly hates it, though it has been a huge help to him on many occasions.
Somewhat subverted with Jaenelle from the Black Jewels trilogy; she's the newest and one of the most powerful incarnations of Witch in the history of the Blood, capable of things no one else had even dreamed of—but she has extremely legitimate reasons to wish she was rid of it. Her family, psychically aware of each other like all of the blood, sense that she's different; it creeps the hell out of them and causes them to send her to Briarwood, a hospital for 'odd' high born girls that is actually a playground for pedophiles.
Elva of the Inheritance Cycle is originally purely Blessed With Suck. However, she figures out very quickly how to use her empathetic abilities to her advantage, eventually becoming a Manipulative Bastard antiheroine.

The Gypsy curse on Angel in Buffy The Vampire Slayer seems to fall under this; Angel fights the good fight because he is 'cursed' with a soul, which torments him and causes him to seek redemption. Experiencing happiness unleashes the bad guy.
- The Slayer tradition itself is often viewed by Buffy as being something of a curse, which prompts much complaining about it; however, the angst that comes with this example is a bit less excusable, given that it has resulted in her being, as Faith puts it, a "hot chick with superpowers". As a result, whilst it does bring genuine hardship into her life at times, Buffy can nevertheless look pretty whiny about it.
Expertly parodied on That Mitchell And Webb Look, in a sketch with a man tormented by the negative ramifications of the superpowers he has kept hidden from the world since his childhood. The powers? Levitating biscuits.
Heroes touches on this a lot. Chronologically, the first offender was Brian Davis, who wished he didn't have his powers. He gets his wish when Sylar kills him. Most other characters are somewhat angsty about the consequences of their powers, but quickly learn to make use of them.
- But some cry about it throughout the entire series. Such as Claire Bennet: her ability is regeneration, and she cries about it nearly all throughout season one, mourning how she's the freakshow of the cheerleaders, despite the fact that nobody except for a very select few friends and family knows about her ability, nor is her ability all that apparent unless she severely wounds herself in plain sight. Then in season two, it gets even worse, because she cries that she can't go around showing her ability and how restrained she feels. Nevermind the fact that the only way to show her ability to others is by injuring herself. Nevermind the fact that all she has to do in order to avoid suspiscion is lay off her masochistic tendencies. Then she cries the company might find her, because they'll run tests on her and stuff, poking and prodding her. She cries about this too, even though it seems that's all she wants to do to herself; seriously if you find an episode with Claire in it that doesn't involve a suicide attempt or self mutilation, you get a cookie.
  - As if that weren't enough, in season 3 she discovers that she can't feel pain anymore — and is grief-stricken over it, as apparently it takes all the fun out of her self-mutilation hobbies. At one point she actually mentions this to Elle, whose Power Incontinence is causing her to suffer horrific agony, and is, needless to say, not pleased to hear it. In fact, her bitching comes across as Narm when you consider the powers others have. Such as Ted and Maya, who kill their loved ones by feeling emotion. Oh poor Claire, she really has it rough, being immortal and feeling no pain. Not to mention the holy grail of cheerleaders everywhere, having to live eternally with super smooth skin that WILL NEVER SCAR and a youthful body that will never grow old...So Yeah...
  - Yeah, but on the other hand, Who Wants To Live Forever? Sylar made a conscious choice to be immortal, but Claire knows she's going to outlive her family, friends, and everyone she cares about—over and over and over. There's a reason Adam wanted to kill off most of the world; after four hundred years of watching humans be bastards he was pretty damn tired of it. And so far the only other (currently living) person who shares her immortality is...Sylar. I'd be pretty pissed, too.
  - During Volume 4, her power reveals an unfortunate side effect: Alcohol has no effect on her. That's right, an eternity of being the Designated Driver.
Clark Kent on Smallville, constantly whines and angsts about how terrible it is to be an alien "outsider" with such and awful secret. Yep, an outsider with: two unbelievably loving parents, some awesome best friends who are totally supportive when they eventually learn his secret (and one's a hottie that's totally in love with him to boot), an acceptable level of baseline popularity in school, gets to looks like Tom goddamn Welling so most chicks think he's hot-as... oh and the small matter of developing a wide array of earth-shattering superpowers that make him a virtually unkillable demigod. Yeah, boo-frikkety-hoo, Clark; cry me a river... If it weren't for kryptonite it would be win-win-win.
- Admittedly, his whining becomes slightly more justified in later seasons as some people he loves die or move away, his would-be OTP starts getting really screwy, and increasingly more dangerous and determined adversaries are pitted against him. Still, you wish you could just tell him that a few years down the track he'll get the hot chick, be the universally beloved protector of the planet, hang out with a bunch of super buddies etc... SO JUST PUT A SOCK IN IT!
Subverted in Reaper. At first it seems like the devil owning Sam's soul looks like the best thing that's ever happened to him: he gets a cool job as a hunter of escaped souls, powers specially designed for each soul so he shouldn't have too much trouble with them, and the big guy's inside advice on how to get laid. However, the devil also occasionally screws with Sam's life just for the hell of it, and he can't say anything about it to the girl he really loves since it would jeopardize her ownership of her own soul.
Averted in Stargate Atlantis. At first, Teyla is understandably freaked out when she learns her telepathic abilities stem from the fact she's part Wraith. However, being a no-nonsense Action Girl, she quickly comes to terms with her background and quickly sets out trying to figure how she can use it against the Wraith.
Dead Like Me: The protagonists are given immortality, invincibility, evidence of a divine plan, and knowledge of the afterlife. They have the time to pursue every dream they ever had in life, and then will get to go off to an afterlife that looks pretty sweet. The only catches are that they lost their old lives (which they lost by dying), and that they have to keep a lot of appointments. Instead, most of the show is spent on whining.
- They don't know how long it'll be before they get an afterlife (Rube waited upwards of 80 years), during which time they have to deal with never being able to truly interact with their loved ones again, knowing that they're in pain over their death and being unable to live their own life and forced to start fresh from scratch. And yes, they can pursue any dream they want— as long as it doesn't make them noticeably rich, famous, popular, powerful, or take them away from their reaper cell for longer than a few days. Oh, and they have to change identities fairly often so that people around them don't notice that they don't age, and on top of that, they don't even get to keep their own appearance to the outside world (except on Halloween).
To some extent, David Banner of The Incredible Hulk. Turning into a green raging behemoth whenever you get angry is pretty lousy, yes, but as played on the show it nearly always kicked in to save him or someone else from life-threatening danger.
Openly addressed in the first episode of Being Human. "How noble of you to take on the curse of immortality so that your friends could wither and decay in hospitals and old people's homes..."
The Charmed Ones from Charmed seem to fit this. For the first three series they don't half go on about being spectacularly powerful witches (especially Piper) and are all somewhat inclined towards giving up their powers if given the chance (especially Piper...) in fact, they only stop complaining about their abilities (to freeze time or move things with their mind/astrally project or see into the future/levitate) in order to use them to save the day from demon of the week.
Acknowledged in the promotional ads for The Listener, about a guy who can hear people's thoughts: he used to think his power was a curse, but he's figured out a way to save people with it.
Although Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood doesn't spend a lot of time bemoaning the fact that he can't die, he has clearly found the drawbacks to it, and there is a fair amount of subtext. He also has to watch almost all his friends, his lover, and at least one member of his family die, then step up and fix everything anyway. He's sort of expected to be emotionless - not cold, just unable to be emotionally hurt or depressed. This, ironically, has got to be depressing.
SaturdayNightLive: in one skit, a man is cursed to summon a sexy sax player named Sergio who immediately invokes everyone around him to dance.

Norse Mythology has the story of Nornagest, a person who, as an infant, was going to be given blessings from the Norns (the Norse goddesses of Fate), but his parents angered one, who, instead of a blessing, gave him the "curse" that he would die when a specific candle finished burning. They manage to turn this "curse" into a blessing by putting out the candle so it would never "finish" burning... until he is forced to light it again three hundred years later.
- A similar story from Scotland (I think) features three witches, a baby, and a piece of peat. No one told the baby, and on her wedding day she found the piece of peat and tossed it on the fire.
- The Greek equivalent of that story was named Meleager. The Fates appeared to his mother and told her that he would only live as long as a certain stick in the fire remained unburned. Then when Meleager "accidentally" kills two of his brothers, his mom goes insane and burns the stick, which results in him horribly melting in the arms of his wife-to-be Atalanta.
In a Greco-Roman myth recorded by Ovid in Metamorphoses a man named Lycaeon is turned into a wolf as divine punishment for being a cannibal and serving human flesh to the gods. It's strongly implied that he was happier in this form than as a human.
In Greek Mythology, Scylla was a nymph cursed to become one of the most powerful and feared monsters in existence, making this Older Than Dirt. She also raised bemoaning her fate to an art form few since have matched, deciding that if she couldn't be beautiful anymore, she'd stay in the spot she was transformed for the rest of her life, devouring anyone who came near.
- Having around six wild dogs attached to you, may explain the whole 'devouring people' deal though.

The "curse" of lycanthropy in Dungeons & Dragons, 3.5 Ed., once the afflicted player character succeeds on a Wisdom check of moderate difficulty. See here.
Point buy based systems tend to allow your character to gain extra points to buy powers if you take disadvantages. Some of the more munchkin-prone players enjoy picking "drawbacks" that may lack a certain sting. "Berserker" may turn you into a rage-driven killing machine that causes you to attempt to destroy anything that crosses your line of sight... but if you're a combat maniac, that just means there are so many more things you can kill!
- Besides, "Lunatic that kills everything in sight" is half the definition of adventurer in the first place. (The other half is taking their stuff afterwards.)
- Also as our group found out the hard way, you don't want to fight an npc with "flaw". Nothing better than someone getting up and going apeshit after you've dealt enough damage to kill a human.
Some players have turned some 'cursed' items to their advantage embracing this trope. The greatest example was the classic D&D Sword -1 Cursed, a Clingy Mac Guffin which would, no matter what you did to get rid of it, would reappear in your hand when combat began. Many did not see a disadvantage of dealing with a -1 penalty for a weapon which was always available. This would eventually make an appearance in one of the Ravenloft novels in the hands of a villain.
Speaking of Ravenloft, each domain—a subsection of the plane—is ruled, at least in part, by a darklord, an incredibly evil indiviual, though not always an unsympathetic one. They get all sorts of shiny powers out of the deal, but in also earns them a curse-which, in and of itself, is personally tailored to the person so that, it wouldn't be so bad for anyone else, but the darklord's personality makes it so that it becomes unberable.
- And let's not forget the demon lord Baphomet, who was supposedly either a human or an animal (presumably a bull, given his minotaur links) "cursed" to be a super-powerful demon lord ruling an entire layer of the Abyss and building his own monsters.
Depending on how the P Cs swing, any World Of Darkness game can turn into this.
Given that the world of Exalted has the Immaculate Order, an entire religion devoted to demonizing the Celestial Exalted, it's entirely possible for a Solar or Lunar with Immaculate sympathies to view having become an incredibly powerful demigod as a curse. (Terrestrials are venerated by the Order, and Sidereals a) have been forgotten by most of Creation, including the Order, and b) are recruited, trained, and disabused of any innaccurate notions about Exaltation and the world in general within days of the Second Breath.)
If you're really lucky in Warhammer 40000, you'll end up like this. Example: The closest thing to retirement a Space Marine might ever get is having their mangled, mortally wounded body put on life support and encased in a Dreadnought, a heavily armed walking tank, for thousands of years. Getting to blow shit up from beyond the grave, and sleeping the rest of the time, seems pretty cool.
- There's one tale Orks tell of a warband that ventured into the Eye of Terror, ending up on a demon world where they were all slaughtered... only to be raised again every morning to keep fighting, for the Blood God. Orks consider this heaven.

All Spartans in the Halo series. Their creator feels she did this, but they can tell it's awesome. Kidnapped at the age of six, given Training From Hell, given augmentations which killed or made useless in combat most of them, but the rest became godly badasses.
- That said, a greater than 50% chance of being dead or disabled by your twenties, plus more or less a lifetime of military service against Scary Dogmatic Aliens and The Virus does seem to be a downer, even if you can punch through a tank with your bare hands.
In at least two of The Legend Of Zelda games, you wake a sleeping imp, who curses you for your impudence by halving your magic... although what he actually does is halve your magic cost, effectively doubling your magic. Thanks, buddy!
- That's just Link to the Past. Or does that happen in another one? Also, in Link's Awakening, a similar imp "curses" Link with greater inventory room, the idea being that Link now has to carry more stuff, and does this three times.
- And let's not forget our good friend Wolf Link, who appears when when Link goes into an area covered with twilight, and not only makes a few things a bit simpler, but also has the ability to warp. Although it's played a bit more straight later, when Zant acutally does curse Link, locking him in wolf form. When you get the curse removed (and now at your disposal), Midna lampshades the fact that the curse has turned out to be quite useful.
- In Spirit Tracks, Princess Zelda is cursed into being a ghost. This allows her to fly, turn into a fairy-orb and possess Phantoms, effectively making her physically stronger than she was when she was actually, well, physical.
Lampshade Hanging in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: In order to receive certain (required) abilities, Mario must open locked chests containing demons that dramatically "curse" him with the ability to turn sideways, fold into a paper airplane, etc. By the fourth one, Mario can see where things are headed and tells the chest to get on with the cursing. The chest expresses disappointment at not being able to perform his big scene. These demons were originally the legendary heroes who sealed the true villain and fell to its curse. They're forced to be "dark", but found a loophole in how being "dark" is interpreted.
- And the one in the third chest comes out and says what the curse really is, in a sort of... pseudo-deception?
The Corrupt state in Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones would, in the short term, seem to fall under this heading, if nothing else because it grants the Prince frightfully powerful killing skills... but... Unfortunately, if you don't get your ass to some water soon or keep killing things, you die. And of course there is an initially helpful but very evil voice talking in your head.
- The Sand Wraith form in The Warrior Within plays this trope straighter. The Mask of the Sand Wraith displaces its user in time a few hours, allowing them to meet themselves in the past to avert some unpleasent fate. The mask comes off when the "past" version dies, so you have to end up killing yourself. In gameplay terms, while playing as the Sand Wraith, your health is slowly depleted. While the may sound bad at first, it only depletes to about a quarter of your original health bar. This is at least enough to survive one solid hit from pretty much anything in the game (during the time you use the form). Add on to that the fact that your sand tanks regenerate at a steady rate, and any competent player using this form becomes borderline unkillable because you can just rewind time to heal the tiny bit of health you have.
In Pokémon Gold and Silver (and later versions), as an extremely rare occurrence, Pokémon may be infected with Pokérus. This highly infectious disease cannot be cured, though the affected Pokémon will heal naturally in 24 hours of active duty. What does this horrible disease do, you ask? They make your Pokémon grow twice as fast than normal, even after the disease goes away. (It's actually a bit more complicated than that, but that's the upshot.) For this reason, players do well to make sure the disease keeps spreading among their Pokémon.
- On the subject of Pokemon, the hero in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon never seems to find being turned into a Pokemon really awesome (seeing all the cool powers and stuff they have). However, the hero also rarely ever mentions a desire to go back to human form...
In Kingdom Hearts II, occasionally, when you attempt to use one of the first three Drive forms Sora gets, you can activate AntiForm, which is Sora's connection to being turned into a Heartless once. It comes with dramatically increased agility, the ability to perform absurdly fast and powerful combos that can range across the screen, and of course black, wispy tendrils from your outfit and your hair. The downside? The complete inability to heal while the form is active, plus the inability to gain experience while in the form. Thus, while it's incredibly powerful, there are often very good reasons to want to avoid it.
- Repeatedly activating the Anti-Form is the second condition to unlocking Sora's final (and strongest) Drive form, aptly named Final Form. The first condition is to have seen Sora's battle against Roxas. Only after that scene can you try to attempt to earn Final Form. When you try to take a Drive form while meeting the conditions to go into Anti-Form, there's a small chance that, if you were going to go into Anti-Form, you'll go into Final Form (and the chance increases each time you go into Anti-Form instead), and Final Form can then be selected at will. Also, you will NEVER go into Anti-Form when trying to go into Final Form, no matter what. Now THAT'S Cursed With Awesome.
Terra in Final Fantasy VI. She considers her magic a curse because it distances herself from others and she fears she may never truly connect with other people. In the meantime, she's the only half-Esper in the world and as such is more or less a demi-god. In fact, until the Big Bad turns himself into a full-fledged god, Terra is arguably the strongest mage on the planet.
Vincent in Final Fantasy VII. He let the chick he was crushing on let her boyfriend turn her into a science project, and when he objected he got turned into one too. He considers it a fitting punishment. The experiments have made him immortal, so he gets to spend eternity in his late 20s, and allow him to transform into various demons that can kill normal enemies in a single hit.
Sorceresses in Final Fantasy VIII. Sorceresses are descended from the guy who created the world, according to myth anyway. They're the only humans who can innately use magic, and their magic is much stronger than the "para-magic" other people use. But because their powers are so great, they're almost universally treated with fear and hatred.
Ashton Anchors, in Star Ocean: The Second Story/Evolution, is cursed by a two-heads dragon, attaching them onto the unlucky warrior. If at first it looks terrible (two dragon heads protuding from his back aren't exactly pretty) they are quite useful in battle. Unfortunately, they do have minds of their own, and thus he has little control over them. (In the anime version, they're prone to seizing control of his body, turning him into a Bad Ass... but he can never remember it afterwards.)
- If you do his optional quest, he later realizes he ultimately likes the two little dragons. His real curse though seems to be his absolutely abysmal luck, of which the dragons are just one of the results.
The main character in Dragon Quest VIII survived the curse placed on Trodain due to a curse placed on him as a baby, that had the side effect of making the cursed immune to any other curses. In an odd subversion of Gameplay And Story Segregation, this even makes him immune to the status effect "Cursed".
The protagonist of Baldurs Gate I and II (and his brother) is "cursed" with supernatural powers due to being descended from an evil god. Depending on which character alignment the player picks at character creature, and on later choices during the game, the character's divine powers differ and grow. "Good" characters may view the ability to destroy the universe as a curse, evil ones probably don't.
- The Slayer form initially seems to be rocking, since after all you can turn into an ungodly powerful machine of death and destruction, but it has a really harsh draw back in that if the protagonist stays in it any longer than about half a minute they die and instead fuel the rebirth of Baal.
Nero's arm in Devil May Cry 4 is demonic, which makes him go to great lengths to hide it from his fellow demon slayers. He's also not happy with the fact that he has a demonic arm, but in all honesty, it's the main reason why he's such a Bad Ass, since it bestows all kinds of asskicking powers to Nero that Dante simply can't match.
- In Nero's case it's not really a curse (he activated it himself through strong desire to save someone else) and the reason he hides it is because, well, he's a member of demon slayers who will kill him if they see it. But he never once wished for it to go away. He even says he would gladly accept the exile of becoming a full demon as long as he could still protect Kyrie.
In Drakengard, there is an idiosyncratic price a human in a pact with some eldritch creature has to pay for that creature's services. Caim and Leonard have obvious curses - they have lost their voice and sight respectively - but Seere loses his "time", making him immortal. While it is arguable that no one wants to live forever (especially as a six year old child), Seere has already lost anyone dear to him by this point, and it is very hard to say this is a real, immediate curse compared to the others. The hierarch Verdelet also isn't very cursed, since all he lost was his body hair; unfortunately, his condition isn't very awesome either since his dragon pact-partner happens to be petrified.
- Seere's condition normally would be considered awesome until you take into account that there is a pedophile in the party...
- Drakengard II gets some of this, too. The knight generals all have pact partners. One lost her appeal, and is now repulsive in all aspects, making anyone who meets her immediately loathe her. One lost his sense of taste, and now spends much of his time gluttonously stuffing himself in a futile attempt to regain the pleasures of eating. And one lost... his masculinity. "Becoming incredibly effeminate" isn't exactly a huge curse compared to some of the others in the series, or even in the same game.
Both Kain and Raziel from the Legacy Of Kain series get this, but Raziel is doubly cursed with awesome - first for being a vampire, and second by being thrown into a maelstrom of ~~acid~~ water and turned into a vampire-hunting soul wraith. As a result he loses many of his vampiric weaknesses, such as his aversion to water, weakness in sunlight and need to drink blood, while still keeping his useful abilities, like super-strength and (limited) flight.
In Net Hack, many "cursed" items can be helpful if applied right, for example a cursed genocide scroll will create monsters instead of kill them, allowing for many useful tactics, such as nurse dancing. (Nurses will raise your HP maximum if they attack you when you have no armor on, surround yourself with lots of nurses and... works best on no teleport levels, so the nurses can't flee.)
In Morrowind, it's possible to contract Corprus disease, an incurable illness which disfigures the flesh of its victim. It increases your strength and makes you immune to disease, but reduces your intelligence and makes people disgusted by the sight of you. In addition, it can lead you to a quest where you seek out a wizard who is working on a cure for Corprus. If you volunteer to be his test subject, he'll succeed in removing the negative side effects of Corprus, as well as the strength boost, though as he tells you, he actually never made a cure and you still have Corprus. Incidentally, this leaves you with the immunity to disease, which is a prerequisite to becoming the Neravarine.
- The Corprus incident is even MORE awesome because it effectively makes him immortal if not killed in battle. As the prophecy puts it, neither blight nor age can harm him/The Curse-of-Flesh before him flies'; Curse-of-Flesh is the prophetic name for Corprus. Apparently he doesn't infect others with the original disease, either - that would be Blessed With Suck.
- Likewise in Oblivion the player can be turned into a vampire by contracting the disease from fighting other vampires. There's a relatively lengthy sidequest to get a cure, but most players won't use the cure even after getting it because the free powers gained from vampirism greatly outweigh the disadvantages.
- Daggerfall had lycanthropy. Becoming a lycanthrope granted stat boosts at night in exchange for uncontrollable bloodlusts every week or so. Thing is, "stat boosts at night" translated as "your character is a nocturnal god" and "weekly bloodlusts" translated as "a piss-easy quest to get a ring that satisfies them."
Adelle of Final Fantasy Tactics A 2, as well as a few other characters are Gifted, which grants them unique powers and nigh immortality, but not all can control it. Adelle initially agonizes over it after her village was wiped out by a plague that didn't affect her. It's also something that makes her desirable by the bad guys, with her consent or not. Many of the other Gifted are outcasts of one kind or another, either because people don't trust them or because of their own desire. Lennart for example states that he couldn't bear being friends with normal people that die within a normal lifespan anymore. She feels that she's been Blessed With Suck at first, but as she meets other Gifted and is given their power for her unique class (Heritor), she comes to realize it's not so bad after all—which allows her to release her own Gift—"the power of life, in all its forms and splendor".
In Metal Slug 3's second stage, getting attacked by a zombie turns you into a zetta slow zombie... but in return, you become immune to human attacks and you gain a special attack in which you vomit a powerful blast of blood.
And for that matter, Zombie status in Final Fantasy X. While your character does convert HP restoration to damage, attacks with drain effects will now heal, while the user takes damage instead, and your character becomes immune to instant KO. There is actually an aquatic sea serpent zombie form of a boss you fight previously in the game who has this effect constantly. And there is an item that brings you back to life with full health. Healing items are useable against enemy monsters. So So Yeah in that case, it's sort of a Blessed With Suck sort of thing if you happen to have a spar Mega Phoenix Down or two normal Phoenix Downs.
- Zombie is only a true case of Cursed With Awesome in one boss fight, in which your enemy casts a high-percentage, multi-targetting instant death attack that will very likely kill you if nobody in your party is not a zombie. In any other situation it's more like Blessed With Suck, as two different bosses (one of which is the above example) will inflict the status upon you and then try to cast healing or life-based spells to kill you instantly.
In F-Zero X, machines with E-ranked grip aren't that bad... in fact, using one allows you to (ab)use several Game Breakers that will let you take massive shortcuts and gain ridiculous bursts of speed.
Fortune from Metal Gear Solid 2 cannot be hit by bullets or rockets, and grenades fizzle out when near her, and all she can do is moan about how she can't die.
- Considering that she lost her entire close family and everyone she cares for in the course of two years, and anyone she develops any attachment for tends to follow suit (nearly happened to Vamp, except that he's Made Of Iron) I think we can cut her some slack.
When Samus defeats the Omega Pirate in Metroid Prime, it falls on her, "corrupting" her Power Suit into the Phazon Suit. The "beneficial side effects" (decreased damage and immunity to blue Phazon) from this corruption are all that the player ever experiences, and the only negative consequences show up in the sequel, in a bit of Ret Con. The Phazon corruption of Samus herself in Prime 3, on the other hand, has both ups and downs, in that she can use it to enter the very powerful Hypermode, which uses health as ammo and can lead to total corruption if not managed well.
Suikoden usually averts this trope; the drawbacks of the True Runes are in most cases genuinely horrifying. A couple of them have no real drawbacks, though (the Dragon Rune and the Gate Rune, for example); their bearers are essentially getting godlike power and immortality for free, so you have to wonder what they're complaining about.
In World Of Goo, when you encounter an "infected area" in Cyber Space, your first instinct is of course to go around it. But Guide Dang It, the "Grape Vine Virus" actually empowers your free-living projectile goo to cling to each other and form long chains.
The Nameless One in Planescape Torment is immortal, can regenerate and has some really cool powers as a result of his immortality, yet the entire goal of the game is to become mortal again. Then we find out there is a huge price for this: every time he dies he loses all his memories, someone else dies in his place and becomes a Shadow, and after enough deaths he will start to lose his mind.
Two-thirds into the plot, Sagi in Baten Kaitos Origins finds out that he is a product of the experiment that involved combining a human with a piece of evil gods to produce a man-made spiriter (the series' equivalent of the chosen one with legendary powers). While he turns into a demon due to witnessing the torture of his mother at one point, he becomes an all-powerful being once he learns to control the power of an evil god within him. From then on, he has no problem defeating villains who have been unstoppable up to that point.
- The extent to which this is a "curse" is debatable, since the extra power is at least partly The Power Of Friendship. After all, the piece of the "evil" god is actually the player. There's also a subversion: player choice can lead to a Non Standard Game Over (meaning it really is a curse).
Kubikiri Basara, first appearing in Samurai Shodown 3, is a ghost. In the living world, Basara can teleport through shadow, transform into a shadowy bat, and control his bladed disc with his mind. He wants his "accursed" existence to end so he can stay with his beloved Kagaribi in the afterlife. In his SS5 ending, he recovers a repressed memory: he, not Zankuro, had killed Kagaribi.
In Mega Man Battle Network 3, the bug associated with the BusterMAX program is basically Power Incontinence; it causes MegaMan to use all of his uploaded chips in rapid fire at the beginning of the turn, aiming and timing be damned. The Game FA Qs community held a contest to see who could produce the best character with that glitch as a stipulation. Most of them tried to work around the issue, but this troper is particularly proud of his contest winner, which combined chips that didn't really care about aiming (field control objects, defensive powerups, Geo Effects and so on) with a specific buster Charged Attack synergy strategy to transform the glitch into as much of an advantage as possible.
- There is another bug in Battle Network 4 where instead of firing of a powerful buster shot, you drop a rock cube onto the field in front of you. (This seems like Blessed With Suck, until you realize that chips like Poltergeist and the Junkman Soul Synchro both like objects on the field. Also, if timed correctly, an enemy running into a rock cube as it is created takes 100 damage and destroys the rock cube. This is better than most chips in the game.)
Corporal Matthew Kane of Quake 4 is captured and painfully transformed into a cyborg by the Strogg about halfway through the game, but he is rescued by his squadmates before the mind-controlling chip inserted into his brain during the "Stroggification" process can be activated. You can see the whole disturbing process here. Despite having most of his organic body crudely replaced with cybernetic parts, his increased strength, speed, and resistance to Strogg technology such as teleporters (which are instantly fatal to regular humans, as demonstrated when one soldier attempts to go through and it rips him in two) are huge bonuses - especially as his aforementioned resistance to teleporters and the like render him the only member of the Rhino Squad capable of destroying the enemy.
The hero in the platformer game Demon Returns in Game Center CX 2/Retro Game Challenge 2 seems to be a form of this: he's turned into a purple imp-like demon by the Big Bad of the game, but all it does is to give him sharp claws from which he can fire various elemental attacks when sufficiently powered up and the ability to use any enemies he runs across as his personal form of transportation. It does seem to hinder him in that he needs to consume apples constantly to stay alive, though.
Jak gains Dark Eco powers in Jak II: Renegade. Everyone else treats it like a curse: the Baron claims it's going to kill Jak, people who watch him in action are terrified, and Count Veger in Jak III concludes that because of it Jak is an abomination who deserves only death. Jak, on the other hand, seems to know exactly how much fun it's possible to have when you can rage everyone on the screen to death in one apocalyptic spray of purple lightning.
The Ghouls in Fallout were created by being subjected to a megadose of radiation during the Great War. The downside is that they look like the living dead and may eventually become feral. The upside is that they are healed by radiation and they can potentially live much longer than mere humans.
- Conversely, the Super Mutants are Blessed With Suck, considering how they're all former humans who were kidnapped and forcefully converted into Super Mutants by The Master on the grounds that existence as a Super Mutant was much better than existence as a mere human. Sure, you get super strength and significantly reduced aging. But you also lose all your memories (and in most cases, drop a few dozen IQ points). You also become instinctively mindlessly loyal to The Master and the Super Mutant horde. Plus, you're now sterile and look like ass (although not quite as badly as the ghouls).
Alicia's Valkyria powers in Valkyria Chronicles. There's a lot of wangst about how awful being a Valkyria is (because being impervious to bullets and capable of blowing up tanks with lasers is just so terrible when you're out to end a war, especially when you've been running around as a one-woman army the whole game) and how badly it messes her up, but her fears are hugely exaggerated in proportion to the actual possibility of any of them coming true. Selvaria is supposed to be an example of how bad it is to be a Valkyria because she's exploited for her powers and doomed to a hopeless one-sided love affair, but she chooses that fate for herself; ultimately there's no way for anyone to force a Valkyria do anything she doesn't want to do, but that doesn't stop Alicia deciding to freak out and kill herself with her newly-mastered powers to prove how much of a choice she doesn't have.
In the PC version of Powerslave (aka Exhumed in Europe), mummies sometimes launch a spell which turns the player into one of them for a few second - and he can launch a very powerful attack meanwhile.
Female lead Reimi Saionji in Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope was genetically enhanced as part of a project to enable humans to live on the nuclear-wasteland surface of Earth. She has a superhuman immune system and healing ability which even allows her to recover from having most of her body turned to stone. She feels guilty about it because as a little girl, she survived severe radiation poisoning when some of her friends didn't. This was agravated by the fact that she still felt the effects of the radiation poisoning as her body adjusted and she was then forced to listen to her friends parents rant about how she should have died with them.
In Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha Vs King Abaddon, its revealed that Gouto's role as The Mentor is meant to be a punishment for an unknown crime he committed. Because forcing him to help his descendents become true Summoners and protect the world from evil is ''such'' a bad thing.
In Odin Sphere, Oswald's adoptive father Melvin pledged Oswald's life to the queen of the Netherworld in exchange for granting her power to Oswald's weapon, the Belderiver. This grants Oswald the power of the Shadow Knight, making him an unstoppable Lightning Bruiser Anti Hero Badass with an activatable Super Powered Evil Side, making him easily the strongest Player Character (and he proves it). Unfortunately, it also means he is destined to die a horrible death which he does. Twice. and become a slave of the Queen of the Netherworld. Luckily for him, The Power Of Love is pretty much the ultimate force in the universe where he lives.
Ciel of Tsukihime has Nigh Invulnerability so long as the vampire Roa remains alive thanks to the world itself, which will not let her die because technically, Ciel = Roa = Alive, and her death would be a paradox. Despite how incredibly useful this is in her line of work, she is dedicated to destroying Roa. Of course, she does have her reasons...
Alex Mercer from Prototype begins the game furious and vengeful concerning his condition which lets him run up walls, glide, pick up cars, become immune to falling damage and be generally nigh-invincible.
- I think it had more to do with the fact that he couldn't remember anything and that Blackwatch freaking shot him when he was unarmed and apparently defenseless. Then they flew after him in a helicopter and kept shooting at him until he managed to destroy them, then they went after his sister.
In it's current form (which could change) the Curse of the Worgen from World Of Warcraft is cured of it's nasty part right off the bat. You can turn into a human when not fighting, and just live a normal life.
- Also from World Of Warcraft: During a certain Boss fight, you can get a debuff called Fungal Creep that increases your chance to critically strike with all attacks and spells by 50%, and reduces all threat you cause to 0. You become literally Cursed with Awesome.
Most of Wario's transformations fall into this category. Being on fire isn't that bad if it makes you invinclible and allows you to burn away block blocking your path.
The corruptions in ADOM are supposed to be a mixed bag of advantages and disadvantages and most of them are actually quite nasty to have (even the advantages tending towards Blessed With Suck), but at least one is extremely useful to have even though it theoretically has a huge disadvantage. It makes you gradually degenerate into a caveman by periodically raising all your physical attributes and at the same time lowering your mental ones. This would theoretically make you a gibbering mindless mass of muscle, attribute-wise. However, there is a trainer in a town in the game who can help you increase any of your attributes. The higher the attribute is already, the harder it is to raise it, and doubly so once it hits its "natural maximum". But it's easy to re-train your mental attributes to their old level (or at least a reasonable level) each time they've fallen while letting your physical attributes go on increasing uninhibited because the corruption doesn't care how high they are already.

Ash Upton's life, from Misfile, has on the surface markedly improved since the eponymous event. S/he's picked up a girlfriend, has two tricked out racing cars, she has established a good relationship with his mother, his father is significantly more involved in her life, and he has guys hitting on her while offering large discounts on expensive autoparts. However since this all involved an involuntary Gender Bender whether you consider this Cursed With Awesome or Blessed With Suck is up to the reader.
While the Negative Continuity of the series prevents it from being explored too in-depth, this strip of The Non Adventures Of Wonderella ends with Wonderita being cursed so that "any blade she touches shall become as dull as a river-washed stone". The final frame shows somebody futilely trying to chainsaw her to death.
- Doesn't a chainsaw just rip you apart regardless of how sharp the chain is?
  - Don't attempt to apply logic to this series; tha way leads only to madness.
This is a major element in The Challenges of Zona, in which a classic slacker gets transported to a magical world, gifted with magical bardic music powers that let him do everything from mind control to blast fireballs, and who immediately ends up seducing an improbably endowed barbarian chick—and then goes into repeated funks about how it's all too much, he can't handle it, he's not worthy, yadda yadda yadda. You'd think anyone with that much facial hair would've already had 'em drop, but...
Chris from 8 Easy Bits. In an omake episode he brags about his fighting abilities, saying that he could kick Death's ass who promptly shows up and throws down with him, the stakes being death or immunity from it. After an epic battle, by fate or fortune he wins and achieves total immortality. He changes his mind after a week and spends the rest of the ages dispatching monsters and heroes outside of Death's reach to re-earn his right to an end outside of God.
The eponymous character in Dominic Deegan. Already gifted with receiving visions, Dominic focused on second sight magic in order to help people and protect his loved ones (to clarify: second sight = actively looking into the past, present, or future, where as visions happen seemingly at random.) Of course, he spent a great deal of his time as a fortune teller for townsfolk who were Too Dumb To Live and resented his very existence.
Minus. Great powers. The other kids consider them cheating and won't play with her.
- Well, most of them. And in quite a few cases, yeah, that would be cheating. And then there's the whole Disproportionate Retribution thing, including, but oh-so-very not limited to, Baleful Polymorph. I'll tell you, if I ever see a little girl with short, improbably-colored hair (not to mention that it shifts colors for no apparent reason with some of it sticking up, and wearing a t-shirt and shorts, I'm staying back until I know she's not going to turn me into something for daring to get justifiably angry.
The character Lorelei from Black Tapestries, who almost immediately gets transformed into a werefox with heightened strength (while retaining her capacity for rational thought during most circumstances) and is soon thereafter rendered immortal by Issac's meddling.
- To be fair, though, her fox form's appearance means she's treated socially like any other Kaetif (the comic's anthro-animal race), which leads to her being skinned by hunters at one point, attacked by a close friend, kidnapped and forced into slavery, raped, and various other horrible things.
- It probably doesn't help matters either that a group of Kaetif killed her father or that being immortal in the particular way that she is means she can experience the pain of being "killed" over and over again.
Prince Sid from Fey Winds is supposedly "cursed" so that whenever he becomes nervous, flustered, or scared, he becomes a dragon. This is, of course, Lampshaded.
Kit:"Sid, in what way is turning into a dragon a terrible curse?"
The Corby clan in Rogues Of Clwyd Rhan are "cursed" with the ability to turn into birds. Voluntarily. With absolutely no restrictions or drawbacks involved. The "curse" is broken when another character points out that they can just stop doing it.

Pretty much all of the protagonists in Dimension Heroes don't want their Guardian powers, despite how cool some of them think they are.
Phase (a student at Whately Academy) got super strength, super toughness, flight (well, wafting...), the ability to pass through solid objects, and can knock people out by passing through them. The downside? He now has the body of a beautiful girl, save for his genitals. His driving goal has been to find a way to return to being all-male, though it could get worse; he's specifically rejected the (already achieveable) option of becoming full-on female.
- Phase's family is another example of Cursed With Awesome: His family is a leader of the anti-mutant movement, which tends to be a strike against you at a Superhero School. On the other hand, he's still got the connections, knowledge, skills, and trust fund he developed as a scion of one of the richest families in the country.
The title character of the erotic Sword And Sorcery series, The Wulf Archives, is always complaining how the Gods hate him. However, since he has continual fantastic adventures, dozens of exotic lovers who don't mind sharing and has an alternate well endowed lion furry form that femmes lustfully drool for, it's hard to see how exactly he is cursed.
The title character of The Saga Of Tuck is a math and Unix nerd who is surrounded by a dozen cute girls, capable of masking himself as female (and getting dates), and able to hold a job he excels at without even trying, but there are some severe downsides.

In Justice League, Jason Blood betrays Camelot to Morgan Lefay, and as a punishment, Merlin binds his soul with the demon Etrigan - thus rendering him virtually immortal. Although Jason perceives this as a terrible curse, it's hard to see the downside, since the demon can't even come out unless Jason recites a specific short poem although the demon also speaks inside his head constantly, so it can go either way).
- Have you ever heard Etrigan talk? Having him speak inside your head constantly would drive the average man insane in a week. Cursed. Totally cursed.
- Chalk this one up to a slight case of Adaptation Decay. In the comics Etrigan was originally a demon that had been cursed into human form, later retconned into a human whose soul was bound to a demon's, then retconned again (by John Byrne, naturally) into a monster cursed with the soul of a human. And it was only centuries after being cursed that he discovered the poem that would transform him to demon form. Etrigan is also more explicitly malevolent in the comics, and Jason Blood sometimes struggles to control him. Also he speaks in near-constant rhyme (if that doesn't drive you nuts then nothing will).
  - You have an automatic rhyme dictionary in your head. Cursed With Awesome.
Transformers Animated: Blackarachnia is constantly searching for a way to remove her organic half and angsting about everything she's had to give up because of it. However, her exile was self-imposed, her organic parts give her the ability to generate webbing and paralyzing venom, and her hideous body has seduced pretty much every Autobot and Dinobot she's come in contact with.
- Though she is apparently physically less durable to some degree: she stated she couldn't survive diving into a frozen lake in her current condition.
- Plus given how much the Autobots seem to hate organics (minus the main cast of course) there is a pretty good reason why she's in a self-imposed exile.
  - Indeed. I believe dissection was mentioned at one point, and going by Sentinel Prime's reaction to seeing her condition, I don't think she was too far off.
Demona of Gargoyles gets this twice: The first, she and MacBeth are magically bonded so that each is immortal, unless slain by the hand of the other. Second, she was zapped by Puck to turn human in the day time instead of going into the normal stone sleep. Both "curses" were meant to be punishment, but all they did was give Demona more time to plot against her enemies (99.9% of Earth) and gave her foes fewer ways to take her down for good.
- Considering how much she hated humans, it probably was a reasonable way to curse her.
- Plus she can't heal like normal gargoyles, so she just suffers until a wound is fully healed at a slow human rate, on top of which the transformation hurts quite a lot.
In The Simpsons episode "The Mansion Family", it was revealed that Mr. Burns suffers from every disease known to man, some of them discovered in him. However, "Three Stooges Syndrome" basically causes the diseases to cancel each other out. Mr. Burns thinks he's indestructible because of this despite the doctor warning him that even a slight breeze can kill him.
An episode of Futurama had Fry get infested with alien worms from an egg salad sandwich. The worms then built a metropolis in his bowels and began overhauling his entire body, bringing him to a level of peak mental and physical capabilities. Everybody else treats this like a horrible affliction and resolves to remove his worms, but Fry thinks this is the best thing that's ever happened to him.
- ...not quite. Leela thinks it's the best thing that's ever happened to him. Fry doesn't even realize that the worms are changing him, and when he does, he realizes that those changes are the only thing that got Leela to fall in love with him. He then proceeds to get rid of the worms, to find out if Leela really loved him, or just the worms.
In one of the more recent My Little Pony animated specials, the eponymous character of "Come Back, Lily Lightly" is the only unicorn whose horn lights up, which she assumes will get her ostracized if anyone finds out. Thus, she runs off when she's accidentally outed, only for her friends to find her and tell her that a glowing horn is cool, and helpful for finding lost ponies on dark nights.
- Clearly she's seen Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.
Averted and played with in the 90s Incredible Hulk cartoon - after a slight variation of her comic book origin, Jennifer Walters becomes the She-Hulk. At the end of the episode, Bruce starts beating up on himself about how he has "cursed" Jennifer too and how he'll need to cure her too... Jennifer (despite being entirely capable of doing so) remains big and green and goes so far as to proclaim "Gamma is a girl's best friend." at one point, while constantly telling her cousin she doesn't WANT to be cured.
- The Hulk is cursed. Jennifer Walters doesn't lose her head when she transforms. She maintains full mental control while in her super form and gets to transform at will. So while Bruce Banner is Blessed With Suck, Jennifer Walters isn't really cursed one bit, and knows it.
Aang never wanted to be the Avatar, and ran away when the monks tried to separate him from Gyatso. Jeong Jeong the Deserter also feels this way about firebending:
Jeong Jeong: Water brings healing and life. But fire brings only destruction and pain. It forces those of us burdened with its care to walk a razor's edge between humanity and savagery. Eventually, we are torn apart.

Autistic savants: They generally have superb mathematical abilities, despite being burdened with autism and being bully magnets.
It has been said that Howard Hughes would not have performed any of his accomplishments if he was not driven by his Super OCD. The same has been said with Howie Mandel.
Tom Lehrer discovered only after he had become a popular musician that he detested playing a fixed set list night after night after night.
Actors often lampshade this, pretending to complain about one of three things: Getting paid to do things in front of a camera, working in gorgeous locations, or having to make out with attractive, wonderful people. Actors often get genuinely sick of repeating things dozens of times, but otherwise they're well aware that they have one of the most enviable jobs in the world. Most recent example: Jake Gyllenhaal mock-lamenting the fact that he had to kiss Natalie Portman about ten times for the movie Brothers.
- Well, it would be pretty bad not being able to be left alone in public without looking like a complete and utter douche, and having an entire society judging you for everything you do. Everyone makes mistakes, but if you do when you are a celebrity, expect to see a few days up to weeks of new on you, and your "scandal". Take the Micheal Phelps picture with the bong picture a little while ago. No-one really cares if you do pot nowadays(for the most part), but one picture with him holding a bong and he loses about 3 sponsorships.
- Addition from the original troper: I realized after a couple weeks or so that a frightening amount of my fellow actors (myself included) develop Stepford Smiler or Black Comedy mentalities to cope with issues we're uncomfortable with, and while we're the most visible part of the performance, we're also the ones in least control. It's worse for stories that were Ripped From The Headlines or Truth In Television, because those are often BAD stories used to tell a message, and we're forced to acknowledge that we're playing real people who suffered--and sometimes perpetrated--horrible, horrible things. Generally, we remind ourselves that it'll all be over eventually, and then we get paid. Also, getting any kind of sickness (even a stuffy nose) will get us fired—either because we're out for more than one day of rehearsal, it (naturally) interferes with our performance, or we risk infecting the rest of the cast with whatever bug we've caught.
- A lot of actors also have a point when they say that making out with beautiful people really kind of sucks, because you're being watched by dozens of people while you're doing it—Diane Kreuger, when asked about her make-out session with Orlando Bloom in Troy, said it's actually very embarrassing to do something like that with that kind of live audience. And there's a reason some actors flat-out refuse to do sex scenes—can you imagine having to act out something like that in front of dozens of crew members? Some people can manage a level of detachment to have no problem with it, but for others the idea of a lot of people watching you naked is just too much. (Helen Hunt also has a story about a crew member ripping an exceptionally loud fart at an inopportune moment when she was filming a love scene for a movie, which completely destroyed the mood and meant she and her costar couldn't shoot any retakes without laughing.)
  - Add to the above that there are many actors out there who aren't celebrities, meaning they have to deal with all of the negatives without getting any of the "positives". And the fact that they have to kiss beautiful women isn't necessarily a good thing either if A) The actor/actress is already in a relationship B) the two have no romantic interest in each other. It's a very embarrassing experience. And there's the fact that beauty is ultimately subjective...

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