Crowning moment of awesome or moment of fail?

Yes, I understand that Crowning Moment Of Awesome is a subjective trope, but I'm more wondering about the ability of this particular situation to even approach it.

The situation is: The mild mannered and slightly introverted protagonist is training to be a full member of a Heroes "R" Us order as well as trying to develop the powers that are a part of his family's bloodline. As part of this he is sent to live with a group of dwarves in an underground city and over the years he makes a good deal of friends and grows close to his "host family" .

A jealous friend and classmate betrays the order and defects to the side of the Big Bad which results in an invasion of the city. The classmate traps the protagonist in a Pocket Dimension where she then forces him to watch the city fall, taunting him all the while about how useless he is. It gets worse when the city's own security system inflicts Unwilling Roboticisation upon its citizens to protect the Macguffin the villains are after.

The traitor classmate returns to the other dimension to further taunt the traumatized protagonist and begins physically beating him while ranting about her motivation. Mid-sentence he punches her across the room and calmly asks her for the exit key. When she strikes at him, he reveals he has unlocked the limited ability to absorb attacks directed at him and again hits her.

The traitor becomes hysterical with rage and morphs into multiple forms, each uglier and more powerful than the last as she tries to kill him. However he simply dodges or absorbs her attacks until she has worn herself almost to death—and then he calmly asks for the key again. Now nearly insane with rage and repeating a Madness Mantra about how she will kill him, she attacks again...and dies from exhausting her powers.

He then digs around what's left of her body until he gets the key.

edited 15th Jan '15 7:57:05 PM by Swordofknowledge

All in all, it sounds to me like a moment of collective "whatever". You could make it good, or you could make it bad. It depends on how you write it.

I'll start with this quick summary of the fight scene, which I presume is what you wish to use to get the aforementioned subjective reaction:

Boring Invincible Hero is attacked by an enraged bad guy who is too stupid to notice it does nothing and dies.

Ugh, that does sound ... well, bad, doesn't it?

And by itself, it really is. That is why you have to take care to do something about it. First order of things, the Boring Invincible Hero thing. Any additional conditions on the use of that power, or maybe one of the Power at a Price tropes? Especially any of those that have effects that will be seen during the fight or after the fight?

And then there's the hysterical rage thing. Why would someone fly into a hysterical rage when one thing goes slightly wrong (uh oh, she got hit and he said he has some sort of power, big deal)? The only cases in which I can realistically envision it happening are if:

1. His power is so great that the mere mention of it makes her hysterical. But if that were the case, she would have been too afraid to be isolated with him in the first place.

2. She was incapable of thinking for herself and could only follow orders, and panicked as soon as anything changed. But if that were the case, nobody would have put her in a position where she was of any importance.

3. His power can cause his enemies to lose their minds. More Boring Invincible Hero thing, "do not want".

4. She was in love with him and became irrational when he became an enemy. No, wait, why would she hit him at all then rather than try to pull him to her side? It makes no sense.

5. She has a Berserk Button for people interrupting her. As you can see, this is a ridiculously flimsy reason that shan't be used if you have any dignity as an author unless the story is a farce (which I doubt).

Seriously, anyone with a brain who was in her situation would have tried something else rather than fly off the handle like a badly-glued broom twig.

Now, getting to the core of the whole thing, though the audience is fickle at best, for something to be considered awesome it generally has to either look great or show someone overcoming a challenge. So yes, it would be possible to write that scene in a way that would have people proclaiming it as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome, but with what you wrote you'd have to aim for the first one and make it look great and your description as it is does not make it sound as if it would be.

You know, in the story I am writing now, there is a scene in which the hero, who happens to have the power to absorb a sort of special energy used by superpowered beings, defeats one of such beings, to save some people, by absorbing as much of it as he can and then using it against the being; and then he has to remove those people from the vicinity, in the end having to resort to just blasting them away and hoping that as many survive as possible, because he is slowly losing control of it over time. Is the scene awesome one or a failure? I know not. But I do know it is because the character has problems that it has a chance of not being the latter. Sure, the power he has makes him the strongest single human in the setting. But it messes with his mind horribly, doesn't stop attacks from actually hurting him if he is not careful, and he will slowly lose control of it to the point where it will melt down and do ... something, nobody knows what exactly but it probably won't be good because that power (or rather, the energy he gets with it) is harmful to humans. At that point he is pretty much trying to get as far into enemy territory as he can and letting it do whatever it would do, maybe possibly dealing them some damage in the process.

The point is, don't aim for making something a Crowning Moment Of Awesome, even if it potentially looks that way to you. Instead, try to keep it interesting, make it so that the reader reads to find out what will happen and not to find out when the hero will win, and keep the characters somewhat human-like and have the readers care about the characters. Keep the hero challenged somehow; if his power is so great that it makes things too easy then either redesign it or plan ahead and give the hero challenges that require him to think. Have us actually try to sympathise with the villains, feel that though they probably are in the wrong they are allowed to think they aren't. Make people expect the character to do something, to take some sort of option, and then have the character strain themselves just to make it a bit better. Have them sweating, bleeding, crying from effort, covered in dirt and grime, but proud that they managed to do more than people thought them capable of. And that will be awesome.

edited 15th Jan '15 8:04:32 PM by Kazeto

@ Kazeto: Thanks for the critique; I wasn't sure where to put this question so I'm glad someone answered it—and in such a well-detailed and rounded way! Anyway, you're right, it does sound a little "thin" now that I think about it, and I really need to work on it, since it's not just an awesome moment but a total changing point in the story itself. I was trying to go for the Grew a Spine and Tranquil Fury aspects for how he reacts to the traitor.

About the hero and the traitor's interactions, you asked some good questions that I'll try to answer. I left out a lot of details because I was trying to make this condensed and readable. I'm just curious if this changes your (or anyone else's) opinion now that I've shared these details.

• The hero's power does have limitations: his Magical Eye can absorb magical attacks of any power level but it can only do so for ten minutes at a time. Using the power also results in blindness in that eye while it is active. For that reason he later has to rely on a partner to watch his blindside while he acts as the "shield" for the group.

• His Tranquil Fury at watching everyone he had lived with and tried to protect suffer and be turned into Steel Guardians comes after a lengthy mental breakdown and is what happens when he comes out on the other side. He recovers and appears to resume his old persona after a while, but it is clear the whole thing took a toll on his overall mental health.

• Your comment about his enemy being incapable of thinking for herself and only following orders is spot on. She wasn't in any position of power; her orders were simply "trap hero in other dimension and kill the people in charge of the underground city gates". Going in after him to taunt him was her own idea and it cost her badly.

• On her motivations: She was very much a Rival Turned Evil since they both came from families with Superpowerful Genetics and were training to develop those powers. He showed slightly more promise than she did, and the constant feeling of being unable to catch up drove her wild with envy. She accepted a Deal with the Devil from the Big Bad, a powerful witch, and became a Familiar.

• The powers the Big Bad gives are Lovecraftian Superpowers that slowly break down the user's bodies and minds until they become mindless monsters dedicated to her goals—and her master's, since the Big Bad turns out to be The Dragon of a greater evil. They then "burn out" and die once they exhaust their strength and purpose. The stronger the willpower of the empowered, the longer the delay. The traitor wasn't particularly strong-willed and her anger at being defied and hit accelerated the degeneration.

edited 16th Jan '15 7:20:53 AM by Swordofknowledge