This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Citizen: If only I could find the original Toastyfrog description for Ramma1/2... Oh, well.
J Random User: To be fair to Ranma, only the aquatransexuality is a result of the curse, and that would be legitimately disturbing in the real world...
Andyroid: And there's the matter of the kind of women he attracts... that "description" is really bugging me. Whoever wrote it obviously hasn't considered that, or the horrendous web of mutually exclusive obligations Genma has gotten his son into (as outlined in Pillars of Moral Character).
Binaroid: Still, there are thousands of fanboys who would gladly kill to be in Ranma's shoes — even though it would probably blow up in their faces in seconds.
Seth: Not to mention the thousands of transgender people who would be lining up at those onsen if they actually existed. Lets just say its subjective. It's supposed to be a bad thing but more than a few people would love it.
Haphazard: There needs to be a Blessed With Suck page.
Jordan: Isn't vampirism kind of treated in most fiction as an awsome curse- it seems like generally, losing your soul and having a constant need to kill are treated as being outweighed by the benefits of super strength, shape-shifting, and some form of hypnotic/seductive powers.
Ununnilium: The Theme Park Version of vampirism is definitely Cursed with Awesome.
Seven Seals: Vampirism being cool goes back a long way. Anne Rice probably did the most a single author can do to promote it. (Who needs a soul, anyway?) Also witness the popularity of role-playing a vampire, per Vampire: The Masquerade and as a disease you don't need to cure in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. (Of course, in most RPGs, vampires are still monsters who have to die, but being one is awesome.)
Ununnilium: Not all good vampires are Cursed with Awesome, but some are, especially the Anne Rice-style ones.
Kilyle: Restoring the following portion of the talk page from the Google cache. Hope it helps! Update: And have done a minor update to bring back the original emphasis and links of some of it.
Citizen: The Animorphs example is starting to get a little too-much like a discussion, and I'm certainly not helping things there. I don't think it belongs, because being permanently turned into a bird (or any animal, for that matter) would suck.
Tragic The Dragon - If people see a good side to Ranma's "aqua-transsexuality" (heh), than it does so belong. And if you think about it, amoung other things, Tobias well never have to worry about getting a real job. (Not to mention, flying rocks.) (Goes off to rescue yet another one of her examples turning into a massive debate.)
Citizen: Flying would get old, give me Internet. You underestimate how darn useful having hands is... (later) That is one mammoth spoiler tag for Animorphs. Let's cut it down. It's just not a good example. If that "Andalite Curse" bit refers solely to the powers and not the Mode Lock (I don't know, I don't remember that part), that is Cursed With Awesome (and a distinction should be stated), but animal Mode Lock is not. Especially when his friends get the same powers and get to stay human.
TTD: I'm changing it back to it's more streamlined original form:
- Tobias from Animorphs. Just... Tobias from Animorphs.
And then I'm letting this go, cause we could argue all night (and I've already had another example I contributed devolve into Thread Mode mayhem and frankly i ain't up to it again). I guess my point is that he just b**tches and moans about being a bird when he could have been Mode Locked as a dung beetle or a crab louse or something. (THAT would suck.)
Citizen: Not iconic enough to stand alone without explanation.
Kilyle: We might need to get a better description of what makes the cut on this page. I see the Fruits Basket Zodiac curses listed here. Now, I grant that being able to turn into an animal may in fact be occasionally useful. That doesn't change the fact that:
- ...the Involuntary Shapeshifting is liable at any second to blow their cover;
- it therefore restricts their contact with people who aren't in on The Masquerade;
- they don't even have Magic Pants;
- the curse leaves them unable to hug their girlfriends;
- the way I read the curse, this gets rid of all but the most carefully controlled forms of sex;
- and that reduces the ability of a married couple to enjoy sex;
- and that reduces the ability of the married couple to procreate in a natural and unplanned manner...
Ergo, unless you've ever thought "Hey, I'd give up sex to be able to turn into a seahorse!" then I'd say the drawbacks vastly outweigh the potential benefits of the curse, and the Fruits Basket example doesn't belong on the page.
Not to mention, I got directed here from a page that listed Schylla (sp?) as one of the oldest examples. Now, I'm a little hazy on my mythology, but wasn't she turned from a human into a giant sea monster, and pretty much nailed in place to harass passing ships? 'Cuz if I'm anything close to the curse, the fact that she gained immortality, invulnerability, immense power and a few dozen Attack Dice doesn't quite outbalance the fact that she lost her humanity, her mind, her ability to converse with other humans, her ability to walk free among other humans, and so forth. Which makes her fate less like "I got promoted to a GOD!" and more like "I got trapped inside a monstrous blob of flesh from which I can never get free!
Nezumi: The way I've always heard it told is that Scylla was a nymph who was cursed to become a horribly powerful monster. This monster was also ugly, and she thought beauty was the most important thing in the world — she decided to stay in one spot forever and menace ships of her own accord in response to this change. As opposed to, y'know, deciding to take advantage of the positive aspects of the change, or even take a reasonable despairing response.
Silvercatmon: Would Adrian Monk from "Monk" be considered this? His ODC has made his whole life hard, but it helps him see things others don't and solve cases.
Tragic The Dragon: Cutting this and moving it:
- A recent Skittles commercial has a man cursed with the power to make anything he touches turn to Skittles. He mentions that it isn't all that great, as he can't dress himself or hold his child. He even killed a guy.
Because, given all the dabating in here, that would very definitely be Blessed with Suck. I wonder how many people see the "Cursed" part and stop reading? I thought it went like this:
Cursed with Awesome - Version one: You've been cursed with... totally awesome powers. Version two: You've got a definitely cool power that you just can't stop complaining about.
Blessed with Suck - Version one: Your power is not just stupid, it's downright dangerous. Therfore, King Midas is the Ur-example. Version two: Your power sounds cool at first, but it turns out to have a lousey limitation, Weaksauce Weakness, or (in the worst cases) dangerous side-effects.
Would the Beast's curse in Beauty And The Beast be an example, at least in the Disney version? —Document N
Isn't Naruto's a bit more Blessed with Suck too? I mean yes he has ridiculous amounts of power that he can access in a jam, but to use any large amount of it means giving up his humanity to the point where he mindlessly attacks his the girl he loves and literally burn his flesh off while regenerating? I mean, the aura after the third tail isn't just chakra, it has his blood mixed in. The seal is weakening too, so he keeps coming closer to the day when the nine tails is fully released, and what normally happens to a prison when a jailbreak takes place? -Slotts
Cutting and pasting the debate of Chuck's Awesome Curse here...
- and his excuses rarely make sense. His family is rarely actually in trouble (usually the villains have no idea who they are), him and Sarah aren't in a real relationship because every time one of them decides to make it real the other talks first and says they need to be professional, and 'returning to a normal life' would simply return Chuck to his former life of working in the Nerd Herd and not saving the world on a weekly basis. For this troper, a bit of suspention of disbelief was lost the second he realized Chuck was actively doing something that would make him lose Sarah (Chuck seems to think it's the only way they'll be together, but there's no logical reason for the government to keep Sarah with him if he doesn't still have the Intercect in his head. Odds are she'll be moved into a new identity and city and be doing something covert away from him).
- The series establishes that Sarah is able to quit or change assignments if she pleases. Bryce offers her the chance to follow him as he goes deep undercover, and Cole asks her to accompany him overseas. She decides in "Chuck Versus the Ring" that she is not in fact going to join Bryce on the new Intersect project, and nearly announces her intention to leave the spy life for Chuck, before that of course is ruined at the last moment. So the tension there is real. Short of that long-shot hope, Chuck can't get too close to either Sarah or anyone else. He has had no privacy to speak of for two years. His Awesome Curse requires him to continually lie to his friends and family and disappoint them. In addition to the constant danger to him—including being "disappeared" or killed by his own handlers—his family, friends and coworkers have all been endangered several times a year, and he has seen others tortured, shot and killed on the villains' hunt for him. Spy intrigue caused his father to abandon him and his sister (after they'd already lost their mother), and it put his life on hold for the better part of a decade as he was unceremoniously kicked out of Stanford—thanks to an apparent betrayal by his friend, who took his girlfriend too.
Citizen: Removed the Tsukihime-Shiki example. It's already under Blessed with Suck, and it really does belong just there. He doesn't constantly bemoan having been given this (admittedly awesome) power, and it really does have nasty side effects.
The entry about Negi really bugs me, but as a not yet registered troper I don't feel comfortable with more than posting an entry for discussion. This is "Cursed with Awesome", not "Oblivious to Fantatic Situation". At no time does Negi treat his students as a curse. Even the story doesn't, the whole teaching gig is a graduation task not a punishment.
Boobah: Pulling:
- Nikki Reilly from Whateley Academy. He gets told that basically she has won the Superpower Lottery. He is becoming what they call the "Faerie Template". Only a thousand people have this. Aging so slow that the first person to get this was in 1695 and still hasn't shown any signs of aging. Also becoming a Mage which only thirty others of the same template are. Then they say that he can tap ley lines to increase his power which only 15 other Faerie can do. Then they add that he can tap the natural world for power (e.g. lightning or wind ) which narrows it further. After they get to "only two others can do all that you can" they find out he is an Empath too. The drawback? He is becoming a she and the more power he uses the more he becomes a she. He/She considers all this a curse? Admittedly it's not free of charge but I don't think being female should be classed as a curse!Hey kid you're the next best thing to immortal and hugely powerful but you have to be an extremely good looking girl. Tough break huh?
because A) it's a long way to go for "turned into a beautiful, undying incredibly powerful elf mage. And also a girl." B) It doesn't touch on the Power Incontinence she had pre-training, the psyche of the 10,000 years dead elf queen stuck in her head, or the responsibilities and enemies she inherited as the reincarnation of said queen, and C) because aside from the initial different is bad reaction, she hasn't angsted over the change.
