Archived Discussion Main / PlotArmor

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Describe Plot Armor Discussion here.

Peteman: I seem to remember this one bit in Wheel Of Time where Elayne, due to a prophecy, feels completely invulnerable from harm, so she takes incredible risks because she knows she'll make it through. However, this ends up biting her in the ass, as her stupid move not only gets her captured (albeit unharmed), but her escorts were killed or even executed. However, I don't remember the scene nor if I am remembering it correctly, or even the possibility of me having confused a thought experiment of how this could have gone horribly wrong as an actual event in the story.

Thatother 1 Dude: OK, this is something so universal we need to limit this to parodies, references, and aversion. Any objections?

Idle Dandy: I object. Since when does a trope being common mean it shouldn't have examples?

That Other 1 Dude: Common? This is so fundamental that omnipresent doesn't even begin to cover it. It's literally impossible to "avert" plot armor or whatever, because it just means "characters live (or at least fail to stay dead) until the author makes them die", and some series can't use it "more". A story lacking plot armor is literally impossible because it would mean a story where the author (or someone else) doesn't control the events. It really doesn't specifically mean "Improbable things happen to keep a character alive" or "specifically noticeable uses of Plot Armor" and we've got Contractual Immortality, Death Is Cheap, Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, Only a Flesh Wound, Made of Iron, Strong as They Need to Be, Shur Fine Guns, Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?, Kill Him Already!, Joker Immunity and God only knows how many other more specific tropes for such a thing. In fact, if anything, this should be an index. Besides that, the majority of claims of plot armor are just complaining about a show or a character something thinks should have died.

EDIT: If there's no reply by Easter I'm deleting the example. It's been nearly a week already.

EDIT AGAIN: OK, removed again. You can't "win" by just not responding to me. If you want them to stay/be restored someone has to give a counter argument of some kind. I'm not just going to forget this.

Idle Dandy: I have created a forum discussion about this here. It is completely unacceptable to keep deleting the contributions of one's fellow tropers without even attempting to get some kind of consensus. If the consensus is to have it example-less, fine.

That Other 1 Dude: How was I suppose to know that? It took weeks for you to give any sort of notification and that was just because I stumbled on the thread by accident. If no response for weeks was the same thing as disprovable than whoever wants something to stay the same could "win" the argument by just never responding.

Johnny E: Is there any point listing aversions? A genuine aversion of Plot Armour is a work in which central characters are no less likely to die, which is just Anyone Can Die, and a lot of the examples aren't really aversions but simply "this character died".

• JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: The legendarily savage Orcs of Mordor become cannon fodder when facing the plot important heroes of the Fellowship. Nearly all of the (non-Hobbit) members are renowned as legendary warriors, but only one of them dies, and that was a redemptive death. None of the other non-hobbits ever suffer so much as minor injuries despite staving off literally thousands of foes. Frodo himself avoids nearly half a dozen deathblows by way of literal Plot Armor - a nearly impervious shirt of Dwarven mithril mail.
  • Ah - how quickly they forget. The legendary heroes of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings were powerful, but to fight armies, they lead armies. In the famous "Chamber of Mazarbul" scene in the Mines of Moria, each member of the Fellowship kills one orc, save that Aragorn kills two, the second of which was fast enough to dodge attacks from both Boromir and Gimli - the others retreat in terror, presumably because they do not have a Cave Troll. At Helm's Deep, Legolas and Gimli each kill around fifty orcs over the course of a night-long battle, which is certainly impressive, but far shy of the thousands they might have tagged in an adaptation influenced as much by the power level of Dungeons and Dragons and the visual styles of popular action movies as by Tolkien's works themselves.
  • And Aragorn and Legolas are the only members of the Fellowship of whom we are not told that they get injured.