[thaumasiotes]

> Yes, if it wasn’t obvious I apologize. Many main characters have plot armor in a way that makes for lazy writing, bad characterization, lowers stakes in the plot in favor of protagonists, and breaks immersion, which is what I was alluding to in response to this part of your comment, and the thread broadly:

>> But compare e.g. her meeting with Glory in season 5, where the two of them get into a fistfight, and after trading a few punches Glory realizes that a human would have been dead by now.

You have yet to describe what the connection is between your comment and mine. Plot armor describes people doing things they can't do, and not suffering the consequences because that would be a boring story.

What's the connection to people doing things that require the supernatural powers they are explicitly characterized as having?

[aspenmayer]

The supernatural powers are the plot armor which prevent OP characters from suffering the consequences.

[DoughnutHole]

A character’s explained powers saving them isn’t plot armour, it’s just armour.

E.g. a superhero whose power is having impenetrable skin surviving a hail of bullets isn’t plot armour - it’s an explained part of the story. A character survived because of their nature as a character.

Plot armour would be a hero who does not have any particular resistance to bullets running through a hail of gunfire and surviving. It’s an extremely improbable outcome which ruins suspension of disbelief. The only reasonable explanation is that the character survived because the writers wanted to keep them alive. That’s plot armour.

[aspenmayer]

I don’t agree that this is how the term plot armor is commonly used, but I won’t disagree with your desire to use the term in that way.

[DoughnutHole]

plot armor

noun

used to refer to the phenomenon in fiction whereby the main character is allowed to survive dangerous situations because they are needed for the plot to continue.

[aspenmayer]

Yeah, that’s what I originally posted. So why are you disagreeing with me when you said:

> A character’s explained powers saving them isn’t plot armour, it’s just armour.

[DoughnutHole]

The important bit is

> because they are needed for the plot to continue.

ie. A character should die in this situation but survives because their death would be inconvenient for the writer.

A character surviving because of a predefined power is consistent with the fiction. They didn’t survive out of the writer’s necessity but because they had already been written as someone who can survive such a situation. That’s competent writing.

You’re trying to define plot armour as just… any character surviving a dangerous situation? That makes the term completely meaningless. It’s meant to denote bad, lazy writing whereby an important character improbably survives despite it not being justified by the rest of the fiction.

Additionally, from the very TVTropes article you linked:

> “Plot Armor is when a main character's life and health are safeguarded by the fact that he's the one person (or one of several) who can't be removed from the story. Therefore, whenever Bob is in a situation where he could be killed (or at the least very seriously injured), he comes out unharmed with no logical, In-Universe explanation.”

A character’s survival being well justified in-universe makes it not plot armour.