[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.

[aspenmayer]

> “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.

The original post we’re both replying to referred to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who is literally the main character of the series. I’m not sure if you’re speaking generally, but I’d say that her powers are not well justified in-universe, to the degree that even supernatural beings in her narrative setting are flabbergasted at her hardiness. I stand by my statement that she definitely has plot armor, as the show is literally named after her.

[DoughnutHole]

The fact that plot armour applies to main characters does not imply that main characters necessarily have plot armour.

Buffy having a high survivability is pretty consistent with her defined powers (general resistance to harm, fighting abilities, accelerated healing). It’s not enough to just say she survives fighting monsters.

A good example of clear plot armour in Buffy is the named vampire characters. The random baddies disintegrate the second they’re touched by sunlight whereas Spike survives stretches of sunlight multiple times. This violates the established rules of the fiction for the sake of protecting an important character.

Another example is the rest of the gang of kids managing to survive fighting vampires on their own without Buffy. Early on they have no established powers and while the various monsters are demonstrated to be tough to take down even by someone with superpowers.

[aspenmayer]

> The fact that plot armour applies to main characters does not imply that main characters necessarily have plot armour.

So we agree that main characters have plot armor?

I never said that main characters necessarily have plot armor, just that when MCs survive events that beggars belief for the viewer, they do. The perception of the existence of plot armor for any particular character in a work broadly or in a given context in a larger work is a subjective distinction, and varies by viewer, their perspective, interpretation of the setting, the character’s powers, how compelling the writing is, and suspension of disbelief or lack thereof.

Your argument feels like you’re gaslighting me for disagreeing with you about differing perceptions about such subjective distinctions, then using that disagreement to find fault with what is actually a difference of opinion, while characterizing it as me supposedly misunderstanding how the subjective concept of plot armor works, when in actuality we agree on how plot armor works, we just disagree with whether or not a specific character has it or not. But that’s the very nature of the subjectivity of plot armor.

Of course you’re free to disagree, I never said you couldn’t, and that’s part of the fun of fandom. Just because I think Buffy has plot armor, and you don’t, doesn’t mean that one of us necessarily misunderstands the concept of plot armor, Buffy as a character, or the show and its narrative setting, in my view.