What to do with over powered characters?

Hello Dear Readers!

Today I want to chat about something the guys and I have been talking about on the Discord.

POTENTIAL SPOILER WARNING for “A Songbird’s Tale” and the eventual sequel, and “Of Dwarves and Dragons”.

You’ve been warned. Now, with that out of the way we can move on to the topic at hand.

I am working on the outline for “Of Dwarves and Dragons”. Which is the story of how Kroegan met Tetsu. Some astute readers may have figured out by now that Tetsu is a dragon. If you didn’t, well. now you know. The problem is, in the world of Galhadria dragons are extremely powerful entities. The fact that Tetsu is running around in the form of a human is pretty unusual in our particular fantasy setting. Not just that but she’s interacting with mere mortals who are so far below her class, it genuinely creates a problem.

The problem is that when you have a character like Tetsu who is really powerful, she can easily become an automatic win button for the protagonist. And frankly, that’s kind of boring. What makes stories good is the fact that characters have to work hard to overcome their obstacles. It is seeing our main character struggle that we crave and what makes them relatable. If they have someone in their party who can just crush any obstacle, solve any riddle, or magic their way through any issue, well, then it’s kind of boring.

Enter getting sick. I recently had my third bout of covid. Yay me. It knocked my on my butt pretty good this time, and I had two whole days where I didn’t really have much energy except to sit around and watch T.V. My brother has been pestering me to watch Frieren, and given I suddenly had a ton of time on my hands and not a lot of energy, what better way to spend my waking hours between naps by binging an anime.

Frieren is about an elf who is a mage. She went adventuring with a party to slay the demon king. Her party is successful and they usher in a new era of peace and prosperity. The series begins with them returning victorious from their 10 year quest. Frieren, as an elf, has an incredibly long life span. She returns to meet up with the heroes of her party 50 years later only to discover they’re all old now. Himmel the Hero passes away very shortly after Frieren shows up to meet with him again. His death affects her greatly and she regrets not having gotten to know him better on their travels. Thus the series begins with her embarking on a journey to heaven to meet with him once more.

Frieren the elf from Frieren: Beyond the Journey’s End - available on CrunchyRoll

The show drops little breadcrumbs along the way and we begin to see how powerful Frieren really is. She far outclasses anything she comes up against and can essentially obliterate any monster she faces. We even get a little bit of a hint towards the very end of exactly how powerful she is when she has to fight her own doppelganger. Her doppelganger who is her exact equal in every way blasts her apprentice just a glance without even expending any mana at all. It’s a pretty spectacular fight.

Anyway. What I noticed about this show, is that they keep things interesting by making the focus not about the fighting. A lot of anime tend to focus on combat and fighting and power levels, and how hard the characters work to improve and become the strongest, (DragonBall, Fairy Tale, etc.) And those are great anime, there’s nothing wrong with that approach. But if you had one character who could wipe everyone out, they wouldn’t be very interesting.

What I loved about Frieren is that she’s working to become more human and more connected to those around her. The show doesn’t spend time focusing on how powerful she is, the show guides us on an emotional journey by dropping little memories and tid-bits here and there about people from Frieren’s past. By keeping the focus off of combat and on the relationships and the things that Frieren struggles with, they keep it interesting.

The problems they present Frieren with cannot be won by being the strongest, most powerful mage in the world. The things Frieren must overcome have to be conquered by being human. She must learn what it means to take on an apprentice. She has to learn how to mediate between her apprentice and other party members. She has to learn how to communicate with others and over the course of the first season she gradually becomes better and better at appreciating the little moments of joy that can be found in the ordinary every day things.

I bring all this up because the guys have been pointing out that by including an overpowered character like Tetsu, I’m creating a huge writing problem for myself. Why? Because it eliminates the stakes. If she can just kill any monster, then we know there is no threat to anyone she’s traveling with. For example, we’ll say Tetsu is level 100 and Kroegan is level 1. What’s the point of having them fight anything less than level 100 if Tetsu can just take it out. On the other side of the equation, if we put her up against something that is a true challenge for her, something that’s level 150, then anyone she’s traveling with becomes useless and all they can do is hide while she fights. Which is boring and does them a disservice if they’re also supposed to be a focus of the narrative.

What this show made me think about is how I can still include Tetsu and keep things interesting. I need to take the focus off the combat and make the problems things that can’t be solved just by being powerful. Tetsu’s power needs to create more problems than it solves, and it cannot be an ‘automatic win button’ for her in most situations. Don’t get me wrong, a flashy display of incredibly power is really satisfying and can be used effectively. But it can’t win the day every time and still make room for my story to be interesting.

I think something like this is going to be easier said than done. In my humble opinion, Japanese culture allows for these types of shows or moments really well. Shows like Frieren or Violet Evergarden where we spend a decent amount of time just reflecting with the main characters. Studio Gibli films do a great job of this too by giving the main characters time and space to just sort of ‘be’ and to reflect. I would describe it as “spending time in the negative space”, which relates to the Japanese concept of “Ma”. You don’t see this much in Western media, we have to jam pack everything full of action and drama. I think spending time in this negative space is one of the things that makes Studio Gibli films so dreamlike and charming. It’s something we have a really hard time putting our finger on and articulating, but I think a big part of it is taking the time to allow for the negative space in the story. We’re fascinated by it, even if we don’t fully understand it, or can’t replicate it successfully in our own work.

To add to that, anime and movies are primarily visual media. A novella/novel is not. It’s one thing to literally show your characters sitting quietly watching a sunset or riding a train filled with spectral creatures, and to have incredibly beautiful visuals to capture the attention of your viewer while these scenes play out. It’s another thing entirely to try to take the paragraphs needed to describe the scenery, the silence, the subtle glances or body language exchanged, etc.

I’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit hole here, but hopefully you get the idea. When I do finally tackle “Of Dwarves and Dragons”, Tetsu is going to be powerful. But her character arc can’t be centered around that. Her character arc is going to need to be focused on how she relates to those she sees as beneath her. I tried to explain this to the guys by describing it like having a pet hamster. You might have a pet hamster because you think it’s cute, and you feel benevolent towards it, you may even want to take it places with you. But you don’t ask it for it’s opinion or it’s help because, well, it’s a hamster and you’re the human. I suspect Tetsu’s problem is going to center largely around learning to see Kroegan as not just an ally, but a friend, rather than a pet.

He Protec. He Attac. But first him finish snac.

Tetsu’s starting state may be that she views all dwarves (and humans, and elves) as basically pets. She is bringing Kroegan along on her quest out of a sense of novelty. However, when she runs into something serious, then she’s faced with an “Eeek, this could kill me! And my dwarf hamster has no chance at all.” and this arc is resolved in part by her change of attitude from regarding Kroegan as a mildly annoying pet into a real fiend who then actually helps her solve the dangerous issue. Which also means it’s a very tall order for Kroegan to do something really clever which will legitimately earn him the friendship of a dragon. (And hopefully the admiration of the readers.) BUT. That sounds much more interesting and satisfying to me than Tetsu just destroying everything in her path and Kroegan tagging along for funzies.

Till next time dear reader, take some time to consider what kind of challenges you can set for your most powerful characters, and remember, not every conflict means combat. See you soon! <3 Tiff