One egregious example of plot armor I remember is from Terminator: Salvation. In that movie they were several times were a Terminator grab onto a character and instead of effortlessly killing them right away like they did with any other human targets in previous movies they throw them across the room instead.
Yes I hate this so much! There are SO many examples of this where an enemy will clearly have a character at their mercy and instead of killing them or doing anything else sensible they just keep throwing them around. Awful fight choreography and writing.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2ptWith some other characters it would make sense like Freddy Krueger or the Predator since that would fit their character but Terminators are emotionless killing machines and wouldn’t partake in any sort of “play with your prey” shenanigans.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt it is like the writter want to create suspension and tension while still want character to survive. Problem is the writer was too dumb to find a logical solution.
Thank you. When talking about the later seasons throwing out George R.R. Martin's rules on "plot armor", Arya and the Waif is the first example I always point to.
People need to shift their perspective, the main character doesn't get lucky because they have plot armour they are the main character because they get Lucky. The only issues are when the main character is constantly defying the odds and their success is born out of the rules changing, like when a zombie all of a sudden doesn't want to bite and instead starts hitting instead.
Yeah 100% agree. People get too hung up on the terminology and deconstructing a story and lose sight of the wider narrative and what the author is trying to convey.
Good video, but I was looking forward to an example of a character surviving in situation in early GoT, and an explanation of why it wasn't plot armor. I think a good and bad example of two similar situations: a character surviving an unlikely situation and a character dying, would have served the point better.
Yeah fair point, I did almost include those but I changed my mind because I wanted to keep the video from being too long and I wanted to try and vary the examples.
The most memorable example of bad plot armor that I recall in GoT is when the Night King could easily kill Jon and has an army with him but spares him for no explained or implied reason.
Ooft yeah, to be honest everything around the Night King and the white walkers was horribly handled. Arya not being killed by the Night King is another example.
Here’s an idea how to fix the Arya scene: Have a scene before she gets stabbed were she steals a plate or something and hides under her clothes. Than when she gets stabbed the plate protects Arya allowing her to run away unharmed.
Hear me out. It’s because she never killed the waif. The whole reason the waif was partnered with Arya in training was so that the wait could learn as much about her mannerisms as possible to accurately copy her. When Arya was no longer useful, the waif killed her and assumed her identity. Which really explains why Aryas attitude towards her sibilants is so cold in later seasons. Arya died in Bravos and never made it back to Westeros. Even the ending where she sails away west is probably the waif leaving on another mission where she will face change again. What better way to explain that Arya is gone than to say she sailed off into the sunset never to be seen again.
Wow. This makes all the sense. However it doesn't work because we see the Waif in the same room was Arya - then again, we never see the outcome when the room fades to black.
I'm not a fan of game of thrones but I really agree with your general points. Why can't highly paid screenwriters allow the audience to suspend belief by good plot structure?? I've ranted so many times about this to my friends and family!
point 1 you mentioned: even if the character doesn't violate the world's internal logic, if they get lucky far too many times, it is plot armor. It is like you won the lottery of highest value possible on earth 10 times in a year, making you a billionaire instantly. Actually, nevermind, most fictions where the character was weak from the start of the story to the end when the character was the most powerful being in the universe have those kind of extreme luck too often.
Yeah you're right, I probably didn't talk enough about luck but I consider getting lucky too many times a violation of internal consistency. Because we all know lucky things can happen rarely, but not all the time due to the simple laws of probability.
Jaime charging against Dany and Drogon, than being throne in the lake in full body armor and Bron swiming both of them to the other side of the lake is one of the most stupid plot armor in the series.
I think the definition of the video is slightly off. A better one would be "Plot Armor is when a character survives or resolves a situation through means that break the suspension of disbelief of the audience". This is an important distinction, specially for writers, as it's not simply because your plot is internally and/or externally consistente that it is believable. Take for example the modern Star Wars trilogy: I think most people agree there is a lot wrong with Rey and most plots of those films, Rey and Finn and most of the "Resistance" has ungodly plot armor - and yet, very little of it is actually inconsistent with the established Disney canon. It is 100% consistent with the Force that somehow an ancient Sith crafted a dagger that would perfectly match the position of the debris of the Death Star at the time and date Rey found it - there is no break of the rules of the Force, even in the EU plenty of people could see the future in one way or another, there are plenty of ancient prophecies, texts, and such, and while humans are short lived, many races actually live hundreds of years in that universe. The Dark Side of the Force in particular is very attuned to that kind of mysterious use of the Force, and in a meta sense it wouldn't be the first nor second nor third time the Force just gained new attributes as the writers needed it. Externally, while it's not scientifically recognized that people can see the future, it is a common belief in nearly all cultures that some forms of clairvoyance exists, so it's not absurd for a writer to draw from that shared cultural experience. So, how come Rey and her little dagger feel like a plot hole, or plot armor? Well, it's hard to say. There is no objective thing you can point at and say "this was the flaw". We can say it was convenient, but convenient things do happen IRL. So was it TOO convenient to be believable? Probably, but what is "too" convenient anyway? Was it the lack of lore? Surely mentioning the dagger in more detail and how it could be a map and how it was made and by whom COULD help, but then again when Palpatine shot lighting through his fingers it was straight up a random power only he had and that wasn't a problem. Could it be the audience was already too fed up with the story, Rey and lost their suspension of disbelief long ago and so that scene came under scrutiny? Maybe. Simply put, it's a combination of subjective factors that make it not sit right with the audience, and while we can raise a bunch of these, we can't get a single objective break of rules to point at and say "this is the plot hole!". It's important to understand that no matter how tight or loose your world is, there will always be a subjective human aspect to your writing and the audience's interpretation.
Hey, you raise some good points, and I think your definition works equally well. I would say both our definitions cover your example, because I would point to that kind of "hyper convenience" as an example of breaking the consistency of a world. That whole movie felt like a weird video game fetch quest it was horrible. Like you said, some of this is audience subjectivity, but you raise a pretty interesting point about Palpatine's lightning. My take on that is that it's nothing that significantly impacts the plot or other characters, I kind of viewed the lightning in the original trilogy a just an expression of the rage and hatred Palpatine felt and his utter mastery of the dark side. Even if it wasn't foreshadowed, it's not significant enough on its own to warrant our vitriol, the important narrative point there is the Emperor is torturing Luke and it triggers Vader to finally redeem himself. The Emperor could just as easily have been doing something else, the lightning itself isn't that important.
Finally someone speaks about how ridiculous it was for Cersei to become queen regnant on her own, despite not being a Baratheon nor a Targaryen by blood, and after having killed most of the nobility and religious leadership, and being humiliated in the streets.
I feel like a lot of fans somehow overlooked this scene and it definitely bugs me so when I was making this video I knew I had to use that example 100%.
That scene always bugged me too. I mean, even Robert only got the throne because he had the most Targaryen blood without being a Targaryen. The idea of Cersei getting the throne after Tommen died is ridiculous.
Great examples! 👍 There are actually a lot more examples where you can compare the excellent writing of the first four seasons with the aweful writing of the later four seasons. I just want to point out that the first four seasons were from the author himself while the later seasons were by some mediocre screenwriters.
Thank you! Yeah I think there's a definite massive drop off when they effectively ran out of source material. They couldn't match the quality of the earlier writing.
Arya, Cersei, Dany, Jon, and many others display traits of Mary Sues. Take Arya, for example-how was she able to hold her own against Brienne? She never received any real sword training in Braavos, and even with training, she shouldn't be able to compete with a seasoned fighter who has defeated many men. Brienne's size and strength would be overwhelming for most men, let alone someone as small as Arya. Then there's Daenerys, who seems to survive everything. Sure, she's immune to fire, but why is she also unaffected by smoke? She burns down a building from the inside without the structure collapsing on her, seemingly immune to all damage. Additionally, it's strange that no one accuses her of witchcraft, especially considering how much the Dothraki hate witches. And why did the Night King kill the smallest, most agile dragon instead of targeting the largest, stationary one with enemies on its back? It doesn't make any sense. Also, why is Dany immune to fire when no other Targaryen has that kind of plot armor? It's repeatedly established that dragon fire can bring down walls, yet Jon somehow survives by hiding behind one. He also escapes a trap set by Ramsay; instead of being killed by the archers, they charge at him. These inconsistencies make the characters feel overly protected by the plot, stripping away the realism that made earlier seasons compelling, S5-8 are just trash.
Everything you've said is 100% spot on. Especially Arya I really hate what they did to her, in the books she'd a PTSD victim and deeply disturbed. But in the show they try to change her into some badass fantasy warrior, the scene of her frightening Brienne with her tiny rapier sword was ridiculous.
enjoyed the video, but I feel like the second example was more "lack of consequences" rather than plot armor. Plot armor could be Samwell getting swarmed in the last battle by 30 zombies and then showing up in the next scene unharmed
Thanks! Agree that the scene with Samwell surviving is definitely a good example of plot armour. But I'd say re : the second example, plot armour can almost be read as a lack of consequences, so I'd say it counts. Samwell surviving the wights is a lack of consequence for him being in what should be an inescapable situation. And same for Cersei with her lack of consequences.
Saw D note and instantly started laughing. The scene where light made a woman "unalive" somewhere nobody could find her makes no sense at all. It's a statistical impossibly that nothing of her would be found somewhere She should have gotten a heart attack right there. Light gets caught. End of story. I mean example we see other moments where light makes people do something they can't and they just drop normally due to the impossibility of doing a certain act.
Haha, I always kind of assumed they eventually found her but I don't think her body would tell them much after a certain point. Overall I do like Death Note a lot, L was the smarter of the 2 since he was more grounded and didn't have the benefit of supernatural allies or abilities on his side.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt that's still a plot hole as it's impossible and they said they still didn't find her. So either the mangaka forgot about it which it was never mentioned and she was important or light just had major plot armor which he did. If anyone found her it's immediately going against the impossibly of not being found as that would be reported and then circle back to heart attack immediately It's a catch 22 moment that was just for cool sake rather than stay to the rules
I haven't watched the full video yet, paused to leave this comment. I hope you mention the new suicide squad game as an example of characters having horrible plot armor. A group of street level criminals being able to kill Superman, Batman and Flash is just ridiculous.
You know I'd managed to block that from my mind, but your comment just now has reminded me. Honestly I saw the early trailer for that game and boycotted everything about it ever since, absolutely ridiculous.
This all seems like a bit of an oversimplification tbh. Also i don't think Arya surviving being stabbed by the Waif was plot armour, it was just bad direction. You can imagine a version of that scene where the Waif surprises Arya but only manages to inflict superficial wounds before she escapes, and everything after that could play out as it did just fine. Her survival is only implausible because the attack was depicted on screen in an overly violent way, which has nothing to do with the writing.
But the whole issue of the scene is the fact that she had severe wounds, if it was changed to be superficial wounds then the whole scene changes and the plot armour isn't as bad. And even with shallow wounds, characters in earlier seasons are still shown to suffer more than Arya did with more serious ones.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt it would change the whole scene sure, but my point was it's not a problem with the plot. Admittedly it would be interesting to read the script directions to see what the writer intended, but unless it explicitly says 'the Waif surprises Arya and stabs her in such a way that she could not plausibly survive' then you can't really put it down to the writing.
You seem to be confusing Plot Armour (characters surviving when they should have died) with the Idiot Ball (characters making irrational decisions because the plot requires it). Ned and Rob Stark dying due to their poor decisions isn't Plot Armour since they died but if their reasons had been poorly explained they could be considered to be holding the Idiot Ball.
Plot armour is wear someone is in an unwinnable / unsurvivable situation but overcomes the odds because the plot demanded it as you cant have the main or a popular character killed like that.
@@doovstoover9703 "Like when Luke switched off his targeting computer and used the force to destroy the Death Star?" Luke was shown training to use the force earlier, something Darth Vader said was more powerful than the Death Star. Also Luke survived because Han saved him, not because he used the force.
@@uanime1 well exactly. A main character surviving in an unwinnable situation isn't plot armour, that's just a story. It's only plot armour if their survival is unjustifiable within the context of the story, ie their means of surviving hasn't been set up properly.
One egregious example of plot armor I remember is from Terminator: Salvation.
In that movie they were several times were a Terminator grab onto a character and instead of effortlessly killing them right away like they did with any other human targets in previous movies they throw them across the room instead.
Yes I hate this so much! There are SO many examples of this where an enemy will clearly have a character at their mercy and instead of killing them or doing anything else sensible they just keep throwing them around. Awful fight choreography and writing.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2ptWith some other characters it would make sense like Freddy Krueger or the Predator since that would fit their character but Terminators are emotionless killing machines and wouldn’t partake in any sort of “play with your prey” shenanigans.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt it is like the writter want to create suspension and tension while still want character to survive. Problem is the writer was too dumb to find a logical solution.
Thank you. When talking about the later seasons throwing out George R.R. Martin's rules on "plot armor", Arya and the Waif is the first example I always point to.
No problem, glad you liked the video!
People need to shift their perspective, the main character doesn't get lucky because they have plot armour they are the main character because they get Lucky. The only issues are when the main character is constantly defying the odds and their success is born out of the rules changing, like when a zombie all of a sudden doesn't want to bite and instead starts hitting instead.
Yeah 100% agree. People get too hung up on the terminology and deconstructing a story and lose sight of the wider narrative and what the author is trying to convey.
An example is Indiana Jones 5, when an explosive is dropped right onto Indy and it only kills everyone else.
@@JoJoJoker I boycotted all the Indiana Jones movies after 3 to be honest.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Indy 4 is a masterpiece relative to Indy 5!
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Remember the famous hide in the fridge to escape nuclear bomb =)) haha that was too dumb
why is this channel so underrated! I love these videos and it helps me become a better storyteller. Please keep going :)
Thank you much appreciated!
Nicely and clearly explained again, i like the use of examples! Totally agree!
Thanks much appreciated!
Good video, but I was looking forward to an example of a character surviving in situation in early GoT, and an explanation of why it wasn't plot armor. I think a good and bad example of two similar situations: a character surviving an unlikely situation and a character dying, would have served the point better.
Yeah fair point, I did almost include those but I changed my mind because I wanted to keep the video from being too long and I wanted to try and vary the examples.
The most memorable example of bad plot armor that I recall in GoT is when the Night King could easily kill Jon and has an army with him but spares him for no explained or implied reason.
Ooft yeah, to be honest everything around the Night King and the white walkers was horribly handled. Arya not being killed by the Night King is another example.
Here’s an idea how to fix the Arya scene:
Have a scene before she gets stabbed were she steals a plate or something and hides under her clothes. Than when she gets stabbed the plate protects Arya allowing her to run away unharmed.
Yeah that would work - or even just have her not being stabbed as severely so it's a more superficial wound.
Hear me out. It’s because she never killed the waif. The whole reason the waif was partnered with Arya in training was so that the wait could learn as much about her mannerisms as possible to accurately copy her. When Arya was no longer useful, the waif killed her and assumed her identity. Which really explains why Aryas attitude towards her sibilants is so cold in later seasons. Arya died in Bravos and never made it back to Westeros. Even the ending where she sails away west is probably the waif leaving on another mission where she will face change again. What better way to explain that Arya is gone than to say she sailed off into the sunset never to be seen again.
Haha I like this a lot. If any fanfic writers are reading this, please make it happen.
Wow. This makes all the sense. However it doesn't work because we see the Waif in the same room was Arya - then again, we never see the outcome when the room fades to black.
I've thought this myself. I wish the showrunners would have done this, it would have been one of the greatest twists in TV.
@@extraplain2412 Plot Armor prevents proper plots :)
@@extraplain2412 The reveal would have 100% been legendary.
Excellent video. The part about cercei is a fantastic point. I never thought about it like that, but now I can’t unsee it!
Thanks very much! Glad you found it interesting!
I'm not a fan of game of thrones but I really agree with your general points. Why can't highly paid screenwriters allow the audience to suspend belief by good plot structure?? I've ranted so many times about this to my friends and family!
Thanks! I feel your pain, as you said it's their full time job so it's frustrating to see poor quality writing in big budget shows.
I dont often hear the term plot armor but I hear Mary Sue being tossed around alot.
Ah yeah another very popular talking point. Probably a close second from what I've seen personally.
point 1 you mentioned: even if the character doesn't violate the world's internal logic, if they get lucky far too many times, it is plot armor.
It is like you won the lottery of highest value possible on earth 10 times in a year, making you a billionaire instantly.
Actually, nevermind, most fictions where the character was weak from the start of the story to the end when the character was the most powerful being in the universe have those kind of extreme luck too often.
Yeah you're right, I probably didn't talk enough about luck but I consider getting lucky too many times a violation of internal consistency. Because we all know lucky things can happen rarely, but not all the time due to the simple laws of probability.
Jaime charging against Dany and Drogon, than being throne in the lake in full body armor and Bron swiming both of them to the other side of the lake is one of the most stupid plot armor in the series.
Lol yeah 100%. Funnily enough I was originally going to use this example instead of the Cersei one.
I think the definition of the video is slightly off. A better one would be "Plot Armor is when a character survives or resolves a situation through means that break the suspension of disbelief of the audience".
This is an important distinction, specially for writers, as it's not simply because your plot is internally and/or externally consistente that it is believable.
Take for example the modern Star Wars trilogy: I think most people agree there is a lot wrong with Rey and most plots of those films, Rey and Finn and most of the "Resistance" has ungodly plot armor - and yet, very little of it is actually inconsistent with the established Disney canon. It is 100% consistent with the Force that somehow an ancient Sith crafted a dagger that would perfectly match the position of the debris of the Death Star at the time and date Rey found it - there is no break of the rules of the Force, even in the EU plenty of people could see the future in one way or another, there are plenty of ancient prophecies, texts, and such, and while humans are short lived, many races actually live hundreds of years in that universe. The Dark Side of the Force in particular is very attuned to that kind of mysterious use of the Force, and in a meta sense it wouldn't be the first nor second nor third time the Force just gained new attributes as the writers needed it. Externally, while it's not scientifically recognized that people can see the future, it is a common belief in nearly all cultures that some forms of clairvoyance exists, so it's not absurd for a writer to draw from that shared cultural experience.
So, how come Rey and her little dagger feel like a plot hole, or plot armor? Well, it's hard to say. There is no objective thing you can point at and say "this was the flaw". We can say it was convenient, but convenient things do happen IRL. So was it TOO convenient to be believable? Probably, but what is "too" convenient anyway? Was it the lack of lore? Surely mentioning the dagger in more detail and how it could be a map and how it was made and by whom COULD help, but then again when Palpatine shot lighting through his fingers it was straight up a random power only he had and that wasn't a problem. Could it be the audience was already too fed up with the story, Rey and lost their suspension of disbelief long ago and so that scene came under scrutiny? Maybe. Simply put, it's a combination of subjective factors that make it not sit right with the audience, and while we can raise a bunch of these, we can't get a single objective break of rules to point at and say "this is the plot hole!".
It's important to understand that no matter how tight or loose your world is, there will always be a subjective human aspect to your writing and the audience's interpretation.
Hey, you raise some good points, and I think your definition works equally well. I would say both our definitions cover your example, because I would point to that kind of "hyper convenience" as an example of breaking the consistency of a world. That whole movie felt like a weird video game fetch quest it was horrible.
Like you said, some of this is audience subjectivity, but you raise a pretty interesting point about Palpatine's lightning. My take on that is that it's nothing that significantly impacts the plot or other characters, I kind of viewed the lightning in the original trilogy a just an expression of the rage and hatred Palpatine felt and his utter mastery of the dark side. Even if it wasn't foreshadowed, it's not significant enough on its own to warrant our vitriol, the important narrative point there is the Emperor is torturing Luke and it triggers Vader to finally redeem himself. The Emperor could just as easily have been doing something else, the lightning itself isn't that important.
Finally someone speaks about how ridiculous it was for Cersei to become queen regnant on her own, despite not being a Baratheon nor a Targaryen by blood, and after having killed most of the nobility and religious leadership, and being humiliated in the streets.
I feel like a lot of fans somehow overlooked this scene and it definitely bugs me so when I was making this video I knew I had to use that example 100%.
That scene always bugged me too. I mean, even Robert only got the throne because he had the most Targaryen blood without being a Targaryen. The idea of Cersei getting the throne after Tommen died is ridiculous.
Great examples! 👍
There are actually a lot more examples where you can compare the excellent writing of the first four seasons with the aweful writing of the later four seasons.
I just want to point out that the first four seasons were from the author himself while the later seasons were by some mediocre screenwriters.
Thank you! Yeah I think there's a definite massive drop off when they effectively ran out of source material. They couldn't match the quality of the earlier writing.
If the only answer to, "why did this character succeed?" is, "because the writer(s) wanted them to," then it's plot armour.
Yep, plot armour can also be read as "writer intervention".
Yep, plot armour can also be read as "writer intervention".
Arya, Cersei, Dany, Jon, and many others display traits of Mary Sues. Take Arya, for example-how was she able to hold her own against Brienne? She never received any real sword training in Braavos, and even with training, she shouldn't be able to compete with a seasoned fighter who has defeated many men. Brienne's size and strength would be overwhelming for most men, let alone someone as small as Arya.
Then there's Daenerys, who seems to survive everything. Sure, she's immune to fire, but why is she also unaffected by smoke? She burns down a building from the inside without the structure collapsing on her, seemingly immune to all damage. Additionally, it's strange that no one accuses her of witchcraft, especially considering how much the Dothraki hate witches.
And why did the Night King kill the smallest, most agile dragon instead of targeting the largest, stationary one with enemies on its back? It doesn't make any sense. Also, why is Dany immune to fire when no other Targaryen has that kind of plot armor?
It's repeatedly established that dragon fire can bring down walls, yet Jon somehow survives by hiding behind one. He also escapes a trap set by Ramsay; instead of being killed by the archers, they charge at him. These inconsistencies make the characters feel overly protected by the plot, stripping away the realism that made earlier seasons compelling, S5-8 are just trash.
Everything you've said is 100% spot on. Especially Arya I really hate what they did to her, in the books she'd a PTSD victim and deeply disturbed. But in the show they try to change her into some badass fantasy warrior, the scene of her frightening Brienne with her tiny rapier sword was ridiculous.
enjoyed the video, but I feel like the second example was more "lack of consequences" rather than plot armor. Plot armor could be Samwell getting swarmed in the last battle by 30 zombies and then showing up in the next scene unharmed
Thanks! Agree that the scene with Samwell surviving is definitely a good example of plot armour. But I'd say re : the second example, plot armour can almost be read as a lack of consequences, so I'd say it counts. Samwell surviving the wights is a lack of consequence for him being in what should be an inescapable situation. And same for Cersei with her lack of consequences.
Saw D note and instantly started laughing. The scene where light made a woman "unalive" somewhere nobody could find her makes no sense at all. It's a statistical impossibly that nothing of her would be found somewhere
She should have gotten a heart attack right there. Light gets caught. End of story.
I mean example we see other moments where light makes people do something they can't and they just drop normally due to the impossibility of doing a certain act.
Haha, I always kind of assumed they eventually found her but I don't think her body would tell them much after a certain point. Overall I do like Death Note a lot, L was the smarter of the 2 since he was more grounded and didn't have the benefit of supernatural allies or abilities on his side.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt that's still a plot hole as it's impossible and they said they still didn't find her. So either the mangaka forgot about it which it was never mentioned and she was important or light just had major plot armor which he did.
If anyone found her it's immediately going against the impossibly of not being found as that would be reported and then circle back to heart attack immediately
It's a catch 22 moment that was just for cool sake rather than stay to the rules
My least favorite use of plot armor would have to be the improper use of Deus ex Machina.
Yeah I really hate seeing this in stories.
I haven't watched the full video yet, paused to leave this comment.
I hope you mention the new suicide squad game as an example of characters having horrible plot armor. A group of street level criminals being able to kill Superman, Batman and Flash is just ridiculous.
You know I'd managed to block that from my mind, but your comment just now has reminded me. Honestly I saw the early trailer for that game and boycotted everything about it ever since, absolutely ridiculous.
ask ma-rey-sue from starwars
she had plot armor thought three movies
including asspulls like teleborting lightsabers
Ooft yeah they whole trilogy was the definition of plot armour and lazy writing. Maybe I'll do a separate video on it.
The whole of the last 2 seasons were plot armour. Only seasons 1 to 3 were good.
Plot armor: see Jon Snow, Battle of the Bastards.
I almost used this as one of the examples, and Jon Snow vs the white walkers and the wights.
This all seems like a bit of an oversimplification tbh. Also i don't think Arya surviving being stabbed by the Waif was plot armour, it was just bad direction. You can imagine a version of that scene where the Waif surprises Arya but only manages to inflict superficial wounds before she escapes, and everything after that could play out as it did just fine. Her survival is only implausible because the attack was depicted on screen in an overly violent way, which has nothing to do with the writing.
But the whole issue of the scene is the fact that she had severe wounds, if it was changed to be superficial wounds then the whole scene changes and the plot armour isn't as bad. And even with shallow wounds, characters in earlier seasons are still shown to suffer more than Arya did with more serious ones.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt it would change the whole scene sure, but my point was it's not a problem with the plot. Admittedly it would be interesting to read the script directions to see what the writer intended, but unless it explicitly says 'the Waif surprises Arya and stabs her in such a way that she could not plausibly survive' then you can't really put it down to the writing.
You seem to be confusing Plot Armour (characters surviving when they should have died) with the Idiot Ball (characters making irrational decisions because the plot requires it). Ned and Rob Stark dying due to their poor decisions isn't Plot Armour since they died but if their reasons had been poorly explained they could be considered to be holding the Idiot Ball.
Hey, you may have misunderstood what I said in the video. Because I said the same as you, Ned and Rob's deaths weren't plot armour.
Plot armour is wear someone is in an unwinnable / unsurvivable situation but overcomes the odds because the plot demanded it as you cant have the main or a popular character killed like that.
Yeah pretty much to be honest.
Like when Luke switched off his targeting computer and used the force to destroy the Death Star?
@@doovstoover9703
"Like when Luke switched off his targeting computer and used the force to destroy the Death Star?"
Luke was shown training to use the force earlier, something Darth Vader said was more powerful than the Death Star. Also Luke survived because Han saved him, not because he used the force.
@@uanime1 well exactly. A main character surviving in an unwinnable situation isn't plot armour, that's just a story. It's only plot armour if their survival is unjustifiable within the context of the story, ie their means of surviving hasn't been set up properly.
Sounds like Tyrion and just the whole Lannisters in the books.
They had no allies, were losing hard and somehow won through sheer luck.
Magnus Carlsen is not the World Champion anymore.
True, still number 1 though even if he technically stepped down I reckon.