Obstacles vs Disempowerment · 10:34am Oct 22nd, 2015
An obstacle is something that comes between a character and something they want.
Disempowerment is the removal of agency from a character.
At first blush, these two things might not seem all that dissimilar at times - when you throw a character in prison, you're taking away their agency, right?
Well, not quite.
Agency, when it comes right down to it, is your ability to make decisions. Someone who is thrown in prison but who has agency might do numerous things - they might try to escape, or figure out some way to prove their innocence, or figure out who framed them from the inside, or plot against those who had them arrested, or run their crime syndicate from behind the scenes.
Someone who is disempowered, on the other hand, simply can't even try to do anything effective - either they won't do anything at all, or their actions are all obviously futile. A character like this might sit around quietly at the police station while all their friends are being killed, even though there isn't even a cop in the room with them.
An important thing to recognize when you're writing is that disempowerment and obstacles are not the same thing, and confusing these two things frequently leads to disaster. An obstacle is an in-character problem, while disempowerment is a narrative one. Characters overcome obstacles by striving to succeed in the story, but characters don't overcome disempowerment, because disempowerment has nothing to do with them as an entity in a fictional world.
Disempowerment is when the monster comes back at the end of the horror movie to eat the protagonist anyway, because you can't win. It is when the villain grabs the heroine by the Standard Female Grab Area and she suddenly becomes unable to do anything to free herself or do anything more than wiggle attractively. It is when your character in a video game just stands around dumbly in a cutscene while the villain does something evil, when, if you could control yourself at the time, you could just shoot them. The character has no power, no control - things simply happen.
And if you've ever been frustrated by the latter two, you can understand why disempowerment is annoying, but also why it feels artificial when it is used as an obstacle - when the heroine suddenly beats up the bad guy, despite having been utterly helpless before, the situation not having changed, and the character not having faked it but having been genuinely unable to act, this isn't her overcoming an obstacle, it is an arbitrary series of events dictated by the writer.
This is not to say that disempowerment is always bad - disempowerment is a powerful tool for driving home a sense of futility, hopelessness, stifling order, or conformity. When Winston loves Big Brother at the end of 1984, or the demon reappears suddenly at the end of the horror movie to drag the character down to Hell, or the princess ends up marrying the prince instead of the peasant boy because that's how it goes, that delivers some sort of impact. The character not only has failed, but they have no hope of success - it is over and done. There is nothing left, and they cannot win, ever, and won't even try.
But when you use it in a story about a character overcoming the odds, it just doesn't fit right, because it isn't an obstacle at all - it is a narrative device, and it is granted or taken away by the author, not by the character's own actions.
Thanks for posting this one. Useful stuff.
I cannot even begin to count the amount of times this has freaking infuriated me over the years!
As long as it doesn't feel out of character, I don't mind Cutscene incompetence. But seriously, sometimes it just makes you feel 'why did they let that happen?'
I read it as disembowelment. That might hurt.
You have specific examples in mind?
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As a totally hypothetical example:
Say Superman lost his superpowers. This is comics, so of course this happens for whatever reason.
In a disempowerment scenario, he is kicked out of the Justice League because he has no powers. He is later taken captive by some bad guys during a hostage crisis, forcing his previous teammates to save him. Later on, he regains his superpowers because
sales are downthe effect that took his powers wears off and he rejoins the team.In an obstacle-like situation, after getting kicked out and taken hostage, he decides that he's still a hero and beats up two of the terrorists with his bare hands before being shot. After recovering, he insists on remaining with the team and continuing to help them, because Batman has no powers and he still helps them, and Superman is no less a man than he is. He does what he can as mission control and trains with Batman to learn how to fight without superpowers. When the rest of the team is captured by some supervillain, he shows up flying again, and the supervillain flees as he realizes that Superman has regained his powers... except, no, Superman was wearing a jetpack under his cape.
In the former case, the character's incapacity isn't an obstacle for the character - the character takes no steps to change their circumstances, and goes along with their loss of power with a loss of agency. It isn't an obstacle to overcome, it is a new normal. When he regains his powers after sunbathing on the beach, it isn't because he overcame the obstacle, it is because the writers decided they wanted Superman to come back; he had no agency in his loss or return, it was simply narrative structure.
In the latter case, despite it being the exact same situation, Superman's lack of superpowers is presented as an in-character obstacle to overcome - sure, he can't be Superman anymore, but that doesn't mean he can't be a hero anymore, and he does what he can to deal with the obstacle and still win, despite the fact that he no longer is what he was. His powers might come back eventually in the latter scenario, but he would have still overcome their absence as if they were an obstacle, even if their return is arbitrary or the result of stuff wearing off or finding a bit of kryptonite stuck under his big toenail or whatever.
You spoiled the ending on 1984 for me.
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art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215535297_B2j5j/0/1050x10000/215535297_B2j5j-1050x10000.jpg
(Though seriously, if you were actually sorry about it and not just being cutesy, sorry, but it is past the statute of limitations on spoilers. Plus, well, it is a dystopian novel; it isn't going to have a happy ending.
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3494402 I kind of thought he might leave in time for Christmas giver style XD since that was one of the last books I read and I though since they share some characteristics.
I read a lot of old classics with my mother and sometimes a few of my friends and the next one we were going for was 1984 and I was really exited for it, we were going to go to a play and everything and now I just kind of have to keep it to myself. : (
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Well, it's not a twist ending or anything. By which I mean that the journey getting there is the more important part of the story than what happens at the very end of the last chapter. Also, and I know this is incredibly petty on my part, the story is 1984, not 1982.
You should read the pony version of the story. After you've seen the play or read the original. Nineteen Neighty-Four.
3499602 Thanks : )