Are we too obsessed with making our heroes the "Underdog"?

Been thinking on this a while, and I feel it is something that's been an issue.

Stacking the deck against the hero does create tension and all, but I wonder if there's an obsession with keeping our protagonists/heroes as the Underdog, even when it reaches the point of ridiculousness.

More to the point, what are good ways to still challenge the hero even when they aren't the Underdog anymore?

Ever seen "Overlord"?

Momonga is one of those kind of heroes that are anything but an underdog.

Except he's not a hero. He eventually becomes a Villain Protagonist.

Although anime does have plenty of examples of overpowered heroes.

Anti-hero, to be precise.

Then there is Saitama. The strongest hero in existence but too apathetic from his own strength to actually become Superman of his setting.

x5 So, I think you're definitely onto something, but as noted above, I'd tend to say that there are two main 'trends' at least in the genre fiction I'm aware of.

1) The power fantasy. Even here, there's a tendency to cast the protagonist as an underdog, but in every substantive way, they are the person with all the power. This is pretty unwilling to address any of the actual challenges/difficulties of exercising power, because it's a power fantasy.

2) More standard underdog stories. These will often have an increasing power storyline, but either the challenge will move with it (think basically Level Scaling, but for the story), or the story will end at the point when the protagonist has just become dominant (e.g. Lord of the Rings). At its most absurd, future fiction in this universe may hit the reset button real hard to avoid having to shift story modes (e.g. Star Wars The Force Awakens).

I do think this may be shifting somewhat, with greater interest in stuff like 'slice of life' type fiction where the power dynamics aren't critical.

But that last question of yours is the most interesting to me. What are the challenges a truly powerful character may face. Now, this somewhat depends on the genre. Like, more realistic fiction story can probably include quite a bit of this—The West Wing would be the obvious example, which has the President of the United States as a major character, who definitely isn't an underdog...but you can see the story often doesn't really know what to do with that. The big stories for him tend to be personal, but also tend to be things his power can't really help with (e.g. his disease, the death of a friend, the kidnapping of his daughter).

But you see some hints of what you can do with this in stories about 'how should he use power?' Is it justified to assassinate a terrorist leader? Should he order a rescue mission of kidnapped people? Should he attempt to intervene in a civil war? Should he pardon someone who is absolutely guilty, given his moral beliefs regarding the death penalty?

For any set up like this, there's a lot of potential stories because the power relies in great part on the consent/cooperation of other people. Every king has to balance their goals against those of their nobles, their merchants and their people and if you don't get it right, you're going to have real problems. The easiest way to not mess things up, is to not change what has worked, which creates an intense, but understandable, status quo bias (especially given the psychological biases in favor of a system which has made you king). There's a lot you can do with that, especially if you can come up with a reason for the king to believe differently, whether it's basically an isekai body-snatching plot, or the king was a hostage and educated in a different nation which thinks differently...

Now, where I think this gets significantly harder is in a more common current narrative, where the protagonist's power is innate. If you don't need to convince an army to follow you, but can simply conquer a city/country/world/universe all on your own, then a lot of these problems basically disappear and the only available course of action is basically passive/hidden resistance and relying on the fact that you can't be everywhere...then it gets really, really hard.

Not impossible, but at that point, the main challenges basically have to be internal (or the occasional other superpowerful person/being) and you can always just wave them away—assuming anyone is actually willing to challenge you on anything. At the point when you can conquer a city on your own...people are going to be very, very, very hesitant to tell you anything which might upset you (I mean, this is also true if you can conquer a city with an army, but at least that army is likely to be willing to make some demands of you).

And that sort of introspective storytelling isn't massively favored in the genres I prefer.

I'm as guilty of that as anyone, as I've been known to say to myself, 'okay, that's enough navel gazing, when does something actually happen?' when reading stories...

Hard balance to strike.

Edited by ECD on Apr 7th 2024 at 6:52:48 AM

I'm gonna have to read through your post a few times, but it is interesting.

I've come to think that it's because on some level, everyone thinks they're the underdog in some way, so it's a quick way to get the audience to relate to the character.

That being said, sometimes it becomes way to pervasive. We want to see them succeed so if the plot keeps undoing their progress to keep them as an underdog, suddenly you get frustrated because it seems like all their efforts are pointless (which might be invoking real life a bit too much depending on your circumstances).

As all (or at least the vast majority of) stories need some sort of conflict to (at least try and) overcome, underdog stories, as well as increasing relatability, also have the benefit of providing significant obstacles for the protagonist to face. However, it's not like it's impossible to create conflict/stakes/obstacles for powerful characters, it's just the narrative basically serves those up on a plate if the character is an underdog. I love both types of story, about underdogs and those who aren't, I just imagine the former is much easier to write (that's not to say that all underdog stories are simple or were easy to make, just that they were probably easier to write in regards to creating conflict). I think there is a bit of a reliance on underdog characters, to the extent there is sometimes backlash when a character isn't as much of an underdog, but both of those are understandable given that it's much harder to write a powerful protagonist well. Avoiding contrivances, such as the monetary/power equivalent of Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? (why don't you use your significant resources to make finding your son easy?), and overuse of things such as The Worf Effect (you're the most powerful person in the world, except for every new villain of the week), can be tricky. However, stories about powerful (be it physically, socially, influentially) people can be extremely rewarding if done well.

So to answer you question is, to an extent, yes, but it is a very understandable obsession. I also want to say, don't be put off making an underdog protagonist (due to it seeming too generic) or a protagonist who isn't one (due to all the things that make creating conflict for that character hard), both are great sources for stories and can be written well as long as you ignore the pitfalls. Just don't feel compelled to write an underdog if you don't want to.

Edited by king15 on Apr 8th 2024 at 10:46:33 AM

I'm pretty sure it's mostly because of the genres I tend to watch and read, but my experience has been the opposite, for the most part I keep running in to stories where the hero has a Story-Breaker Power that makes them significantly stronger than everyone else, with what feels like a 50/50 chance on whether or not the Big Bad is the only exception. They might be an underdog socially in some way (often starting off as like some "nerdy loner" or whatnot), but have some inherent physical advantage, and I think this often takes away a lot of the tension. One of the many things I like about Gravity Falls is that the main leads don't really have any special powers and, barring a few exceptions, they take down monsters using skill or relatively "ordinary" things they have with them.

What I generally try to do with my stories is almost always have the main villain be stronger than the main hero in some way, regardless of the hero's status or abilities. In such a way that a one-on-one straight fight would not come out in the hero's favor even if the hero was at their strongest and they'd need to use some strategy or slowly weaken the villain's forces/powers over the course of the story to beat them.

For example, the current "big" webnovel I'm working on would have it be a thing that the hero group slowly rises in both abilities and recognition, yet no matter what except maybe by the end they don't surpass the main antagonist in either. Said antagonist is a Villainous Princess With Good Publicity with the birth-given ability to use certain powerful magic objects that would kill almost everyone else, including all the main heroes (long story behind that). It's a thing that while the lead group grow in number and get more fame and money and the like (not quite sure if it would be Rags to Riches level), they never become as rich or powerful as said princess in her prime (at some point she is forced to leave her own kingdom to do villainy in hiding), and that she is so overwhelmingly strong that they have to defeat her in a group, with heavy strategy and spending most of the story trying to get things to counteract her abilities. I want to make a point where the villain is the one with an overpowered, unique ability, and that the main character's powers are just "average" and "common" by the setting's standards in comparison. To a lesser degree, the rest of the Big Bad Ensemble is also made up of One Person Armies and need to be outwitted with cooperation on the hero team's part.

So overall I think a reliable way to keep tension up even if a hero isn't an underdog is to make it clear that Always a Bigger Fish is in play. I personally find invincibility boring, so I like a story where the hero isn't at the top of the food chain. And also regularly encounters people on their power level; I think a Curb-Stomp Battle might be impressive at first, but every fight ending overwhelmingly in the hero's favor gets dull pretty quickly.

Edited by greatpikminfan on Apr 25th 2024 at 11:55:52 AM

I actually dislike when the protagonist is too strong right away since it takes away the stakes for me. I like natural buildup, so I do like underdogs. Though if they're way too weak, it has the opposite impact since it removes believability and investment for me. So as far as I'm concerned, I like a balance: the heroes not being so strong that they're pretty much guaranteed to win, but not being so pitiful of an underdog that the universe needs to break for them to win.

What I really like are characters who have victories by unconventional means. So while they may be, say, weak or lower-class or unable to perform the tasks everyone else can do, I prefer them to have creative thinking skills and some cunning. So maybe they can't win a fight, but they can outsmart their enemies, or come up with strategy, or make use of resources. Those are the sort of underdogs I like.