Character Shielding

Character Shielding (also known as Plot Armour or Script Immunity) is a literary device that "protects" a character based on their relative level of importance to a story.

Overview

Character Shielding is omnipresent in any given work of fiction, for the simple reason that the audience needs characters to relate to in order to become invested in the outcome of a story. Though it's a favourite phrase of those who like to complain about characters they hate who they think win too often, Character Shielding is not an inherently bad thing - in most cases it's absolutely necessary to create an engaging narrative. The audience willingly suspends their disbelief so the story can advance: for example, if Van simply got eaten by a Guysack in the very first chapter then there wouldn't be a story, even if this would be the most plausible outcome of an encounter between a scrawny 14-year old boy and a murderous 20-ton biomechanical arachnid. In cases like this, drama takes priority over realism. For all but the most cynical or nitpicky of viewers, it doesn't matter if a story is realistic so long as it's consistent.

However, a problem arises when a story begins to wear its character shielding on its sleeve. When this happens, a story can lose dramatic tension, either because the conclusion is foregone, the solution is so contrived that it shatters suspension of disbelief, or it makes the characters' accomplishments seem determined by plot necessity rather than by on their own merits. For example, in episode 59, Raven and Rease are seemingly enveloped by a charged particle beam fired by Hiltz, but later on they are revealed to have survived for no good "in-universe" reason; they managed to escape simply because the plot needed them to. Every viewer has their own threshold for suspension of disbelief, so the point when a story's character shielding becomes obvious can be highly subjective.