Character Study: Eczel Strata and the nature of POWER

[H-Man]

Hi. Felt like writing about a character of mine because well, not like I'm doing much right now and it's been a while [never] since I actually wrote all the details on him. And besides, given the general opinion on things like Grenragan... what do I have to lose?

All credibility, of course.

Part 01​

So, Eczel Strata. Explaining the character is no easy task, from past experience. So I hope you guys don't mind my going on tangents and only giving the full explanation at the end...

Eczel Strata was originally created not long after a binge playing of Devil May Cry 3 and discussing roleplaying characters with a friend of mine. The development has taken me some eight years, give or take, and it's still going on even now.

Every character is created from a concept, whether you go with the overly descriptive version or not. You may not go with terms like 'deuteragonist' or 'Goldfish Poop Gang' or such, but you definitely want something like 'I need a character for the lead to talk to this chapter' and 'I need a character to fight next', or 'I need some audience members to be impressed by my character'.

Eczel's concept was built around Power. I wanted to create a powerful character, one who would be capable of handling dangers such as the ones from Devil May Cry or the campaign said friend had taken part in. Devil May Cry also affected me given its 'cool' nature, which I wanted my character to be able to partake.

You can guess this did not go well with test audiences. Hell, you're probably even thinking about that overused word, 'Gary Stu'. So overused it is, in fact, that I lost interest in using it to refer to characters simply due to things like 'power levels'. It feels like a crutch, to be honest, and there's also the part where a powerful character can be written in an interesting manner, and an uninteresting character is much worse.

Is Eczel interesting? I 'unno. I'm interested in him and I admittedly went through a phase where I refused to bring him up again because people reacted poorly. As it is, though, I'm thinking that at least writing this can teach people to not make mistakes I've made, even if changes no minds at all.

So! As stated, Eczel's primary concept was 'Power', followed by 'cool'. The latter is, admittedly, very much viewer-centric: the whole point of Poochie's existence is that trying to manufacture 'cool' does not necessarily lead to good things. [Of course, that doesn't stop people from trying, as seen with Grenragan or The Wonderful 101.]

But what does that mean? What is Power, and how does it work?

One thing to start with: people - the audience, primarily - doesn't understand Power. As much as people think Dragon Ball Z's 'POWER LEVELS' are stupid, as well as its focus on making 'BIGGER BEAMS' and such, the fact is that these come to mind very easily when it comes to combat. Just take a look at the standard Time Loop plots by bad authors, such as PL's Chuunin Exam Day. Naruto's only considered 'strong' when he knows as many techniques as possible, when he can use as many of them as possible, even when it would be technically unnecessary. Or certain Pokémon stories that focus on the 'Gotta Catch'em All' aspect, having the characters catch a lot of Pokémon they're not even going to use.

Contrast this to Xykon from the Order of the Stick comics. He doesn't need much more than Magic Missile - the most basic spell - to crush his opposition. He knows more spells, but that's only due to his nature as a D&D character. If not for the fact that there are obstacles his magic cannot overcome, he could've taken over the world with a minimal amount of spells.

Power does not preclude having more than one ability, of course. What one has to take into account, however, is how it is balanced in a story. Devil May Cry lets Dante wield his Devil Arms and guns masterfully, capable of chaining multiple attacks and weapons within only a few seconds, but it is contrasted by the enemies' numbers and own combat powers, which can force him to sacrifice style in exchange for actually killing them. The big flaw of something like Chuunin Exam Day is that there's little effort taken to balance the actual power levels: simply put, the villains can't exercize a valid threat when they come upon the 'hero', simply because said hero has too many abilities that can easily defeat any foe.

Ironically, even from the beginning, I wanted Eczel to be powerful, but I always, always, was setting up limiters. One of the earliest was simple: Eczel could move at maximum speed [guaranteeing an evasion], so long as he was focusing on a single point throughout the whole thing, his mind so focused he could not perform any other action. [At this point, he had been created for roleplaying purposes; using him for stories only came in the last few years.]

I do want to write more, but... well, I have some things to do now. I'll have more thoughts and analysis tomorrow.

 

[H-Man]

So it's tomorrow and I got involved in stuff, thus I didn't write much more earlier. Thankfully, I have time to work now.

Part 02​

You'll notice the title of this thread says POWER and yet, I've been using Power instead. That's because the two terms are somewhat interexchangeable; both mean a level of power above the normal concept of power, as we use it. But what is power, then?

Power goes hand in hand with a desire. In simple and obvious terms, people want things, and they then do those things. Wanting is desire. Doing it is power. Being able to exercise your will over another is another way to see it: even if you're not doing the obvious tyranny aspect, it applies because you're exercising your will over the universe. A text only exists because someone wrote it, for instance; simply wanting to write it won't create the text.

In shounen, we understand power in a manner directly connected to combat power, in part because of the very focus shounen puts in combat. Even when taking a work like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, where using your smarts is just as important, the fact is that it ultimately centers around being able to overcome the odds, the obstacles that are in the way. Powerless characters are the allies, the weak, the lesser ones. The ones that do not make the story proceed on its own.

But power is not Power.

We've all heard of power escalation. Of how, to show an enemy is more dangerous than the last one, their power level is higher than the last one. This is 'necessary' because, in order to overcome the last foe, the heroes had to become stronger than them, to surpass his limits and reach a level that then becomes the new standard. After all, if the hero was able to defeat the last villain, then that becomes his new baseline.

Rarely things like luck or temporary power boosts come into account. Characters have to keep growing stronger because the new foe is stronger than the last foe and if they were strong enough to defeat the new foe to begin with, the last foe shouldn't be so difficult to handle.

Power doesn't deal with that.

I won't deny that there's some level of involvement, but the fact is that much of this is derived from the Underdog Syndrome; we want to see the weaker, less powerful guy succeed, because it makes us fellow weak, less powerful guys feel glad that someone is overcoming the big and mean powers that be that we cannot defeat. As such, it sounds like it's hard for us to care about a guy who is 'too powerful'.

Yet somehow, characters like Alucard, Dante, and even in theory Grenragan itself are considered to be very awesome, even though there's no enemy they cannot defeat. [Before you bring in their obvious undefeatable foes, I am not speaking about the story at length; I am speaking about their immediate portrayal, the general opinion a reader or audience member may have, say, midway through the story.] Much of it can be derived from the aforementioned effect [Grenragan keeps upgrading until it's galaxy-sized, I know], but at the same time... what truly keeps the audience from not caring is the perception that the character could not actually handle the threat that appeared from the beginning. Even if we assume every story follows the Boring Invincible Hero until proven otherwise, the Hero is not Boring simply because he's Invincible.

It's when there's no drama - no stakes at all - that the Hero becomes Boring. The Hero can win every battle, but as long as we believe the Hero legitimately struggled, no matter how powerful, then we don't think of him as Boring.

Let's bring Eczel back to discuss Power. The third element to his creation was a concept I was growing familiar with at the time, Metamagic: the idea of magic itself being a power, and not just elemental types or forms. The first draft of Eczel's character was that a deity granted him the power of Metamagic, which he would then be able to use to the utmost - but, in itself, what does that mean?

In terms of power, it means that Eczel can cast any spell he wants, and channel it with the same maximum level of strength. He can cast white magic, black magic, any spell he is capable of knowing, and given he knows how to cast some truly dangerous spells, surely he'd be able to use this same power with leser spells. Of course, at that point said spells are just the same, so it's not necessarily a bonus.

But with regards to Power, Eczel is not as mighty as that may sound. His life force supplies his own power - he cannot cast spells without injuring himself even a little bit. Channeling more power to a lesser spell weakens him further, so he has no reason to 'power up' such a spell if it seems unwise - why go for overkill when you can channel enough strength to kill a foe already? And lastly, he's not even that much of a magician in his personality - using weapons just feels like something he prefers, so he willingly forgoes magic to fight on melee or ranged if necessary.

I must remind you all that, as initially established, Eczel was supposed to be able to fight extremely strong enemies. To be more specific, things like gods.

Even at their lowest ability, a god's nature is to be fueled by faith. As long as the god has those who believe in them, this empowers them - in a way, it even means a god can constantly 'refuel' his or her magical stocks simply by drawing on the faith of their followers. It's true that this is not how it necessarily works, but it's a perfectly valid choice for a given story.

The point is that a god has actual Power. They're Mighty, in our point of view, because they can do more than simply strike any opponent unmatched. A god's emotions can change the world around him. A god's wrath can cause storms and unleash volcanoes. A god's sadness can kill off an entire world. It is not just the direct power we see, but the side-effects, passive influences and otherwise ways the god can influence the world without necessarily doing anything.

We know we humans can do such a thing - a single unhappy person can ruin a perfectly fine meal by being around happy people - but as you can see, the scale just naturally changes by virtue of this structure. Normal shounen heroes do not get this far - they are so focused on the combat nature that they cannot actually generate such influences. They can talk an opponent into joining them, but they cannot cause changes on such levels.

Eczel is not a god. He does not have the ability to draw faith from others and he is a terribly awesome magician [as in, he's awesome with magic, but a terrible magician]. And yet, at least as I've conceived him, he does have actual Power - in a much different scale.

Sadly, I cannot continue on; I have a trip to go on tomorrow and will be away for a few days. Still, I hope this proves an interesting read to those who are still following.