Cursed with Awesome/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A curse comes with positive side-effects that outweigh any negative effects of the curse.

  • Straight: He's cursed to be the cleverest person in the world.
  • Exaggerated: He's cursed with omnipotence.
  • Justified:
    • "She was required by the rules of magic to place a curse upon her son... but nowhere did it say that the curse had to be a terrible burden, and she did love him with all her heart."
    • Or it was intentionally a curse, but the hero bends it to be a power.
    • He is the cleverest person in the world so everyone's seems to him as child. He cannot find anyone who would understend him, doomed to be Surrounded by Idiots. It may additionally result in depression after overthinking the meaning of life etc.
    • The wizard focused solely on "Curse" magic, and, through Sufficiently Analyzed Magic, learned to use a painless version of Promethean Punishment as a reward.
    • The wizard himself is cursed; the effects of "Curse" and "Bless" are inverted.
  • Inverted: See Blessed with Suck
  • Subverted:
    • He's cursed to be the cleverest person in the world... but "cleverness" in this case means being able to see through every argument, and not being able to shut up, so that it really is a curse.
    • Alternately, he's cursed with a demonic form with Super Powers... that are preventing him from using his normal, more powerful Super Powers.
    • The superpowers would normally be a blessing, but With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility... Eventually, he has a nervous breakdown because no matter how hard he tries, he can't save everyone. This is the real curse, the burden of the mighty, the guilt of a hero. Consumed by his failures, he cries himself to sleep at night, alone in his tiny apartment, with no time for friends, too busy scrambling to save the world to hold a steady job.
  • Double Subverted:
    • He's cursed to be the cleverest person in the world... but "cleverness" in this case means being able to see through every argument, and not being able to shut up, so that it really is a curse... but he figures out how to get around the "never shut up" part, and thus, find his curse useful.
    • He's cursed with a demonic form of Super Powers that are preventing him from using his normal, more powerful Super Powers... but then he faces the enemy immune to his normal powers and finds out that he is vulnerable to his demonic powers.
  • Parodied: People start lining up to get cursed by the evil wizard in the hopes of getting wonderful side effects as a bonus.
  • Deconstructed: The failure of the curse actually subverts the morality of the setting, as the threat of curses were all that kept people in line.
  • Reconstructed: "With great power comes great responsibility," and responsibility is meant to be the "true" curse.
  • Zig Zagged:
  • Averted: It's a terrible curse. Full stop.
  • Enforced: "We can't have something really bad happen to the hero, so let's make the curse inadvertantly beneficial."
  • Lampshaded: "Oh, one of THOSE curses." "Huh?" "He's saying that it actually benefits the person cursed."
  • Invoked: "If I play my cards right, I can trick the wizard into chooing a curse that isn't too terrible at all."
  • Defied: "You'll place a curse on him. And the curse must be a true curse, none of this 'blessing in disguise' nonsense!"
  • Discussed: "You do realize that some people would kill to have that curse placed on them, don't you?"
  • Conversed: "Why is that character complaining? He got Super Powers, and none of the usual downsides thereof."

Back to Cursed with Awesome with you, or I'll... I'll... I'll turn your bones into Indestructium! Or how about Irresistable Charisma, eh? Or maybe Incomparable Body Arsenal?! Okay, You asked for it!... Still here? Swift Reformation of Flesh! Ha ha! Take that!

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Cursed_with_Awesome/Playing_With?oldid=1943034"