Oh yeah, I think Sora from Kingdom Hearts also counts though.
"Hell exists not to punish sinners, but to ensure that nobody sins in the first place." - Eikishiki Yamaxanadu (Touhou)
X-14: Killer Cheese
Is this supposed to be a superpower? What about a character who is just good at reading people?
If this trope is so seldom used well, why is that? It seems like it has a lot of potential.
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Its problem is kinda the inverse of that of magic powers in superhero comics: whereas magic tends to be interpreted as so powerful and versatile (it's like nobody in the comics business can come up with any plausible limitations to it) that it can't be anything other than a Story-Breaker Power, empathy is usually treated as an extremely limited power that's almost impossible to use in a proactive way. Also, they tend to give it to females and use it afterwards to emphasise "feminine weakness" (hi there, Unfortunate Implications!). In both cases the "creatives" seem to be unable or unwilling to get out of their rut. It's kinda like a case of Real Life entertainment industry-wide Contrived Stupidity.
Personally, I've come up with a LOT of ways an empath can be badass, as a character in one of my personal settings is one, and I don't like characters to be useless wastes of plot space for no good reason (plus, I wanted to buck the cliché a bit). Yeah she's a girl, but the effect would have been diminished if i'd used a male.
I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me.
I've noticed you guys didn't put Athena from Ace Attorney on here even though she's listed as an empath on the character sheet for the series.
Although I suppose it is sort of a Visual Novel, a new folder would need to be created for her then.
"Hell exists not to punish sinners, but to ensure that nobody sins in the first place." - Eikishiki Yamaxanadu (Touhou) Hide / Show Replies