: Re: I kinda want to completely annihilate the hero - what would speak against it? The hero in my story succeeds in destroying the villain, but not without paying a hefty prize. Not only will he

@Steve161

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If I understand you correctly, on the one hand you want your hero to willingly go through with a selfless sacrifice, wiping himself out of time so he never existed in the first place (or something similar). You feel the plot demands a sacrifice greater than just death.

On the other hand, you feel that the hero wiping himself out is too much of a downer ending - there is no catharsis, no closure that feels right.

My instinct is to combine the two. This seems to me the right place for eucatastrophe, for whatever form of divine grace makes sense in your story. First, your character goes through with the sacrifice as planned. Then, maybe your he is reborn. Or maybe he becomes a god. Or something else, similarly transformative. Whatever would not break the rules of your world.

This solution might require that you go back and plant the seed of the possibility in the early chapters of the story. Go back and plant that seed. Don't make it too visible - if the readers can figure out in advance that the hero isn't going to be wiped out "for real", the choice would lose its impact. But in retrospect, the eucatastrophe has to make sense.

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