: 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

@Candy753

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If you truly doubt your course, you could try a type of law of conservation of energy where nothing is truly lost, but converted or combined to create something new. Your hero would be unaware of the logical impossibility of true annihilation.

My first instinct is that if you believe that your hero must do more than die and his virtue would be the greater for destroying the villain knowing that he must suffer a like fate or worse, do it. If it suits the personality of the hero and serves the plot, let him. Perhaps his utter destruction will seal the villain’s doom.

If the reason is good enough, it becomes a matter of your hero not being able to do less. If his removal from existence also removes the evil done by the villian and forever protects those the hero loves, he could do so with joy at the thought of the lives saved.

In one novel I was writing I had a mage who was stripped of all of his power, which killed him. I later realized that I had created an impossible situation in that paradigm and had to rewrite it so he was only severely weakened and had survived. Annihilation must be possible in your paradigm for it to work or the reader might feel blindsided.

Consider the effect on the book as a whole if the character is annihated. If it works, it could be fascinating.

An observer character could even witness some traces of the rewriting of history if a character were writing about his deeds or chronicling the villain and literally watch as his writing fades from the parchment as the existence of both characters fades from memory.

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