: Re: How would a god-like character react to losing their godhood? A character in my book is a (small g) goddess, who has limited knowledge of all her worshippers and the natural world. She and

@Lee1909368

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There are a huge amount of possible reactions your demoted goddess could have, such as despair at losing so much of her power to help, frustration at losing it at all, insecurity regarding her worth without her powers, anger at the people or situation that caused her to lose her godhood, determination to regain it, denial of her inability to regain it, joy at being able to experience something new, relief at being free from her role, guilt for being relieved...

I'd have two main pieces of advice:

Make it complex

People are complicated, contradictory things, and their emotions aren't constant - especially not to such a sweeping change as this. Your goddess is going to have multiple reactions, most likely both positive and negative, selfish and altruistic, and how she feels is going to change over time. Maybe she feels terrible because she knows how much her side has lost now... but part of her is delighted that she'll be able to truly learn and discover in a way she couldn't as a god... but she's in denial about that because it feels like such a selfish reaction. And maybe then she starts thinking that it's fine for her to be selfish since she's sacrificed so much for the cause! Or she becomes determined to learn as much as she can to help the battle against evil as a mortal... there are many options here.

Honestly, this seems like the start of a character arc to me. Especially if you want to show her accepting the loss - that's a really unlikely reaction for her to have to such a fundamental change immediately, unless she was desperately unhappy as a god. That calls for time, plot and character development.

Remember the little things

So she's mortal now, after having been a god for a long time. How does this immediately physically affect her? Do gods have to eat or sleep - if not, how does she like it now? How does losing her powers actually feel - does she still reflexively try to do things by divinity and end up stumbling? How has the way she experiences the world changed - has she lost or gained something like a sense? I would expect a god's experience from the world to be really, fundamentally different from a mortal's, and would expect to see some of the shock and adjustment of going from one to the other! Whether that's her delightedly sampling every cuisine around because having a sense of taste again is fantastic, or suffering blinding migraines because she keeps trying to use godly powers she no longer has, or former worshippers having to guide her around because she hasn't quite grasped what her body's limitations are and keeps trying to jump out of second-story windows and the like. You don't have to go overboard, but including details like these can IMO make a story much more realistic and compelling.

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