A strongly held belief I have in storytelling is this:

If a character is stated to be invincible, they must eventually be proven wrong.

Another strongly held belief I have in storytelling is this:

Any rule about what must be done in stories can be broken if you do it with enough style.

Rules exist so that you'll think good and hard before breaking them

but as an example, the above rule is a big part of why I don't like the final Cradle book

a certain character was shown to be invincible in the second book, and only moreso as time passed

then he just kept winning all battles right up until the very end, only occasionally briefly having to exert himself

the counter moment to his unbreakable schmeat never came

I think I tend to be most receptive to invincible things in fiction if they aren't on a side, they're more implacable forces of nature and you just need to get the fuck out of the way

So then I guess it comes down to whether you think he had enough style to pull it off

the further they are from the core conflict the better

Generally speaking, unlike in real life, things in a story exist for some purpose or reason

So an invincible thing must have a reason to exist in the story

And that reason, ideally, should be a good one, to get the audience to accept something that's both outlandish and predictable, like an invincible person

I will also accept scenarios where their invincibility is nearly useless in the current dilemma

for clarity when I say invincible I don't mean literally cannot take physical damage

Which is admittedly kind of like proving that they’re not invincible

I mean a character with the apparent ability to resolve any conflict they're placed in within the story effortlessly

Ah