The first terms I coined at Mythcreants were “candy” and “spinach,” featured in a 2013 article I wrote before the website had even launched. After spending years trying to predict which novels I would finish reading, I’d found that a general pattern of character properties were the best indicators. Because they were so cumbersome to describe directly, I gave them symbolic names based on food. Candy is enjoyable, but too much makes you sick. Spinach is good for you, but it’s not much fun.
Nine years later, candy and spinach sound a little silly, but they’re still a handy way of discussing character portrayal. They represent a common point of contention between readers, demystify some frequent mistakes by writers, and are related to other important character concepts like likability and karma. Silly or not, candy and spinach have a huge impact on who enjoys a story and how much.
While useful, these concepts have always been tricky to explain, so many people have gotten them wrong. With hindsight as my guide, it’s time for an updated explanation of what they are and why they matter. However, you can still read the original article via PDF.
What Are Candy and Spinach?
Candy is anything in a story that glorifies a character. A character that has lots of candy is called a candied character, and if it’s too much, the character is over-candied.
You’re probably familiar with candy through its association with the stereotypical Mary Sue or self-insert character. However, the term “Mary Sue” is sexist, and self-insert characters may not be glorified. Candy is a more accurate and neutral way to describe glorification.
Spinach is anything in a story that humbles a character. It is candy’s opposite and the principal cure to a candy overdose. However, while less common, characters can also have too much spinach. A character with lots of spinach is a spinachy character.
While glorifying or humbling a character could mean lots of different things, candy and spinach often appear in similar ways.
- Are they special or average? Anything that makes a character feel special is probably candy. That includes being chosen, being featured in a prophecy, being the last of their kind, having an interesting birthmark or hair and eye coloring that makes them stand out. On the other hand, most spinachy characters are presented as average and unremarkable. When they do stand out, it’s in a way that makes them less impressive, such as being the only person who can’t wield magic.
- Are they conventionally attractive? This one’s pretty simple. Do they have brilliant eyes? How about hair that shines golden or is so dark it sucks in the light around it? Do they have a scar that makes them look edgy? Are they lithe or muscled? Do other characters admire their looks? That’s all candy. For spinach, they might be a bit homely with dull brown hair and chubby cheeks. No one would look twice at them, much less ask them to the ball.
- How impressive are their skills and abilities? A typical candied character has impressive skills, sometimes many impressive skills all learned at a young age. Perhaps they are the kingdom’s best duelist and also a prodigy at alchemy. Any magical abilities or other special talents qualify as candy. On the other hand, if a character struggles to acquire new skills or has no notable talents, that’s spinach.
- How often do they succeed or fail? Related to skills and abilities, when a character succeeds, especially if they succeed easily, that’s candy. This can come in many forms. Maybe the character learns to duel remarkably fast, maybe they win a duel easily, or maybe they beat the best duelist in the kingdom. Alternately, being right is also candy. A candied character might be a strategist who always knows what will happen next, or they might have remarkable intuition that tells them when someone is lying. A character gets spinach when they fail to win a duel even though they’ve been practicing or they fall for tricks even when they’re careful.
- Do other people look up to them or down at them? How other characters react to someone is a big source of candy or spinach. However, it’s not a matter of whether a character is liked, but whether people think they’re impressive. That means a candied character will be surrounded by people who praise them, worship them, or, alternately, are jealous of them. A character with spinach may be laughed at, called names, or, alternately, be a target for well-intentioned pity or condescension.
What Candy and Spinach Are Not
- Happiness / Unhappiness. While candied characters are more likely to be happy than spinachy characters, that is incidental. Happiness has no effect on candy or spinach.
- Privilege / Marginalization. Candied characters are more likely to have some privileged traits, such as being conventionally attractive and wealthy. However, many privileged traits aren’t considered candy. Similarly, marginalized traits can be used to generate spinach, but a marginalized trait is not necessarily spinach. Sometimes authors invent traits that are candy yet marginalized in their setting.
- Perfection / Imperfection. Character strengths and flaws are one source of candy and spinach, but not the only one. So while candied characters are much more likely to be perfect, a character can be perfect and have spinach. Similarly, a character with flaws can be over-candied.
- Good / Evil. If everyone quakes in fear of the main character because a prophecy says the main character is the next dark lord, that’s candy, not spinach. People are afraid because they think the main character is special and powerful. The moral qualities of a character – or their perceived moral qualities – are unrelated to candy and spinach.
Candy and spinach also aren’t strictly character traits – they can represent anything in a story. And while character traits are abstract concepts we deduce from a story, candy and spinach are a matter of what actually shows up on the page or screen.
- A bit of dialogue by two side characters praising the main character is candy. This is true regardless of the accuracy of their praise or whether the main character can hear their conversation.
- If the narrator mentions a character is a famous singer, that’s candy. If the narrator mentions their famous singing again, that’s more candy.
- If instead of simply calling the character a “famous singer,” the narrator says “their singing was renowned throughout the lands for its wide range and pure tone,” then the longer description would provide more candy because it puts more emphasis on the famous singing and mentions a couple of praiseworthy qualities.
You can think of candy as a sort of authorial endorsement of how cool a character is. Sometimes a character is candied because they are objectively really badass, and sometimes a character is candied because the storyteller will not shut up about how badass the character is. Similarly, spinach means the storyteller is portraying the character as an ordinary, not-heroic individual, perhaps even an embarrassing disgrace.
How Do They Affect Enjoyment?
At Mythcreants, we measure a story’s ability to engage its audience by assessing four factors called ANTS: attachment, novelty, tension, and satisfaction. Attachment is how emotionally invested the audience is in the story. Compared to the other ANTS, attachment is the most long lasting, and a story’s characters are the biggest factor in generating attachment. This is why when I was looking to predict what books I would finish in my early years, I focused on traits of the main character. If I was attached to the main character, I would continue the story even if it got boring.
For many storytellers, candy and spinach present a big dilemma. A person who is already attached to a character generally wants that character to get candy, not spinach. Candy provides wish fulfillment, and it can be lots of fun. For the audience members that can instantly bond with a character, lots of candy may be really attractive. These are likely to be people who are similar to the character in important ways and identify with them. In addition, some audience members are more naturally inclined toward candy than others.
However, for a broader audience, lots of candy will prevent attachment from forming in the first place. In fact, it will turn many people against a character. One of the biggest reasons for this is character karma.
Candy Sabotages a Character’s Karma
Character karma is one of the basic laws that underlies how people respond to stories. When a character faces hardship but deserves better, that character gains good karma. This means the audience starts rooting for them to succeed. In other words, the character is a sympathetic underdog, and they’re more likable as a result. This builds more attachment for a character, especially from a broader audience that may not see themselves in that character.
On the other hand, when a character succeeds without doing enough to earn that success, they gain bad karma. Because they’re always showing up more hardworking people, many audience members will start rooting against them. In likability terms, they are often perceived as an arrogant character who needs their ego deflated.
Over-candied characters don’t just succeed, they succeed easily. They never have to work hard to earn their success, because they are inherently bestowed with all the talents and traits they need. Then, they are continuously rewarded for their good luck. Storytellers do this because it provides the most wish fulfillment. It feels good to be inherently awesome, secure in the knowledge that this awesomeness can never be taken away. But for people who want the character to prove themself, this is a recipe for bad karma.
It’s the spinachy character that works hard and struggles their way through challenges. It’s not their fault that they were dealt such a poor hand at birth. They didn’t decide to have dull hair or trouble learning how to swing a sword. And not only do spinachy characters usually deserve better, gaining sympathy and good karma, but their life experiences are also more relatable. Most of us are more likely to describe ourselves as average looking than having golden hair and violet eyes. For these reasons, spinach usually encourages attachment.
Storytellers Are More Candy Inclined Than Audiences
As I mentioned above, people who are already attached to a character generally want that character to get candy, not spinach. The problem is that storytellers often fall in this category. They’ll give their favorite characters lots of candy because it feels good to them, and they won’t realize that their audience is coming from a different place. If you’ve discovered a character in your story has too much candy, I have an article on correcting this with minimal heartache.
Some storytellers want to feed their character all candy and no spinach, but they know their audience expects a character with more humility. This is what causes the phenomenon of fake spinach, in which a storyteller tries to make it look like a character has spinach when they don’t. Sometimes, fake spinach is even candy. For instance, in Fifty Shades of Grey, Anastasia bemoans that her blue eyes are too big. Inventing traits that are candy yet somehow marginalized in the setting, such as stigmatized magic, is another way of accomplishing this.
To be clear, wish fulfillment is not a bad thing; it’s good. Many people have tough lives. If you can give everyone joy and validation by telling them a story, do it. The issue here isn’t that there’s too much wish fulfillment. It’s that the people who aren’t attached to a candied character don’t get to experience that wish fulfillment; they only get the resentment of putting up with the storyteller’s pet character.
The best way to deliver wish fulfillment to a broader audience is to give the main character more spinach to start. The main character is the person the audience is most likely to get attached to, and giving them spinach will further encourage attachment. Then, as the story continues, you can slowly increase the main character’s candy, particularly if they work hard to earn it. Maybe after they almost die from fighting a monster, they win a medal and get a cool scar.
This doesn’t mean a main character shouldn’t have any candy to start. A main character that has nothing but spinach will create a gloomy experience, especially as the story continues. A little candy will show the audience why this person is the main character and promise them more enjoyable moments to come. So go ahead and give your character shining hair, a special talent for magic, or a mystical birthmark. It’s simply about balance.
How We Apply a Double Standard
When we analyze candy and spinach in media, we need to understand the current double standard that is applied to characters based on their level of privilege. As I mentioned above, people are more likely to identify with characters that are a lot like them. Then, if they see themselves in a character, the wish fulfillment that candy provides is more likely to work.
Since we live in a society controlled by white men, where the dominant narrative about stories is set by white men, white male characters with lots of candy are often celebrated, while other characters with that much candy are torn down. This is why even though candied men are more prevalent in big-budget stories, the best-known term for candied characters – Mary Sue – specifically targets women.
This is also why Mythcreants will never stop making fun of Kvothe from The Name of the Wind. Below is a list of the candy Kvothe gets in the first fifty pages of the book, which is only the story’s framing device.
- Kvothe has “true-red hair, red as flame.”
- Kvothe moves “with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.” The opening specifically mentions he knows the names of all the stars, as a precursor to introducing a magic system that uses names.
- A minor characters ruminates on Kvothe’s eyes: “They were less sea-foam, less green-grass then they had been. Now they were like riverweed, like the bottom of a green glass bottle.”
- Kvothe wields an ancient sword that appears brand new. It’s described thus: “It looked as if an alchemist had distilled a dozen swords, and when the crucible had cooled this was lying in the bottom: a sword in its pure form.”
- A stranger who comes to Kvothe’s inn calls him Kvothe the Bloodless, and says “I heard you sing, and I knew it was you. I heard you in Imre once. Cried my eyes out afterward. I never heard anything like that before or since. Broke my heart.”
- Kvothe has lots of scars across his back that are “smooth and silver, streaking him like lightning.”
- Kvothe has a fae student, Bast, who clearly worships him.
- A famous chronicler comes to town to record Kvothe’s life story and clears his schedule when Kvothe demands it.
- Kvothe learns the chronicler’s unique notation system perfectly in fifteen minutes, and previously, he apparently learned a language in a day and a half.
The Name of the Wind is a bestselling book that has won four awards. The unfinished trilogy it is a part of, The Kingkiller Chronicle, has been praised by famous authors like George R. R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, and Michael Chabon.* The story of Kvothe has received veneration that few books enjoy, while similar portrayals of women are laughed off as cheap stories about Mary Sues.
But that’s not all. These double standards also operate on the other end of the candy-spinach spectrum. White male protagonists are allowed to have more spinach than marginalized protagonists. This makes the character more relatable to a white male audience, and people will assume he needs no other skills or qualifications for being a hero.
A good example is Emmet from the 2014 The Lego Movie:
- His defining feature is being unremarkable in every single way.
- He’s a lonely person who uses his houseplant for company and goes unremembered by the coworkers that he considers his friends.
- While his mentor declares him the “Special” of prophecy, he lacks the skills of a “Master Builder,” making him inadequate for the task.
- He embarrasses himself in front of a bunch of Master Builders, and they refuse to follow him.
As the story continues, Emmet does build the skills he needs to save the day. But for quite a long time, the movie provides viewers with little reason why Emmet, among all the people in the setting, should be the hero.
While characters representing the most privileged people are allowed to be candied or spinachy while receiving funding or acclaim, characters representing more marginalized people must walk on a tightrope. If there’s too much candy, the story is cheap wish fulfillment for a niche demographic. If there’s too much spinach, a character is considered incompetent and worthless.
At Mythcreants, we generally recommend a balance between candy and spinach, with more spinach at the start and more candy at the end. But, as with many things, we shouldn’t forget the nuances of this topic.
- Wish fulfillment isn’t inherently bad. It may not be what you want to do with your story, but it brings people enjoyment, and enjoyment is good.
- You can write for a smaller, niche audience if you want to. The problem comes when so many stories written for a niche and privileged group are treated as though they are profound works appealing to everyone.
- Before we deride characters, we should examine the context they exist in. Who is this story being marketed toward? Does this character represent people who are more privileged or more marginalized? How are similar characters of other demographics being treated?
As storytellers, the best thing we can do is be aware of what we’re putting into our stories and make intentional choices. That way we don’t subconsciously give a favorite character more candy than we intend, only to face a rude awakening later. No one wants their beloved character to be hated by their audience.
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I think this is overall really good and comprehensive (even though I honestly LIKE spinach in food! It’s not something I have to force myself to eat because it’s good for me X-D ).
Still, though, I think there’s one more phenomenon worth exploring here, which comes up sometimes in the comments sections on articles you write about candy and spinach.
I remember one discussion where some people said that when Harry Potter lives under the stairs and is bullied by his aunt and uncle etc, that was just “fake spinach”. Even though this would be horrible to experience in real life. I think people meant that Rowling was obviously just setting Harry up to be super-special, and him suffering unjustly at the hands of horrible people (like Jesus!) was one more way to make him super-special and better than everyone else.
So there is a phenomenon where the audience feels that the author is just shoving down their throats that “this character is so great and special” EVEN WHEN the character is made to experience things that would be terrible in real life, and just like with characters who get too much candy, this can be something that pushes audiences away. (Obvs HP worked for tons of people since the book series was so popular, but I think the above reaction that at least SOME people had is interesting.)
Similarly with candy. If an author gives the antagonist lots of unearned candy but it comes off in a similar way, like the author shouts “look at this terrible terrible antagonist who everyone loves for NO REASON, isn’t it horrible and wrong how loved they are”, this can alienate audiences, and even push them into rooting for the antagonist and coming up with reasons as to why they deserve to be loved after all.
Like, when the author’s “voice” gets too loud and insistent, when it feels like the author yells in your ear that “YOU MUST LOVE MY MC!” or “YOU MUST HATE THIS ANTAGONIST!” this can push people away, make them hate the MC and root for the antagonist instead, even if the author does this via spinach to the MC and candy to the antagonist.
Yep, a heavy-handed attempt can easily backfire. No one likes to feel manipulated.
I used to find the term “Mary Sue” useful. But as you said, its use soon became sexist, used to describe any woman who had any skill whatsoever, who was not totally dependent on a man. Parker from Leverage was called a Mary Sue. While she did in fact have amazing talents, so did the rest of the the characters. If anything, she had the most spinach, and was the least talented outside of her specialties, though she learned and grew over time. Over-candied is more useful now
DELIBERATELY giving a character too much candy is a good way to make us hate them. Captain Hammer from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is the perfect example here. Everybody loved him. So naturally, we hated him
I just want to add, when I run an rpg, I make sure to give the PC’s plenty of candy. People enjoy playing heavily candied characters more than they enjoy reading about them
Oh, but I’ve seen games where a favorite NPC gets too much candy. This… is rarely a good idea…
I mean, I think RPGs are just on a much higher level when it comes to how much candy to give (because your audience is by default very, very attached to their characters), but a candy/spinach balance is definitely still important. I think that when you’re talking about RPGs, candy and salt might be a better metaphor, because salt is bad on its own, but a little bit of it makes food taste a lot better (not that I’d want salt on candy, per say). Players want to win, but they want it to be by the skin of their teeth rather than a cakewalk. Giving them some salt means that when they get their candy, it tastes SO much sweeter
I once played in a game where we (the PCs) got a really cool magic item, used it for a few sessions, and then got in a fight where we were way over our heads. We got beat up, and the item got stolen. I have never, as either a GM or a player, seen a group of PCs more motivated than we were to get that item back. It drove much of the rest of the campaign on its own.
Also, as far as NPCs goes, it’s tricky, but giving NPCs candy that is the result of player actions can be supremely rewarding. Like, if the knight and their squire develop a really close connection over the course of the campaign, and then the squire pulls some totally badass move at the climax, the knight character (as long as they’re getting plenty of candy too) isn’t gonna feel resentful they’re going to care about the squire like an audience member would care about a protagonist they like, and they’re gonna feel rewarded. That said, it is definitely tricky to pull off, and if you give too much candy to the wrong NPC, or even just give candy to the same NPC too many times, the players are not gonna be fans. Definitely when in doubt, err on the side of less candy for non-villainous NPCs.
tldr: Give PCs lots and lots of candy, but don’t be afraid to add a bit of salt too, and giving NPCs candy can work, but it’s a real delicate balance, and less candy is always the safer route
I’d never heard that about Parker before. That seems rather odd to me. While several people have referred to Parker as the greatest thief in the world, everyone is on the same level of competence. Eliot has literally never lost a fight(with his worst showing being when he won the rematch), Sophie and Nate managed to con a legendary con man and pull off an insane number of clever ploys, and Eliot and Nate have both said that Hardison is the smartest guy they’ve known.
Personally I also found her struggles with understanding social interactions rather relatable.
The Leverage characters are all indeed on the same level of mega-competence, for better or worse. I’m a little surprised people would single out Parker over Sophie, but the double standard is sadly predictable.
Just a guess here, but it could be because Sophie’s manipulations are more “feminine coded” than Parker’s thieving skills?
Could be, though in my experience, sexist reactionaries hate that too! At least, they hate it if it doesn’t involve some softcore porn for them watch.
As tricky is it is for writing privileged characters, it sounds even harder for marginalized ones. How much would cultural biases figure into that trickiness?
I am curious how attachment and candy/spinach interact with unhappiness. Because people love characters to have tragedy, especially ones they like.
Make a villain sad and you will have people rooting for them.
It is why Fanfiction and Comic books (both candy heavy mediums) tend to lean heavily toward angst.
Heck, some characters main point of attachment is they have had a hard time and you want them to get what they want.
For example, Grunkle Stan is my favorite cartoon character, but if not for his tragic history would be an overly spinached character.
Generally a character will be more sympathetic with some level of unhappiness, and various forms of spinach are often used to create sympathy (sympathy is what gets people rooting for the character). So unhappiness and spinach are definitely correlated – you’ll see them together a lot, it’s just there’s not a direct causation there. A character can get spinach without being unhappy, and unhappiness itself is not spinach.
It’s possible for unhappiness to coincide with candy if problems are used to give a character attention or they are doing some kind of poetic suffering. That’s less common, but it can still happen.
I think a good example of an over-spinached character is El from A Deadly Education/The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik. The narration goes on and on and on about how hard everything is for her and how much she’s struggling and how she has no friends so much that it goes way beyond being an underdog protagonist and becomes a huge slog to read. The first book really turns around at the halfway point because El finally gets some candy. It had a huge effect on how much I enjoyed reading the book, to the point where it seems like the first half of a bad book attached to the second half of a great one. I think part of the problem is also that the narration is first person, and that it dwells so much on the spinach that it makes everything about the book – the characters, the worldbuilding, the conflict – just seem absurd in how bad and grim it all is.
Also the illustration for this article is so cute, especially the little candy person!
“This is also why Mythcreants will never stop making fun of Kvothe from The Name of the Wind.”
Kvothe superfans: “So all your criticism of the book are politically motivated, and can be dismissed?”
:P
It’s a personal crusade to destroy Kvothe. ;)
Where can i buy an spinach-o-meter? I don’t know how to measure the amount of spinachs needed to compensate the candy my MC is getting. Is the usual “dark night of the soul” (the lowest point for a character) counted as spinach?
I wouldn’t call the black moment (or dark night of the soul) spinach at all. This is the setup for the hero’s full investment in the climax, everyone gets it.
But it often involves being beaten up, abandoned or otherwise put the MCs to their limit without a chance to solve it inmediatelly. Some humbling events in my opinion. I can’t imagine anyone praising the MC in their darkest moment (despite i’m positive someone have tried it before)
if it happens late in the story it won’t help build character investment though
As mourningcrow already pointed out, if it happens that late (the black moment is at the end of act two/the middle part), it won’t help making people more invested in the character. You need to show early on that there is a reason for people to sympasize with the MC, that they have spinach. Ideally, you do it in the first act/beginning. If you haven’t done it before the time of the black moment, you probably won’t have much of an audience left.
Great article!
What influence in either direction does it have when a character’s candy directly exposes, highlights, or exacerbates their unflattering elements? Some hypothetical examples (not to be answered individually, but just to illustrate the point):
* A character whose popularity and influence is growing is shown to be ignorant of the realities of wielding power once they actually have some. Perhaps that whole bit about the people’s money belonging to them, that got the crowd chanting, turns out to be a problem when you have to figure out how to pay for roads, public services, and a military that deters bandits and marauders.
* A character who gets a legendary weapon is outwitted by enemies on more than one occasion due to their impulsive nature. They could get away with impulsiveness back when they were just some no-name; once they get known as the wielder of their legendary weapon, all their extra power excessively emboldens them, but isn’t enough for enemies who now know to prepare for them.
* A character who is renown for their combat ability is defeated and barely escapes with their life on more than one occasion, because they refuse to accept that they can’t beat their adversary just by trying harder, and they’re too proud to ask for help.
In addition, what influence does it have when a character’s candy is tied to a key character flaw? (For example, a character is so good at what they do because they’ve committed themself to it at the expense of everything else that matters.)
You would just split that up and call the glorifying aspects candy and the humbling aspects spinach. Being renowned for their combat ability is candy, being beaten by an opponent is spinach (being prideful is less likely to be spinach). It would be very difficult to tell which aspect would make the bigger impression without looking at how it’s actually implemented in the work in question.
Flaws aren’t always spinach. For instance, some stories definitely glorify the act of committing to one thing at the expense of everything else, while still calling it a flaw. If the character fails though, that’s usually going to spinach.
Gotcha, thanks! I guess that makes a lot of sense – no need to overcomplicate the considerations. (I’ve closely tied candy to spinach in a lot of cases, and I got concerned that spinach might not count if it wouldn’t otherwise exist without candy.)
That’s a fair point on pride. Personally, I find misplaced pride more sympathetic when it’s shown to tie into a character’s sense of self-worth (e.g. “If I’m not amazing at this, then what am I even good for?”) or their need to meet expectations (e.g. “Everyone is counting on me, and I can’t let them down by admitting I’m not as good as they think”). Delusional arrogance makes me enjoy watching a character fail.
Regarding the last point – as with pride, I guess a it comes down to how exactly it’s portrayed. Like how someone who completely devotes themself to a video game might be portrayed as a pro who’s found their calling, or a loser who’s completely lost sight of the real world.
Yep, that’s how it works. A lot depends on how something is portrayed.
1) Averageness is considered spinach? And candy is on either end of whatever distribution is being analyzed?
2) With so much content focused on the double standard regarding candy, I am intrigued to learn more about the relatively unexplored spinach side. The corollary of marginalized protagonists being prohibited from humbling depictions has been a recent fascination of mine and I would love to see a Mythcreants take on it.
1) In writing, most main characters aren’t average, so being average already counts as a disadvantage. Of course, the lower the character is on the ladder (whatever one it may be), the higher the amount of spinach. Yet, it can flip into candy when the character is severely disadvantaged, because then they become underdogs and people root for underdogs.
So being on the lowest rung on the ladder is a form of wish fulfillment? In an adventurous sort of way?
Wouldn’t underdog status imply a reputation for failure (spinach)?
It’s not wish fulfillment. It’s that most people can identify with being an underdog and want them to succeed. If you want to put it that way, people like characters who start out as an underdog, because they will rise through the ranks in the story and that is wish fulfillment. I’m not quite sure if you can call ‘being an underdog’ candy, but it’s not really spinach, either.
Being born into a position of an underdog is not connected to failure – none of us chooses our family and we know that. I know that in the US, a lot of people think that poverty is your own fault, but it usually isn’t, as it were. No, underdog status doesn’t imply failure, it rather implies bad luck and a chance to ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.’
Let’s stick to the main definition of underdog as a competitor thought to have little chance of winning a contest rather than a low-status member of society. There could be some overlap between those, but let’s avoid focusing there. You said “the lower the character is on the ladder…the higher the amount of spinach. Yet, it can flip into candy when the character is severely disadvantaged” and that seemed to imply that the contest spectrum (keeping with that analogy) is arranged as follows.
Good Odds: Candy
Even Odds: Spinach
Bad Odds (Underdog): Candy
I would argue that being an underdog in this sense is indeed spinach, as I would also count the statistical expectation of failure as spinach along with an actual failure. The reader as well as other characters may pity an underdog going into a contest that will likely prove them a loser, which is spinach as well.
My original question, as much as I am intrigued by my tangent with Cay, is whether average should be considered spinach. I personally don’t find myself thinking “This character has got it bad and deserves better because they are ‘normal’.”
Chris did seem to address this specialty spinach with “When they do stand out, it’s in a way that makes them less impressive, such as being the only person who can’t wield magic.” The problem is the difficultly in finding a special attribute that is not linked to attractiveness, skill, success, or estimation. Looper’s TK powers come to mind as a power that a character could lack without any meaningful impact, but that’s it.
Reading over the article again, one thing I think would be worth noting is that candy is generally more tolerated when it’s important to the plot, as opposed to just something extra.
For an example regarding powers, take Goku vs. Superman. The former receives far less criticism for his power than the latter; the former is put in more situations where he needs the full extent of his power, whereas there would often be no conflict if the latter wasn’t prevented from using the full extent of his power, whether that be by Kryptonite or by the situation. Because of that, it’s often exciting when Goku gets more power; the same isn’t typically the case for Superman. (There are many other factors, but I’m just trying to make a specific point, not kick off the infamous historical debate.)
Being praised and having a reputation are often extraneous, but an example where it’s not is with the eponymous character in John Wick. The fact that he’s a retired badass assassin is integral to the plot, and is the whole reason he gets as entangled as he does in the mess of the series. People wouldn’t be trying so hard to kill him if they weren’t so scared of him, and didn’t know they needed to try hard.
I also thought it was interesting when the story establishes his reputation; after he gets a heaping of spinach by being beaten up in his home. It’s given right after the audience would be wanting candy; and as opposed to how praising a character who gets beaten up often comes off as contradictory in other contexts, it serves to ramp up anticipation here.
One could also argue that Goku gets into less trouble for his powers because his schtick is to beat stronger and stronger opponents. He starts off on a level where he can’t beat the new enemy, grows stronger, returns, and beats the enemy. That’s how all of Dragonball works. Sometimes he’s killed, trains in the afterlife, and comes back with the help of the balls. Sometimes they’re used for something else. Sometimes the series forgets they exist.
Superman already has all the powers he’ll ever need. It’s hard to keep him on a level where a human (with or without special powers) can defeat him, so Kryptonite comes in to give them the upper hand for a while. Goku doesn’t need that, because the enemies come in as stronger and Goku grows more powerful (to the point where it’s beyond riddiculous).