Picture this: You’re walking through a field with your party, off to fight an enemy or something of the sort. It’s a beautiful day in spring; bees are buzzing, and birds are chirping. You know what springtime also brings? Allergies.
You turn to your friend. He’s the heart and soul of the party, but he’s also incredibly allergic to almost every grass and tree in the region you’re currently in. In spring.
You walk over to your friend, but he’s already on the ground.
*COUGH CoUGh coUgH wheEZe cOuGH hACk cOUGh CougH cOuGh*
Enemies begin surrounding you as your friend’s face is turning bright red from being unable to breathe. If only you had refilled his inhaler in the last town.
Almost all heroes have a weakness. Usually, it’s something like a negative personality trait like arrogance, anger issues, or not washing their hands after using the bathroom. Sometimes it’s even something magical, like an object the villain has. But I feel like I never see someone’s true weakness be their allergies. Most of the time, if a character does have allergies, it’s just a part of their lore or something that the fandom came up with. I want to see someone’s allergies be their downfall. Forget panic attacks and killed off friends or parents– I want to see the hero learn to manage their severe allergy and save the city even if they’re dying from there being too much damn pollen in the air. So today, I’m going to give a couple of ideas I came up with that hopefully will get you inspired to consider giving your characters allergies.
#1: The forbidden baker
Meet Chuck. From a young age, Chuck was always in the kitchen with his mom, baking the most scrumptious desserts the town has ever had. His mom has a bakery downstairs that always sells out by the end of the day, and Chuck hopes to one day be his mom’s successor to her bakery.
But there’s just one issue. Chuck is severely allergic to chocolate. He won’t go into anaphylactic shock, but his allergy is still severe enough to where consuming any amount of chocolate will send his ass straight to the doctor’s office.
Chuck tries his best to work around his allergy, but with him not being able to try any of the chocolate desserts he makes, he has a hard time adding new recipes to the menu. His mom tries her best to help, but so far all of his new recipes have either come out too bitter or too sweet.
Despite the challenge, Chuck perseveres, continuing to learn and refine his craft to become the best baker his town has ever seen.
#2: The goofy villain
He’s your typical villain of the week. Always getting defeated by the hero. The villain has been defeated in a number of ways throughout the years, but he will never forget the day that he was poisoned by his worst enemy.
No, it's not the hero he’s sworn to defeat. It's sesame seeds. Just recently added to the list of big allergies (and probably because of him), the villain hates going to any Asian or hamburger restaurant for fear of breaking out in hives and having his face blow up like a balloon. But you know what he can’t avoid? Ground up sesame seeds baked into a bread loaf by the hero.
In a morbid turn of events the roles are reversed in this scenario, and when the poor villain goes outside and sees the heavenly loaf of bread sitting on his porch, he doesn’t give it a second thought. He brings it inside, slices it up, and makes a grilled cheese out of it.
As the villain is finishing eating his sandwich, he notices his face feels tingly and his body feels itchy. He looks closer at the note that was attached to the bread and saw it was from the hero. Crap. The villain slumps off to his room to get his medicine before he gets any worse, and all the while, ideas stew in his head on how he’s going to get back at the hero this time.
Now, these are just a few ideas I came up with (including the intro). There’s plenty of other allergies out there that a character can have. Maybe even allergies to fictional plants or animals from a fantasy or sci-fi story. I hope I’ve inspired one person to give their character an allergy that actually affects them in the story they’re in. Personally, I just think it would be really funny to watch a character just struggle because they forgot to take their medication.