The Smart Guy may be so smart that it's said to alienate others and leave him lonely or anti-social, but if he's in a Five-Man Band, he almost certainly has at least four True Companions. The Super Mode can be legitimately terrifying if the person using it loses control of themselves while remaining aware of what they're doing, but not if they only do things that they could just as well have done anyway and are just as beneficial, but now they have an excuse for behavior that might be otherwise unacceptable. There are also some cases where the drawback is just a straight-up Informed Flaw, or negated by a bit of Fridge Brilliance. On the other hand, it can make for some great Character Development if the character is saddled with something that is genuinely difficult to live with, but later figures out a way to benefit from it. This is especially a risk if a balance between the awesomeness of the powers and the suckiness of the consequences of possessing them is not maintained if the drawbacks are outweighed by the benefits, then the character just looks whiny. This trope is a major source of Angst Dissonance - if not used carefully, then a character being Cursed With Awesome carries the risk of plummeting straight into Wangst or Deus Angst Machina territory, as nothing is guaranteed to piss an audience off more than a character complaining about having abilities that are, on the face of it, utterly fantastic and that the audience would kill to have. But if you keep driving off every Torch-swinging Muggle for a generation or so, you're just reinforcing the Fantastic Racism. On the other, it's not like All of the Other Reindeer will have an easy time burning you. The jury is out on the justification of the "curse" of Awesome being Fantastic Racism on one hand, superpowers aren't that much fun when the majority of the population believe suffocating you in your sleep is pest control. Vampire protagonists are very frequently Cursed With Awesome. The Curse That Cures can skirt this depending on the severity of the curse and the illness or injury it's curing as a side effect. The Emergency Transformation of a character often crosses into this, as the condition is considered literally de-humanizing.
While eternal life does have some understandable drawbacks, excessive emphasis on the negative side can push it straight into Cursed With Awesome territory, where it becomes another trope. Immortality has been done to death under this heading, even garnering its own trope.
The idea that the awesome is a curse may cause some forms of Internalized Categorism. Sometimes a subset of people try to tell them this. Other times it's the "reward" for Heroic Willpower. Often, such characters will bemoan their fate and go to great lengths to be rid of the "curse" instead of taking advantage of whatever cool side effects the curse may have. Sooner or later, that something you really wanted nothing to do with is going to be what saves you.Ī character has some "terrible" curse placed on them (if they weren't born with it) that is actually pretty awesome.
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