This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Pinball Protagonist: From YKTTW
Starfire: No I didn't include everything. Some of the suggestions I wasn't familiar enough with to really include. and the whole thing probably needs some editing. I realize this could become a trope to gripe about characters people hate, but there are some good examples.
This reminds me somewhat of the Douglas Adams/David Vogel conversation talked about here
. I wonder if they had a term equivalent to "pinball protagonist" then, and if not, how much shorter the meeting would have been if they had.
Also, are there any first-person shooters or similar games that use this trope? I remember hearing something about the ending of Call of Duty 4, but I haven't played it. —Document N
Danel: I can't help but feel that the trope description - and some of the example descriptions - are far too negative here. While it can be annoying if taken too far (if the protagonist becomes unnaturally incurious), there's nothing as horribly wrong with it as some of the examples seem to think. In most of these cases, the real "main character" is the world or the events, and a proactive protagonist would distract from this.
GDwarf: Removed the Escaflowne reference, Hitomi does try to be proactive, and is the driving force of a large part of the plot (Admittedly, rarely for anything she actually does, but things would still have turned out rather differently had both sides not known she existed.) While, if I'm understanding this trope correctly, it's more about protagonists that have no influence on the plot.
Also second the dislike of the negative connotation this article has taken on. Passive observers are a well-established convention in quite a few very well-liked works, making the use of this trope a License to Whine very odd.
Anke removed the following because they had answer-comments saying those were not about protagonists, leaving them here just in case:
- In The Great Gatsby, the protagonist and narrator is the excessively passive Nick Carraway, who makes no important choices in the entire book, and is very much content to simply observe the rest of the more dynamic characters.
- So much so that many people who read the book forget his name. His first name isn't mentioned more than four times and his last name is mentioned even fewer times than that.
- That said, Nick is usually not considered a "protagonist" (for this very reason!), giving the role of main (if not viewpoint) character to the titular Gatsby himself.
- Nick is certainly not the protagonist. Gatsby is the protagonist, and Nick exists solely to be the third-person subjective narrator, so we don't get into Gatsby's mind.
- Arguably, Buttercup for much of The Princess Bride.
- No, she's just your standard Damsel in Distress.
Paul Power: Not to be confused with protagonists that are sometimes literal pinballs?
