Why do most writers the Heroic Wannabe archetype?

I always wondered about this but why do most individuals hate the heroic wannabes? What is it about this that makes some people cringe whenever someone wants to be a hero?

It's a common archetype to write badly. Mostly I think it fails due to the reasons for wanting to be a hero are either too fuzzy to gain any traction with the audience, or they raise Fridge Logic that contradict the wanted message.

Edgyness.

Well....this can fail for a lot of bad writting, particulary when "heroic" is the only character trait, then stop to be heroic and start to be preachy.

I wonder if it has something to do with sincerity as well?

The idea is that heroes aren't suppose to see themselves as such. They do what their morals drive them to and think that it's what anyone would do.

Pretty much, yeah. I'd say an actual hero would just focus on the problems at hand, instead of going for preset ideas of what heroism is supposed to look like. Otherwise you end up with something between a glory hound and a tautological Templar.

The hero is not supposed to view themselves as such? IS that why they often are punished for even becoming a hero out of selfish desire? Is that why this trope is frowned upon?

Wanting to be a hero, a selfish desire, is not a heroic motivation.

Yet why do some stories treat as a good thing?

Exactly what is it that they treat as a good thing? Wanting to be a hero, or wanting to help people? Wanting to be someone people look up to, or wanting to be someone who inspires people?

It's certainly not an inherently bad quality, and it can very often bring good things with it, so it's natural for it to be treated as a good thing in those cases. There's this word a certain swordsman like to use: "Context".

I'd say the desire to be a hero, at least stemming from the idealized impression of heroism, can reveal quite a few character flaws, even without being interpreted as a selfish quest for glory. For instance, wanting to be a "good guy" and defeat "bad guys" is more than a little naive, if not outright unwholesome. Moreover, wannabe heroes are inexperienced in the more practical aspects of the lifestyle, meaning they can cause more harm than good if nobody's around to babysit them or at least show them the ropes. And that's not mentioning the risks and required sacrifices of the lifestyle itself, as the grittier works aren't in the habit of featuring improbable survival rates or sugarcoated third options whenever a hard choice arises.

At the same time, whenever aspiring heroes are uniformly berated by people who started out much the same way, there is the unflattering shade of hypocrisy and vain maintenance of a monopoly for its own sake. For all of it being a frequent army recruitment tactic, I'm a big fan of the more the merrier approach.

& I see.

Some other common problems with the Hero Wannabe:

Incompetence/Accidentally making things worse. The desire to be a hero leads them to take unnecessary risks. In many cases, this will lead to endangering others as well as the wannabe hero. A man charges into a burning building, but lacks any training, gets trapped, and is now just one more person the professional firefighters have to rescue.

Deliberately making things worse (sometimes called Hero Syndrome). A fireman turns to arson in order to create opportunities to display his heroism in fighting the fire that he, himself, started. (This is a real thing. Rare, but not rare enough.)

edited 17th Jul '16 10:54:36 AM by Xtifr

Heroism Addict.

And then there's the question of opportunity. Wanting to save innocent people from some villainous threat or impending disaster is good...if and only if there is a villainous threat or impending disaster to save them from.

Otherwise, it's basically wanting some villainous threat or impending disaster to appear so the character could save people from it. Which, even if it doesn't go as far as the character actually creating the threat themselves, is certainly not something a good person should want.

Well this cirtainly isn't going to help Video games, or movies, or anything where the viewer indirectly led to the bad things to happen.

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People don't like the Heroic Wannabe because it's inherently a trope about someone getting in over their head. Jumped at the Call is basically "a Heroic Wannabe who can actually do the hero-ing" and is also incredibly common.

Most Heroic Wannabes are in way over their head as they have no idea what they are doing and they can get into a lot of trouble.

Huh.

It'd be interesting to see a Heroic Wannabe who did know exactly what he was getting into and despite badly wanting to be a hero still treated the situation with the seriousness it deserved.

I'm not sure if that's ever been done before. Maybe Shirou Emiya but even he had some holes in his become a hero of justice plan that he didn't think of (though that was due to some massive psychological issues).