Designated Hero/Villain cleanup and maintenance

Designated Hero and Designated Villain are two tropes that suffer from lots of complaining and misuse. The tropes are supposed to be, respectively, a hero who doesn't really act like a hero or do heroic things, and a villain who doesn't really act like a villain or do villainous things.

Unfortunately, many entries are needlessly bash-y and complain-y, often complaining instead about heroes tropers personally don't like or otherwise using the two tropes to complain about works. Some entries additionally are misuse for characters who aren't heroes/villains to begin with.

Per TRS discussion, this long-term thread will be started to help deal with these issues as well as others that arise related to these two tropes.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jul 9th 2021 at 6:30:04 AM

YMMV.North

• Designated Hero: We're supposed to sympathize with North's quest for better parents as he apparently feels both unappreciated and neglected; the fact that this is barely showcased in any meaningful manner or that he is the one actively dreaming up the many ethnic stereotypes seen throughout his fantastical journey leaves many to wonder whether our hero is simply racist and too full of himself to recognize what he has.

This just seems like purely complaining.

At best, it can be rewritten. At worst, it can be cut altogether. Requesting more input as to what to do.

Bringing up this example from Bride Wars:

• Designated Hero: The two leads are incredibly, terribly unlikable and treat each other like shit. Yet they're both treated as the heroes.

Needs at least a rewrite to be less bash-y.

DesignatedHero.Super Mario Logan needs the axe, because all of the characters seem like Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonists

Edited by randomtroper89 on Jul 23rd 2021 at 2:15:59 PM

I've seen Designated Hero tropes be limited to only one character at best, so seeing a subpage ought to bring some alarm bells.

On top of that, the entirety of SML recently got mass-axed due to a cease-and-desist from Nintendo, so its a bit harder to verify some of the entries now.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jul 23rd 2021 at 7:42:25 AM

Holy crap. Well, it was never meant to have a subpage anyway, so feel free to axe if you like.

It's been officially put on the kill list

Okay from The Devil Wears Prada:

• Designated Villain: The movie tries to frame Christian as being a dick for knowing about the plan to replace Miranda and the whole thing as a Moral Event Horizon for the character. Andy's "I'm not your baby" is intended as a Shut Up, Hannibal! moment, which some feel is a bit overblown. The only genuinely dickish thing he does is kiss Andy while he knows she has a boyfriend, which ironically the movie blames Andy for.

I feel like this entry could be rewritten or cut all together. You see because I have never seen anyone make this argument. The fandom mostly sees him as a villain, and infact he gets a good deal of Ron the Death Eater. Still I thought I would get a second opinion.

We have designated hero and designated villain pages for Not Always Right and it's sister site Not Always Working, but according to the work pages they are sites where the people post REAL experiences, so I'm almost sure that is violating the NRLE rule (althought the page also says that some stories have an Unreliable Narrator, but probably would almost impossible to say what stories have unreliable narrators and what not). So I think we should cut the pages.

DH and DV are Audience Reactions or just can be too subjetive how to put examples in the work pages without the risk of starting a edit war? and is exact the entry or the character is actually more villanous? If the answers are that it's too subjetive and that the entry is exact repectively, probably the entry can stay with a rewrite, otherwise it should be cut.

Edited by ASghhrv6ub on Aug 1st 2021 at 1:09:01 PM

It might be too subjective, because it certainly is not how the audience reacts to him. I can try to rewrite it, but I feel like I would personally just cut it.

Well the audience infamously doesn't like Nate as you've said, so it doesn't surprise me that there are those who would prefer Andy with Christian. Even then, more clearly prefer her with Miranda actually rather than either one as you've clearly shown the evidence for before.

Edited by futuremoviewriter on Aug 4th 2021 at 3:46:31 AM

That is not what I meant. Him doing that to Miranda is why a lot of don't like Christian. When ever the audience brings it up, it is almost always Christian is bad and Miranda is innocent. That is also because Miranda is a big figure who gets Draco in Leather Pants. I can't find a single sole online who defends him there. Shipping has nothing to do with it.

Either way I feel like it might just be subjective. So let me try to rewrite.

Edited by Bullman on Aug 4th 2021 at 5:54:12 AM

When I first saw the movie, I rooted for him to take Miranda down similar to how Katharine Parker was taken down at the end of her movie. I think on it now and yeah, it's a shitty thing for Christian to do as she is so passionately tied to the magazine and it's better because she always gives everything to it even at her own expense. That said, I don't hate him because he never plotted against Andy in any of it and also thought he was probably doing her a favor too.

So maybe he does in that case get unnecessary hate—though not sure it's fitting to DV the way that say Zoey Brooks ends up getting labeled DH on certain episodes of her show. That also said, the audience having a mix of reactions towards what Christian does is also maybe the point too.

An example of someone who's not a DV is Larry Quinn even though many think his idea to send Conrad to military school is actually a very legit solution since the kid's such a terror. Quinn is a con man and a bum not actually caring about Conrad's well-being and doing it all for the wrong reasons, so yeah, Christian I suppose can be opened to ACI on the other hand though which may or may not lend itself to him counting as a DV.

Edited by futuremoviewriter on Aug 4th 2021 at 4:11:27 AM

@Bullman Yes I guess that's the motive since none of the tropes is indexed as an audience reaction, anyway IRC I guess that if the entry is right and if he is represented as a villain he could count depending on how evil makes him knowing about the plan to replace Miranda; condidering that during the Designated Hero TRS we decided that how the audience see a character is'nt a calificative.

Also, any opinions about NAR and NRW pages?

I have never heard of those sites, but sounds like they are violating the NRLE rule. So I say cut.

Either way I will try to rewrite that entry as it does present him as in the wrong there at least until Miranda does worse then him.

Also for the first two examples presented for the clean-up.

North: Looks like it's based on ACI, plus racism usually does a character unlikable, but if they don't hurt anibody (either for racism or for another reason) doesn't meke them evil, so unless the entry if forgotting something he wouldn't be designated enough to count anyway.

Bride Wars: That entry doesn't tell anything, says that they are unlikable since they treat each other like shit, but never gives a example of this, yes the entries don't need to say all the actions that make the heroes designated, but at least should give some examples, in this moment is a ZCE and depending on if somebody have seen it and thinks that is a valid example it should be hidden or cut.

More opinions about NAR and NAW pages?

Edited by ASghhrv6ub on Aug 5th 2021 at 7:09:56 AM

By the way DesignatedHero.Live Action Films has way to many MST3K references, mind I replace it with Sandbox.Designated Hero Live Action Films

Edited by randomtroper89 on Aug 5th 2021 at 1:08:52 PM

I am okay with it.

Found this doozy on Deadly Games:

• Designated Hero: Follow me on this one—so this guy, some dork who can't keep a friend or girlfriend to save his life, blames literally EVERY PERSON HE EVER MET for his own failures. Wracked by his own impotence and feelings of insecurity, he designs a special power fantasy video game to KILL them in virtual reality, including his FATHER. Meanwhile the main (massive quotation marks) "hero" of the game is...him. Him as a kind of vigilante or assassin, modeled after an action hero, and the Distressed Damsel he saves is his EX, thus handily explaining why she is his ex now. So when his further incompetence releases virtually indestructible killer robots into the real world modeled after these characters, only then does he realize he made an oppsie-daisy and tries to stop them. It's the plot to Virtuosity if Denzel's character was played by the titular character from Dexter's Laboratory, and Dexter was a sociopath.
  • Again, let's put this into perspective: a guy in high school who got laid more than Gus, he turned into a character in a VR game he could KILL REPEATEDLY with water because his real life version never learned to swim...a fact Gus latched on to, in the hopes of feeling in some small way superior. So, still fuming from some high school slight, Gus has created a version of a guy he felt wronged him with a weakness that means he has to DROWN HIM repeatedly. For fun. Drown a man, for fun. Because high school. Ok...
  • Granted, The Show does not absolve Gus of this, either. Part of Gus' Character Arc of the Show does have the others repeatedly call him out for doing this and Gus realizing his own pettiness.

It's basically a Wall of Text, it's written in first person, it relies partially on Fan Myopia (knowing both Dexter's Laboratory and the movie Virtuosity), there's allcaps galore, the entry both repeats itself and argues with itself...

The entry even argues with itself. Cut.

Looking at the history for the page, there was an attempt to rewrite the first paragraph to be more neutral, but the changes got reverted.

Checked the Anime & Manga page.

My Hero Academia:

• Mineta Minoru is a perverted hero in training who lacks any of the traits that the rest of Class 1-A is praised for having; he isn't altruistic, selfless, kind, courageous, heroic, charismatic or anything of the sort, and his reason to try to become a hero is so he can be seen as cool and get girls, not to mention his beyond inappropriate treatment of his female peers. Despite these traits, he keeps being lumped together with the rest of the class as a great hero to be and is treated as one of the good guys.Mineta is a gag character, not meant to be a hero
• To some of the fandom, Bakugo's messy morals in the sense he doesn't seem to actually realize that bullying someone and using violence to solve problems is bad, really paint him as a gray moral character that he doesn't truly seem like a hero. Even more importantly, people in-universe believe he is this, which is why the fact he decided to tell the League of Villains to shove their invitation up their ass and didn't go the "Rival Turned Evil" route that looked all but actually written on the wall is all the more astonishing.Bakugo's not excused by the narrative
• Aizawa is seen as this by his detractors. He's a deconstruction of the Sink or Swim Mentor, but a lot of people see his methods as either ineffective or downright cruel. He is willing to expel entire classes, and has done so before, should they not meet his standards, and would have done the same to Midoriya had he not impressed Aizawa at the last minute. While it's later revealed that the expulsions were temporary, they still go into the student's permanent record. He repeatedly uses "rational falsehoods" to get the students to work harder, but it in turn just scares the crap out of them. He's so incredibly militant about stomping down on all hope or love for the job for the sake of trying to adapt his class to the harshness of Hero life (read: it may get them killed and "sometimes you can't save them all") that when other teachers arrive the kids look like zombies, so dour he's made them. He tends to miss important details regarding the behavior of his students or punish them when he does notice.^* Including: failing to notice Iida signed up to intern in Hosu, where Stain was last sighted (especially considering that someone who made it to the semifinals of the sports festival could have gotten a more prestigious hero agency than Manual's); thinking Midoriya and Bakugo would become Fire-Forged Friends by facing All Might only for their relationship to remain volatile and All Might almost crippling them; failing to notice Bakugo suffered issues from being kidnapped and being made to take a test that replicated the Kamino incident leading to his fight with Midoriya, then punishing both of them for the fight. He also perpetuates the controversial aspect of Hero Society by threatening to punish the students for acting without licenses, namely by saying he'd have expelled the entire class outside of Bakugo, Jiro, and Hagakure for either attempting to rescue Bakugo themselves or for knowing about the attempt and not stopping them. Many end up seeing him as both a horrible teacher and a Knight Templar Rules Lawyer in the process. He even mentions that Vlad King, the homeroom teacher for Class 1-B, is a far better teacher than him, as Class 1-B's teamwork is on par with Class 1-A's despite the former's relative lack of life-or-death experience.
• Endeavor, as all his heroic actions are less being motivated to help people and more about bringing glory to himself, he's an asshole to pretty much everyone even in casual conversation and he's so obsessed by beating All Might that he abused his wife and children, just so he could breed a perfect heir who would surpass him. For many, his attempts to change for the better are too little, too late.Again, Endeavor isn't excused by the narrative, and his abuse created a dangerous villain
• All Might can fall into this despite being the Big Good of the series, namely because of how extreme of a Sink or Swim Mentor he is. His training with Midoriya is harsh (because Midoriya has to work hard for his body to catch up with his Quirk, whereas most people have had their Quirks since they were toddlers), but his brutal regime has put Midoriya in the infirmary several times - All Might once beat Midoriya and Bakugou so violently in their Exams that he nearly broke Midoriya's back and hit Bakugou so hard in the stomach he vomited. Recovery Girl outright called him out on how needlessly brutal he was being. Then there's how All Might's favouritism towards Midoriya has lead him to neglect Bakugou several times over the series despite being Bakugou's hero too - he failed to save Bakugou from villains twice, once during the Sludge Villain incident (because he didn't want to risk exposing his secret and only snapped out of it when Midoriya tried to intervene instead) and then again during the Hideout Raid arc, and he also sat back and did nothing about it when Bakugou's mother outright blamed Bakugou for being kidnapped by supervillains. His failure to notice Bakugou's guilt and emotional anguish over the situation resulted in Bakugou having a complete mental breakdown and fighting Midoriya because of his self-loathing over being the reason All Might lost his powers. All Might even lampshades this when he reassures Bakugou it was not his fault by remarking in his internal monologue he should have done more for him and forgot that Bakugou is still a child because of his talent and proud personality.