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How To Handle The Hero

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badtothebaritone (Life not ruined yet) Relationship Status: Snooping as usual
#1: Nov 19th 2022 at 1:47:10 PM

This is a spinoff thread from this one so that it can focus solely on Nice Guy.

Back to the conversation at hand: how do we define The Hero?

Edit: Better restated the main question.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Nov 19th 2022 at 3:57:16 AM

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#2: Nov 19th 2022 at 1:51:13 PM

I mean, right now, we don't do anything to it. We gotta discuss what the problem even is first, if it's actually a problem, and if there's any way to actually fix it.

Should clarify what the actual issue is, because people shouldn't be expected to read the other thread first:

The Hero's description describes The Hero as being basically a shining example of all that is good and pure in the work. Basically, it's The Hero as the most morally-pure version of the term.

However, in more casual terms, "the hero" is mostly just synonymous with "the protagonist" and being the hero doesn't necessarily mean they're the pure hearted good guy type of hero. With this definition, it's more of an umbrella term for all things on the Heroes index, including Anti-Hero.

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SharkToast Since: Mar, 2013
#3: Nov 19th 2022 at 1:53:23 PM

The Hero is a weird trope because we seem to define it differently than how people off the site use it. Most people use The Hero to mean The Protagonist or just anyone who's on the side of good. But on this site, The Hero seems to be a team role. Usually they're The Leader of the good guys, but not always because there's the Big Good. I'm honestly a bit confused on what exactly The Hero is.

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#4: Nov 19th 2022 at 6:01:44 PM

[up] I noticed that too - the description is still influenced by when it was mainly a component of Five-Man Band, I think.

To continue my thoughts from the other thread, there are more tropes than just The Hero and The Protagonist that are commonly conflated with each other. I can think of at least four five:

  • The Main Character is the character the story is about.
  • The Viewpoint Character is the character whose perspective informs the audience.
    • The Narrator tells the story. In a close first-person perspective, the viewpoint character is the narrator; however, other narrators may be more detached, like a biographer or historian of the viewpoint character(s), or not even a character at all but the voice assumed by the author.
  • The Hero is the character the audience wants to succeed, frequently because they're "the good guy" fighting "the bad guy". But also, they're a mytheme with a particular role in specific plot archetypes.
  • The Protagonist is the character whose decisions drive the plot. Except when they aren't.

Frequently all of these are the same and I don't know if there even are any stories where all five are different. "The Protagonist" is used differently in different schools of analysis. (TV Tropes tends to identify it with the viewpoint character, as in Villain Protagonist and Pinball Protagonist... unless the viewpoint character is, say, The Watson.) And "the Hero" is old enough a concept that its usage has also evolved with culture as well as genre, and trying to pin it down as one specific archetype just doesn't reflect how it's actually used off, or on, the wiki.

Probably the best thing I can think of to do would be to treat The Hero as a supertrope, acknowledging the ambiguity in usage with a list of the pages for its Ideal Hero, Byronic Hero, Tragic Hero, Anti-Hero, etc, variants - much like Anti-Hero itself already is.

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MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#5: Nov 20th 2022 at 5:32:28 AM

Yeah, The Hero seems to conflate a few different uses:

  • The main, or at least central, force for good in a work. This is, as far as I understand, the sense in which Hero Protagonist uses it: a "hero" that's not a protagonist could be someone who teams up with a Supporting Protagonist, or simply a Hero Antagonist opposing a Villain Protagonist or in a Good Versus Good story. It says nothing about their demeanor or personality.
  • The paragon of goodness, a heroic character that doesn't fit any of the definitions of the Anti-Hero.
  • The hero as a component of the Five Man Band Classic, mostly the first category but with some tweaks to define it specifically in the context of their relationship with the rest of the group.
And then there's Heroic Archetype, which is actually a redirect to The Hero since 2020. If you had asked me why we had a separate page for it, I would have told you it would be to represent the second category allowing The Hero to focus on the first and third, and that was what crazysamaritan seemed to think on the other thread as well. But before it was redirected, what little description it had, and the fact it seemed to be an exampleless supertrope that redirected people to another index for the subtropes, seemed to be primarily about the first category:
The good guy, seeks to defeat the villain, save the princess, find the treasure, etc. Generally the central figure in Action Series and Adventure Series.

A list of subtypes can be found on the Heroes page.

On the other thread, Noaqiyeum indicated that they saw the trope as being primarily about the first definition, but that seems to be primarily reflected in usage off of the page more than the page itself. But even the conflation between the second and third categories can cause problems. Roy Greenhilt was cited on the other thread as an example of Good Is Not Nice that would therefore be disqualified from the second definition, but the various incarnations of Five-Man Band always listed him under that trope's definition of The Hero, because he's the leader of the group and the closest thing OOTS has to a main character.

At the very least, the vague name definitely lends itself to being seen as the first category, and being one of the Tropes of Legend and one of the most Overdosed Tropes on the wiki further fuels that perception in a feedback loop.

Edited by MorganWick on Nov 20th 2022 at 5:36:22 AM

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