Ambiguous Name: Hurting Hero

The problem: Hurting Hero is about heroes who go through incredible trauma and hardship, but persevere anyway. Note the last part, as mentioned in the description:

I mention this because the misleading name does not indicate this important part of the trope, and the previous unclear image didn't either. That image came up in Image Pickin', and upon seeing the trope I became concerned that the misleading name might be leading to misuse for heroes who don't persevere at all.

I decided to do a wick check to see if my suspicions were correct.

Wick check: Link here, but here's the quick totals:

• 8/50 examples were correct and had full context, or 16%
• 33/50 examples were partial-context and don't mention perseverance, or 66%
• 2/50 examples where cases where a hero flat out didn't persevere, or 4%, and
• 7/50 examples were zero-context or unclear, or 14%

Totaled together, that's

• 8/50 correct, or 16%, and
• 42/50 incorrect, or 84%

Wick analysis: So interestingly, misuse wasn't the big concern here. What was a big concern, however, was the enormous number of partial-context examples. These examples mentioned the "hurting" part, often in great detail, but didn't mention the "persevering" part. This confirms that the name might be causing problems for the trope. On the other hand, there were more correct examples than I thought.

What should be done?: I have two possible, mutually exclusive ideas here.

• One interesting option we could try would actually not be renaming. If a "hurting hero" who has been through tremendous torment is deemed tropable on its own, we could just remove the requirement that the hero persevere. This would make wick cleanup easy or nonexistant, although I wonder if this is a valid tropable concept, so I currently don't support this proposal unless a convincing argument is made otherwise. Under this proposal, perhaps the original concept could additionally be sent to the Trope Idea Salvage Yard.
• The other option would be to keep the trope as is, but rename to something clearer, like Hurting But Persevering Hero (custom titled, of course, to Hurting, but Persevering Hero). This would make the trope name clearer. I also would suggest (under this proposal) a slight description rewrite to more clearly indicate the requirement that the hero persevere—while it's currently there, it isn't written the most clearly or the best, and could be made more explicit.

What does everyone else think? Any other ideas or solutions?

Opening

On the one hand, adding context on perseverance on a lot of these examples seems... redundant?

Like in this case, the perseverance is implied by the way her tribulations are presented as ongoing; if she weren't persevering, she'd hang up the cape, and then the story would be over. But what context is added by explaining that something didn't happen?

On the other hand, some of these are also definitely misuse:

This example implies that Bruce didn't persevere (and I have the background knowledge to confirm he did not - it made him retire). And there are enough others like this to indicate that the perseverance aspect indeed isn't being understood.

But on the gripping hand... overcoming personal hardships and injuries is inherent in a typical heroic character arc. Of course the hero gets hurt, and of course they struggle forward anyway, so what's special about the page examples? Is it genuinely meant to include every aversion of Invincible Hero, or is it based on exceeding some minimum level of personal harm? From that angle, of course it's deteriorated into a contest over whose favourite character suffered most... but at the same time, examples of characters who eventually did give up seem more significant.

• First suggestion: This isn't a trope, or at least not a character trope - it's a plot moment akin to Friend-or-Idol Decision or To Be Lawful or Good where the hero contemplates sunk costs and the option of walking away from what they're trying to achieve, and either the hero becomes The Determinator or The Hero Quits. (Do we already have this? I don't see anything like it on the Moral Dilemma page.)
• Second suggestion: At the very least, require the presence of such a moment to show that the hero has chosen to persevere.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Nov 19th 2022 at 4:49:58 PM

This appears to have been launched without YKTTW back around 2009 (although there's an existent-but-blank archived discussion, and the oldest Internet Archive version of the page has a "this page has discussion" bullet that they didn't pick up, which makes me wonder if there was a YKTTW that got lost somehow), and the description is all over the place to such an extent I'm not actually sure the idea of persevering is meant to be definitive of the trope, only one of many ways that a hero could respond to trauma (although all the examples on that old version are of continuing series where, as said , "if they didn't persevere the story would be over").

Edit: okay, having resorted to looking at an archived version of YKTTW itself, this did go through there, and perseverance wasn't even part of the description then. Motion to refer to the Trope Description Improvement Drive (assuming the broader concept is deemed tropable, and a comparison with the above link doesn't find more misuse).

Edited by MorganWick on Nov 20th 2022 at 1:30:08 AM

I will admit, I was a bit nervous about this thread since what said is true, and that that part of the description did feel kind of tacked on. If this is more of a Trope Description thread job, than so be it.

(I really should have taken this to Trope Talk first.)

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Nov 20th 2022 at 7:19:05 AM

If this needs to go through Trope Talk and we end up closing this thread, then I'd say we could keep the wick check to use for another TRS thread if Trope Talk determines that it still needs TRS. If that ends up happening, the wick check's example list can be resorted if necessary to account for anything that comes up in the Trope Talk thread (such as if there were details of the definition that were missed).

Right, so should we move this to Trope Talk? I'll admit I may have misread this trope and screwed up this particular TRS, so we'll probably do better hashing it out there IMO.

If this needs more discussion, moving to Trope Talk might be better. If more people agree to moving to trope talk, we can do that.

Yeah, we can move to trope talk for now. I don't doubt that a trope like this probably needs help, but it also seems to require a deeper discussion.

Feels like a combination of Being Good Sucks, Knight in Sour Armor and Heroic Spirit.

Think this needs a discussion of what the trope is supposed to be about and if it's own trope.