The Hero's TRS thread (link here) stalled because it was unclear what the definition is.

Here's the OP of that thread, including the wick check (written by El Rise):

More than 10 years ago, a user observed that The Hero is plagued with unclear description and definition, as well as overlapping with existing tropes (namely, The Protagonist, The Leader and Ideal Hero super-trope). A wick check is conducted to see how The Hero is used.

Here are the results of The Hero Wick Check:

• 30.30% (40/132) wicks are used as a duplicate of The Protagonist.
• 5.30% (7/132) wicks are used as a duplicate of The Leader (also found in wrongly-indented examples of Five-Man Band).
• 6.06% (8/132) wicks are used as "a morally good character who demonstrates heroic behaviour".
• 0.76% (1/132) wicks are used in the form of The Protagonist + The Leader.
• 3.03% (4/132) wicks are used in the form of The Protagonist + "a morally good character who demonstrates heroic behaviour".
• 2.27% (3/132) wicks consist of irrelevant context.
• 52.27% (69/132) wicks consist of ZCEs, PCEs, unclear potholes or otherwise insufficient context on how it is used (Blank examples and potholes to named characters are common).

This post by Morgan Wick gives a possible reason for why the word "The" is in the name, potentially distinguishing it form other Hero Tropes (with the tropes listed being for heroic characters in general):

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 3rd 2023 at 10:01:38 AM

I wasn't suggesting that was the definition, only a potential definition. The problem is I don't think the page has ever had a coherent definition that would be viable on the present-day wiki; the oldest version of the page on the Internet Archive seems to be about the role in the classic Five-Man Band first and foremost. The lead role in the FMB was changed to The Leader in 2012, but a year later The Hero still had significant elements referring to the other FMB roles as though it were an FMB role itself, even though it also clarified that it didn't necessarily refer to The Leader. The change in the FMB may have been precipitated by a previous TRS thread on The Hero but I don't know if it was any more clear as to what the trope was or should be.

Edited by MorganWick on May 4th 2023 at 3:32:46 AM

Judging by the archive, The Hero was originally supposed to be The Leader of the Five-Man Band. The thing is, when people call a character The Hero, they usually mean that character is The Protagonist and The Protagonist isn't always The Leader. Frodo isn't the leader of the Fellowship, but most people would describe him as The Hero. Luke is considered an archetypal hero, but I wouldn't call him a leader. He spends the first film following Obi-Wan's lead and in the next two he splits off from his team to do his own thing. Katniss is clearly The Protagonist of The Hunger Games, but she isn't a leader. The major decisions in the story are made by other people.

Edited by SharkToast on May 4th 2023 at 4:18:59 AM

Eh yeah I suggest we ignore the oldest definition because FMB was artificial anyway and as soon as The Leader came across, The Hero got booted out of it entirely.

The Leader Hero? ... A Protagonist Shall Lead Them exists?

I mean, the point I made in bringing it up is that I don't know if that TRS or any other actually settled on a definition that would work, so we might not have much of anything to go off of in terms of what the page is supposed to be, and might end up making up such a definition ourselves.

I decided to take a look at the thread in question, and one of the last posts before the thread was locked as stalled suggested that the thread had settled on the definition "champion of good from either a narrative or an in-universe POV, whether or not they're actually The Leader of the good faction(s)", but may not have actually enacted it and may not have actually settled on it the way the troper who brought it up thought it had. That might be decently close to what I proposed.

Edited by MorganWick on May 5th 2023 at 3:07:10 AM

I think this suggested post is a good idea on how to deal with The Hero.

Agreed. Something like Synch suggested:

The term "hero" is very broad and ancient and linguistically it comes from the Greek "heros" which literally means defender or protector. "Hero" then entered the English language in the 16th century. In the early days of storytelling, especially classical mythology, "hero" used to stand for "a legendary figure often of divine descent blessed with great strength or physical courage."

Nowadays, it came to describe such characters who performed great deeds of strength and courage to overcome adversity in the name of good.

The concept of a hero is generally but not always defined as the following:

1. The Protagonist of a story (see Protagonist Tropes for all the types of protagonists).
2. A good person morally and ethically (see Hero Tropes for all types of good heroic characters).
3. The main force of goodness, but not always and not necessarily the only one.

Please do not add examples to work pages, this merely defines the term.

We can explain the hero concept more if the description is too short.

Assuming that there will be a consensus on The Hero's definition, will it be brought back to TRS? Or some other action will be done?

Yes, we don't take any action here because this side of the forum is for discussing tropes only. We can reach a consensus on what solutions might be viable and good enough but the voting and carrying out the solutions take place in TRS only.