So, Decoy Protagonist becomes the broad trope and a Sacrificial Decoy Protagonist gets the description?
Fight smart, not fair.I think that death induced could be a subtrope, but really you can have a Decoy Protagonist without killing them.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickThat's what I meant. Broaden Decoy Protagonist to the general case, move the current definition to something like Sacrificial Decoy Protagonist.
Fight smart, not fair.Make Decoy Protagonist a supertrope or something.
edited 13th Oct '10 2:14:37 PM by JackMackerel
Half-Life: Dual Nature, a crossover story of reasonably sized proportions.The only problem I can see is that the non-fatal Decoy Protagonist is already covered by Supporting Protagonist. At least that's how I read it.
—R.J.
I think it would be has more to do with how the story treats them. A Supporting Protagonist simply isn't the hero, a Decoy Protagonist is set up to be the main character in the first act, and then the story decides to follow someone else.
Fight smart, not fair.No, Supporting Protagonist is when the protagonist is not the hero — but he's still the protagonist. This would be when the character you initially assume is the protagonist isn't even really the main character.
I guess it is.I still think the non-dying Decoy Protagonist and Supporting Protagonist are too similar to each other to be two separate tropes. Might be easier to just move the non-dying examples from Decoy Protagonist to Supporting Protagonist and tighten the descriptions a smidge.
—R.J.
Uh, no, I think Nyktos got it. A non-dying decoy can still be quite distinct from a supporting, and functions more like a dying decoy than a general supporting.
edited 3rd Nov '10 7:49:57 AM by Ironeye
I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.
Me Too!. Redefine to eliminate death as a requirement.
Yeah... change the death requirement to something like "Most of the time its done by killing the decoy off"
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!I elaborated the definition of Supporting Protagonist - it was mostly defined by what it isn't. There's a fairly bright distinction between the two.
Decoy Protagonist: A character initially appears to be the hero/protagonist, but is supplanted after the first act by the real one in both roles. He drops down to the role of supporting character or simply dies, but either way somebody else becomes the main character and the hero.
Supporting Protagonist: The hero and main character are two separate people. This never changes.
edited 3rd Nov '10 10:37:55 AM by Shale
"Most of the time" is a bit strong and it's not like we've done a survey. For all we know there are even more non-dying examples that haven't been added because of the current description. "Often" should be enough.

This trope claims to be about a character who seems to be the main protagonist but dies early. It's used to mean a character who seems to be the main protagonist but...isn't, whether that's because of death or some other reason. I'd suggest we redefine it to the latter, or create a trope for that and make Decoy Protagonist a subtrope of it.
Note that if we do redefine it, it won't be a Death Trope anymore, so spoiler tags will need to be added where they aren't present.
edited 9th Oct '10 12:49:37 PM by Nyktos
I guess it is.