Discussion Main / UselessProtagonist

I don't agree. His involvement is ultimately the reason Sin is destroyed - his willingness to question Yevon's doctrines leads to Yuna refusing the Final Summoning, and his "weak tie to Sin" is Sin being his freaking dad. Removing him.

Given that he has to be the protagonist, then yes, that does imply he's the main character.

Well, "This character doesn't have the universe revolve around them" implies that the character in question is actually a secondary character. And "I hate this guy!" is pure complaining. Give a look in Madrugada's answer in one of the discussions of the page.

No character should have the entire universe revolve around him unless he's a Mary Sue. This trope seems to literally be describing a protagonist that needs other people to do things for him. I've nuked a few answers already that seemed to not understand that - for example, suggesting that Indiana Jones is unimportant to his his own movie because if you rewrote it to remove him and handwaved all the plot holes that creates (check the history - somebody literally just did that instead of removing what was obviously an awful example), you still have a bad example because he's not kicking back and letting other people do all his work for him.

What this trope should be: The Load is the main character.

What this trope often winds up as: The main character isn't as effective as I think he should be.

The best example I can think of is Journey to the West; Xuanzang is a monk (not the warrior kind, the pacifist kind) and while he's the main character, all the "work" is done by his escorts. I'm shocked it's not in there.

It definitely has merit as a trope, sort of as a Perspective Flip to Supporting Protagonist.

The Indy example is clearly someone who noticed (or, more likely, saw from Cracked.com) the Fridge Logic that Indy managed to break things just as often as he helped. It's still Square Peg Round Trope, but I'm positive that's why he did it.

I can agree with that assessment of what this trope should be. Maybe a good solid clean up is all that's needed.

Normally I do this on trope repair shop, but it's been full for days :P

Yeah. We had a good stretch where there were opening for like a week. Ahhh... the salad days of youth.

I'll help where I can to clean up. I agree, it's a mess but a cleanup and and a bit of rewriting the description (... and honestly, some vigilance because people will shoehorn their least favorite characters) should be enough.

I feel like Overshadowed by Awesome should be mentioned in the description. Many of the examples are impressive in their own right, but just aren't at the apex of the power level of the work.

I think it's also important to distinguish the Useless Protagonist from the Supporting Protagonist and the Designated Hero. Because I can easily see where those tropes could be confused without a little more clarity.

First, Nick Carroway is The Ishmael. The Ishmael is a narrative device, a different way of doing character POV, it has nothing to do with their capabilities.

Second, comparing to Pinball Protagonist: Right well for many of the example here "inherently useless" simply isn't true. Also the Pinball Protagonist is simply defined in terms of no plot instigation. "Useless"-ness is a vague, complainy quality that is actually near impossible to achieve.

This appears to be conflating (or confusing) "Protagonist" and "Viewpoint Character", and calling the Viewpoint Character a "Useless Protagonist" when they aren't a protagonist at all. Cut, I think.

I'm with Some Sort Of Troper: the distinction between this an Pinball Protagonist is based on Pinball Protagonist having a prerequisite (being "useful") it simply does not have.