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Hero
Hero is a word best used to describe a corpse as it will be used in the first sentence of the letter sent home by the Commanding Officer before the body to describe how a person died along with other meaningless words like brave, thoughtless and humble. As it has lost all its original meaning over the years, as people have even used it to describe someone who powered through a tear inducing - painful dump, the word Hero is now best used as a word of condolence to the family of someone who was dumb enough to get himself killed. The military has a saying, "You meet a veteran at the gate with all the other passangers. You have to sign for and claim a hero with all the other cargo."
The Original Hero
The word Hero originates from the Greek word ἥρως (hērōs), meaning protector or defender and the Hero was nothing more than a character type no differant than the Slutty Girl or The Villain and was a resourceful, Ubermensch style character that is intrisicly flawed, perhaps by hubris, who put other's needs before his own and rose up, like David, to defeat what Joseph Campbell would describe as the ogre or the Dragon that was terrorizing his people or be someone like Parzival who begins his quest not knowing he has started on it by following Knights to Camelot who had impressed him with their talk. This first step by Parzival sets him off on an epic quest that will span years and will usually bring about a rebirth in him before the quest is completed and a rebirth or change for the better in the world when it is finished.
Where the first story of David is meant to be more of a history lesson and reenact events that serve as a lesson of faith to remind what a man is capable with G-D on his side, the second or the one refering to Parzival is meant more to teach an ideal as the story focuses more on Parzival's flaws like his loss of faith in G-D, loss of honor and guilt. Only by overcoming these flaws and truly understanding himself can Parzival be reborn spiritually and succeed at his quests.
In the Parzival story, or rather the epic quest the Enemy is less monsters and more themselves.
To quote Parzival from his grail quest, "Here I found it was myself who I was always standing against."
The Superhero
For the most part, the modern Superhero acts more along the lines of the telling of legends of the gods like Zeus, Thor or Amaterasu because so many of them are raised so high above man like Superman that The Human Condition hardly applies to them and their stories border more on the ideas of Dharma versus Chaos and almost every story is these new gods setting themselves against an enemy who desires the end of all we know like The Anti-Life Formula, wants to destroy or devour the current universe and remake it, Galactus, are a force of nature themselves like The Phoenix or even innerspace demons/destroyers who do it for the lulz like Trigun.
The human role or the human side of these larger than life characters is Literally pointless because how do you get a character like Superman to understand weakness when he can bench-press the planet Jupiter? Before the weeaboos start with their "This is why Animu is better written," How can a character like Goku understand weakness when all he has to do after an ass whooping is go into a Time Chamber for a day and come out with a new technique or Sayan level? Really, how much of a threat is death when everyone who died gets wished back at the end of the story arc?
Much like the god stories of old, the Superhero's growth comes from the happenings of their friends like Jimmi Olsen or Lois Lane and much like the old god legends, these stories have ways of disenfranchising fans because all ailments, even death, are temporary and can always be fixed with a magical amulet. No one ever dies, or at least, death isn't a permanent condition. Death can be overcome by a god's boon of bringing back the character as a reward, Such as the end of Clash Of The Titans where Zeus brings Io back from the worm farm or a quest into the underworld, like Orpheus, to bring their lover back to the world of the living.
Even Batman with his well advertised mortality and human weaknesses has his Lazereth Pits that have even brought back characters fans wished would have stayed dead like Jason Todd.
The only story that ever came close to properly portraying such an overpowered character was The Watchmen when Dr Manhatten pulled rank on Adrian Veight, telling him that for all Adrian thinks he knows, he's just a man where Dr. Manhatten is a god and infinitely above him, Adrian could never compare to him - even going so far as reminding Adrian that he, Dr. Manhattan, is beyond death and removed from the human condition.
As the role dictates, tired of playing god, Dr Manhatten leaves Earth to become a real god and create life in his own image.
The Irony Of The Superhero Movie
For years, Companies like DC and Marvel along with Editors like Stan Lee ✡ fucked over creators like Chris Claremont, Bob Kane, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Frank Miller and Alan Moore with work for pay contracts that had them giving up all their rights to works they have created, ensuring that they never received any royalties or pay following their original work for the company despite many of these creator's works like Batman becoming so big they are actually a part of the Americunt identity.
For any fan, or former fan of comic books, the fun comes from watching companies like Marvel whine and cry about not making any money from the movies being based on their intellectual property. Such is the case, especially with Marvel Comics, Stan Lee and the X-Men movies. Stan Lee has actually gone on record saying, "Reader, how much money did you make from the last X-Men movie. Nothing is exactly how much I made too."
Now in mid-tantrum Marvel, unlike DC who is owned by Warner Brothers which makes DC movies like Batman and ensures that the same company makes money off its intellectual property, Marvel taking orders from its parent company Disney has started killing off many of it's characters like Wolverine and ending titles all together like The Fantastic Four hoping to starve these companies into submission by denying them new material or characters to make movies with. As any fan can tell you, no Superhero movie has ever stayed true to the source material, need I say Deadpool in that bobbing piece of shit Wolverine movie.
In what can be called Poetic Justice it's fun to watch as these companies have to take it in the ass in the same way they've ass raped so many creators. Much in the same way the Greek playwrites gave up writing about Heroes, morality and lessons when the theater owners were making all the cash. People like Stan Lee and Marvel want out of the hero business claiming that movie companies like Fox are unfairly making money from THEIR creativity. Their demand is royalties for their creations or the goal of strangling back the movie rights to their biggest titles like the X-Men. If they ever succeed, watch as all this death and disease was just a bad dream or Stan Lee in mid-stroke.
While they might have a right to do this, maybe Stan Lee and Marvel should go ask Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster how their law suit against DC for their creation of Superman went just for shits and giggles. Spoilers, they both died broke.
The Modern Age And The Semantic Shift Of The Word Hero
When you were in school and your teacher said, "You can grow up to be whatever you want to be." You knew she wasn't refering to you because you already knew the die had been cast and you'd be digging ditches. You were at least smart enough to know who she was refering to.
The problems with the word hero started like it did with the participation trophey. Because children are such vain glorious, ego hounds that can't stand the thought that someone is actually better than their fat, lumbering, worthless ass, the participation trophey was invented that pretty much says, "You aren't even close to equaling our best player but because you showed up we had enough people to play and that's why we won."
Looking to stoke G-D's practical jokes egos else where, when pumpkin stickers and tropheys would be pointless, society moved on to titles. Much like how you can appease a middle management pawn into complacity with a token raise and a new title, society did the same with its rejects certain that what works at the middle of the Bell Curve will also work at its bottom.
Why should we reward the school autistic for showing up, not groping girls and not shitting themselves, things that they are supposed to do, like we do with everyone else by simply not bitching at them? For some reason we'd rather create some Skinner Box monster that needs to be fed constant reward and praise to get even the most menial of tasks done. Being cheaper than store bought items, words worked better to stoke their already tremendous egos, some more by calling them a hero as it's some kind of great struggle for these irregular items to act normal. In other words, we have taken a word that once was used to describe people who rose up against the odds to fight and give their lives for what is right like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln and Gandhi, pretty much saying everytime we call one of these specials a hero that everything people like Gandhi fought and died for pales in comparison to this fuckwit's ability to hold their colon long enough to get themselves to a toilet.
We are supposed to believe someone like Sergeant Alvin C. York would look at someone like Chris Chan and say, "I may be one of the most decorated soldiers in US history and responsable for capturing 135 German soldiers all by myself in World War I but when I saw the way you only showed up at a gay rally to get your picture in the paper and made it all day without shitting yourself, you Sir. You're the real hero."
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The Real Hero
When so few have given up so much so much so you can sit in Your Mom's Basement jerking off onto your My Little Pony collection, buying garbage with the tax payers money like body pillows and video games or arguing on Twatter that it's not gay that you like to massage your prostate with a vibrator, unless your contribution to society as a whole compares to theirs, DON'T FUCKING TELL ME HOW YOU ARE A HERO BECAUSE YOU GOT THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL WITH YOUR LEARNING DISABILITY. Your ass would better be served as a meat shield protecting real men instead of hiding behind your mom saying over and over again how you can't fight because you don't breathe so good when you're stressed.
See Also
- An hero You killed yourself because you lost an iPod, really?
- Army
- Batman
- Chuck Norris
- Dangerman
- DC
- God
- Hero Online
- In defense of slandered heroes
- Our great god emperor, street fighting man
- Progman
- Sandwich
- Space Bat
- Superman
- Tweek is our Hero because he shit in some cupcakes he sent to North Korea
- Video games I played a sniper in Call Of Duty, I know what you went through in Vietnam
- World War I
- World War II
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Hero is part of a series on Visit the Truth Portal for complete coverage. |
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Hero is part of a series on Visit the Television Portal for complete coverage. |
