My Kind of Hero

My Kind of ( ) is a series of posts about my particular taste, the things that get me wound up in narrative. I always know them when I see them; the types of characters that seem like they’re speaking just for me, the settings that send me into daydream-land for weeks, the twists and plots that make me stay up late and miss work the next day. For the first? Heroes.

My kind of hero carries his emotional baggage awkwardly. He’s tortured by his past  failures. He may be haunted by lost loves, missed opportunities, or just the gradual fading of unrecognized glory days. But he never lets these failures cripple him. They just make him hesitate, falter, and doubt.

My kind of hero is full of doubt. The plan may not work, but he pushes on anyway. The companions may not be trustworthy, but no one else will help him. Or worse- he may not be man enough to get the job done. I love watching a hero wrestle with his own portrait of himself, and then repaint that image through sheer doggedness.

He keeps on, when anyone else would have quit. He’s tenacious to a fault, to the point of being ridiculous. He can’t manage to quit, even when seized by doubt. He doesn’t know how to stop being a hero, even when he probably should.

My kind of hero is a normal man forced by circumstances into change. That change is usually catastrophic to his Life Before. His shift is tectonic, massive, shaking everything around him to its foundations.

He is brutal when he must be, and merciful when he can afford it. He doesn’t savor cruelty, though he can careless and callous. He can be a bit of a buffoon, and there’s always an unhealthy amount of charm hiding under his gruff exterior.  He may be full of contradictions, but I always know my kind of hero when I see him.

My kind of hero is unsure, imperfect, and still embodies all the things we all hope to be:  in his golden, shining moment of greatness, he is the best of himself in the worst of circumstances.

-Danika

So tell me about your kind of hero. Who is he? What grabs you about him?

Next up in My Kind of… Heroines.