Nornagest comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Alsadius 17 December 2012 07:19AM

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Comment author: Nornagest 18 December 2012 01:29:35AM 5 points [-]

"Heroism" seems like a more succinct way of putting that, although it's a fairly specific sense of heroism.

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 18 December 2012 06:04:26AM 1 point [-]

"Heroism" has the same objection as does "Courage": You may get many chances to be heroic. "The Call etc" is a particular trope, and only occurs once per character.

Comment author: Nornagest 18 December 2012 06:18:45AM *  2 points [-]

"Campbellian heroism", perhaps. Though strictly speaking a Campbellian hero doesn't have to be a conventional hero -- the Thousand Faces/Hero's Journey pattern is more about growing into your potential than about saving people or defeating a specific Big Bad -- and both seem to be indicated here.

As I think I've said before, the specific construction of heroism that MoR is using seems to inherit a lot from Fate/stay night, and more specifically from the "Fate" and parts of the "Unlimited Blade Works" routes. The concept we're pointing to usually gets translated there as "superhero" or "hero of justice", but I'm not sure what the Japanese is, and in any case I've no idea if Nasu was using a conventional phrase or if he's using a specialization of a more general word the same way we are.