What is a hero?

Definitional papers are great, but they're only a start. Should look to narrow the focus a bit.

Downsides to Heroism

There definitely are some. Real life heroes tend to be people who risk life and limb, and the consequences of those risks mean some bad things can happen.

Selfless Altruism

The mindset of true altruism (no ulterior motives) and the mental and physical upsides of altruism

Become Your Own Hero

Often we get caught up in the culture of hero worship, which means we neglect our own potential hero journeys.

The search for meaning in life is answered by many through religion, for others through art, and still others through love. But it's important to search for that meaning, and why not be your own hero?

Saving Pets after Natural Disasters

There are a lot of pets that get  left behind. Most often, owners don't do so willingly, but evacuation orders come quickly, if they come at all.

For people who stay behind, many of them underestimate the damage to the area, and if they survive and their homes are livable, they still may not be ready to care for pets while trying to care for themselves.

Robert Redford

Actor who recently died. Redford had portrayed many various characters, many of them heroes (although he's probably best known to young people as the villainous Hydra leader in Captain America Winter Soldier)

Hero Worship in Children

Mimicking tv shows, even heroic ones, might end up in more violence. Specific mentions to TMNT and Power Rangers.

Superheroes and Politics

Superheroes debut during the Great Depression and really take hold in WWII, and have always been political in nature.

Superman and Wonder Woman are immigrants. Batman fights corruption in politics as well as street crime. The X-Men are analogs for race and gender. Spider-Man is all about the struggles of adolescence and puberty in particular.

Navajo Code-Talkers

Prejudice against American Indians has led to some serious neglect of the importance of the Navajo contribution to WWII, and the treatment they received after the war was every bit as bad as any other racial injustice.

Sustainability and Ecological Heroism

I was going to say "modern culture throws away a lot" but the truth is humanity has always thrown shit away. In fact, theories about pyramids is that the first mounds that became temples, long before the Great Pyramids in Giza, were merely where people threw their crap away. Not an exaggeration! It was only after decades of this disposal of goods that places of worship began being built on those mounds.

Anti-Heroism/Villains as Protagonists

Can protagonists be heroes even when their actions are anything but heroic?

Walter White and Jesse Pinkman (Breaking Bad), Dexter (Dexter), Joe Goldberg (You), Tony Soprano (The Sopranos), Arthur Morgan (RDR 2), Marty Byrde (Ozark), Omar and Stringer (The Wire), Lucifer (Lucifer)

The Cold War

The number of events throughout the years of the Cold War that could have erupted into a hot war is staggering, and but for the unsung heroism of everyday people, we could very well have lived through a nuclear event.

Real Life Spiderman?

Mamoudou Gassama

Neat article from 2018 about a man who climbed four stories to save a child who'd fallen over a railing, but was hanging on while other people watched from the ground.

Responding to School Shooters

Famously, the police in the Parkland school shooting in FL did not respond even though they could hear the shooting.

But that's not always the case. Last semester there were four band dads who stepped in and stopped a shooting at a band competition, and earlier this summer there were kids protecting other kids in Minnesota.

Small Acts of Heroism

Too often the focus seems to be on celebrities and athletes, when it is the smaller acts by virtually unknown people that really provide daily heroism. The neighbors who save children who fall into pools, the strangers who donate blood or organs, etc.

Aid Workers in Wartime

The original post was about work in Gaza, which is a great, very specific topic. I just wanted to broaden the discussion a bit to include any sort of healthcare or aid work in any war-torn region. If you choose this topic, stick with a specific area for your paper.

Local Heroes

The specific topic presented was about resistance figures, particularly in Latin America

Super-heroes as Advertising

Super-heroes have been used to sell everything from supplements to cereals, from exercise products to feminine hygiene products.

Gender and Super-heroes

Historically, women super-heroes were rare, and if they existed at all, it was in company with male super-heroes, and those women often still served as "mother" or "wife" alongside whatever powers they might have.

Disney Princesses

I don't think it's as clean as "Snow White and Cinderella bad, Moana and Tiana good" that I see being stated now. One thing that may sound dumb, but is true, Snow White and Cinderella have more speaking lines than any male characters, and they are the sole main characters. That's not true of Moana (she shares most of the movie with Maui) or with Tiana, where one could convincingly argue that the real main character is Naveen.

The first Disney movie that really rejects male dominance is Brave. But Disney has always centered women's empowerment. Cinderella breaks free of a wicked stepmother. Snow White is taken advantage of by a jealous queen, but has established her own dominance of the dwarves. Ariel rejects her own father to establish an independence. Yes, there is some problematic crap with falling in love with a human, but before that, it's about her forming her own truth and way forward. Jasmine does the same thing in Aladdin.

Narratives about Disney princesses aren't as

cut and dry as they might seem.

Free Speech Advocacy

It may not seem heroic in the sense of putting a life on the line, but standing up for freedom of speech has been literally that. In modern times, the government of democracies don't usually jail people who speak out, but social and financial ostracism can be worse.

Vigilantes

Untrained civilians using pop culture references and sometimes bad faith efforts, using skillsets to catch criminals, primarily those who are pedophiles or CP distributors.

Many people think these kinds of groups are heroes, but law enforcement doesn't always agree, and in at least a few cases, the interference from groups has crossed legal lines itself, either through actually contributing to the CP problem or through vigilante violence that then makes it impossible for law enforcement to work.

Wicked

The post was about the movie, and specifically about Cynthia Erivo being a black woman playing Elphaba. But the story of Wicked itself is a story about complex narratives. Villains and people we call evil do not see themselves as such.

Charities?

Do your research before donating to charities. The non-profit industry is rife with scam artists. There are a few who start as well-intentioned and then fall off, and some that start as outright scams, but whatever the case, be sure the money you're donating goes to the causes you think you're supporting.