ah, i see...i think i get what you're saying now. i tend to classify the sort of heroic suffering you're describing as more the requisite hardship the hero must endure to make them more fallible and identifiable to the audience, though - more 'noble sacrifice' than h/c.
it sounds like both our definitions here kind of hinge around whether it's the hero or a supporting character who suffers, and whether the audience identifies with that hero or supporting character. but i think the overall h/c definition is wide enough to cover both variations - sometimes the hero and the woobie can actually be the same character, and sometimes the audience might be meant to identify with someone who's not the obvious hero of the story.
for my definition of h/c, i'm thinking more in terms of dickens' model of the woobie/mary sue relationship: in his books, his identification or self-insertion character (the 'mary sue') doesn't tend to be the hero, but more often the hero's kindly benefactor (david copperfield being a possible exception). for example, in oliver twist, oliver is the hero/woobie and mr brownlow is dickens' self-insertion 'mary sue' benefactor; in bleak house, esther summerson is the hero/woobie and mr jarndyce is the 'mary sue' benefactor.
for a doctor who example, in '42', the doctor is the one who suffers - ie, the hero - but according to rtd, the character the audience is meant to identify with is the companion (so he thinks), and so martha the Comforter is supposed to be the one who we relate to.
so i think the blanket h/c term can be used to apply to all sorts of character variations...it's just that in my own experience, i've seen dickens' 'kick-the-woobie' model of h/c turn up in a lot more stories than the 'suffering/comforted hero' type of h/c, especially in scifi/fantasy fanfiction.
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it sounds like both our definitions here kind of hinge around whether it's the hero or a supporting character who suffers, and whether the audience identifies with that hero or supporting character. but i think the overall h/c definition is wide enough to cover both variations - sometimes the hero and the woobie can actually be the same character, and sometimes the audience might be meant to identify with someone who's not the obvious hero of the story.
for my definition of h/c, i'm thinking more in terms of dickens' model of the woobie/mary sue relationship: in his books, his identification or self-insertion character (the 'mary sue') doesn't tend to be the hero, but more often the hero's kindly benefactor (david copperfield being a possible exception). for example, in oliver twist, oliver is the hero/woobie and mr brownlow is dickens' self-insertion 'mary sue' benefactor; in bleak house, esther summerson is the hero/woobie and mr jarndyce is the 'mary sue' benefactor.
for a doctor who example, in '42', the doctor is the one who suffers - ie, the hero - but according to rtd, the character the audience is meant to identify with is the companion (so he thinks), and so martha the Comforter is supposed to be the one who we relate to.
so i think the blanket h/c term can be used to apply to all sorts of character variations...it's just that in my own experience, i've seen dickens' 'kick-the-woobie' model of h/c turn up in a lot more stories than the 'suffering/comforted hero' type of h/c, especially in scifi/fantasy fanfiction.