The other day I read an article on Science Daily suggesting that some kind of female animal, I forget which, loses interest in males who lose fights. Their was a suggestion that human females would feel the same way. For writers the implication would be that to be attractive to female readers, a male hero should never lose a physical fight.
Though I've been attracted to men who I imagined were skilled fighters, I think that human females are a little bit more complicated than this, at least when they are sober. In popular fiction, male heroes can be skilled fighters, but two other intertwined qualities are also important.
The first is having good judgement in stressful situations. The hero shouldn't be an idiot who would charge a tank with a sword, no matter what crimes the tank driver has committed. A writer can even get a little sexist and have the hero's love interest test him by suggesting doing something dangerous. The hero should be able to refuse her. He comes across as a better man if anger, fear and lust are not able to truly corrupt his judgment.
The second quality is honor. While he needn't be and probably shouldn't be a virgin milquetoast goody-goody, he should have some lines that he won't cross. He can drink, swear, and get into some avoidable fights, but he should show fidelity to a personal code, even at some cost to himself.
No doubt men and women who have acted heroically in real life might find the above somewhat silly. After all, a real hero is often an ordinary person who did the best he or she could do in extraordinary circumstances, but I am trying to describe a type of male character that would be entertaining for me to read about, not to dissect real life heroism.
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