Thread:Mediawatcher/@comment-3581997-20150905032118/@comment-3581997-20150905070358

Narrative: First of all I disagree with Villains wiki appoint Zeus as a villain, but the posters claim it is because he was at the source of a lot of problems thus an antagonist in the technical-sense.

Poseidon openly opposes heroes for the sake of being contrary and his own ego. And Ares openly subscribes to thinks like war, violence and murder, And of course Hera is the one who made Heracles kill his own family and that is just one of the things she did. But the important point is the role they play in the stories.

Let me give you 2 samples of how role affects character over that of a personality.

Heracles- barbarian, has fun hurting things, short tempered. Yet the only stories he appears in is ones where he solves problems, he directs his anger at monsters to save innocent people and make up for killing his family while under Hera's control. Now if there were a story told from the monster's point of view about being killed by a crazy barbarian killing them all to make himself feel better about a night of madness he would be an antagonist. Or some sort of novel story from the point of their family a la The Shinning, where daddy comes home one day insane and starts hunting the family down. But there are no such stories. The stories are told from the side of humans in civilized society whom he saved repeatedly.

Hades- Calm, collective, sophisticated, views what's inside a people, souls, as the only important thing. Sacrifices all his free time to doing his job and seeing everyone gets their just rewards and the natural order is maintained. But he is the source of death. Thing die and will continue to die because of him. There are no stories about him fighting evil mostly because he spends all his time maintaining the natural order. He creates conflict to the desires of most people, thus regardless of personality or intent he is an antagonist. The only story where he fights evil is the one where he helps fight the Titans and that wasn't just him, it was him and all his siblings.

That is what ultimately matters and how to separate the heroes from fan favorites/ fan hatred. What do they do?, Who do they do it for? and what is the view of the story?