This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
From YKTTW Working Title: Big Good
Depending on your outlook, the God Emperor of Mankind from Warhammer40k could be a Big Good, a Big Bad, both, or neither...
I am failing to see how this is a trope.
Dana O: It is a little vague. There's often a character in various storylines who can be thought of as a direct opposite number to the Big Bad who is not the protagonist or an active hero, somebody who's more important than the protagonist to the setting but not to the audience. However, I'm not sure that making this synonymous with "cornerstone of the opposition to the Big Bad" works, and "least expendable" is problematic since that can easily lead to confusion with the Messiah, or sometimes the Chick (or other character types if we go far enough). The person everybody thinks of when they think of the Big Bad's opposite number may come closer. The Big Good may not do anything we know about right away, or at all, or even actually appear in the story (and the trope arguably works better the more distant the Big Good is from the readers).
In the Ultima series, for example, while it's questionable what he's actually doing during most of the games' events, and he's probably not really irreplacable, Lord British is very clearly the Big Good, with the Avatar seen in-universe sort of as an extension of his presence.
For Negima, I'd have picked Negi's father Nagi, whether he was actually still alive by the start of the story or not.
This probably is a valid trope, but an easily confused one. (I haven't done the necessary checking to see if it's already been defined under a different title.)
