The title says "resolver" but the description and examples seem to put a lot of focus on who ultimately "kills" who. "The hero isn't the one who kills the villain" seems like a much more trivial and less interesting trope than "an unconventional plot structure in which the protagonist's actions don't resolve the central conflict".
Take The Hobbit, for example — Non-Action Guy Bilbo discovers Smaug's weak point, and it's an archer who actually takes the shot... OK, so Bilbo still crucially contributed to defeating the dragon, he just didn't directly kill it.
Hide / Show RepliesLogically, sure, Bilbo did lead to killing Smaug, and you could argue if Bard hadn't done it, someone else might've as long as Bilbo was there. But it actually IS a rather unusual narrative to have a random townsperson kill the dragon in the end, which creates a very different audience reaction compared to if Bilbo or one of the dwarves had done it. I'd say that's exactly what this trope is about!
The description emphasizes that this is about a PLOT resolution, not about a CHARACTER, and later reels off 4 CHARACTER tropes that are "unrelated" to this one. But then why is this named after the character, shouldn't it be called "Non-Protagonist Resol UTION" if it's really just about the plot? And why does it say the "counterpart" to this trope is the Supporting Protagonist - it shouldn't have a character counterpart if this is about the plot and not the character, right?
Does this need a rename?