User blog comment:TDWTisAWESOME/Your "Official" endings./@comment-26350151-20151024055512/@comment-26350151-20170127204326

Beth's build-up was relatively minor and it still doesn't make her any more deserving of the prize even if you think her development is more than meets the eye. Beth's only story for the longest time was pestering everyone about her totally real boyfriend and everything else is moving OTHER peoples' stories forward, again, until the very last stages of the game.

Despite Duncan not interacting much with Beth and Lindsay, there's still never a time where he's not doing something of some sort of importance development-wise or competition-wise. Whether it's his relationships with Gwen, Harold, Leshawna, Courtney, and others that, granted, aren't as prominent but still present, Duncan never spends an episode doing nothing of some sort of value. Literally every post-merge elimination was something Duncan's influenced and his interactions with other contestants don't count him out as just a satellite to more important characters, more often than not he's on the same field of importance as them. And hey, the same can be said for Beth about Duncan and, honestly, Harold in terms of actually progressing the story forward. Even her friendship with Lindsay technically had no real substance to it and doesn't actually influence anything. Barring Courtney and arguably Duncan, you could take everything else out and no form of development and story progression would be worse off for it; Leshawna was still voted off by Duncan despite forgiveness from some of her peers, Lindsay would be no different, Justin lost any sort of meaningful impact with Lindsay and Beth once the merge came around, it's all just sort of there. And even though Beth may carry some minor importance sometimes, the real kicker here is that it's never consistent. She spends most episodes just standing around than actually contributing something for herself and even for those around her; the ones where she's a driving force to her surroundings still total up to give or take half of what the season amounts to.

Protagonist ≠  Hero. The textbook definitions of what a protagonist is are " the main figure or one of the most prominent figures in a real situation ", " the leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text. " Protagonists don't have to be good guys, they just need to be the driving character to the story as a whole. Heather's the protagonist of World Tour; she's no hero but she's the most prominent character there is and actively opposes the true villain of the season without being seen as an antagonist herself.

 Antagonists are ones who oppose the protagonists, again, regardless of morality, as antagonists can be good guys should the story be from a villain's perspective. Courtney's the antagonist because she's hostile to the point of constant aggression, nobody likes her because of her unfair advantages that she just threw in for the sake of greed, and she tries to interfere with everyone around her even when it's not needed, including Duncan despite their relationship, and Duncan's ultimately the one who helps take her down. Duncan has had conflicts for days but they're all either conflicts with antagonists (Justin, Courtney), or rivalries on totally equal footing (Leshawna, Harold); never ones where he undeniably looks like the bad guy. Protagonists carry conflicts too, if they didn't there'd be no story.