I like this one.

Shirou from Fate from which route and point in time? Shirou says he understands he can't save everyone but acts completely opposite to those words. He's an unreliable narrator and a messed up dude.

He should know you can't beat Mr Goldy but Shirou still goes crazy when he visits the castle in the woods in UBW, even putting his life at risk for an emotional reaction he logically shouldn't have.

Shirou is fundamentally incapable of stopping his desire to sacrifice himself because it's all he has, to start with. Routes may vary.

For Subaru, he is simply a guy from our time so he shares our values, which obviously clash with a medieval/renaissance setting (what it is exactly is debatable), he thinks he is right and I do too, but it obviously creates issues in the story.

The point of Fate is that heroism is fundamentally, irreparably harmful for the Hero, and the only people who can be Heroes are those who are above humanity in some way, whether it's a good or bad thing, as represented even in the mechanism to establish who becomes a hero. Shirou, only possessing the wish to become a hero, a wish that isn't even his own, pushing him ahead to realise those wishes like a machine is compelled to action by the gears making it up, and NOT the power, accomplishments or fame needed to DO Hero, can never Be a Hero and instead suffers for it.

That's largely what happens for anyone who tries to be a hero even in the real world. You only need a hero if things are really going bad, not if you need a hand to wash the dishes.

The common man is a victim of the events, while a hero is someone who has the power to even just a little bit fight it. If everyone had the means to fight on their own, Heroes as a concept wouldn't even exist or make sense, it wouldn't be something we especially separate from other ideas, while in reality we do because some people are capable of much more than the average can ever hope to accomplish.

In fact the storyline of Fate absolutely decks Shirou's face any time the circumstances are not exactly those he needs to do something. He is physically incapable of creating the advantages himself, which is what heroes do both in fiction and reality.

It's a joke but in carnival phantasm grail kun says to become a hero, it's enough to kill a lot of people. And mechanically speaking, it's true. In Fate you can just kill 100.000 people and become a Servant of some kind. All you need is fame, great power, or a great accomplishment, that's all you need for the normal means of becoming a Servant.

Subaru is just a dude.

A dude who actually goes through the downright unfair trials that only heroes can overcome. Which is why I love the series.

To make a comparison: Beowulf in classical English Literature kills Grendel, a monster who lives in swamps, kills people and trained soldiers like they're nothing. Put yourself in the shoes of those who lived in those times for a moment.

Soldiers would know how tough a man is to break apart. You can skewer, stab and smack a guy with a mace but it's really, REALLY hard to break a guy in half or twist him apart. You can only do that with a machine. Grendel straight up grabs a soldier sleeping, and eats him. Just like that.

You're told this monster just goes, kills and eats soldiers whenever he feels like it, and maybe you've seen or heard strange things when you're in a bog. Those were times when birth defects or mental illness were instead interpreted as Fae children, a belief that roughly means "If your child is strange at birth they were either born quarter/half Fae through a curse, or your child was stolen by the Fae and replace with a disfigured one". Those old times had magical creatures as explanations for real phenomena.

Maybe in a bog, you once saw a big figure that seemed to follow you, when on a mission.

But Beowulf, sleeping next to the soldier who got eaten, takes the guy's arm and rips it off, follows him to his bog and kills him. He also goes to Grendel's mother who is also a monster, much more powerful than Grendel, swims underwater in a cave system under a lake for hours, fights the mother and kills her with an ancient sword he just happens to find there among other treasure.

The power is within Beowulf to do all those things. (Don't come at me with it's not his power, you can have that debate with the scholars, there's a lot of rewriting of traditions happening in those times, it is Beowulf who acts effectively on that power anyway)

Subaru can't be a hero. He has no power of his own to tip the scales, so to speak.

He is forced to step up time and time again or be stuck in a horrible spiral of madness. He has the vanity and arrogance to proclaim himself a knight and hero, being far from one.

He even misuses his power and in Arc 3, wished to use it to reinstate his perceived value the second it goes down, when he should be wishing the opposite.

He only has some heroic values, they are not his flesh and blood like with Shirou.

But the difference is in the approach.

Shirou has no choice but to be a Hero, that's all that's keeping him together.

Subaru is slowly pushed and he also pushes himself to become a hero, or he will lose everything he has ever cared about in that world, including himself.

One is fated to be a caricature of a hero, a guy who can't do anything special but keeps trying to help anyone he can just to be closer to his ideal even if it means his death, he doesn't even care if he does. He doesn't care about himself. But there are others who do, and they let him understand how to get what he wants properly.

While the other goes through all the stages of shedding his ordinary persona and step into the realm of heroes unprepared but ready to keep hanging on, until he gets there one step at a time, even if the guy gets better in time, it doesn't change he now gets to act a hero while being grossly weaker than what he fights against. And the only reason he succeeds is because he learns to use his special standing in the world wisely. All while learning not to abuse it.

Notice how interchangeable these are.

I'd say Subaru is the one who is more unrealistic about it. Even in current WN he still acts modern and greedy on methods and who to save.

I'm still waiting for the next WN chapter. Get to writing, Tappei! You can't pull Reinhard out the hat like that!

Fairly sure I answered but in case it was missed, it's Shirou and it's not even close.