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kd7sov asked me for my top five 'most awesome relatively-underpowered characters.' As I said when I was talking about bulletproof tropes: I LOVE underpowered characters. I especially love underpowered characters when the narrative allows them to be awesome despite the fact that they're the only one not shooting laser bullets with their mind, although sadly this doesn't happen nearly as often in fiction as I would like. But whenever it does, I'M THERE SO FAST, guys. SO FAST.

1. Sokka, Avatar: The Last Airbender

OH SOKKA. FOREVER KING OF MY HEART. I love many, many characters in A:tLA, I love them all very fiercely, but the moment when I really gave my heart to the show is the moment in "Jet" when I realized that this character - who up to this point had been cast essentially as the comic relief, the underpowered Skeptic Guy who needed to learn some valuable life lessons about Hope and Feminism - wasn't just destined to be the show's eternal buttmonkey; that the narrative took him as seriously as it did everyone else. Sokka might not have the awesome bending powers of most of the rest of the cast, and even among non-benders Suki and Mai and Ty Lee all easily outpace him in terms of fighting ability. But the guy has important skills, he has a brain, and time and time again the show validates the importance of this. (He also has great fashion sense and excellent artistic sensibilities! SOKKA ADDED A RAINBOW TO THE PICTURE, GUYS.)

tl;dr I love Sokka forever the end.

2. Riza Hawkeye, Fullmetal Alchemist

I waffled about even including Riza here - "RIZA'S NOT UNDERPOWERED," protested my soul, "she's powered by PURE AWESOME!" - which is true, but nonetheless, when you're talking about Fullmetal Alchemist, a series in which most of the cast are either armed with alchemical superpowers, immortal homunculi with a healing factor of a million, or, you know, Armstrongs, Riza is a lady with no superpowers except a brain, a gun, and ice-cold determination. AND YET SHE IS THE MOST BADASS OF ALL. Sorry, Colonel-can-summon-fire-out-of-thin-air-to-burn-down-a-whole-city, you're useless when it's raining. She's got this one.

3. Rachel, Baccano!

So: Baccano! Otherwise known as That Anime With All The Psychopaths. About 50% of the cast of Baccano! is immortal; another 30% are not immortal, but they're highly trained assassins which leads to about the same effect. And then you have Rachel, intrepid reporter, who - armed with, apparently, nothing but some angsty childhood backstory involving trains - manages to rescue about half the cast from bloody death in the course of a single episode without breaking a sweat. (She does break her leg, but, you know, she copes.) Then she survives lunch with Claire Stanfield, which takes a whole different kind of badassery. Biggest Damn Hero of all!

4. Ando, Heroes

First of all, I want to make it clear: I am talking about Heroes, that show that got tragically cancelled at the height of its potential after the first season. Are we clear? OKAY. MOVING ON: I have to talk about Ando, because I don't watch/read enough superhero stuff to have a better example for this archetypal character that I am a total sucker for. You know the one I mean - the dorky everyman sidekick who has no powers and doesn't think he's good for much, who's just along for the ride, and ends up going on ahead despite the fact that they're totally outclassed and they think they're doomed, because the thing is that what they're doing needs to be done. (Sokka is sort of this guy, but he also never was this guy, because Sokka was never an everyman and the narrative always respected Sokka more than it usually respects this guy-or-girl.) I loved the Hiro-and-Ando story for this, I loved it so much, and someday I'll rewatch the first season of this TRAGICALLY CANCELLED show to remember why I loved it again.

5. Koizumi Kyoko, 20th Century Boys

(For the record, Kyoko is the flaily unnerved-looking girl looking awkward in front of the serious, hardcore-looking girl behind her.)

So this is sort of cheating, because there aren't actually all that many powered-per-se characters in 20th Century Boys (though there are a few wielding big psychic guns . . . and another few wielding, you know, actual guns.) But, I mean, even in a set of not-all-that-powered characters, Kyoko is one of the most powerless of all. She's got no revolutionary network, no hard-learned secret agent skills, no master plan - she's just an ordinary band-obsessed schoolgirl who raised her hand at the wrong time, got sent off to brainwashing camp, resisted getting mindwiped by sheer love of rock music and power of contrariness, and ended up a completely reluctant part of THE REVOLUTION. Sometimes she saves her friends from assassins via cell phone while just out of the shower! Sometimes she runs away screaming! Whatever she is doing, I love her more than words can say.

Talk to me about your favorite underpowered characters, flist!

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I'd like to nominate Darcy Lewis, as portrayed by the inimitable Kat Dennings, who takes down the mighty Thor within five minutes of the movie's opening with a taser. :-DDDDD

Edited (now with YouTube link!) 2011-06-17 15:50 (UTC)

No lie, I still haven't yet seen Thor (I know!) but what I've heard about Darcy is THE BIGGEST reason that I want to see the movie. She sounds one hundred percent awesome!

DARCY IS PRETTY GREAT. And yeah, she and Jane Foster have a fabulous dynamic, and I'm sure you've heard by now that it passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors throughout.

(Also there is Sif. Sif is a badass. And Frigg STABS A DUDE. Basically everybody in the film is made of amazing! Plus there's some skinny dude with horns who's okay.)

A superhero movie that passes the Bechdel Test is a (sadly) rare gem IN AND OF ITSELF.

(SHOCKINGLY, I have heard a lot about Sif. :P And about that dude who I guess pops up on my flist occasionally sometimes. - speaking of, okay, is it just me, or does he actually look a lot like Lee Pace? Because that's what I think every time I see him.)

(When he has black hair, he kind of looks like Lee Pace. Someone else remarked that he looked like Matthew McConaughey; others, Michael Fassbender. I think it may just be the amazing bone structure, though. Personally, I've just been ruined by his ~~hilarious~~ hilarious blond curls. Seriously. Seriously.)

A superhero movie that is about a MALE SUPERHERO and only has two hours of plot that all revolves around the MALE SUPRHERO. And it still passes the BEchdel test IN THE OPENING SCENE and throughout.

Yes.

Also submitted for inclusion: Xander Harris. If the Scoobies were the Planeteers, Xander would be Heart. He has no special abilities or remarkable talents, but he fights beside the others because to do otherwise is simply unthinkable.

Xander is definitely the underpowered character of the Buffyverse, and I loved him when I was watching the show, but - hmm. I don't know quite how to put it into words or give a specific example (and it's been a long time since I watched Buffy) but I always got a bit frustrated at the show because I don't think it ever quite let its underpowered break out of that buttmonkey role in the same way A:tLA lets Sokka do, for example. I mean, Xander definitely has his moments, but . . . you can feel when the camera respects a character, and it doesn't really respect Xander. Maybe the best way to say it is that it lets him have moments of heart, but it never really lets him be competent and that kind of makes me sad.

I don't know if I agree on the "never" part of that last statement. Yes, he is rarely shown that way, but not never, which only highlights the times that he's not.

The episodes in particular I'm thinking of are "The Zeppo", "Grave", and "Empty Places".

"The Zeppo" is actually part of my argument here - I'm thinking of Sokka, again, who is a fairly direct analogue in a lot of ways. Sokka's first competence!episode is "Jet," which is an important part of narrative continuity and emphasizes his good judgment. Xander gets "The Zeppo," a wacky filler comedy episode where 'look, Xander's saving the day for a change!' is the joke, and that has pretty much no effect on overall continuity. The fact that Xander-is-being-competent-for-a-change calls for a special wacky comedy episode is sort of what marks the difference in tone there for me.

has pretty much no effect on overall continuity

Not from a plot standpoint, but it does serve as something of a turning point for him, character-wise. He realizes that he is capable of handling his own problems, and that reflects in his character from then onward.

I don't remember noting much of a change coming from that, but it's also been a while since I've seen any Buffy, so maybe it does have more of an effect than I remember! But it is something that I remember bothering me, when I watched the show.

I just recently finished a complete rewatch, so it's all fresh in my mind. :) I pretty much see all of Xander's accomplishments in season 5 and onward being a result of the realization of his competency and capability, and that all started here.

Then again, I've often felt like the Xander in my circle of friends, so maybe I'm projecting. ;)