ElvenAngel
I forget stuff because I had to make room in my he
I'm bored. And leaving for a 4-day trip tomorrow with possibly no internet. So yeah, I thought what the hell, let's all make a list of our 10 most favorite badasses in real life or culture or entertainment depictions. It's an excuse to write fun stuff and all that. No need for long descriptions or stuff if you don't like it, the only requirement here is a pedigree for badass-ittude. Here's mine =D
- Odysseus
Sometimes stupidly Latinized as Ulysses (which isn't even close to the actual name or the meaning of it).
Odysseus was neither descended from of some A-list god, nor was he an ass-kicking, names-taking warrior that lay waste on the battlefield. He had no divine boon of might or ability like other heroes. Sure, he had a god in his distant ancestry, but who would go around priding themselves in being descended from the god of thieves? That's Hermes, by the way, and incidentally he was also the patron god of wit, cunning, eloquence and being a complete smart-ass.
But Odysseus was the smartest and most grounded leader on the Greek side of the Trojan War--much needed when you had to deal with guys like Achilles, Ajax and a bunch of other muscle-heads. He was an underdog who played by his own rules while letting everyone think he was playing by the book. In battle he was usually overshadowed by his more prominent, battle-crazed comrades, but he was the glue keeping them all together and even high-and-mighty Agamemnon and Achilles had to shut the fuck up when Odysseus started lecturing them for being morons.
It certainly helped that Athena, the goddess of wisdom and intellect was his personal patron, but really all he ever had to work with was a sharp wit, god-like cunning and a knack for thinking on his feet--elements unusual for heroes of the time.
He ended the Trojan siege with his cunning and after that, was one of the few kings who actually got home safe, because unlike everybody else, he didn't go pissing off the gods...except during the trip. Normally pissing of an A-list god like Poseidon meant you were gonna die a horrible death and suffer ever-after. Odysseus? He directed a metaphorical 'fuck youuuu!' at Poseidon by persisting through 10 years worth of monsters, hostile peoples, man-eating ogres and clingy-possessive goddesses trying to keep him from returning to his dingy little island kingdom. When offered an easy way out with immortality as a bonus by one of them he refused it, keeping his eye on the more modest prize of just going home.
When he finally dragged himself back to Ithaca, he conspired with his son and servants to trick and then kill the shit out of nearly 100 presumptuous wannabe-usurpers who were trying to get in his wife's panties.
I'd say this guy is more or less the mythological equivalent of Batman. And speaking of the Dark Knight...
- Batman
He's Batman. What else is there to say?
- Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan
He made the Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver one of the most badass firearms in existence.
He's the origin of the Dirty Harry gritty line-delivery and style--you can imitate it, but you'll never top it.
He uttered one of the most badass quotes to ever come through the silver screen: "I know what you're thinking: 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"
He was played by Clint Eastwood when the man was on the top of his game.
He shot people with what is pretty much a very personal and affable style.
The guy is the touchstone against which all badasses that came after him had to stand up to. Much of the idea of badass as we know it today, since the 70s, largely originated with this guy.
- Dr. Gordon Freeman; P.h.D
He survived the beginning of an alien apocalypse at Black Mesa, terrorizing legions of aliens with little more than a crowbar and some guns. When he came back for seconds in City 17, he escaped the Combine, went and crashed one of their secure prisons, tore through a zombie-infested town with a gravity gun, ransacked various Combine headquarters and then took out their base and sent them packing in less than a few days. All that while donning an amazing battle--excuse me, HEV suit. He's also got a sweet GRAVITY GUN (or if you wanna get technical, Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator).
Did I mention he wears glasses...and he's just a theoretical physicist?
Insert [What do you mean it's not badass?!] here.
- Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr. ; P.h.D
Adventurer, member of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), professor of archaeology, bullwhip-cracking king and master of the art of 'flying by the seat of one's pants', boasting several dozens of successful 'plans' that were developed on the spot.
Also, owner of a very cool hat.
Yet another badass bookworm, Dr. Jones has instilled the notions of badass, literally whipping people into shape and just pulling out a gun and shooting them when you can't be arsed, to several generations. Besides being the finest example of a homage to the 1930s heroes, thus having a pedigree for badass, he further cemented his status with the simple fact that he's got an utterly cool and ear-worm theme. You all know it. *hums the Indiana Jones theme!*
- Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt
The man who went by the credo of "Speak softly and carry a big stick", Teddy Roosevelt is probably one of those very few men, in what we define as the Modern era, who really embodied the very notion of 'badass' in every sense of the word. Where do we start with this guy? Cattle rancher, deputy sheriff, explorer, naturalist, hunter, author, police commissioner, assistant Secretary of the Navy, governor of New York, soldier/war hero; and that's just to begin with. He even won a Nobel Peace Prize. Even as President he didn't soften up--He kept a bear and a lion at the White House and kept a pistol on his person at all times. Not that he'd really need it, with a black belt in jujitsu and his history as a champion boxer. Roosevelt was also an enthusiastic outdoors man and hunter--and all this from a guy who had been mostly ill throughout his childhood.
Further proof of this man's pure badass is this fun fact: While Roosevelt was on his campaign for a third term, some loon shot him and instead of getting out of there to get treated, he instead delivered his campaign speech with the bleeding, undressed bullet hole in his chest.
Even other people knew how badass this guy was. Thomas R. Marshall, a fellow politician and then U.S Vice-Presideny, had a very succinct comment on the eve of Roosevelt's death: "Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake there would have been a fight."
Do you need further evidence of real-life badass? And to think that I normally don't really give a dime about the US presidents...
- Elizabeth Bennet
Zombie mayhem! In small controlled doses, it's all good fun, makes good movies, funny books...and Regency-era England a hundred times more interesting! So England's crawling with zombies and the English are taking no shit; they're drinking their tea and carrying on, waging the good fight against the legions of Hell. In the thick of things are the Bennet sisters: 5 young ladies trained thoroughly in the art of dealing death to defend their country from the hordes of shambling dead.
And then a certain arrogant, secret badass, no-nonsense gentleman shows up and the game is so. very. on.
Lizzie is the sensible, smart one among her sisters (hell, among a large amount of people) and the most talented in dispatching zombies. Everyone admits that, except those people who are too stuck up their asses to see anything . Even Darcy admits to her skill once he's been exposed to it. She has to put up with 3 fairly moronic sisters, even though she's obviously often tempted to just get rid of them (as hilariously explained in the book). She takes on a horde of about a hundred zombies with a sword and a rifle, earlier on crosses zombie-infested country with nothing but a dagger and eventually takes on the legendary zombie slayer Lady Catherine, beats her senseless and lets her walk away just to prove a point. Lizzie is unfazed by most of the events of the book and knocks wits with that one guy who is more or less her equal, Darcy. The sparks that occur from this friction are fun to read.
So chucking a few zombies into one of the most entertaining romance novels of English literature makes for a fun story and turns an already enjoyable heroine into an all-round badass, zombie-slaying heroine.
...Though frankly, Lizzie's pretty badass in the original book too, sticking it to Darcy when he was having an idiot moment and then taking no shit at all from Lady Catherine.
- Leon Scott Kennedy
Asking a rookie cop to take on a city full of zombies and other mutant monsters on the first day of the job is not really something you can train a person to be ready for. Well he did it. And a few years later he was in the personal employment of the President.
I do love the way Capcom thinks when they write plots. </sarcasm>
That aside, I always felt that Leon was indeed the more badass of the RE characters, simply because he didn't quite look it, and because he went about being a badass with considerable style.
I like Leon for a lot of reasons. Probably above all because, while characters like Chris or Wesker look badass, Leon just is without needing to look the part or shouting it. He doesn't need to be a big tough army guy or a sunglasses-totting, cold calculating human monster. He just rolls with situations, starting with the Raccoon City infestation where he really took it calmly after the first few zombies were taken down, and then the RE4 events where hardly anything fazed him. Most of the time he sounded more annoyed than scared, worried or hyper-alert.
Really, it's Leon's snark and genre-savvy and the less imposing image he cuts that makes him the more badass in my books. He doesn't need mutant powers or arms bigger than his head to kick ass and take names.
- Dante
Dante is one of those insane characters that you just know are going to be trouble, the moment you clap eyes on them.
Badass just runs in his genes; he's a half-demon slayer of demons, and if we're to believe the games, just the notoriety of daddy's name is enough to make some demons soil themselves. And it's not enough that he makes a complete mess of infernal monsters with a pair of handgun-shaped canons and a longsword so big and crazy you feel a bit offended by it, he does all that while spouting some of the cheesiest, funniest one-liners I've heard in a game.
To further cement his badassery, if he gets bored of his sword, he can pick up any weapon, preferably one made outta the soul of a demon he's already sucker-punched to death, and use it as if he's been using it for ages. The guy can pick up ANYTHING and cause total chaos with it, completely on instinct.
And then there's the clothes. For all intents and purposes, Dante's a pretty stylish dresser--except in DMC3, but we can chalk that up to him being a dumb teenager whose house got wrecked and he's too cheesed off to bother with getting himself a shirt before he goes out to wreck some faces. The glaring red coat is likely another example of his bravado: he's wearing a freakin' bullseye and he doesn't give a rat's ass about it. It's the kind of thing everyone, demons and humans alike, would zero in on and try to kill to death. And he just doesn't care.
It kinda makes you sad to think that this hilarious, smart-mouthing badass gets so much bad rep because of stupid fangirls and Capcom's own ineptitude and inability to keep their own series from going to shit.
- Ashley Riot
This guy is my personal patron saint of impossibly broken, overpowered characters, when he's not in this list. He also happens to be one of those characters that people either adore or haven't ever heard of.
Ashley is a Riskbreaker, something akin to special forces of the medieval kingdom of Valentia. He's the kind of guy who takes on the most insane missions. He's...well, the best comparison is to say he's Solid Snake as written by Shakespeare. In Vagrant Story he's sent on what you might call a suicide mission, into a deserted city, Lea Monde, wracked by disaster and full to the brim with ghosts, monsters and risen dead. It's also brimming with evil power, did I mention that? It's a source of power that people want to exploit and Ashley's kicked right into the middle of it while trying to apprehend a crazed(?) cult leader who may or may not be responsible for the death of a duke.
It's a convoluted story but it's an amazing one that I'd rather not spoil here. To cut to the matter, Ashley more or less sneaks and plows his way through the story, applying cunning, strategy and brute force (he's got enough of all 3) where needed in order to get the job done and figure out the real motives of just about everybody.
I mean, even other characters in the game comment on how broken this guy is. But given VS's brutal difficulty you won't be complaining--I never was.
Here's one exchange that clearly demonstrates the kind of badass that Ashley is, between his partner and Ashley just before they enter the deathtrap of a city:
Merlose: "Where are the reinforcements?"
Ashley: "I AM the reinforcements."
I have nothing witty to add to that.
- Sherlock Holmes
The brilliant, London-based "consulting detective" was a badass even before Robert Downey, Jr. portrayed him, setting standards for intellectual and affluent badassery since the Victorian period. Like the best badasses, Holmes played mostly by his own rules, solving cases that leave everybody else baffled, often embarrassing the police and catching up to criminals that nobody else dared or could match up to.
Besides being a great mind of his own, Holmes was by no means deficient in the art of beating the crap out of others. Several times in the stories he displays considerable strength compared to his tall and wiry build and on other occasions easily demonstrates a great skill in unarmed combat (he mentions boxing and bartitsu--which isn't entirely fictional! Look: [link] ).
What makes him really badass is that he remains a thorough gentleman throughout everything. He maintains an impossibly calm and cool head (to the point where it's a bit creepy) that not a lot of badasses can boast. His fondness for the theatric and pompous adds to his image since not only is he a gentleman badass--he knows it very well and he thoroughly enjoys it. Downey's performance in the 2009 movie certainly cemented that aspect in for us.
- Nikola Tesla
The patron saint of mad scientists and the Serbian god of electricity, this man is credited with creating the 20th century as we knew it. A genius with an insanely accurate memory, who kept 2/3 of his inventions and experiments' schematics in his head, he's largely responsible for the reasons we can all sit here and read each other's stuff, by bringing electricity to the population by developing the AC technology used today.
He allegedly created earthquake machines, dabbled with wireless energy, still holds the world record for biggest bolt of artificial lightning (seriously, and the fact that they keep records for this thing is awesome), created the Tesla coil, dabbled in robotics, X-rays and in his twilight years worked on frickin' death rays.
And maaaaaaaaybe he caused Tunguska to explode. Maybe.
And for all it's worth, the SI unit for measuring magnetic fields, (aka magnetic flux density and magnetic induction for your science buffs), the tesla, is named in his honor.
Plus he was once portrayed by David Bowie in "The Prestige" and that's all kinds of awesome.
- Squall Leonhart
Now, this is a clearly personal opinion, but if the FF series has a handful of truly badass characters, Squall is probably one of the more honest ones. One of the things that makes him most badass is that when it comes down to it, he's completely and honestly human. No frills and bells. Without GF he's just a regular human...trained as a soldier since childhood, which is all kinds of messed up and yet awesome.
He also has a pretty badass look that isn't spoiled by overly complicated or bizarre outfits, or a particularly prissy haircut. He looks every bit of the cranky, devil-may-care guy that you don't wanna run into, which he rather is, with a subtle coating of manliness sprinkled on top. To say nothing of that scar; you need to have nerves of steel to take such a cut to the face and respond in kind without screaming your lungs out like a pancy.
On that subject, I'd say he also is in possession of a pair of polished brass balls just for the way he went about the botched assassination of Edea in Deling. I'm sorry, but leaping off a building, crunching a soldier underneath you to break your fall, shoving past a group of stunned soldiers, stealing a car and driving it in a hellblazer manner towards one of the most powerful beings on the planet with nothing but a gunblade HAS to be one of the more insane acts of testicular fortitude done by a FF protagonist.
Plus carries one of the most strange and yet awesome weapons I've seen in a video game and he certainly knows what he's doing with that thing. If the game's own script is to be believed, they're some of the tougher weapons to master and yet he's called an expert at it. Other characters remark that he's a great soldier and for all intents and purposes a pretty darn good leader. I'd say that he qualifies rather well for a degree in badassery.
- John Marston
The Old West's dying and Marston is one of the last great hurras before it all goes down in a blaze of gun-totting, tough-talking and hard-riding glory. This guy got ganked out of his attempt at a peaceful life, away from his wife and kid, and forced to go track down some of his former outlaw buddies by the always loveable government. He scoured the west and even got messed up with Mexico's stupid revolutions, did all of the dirty work, just for the federal agents to screw him over and take all the credit and then some.
But Marston did nothing in halves and the game let you know it. Whether it meant assembling a band of misfits, getting involved with the Mexican tyrant or the U.S Marshals, he went in guns blazing and shooting the hell out of anything that picked a fight.
And as if we needed more evidence to solidify how badass this guy is, he also took on legions of zombies.
- Lisey Landon (nee. Debusher)
Considering all the Stephen King stories I could've picked a badass from (like Roland Deschain from The Dark Tower series), this may seem a strange choice. Lisey is just a widow who is trying to figure out how to live after the death of her husband, Scott Landon, a famous writer. And to make things worse, a crazy fan of her husband's is out to terrorize and hurt her for possibly withholding unpublished work of her husband's from scholars. This clusterfuck forces Lisey to confront personal demons, some dark secrets of her marriage with Scott and a terrifying reality behind his writing.
In all honesty, what makes her so badass is the way she goes about things, ranging form saving her husband's life from another crazed fan who tried to kill him, with nothing but a spade, to confronting the new psycho who stalks, terrorizes and mutilates her, having little more than 'the dark heart of her marriage' that Scott has left her to fight him with...and you wouldn't believe how good enough that is.
- Chell
Because you don't take on psychotic A.Is obsessed with cake and a series of death-trap 'test chambers' with nothing but a portal gun without being even a little badass.
- Ezio Auditore
Assassinating a load of people, taking on the notorious Borgia family and then building an assassin order from the ground up, in truly considerable styles makes him pretty darn badass. Ezio kept on giving the Templars the finger even as he got old (but don't tell him that ;D).
