#underdog characters

[em-dash-press]

6 Tips for Writing an Underdog Character

People love reading about an underdog. There’s something within all of us that relates to persevering against the odds, even when they’re crushing. Anything becomes possible—but how do you write that kind of character successfully?

Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Create Their Disempowerment

Underdogs need to lose something or have one thing less than those they fight against. It might be something they hope to gain back or something they hope to gain at all.

Let’s use The Hunger Games as an example for this post. Katniss comes from District 12, but she’s already at a disadvantage when she volunteers as tribute. Restrictions on her district kept her from food security for most of her life. Without a lifetime of basic nutrition, her body is already at a disadvantage in the physically-demanding games.

District 12 is also one of the less appreciated districts in her country. She doesn’t think anyone will care about sponsoring her in the games, which makes survival much less likely.

But we still root for her! She volunteered to save her sister, which is heroic. There’s so much potential for more heroic growth that we keep turning the page, even though she’s not the most likely person to survive.

2. Make Your Protagonist Likable

Getting excited to see a character grow might be something you feel as a creative writer, but the average reader also needs an underdog protagonist to be likable in some way. Katniss will do anything for her family, including hunting where and when she isn’t supposed to. Many people would feel the need to do the same for their families.

She also feels deep compassion for people, which she covers up with her gruff demeanor. We’ve all felt like we got hurt because our hearts opened too wide for someone. We can relate to her building defenses into her personality, which might make her likable to more readers.

Katniss also has the core value of loyalty. People always seek loyalty in new connections. It’s how we trust new friends. It’s also how readers trust characters.

This site has a few more tips on crafting likable characters. Part of that happens while you’re creating the characters during your planning process, but you can also do it while you’re writing. As your underdog becomes more of a real person in your mind, you’ll know which primary character traits make them most likable to readers.

3. Plan Their Rock-Bottom Moment

Underdogs always reach a point where they feel they’re at their lowest. Even when they feel crushed or defeated, they choose to find strength and continue with their journey. It makes readers support them even more, but it’s also the defining moment of an underdog’s arc.

Your underdog’s rock-bottom moment will be the scene where they resist the temptation to give up, change their dream, or change who they are. It will be the choice that keeps them moving toward their end goal, instead of taking the easy road.

You could argue Katniss has a few rock-bottom moments. It might be when she hears her sister’s name called at the Reaping. It could be when Rue dies and she chooses to spearhead a revolution.

There could be multiple moments for your underdog too. It depends on the shape of your narrative arc and how many acts your story has.

4. Show Them Trying and Failing

It’s time for an important caveat—underdogs also fail. If they were perfect, they’d be god-like figures that readers couldn’t personally identify with.

Maybe your underdog achieves their ultimate goal, but they experience failure along the way. Their failure helps them grow or makes them pursue their goal with more conviction and determination.

Katniss begins her journey with a mindset of self-preservation. That makes her slightly selfish and automatically distrustful of people. She makes some choices readers would probably disagree with, but then she learns from them. By the end of the series, she’s as selfless as a human can get. 

Characters don’t grow if they don’t make mistakes. Even underdogs should fail. However, that failure shouldn’t make them quit. It should either motivate them to keep going or give them a new perspective on how they can achieve their ultimate goal.

5. Train Them Along the Way

Underdogs start out as unlikely heroes because they don’t start with everything they need to succeed. That might be a societal problem, like coming from an economically disadvantaged family or a biased society. Maybe they don’t have the skills they need, like the ability to fight in hand-to-hand combat, outsmart their antagonist, or solve mysteries.

Usually, characters learn these things during their arcs. Your underdog will likely pick up what they need to succeed through the relationships they make and experiences they have. 

Katniss already knows how to hunt when she volunteers for the games, but Haymitch mentors her to win over much-needed sponsors to survive. Peeta teaches her how to soften her heart and think outside the box. She wouldn’t have made it through the series without the people in her life. Other underdog characters can’t either.

6. Reward Them at the End

Underdogs work hard and transform themselves to achieve their goals. At the end of the story, they often gain a tangible reward, power, knowledge, a new title or a new community. Your underdog should get what they set out to achieve, plus a few extra things they didn’t expect.

Katniss wins the Hunger Games. She gets her primary objective: to continue living. She also protects her sister. In addition to surviving, she has her (albeit rocky) relationship with Peeta, a new mentor in Haymitch, a comfortable living in the Victor’s Village, and an audience of fans who are another layer of protection against President Snow’s desire to kill her.

The extra rewards propel her through the remainder of her storyline. They also set her up for more success with the new lifepath she sees for herself: aiding the revolution to end the games for good.

A new goal is sometimes a reward in itself. It depends on if you want to continue writing about your character or if you want a one-off story.

-----

I hope this helps gives you a new perspective on future protagonists! Adding one of these factors into your character’s growth could remove your writer’s block too. They set up a path forward for your protagonist and help shape their journey.

You can also use these resources to learn more about the underdog archetype:

Character Archetypes: The Disruptor and the Underdog

Writing the Underdog: Effort Matters Most

7 Tips to Writing Underdog Heroes

[lemonprick]

it’s like the artful dodger (2023) was MADE for tumblr. thomas brodie-sangster and flowy bloody sleeves. delightfully gory victorian surgery. period romance that is way hotter than it should be. period costuming that is FOR ONCE not referred to as ‘stifling’ or ‘torture’ by the spunky lady lead (this one’s for the historical dress community). anti-authoritarian. crime shenaniganry. young upstart tempted to their old ways. banger guy-ritchie-sherlock-holmes -2009-esque soundtrack. lovely lighting direction. what more could you possibly want.

[yuridovewing]

i really hate how the fandom’s excuse for jayfeather’s shitty behavior (and outright medical malpractice in certain cases. looking at the time he refused to help squilf in labour bc he couldnt be bothered and later blamed her for how bad it was) is “well the clan was ableist to him growing up, so fuck them!” ok how does that excuse him screaming at and berating the cats that didnt do any of that. or the babies.

[thrumbolt]

I can't be the only one

[severaltuesdays]

Mori and Abuse

I’m making this because the BSD fandom has 2 modes for interpreting Mori and it’s either evil evil child abuser or spineless bastard and I HATE both of them.

Mori is an abuser, yes, but the way he abuses characters is very atypical, and not at all what most people expect. His abuse is almost all psychological, the only character we can say for sure has been physically abused by him is Yosano, and we’re only shown one instance of that.

For simplicity, I’ll be referring to his abuse of Dazai, Chuuya, Koyo and Yosano, but I believe it could be said that Kyuusaku and potentially the Akutagawa’s have suffered because of him.

To understand why Mori has abused certain characters, we must understand a bit about him as a person. This is potentially why Mori’s actions are so wildly skewed by the fandom, because no one wants to observe him too closely (but that’s a whole other post). Simply put, Mori is a military man. He does anything and everything to achieve the “optimal solution”, he has a plan and if he has to get his hands dirty to reach his goal, he will. Emotions and attachments go out the window for him, most of the time at least, because he would sacrifice anything, and anyone, to achieve his goal. Most of the time at least. That’s why he used Yosano, because what’s the life of one girl to the safety of his nation? That’s why he manufactured Oda’s and his orphans deaths, because the prize outweighed the cost.

Mori is logical and reserved, so we must observe all his actions with the lens that he has a reason for what he does, because he (almost) always has a reason.

I’ll start by referring to Mori’s abuse of Dazai, because he’s a bit of a special case and also the one that the fandom overall gets the most wrong. Mori’s abuse of Dazai is usually twisted to be sexual or physical, when there is absolutely no evidence of that. People like to bring up Dazai’s abuse of Akutagawa, or that one throwaway line from The Day I Picked Up Dazai as evidence, but neither of those hold up in my opinion.

Firstly, just because Dazai’s abuse of Akutagawa was partly physical, doesn’t mean he himself underwent physical abuse. Just like Mori, Dazai always has reasons for what he does, and his reason for what he did to Akutagawa was tailored to Akutagawa and his ability, therefore not something that Mori would have done to Dazai. Not to excuse Dazai’s abuse of Akutagawa, of course, but the fact of the matter is that Dazai’s abuse was a test of Akutagawa, and a punishment because Akutagawa didn’t adhere to Dazai’s standards. This abuse is the result of Mori’s own abuse, yes, but it’s not as straightforward as “Mori hit Dazai, ergo Dazai hit Akutagawa”.

The line from TDIPUD is also poor evidence, as all it is is Oda telling Dazai that what he’s doing won’t hurt and Dazai responding that Mori says the same about the needles he gives him. The fact that this is taken as abuse is really weird to me, why is that the assumption here? Mori is a doctor, there are multiple reasons for him to be giving Dazai needles. And the fact that Mori says it’s not going to hurt just sounds like the typical “doctor giving a kid a shot” exchange.

Dazai hates pain, so obviously Mori would lie and say that it isn’t going to hurt. Mori cares for Dazai’s well-being, which is what makes Dazai a bit of an outlier, as Mori shows care for him before he’s found a reason to justify that care. This is evidenced by their exchange in the beginning of Dazai, Chuuya: Fifteen, which is very important as it gives us an insight into Mori’s perspective during that time, where he panics because he hasn’t achieved the “optimal solution” by keeping Dazai alive, but then justifies that action by deciding Dazai is too good an asset to throw away.

And here-in lies the actual abuse that Dazai went through, not being hit or shamed or any of that, but emotional coercion, a slow cultivation of the parts of Dazai that Mori saw as useful, and a creation of the mindset we see Dazai use. This is most prominent with how Mori plants ideas into Dazai’s head. This is referenced in Chapter one of Fifteen as well, establishing that Mori has taken somewhat of an instructor role to Dazai, but that’s something Dazai rebels against.

This exchange is a perfect example of that conditioning, instead of giving Dazai information directly, Mori gets Dazai to deduce his answers using information he already has, something we see Dazai does very often in the current plot. But the main example of this conditioning comes in the form of Dazai’s plan to use the Sheep against Chuuya, a plan that comes DIRECTLY from Mori.

Mori makes sure that Dazai is in the room as he baits Chuuya, uses the weakness of the Sheep against him, and then breaks down EXACTLY what has happened for Dazai. “Just some food for thought” my ass.

Then when discussing his plan with Rimbaud, Dazai brings up a theory taught to him by Mori. 15!Dazai is such a little parrot, it’s all “Mori says, Mori says, Mori says”, just word-vomiting all the thoughts Mori puts in his head, there is a CLEAR influence here.

Just like Mori, Dazai uses the Sheep against Chuuya. Mori shows Dazai how to control people, how to make them listen and how to make them obey. The reason Dazai treats people like pawns, the reason he KNOWS how to manipulate people is because Mori taught him.

Just like so many of the characters, the fandom forgets that when Mori met Dazai, he was a child. He was a broken child who needed a guiding hand and the hand he got was Mori’s. Morí crafted the Dazai that we see, shaped the way that he thinks, THAT was his abuse.

Chuuya as well is a special case. Like Mori, he is a leader, and that is a quality Mori admires in him. In turn, Chuuya looks up to Mori, sees him as an inspiration for what it means to be a leader. This is another example of Mori’s manipulative abuse. To Chuuya, Mori makes himself out to be a saviour, someone who will teach him how to be better, how to protect the people he thinks he has failed. Mori takes Chuuya at his weakest point and gives him a new chance.

And with that, Chuuya is loyal to the mafia and Mori has Soukoku. Never mind that Mori was the brains behind Dazai’s plan that got Chuuya into the mafia in the first place, by getting Dazai to do his dirty work, Mori gets to appear to Chuuya with a halo and wings (I could also talk about Mori’s involvement with Stormbringer and how that locked Chuuya into the mafia, but that’s another tangent).

Mori has done the same with Koyo. She’s loyal to him, but clearly does not LIKE him, so where does that loyalty come from? It is because he has freed her. Koyo suffered under the rule of the Old Boss, she had no freedom, the man who cared for her was executed, she was restrained within the mafia. And then Mori takes over and she ends up an executive. Suddenly she’s got POWER, she can change things, under Mori she’s given the ability to change things and take charge. He sees a girl in chains and loosens them, not enough for her to escape, but enough that she can move. And having been chained up for so long, that feels like freedom. Koyo is loyal to Mori because he’s better than the alternative, because if she can’t be free, at least she can move.

I left Yosano for last, because again, she’s a wild card. Unlike all the other people Mori has coerced, Yosano’s abuse took place during a time where every second was precious. There was no time to do it delicately, the way Mori handled everything else, it was war, win or lose. Mori’s tactics were a lot more brutal, Yosano wants the soldiers to live, so Mori shoots the one she cares about so either she WATCHES her friend die, or she can save him. Unlike with Dazai, with Chuuya, with Koyo, Mori isn’t Yosano’s saviour, he’s her captor, he gives her a choice, but its one where neither option is made to look kind. He makes it clear, she heals them, or they die, whether it’s at his hands, or the hands of the enemy, and he knows she would never let them die.

Mori works through coercion and manipulation, he shapes the way people think of him carefully, moulding his appearance in the eyes of others. To Dazai he’s just an old man that Dazai has under his thumb, who tries and fails to manipulate him. But that’s not the truth. To Chuuya he’s a benevolent leader, someone so gracious as to grant him a place in the mafia. But that’s not the truth. To Koyo he’s the safest option, not someone she wants to follow, but someone she will follow, because at least she’s free. But that’s not the truth. To Yosano he’s evil, cruel and harsh and he takes lives as easily as he breathes with no remorse, he’s the God to her Angel of Death. But thats not the truth. To the audience, he’s a monster, a filthy pervert who is nothing more than a pedophile. Is that the truth?

Mori is like a spider, ensnaring people in his web with carefully constructed lies and appearances, his abuse is not physical or sexual, it’s a psychological coercion, careful at times and brutal at others, his abuse is a targeted attack of an individual’s weaknesses, and a cultivation of the parts he sees as useful.

Every person is his tool, and he likes his blades sharp.

@1seaweedbrain1 for you <3

[drawinglinestoconstellations]

It’s been way too long again since I drew my beloved Underdogs ~

You can find the hi-res colors and inks, timelapse videos and a little writing to go along with this illustration over on my Patreon, which is where you can find and support my original work!

[underdogarts]

A couple minor character designs for my thesis! They’re such little guys

[nutzgunray-lvt]

Me trying to make sense of how Izuku got only one internship offer despite having Pro-Heroes saying they liked him, and Bakugou got +3,000 despite being a horrificly entitled brat:

[puzzledemigod]

Ok it's soooo funny to see Miles and Phoenix interacting now after episode 4 because Miles is always like "I will destroy you, don't you dare even mention evidence to me, are you that shit of a lawyer" and everyone's like "he must really hate you :/" and Phoenix always goes "nah he's just in work mode, he loves me actually"

He can absolutely separate who they are in court vs out of it and doesn't hold anything against him out of it, while Miles seems to have an existential crisis every minute they're going against each other, "oh now you think I killed the guy right? After all that effort to prove my innocence you're against me at last, just like everyone else?" And Phoenix is there like "huh??? I was just asking if you're ok after listening to all those rumours..."

And then he goes and tag teams it with Phoenix in court, completely disregarding his role as prosecution lmao

[moeblob]

I have fallen down the anime sports hole and landed on Eyeshield 21 and I'm so sorry I'm adopting all these kids.

(I was actually going to like. Hold off posting my silly sports anime doodles until after commissions but no I wanna share them now. It's hard out here being me who thrives off interactions and this show is like "hey what if we gave you lots of interactions and also a secret identity for MORE interactions".)

[conchadesabedoria]

my favorite quirky underdog boys

[shukakumoodboard]

I don't mean to offend, but Temari is the useless one of the sand sibs. She literally does nothing in Shippuden, whereas Kankuro is at least given some stuff to do in the arcs that matter (the one where Gaara was kidnapped and basically killed and the big war arc thing at the end).

whats shippuden

[ironinkpen]

god i’m so obsessed w Delloso de la Rue and yeah, I’ll say it: they’re right about everything

I think discussions I’ve seen about Rue’s position of “privilege” often fail to contend with the fact that Rue experiences this world as a kidnapping victim. Rue is not an archfey. They were taken from the mortal world as a young child. From what we’ve seen about how Wanessa is treated like an oddity/fascination, we can guess that Rue was treated much the same. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Rue became a party planner—when you are brought to a world as entertainment, I suspect you grow up terrified of what might happen if you stop being entertaining. 

Rue has existed on the outskirts of the Court of Wonder for years. Forced (whether literally or just by social pressure) to wear a glamor—scared of anyone even touching their HAND for fear of being found out. Do you think Rue has ever danced at the Blooms they’ve spent millennia planning, or was this year the first time?

Claiming Rue is oblivious to the plight of other, lesser fey ignores the fact that Rue is ultimately a worker—not a true aristocrat like the Lords of the Wing. They have a job—they plan the Bloom. Yes, they have political power, but not due to being high-born or playing the political game or all that; they have political power because they’re popular, because they dedicated themself to the happiness of others for millennia, connecting people of different courts together, bringing people love and joy. And I doubt they even realize just how powerful they are, because they spend most of their time away from their court, planning a fucking party.

Everyone calls them the “pride” of a court they barely see. They are assumed to speak for them, even when they are speaking their own mind. Of course they have no loyalty to the Court system. Of course they don’t see the point in anything except love—love they themself have been robbed of, were stolen away from. Rue’s bardic inspiration is a song they remember from the mortal plane. Isn’t it telling that even thousands of years later, their magic—magic, which Andhera and Binx both describe as stemming from love—comes from that faded memory of home?

Yes, it’s a bummer that Rue’s actions caused Hob’s victories to be undermined a bit, but honestly? Why should we really care about the political advancement of the Goblin Court’s aristocracy, who have shown they are exactly the same as the Court of Wonder in their treatment of their subordinates (Hob standing away from the campfire, just as Rue is kept in a tower for months out of the year)? Rue might have hurt Hob by hiding the truth, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong when they urge him to take care of himself, to abandon his loyalty to a system that won’t reward him for it. That’s not Rue being naive or privileged—that’s Rue being exactly like Hob, a servant of their court who toiled tirelessly for years, sacrificing their own happiness, only to just now realize how pointless it all was.

And honestly, on the more political side, Rue probably saved everyone’s asses by breaking up the marriage between Grabalba and Apollo. Apollo would for sure have used the Goblins’ military might to accelerate his plans of stealing the magic. And then, once that was achieved, do you really think he would have honored his agreements with the Goblin Court? He’s the kind of dishonorable man who tried to murder Hob in secret. You’re telling me he wouldn’t have double crossed them once he got what he wanted? Why would he give a shit about a political marriage? 

Like, for real: why would Apollo want to marry Grabalba? We know the Goblin Court’s status would be MASSIVELY elevated by this union, but what advantage does the Court of Wonder gain from marrying into the Goblin Court? It was all military—another power grab by Wonder. Rue broke it up and probably saved the fey realm in the process. 

And now they could lose someone they really love over it. 

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

Getting used to the boy before settling in for some page inking using these old sketches.

[scarefox]

Can't stand seeing all the shade people throw on Zerui and Zongyi 🙄 Did the mistake of scrolling down on MDL .... I srsly don't get why people don't like them. (unless it's the age thing. I can understand if someone is uncomfortable with that start, but it's not the point for most who dislike them)

imo they are as interesting as Ai Di and Chen Yi 🤷‍♂️ (My siblings in hell... they literally have bite mark engagement rings and a thing for lap sitting with a non-cliche top/bottom constellation besides their whole story!!) But they barely get any attention or love. Some even want them not included in a possible second season... dafuq. I love them all 4 so much, you can't separate them so disrespectfully.

[drawinglinestoconstellations]

This one is finally finished and up on patreon with a little story behind it written with the help of @stefanomaglianoart 🩵