These characters aren’t magically inclined. They don’t have some otherworldly element to their existence that makes them incredible. There isn’t anything powering them that is supernatural or paranormal or anything that isn’t human. They are simple human beings with average lives, and they are amazing people. That’s what this category is about – simple people being genuinely good humans for the sake of humanity.

Hannie Schaft, The Girl With The Red Hair

Hannie is a young woman from a normal background with an average life planned. That is, of course, until Germany invades the Netherlands. The Girl With The Red Hair is set during WWII, following Hannie as she joins the Dutch Resistance, helping her Jewish friends find shelter from the Nazis as the systematic removal of Jews to concentration camps split friends and families apart. Hannie, a girl with nothing to give but her love and devotion to the people of the Netherlands, signs up to fight the Nazis face-to-face as an agent. She learns to infiltrate locations of interest, plant bombs, shoot to kill, and more, all for the good of the people and the good of humanity. She had the courage, the strength and the resilience to fight to her very last breath for what was right, and I cannot make a post like this without giving her a spot on the list.

Nancy Wake, Code Name Hélène

Nancy Wake is another such icon during WWII fighting for the people. Nancy left school at 16 to train as a nurse before ending up in France, teaching herself to be a journalist. When the war broke out, she drove ambulances until France fell in 1940. Having learnt the truths of Hitler’s regime through her journalism endeavours, she joined an escape network team called the Pat O’Leary Line and lived in danger of being found, her telephone lines were tapped and her mail intercepted. After the network was ratted out in late 1942, Nancy needed to flee. In early 1943, she managed to avoid permanent capture after a trainload of people were arrested (including her) in Toulouse. Once she crossed the Pyrenees into the safety of Spain and arrived in Britain, she joined the SOE (Special Operations Executive) for a year, training in many programmes before she was picked to return to France in a three-person team to run liaisons between the local maquis fighters and London. Nancy was in charge of the shipments, tasked with securing their arrival and retrieving them, and she carried a list of targets for the maquis to eliminate before the Allied invasion on June 6th 1944. She was a busy woman doing incredible things, sacrificing everything and agreeing to go back to France when she had only just managed to get out with her life. Who needs superheroes and magic when you have women like Hannie and Nancy to look up to?

Finnick Odair, The Hunger Games

A different pick from the women mentioned above, given we’re back to fictional characters rather than real-life figures, but hear me out. No year of the Games is the same, but the brutality of the Games and the complex trauma piled on year after year on the districts and the victors is oh so familiar. Finnick Odair was a fourteen-year-old boy when he was reaped for the games. Fourteen. Those from the Career districts (1, 2 and 4) train in academies to better their chances of winning and while it may be seen as unfair for the other districts, is it not a coping mechanism for the trauma piled on year after year? Are these kids not, in some way, conditioned to believe that killing other kids for the sake of surviving is not the right thing to do? Children are impressionable, and it isn’t difficult to understand that being raised in such a way shapes how detestable these Career tributes are. Through Katniss’s biased perspective, we learn that Finnick got through his Games for two reasons – skills learnt through academy training and popularity and favour from the Capitol. He was gifted a trident during his games, directly tipping the scales in his favour. But that came at a price, one Katniss never knew about until Mockingjay. Finnick was sex trafficked by President Snow, and his loved ones threatened with death if he didn’t cooperate. This wasn’t public knowledge, skewing the belief that he became a sought-after child in the Capitol and took many suitors and, in turn, separated him from others in District 4 and the other districts. For ten years, he was forced to take the Capitol to bed to appease Snow, and he was made to mentor tributes, one of which was Annie Cresta whom we know he fell in love with. Then he gets sent back into the arena and forced to relive trauma and nightmares while being broadcast across all of Panem. Finnick, on live television during the Second Rebellion, made himself vulnerable before everyone and detailed what he was forced to do from such a young age. I could go on for hours about Finnick because there is so much more than he did for the Revolution and those close to him, his loved ones and the others he let himself be Finnick around. Finnick is so much more than the persona the Capitol forced him to be, and I find him to be one of those characters with so much more heart than people realise.