Numbers 15 - 11

15. Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games trilogy)

The Hunger Games are basically a fight to the death. Therefore, anyone who survives one of these is automatically awesome. Katniss survived the equivalent of THREE! And when your mentor is a jerkass drunkard, well, that’s just more impressive. Volunteering in place of your frail little sister? That’s just plain heroic. Becoming a halfway decent archer is hard enough, but being able to hit a squirrel in the eye every time is pretty damn impressive. She literally fought the law, and the law lost.

14. The Bride (Kill Bill)

Why? Why would you murder everyone a woman cares about on her wedding day? No amount of bullets will kill her, and she will in turn murder YOU! God help you if you stand between Beatrix and Bill. She wants him dead…and the rest of Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Get out of her way, and she’ll let you live. Gogo didn’t learn that lesson, and look what happened to her…and the Crazy 88s shortly afterwards. But no matter how many times you shoot her, stab her, cut her, allow creepy guys at the hospital to rape her comatose body, or bury her alive, she’s going to keep coming back to kill you.

13. Galadriel (The Lord of the Rings)

What makes Galadriel awesome? Well, for one thing, when offered the One Ring she turned it down (the thing with so much power that Frodo nearly jumped into an active volcano to retrieve it). She’s the bearer of Nenya (one of the Three Rings of Celebrimbor), the Ring of Water. And she’s a co-ruler of the elves of Lothlórien. Basically, she’s a really powerful elf woman and behind a lot of the success of the Fellowship after they lost Gandalf in the Mines of Moria. That phial Frodo and Sam used to get through Shelob’s lair? She gave them that. Gandalf upgrading from Grey to White? That was her too. Aragorn finding out about the Paths of the Dead? You guessed it, Galadriel. Seriously, the only person who could take her down was Sauron himself.

12. Ellen Ripley (Alien)

Okay, first up, do you know what the aliens from these movies look like? Good, now you have some idea what Ellen Ripley is up against. In the first movie, she only had to deal with one of them, and even that nearly killed her. Then, someone had the great idea of colonising the planet that the crew didn’t come back from until fifty seven years later, and of the seven that went, one came back. I’m amazed she was willing to help those morons. Then in the third movie, upon realising she’s pregnant with one of the alien’s babies, she gives us a heroic sacrifice to get rid of it. But obviously the highly dangerous monsters have taught scientists nothing, because they felt the need to clone her and the alien so it can massacre them again. I guess as long as Ripley 8 is still around, she’s gotta keep killing the Xenomorphs.

11. Willow Rosenberg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Honestly, for the first couple of seasons, Willow was just around, not really contributing much. That is, until she starts learning magic. The season two finale where she gave Angel his soul back was just a taste of things to come. It wasn’t until she met her girlfriend Tara that her powers went through the roof. And they kept going, to the point where she was able to physically harm not one, but TWO gods. To put that in perspective: not even Buffy has done that, and she was born with superpowers. And don’t even get me started on Dark Willow.