50 GREATEST FICTIONAL BADASSES

#1 – CONAN OF CIMMERIA.

Some guys wish they were rich, some wish they were famous. Some daydream of being rock gods that bed Eurasian models, while others still dream of ambition and market influence. Ask me, they all aim too low. I wish I were Conan, the most badass mother-fucker in spec fiction history.

Conan is the ultimate adventurer. He’s a self-made man. Born on a battlefield, he’s been a thief, pirate, and mercenary before crowning himself king by his own hand.

The allure of Conan’s world is precisely why some revile it. It’s primitive, vicious, offensively sexist, violent and lawless. In this realm, everyone and everything is the enemy. Only the strong survive and the most savage prosper. At least Tolkien’s landscape had room for integrity and hope. These qualities serve only as death rattles in wicked Hyboria. It is a Nietzsche wet-dream rolled out in ink, four colors and cinema Technicolor. Whether you heard his call through the Robert E. Howard novels, or the more famous Marvel comic series, or (like myself) the films of Arnold Schwarzenegger, when you were summoned to Conan’s adventures, you came to meet your own formidable self.

So why the fascination? For me, Conan is freedom. He’s smart and cunning, his strength unmatched. He bends his knee to no law, master or god. I love that Conan’s idea of penitence is telling his creator to go to hell.

Tyler Durden was right: men have become consumers, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We have traded the warrior in us for the illusion of security. Conan reminds us the wolf’s still there, impatiently waiting to claim what’s always been rightfully ours, by our own hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5K3AKl5qpc

Mongol General: “What is best in life?” 

Conan: “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”