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Power Grid

10 of the Fastest Promotions in Geekdom

by The Mary Sue Staff | 12:32 pm, October 4th, 2011


Allow Us To Explain

Allow Us To Explain

It’s hard to nail down a working definition of badass. Not only does the term suffer from a certain amount of over use, it’s kind of nebulous. Not everybody who is awesome is also badass. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that badass is when you do great things with very little resources or perceived resources, and in that case there isn’t a lot more squarely badass than unexpectedly receiving a huge promotion and then absolutely rocking the job.

To that end, we present this list of folks who were never intended to rise as high as they did, or, at least, not that quickly. Some of them are battlefield promotions because everybody else was stone cold dead at the time. Some of them were promoted because of a sudden and unexpected increase in their utility to the forces that controlled their promotion. Some of them simply weren’t ready for the responsibility.

We tried to stay away from folks who were magically destined from the start to be specific roles (with one notable exception), and from people who lucked into power but were not part of a hierarchical structure where promotion to ranks was an issue.

Runners up would include folks like Wart (from The Sword in the Stone), Neo, and almost everybody else who was ever referred to as “the chosen one.”


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  • http://twitter.com/textbkleftovers Textbook Leftovers

    *Admiral* Piett’s promotion has always been one of my top-five favorite moments in the Star Wars movies, from the first time I saw it as a wee little tyke.

    And as much as I love Trek 09, I have to say that it always struck me as odd that everyone got promoted so quickly.

  • http://twitter.com/Valiero Valiero

    How about Rico from Starship Troopers (1 & 3)?
    People above him are dying all the time!

    Also probably plenty of people in ASOIAF, since well, everybody keeps dying and/or fomenting pollitically intersting weddings and such.

    /! ////////////// SPOILERS \\\\\\\\\\ /!
    …
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    King Tommen anyone? Or the king in the North? or Jon?

  • http://www.facebook.com/alison.groomesklotz Alison Groomes-Klotz

    I’m really glad you mentioned ASOIF, and I’m surprised it didn’t make the list.

  • Anonymous

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  • http://taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com/ Taste_is_Sweet

    What? No mention of John Sheppard from Stargate: Atlantis? (http://www.gateworld.net/wiki/John%5FSheppard) He goes from a disgraced Major wasting his life piloting a helicopter to shuttle scientists across the wastes of the Antarctic to suddenly being included on an expedition to the Pegasus galaxy because of his DNA, only to end up forced to mercy-kill his commanding officer and becoming the de-facto military commander of the same expedition less than twenty-four hours after they walk through the Stargate. Definitely a case of having greatness thrust upon him, and just about textbook for this grid. :)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7G4SWUX2MCWWXLMYNN347JMIZY Frodo Baggins

    “But rather than continue having nightmares, she decides instead to face her fears, thinking that will make them go away (really?)”

    Pretty sure she agreed to go back out of concern for the civilians in the colony, not for her own psychological satisfaction. Also, the only reason Weyland Yutani revoked her license was because they didn’t believe her (or didn’t want to admit to her) about the alien. Once it seemed like she might have been telling the truth, what with them losing contact with the colony on the planetoid she told them about, reinstating her seems like a perfectly deserved compensation.

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  • http://twitter.com/Riviare Kimberly

    Despite Steve’s joke about it, I never actually got the impression that Captain America was *actually* promoted to the rank of Captain. I think it’s just his title. Which is also why I think people were calling him that, because well, the stage name is what they know him as.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7G4SWUX2MCWWXLMYNN347JMIZY Frodo Baggins

    Yeah, it’d be weird if everyone in the movie called him “PFC Rogers,” or “Steve.”

  • Anonymous

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  • http://twitter.com/wulfmojo Wulfy

    How about Sheridan from Babylon 5. In the space of a couple of years he goes from Captain of one station to representing *all* living thing in the galaxy and telling certain races to get the hell out, not to mention leader of an insurrection against the Earth government.

    Well okay, those things aren’t technically promotions. However what was a promotion was after the war to free Earth was over, he resigns from being Captain and then suddenly becomes elected to President of the Interstellar Alliance *all in the same day*. The whole of the next series focuses a lot around him having to cope with the idea of being a politician and not a soldier, which he manages to pull off quite well for the most part.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_H77264ANIMBKYRLGXMAO7CJPNE Nuraini

    about jake sully. i always explained it away by the fact that he was a warrior. and so the na’vi accepted him more readily than a scholar – something they understand less. 

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