18+ General Discussion Forum

That's a tough one. But some pretty level characters I can think of off hand that were done well are Tanis Half-Elven from DragonLance and Gen from Samurai Champloo.

Tanis doesn't show his problems so it's left to the narrators to explain how much he's kicking himself for getting his friends into the mess and how he doubts himself and wonders why the group has chosen him as a leader.

Samurai Champloo is an anime and the narrator doesn't go into character emotions. It's explained by occasional cracks in Gen's character, such as when fishing he gets frustrated and jumps into the stream, and conversations. In conversations and flash backs the story is told about how his lord tried to kill him and later on Gen tells an enemy that there is no lord worth dieing for, but that a friend is different A rare clue that he cares about the girl, Fuu.

I would think that characters like that are harder to pull off, but if done well than they can have even more emotional impact than the screamers. When Tanis or Gen loose their cool, it's for a darn good reason.