User blog comment:Regulus22/Action V Reaction/@comment-5656020-20130125213723

Ok, I could just be misremembering, but didn't Canary say "Never let your opponent dictate the terms of the fight?" That isn't even close to saying "always take offensive action." Canary's fighting style against stronger opponents is almost completely reactive. She goads them into attacking her and then uses their momentum and lack of balance as they charge against them. It's big guy mentality vs little guy mentality.

Big guys want to win fights with their raw strength and throw their weight around, so they fight accordingly, full frontal assault totally reliant upon their opponent's use of the same tactic and not being able to match them in swinging and punching. Big guys tend to rely entirely on their superior physical traits to win a fight (or as is the case with a lot of supers their powers or weapons in BB's case), which makes them predictable, and if you can outclass them in their particular trait of choice, they're royally f'd.

Little guys typically don't have the brute strength to match a big guy, so they have to fight smarter not harder. This is why lots of little guys learn martial arts. Little guys have to use their whole bodies to generate a blow as powerful as one from a big guy, so head on brute strength tactics are out. Therefore little guys have to learn to fight reactively, evasively, and defensively.

Forward motion is all well and good but in the event of fighting someone with greater strength and reaction times, you have to find or make an opening before you can do anything in the way of direct offense, so in the mean time, you had better be able to run and duck like hell or be able to turn your defense into offense. Canary is extremely good at both, and not half bad with direct offense, which is really characteristic of little guy style.

You might better categorize the characters by who has the big guy fighting style, [pick a trait and pwn at it], (ex. Superboy S1, KF, Lagoon Boy, Robin (both of them), Batgirl, Batman, actually dang near everybody),

vs. little guy fighting style, [be a jack of all traits and boss at several] (ex. Black Canary, Artemis, Red Arrow, Green Arrow, Arsenal, Aqualad, Black & Green Beetles, maybe a few more I can't think of right now)

Please note: normally I would NOT put the Bats under big guy style, but in this incarnation, if they cant stick an explosive batarang in it or sucker punch it into submission, they've pretty much got nothin. And since I know somebody is going to wonder why Black Beetle is under little guy style even though he's huge, think about it: even though he is stronger, has anyone actually seen him attack something that didn't attack him or something he was protecting first? And he doesn't just win with brute strength like Blue tries to do with weapons, he actually gets inventive, and I suppose that's another good identifier of little guy tactics.

Sorry for being so long winded but I'm a little guy with a black belt, this topic is sorta close to home for me. X)