20 of the Most Pitiful Characters of All Time
Scientifically speaking, there’s a finite number of people that you’re capable of considering people, and a good percentage of those slots are probably fictional characters. That’s not your fault — those characters are explicitly designed to be more interesting than any of your neighbors or coworkers. You want to be friends with them. You’ve probably had a full-on crush on one of them. There’s a fictional death that hit you harder than that of someone you actually knew — not well, mind you. Your cousin’s wife’s best friend who you met at a Christmas party two years earlier. How was she supposed to compare to Sirius Black?
That means there’s all sorts of emotional tricks screenwriters can play on you. They can actually make you feel bad for someone who a) doesn’t exist, and b) they’re torturing on purpose. It’s kind of like watching a sock puppet beat up another sock puppet and getting mad at the first one, when it’s just one guy punching himself. Nevertheless, when one Redditor asked r/AskReddit, “Which fictional character do you genuinely feel sorry for?” Redditors somehow found plenty of leftover pity within themselves.
