Characters you thought "deserved better"

[Vault101]

I'm talking about a character in whatever work of fiction that you felt got the short end of the stick, both in-universe or out-universe

maybe a shitty death or not even the privilege of a death at all, maybe they just disappear randomly, maybe they get mangled by an adaptation, mabye they just seriously cannot catch a break


MY example....one that I've been somewhat bothered by after I finished the Star Trek TNG episode :Redemption part 2 (about half an hour ago) is Natasha Yar

who the fuck is Natasha Yar? you might ask...good question, she's a character who was around in season 1 and...around and then she dies, I know the real life reasons as to why that charachter was killed off but anyway:

[spoiler/]Yarr's death was a crappy one (it WAS season 1 afterall) which was bad enough...but then in one of the most memorable TNG episodes "Yesterdays Enterprise" she gets her own moment and a death thats actually fitting...all good right?

WRONG

oh no...see as we find out in the season 5 episode I mentioned she got captured by Romulans and as an alternative to death had to be a Commander's..."consort"...then she has a child....

one night she tries to escape with the child only to be found out (the kid didn't want to go) and executed (the daughter tue to timey wimey whatever is able to tell picard this)

....but she got a baby out of it all right? babies make everything better?

seriously am I the only one not horribly disturbed by this?? maybe that was the point BUT STILL, its almost hilarious how much of a raw deal this character got, when she's not doing not much or giving Wesley saturday morning special talks about the dangers of drugs she's constantly having to reaffirm her heterosexuality (see episodes code of honor and the naked now) if the actress hadn't have bailed in season 1 mabye she would have developed into an actual "strong female charachter" instead of the confused mess

*siiiiggghhh* [/spoiler]

 

[Uriel_Hayabusa]

A whole bunch of characters from A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones.

Richie DiMaso from American Hustle. Sure, he was a sleazy jerk; but so were plenty of other characters in that film and pretty much all of them got better endings.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Many of Star Wars' villains. Darth Maul, Grievous, Boba Fett. They're always introduced as the most awesome thing ever yet are dispatched with relative ease.

The elf guy in The Two Towers (movie). In the books he's just a side character who gets off OK, in the movie he gets promoted to Red Shirt so he can amp the kill count and fabricate some very superficial drama. Tough luck Haldir.

Saruman also deserved way better than his non-appearence in Return of the King. I know this gets fixed in the extended edition, but still. This was arguably the main villain in the preceding two movies, you can't just handwave him like that.

I hear the bad guy from Far Cry 3 also deserved better.

 

[Zhukov]

Oh, I got one.

Anyone else read Y - The Last Man?

Spoiler: Massive spoilers. Seriously.

Agent 355.

She spends four years of her life selflessly escorting a mostly useless goofball and a quasi-pasifist doctor across a chaotic world. She fights like a fucking demon the whole way, incurring frequent and substantial injuries, not to mention psychological scars. She habitually throws her own happiness and safety to the wind in order to be a guardian, friend and confidant to the people in her care.

Then, once the job is done she says her goodbyes and quietly exits stage left.

Shortly thereafter she is tracked down and shot through the head from range. Never even sees it coming.

As an added kicker, while the people she escorted go down in history as world-saving heroes, her existence never becomes public knowledge and only the handful of people who were actually there will ever remember her assorted heroics.

Not saying it was badly written or anything. In fact, I thought it was well done. After all, the world is often an unfair place. But damn, that still bit.

...

Ohhh, another one!

From Cloud Atlas. I'm referring primarily to the book, but also more-or-less applies to the movie version.

Spoiler: Yet more spoilers

Sonmi-451

(Hey, another chick with a number for a name. There's a coincidence for ya.)

Lives an incredibly dull and shitty life as cloned slave with so little freedom or stimulation that she's barely sentient. Is later freed and gets a brief taste of life in the outside world. However, she's manipulated entirely for the political gains of others and is soon betrayed, captured and executed.

Her writings end up inspiring an uprising that wipes out the system that she suffered under and she eventually comes to be regarded as a saint, but by then she is long dead.

...

And another!

From the game The Last of Us.

Spoiler: Yes, more spoilers. Involves the ending.

Marlene, the firefly lieutenant.

She was faced with a shitty choice. Sacrifice the life of a kid in the hopes of curing a devastating virus. The kid's mother, who died shortly after giving birth, had been Marlene's close friend and had entrusted the kid to her care.

She feels conflicted and guilty as fuck about it, as one would, but understands that there is so much more at stake than the life of one kid or her own peace of mind.

She ends up being gunned down by the protagonist while pleading for her life and knowing that she has failed and all her efforts have been for nothing.

 

[Vault101]

Many of Star Wars' villains. Darth Maul, Grievous, Boba Fett. They're always introduced as the most awesome thing ever yet are dispatched with relative ease.
.

I thought Bobba Fett's popularity was something of an unintentional anomoly

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Many of Star Wars' villains. Darth Maul, Grievous, Boba Fett. They're always introduced as the most awesome thing ever yet are dispatched with relative ease.
.

I thought Bobba Fett's popularity was something of an unintentional anomoly

I think it's because he was subtly built up to be a badass, like standing up to Vader on his own terms, capturing the other cool guy in the series, all that aloof posing at Jabba's palace, the gravelly voice... I'm trying to do this from my point of view, since I've never read any EU fiction. Maybe it's just that I liked his design. And the jetpack.

 

[manic_depressive13]

The most recent, and thus the only one I can remember, is probably Discord from MLP. He's meant to be a crafty trickster but he gets fooled in the Season 4 finale by Evil McEvilson with an "I'm evil" stamp on his forehead. I was just starting to warm up to him and they turned him into a giant idiot.

Now that I mention it, they did the same with Lin in Book 2 and 3 of LoK. They did such a good job of establishing her character in the first book, then promptly dacked themselves and shat all over it. They made her seem completely unreasonable and incompetent, and completely killed her character for me.

I think I watch too many cartoons.

 

[Jandau]

Well, A Song of Ice and Fire springs to mind instantly. Particularly Brienne in A Feast for Crows, which is basically one big book of George Martin taking a big, greasy, steaming shit on her face (and then having a cannibal bite a part of that face off). Also, Tyrion in A Dance With Dragons, in which it becomes readily apparent that Martin has come to despise Tyrion, probably because of how popular the character is, but at the same time can't kill him off, again, because of how popular the character is.

Next would probably be a ton of people in The First Law and other Joe Abercrombie books, but when you stop and think about it, most of them either had it coming or didn't end up quite so bad. The one exception might be Shivers, who was one of the few truly decent people in the books, but got screwed over so hard and repeatedly that it was tragic to watch. Used to think Bremer dan Gorst got it pretty bad, but then I read Heroes and any sympathy I might have had vanished...

Finally, Malus Darkblade, simply because COME ON, give the guy a break. Also, more books.

 

[Promethax]

Garrosh Hellscream from WoW.

I get the impression that Blizzard wanted to develop his character in Cataclysm to make him more interesting and complex. WoW fans, being WoW fans, threw a shit fit, and thus his character was derailed from an impulsive brute with a code of honor to a completely monstrous orc-nazi.

A golden opportunity completely squandered.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

Most examples I was going to go with have already been chosen, so I will go with one I just became aware of.

I recently ran through Sword Art Online and I got to go with Asuna in the second half of the first season. Going from the 3rd most powerful character in the show to a straight up damsel-in-distress (though with a lot more sexual assault) was just awful. She does NOTHING the entire time she is captured, only escaping once to be promptly captured again by the tentacle monsters (who, while on-screen, I was just hoping they would refrain from yet more sexual assault or worse). This was just one of the many problems I had with the second half, I would have to say it is one of the biggest (along with the creepy as fuck sister/cousin/whatever subplot).

 

[Casual Shinji]

A particular character in Berserk who if I say his name would spoil the death scene.

Spoiler

Judeau

He's a friendly chap who just like the rest of the Band of the Hawk gets transported to Hell to serve as a sacrifice for Griffith's rise to becoming part of the Godhand. Just like everyone else he dies, but he does so while trying to protect Caska. And as she tries to drag his shattered body to safety, Judeau's dying thoughts are of how Caska will never know that he loved her.

It's pretty damn heart rendering.

 

[Evonisia]

Garrosh Hellscream from WoW.

I get the impression that Blizzard wanted to develop his character in Cataclysm to make him more interesting and complex. WoW fans, being WoW fans, threw a shit fit, and thus his character was derailed from an impulsive brute with a code of honor to a completely monstrous orc-nazi.

A golden opportunity completely squandered.

I wouldn't blame the fans, it's Blizzard who has the terrible writing staff and decided that Garrosh should be no more than a plot device.

TBC - I'm sad 'cause my Dad was an asshole. Then he gets his spirits up and that's nice.
WotLK - ROAR SMASH ALLIANCE! I don't have a reason to want to do this but SMASH ALLIANCE!
Cata - Honour must be upheld, I am totes a great leader.
MoP - Evil pyscho who wants to smash everyone.

There's no consistency, and the fact that he survived the Siege of Orgrimmar just annoys me because he'll be back in Warlords of Draenor to stink up another (part) of an expansion.

 

[Erttheking]

A particular character in Berserk who if I say his name would spoil the death scene.

Spoiler

Judeau

He's a friendly chap who just like the rest of the Band of the Hawk gets transported to Hell to serve as a sacrifice for Griffith's rise to becoming part of the Godhand. Just like everyone else he dies, but he does so while trying to protect Caska. And as she tries to drag his shattered body to safety, Judeau's dying thoughts are of how Caska will never know that he loved her.

It's pretty damn heart rendering.

I think we can also say just about every single character unfortunate enough to get stuck in that scene. Especially the one who was never the same again after it and still hasn't recovered. I think you know who I'm talking about. It...just seems so unfair.

 

[Euryalus]

Doakes got the short end of the stick in Season 2 of Dexter. It was sad. He was far from my favorite character, but it seemed unfitting if not bad exactly.

Spoiler

He found out that Dexter was the bay harbor butcher, so Dexter framed him and then in the finale he was killed by Lila. The body was found and he went down in history as being the butcher. It was shit

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

Venser from Magic the Gathering. Yeah he went out like a hero, but then they basically pretended he didn't exist afterwords. That really irks me as someone whose so deep into the lore and Venser being one of my favorite Planeswalkers.

 

[Skatologist]

Tien seems very popular among the DBZ fans as an underused character. While Yamcha and Krillin are usually viewed as the weaklings that they are, Tien has been often seen as the strongest human of the series and much better than the other two mentioned. Also, some fans get pretty angry that he never really had his moments to shine like a lot of the other heroes, so yeah, a lot of people think he deserved better from the series.

 

[JimB]

Power Girl.

Comics have a weird relationship with feminism, often missing the point badly. At some point, the character was given massive-even-for-comics tits and a costume with a tit-window, and the writers tried to sell to us that she chose to wear that because she's a !!WOMAN!! and !!WOMEN!! can wear whatever they want (all the while ignoring the seemingly very obvious but largely irrelevant to my larger complaint point that she's a woman but her code name says she's a girl...) because they didn't seem to notice that Power Girl is not a woman. She's also not dressing herself. That costume was designed by men in a medium meant to be sold to young boys.

But okay. Thirty or forty years pass and someone at DC takes a look at that, and decides yeah, bit of a mixed signal there. Power Girl needs a new origin (just in time for a new universe-wide crossover sales event! Funny how that works out!), and they even brought a woman on the creative team as an artist for this...and to explain away the tit-window, they write that she was going to put a symbol there once she figures out who she is, but she never has and it leaves a big gaping hole in her to be filled. Insert your own "giggity" joke here.

I just...I don't know, man. Power Girl is supposed to be Supergirl all growed up and empowered by her maturity and experience; she's supposed to be Superman, but female. As a character, she has the potential to be something really special, godlike power bestowed upon a woman and viewed from a female perspective, but instead all she ever seems to get are rationalizations that tell us male readers it's totally okay to stare at her jumblies.

 

[happyninja42]

Garrosh Hellscream from WoW.

I get the impression that Blizzard wanted to develop his character in Cataclysm to make him more interesting and complex. WoW fans, being WoW fans, threw a shit fit, and thus his character was derailed from an impulsive brute with a code of honor to a completely monstrous orc-nazi.

A golden opportunity completely squandered.

I know! Man that pissed me off more than anything back in the day when I played WoW. I stopped playing before the WoTLK expansion, but my friends still did, and they explained his Face/Heel Turn, and man it pissed me off!

Of course I'm biased, as Grom Hellscream's cinematic in Warcraft 3 is why I started playing WoW in the first place. So much awesome packed into that short clip. Hell every time in the Outlands, when someone would complete the quest where Thrall comes out there to tell Garrosh how badass his dad was, and they replay that little sequence in game, I would show up to watch and cheer it on....every...single...time.


I can't think of any examples at the moment sadly, though I know I've got some. OH!! I remember one now! Shane Walsh from The Walking Dead.

Spoiler

He does his best to care for his best friends wife and son, after the world ended, and even stepped aside when he showed back up, but the wife, in a desperate attempt to pass the blame off for her actions on someone else, blames everything on him, and shuns him, and turns the whole group against him. He still tries to be a good guy, stumbling along the way, but he's still determined to protect those he cares about, and tries multiple times, to point out the folly of the choices they are making. And half the time, he was right. At the end of the day, Shane's opinion on what would happen, and how they should deal with it, ended up being right, and they still hated him for it. He wasn't perfect by any means, but damn if he didn't have the right idea about what they should do to survive an apocalypse, but fuck that, he's an asshole so we should just ignore him and kick him to the outskirts of the group like some pariah! No wonder he went batshit crazy at the end.

 

[Euryalus]

Tien seems very popular among the DBZ fans as an underused character. While Yamcha and Krillin are usually viewed as the weaklings that they are, Tien has been often seen as the strongest human of the series and much better than the other two mentioned. Also, some fans get pretty angry that he never really had his moments to shine like a lot of the other heroes, so yeah, a lot of people think he deserved better from the series.

Most of the side characters in that show started out great in Dragonball. Especially Krillin and Tien. I actually loved Krillin in the first series and Tien was a badass when first introduced... then they all started being less important until they pretty much became jokes.

I think Eternal Nothingness has this criticism pretty thoroughly covered, but he's right that it became a problem that just got worse and worse. Even Piccolo was sidelined by the middle of DBZ. He was THE final boss so to speak at the end of DB.

 

[Suhi89]

I'm talking about a character in whatever work of fiction that you felt got the short end of the stick, both in-universe or out-universe

maybe a shitty death or not even the privilege of a death at all, maybe they just disappear randomly, maybe they get mangled by an adaptation, mabye they just seriously cannot catch a break


MY example....one that I've been somewhat bothered by after I finished the Star Trek TNG episode :Redemption part 2 (about half an hour ago) is Natasha Yar

who the fuck is Natasha Yar? you might ask...good question, she's a character who was around in season 1 and...around and then she dies, I know the real life reasons as to why that charachter was killed off but anyway:

[spoiler/]Yarr's death was a crappy one (it WAS season 1 afterall) which was bad enough...but then in one of the most memorable TNG episodes "Yesterdays Enterprise" she gets her own moment and a death thats actually fitting...all good right?

WRONG

oh no...see as we find out in the season 5 episode I mentioned she got captured by Romulans and as an alternative to death had to be a Commander's..."consort"...then she has a child....

one night she tries to escape with the child only to be found out (the kid didn't want to go) and executed (the daughter tue to timey wimey whatever is able to tell picard this)

....but she got a baby out of it all right? babies make everything better?

seriously am I the only one not horribly disturbed by this?? maybe that was the point BUT STILL, its almost hilarious how much of a raw deal this character got, when she's not doing not much or giving Wesley saturday morning special talks about the dangers of drugs she's constantly having to reaffirm her heterosexuality (see episodes code of honor and the naked now) if the actress hadn't have bailed in season 1 mabye she would have developed into an actual "strong female charachter" instead of the confused mess

*siiiiggghhh* [/spoiler]

Spoiler

I agree. Yesterdays Enterprise was so good, partly because of the emotional impact of the sacrifice, knowing that to go through the anomaly meant certain death and that her death would have meaning... except no actually she survived and her eventual death had no real meaning.

Sticking on the Star Trek theme, what they did to Kirk in Generations. Ugh. Also all of the characters in Nemesis but especially Data.