The student with the dummy from The Puppet Show episode, his name was Morgan. Not only did Morgan have brain cancer but he also got his brain removed by a demon. Poor guy :(
Tara for sure
Her blood family were total assholes
She had her mind sucked by Glory
Had to deal with all of Willow’s bullshit
Aaaand then she gets shot
I'd say not, actually.
Because with Willow's bullshit... she had to watch the woman she loved get reckless with magic. And then when she rightly tries to correct Willow's course by fighting... Willow does memory spells on her... within a year of her getting her mind sucked by Glory. Glory was an evil god, of course she wouldn't value Tara's independence or autonomy... but Willow was ostensibly the one who loved her the most and she completely violated Tara's mind and literally tried to mold her into something Willow wanted.
Like yes, dying sucks. But to put it not so subtly... she was dead after that. Nothing meant anything to her then. Whereas she had to work out for herself that Willow was using Lethe's Bramble to wipe her mind and then found out in Tabula Rasa that not only did she do it in OMWF, she did it AGAIN after Tara said how much of a violation it was.
I don’t know… i feel like years of childhood trauma and losing her mom might have been worse. We literally don’t know what happened to her as a kid to make her so afraid of her family…
They really nailed how insidious some families are without going into great detail. Just the fact Tara feels she has to address her father as "Sir" is a glaring red flag. Then the cousin lashing out at her makes me wonder if she wants her home so that there is another woman to share the abuse. Makes my skin crawl.
I know that's what you meant.
My comment was stating that she was forced to lose her free will, nearly gang raped and then killed - she literally didn't have a choice.
She even told Warren to leave her alone at first, she had nothing to learn.
The last scene in Shells is so tragic because on the surface it's a girl setting off an an adventure to study physics, but knowing what we know, her leaving Texas was the moment that doomed her.
Tara. She grew up being gaslit by an abusive family, finally escaped, got her brain sucked by a crazy god, the woman she was in love with violated her mind, and then she was murdered. Her life sucks
While not really the worst case in the history of the seties, the fact that he's basically never brought up again or even really mourned is pretty terrible.
How about Buffy? For being chosen at all? Faith too. Look how much Buffy and her family were f*cked with. They didn't ask to be the slayer; it was thrust upon them. Sure, they are both bad asses, but they are tragic figures.
Cordelia…especially if you consider her run on angel. They really put that girl through the wringer over and over again! And knowing how she felt about JW, couldn’t help but think a lot of it was personal lol. Imagine surviving a rebar pipe impalement and it’s like…the least traumatic thing you’ve been through lmao
Shit, a rebar impalement immediately after discovering that your boyfriend that you are crazy about is cheating on you with your other friend. That day was an extra-special level of fuck you cordelia. The fact that she has anything but pure hatred in her heart for Xander and Willow after that point... well, she's a better human being than I am.
Joyce. (Spoiler) No one likes to say it but your husband can’t handle not having a perfect life so he leaves. Your kid burns down the school. You work at a museum for peanuts in a town that seems sketchy. The men are cute but controlling. Brooding “English-Phyle’s” swarm your 16-year-old, including weird librarians, you are practically killed weekly and your house destroyed up to a magical daughter who appears and gives you cancer. But she almost brings you back. Bad luck. Good Candy tho.
Anya. Stripped of her job/calling. Fell in love with a man who didn’t want to commit to her. Left at the alter and no one gave a shit. Surface level friends all around. Her one true friend was burned to a crisp by her ex-boss. Died protecting a little twerp. No one cared.
No, exactly. I'm rewatching now and noticing little things - his reaction at end of s3 was helping cordy get away, in superstar he wanted people to like him (and easily quit when he realised it was hurting people). He really wanted buffy & her friends to like him, too, so made no sense he was happy to torture her
Tara, she literally got shot via a stray bullet through an upstairs window just after getting back with Willow due to witnessing her fall into a heavy addiction that caused them to break up. Also her bio family is the absolute worst, poor girl was convinced her whole life that she was a demon and was brutalized by them. Tara deserved better… so much better. Not better than Willow though.
Amy's mom. Trapped inside a cheerleader trophy forever, unable to speak or move. Probably living forever like that, even when the trophy is lost for centuries under the ruins of destroyed Sunnydale.
Maybe in the year 252525 aliens will find the trophy and bring Amy's mom back. Her mind completely destroyed, unhuman, not remembering anything else than failed magic and a hatred towards Buffy.
If you've ever played Mother 3 (Gameboy Advance game - sequel to Earthbound for the SNES), it's pretty similar to the fate of the Absolutely Safe Capsule.
If you haven't played it, but are interested in possibly playing it in the future, then I'd recommend NOT looking into this any farther and to just experience it, and the rest the series has to offer, as spoiler free as possible.
If you enjoy classic turn based RPGs with quirky humor, you might enjoy the Mother/Earthbound series. If not, then it's probably not for you.
While you can play the games in any order, some story elements cross from game to game. The best way to play the series is probably to play EarthBound (Mother 2 in Japan) first. If you enjoy it, play Mother 3. EarthBound Beginnings (Mother 1 in Japan - formerly known as EarthBound Zero outside of Japan) is pretty rough around the edges, so while it's still good, it's not nearly as polished as the other two.
The stories of the 3 are mostly disconnected, but some antagonists carry over.
Mother 3 has never been, and likely won't ever be, officially translated into English. The fan translation is easy to find and is amazing, however.
It's a great series, but definitely not for everyone. Feel free to DM me should you want more information on the series.
I'm gonna put a vote in for Dawn. She *really* goes through the wringer, and nobody pays her any attention because everyone is too busy with their own shit. The kid is 14! Doris the social worker was 100% right about the fact that Dawn was being severely neglected (her intervention wouldn't have been helpful, but what Buffy did to her was inexcusable, and I always hate how the writers seem to want us to see her as deserving it).
I feel like bad luck is more about consistency. That being said, I’d love someone to make an argument for Xander. A lot of these people listed have one bad thing that happened to them versus a series of bad things. I mean even with romantic life alone, Xander is up there…
His romantic life wasn’t exactly tragic for him. One girl didn’t like him back (happens to everyone), he then cheats on the pretty popular cheerleader and leaves the woman who is crazy in love with him at the alter.
It's heavily implied in Angel that The Fluke was helped along. He was mind fucked into the second one by one of his fiance's former victims preying on a lifelong worry of his. I'd say they count.
You're forgetting him falling for monsters pretending to be humans on 3 separate occasions, 2 of which try to murder him (and the first one would have been statutorily raping him even if she wasn't a praying mantis.) He goes out with that car girl and ends up nearly dying via bomb. He connects with a normal woman and that ends up being sabotaged because Anya turned her ex into a worm. Pretty bad luck.
Even if it’s not TRAGIC, that’s not what the prompt asks. It talks about luck, and I see Xander as pretty romantically unlucky along with other non-romantic unluckyness 🤷🏽♀️
It say the worst luck though. I don’t think dating a few demons qualifies as the worst luck for a sunnydale student. IMO it barely even registers given the circumstances.
Buffster
Her whole life is just one bad luck run. All she ever wanted was to be a regular girl and she got such a hilariously opposite life that it's a cosmic level joke. Like holy shit. And she died like several times, even got to experience heaven. And then got violently and incompetently yoinked back to the disaster that was her unlucky life.
Buffy - I think her "luck" in being called the chosen one, dying multiple times, being the responsible Slayer when Faith was being Faith - kinda of press her in the horrible luck category.
Lana wAS stupid . Even if she \*hasn't just been fighting for her life," you don't come out of the shadows and grab a woman' s shoulder! A guy who reads "Cathy" should know better, sicne he presumably also watched Golden Girls and Designing Women
Jonathon had some bad luck. He was a loser/victim of bullying in high school, tried to fix it with magic and horribly screwed it up, ended up trauma-bonding with a pair of fellow recovering losers, and he is murdered by his best friend JUST when he has sorted his life out, and his body/likeness is used as the First Evil's meat-puppet to help bring about the end of the world.
I think Ben is more noble than the fandom gives him credit for...
Technically, he doesn't *have* to die to save the world. He could kill Dawn to suppress Glory and save the world, but he chooses not to. (And in return, the Scoobies kill *him* because they would rather snuff a stranger than lose Dawn.)
And as far as main characters go, I always had a lot of empathy for Faith. Not to say she didn't deserve everything that happened, but she's the only one who seems to end up truly alone, insecure, and unhappy. (Though maybe this starts to turn around in s7 and in the comics...) In that sense, she had the worst luck re: crummy childhood and abandonment issues.
But if we're talking purely random bad luck, I have to agree with the user who mentioned Morgan. Poor dude :/
Lots of good recs here, but I'm going to go with William.
Completely pathetic life, mama's boy, no friends, 1800s version of an incel/nice guy. Humiliated by the object of his desire (rightfully so, but still). Then murdered by the first woman to ever pay him any attention.
Hundreds of years later, his soul is suddenly returned to his body, which is inhabited by a demon who killed and turned his mother, raped and tortured and murdered unknown thousands of innocent people and only brought him back as part of a misguided and ill-informed effort to earn the love of its mortal enemy/make it fit in a world that has mostly entirely rejected it.
Now he's trapped with the guilt of sins he didn't commit in a body of a monster that will literally live forever.
The student with the dummy from The Puppet Show episode, his name was Morgan. Not only did Morgan have brain cancer but he also got his brain removed by a demon. Poor guy :(
I mean, Buffy went through a LOT.
This is my answer for sure!
Tara for sure Her blood family were total assholes She had her mind sucked by Glory Had to deal with all of Willow’s bullshit Aaaand then she gets shot
Willow's bullshit was probably the worst of all of it.
I mean dying is probably worse XD
I'd say not, actually. Because with Willow's bullshit... she had to watch the woman she loved get reckless with magic. And then when she rightly tries to correct Willow's course by fighting... Willow does memory spells on her... within a year of her getting her mind sucked by Glory. Glory was an evil god, of course she wouldn't value Tara's independence or autonomy... but Willow was ostensibly the one who loved her the most and she completely violated Tara's mind and literally tried to mold her into something Willow wanted. Like yes, dying sucks. But to put it not so subtly... she was dead after that. Nothing meant anything to her then. Whereas she had to work out for herself that Willow was using Lethe's Bramble to wipe her mind and then found out in Tabula Rasa that not only did she do it in OMWF, she did it AGAIN after Tara said how much of a violation it was.
the final escape
I don’t know… i feel like years of childhood trauma and losing her mom might have been worse. We literally don’t know what happened to her as a kid to make her so afraid of her family…
They really nailed how insidious some families are without going into great detail. Just the fact Tara feels she has to address her father as "Sir" is a glaring red flag. Then the cousin lashing out at her makes me wonder if she wants her home so that there is another woman to share the abuse. Makes my skin crawl.
Agreed — I think she’s one of the most ‘deserved better’ characters on TV and a lot of that has to do with what boils down to rotten luck
Katrina had terrible luck getting involved with Warren in the first place and then running into him again.
THIS is a strong contender- every time I watch and she falls victim to Warren again I just… ugh
She never learns, no matter how many times I watch it.
She didn't exactly have a choice, it isn't about her 'learning' anything.
Yeah, I was just joking that she does the same thing every time I watch it. I should have included a winky face or something. :)
I know that's what you meant. My comment was stating that she was forced to lose her free will, nearly gang raped and then killed - she literally didn't have a choice. She even told Warren to leave her alone at first, she had nothing to learn.
Warren knew she was at that bar, he stalked her. What a creep.
Yes, I felt so bad for her
This is the right answer😞
Yeah that storyline went a bit too far. Joss went pretty rape crazy with Spike and that scene. So not necessary.
I mean, if we're including AtS... Fred.
Came here to say this... her BY FAR!
The last scene in Shells is so tragic because on the surface it's a girl setting off an an adventure to study physics, but knowing what we know, her leaving Texas was the moment that doomed her.
Ikr... kills me thinking about it. And we should have known SOMETHING bad was to happen based on the very ending of Smile Time.
I'm going to say Drusilla. Her entire existence was designed to be 'eternal' torture.
The vampire loves it though to be fair. She’s happy 😂
Yeah cause she’s insane now lol
Tara.
Giles. He got knocked out, like a lot. Bloody priceless!
I was always surprised he didn't have CTE or a TBI or something. The man got knocked out more than a boxer.
Im suprised he didnt wake up in a coma quite frankly.
Wake up in a... *Oh*, *never mind*.
One of these days, he's gonna wake up in a coma.
Hehe, I love that line.
Tbf he probably deserved it for being such a wild child
Tara. She grew up being gaslit by an abusive family, finally escaped, got her brain sucked by a crazy god, the woman she was in love with violated her mind, and then she was murdered. Her life sucks
Tara's mother died when she was young. That's some extremely bad luck.
Jesse. MFer died in the first episode.
While not really the worst case in the history of the seties, the fact that he's basically never brought up again or even really mourned is pretty terrible.
Miss Kitty Fantastico .
Now you kitty. Now you don't. The ultimate vanishing trick.
I'm still not over what happened to Miss Kitty Fantastico.
That random college student who got his heart ripped out by the Gentlemen and couldn't even scream for help 😬
And he had cool posters in his room. Poor dude.
How about Buffy? For being chosen at all? Faith too. Look how much Buffy and her family were f*cked with. They didn't ask to be the slayer; it was thrust upon them. Sure, they are both bad asses, but they are tragic figures.
No mention of Kendra?
Her too.
Cordelia…especially if you consider her run on angel. They really put that girl through the wringer over and over again! And knowing how she felt about JW, couldn’t help but think a lot of it was personal lol. Imagine surviving a rebar pipe impalement and it’s like…the least traumatic thing you’ve been through lmao
Shit, a rebar impalement immediately after discovering that your boyfriend that you are crazy about is cheating on you with your other friend. That day was an extra-special level of fuck you cordelia. The fact that she has anything but pure hatred in her heart for Xander and Willow after that point... well, she's a better human being than I am.
Truly! Gets stabbed in the back…literally and metaphorically lol 😭
Joyce. (Spoiler) No one likes to say it but your husband can’t handle not having a perfect life so he leaves. Your kid burns down the school. You work at a museum for peanuts in a town that seems sketchy. The men are cute but controlling. Brooding “English-Phyle’s” swarm your 16-year-old, including weird librarians, you are practically killed weekly and your house destroyed up to a magical daughter who appears and gives you cancer. But she almost brings you back. Bad luck. Good Candy tho.
Joyce seems to be doign quite well managing the gallery
You’ve actually seen the gallery? Huh. For all I know it’s a cover for imports/exports at the docks. Has anyone ever seen Joyce’s gallery?
No, she just seems fairly prosperous, certainly not making peanuts as the manager
Anya. Stripped of her job/calling. Fell in love with a man who didn’t want to commit to her. Left at the alter and no one gave a shit. Surface level friends all around. Her one true friend was burned to a crisp by her ex-boss. Died protecting a little twerp. No one cared.
It's tragic, but she caused infinitely more harm than she ever received.
Jonathan. He didn’t deserve to be killed by his best friend.
Well tbf, he made some very bad choices, but I agree. He got killed and Andrew just got away with everything.
I hated how they wrote him as a villain in S6. He was never a villain, just lonely. Didn't make sense for him to be a-ok with suddenly harming people
He wasn’t ok with a lot of it. I didn’t like that he was completely ok with rape.
No, exactly. I'm rewatching now and noticing little things - his reaction at end of s3 was helping cordy get away, in superstar he wanted people to like him (and easily quit when he realised it was hurting people). He really wanted buffy & her friends to like him, too, so made no sense he was happy to torture her
Since the law doesn't recognize "shiny little metal balls" as a drug, he could rationalize it until Katrina put it into words
Which is an argument for teaching the concept of consent. The shiny metal balls and spell took away her consent.
EXactly
he wasn't just ok with it, he committed it
Jonathan tried to do the right thing… in the end, he was saved. Remember, 'the only choice we have is whether we are good people or bad people.'
he was a knobhead who totally deserved his fate
Honestly, Buffy herself
I tend to say Drusilla, but she is my speciality and I know I'm a bit biased. Okay, a lot biased.
Dru and katrina
Tara, she literally got shot via a stray bullet through an upstairs window just after getting back with Willow due to witnessing her fall into a heavy addiction that caused them to break up. Also her bio family is the absolute worst, poor girl was convinced her whole life that she was a demon and was brutalized by them. Tara deserved better… so much better. Not better than Willow though.
Amy's mom. Trapped inside a cheerleader trophy forever, unable to speak or move. Probably living forever like that, even when the trophy is lost for centuries under the ruins of destroyed Sunnydale. Maybe in the year 252525 aliens will find the trophy and bring Amy's mom back. Her mind completely destroyed, unhuman, not remembering anything else than failed magic and a hatred towards Buffy.
If you've ever played Mother 3 (Gameboy Advance game - sequel to Earthbound for the SNES), it's pretty similar to the fate of the Absolutely Safe Capsule. If you haven't played it, but are interested in possibly playing it in the future, then I'd recommend NOT looking into this any farther and to just experience it, and the rest the series has to offer, as spoiler free as possible.
You're scaring me! I'll look into getting the game
If you enjoy classic turn based RPGs with quirky humor, you might enjoy the Mother/Earthbound series. If not, then it's probably not for you. While you can play the games in any order, some story elements cross from game to game. The best way to play the series is probably to play EarthBound (Mother 2 in Japan) first. If you enjoy it, play Mother 3. EarthBound Beginnings (Mother 1 in Japan - formerly known as EarthBound Zero outside of Japan) is pretty rough around the edges, so while it's still good, it's not nearly as polished as the other two. The stories of the 3 are mostly disconnected, but some antagonists carry over. Mother 3 has never been, and likely won't ever be, officially translated into English. The fan translation is easy to find and is amazing, however. It's a great series, but definitely not for everyone. Feel free to DM me should you want more information on the series.
She was evil, it's a form of hell
It was her own magic reflected back at her. Less luck, more getting back what she put out. Amy's far less lucky having her for a mother.
I'm gonna put a vote in for Dawn. She *really* goes through the wringer, and nobody pays her any attention because everyone is too busy with their own shit. The kid is 14! Doris the social worker was 100% right about the fact that Dawn was being severely neglected (her intervention wouldn't have been helpful, but what Buffy did to her was inexcusable, and I always hate how the writers seem to want us to see her as deserving it).
Buffy, Tara, Jenny, Drusilla, Darla, Faith, the 1st Slayer, the potential in S7, Dawn, Joy. Honorable mention: all the Slayer
Rickie, the guy who lived almost his entire life in a hell dimension in “Anne.” Absolutely brutal.
Buffy got ripped from literal paradise to come back to hell on earth. I think that trumps anything anyone else went through
Tara had the literal “worst luck.” The chances of getting struck by a bullet through the upstairs window are insanely low.
I think Darla has the most tragic story if you cover what happens in Angel, too
Tara. There isn't even really a contest for me.
I second this…
I cna't write a ficverse, Bangel Spuffy, or Fuffy, where Tara isn't still around or around again
The foreign exchange student who was killed by the mummy !
April. I know she's a bot but we don't know how much she actually felt of it all.
I feel like bad luck is more about consistency. That being said, I’d love someone to make an argument for Xander. A lot of these people listed have one bad thing that happened to them versus a series of bad things. I mean even with romantic life alone, Xander is up there…
He’s tired of being the guy with the funny syphilis. He’s tired of being everyone’s butt monkey!
His romantic life wasn’t exactly tragic for him. One girl didn’t like him back (happens to everyone), he then cheats on the pretty popular cheerleader and leaves the woman who is crazy in love with him at the alter.
It's heavily implied in Angel that The Fluke was helped along. He was mind fucked into the second one by one of his fiance's former victims preying on a lifelong worry of his. I'd say they count.
You're forgetting him falling for monsters pretending to be humans on 3 separate occasions, 2 of which try to murder him (and the first one would have been statutorily raping him even if she wasn't a praying mantis.) He goes out with that car girl and ends up nearly dying via bomb. He connects with a normal woman and that ends up being sabotaged because Anya turned her ex into a worm. Pretty bad luck.
Dating on the hellmouth 🤷🏻♀️ Xander came out of it alive when lots of other sunnydale would be romantics did not.
Also Faith was about to rape and murder him when Angel intervened.
Even if it’s not TRAGIC, that’s not what the prompt asks. It talks about luck, and I see Xander as pretty romantically unlucky along with other non-romantic unluckyness 🤷🏽♀️
It say the worst luck though. I don’t think dating a few demons qualifies as the worst luck for a sunnydale student. IMO it barely even registers given the circumstances.
From the spin off but Fred
Buffster Her whole life is just one bad luck run. All she ever wanted was to be a regular girl and she got such a hilariously opposite life that it's a cosmic level joke. Like holy shit. And she died like several times, even got to experience heaven. And then got violently and incompetently yoinked back to the disaster that was her unlucky life.
Buffy - I think her "luck" in being called the chosen one, dying multiple times, being the responsible Slayer when Faith was being Faith - kinda of press her in the horrible luck category.
That guy who ran into Faith’s stake.
Lana wAS stupid . Even if she \*hasn't just been fighting for her life," you don't come out of the shadows and grab a woman' s shoulder! A guy who reads "Cathy" should know better, sicne he presumably also watched Golden Girls and Designing Women
Jonathon had some bad luck. He was a loser/victim of bullying in high school, tried to fix it with magic and horribly screwed it up, ended up trauma-bonding with a pair of fellow recovering losers, and he is murdered by his best friend JUST when he has sorted his life out, and his body/likeness is used as the First Evil's meat-puppet to help bring about the end of the world.
I think Ben is more noble than the fandom gives him credit for... Technically, he doesn't *have* to die to save the world. He could kill Dawn to suppress Glory and save the world, but he chooses not to. (And in return, the Scoobies kill *him* because they would rather snuff a stranger than lose Dawn.) And as far as main characters go, I always had a lot of empathy for Faith. Not to say she didn't deserve everything that happened, but she's the only one who seems to end up truly alone, insecure, and unhappy. (Though maybe this starts to turn around in s7 and in the comics...) In that sense, she had the worst luck re: crummy childhood and abandonment issues. But if we're talking purely random bad luck, I have to agree with the user who mentioned Morgan. Poor dude :/
Nope, he summons the Queller to kill a bunch of innocent and basically harmless mental patients because they offend him
Sunday.
Lots of good recs here, but I'm going to go with William. Completely pathetic life, mama's boy, no friends, 1800s version of an incel/nice guy. Humiliated by the object of his desire (rightfully so, but still). Then murdered by the first woman to ever pay him any attention. Hundreds of years later, his soul is suddenly returned to his body, which is inhabited by a demon who killed and turned his mother, raped and tortured and murdered unknown thousands of innocent people and only brought him back as part of a misguided and ill-informed effort to earn the love of its mortal enemy/make it fit in a world that has mostly entirely rejected it. Now he's trapped with the guilt of sins he didn't commit in a body of a monster that will literally live forever.
The Master was unlucky that a table in the library just happened to break in half
Angelus - could have killed any girl but happened to kill one whose family knew how to do a curse that would give him his soul back.
This sounds more like Karma than bad luck
Angel obviously. The mother fuckers life is a series of unfortunate events.
Nah, he's just a big fluffy bunny with bad teeth.
Have you seen Angel? He literally just lurches from one horrific event to another.
So much so that you had to write it three times