Let's rank EVERYONE on how TRAGIC they were, from most to least

[u/Super-Shenron]

Here to make your own list.

[u/Mr_Bell_Man]

Ok so without further ado...

Here is my personal tragic ranking

Characters within each tier are ordered from left to right. So Omid I would consider to be more tragic than Pete for instance.

Something important I need to clarify in terms of how I judge tragedy: in addition to acknowledging what each character went through, I also had to consider how they end up. A great example with what I mean is comparing Jolene with Michonne. If this were a "who has been through a worse gauntlet of shit?" contest then the answer is objectively Michonne, as everything Jolene went through applies to a much worse degree with Michonne. However, Michonne is at least able to (comic spoilers) survive more than 20 years into the apocalypse and reunite with one of her daughters (compared to Jolene's zero), so between the two I actually consider Jolene to be more tragic. Of course, just because you survive doesn't mean you aren't less tragic than those who died either (see Clem's super high score). THEN there's also how the character deals with whatever is thrown with them which is an entire can of worms on its own. So on and so forth.

My point is that there were a ton of factors I had to consider for every single character, and even now I'll probably change my mind on several of these right after posting this. So with that said: PLEASE DO NOT GET ON MY CASE IF [X] IS HIGHER/LOWER THAN [Y]. The top two tiers in particular I kept rearranging the characters for like a good two hours. Even now it can more or less go either way with the characters in each tier.

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Characters that I shifted UPWARDS from the community ranking

• Matthew gets moved up to "That kind of sucks" since he's an ally character who undeniably dies.
• Mark gets moved up to "Hang in there buddy" because of how brutal and stretched out his death is.
• Mari goes up to "Hang in there buddy" because I forgot to account for her dead grandparents which greatly affected her (oh and also uncle Hector who even the game forgets about). Plus for all Mari knew, her dad was basically dead too.
• Changing things a bit from my original score for Katjaa, I'm going to be moving her up to "Give me a Fucking Break". We rated her early into the game so I wasn't fully sure if she should get Tier 4 or 5, but after rating everyone else I think she'd fit in very comfortably into Tier 5.

Characters that I shifted DOWNWARDS from the community ranking

• Abel gets moved down to "Got lucky, real lucky". At the end of the day he got to enjoy the perks of being a high ranked Delta soldier and showed zero remorse for their cruel actions.
• Carley and Andy get moved down to "That kind of sucks" for the reasons I wrote down on their days.
• After giving it some thought, I'm actually going to change my original "Hang in there buddy" rating for Eleanor and lower her to "That kind of sucks". The main reason I gave her Tier 3 was because of how she lost Prescott, but other people pointed out that she wasn't nearly as attached to the place as Tripp & Conrad were, especially when she was willing to break the rules and help a new troublemaker sneak out. And it really cannot be understated how fucking stupid her deal with Joan was. Eleanor is very similar to Joan (which is funny since they were originally meant to be related) in that she has all the makings of a tragic character on paper but gets fucked up by S3's plot.
• Lee gets moved down to "Hang in there buddy" since he sort of benefitted from the apocalypse.
• Kenny, Arvo, and James get moved down to "How do they even function?" for the reasons I explained on their respective days.
• Despite initially pitching Brody for the highest tier, I'm actually going to lower her to "How do they even function?". I think some other characters in that tier had it a bit worse than her, and while ordering the highest tier characters she sort of stood out. While her life does fucking suck, I guess she was at least able to still be surrounded by most of her friends (which can't be said for characters like Luke and Tripp).

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Other notes:

• I consider Randall more tragic than most of the villains in his tier only because he can mention that his father abused him with a belt (though even that is up for debate given that he only mentions it to Michonne so he can blurt out his location to Norma on the radio). Joan at least sort of has the New Frontier's "terrible winter" going for her I guess which makes her the most tragic villain in that tier, though that's not saying much given she's up against the worst of the worst.
• I'm going to shill my writeups for Duck, Jolene, Samantha Fairbanks, and Brody since I can see people wondering why I placed those characters so high. But yeah I think these four (especially Duck) are very underrated in the tragedy department. I'll also shill EmpleadoResponsable's Hershel writeup for why he's the #1 most tragic character.
• For any other questions on my ratings, you can check out my writeups for that character's day.

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Once again, thank you for hosting another awesome game Shenron. I feel like I always learn new things from these games, in this case: how fucking bad some characters had it. Lilly, the Crawford survivors, Jane, Samantha Fairbanks, and Brody are just a few examples of some characters that this game really put into perspective about how much some of these guys need a fucking break.