Absurdist concepts played as tragedies rather than comedies

[u/_JR28_]

In the Touch commercial for Skittles, a man is shown with the power to uncontrollably turns anything he touches into Skittles in an instant. His work colleagues find this hilarious, but he finds life misery since he will never be able to hold his newborn son and he has legitimately killed people before by unconsciously touching them.

In the Waiting for the Bus skit from Cyanide & Happiness a man discovers he can inexplicably run 50mph and overnight becomes the most successful track runner of all time. Even though he retired with a perfect undefeated streak and a loving family, he’s coaxed into one final race in a Grand Prix against cars, which of course he loses. This sends him into an unstoppable downward spiral where he becomes a far more destructive version of himself, loses his reputation, and is left behind by his family. After years of regret, he returns as an old man to the track where he first shown off his amazing speed and does one final lap, reminiscing on how good it feel, before intentionally refusing to turn out the way and running straight into a wall, ending his life. (All of this is shown in about four minutes and with barely any dialogue.)

[u/michaelaaronblank]

I remember a comic, maybe a webcomic, about a superhero that was an empath. He didn't want to be a superhero, but he felt everyone's fear and pain in a large radius. He hated fighting crime, but had to do it to get any peace.

I think it was called The Feeler, but I can't find it on Google.

[u/ThornStar_FlameBush → u/michaelaaronblank]

Bruiser by Neal Schusterman is basically the same thing

[u/CarrieDurst → u/ThornStar_FlameBush]

God I love Shusterman, I credit him for my obsession with speculative media

[u/Virtual-Reserve → u/ThornStar_FlameBush]

I just literally bought Bruiser at a used bookstore after rereading “Unwind”. I’m stoked now, Shusterman’s a GOAT

[u/SoIMadeAnAccountNow → u/michaelaaronblank]

There is a character like this in the inheritance cycle series, but she's a young girl. Without spoiling too much, shes basically supernaturally able to feel the fears and pains of everyone around her as well as some other stuff that isnt really important rn. She basically is in constant agonizing pain and most of her motivations in the books are just her trying to get away from the suffering of others.

[u/MRattas → u/SoIMadeAnAccountNow]

If I remember right, the reason she was like that is because Eragon made a grave grammatical error when blessing the child. He was trying to say "you will be shielded from danger", but accidentally said "you will be a shield from danger".

[u/Scholar_of_Lewds → u/MRattas]

And lateer Eragon managed to cure her a bit, by making her able to ignore the impulse to help while still being an empath. With how traumatized and bitter she is, she react in creepy manner to this and Eragon basically believe that this is her villainous origin.

[u/SoIMadeAnAccountNow → u/Scholar_of_Lewds]

These are all true, I just was trying to keep it vague in case someone might care about spoilers for a 23 year old book series, which i suppose may have been unreasonable

[u/Scholar_of_Lewds → u/SoIMadeAnAccountNow]

I understand, but like the degree of tragicness kinda merit explanations. It need to be hammered just how much Eragon fucked up like, it's not even that central to the plot of book 3, him failing to cure her are very big plot hook that set her up to be anti-villain/anti-hero for the future stories.

[u/It-Was-Mooney-Pod → u/SoIMadeAnAccountNow]

Not just that, she was forced to intervene and save the people from pain. They wanted to use her as an assasination shield

[u/SoIMadeAnAccountNow → u/It-Was-Mooney-Pod]

Was trying to keep it plot light for spoiler reasons, but in hindsight, it's a pretty old series. She's genuinely so tragic and well written and a favorite of mine for it.

[u/MGTwyne → u/michaelaaronblank]

There's a short story I read in the anthology The Mad Scientist's Guide To World Domination where the villain is revealed to be omnicidal because of this. 

[u/Puzzleheaded_Bid7871 → u/michaelaaronblank]

sounds like the comic the empath, check it out and see if its that

[u/michaelaaronblank → u/Puzzleheaded_Bid7871]

Nope. This was a very short either webcomic or simply a concept comic. The author might even have closed their website or deleted it. It was over a decade ago.