Do people like SYCOPHANTS?

[lucky_kari]

No: HPFGUIDX 36539

Sycophants make great characters at point. Note Grima Wormtongue and 
Peter Pettigrew. But do people actually like them? Do you ever feel 
sympathetic with a sycophant? When you read Elkins' Avery posts, do 
you feel an urge to put your arms around Avery and tell him it'll be 
all right, or do you think "Another stupid sycophant. They deserve 
what they get?" 

When you read the Shrieking Shack scene for the first time, were you 
feeling it more from Sirius/Lupin's angry POV or Pettigrew's 
desperately afraid POV? 

Well, it might be something strange in me but I was seeing it from the 
 second POV. I have this tendency to get along well with sycophants, 
neurotics and the rest. One of my first fanfics was about how Gollum 
survived Mt. Doom and Merry and Pippin brought him back to the Shire 
and reformed him by taking him swimming and on picnics. (I was very 
young.)

Now, I can take the pain given to weaker characters, and, being a 
FEATHERBOA, enjoy it, but my heart still goes out to every miserable 
fictional character that comes along. 

My favourite character is Star Wars is Admiral Piett, who pretends not 
to notice when Vader's strangling people behind him, makes jokes about 
 bounty hunters to his officers and then backs away when a bounty 
hunter looks at him, changes his mind on his course of action when 
Vader so much as breathes in his direction, and dies in a valiant 
attempt to hold the roof of the Executor up when a fighter comes 
through the window. (At least that's what it looks like.) 

Is this wide-spread phenomonem? Or are we only a few whose supply of 
pity is infinite? Are we the same people who start pondering whether 
Tom Riddle was cute as a baby? 

Eileen