Jenny Humphrey from Gossip Girl and Rue Bennett from Euphoria are pretty similar, in my opinion.

Here’s one reason why I deeply think so.

It’s easy to pity & hate both

One major similarity I’ve noticed between Jenny and Rue is how easy it is to have such mixed emotions about them as a viewer.

I literally pity them both at times and hate them both at times. And I’m not alone in my thoughts about this. Other fans feel the same.

Both of these characters were written to be flawed, which means rooting for them at times and hoping they get what they deserve at other times is the actual intention behind the way they’re written as characters.

With Jenny, I despised her when she stole that red dress from Hazel‘s mother‘s closet. It was dumb and embarrassing of her to do that.

I was annoyed at her when she dated Asher as a status symbol just to make herself look better and gain more popularity.

I was pissed at her once you set up Vanessa to wear a see-through dress to the snowflake ball.

I hated her when she tried to seduce Nate while he was dating Serena.

I thought she was so idiotic when she thought photographer almost take nude photos of her.

She was the absolute worst when she bullied Eric van der Woodsen just to look more powerful in front of her minions.

And I thought she was unforgivable when she teamed up with Juliet Sharp and Vanessa Abrams to sabotage Serena, even though she didn’t know that Juliet was going to take their plan to such an extreme place.

It was easy to hate her during all of those scenes and more.

But it was also easy to pity her and empathize with her when I watched the way her controlling an overbearing father constantly cock blocked her dreams.

It was easy to feel sorry for her, knowing that she wanted true love, but continually got screwed over by boys.

My heart broke for her when she saw her dreams of becoming a fashion designer constantly fall apart in front of her eyes like when Agnes lit her dresses up or when Eleanor Waldorf initially tried to fire her from Waldorf designs.

My emotions toward Jenny have bounced back-and-forth between hatred and pity.

And that is also the case with Rue. I’ve hated watching scenes of her while she seeks out drugs without a care in the world or any concern for the fact that her family is so worried about her.

Every time she lied straight to Jules’s face about her sobriety, it made me feel more frustrated and more annoyed by her as a character.

Knowing that she had no intention of even trying to get sober, made her even worse and more difficult to root for.

But by that same token, I also felt pity in my heart for Rue when I thought about her desperation to numb her pain because of her father‘s death.

I can’t even imagine how painful it would be to lose a parent as a teenager, but that is the pain she was battling, and because of that, I found myself having sympathy for her.