Mr. & Mrs. Carter
It is callous. You're right - and I don't think you need to apologise.
But it's hard enough to think of your heroes as people -- even when you know they're real and they - you know - get thawed out of an iceberg and wear stupid sweaters at Christmas. It's got to be even harder to really let it settle in your head that these characters who used to exist for your entertainment and nothing else - now have feelings, opinions and emotions.
I am starting to think you influence the tesseract though, (it's happened before) because this world is still lacking in Steve Buscemis.