Archived Discussion Main / SympatheticSue

Anime

• Chris Thorndyke of Sonic X. He constantly goes emo about having 'No real friends' and being lonely, despite the fact that he does have friends at school who are never portrayed as anything less than genuine, his loving Grandpa with Tails-esque intelligence, doting house maid and butler for company. And while his parents aren't always around, they do show up sometimes and they're BOTH famous and rich. And yet he still thinks his life will suck without Sonic holding his hand, regardless of being the richest kid in town, who is beloved by all.
  • Not to mention his Purity Sue moments, such as when he convinced Shadow to reform from his wicked ways because he looked like Maria. That was AFTER Shadow beat the hell out of him. What makes this even worse is that on Sonic Adventure 2, this was Amy's role.
  • In #36 of the comic version of Sonic X, a rich and highly obnoxious character is introduced. The human kids point out that rich people tend to act that way. Sonic mentions that Chris isn't that way but he's just as rich. The human kids say that this is because Chris is a nice guy.

• In the Cyborg 009 2001 series, the adaptation of the manga chapters concerning Princess Ixquic (a Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette Robot Girl who befriends Joe aka 009 when he gets into an area of ancient ruins) was so badly handled by the writers that 009 was subjected to severe Character Derailment through it ( wtf, you spend the last scene after Ixquic's disappearance claiming that 007, who had lost one of this best friends from his past life, should STFU because Ixquic was soooo lonely?) and Ixquic became one of the most hated characters of the series, either because 009 x 003 fans were out of her blood (009 ignored 003's temporal depowerment to swoon over her), or because fans couldn't stand how 009 was simply Not Himself when around Ixquic.

Literature

• Despite liking Kate Forsythe's novels, this troper must reluctantly place Rhiannon o' the Dubhslain (of the Rhiannon's Ride trilogy) on the list: She's a Half-Human Hybrid who starts out being reviled for looking too human. Once she's among humans, she gets grief for having been Raised by Wolves. In the second book, she's on death row for having killed a royal guard in what was basically self-defense. But she ends up not only going free, but in a position of respect...and everyone who started out disliking her (including a romantic rival) has had a change of heart, died, or both. She also turns out to be the long-lost bastard daughter of a nobleman. And on top of all that...she's got a flying horse.
• Ender Wiggin in the Speaker for the Dead series. Trained as a soldier from age six, he finds himself placed in circumstances deliberately angled against him, alienated from all his peers, and reviled as a genocide a frustratingly short period after saving Earth from an alien race.
  • Um, to be fair, "Speaker" takes place more than three thousand years after the first book, and going from humanity hating the alien enemy to feeling a bit sad they're dead to hating Ender for killing them probably took a while.
• Laciel from Sharon Green's Far Side of Forever series is a powerful sorceress that can imitate her teammates' abilities, has a pet demon, and spends an entire book not understanding that every male teammate of her is in love with her. Because she has no experience with men, you see. And she was raped. More than once but the second time was to teach her her place.

Live-Action TV

• Captain Jack Harkness, but only in his Torchwood incarnation. The character as originally created by Steven Moffatt for series one of the new Doctor Who was a lovable rogue. Once the Torchwood writing staff got their hands on him, he became tortured and angsty, had pretty much the entire team making googly eyes at him, and by the end of the series had become an almost messianic figure. Note that his later guest appearances on Doctor Who brings him back to the original characterization, regardless of what happens to him on Torchwood.
  • ...Which evaporates the second he's back on his own show. After his Christlike antics in the finale of the first season, at the end of the second he spends some time being tortured in a cruciform pose for a while (again) then allows himself to be buried alive for TWO THOUSAND years of continual death and revival - OUTDOING Christ in terms of suffering by a considerable margin- by his crazy long-lost brother. Then he ROSE FROM THE TOMB, with his sanity, clothes and haircut completely intact, to utter the words "I forgive you."
  • To be fair, the Torchwood writers were basically told "Here, have this guy. We don't know who he is, where he came from, or why he acts the way he does, except that he's missing two years of his life due to the work of an organization he trusted and he's pissed about it." And it's always possible that hanging with the Doctor brings out the best in him, whether that's the main part or not.

Webcomics

• Luna from Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire. She's perfect in every way except for a pair of tusks, which don't really provide any impairment and look more like a fetish point than anything that detracts from her appearance. In spite of both the fact that this is a minor annoyance at worst and how it could be resolved within minutes (I guess "alterists" must be really creepy), this (and her cruel family that fixated on this exact same problem) leads to her having extremely low self esteem and even attempting suicide. This is all handled with the subtlety of a jackhammer and just completely ignores that she's otherwise beautiful, smart, and highly skilled in magic. Single-Issue Psychology at its worst. Let's not even get started on the virginity loss storyline...
  • Eventually, this aspect of her is pretty much dropped when she gained some self-esteem and she becomes the same sort of combination Purity Sue (everybody that isn't Obviously Evil™ loves her) and God-Mode Sue (every single spell she casts works to maximum effect regardless of logic) as every other primary character. Of course, there is the occasional callback to this characterization every now and then.
• Some would argue that Ariel from Drow Tales counts. She has a bizarre origin story and wangst, and she gets away with murdering a kid in front of his family, as well as her oldest friend for his perfectly reasonable reactions.

Western Animation

• From Hey Arnold, Helga's beautiful and brilliant, but neurotic and dangerously out-of-reality older sister Olga. Depending on the episode, she seems to walk the thin line between being a real Sympathetic Sue and being a deconstruction of the Purity Sue concept.