Examples of characters in Literature that come off as Unintentionally Sympathetic.
And Then There Were None has its own page.
- David from Animorphs was intended by the author to be a character that the whole audience could despise, being a dark reflection of the other Animorphs. However, considering that he lost his family to the Yeerks, was recruited by the Animorphs involuntarily, was forced to live in Cassie's barn instead of his former home, and was forbidden to go out in public. In addition, his ultimate fate, though a Karmic Transformation considering who he is, happens to be quite horrifying and can actually make you feel sorry for him. Having said that, some readers despise him for what he did to Saddlernote , though it's not too different from some of the things Jake and Rachel have done.
- Zedar in The Belgariad is this if you take the interpretation that he was mind controlled the entire time. Forced by the God of Evil Torak to betray his former deity Aldur and his fellow sorcerers against his will, brainwashed by Torak into committing evil deeds for centuries, and reluctantly made to kill Durnik in self-defense in order to keep himself from being killed by the latter in his Unstoppable Rage, he is sealed away by his former comrade Belgarath in a rock for all eternity as if he had joined Torak and committed evil in his name of his own free will and killed Durnik in cold blood. Protagonist-Centered Morality at its finest, folks. (And let's not get started with the fact that the good guys would have actually lost if he hadn't defended himself...)
- In The Berenstain Bears:
- Brother Bear in "The Trouble With School" gets pretty sick and has to miss school for at least a week if not two. During which, his math class learns how to divide.... except Brother is expected to learn to do this on his own without the input of a teacher. When he returns, he is then made to take a test on it - when a decent teacher would have either excused him from it (to make sure he is fully caught up since learning to divide is a pretty major part of arithmetic.) Sure enough, he fails the test. This was meant to be his fault, but if anything, Brother's teacher and his parents all are to blame here.
- Another example is the book "No Girls Allowed", where Brother and his guy friends are portrayed as sexist jerks for kicking Sister out of their club because Sister was outdoing them in every activity she participated in with them. However, that isn't the reason they kicked her out. The real reason was the way Sister celebrated every time she won, which got on Brother and the other guys' nerves so much that they just decided to not want anything to do with Sister at this point. It doesn't help that not only did Sister do the same thing after discovering their club, when she tells her parents about it, Papa actually declares that he's going to make Brother and his friends let Sister join their club under a threat of tearing the club apart limb from limb, which only gives the readers an even bigger reason to take Brother and the other guys' side. Mama even lampshades this by pointing out that while she doesn't endorse Brother and his friends' decision, she does understand why they did what they did and puts the blame more on Sister for her frequent gloating.
- Carrie: Carrie is vilified in the book as a mass murderer who destroyed a whole town with her powers. But considering the torment she faced, and how nobody (except for a handful of people) gave her the support network she needed, most readers cheer her rampage.
- Susan Pevensie infamously from The Chronicles of Narnia. While there is more going on with her absence from the ending of The Last Battle than simply an interest in makeup and parties, many readers feel that her failings are not as bad as Lewis intended, and that losing both of her parents and all three of her siblings in a train crash (and the fact that nothing in the book acknowledges how this will affect her) is a disproportionately cruel ending to give the character. In Lewis’s personal correspondence, he wrote that he didn’t think Susan had no hope of finding Aslan’s country, but that her journey would have been more of a grown-up novel than what he wanted to write. Unfortunately, omitting “grown up” elements just leaves very shallow, childlike indictments of her character as expressed by her siblings, and Lewis never wrote a more mature novel with Susan.
- A Court of Thorns and Roses:
- Tamlin. The series never had an issue with calling Tamlin out on his worst character aspects and for his actions in A Court of Mist and Fury. However as time goes on Rhysand's flaws are becoming far more apparent, to the point where he does similar things... but the books will jump through hoops to excuse Rhys despite being guilty of the same thing and worse. While many of Tamlin's actions are not justifiable, several readers point out that he's likely suffering from PTSD after everything that happened and lacks a strong support system, nor does it help that he's being manipulated by Ianthe (whom he believes he can trust). He also appears to have good intentions rather than acting purely from malice and still does some heroic things in the third book, yet everyone acts like he did it all For the Evulz and deserved to have his entire court destroyed. Instead of making Tamlin out to be merely an abusive jerkass, he's starting to come across more as a highly traumatized tragic figure given absolutely no chance to properly cope. Even readers who don't much like Tamlin felt some pity for him in A Court of Frost and Starlight, as he appears to be deeply depressed and possibly suicidal, and thought Rhysand was out of order for mocking and ranting at him.
- Nesta in A Court of Silver Flames. While she can be a rude, standoffish jerk to the Inner Circle and needs to find better coping mechanisms for her trauma, the way everyone acts like she's the worst person ever for this comes off as disproportionate (especially coming from people who've done things like torture, murder, and starting civil wars for petty reasons). Nesta's behavior is a largely self-destructive response to PTSD, yet the Inner Circle treat her with utter contempt and debate exiling her into hostile territory (either the human lands where she'd never fit in, or the Court of Nightmares) just because they personally dislike her and find her "embarrassing", also taking the time to mock and slut-shame her when she's at her lowest. They're also aware Nesta has powers she can't fully control, yet seriously consider abandoning her in a place she could endanger both herself and others. Feyre's solution is to lock Nesta up in the House of Wind and force her to train in Illyrian war camps against her will. note She's also forced to be around Cassian, which she's made clear upsets her. Considering that one of the things Nesta does value is her ability to choose for herself, it's hard not to pity her now that this has also been taken away, and how little everyone around her seems to care for her. It doesn't help that she was completely right to tell Feyre her pregnancy was extremely high risk when everyone else hid the truth, for which Rhysand threatens to kill her.
- Rodrick Heffley from Diary of a Wimpy Kid may be a Big Brother Bully towards Greg, but quite a few fans feel sympathy for him because he is arguably an even bigger Unfavorite in the family than Greg is, and the latter may be at times too unlikable to take sides with. Especially at the end of the third film, where Greg ends up with Holly while Rodrick fails to win over Heather.
- Fifty Shades of Grey:
- Christian Grey's deceased mother, Ella, is repeatedly called "the crack whore" by her son and he claims she made him go hungry and complains that she should have defended him from her pimp. However, judging by flashbacks, she couldn't defend herself when her pimp started attacking her, much less her son. Grey also mentions that she made a birthday cake for him, so she was obviously doing her best. She was also very young and might have given birth when she was a teen, possibly a runaway. Add in that some pimps get their hookers addicted to drugs to keep them from running and Ella comes off more as a Hooker with a Heart of Gold than she was intended. Christian at one point says that he doesn't want to get in contact with Ella's family because they were probably like her, which, even if his claims about how she treated him aren't taken at face value, implies that she was abused by her family. So the abuse Christian claims to have suffered when he was too young to really remember it is supposed to excuse his own abusive behavior, but the reader is expected to hate Ella for using the abuse she experienced, while old enough to remember it unlike her son, as an excuse to abuse others.
- Leila Williams, one of the previous subs, is an odd case. Grey keeps insisting she needs help due to being mentally ill, but Ana only treats her with contempt (because she thinks Leila is trying to lure Grey away from her) and envy (because she's a better submissive). There's also a strong indication that Leila's relationship with Grey led her to develop PTSD. Also, when she approaches Ana in Fifty Shades Freed to apologize for threatening her, Grey threatens to cut her off from psychiatric help she desperately needs and art school if she ever talks to Ana again. Leila also never actually threatened Ana during Fifty Shades Darker, only Grey... and she seems more suicidally depressed rather than a homicidal yandere. Also, Grey was the one who made it so that she got forced treatment even when it should be illegal in Real Life.
- Perhaps ironically, a number of critics of the novel dislike the character of Ana but feel bad for her because she's in a relationship with a man who stalks and abuses her — the very thing readers are supposed to find romantic and enviable.
- A in-universe example in For The Emperor. Ciaphas Cain is forced into some Dirty Business, which involves deliberately wiping out an allied squad that is on the verge of endangering the mission and turning the Cold War with the tau into a hot one. After the deed is done, he tries to rally the spirits of his troops, but his usual eloquence fails him completely. Surprisingly, it turns out to be exactly the right response: the troops under his command are reassured when they see that the action upset and disturbed Cain just as much as it did them.
- Julian May's Galactic Milieu Trilogy has one of these on an organisational level. The language used in the finale and elsewhere clearly indicates that the titular Milieu are the good guys and the Metapsychic Rebellion the bad guys. However, the actual events of the story fail to relate this to such an extent that it's a horrific Downer Ending on first reading. This is actually INCREASED if you read the other three books, and discover that the leader of the rebellion is exiled, becomes much more unambiguously a straight-up villain, and then founds the Milieu after his hard turn heel-wise. It also doesn't help that all the good things and superior characteristics of Milieu members are necessarily informed, since the books are written from the perspective of a species that hasn't joined yet.
- Kurt Vonnegut's satirical sci-fi short story Harrison Bergeron has the eponymous character, who is, according to Word of God, meant to be a satire of how the United States perceives itself relative to the rest of the world - a superhumanly strong, tough, and intelligent "emperor" amidst a sea of mediocrity. Unfortunately for Vonnegut, he chose to portray the world's non-American people as citizens of an ultra-collectivist dystopia where people's natural talents and skills are repressed by the government in the interest of absolute equality, with Harrison as the only one who's not drinking the Kool-aid, meaning he comes off far more heroic rebel than arrogant jingoist. This story is so commonly misinterpreted that Vonnegut had to come out and explain that it's not meant as a critique of collectivism or socialism (Vonnegut being a socialist himself) but rather Cold War America's (over)reaction to it.
- Harry Potter:
- There's the minor character of Marietta Edgecombe. She's Cho Chang's friend and rats the DA out to Umbridge. She's punished for this by having "SNEAK" permanently pock-marked across her face. As she's not developed enough as a character, fans often take a line from Cho about how she feels conflicted because her mother works for the Ministry as a good reason to sympathize with her. Further muddying this issue is the fact that she was dragged along to the meetings by Cho. Some fans feel as though her punishment was Hermione going too far. Needless to say it's a divisive issue.
- During the fifth book particularly, the reader is meant to feel angry at Dumbledore for keeping his secrets close to his chest and not giving Harry more information. However, the fact is that he's running a secret resistance group against an enemy with greater numbers and resources while also keeping it on the down-low from the corrupt government. In this kind of situation, compartmentalization is SOP, never mind the fact that this is a world where Telepathy and Mind Control spells, plus truth potions, do exist. Furthermore, Harry's psychic link to Voldemort means that potentially anything Dumbledore tells him has an excellent chance of ending up in Voldemort's hands anyway. When Dumbledore gives him a way to learn a Psychic Block Defense, Harry flat-out refuses.
- Even aside from this, Harry is hot-blooded, impulsive, and anti-authoritarian (which, admittedly, is because of his PTSD and because of being raised by abusive guardians), as shown best in the climax where he slips Snape a coded message, gets exasperated when Snape pretends not to understand (because there's an enemy agent in the room), and then goes off on a mission to sneak into the Ministry and confront Voldemort and his followers with half a dozen barely-trained teenagers. It's only thanks to Dumbledore's intervention and phenomenal amounts of luck that the situation doesn't end up with Harry and his friends dead or worse, and the incident results in Sirius getting killed. In this case, one can easily see why Dumbledore doesn't let Harry in on more.
- Hermione is meant to be in the wrong for her activism on behalf of the House-elves and is broadly mocked for it In-Universe. However, many readers have pointed out that, haphazard as her efforts are, she's basically being attacked for being horrified that the Wizarding World uses slave labor and deciding to do something to put an end to it.
- Sirius's treatment of Kreacher is harsh and the main reason he ends up dead, but does Sirius have a lot of reasons to be nice to him? Keep in mind that Kreacher treats him like dirt, has always been loyal only to the rest of Sirius's family (who also treated him like dirt and as an outcast), calls Hermione (who actually does try to be nice to him) racial slurs, and generally does his best to be as horrible to him and his friends as he can be. For example, Sirius' fatal last command to Kreacher ("Out!") was in response in Kreacher mocking the Weasley kids over the near fatal attack on their father. It's not hard to see why Sirius isn't exactly showering him with affection.
- The House of Night:
- There's the briefly-shown Kayla. She was Zoey's friend when Zoey was human, and supposedly "betrays" her by dating Zoey's boyfriend, Heath, unfairly sending the police to investigate Zoey in the wake of several murders, and forming a "Bitch Posse" with a group of not-nice female classmates. Thing is, Kayla began dating Heath after Zoey repeatedly said how she had dumped him, her going to the police was logical since Zoey openly threatened to drink Kayla's blood (and Kayla saw her drinking Heath's blood), and the alleged "Mean Girls" she befriended are never introduced, so there's nothing to go off of, save Zoey's word that they're "hateful sluts".
- In Chosen, Erik's reaction to finding out that Zoey slept with Blake is over-the-top, with him repeatedly calling her a slut and a two-timer, while she cries about how he's so different and hurting her so much. Later, Aphrodite accuses him of hating on Zoey just to boost his own ego, which is treated as her rightfully calling him out. The thing is, after Zoey spends the past book and all of Chosen sneaking around with two other men, Erik being angry with her comes across as pretty justified. Not to mention that everything he tells her (that Blake didn't actually love her, that he was obviously using her, that he'd dump her the instant he was tired of her, and that Zoey was kinda stupid not to notice) turned out to be true.
- Marcie Miller from Hush, Hush series. We're supposed to hate her for having money, wearing short skirts, and dating Patch after he and Nora break up, but it doesn't change the fact that she's virtually the only one who sees Patch's stalking as disturbing, dealt with learning that her father never loved her, and comforted her mother after her parents got a divorce (which is more than Nora ever does for her own mother). Then, there's the fact that Nora goes full-on Yandere towards Marcie, and it's kind of hard not to pity the girl. And to add on top of it all, Finale reveals that Marcie died offscreen, several months before the epilogue (meaning she would have still been in her teens and not had a chance to do anything with her life) and that only five people, including her mother, attended her funeral. Vee's response to this is that she deserved it.
- In Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, Shere Khan the tiger is supposed to be a villainous coward for how he hunts humans, and wants to kill Mowgli. However, when one thinks about it, Shere Khan is a Bengal tiger who lives in an era where humans would go out on elephants and shoot tigers for their skins and heads. Therefore, all the animals are condemning Shere Khan for technically doing something that could be classed as fighting back. Also, Shere Khan partly wanted Mowgli gone because he was worried that Mowgli would grow up to be a threat to him, and it doesn't help when the other animals rub that risk in the tiger's face by saying that a time will pass when Mowgli will hunt him.
- In the Jeeves and Wooster novel Right Ho, Jeeves, Bertie is depicted as a vain and incompetent Upper-Class Twit who bites off more than he can chew when he tries to help his friends and relatives solve their various issues, even though they had actually wanted to ask Jeeves for help. When Bertie's advice inevitably makes things worse, the people he attempted to help blame him for the disaster and harshly chew him out for it. His Aunt even tells him to kill himself for driving her chef to quit. The book seems to treat their behaviour as a justified response to Bertie's poorly thought-out interference, and the story ends with Bertie acknowledging Jeeves's superiority and vows to let the valet do what he does best the next time. Many readers find that the book's treatment of Bertie is disproportionately cruel, especially since he means no harm, and that his friends and family never face consequences for their flaws that instigated the problems Bertie needed to solve in the first place.
- Too many characters in the Left Behind books to count, especially by comparison to the callous,
misogynistic, self-satisfied way the alleged heroes act. - Rosaura de la Garza from Like Water for Chocolate was supposed to be seen as a selfish Jerkass bitch, but many readers ended up feeling sorry for her instead. Yeah, knowing that her husband only married her to be close to her little sister since the Evil Matriarch won't let him marry her is just the beginning to lots of humiliations coming from him, and one can't imagine how bitter such shit will make anyone in the end. Tita is very sympathetic, too, and a good part of the book is a genuine Break the Cutie for her, but it's very unsettling to see how the narrative takes Rosaura's actually quite understandable objections and makes her look like she's stupid, bitchy, or plainly evil in an attempt to make Tita and Pedro's deal better/worse, to the point of having her want Esperanza to stay there for her like Tita did to Elena for ZERO reason other than to make Tita throw a tantrum... followed later by a ridiculously humiliating death and an And There Was Much Rejoicing. (Especially considering that Gertrudis, when she said that Pedro and Tita were meant to be, also added that Rosaura understood it to some point.) In the end, once cannot help thinking that the author wanted any woman who didn't kiss Tita's butt to be the worst bitches ever whether they actually were bitches or not, and Rosaura ended up taking the "spot" without deserving it as much as her and Tita's Evil Matriarch ever did.
- In Little Men, Nat is caught telling a lie, and this is treated as a very serious issue and resolved with a cruel and unusual punishment. The problem is, a much older boy was threatening to beat the crap out of him if he'd ran through the boy's veggie patch - which he'd done because he was being chased by another older boy - so Nat got scared and denied it. And neither of the other boys were punished or even given a talking-to.
- In the first book of Little Women, we have Amy burning Jo's book out of anger. Jo is supposed to be wrong when she doesn't let go of her anger or forgive Amy right away after Amy apologizes, even though a) Jo just had her most cherished creation destroyed and it would be ridiculous to expect her to get over it in a day, b) Amy doesn't appear to get any punishment beyond a lecture.
- In Robin Hobb's Liveships fantasy series, you are encouraged to hate the pirate Kennit, who does unspeakably evil things throughout. Then we are given his back-story and suddenly you find yourself getting all teary-eyed over the fact that he is killed, instead of cheering wildly as should be appropriate for the scum. It doesn't help that even before you know his backstory, his POV chapters show that he's mostly driven by pure terror that people are going to hurt him again, so even as you're disgusted with his actions, you can't help but feel sorry for his motives.
- This also happens in-universe, thanks to Kennit's luck. Kennit works very hard to portray himself as a hardened, emotionless pirate captain, believing it will make him more powerful. But, his crew keeps interpreting non-emotional coincidences as shows of great kindness and honor, and absolutely love him for it. Early examples are when Kennit goes into a slave-hold of a ship, and tears up at the smell, only for his first mate (a former slave) to become utterly devoted to a captain who would cry over the plight of slaves, or when Kennit drops his load of newly-liberated human cargo at the nearest port town to be rid of a nuisance, only to discover that this was where they'd been originally stolen from. He's pretty freaked out by this new loyalty at first, but uses it to his advantage in the end. To do more evil things (or at least try to), of course.
- A lot of characters in the series can fall victim to this, since the heroes have a tendency to be moralising scolds who often insist on doing everything by the Good Old Ways without offering much in the way of reason for why those ways are good and not just old, or a way to do so without becoming a Doomed Moral Victor. Many of them cross some sort of Moral Event Horizon before we can start sympathising with them too much note but not always - Malta Vestrit, for one, is just a teenage girl who wants to wear pretty dresses, go to parties and flirt with boys, something that both the story and her family treats as the height of immaturity and moral bankruptcy.
- Swim Swim from Magical Girl Raising Project is responsible for the deaths of a lot of characters, including some fan favorites, with a pregnant woman being one of them. Her actions are meant to be seen as a Moral Event Horizon and several fans do hate her for the things she's done. However, there are others who see her as an Unwitting Pawn who just doesn't know any better, especially given that she's only seven years old. It also doesn't help that everything she does, she did to emulate Ruler who she admired as a princess. To put simply, Swim Swim's actions are only due to being surrounded and influenced by truly bad people.
- Memoirs of a Geisha:
- Though the main character is sympathetic herself, Pumpkin's revenge against Sayuri is meant to be a major Kick the Dog, but as she points out to Sayuri, Sayuri took her life goal of becoming officially adopted by the okiya and becoming one of the most successful geisha in Gion, and she didn't really even want that; it was all just "a stepping stone" to get to the Chairman. Under those circumstances, it's easy to feel like Pumpkin's revenge was justified, even if Sayuri hadn't meant to do that and was manipulated into it by Mameha and The Chairman.
- Similar to the above situation, Nobu's reaction to Sayuri was a bit extreme but she did make him think she loved him when in reality, she was only doing it under Mameha's instruction so Nobu's feelings of betrayal are understandable, especially how his best friend the Chairman orchestrated several events.
- In November 9, Fallon is often treated as being stubborn and insecure due to her repeated rejections of Ben, but readers found her actions to be pretty understandable and sympathetic in some circumstances, especially in the final act. After finding out Ben has hooked up with his recently-widowed sister-in-law and is raising her child, most readers found it reasonable that Fallon would want to remove herself from the situation, only for Ben to refuse to accept Fallon's wishes, stalking her and trying to force himself on to 'persuade' her to accept her feelings for him (nevermind that just because you have feelings for someone, it doesn't mean it's a good idea to be in a relationship with them). Many readers also thought she was completely justified for trying to cut Ben out of her life permanently (including getting a restraining order) after she learned he lied by omission that he started the fire that nearly killed her and ruined her life.
- John Milton's Paradise Lost. Because the poem starts off from his viewpoint, Satan comes across as more of a Designated Villain than an actual bad guy. However, as the poem progresses, it becomes clear that Satan is rationalizing his behavior, just like humans tend to do, and is ultimately a hypocrite. The reader is supposed to sympathize with Satan and feel the temptation of sin, but ultimately reject him. However, many who read the work miss the point and believe that Satan is in fact the hero of the story. This may be a case of Values Dissonance mixed with Cool People Rebel Against Authority. A big part of the problem is that Milton doesn't bother to give God any positive traits beyond sheer power, pretty much just assuming Omniscient Morality License is in play and not bothering to back it up. This means that Satan's arguments go unanswered, and Villain Has a Point creeps in.
- Pride and Prejudice:
- Mary Bennet is supposed to be, in her own way, just as annoying as Lydia and Kitty due to her preachiness, Know-Nothing Know-It-All pretensions, and refusal to socialize. Values Dissonance comes into play here: in the time and place in which the book is set, there was little to no way other than marriage for a woman to be assured of having a home and a means to live, and socializing at balls and parties was practically the only way of meeting and getting to know prospective husbands. In this context, Mary's unsociable behavior could easily have serious negative repercussions on her future. However, the fact that she's the "plain" one who avoids going out because she doesn't want to be unfavorably compared to her sisters makes her an underdog from the start, and modern readers are likely to sympathize with her as an insecure, bookish introvert much more than Austen intended.note
- Kitty Bennet also qualifies. While unlike Mary, she is possibly meant to be something of a likeable character, she definitely is treated unfavourably by both her parents, despite being better-natured, if no smarter, than her obnoxious sister Lydia.
- Serge Storms: Rachael from Atomic Lobster is portrayed as the second coming of Token Evil Teammate Sharon Rhodes and has an "obnoxious and morally reprehensible" characterization, but can still feel like a Jerkass Woobie at the very least. She is living in dreary circumstances (she is a drug addict and mentions she sometimes does sex work to pay her electric bill) and otherwise minding her own business until she threatens Serge in an argument over an Asshole Victim's money and ends up cajoled into becoming Serge’s companion. Not once in 2-5 months does Serge seriously try to intervene with her pitifully desperate cocaine addiction. He only keeps her around for hate-fueled sex while giving her no respect (although she is just as vitriolic to him, if not more so) and constantly twisting her arm behind her back during arguments. She shows some standards by slapping groom-to-be Trevor for propositioning her on his wedding night. Finally, she only snaps and attacks her companions with a knife after she discovers that the people she's been having such a toxic relationship with killed her beloved sister Sharon ten years earlier, with Serge not showing any willingness to go easy on her despite the justifiable trauma of that revelation and how she is clearly "wired out of her head" at the time.
- The Scarlet Letter:
- Roger Chillingworth. He is portrayed as wickedly and disturbingly obsessed, though Hester does note that she shouldn't have wronged him in the first place. He does little or nothing objectively bad (somewhat depending on interpretation). He has done a lot of good things though: at great personal risk he has learned medicine from the Indians and uses it for the benefit of the community. He forgives Hester, even saying that her infidelity was mostly his fault, and medicates Pearl. He also lets her go, despite the fact that apparently he still loves her. He helps the man he suspects is the man who cuckolded him-even Dimmesdale admits that Chillingworth saved his life. Chillingworth correctly insists that Dimmesdale needs to fess up to whatever is on his conscience to truly regain his health. Yet everyone, including the narrator, Dimmesdale, Hester and Chillingworth himself assumes he does all of these things for the worst reasons.
- Pearl. The public, and even Hester at times, in the book sees her as a product of sin. The fact that she is a child of a single mother, shunned by the community as well as mentioning that she could have had a better life if Hester would just leave the village, make her more sympathetic than she was probably intended to be. Many readers also think that she is a girl misunderstood by the whole community (who take every little "bad" thing she does and connects it to her being an illegitimate child) and brought up by a mother too distracted by her guilt to discipline her.
- In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the residents of Innsmouth are supposed to be seen as sinister and repulsive, but it's hard not to feel sorry for them when you consider the terrible situation they're in. They're all stuck living in a Dying Town because nowhere else will accept them. They're forced to watch all their loved ones slowly losing their minds as they turn into Deep Ones, knowing that they'll eventually succumb to the same fate. If they ever let anything slip to outsiders they put themselves at risk from both the Order of Dagon and from the government. None of this is their fault either, as none of the current residents chose to get involved with the Deep Ones. And then they're all killed by the government for the crime of existing.
- Sisters... No Way!: Aishling has very little sympathy for Cindy in her diary. The narrative also seems to view her as a brat who needs to mature. This is a girl that first has had to deal with her mother suffering from a terminal illness, dying from said illness, her father remarrying and three new people moving into her house all in the space of a year. More superficially she also had to do her Junior Cert - which is quite a stressful experience for a fifteen-year-old.
- Mrs. Snake in the first book of the Snugglepot and Cuddlepie series. The narrative constantly reminds us she's evil, and we are supposed to celebrate her demise by decapitation in the end because "she was very wicked and deserved to die." One problem: She's lost most of her family to Mr. Lizard preparing a feast, and is understandably bitter about it. Snugglepot and Cuddlepie telling her that "You eat birds, so birds eat you" doesn't help their case, when they don't tell off other snake-eaters for eating snakes in the first place, so she comes off more of a vengeful serpent looking for revenge than a generally wicked creature.
- The Twilight Saga:
- Through most of the series, Leah is meant to be seen as a heartless bitch who didn't bow graciously out for Sam hooking up with Emily, uses the pack mind to think of various scandals, and tell Jacob he's being overly angsty about Bella. Thing is, with all of the shit that Leah goes through (her fiance is essentially brainwashed into loving her cousin, her father dies of a heart attack at the sight of her and her brother turning into werewolves, she's the only girl ever to become a werewolf, heavily implied to be infertile due to her powers stopping her monthly courses (and she believes it’s one of the reasons why Sam dumped her for Emily), the entire pack thinks she's bitter and weak, her own brother says that she ruins everything, etc), she comes across as an Iron Woobie. She comes across as this even more so when one considers that the same people who call her selfish and whiny all coddle Jacob for being even more self-centered and whiny over Bella, who he was involved with far less than Leah was with Sam. This is especially rich when one considers that a massive chunk of the second book is all about how sad and empty Bella feels without Edward, to the point Bella barely notices entire months passing because of how depressed she is. If it's supposed to be sympathetic when Bella does it, it seems a little unfair that it's supposed to be annoying when Leah does it.
- The Volturi are supposed to be seen as the evil government for vampires and Aro is portrayed as an insane collector of special abilities of vampires, including wanting to get Alice and Edward into their coven. They're stated to have killed the Denali Sisters' coven-mother, because she created Immortal Children (biting a child and turning it into a vampire), fought a war with the Romanian vampires when they wanted to overtake the Volturi and repeatedly attacking and separating covens that spring up. They're meant to be villains, but these actions are justified: creating Immortal Children is forbidden, as Meyerpires never advance once they've been bitten and Immortal Children cannot learn to control their bloodthirst and have eradicated entire villages, just to satisfy a bout of hunger. The Romanians were going to overthrow humanity and let vampires rule the entire world and the Volturi fight them down, to avoid any coven growing too large and being noticed by humans. The Volturi only put two rules onto the vampires in the entire world. 1) Do not let humans notice that you are a vampire and 2) do not create Immortal Children. Das Sporking even went in-depth into why the Volturi are actually good guys for both vampires and humans.
- In an odd Meta example, Robert Pattinson interpreted Edward to be a suicidally-depressed creepy stalker with few sympathetic qualities, and played him as such, and was very surprised when he learned fans and the author saw Edward as a sympathetic romantic lead. Reportedly he would get into "passionate" arguments with Stephanie Meyer over the character's motivations and alignment and often played up the character's more negative qualities in spite of it, making Edward a character who was meant to be sympathetic but played to be unsympathetic and interpreted as sympathetic.
- Whatever you think of female clergy, Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War opens to a female bishop being burned at the stake rather than renounce her faith or position, a powerful image of moral courage. She is meant to be part of the destruction of society by accepting multiculturalism, though she comes off far better than the protagonist, who in the same chapter pitches a fit over female Marines existing.
- Warrior Cats:
- Depending on who you ask, Mudclaw could be seen as a heroic warrior who deserved to be Tallstar's successor after his moons of loyal deputyship, and his rebellion as being in WindClan's best interest. This doesn't make Onewhisker any less sympathetic, as he was forced into the position and was only trying to follow Tallstar's dying wish; but it helps Mudclaw's case that Onewhisker was promoted so WindClan could "stay friends" with ThunderClan, which even Onewhisker knew would be bad for the Clan's reputation, and that the tree that killed him was confirmed to have not been StarClan's doing. Mudclaw later appeared as a member of StarClan, showing he was given some sympathy in-universe as well.
- Other villains, like Mapleshade, Scourge, Thistleclaw, Tigerstar, Hawkfrost, and Brokenstar all have fans who see them as sympathetic characters due to either a sympathetic backstory or, in Thistleclaw's case, being little more than Bluestar's rival who didn't commit many evil acts on-screen yet still ended up in the Dark Forest. In Scourge's case, the author even made a note in his novella that his story wasn't meant to justify his actions, and yet many believe it in fact does.
- For a non-antagonist example, Rowanclaw in the arc A Vision Of Shadows. Plenty of characters see Rowanclaw as having been too weak to lead ShadowClan well and make it great again. But considering that the apprentices (including his own grandchildren) were being rebellious and helped Darktail overthrow the Clan, people feel that while Rowanclaw could've been a little tougher on them, he ultimately does try and help his Clan out the best he can before ultimately giving up being leader. What makes matters worse is that after he dies and goes to StarClan, most of the former Clan leaders (including Blackstar and excluding Firestar) treat him like an annoying kid. All this seems to do is make people decide that Rowanclaw deserved better.
