Unintentionally Unsympathetic / Literature

Characters in Literature that are intended to be sympathetic by the author, but are seen as Unintentionally Unsympathetic by readers.

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• The title character in The Adventures of Stefón Rudel is meant to be an admirable Kid Hero and Adorably Precocious Child, but in reality he's rather bratty and creepily violent for someone his age.
• Am I Actually the Strongest?: As per the course for LN protagonists, Haruto had a horrible life prior to his reincarnation; being relentlessly bullied by his classmates and emotionally neglected/abused by his parents to the point that he became a shut in NEET. And while his new life didn't start off any easier; being abandoned by his new birth parents for being percieved as weak and useless; he still wound up with a far better life than he had before. Gaining a sexy demoness servant, being adopted by foster parents who love and support him, a little sister who idolizes him despite initially being afraid of his power, and basically having opportunities and resources at his disposal that he never had before. Yet despite it all, he refuses to grow past his Hikikomori tendencies and make something more of himself despite the second chance at life that he's been given.
• Animorphs has Tobias. In Megamorphs 2 the Animorphs travel to the time of the dinosaurs. They interfere in the war between two alien species, the Mercora and the Nesk. When the Mercora win, the Nesk send a comet to Earth to extinguish the Mercora. The Mercora ask the Animorphs to give them a bomb they stole the Nesk to repel the comet. Tobias asks Ax to deactivate this bomb so that the comet hits the settlement of Mercora. This eventually causes the Mercora to all die while the Animorphs escape. Tobias later explains that he had to do that to put time on the right track, because it was just that comet that killed the dinosaurs and that otherwise mankind would never have come into existence. But many readers were appalled by his decision to recklessly eradicate a whole sentient species.
  • The second volume of Alternamorphs makes the narrator one of the animorphs. But one of his bad choices eventually makes Rachel force him to be a fly permanently. This reflects the fate of David, one of the new Animorphs in the original series. He was forced by the other Animorphs to stay permanently in the body of a rat. But David had clearly sociopathic tendencies. He also tried to kill the other Animorphs, threatened to turn them over to Visser Three, and eventually killed a cousin of Jake and Rachel to take his place. And in his case, this decision is still portrayed as cruel. But the narrator has neither betrayed the Animorphs nor deliberately attacked. He happened to be around when Cassie was shot dead by a Howler. Rachel blames the narrator, though he did nothing wrong. And if he does not do what she wants, she catches him as a fly. The Animorphs, but especially Rachel, were perceived by many readers as negative in this scene.
• Let's just say Ayn Rand invited this kind of criticism in more or less all her novels and leave it at that. Her vision of the ideal Objectivist paragon as presented in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is contested, at best, especially given her own problems with living up to her own idealised standards.
• Circe in The Beast Within: A Tale of Beauty's Prince is described as being kind and compassionate, but she only curses the Prince after he jilts her personally (even though one would think she would have picked up on the fact that he's rather selfish and misogynistic in general), she extends the curse to the servants after he taunts her (essentially messing up their lives just so he'll be a little worse off), and then completely ignores him for years, without even thinking to check in on his progress until she hears her sisters are doing so behind her back (because of this, she doesn't learn about the abuse he heaped on Princess Morningstar until it's nearly too late to save her and her family). And on the subject of the last point, despite knowing how her sisters operate on a different moral sense than her and hate the Prince, she does little to enforce her order to leave him alone and is easily manipulated by them into not noticing them attempting to kill Belle and the Beast. The end of the novella also has her showing more sympathy to Belle than the Beast, who besides being the character she actually knew and claimed to care about, is on the ground, dying of a stab wound.
  • The Prince/Beast himself suffers from this in the same book. While he's meant to be unsympathetic to an extent as the majority of the book is about his life before he met Belle and thus was still self-centered, he's also meant to still be sympathetic enough for his eventual redemption and romance with Belle to feel earned and believable. Unfortunately, the author completely overshot the "flawed but redeemable Beast" portrayal and landed squarely into "complete asshole who ruins the lives of multiple people for 5/6ths of the book" territory instead; when your protagonist cruelly dumps two women who loved him - one of them with full knowledge that he's dooming her entire kingdom by doing so - and orders the murder of a painter just because he drew a portrait of him with signs of the curse taking effect on him and shows absolutely no signs of reforming or regretting his actions until the last 20 pages, it becomes quite hard to root for him to get his happy ending with Belle especially since Belle never learns about any of this.
• The Berenstain Bears: Mama Bear is meant to be the voice of reason. However, some readers found her too stern with both her cubs (for instance, threatening to take their toys away in "The Messy Room") and her husband (since she often talks down to him and/or nags him).
• In Black Blade Blues, this is a bit of an issue. It's not a problem with Sarah herself, whose Hair-Trigger Temper and discomfort with her own sexuality are clearly intentional issues for her to work through even before a magic sword starts ramping up her aggression, but it is a problem with her girlfriend Katie in the early parts. Katie seems to have realised that Sarah has a lot of unresolved issues from being brought up by a misogynistic Christian fundamentalist in a selection of homophobic small towns, but basically expects Sarah to just kind of spontaneously get over them, because apparently Sarah has access to little dials marked "Internalised Homophobia" and "Childhood Trauma" and can just turn them down whenever. (Katie does get more sympathetic later, but that's because Sarah starts to go seriously off the rails.)
• Carrie: Chris Hargensen's death seems to be aiming for Alas, Poor Villain when her last thoughts are that she didn't want Carrie dead, but after everything she did to torture Carrie, it's doubtful that the reader will have any sympathy for her.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:
  • Willy Wonka is meant to be a lovable Cloudcuckoolander, but some readers instead see him as mean, for showing No Sympathy for the brats even as they're being subject to horrible fates that many viewers saw as too extreme to simply be due punishment for their brattiness (such as turning into a giant blueberry for Violet). In addition, it's never revealed if he pays the Oompa-Loompas, causing some readers to wonder if he's enslaving them, and in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, he's often the one who leads the Buckets into danger (such as insisting on going high enough to make another hole in the roof solely for dramatic effect that leads to them being stranded in space, and introducing the wonka-vite that leads to Grandma Georgina disappearing from taking too many pills.
  • The Oompa-Loompas are also seen as unsympathetic to some viewers, since they sing rude songs to the children while the children are in danger (in Augustus's case, body-shaming him for being fat and saying he deserves to be made into fudge).
• Tristan, the protagonist of Chronicles of Blood and Stone can be this for some readers, given his tendency to complain a lot and behaving like a Bratty Teenage Son whilst actually being almost 30. His hang-ups about being king earn him few sympathy points, as it tends to come off as him being a selfish, immature jerk who just doesn't want to take any responsibility in his life (which is especially difficult for some readers to swallow given his age). The fact he frequently does rather stupid things but rarely experiences negative consequences for this doesn't help, either.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses:
  • Feyre's family in the first book (they become more nuanced later on, especially Nesta). They get little characterization beyond the fact they're selfish jerks who treat Feyre like crap even though she's the one keeping them alive and they barely tolerate each other. Feyre herself has a low opinion of them, frequently criticizing them even as she emphasizes her devotion to them. Even Feyre's dead mother - to whom she made a deathbed promise to look after the family - is described as being cold and vain. None of them save for Feyre do anything to alleviate their dire situation (unless nagged) even though its been nearly a decade since they lost their fortune and they're all adults. It makes it difficult to sympathize with the family's struggles and some readers even find it weakens Feyre's driving motivation of protecting them, considering her relationship with each of them ranges from indifferent to actively hostile.
  • For several readers, Feyre slips into this regarding the Spring Court debacle in the third book. While her being royally pissed at Tamlin for what he did to her and her family is understandable, she ends up intentionally destabilizing and causing a civil war within Tamlin's court that potentially leaves thousands of people dead or displaced, all to get revenge on Tamlin. And it ends up working in the villain's favor to boot, as the Spring Court is the last line of defence between Prythian and the human realm. Feyre does get called out on it a bit, but otherwise experiences no negative repercussions and doesn't even seem to care about it all that much, saying that Tamlin had it coming with little thought given to the many innocent people who wound up as collateral damage (not to mention she drags an unwitting Lucien - her supposed friend - into her plot, putting him in a dangerous position with Tamlin). The situation can make Feyre come across less as being righteously angry, more extremely petty and self-absorbed.
  • Rhysand is increasingly viewed this way, especially after A Court of Silver Flames. A lot of this is down to the fact he often does rather morally questionable things in the name of the 'greater good', but all his actions are constantly glossed over or justified in some way, and he's often presented as right. Some readers find he's not much different from Tamlin in terms of allying with a villain from desperation and doing unsavory things to protect Feyre (the worst of which includes drugging and sexually harassing her ^note his reasoning for doing so is arguably rather flimsy seeing as Tamlin is already pissed at Amarantha and he later admits part of it was just to get back at Tamlin for their personal conflict and hiding the fact her pregnancy could kill her and her unborn child). However, Tamlin gets constantly vilified by the narrative for this behavior, while Rhys does not. Some readers have also noted that while Rhysand is devoted to protecting those he sees as family and the citizens in Velaris, he doesn't seem to care all that much about anyone else, even other places in the Night Court such as the Hewn City, and he's still willing to deceive and manipulate those he loves for his own gain.
  • Cassian comes off as insensitive at best and creepy at worst during his interaction with Nesta in Wings and Embers. They barely know each other yet he finds it appropriate to question her about her sex life (i.e. whether she's a virgin, if she prefers men or women) and doesn't back off even when she tells him it's none of his business. And when she inadvertently reveals she has been sexually assaulted (her ex-fiance attempted to rape her when she broke up with him), Cassian's response is to grab her arm to keep her from leaving and demand to know more; he also then thinks it's a good idea to engage in rough foreplay with her, including pinning her in place even when she tries to get away. For some readers Cassian fully had it coming when Nesta knees him in the groin and tells him not to come back.
• Two big ones in The Demon's Lexicon.
  • Seb. It starts well enough, with his genuine regret for his bullying of Jamie, which is even revealed to be because he's an Armored Closet Gay who was terrified of his attraction to him. But then he's revealed to be a magician, despite which we're still supposed to think he's a nice guy whose eventual Heel–Face Turn was inevitable. Just one problem: before that turn there are not one but two scenes where the other magicians, in his presence, threaten to kill a little kid, and he doesn't raise a single word of protest. It doesn't even come off as him being too scared to speak up; his presence is simply ignored.
  • Helen. She's supposed to be seen as a Worthy Opponent who simply sides with the magicians out of pragmatism. Except at the end of book 2 she murders Annabel without a second thought, and despite her posing no real threat. This makes her Heel–Face Turn come off more as a Karma Houdini who's still just as evil, and just biding her time until she can show her true colors again.
• From The Dresden Files: In the short story "Bombshells", Andi slaps Molly for staying at Butters' house, and then shoves her against a wall. Apparently, it's because this would attract attention to Butters. We're supposed to see this as Molly getting called out for not giving mind to her allies' well-being. However, considering that Butters volunteered his place as somewhere for her to stay, the fact that she would be homeless otherwise, and her use of it primarily to do things like sleep, bathe, and eat means that Andi comes off looking absurdly petty, and yet Molly is the one who has to apologise.
• In the first two or three Evernight books, Adrian is intended to be a flawed yet loving parent to Bianca, but there are times - particularly in Stargazer – when he borders on being emotionally abusive. His overprotectiveness of Bianca tends to manifest as constantly lying to her, treating her like a child (while also criticizing her maturity) and dismissing her concerns or opinions on important matters. Bianca's mother Celia can also be overprotective but she at least tries to understand where Bianca is coming from and makes an effort to meet her halfway, while Adrian snaps her at for so much as disagreeing with him, says Bianca has no choice about becoming a full vampire with no room for discussion, and criticises her friends simply for being human. He also gets angry because his daughter may or may not be having a sexual relationship with Balthazar, even though she's almost eighteen, he's been actively encouraging a relationship between them (which is a bit creepy considering that Balthazar is actually older than his own wife) and it's really none of his business. When Bianca cuts her parents off because of the lies they told her, Adrian has the nerve to act like she's just being a typical rebellious teenager over a 'little thing' like lying to her about what she is her entire life, and even tries to guilt trip her by telling her how much she's 'hurting' her mother, with little acknowledgement of much Bianca might be hurting from all this.^spoilersFor context, they never told Bianca they conceived her by making a bargain with the wraiths, who now seek to claim her as one of their own (which involves killing her). Her parents knew all along the wraiths would come for her and have been endangering everyone around her, but they hoped she would just unquestioningly become a full vampire without ever finding out. They also never told her that if she didn’t become a vampire, she’d inevitably become a wraith, which she and her loved ones find out the hard way Luckily, he redeems himself in the fourth book by immediately and unconditionally accepting Bianca after learning she's a wraith.
• Fifty Shades of Grey:
  • Christian Grey. We're supposed to feel sorry for him because he was hungry as a child, his mother was, in his words, "a crack whore" who died when he was small, and her pimp was abusive. This supposedly justifies all his current abusive behaviour. Also despite using his past as a means to guilt-trip Ana, he never thinks about helping the 15.9 million American kids who suffer from hunger every year, despite definitely having the means to do so. It eventually got worse with the release of Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey As Told by Christian when many, including some fans, were turned off by his internal thoughts where he comes out as a creepy stalker.
  • Anastasia Steele can come off as highly judgemental and lacking in empathy. In her first scene, she continually whines internally about having to do her best friend Kate's interview for her, even though she willingly volunteered herself; she's also annoyed at Kate for getting flu. Ana has extremely negative opinions on BDSM, at one point referring to Christian as a "monster" simply because he has a sex dungeon. While some of this could be explained by Ana being uneducated on BDSM and having only Christian as a example (which is a pretty poor example admittedly), all throughout the trilogy she tends to think of Christian as being 'damaged' or 'sick' largely because of his sexual kinks, as opposed to things like his lack of boundaries, manipulative tendencies, mood swings and extreme jealousy. Ana is almost as paranoid and territorial as Christian when it comes to romantic jealousy, constantly making negative remarks about women in her narration; she assumes they're all trying to steal her man, gives them disparaging nicknames and occasionally slut-shames them. Ana standing up to Gia for allegedly flirting with Christian is meant to be empowering, but lots of readers found that Ana instead comes off as needlessly hostile. Her cattiness even extends to women who aren't romantic rivals and have only been kind to her, such as likening Christian's grandmother doting on her as her "being all over me like a rash" and judging Kate for hooking up with Ethan (even though Ana herself hooks up with Christian). Ana's behavior is intended to depict her as insecure and naive, but rather than make her sympathetic, it makes her look childish and small-minded, while also undermining her characterization as a supposedly kind, giving person.
• In The Firebrand, a wife argues with her husband about his decision to kill their newborn son, who is prophecied to bring doom upon their city. It's a justifiable point, but her arguments are ridiculously, unnecessarily, misandrist. Apparently their son should live because she's a woman and she says so - not because they love him, or it would be the right thing to do.
  "What right has a man over children?"
• The Wretch in Frankenstein. On one hand, yes, he is a Woobie whose long rants about his sore life are difficult to refute and is arguably an even more sympathetic character than the man who created him. But on the other, he's killing people who have done nothing to him just because he knows it'll hurt the title character. To make matters worse, he knows exactly what he is doing and is thus consciously evil. It's hard to see him as a Tragic Monster when he murders by choice.
• Kerim in From Russia with Love becomes this on sheer force of Values Dissonance. When describing his past to Bond, he blithely admits to kidnapping, false imprisonment, and Attempted Rape he committed as a rowdy teen, and his present-day self's reflection on this is essentially, "Oh I sure was stupid as a kid, huh? Besides, she didn't hold it against me." Keep in mind that even for the '50s Kerim was clearly intended as an Unscrupulous Hero - he shows himself to be okay with gunning down a fleeing opponent, for one, something Bond mentally notes he'd never do - but to modern readers taking him seriously as a protagonist at all can be difficult.
• Goosebumps has its fair share of protagonists that lived crappy lives even before their ordeals and are written for the readers to sympathize. However, some of them can come off as rather querulous, annoying, or just do a bunch of dumb decisions that would make the readers lose sympathy for them they were meant to gain from them. These are the specific protagonists that fall towards this trope:
  • Evan Ross becomes this in Monster Blood II. He is portrayed as a social outcast who is promptly spurned by the other kids and receives punishment by his science teacher. Problem is he loses every ounce of sympathy from the readers since the reason he was even ostracized in the first place was because he was dumb enough to tell everyone else about the Monster Blood he bought at the toy store, believing anyone would believe him and he would get popularity for it, despite the fact that it gives him nightmares. To top it off, the reason he was punished in the first place is because he was daydreaming in class about the stuff. It makes him come across as a complete moron, and along with his querulous attitude, it really isn't a wonder why he is a loser to begin with.
  • Sarah Maas in The Curse of Camp Cold Lake is considered this as well. While she is portrayed as socially awkward and rather shy, it's a bit difficult to sympathize with her when not only does she come off as annoyingly whiny, she comes off as rather egocentric when she compels one of the bunkmates to relinquish her bunk just to sleep on a bunk not close to the window (and not on the top bunk since she rolls around when she sleeps and is afraid to fall off), comes up with the dumbest plan to pretend to drown at such a poorly desperate attempt to get the others to sympathize with her, and becomes a complete bitch towards her brother, the only character in the whole story who has actually treated her with genuine kindness compared to anyone else in the book, right after he gives her helpful advice (and then acts surprised when he gets angry with her after she shoves him hard on the ground, because she "hates that he's sensible"). Her hallucinations of Della being everywhere she goes also kind of make it hard for many readers to feel bad for her when you consider that it was all brought on herself since the reason all this happened in the first place was because she tried to drown herself just to get others to sympathize with her, believing it would make her friends. If anything, the twist at the end is more of a cathartic feeling than anything else.
  • Joe Burton from Revenge Of The Lawn Gnomes. He's meant to be a cute prankster kid but mainly just comes across as annoying, and his sister Mindy, who we aren't supposed to side with, comes across as a lot more reasonable and sympathetic.
  • Greg Banks from Say Cheese and Die!, particularly the sequel. It's harder to sympathize with him when his teacher and classmates make fun of him for his weight gain considering the fact that the reason he gained weight in the first place was because he was foolish enough to retrieve the evil camera that caused harm to his family and even death last year. Even in the first book, he continued taking pictures of his friends and family with the camera, not being able to put two and two together and figure out that it was dangerous after it caused harm to happen each time he snapped a picture. On top of that, Greg was also dumb enough to include his misadventures with the camera in his class report, believing that a teacher such as Sourball Saur (or anyone not named Shari, Michael, or Bird for that matter) would actually believe such a story that would seem implausible to a normal person instead of just a regular, more believable summer story. So the grade his teacher gave him on his report was well-deserved.
  • Eddie from You Can't Scare Me! His obsession with scaring Courtney due to jealousy comes off as pathetic and even borders on bullying. Plus, despite being generally annoying, Courtney never actually does anything to hurt him or his friends.
  • Some fans perceive Samantha Byrd from Be Careful What You Wish For... as this, since she keeps making dumb wishes despite knowing how dangerous and unpredictable Clarissa's magic can be, and thus most of the stuff that happens to her after meeting Clarissa is self-inflicted (Judith stalking her, her turning into a bird).
  • Tim Swanson in Bad Hare Day is portrayed as the character who is underappreciated by everyone around him, including his parents, as no one seems interested in his love for magic. However, it's very difficult to commiserate with him when not only does he claim the crowd should extol his magical act despite not being very talented of a magician, he's an awful friend towards Foz, he steals the magical kit from his idol, he's a compulsive liar, and when his sister gets transformed into a rabbit, Tim is far more worried of the fact that he might get into trouble with his parents and not showing any concern for his sister in the slightest. Needless to say, no one feels bad for him when he is transformed into a rabbit himself as his idol's assistant.
• Caine for a lot of the series Gone, particularly in Plague. You're supposed to see him as a misguided and twisted person, but ultimately understandable. But it's hard to feel sorry for him when he takes advantage of and abuses Diana, the only person who actually cares about him. This was fixed in Light for a lot of fans, though.
• Harry Potter:
  • Cho in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The reader is obviously supposed to feel sorry for her because her boyfriend Cedric died, but she comes across as a demanding and whiny brat who hasn't sought out any help in dealing with her current emotional situation and repeatedly demands that Harry talk with her about it, despite him not wanting to talk about it, because he not only also saw Cedric die, but also was fearing for his own life at the time and has been suffering from PTSD and nightmares of being back in the graveyard and bringing it up in every situation won't help. The fact that Cho sees nothing wrong with the fact that her friend Marietta Edgecombe ratted everyone out to Umbridge, which had the consequence of Dumbledore being forced to leave Hogwarts among other things makes her come across as selfish and incapable of seeing her part in it. After all, she was the one who dragged the friend, who didn't want to partake because she feared it would endanger her mother's job security, to the meetings.
  • Wizarding society as a whole falls into this a fair bit. They treat things like love drugs or vicious pranks as something on par with a kick-me sign and consider wiping memories en masse or employing a Slave Race to be similarly harmless. The government is hopelessly corrupt and ill-functioning, and the school isn't that much better. While some of these issues, such as anti-Muggleborn or anti-werewolf prejudice, are depicted as legitimate problems in their society, others are casually said and done by heroic characters and meant to come across as quirky or silly rather than wrong. One of the most commonly stated criticisms of the epilogue is that despite the cheerful tone and the claim that "all was well," nothing substantial really appears to have changed and the whole thing comes off like an Esoteric Happy Ending.
• Zoey and her friends, in The House of Night series. The group as a whole are supposed to be outcasts known as "the nerd herd", but it's hard to see them as that when all of them are given extra-special powers directly from the vampire goddess. All of them have a tendency to be pretty rude to each other (most often it being the Twins constantly making gay jokes at the expense of Damien and Jack), which is meant as friendly ribbing but doesn't really come across as such. Zoey herself is extremely judgmental, dubbing many female characters (including ones we never even see in the series) as "sluts" and "hos", constantly making disparaging comments about the behaviors or appearances of people in various groups (this includes, but is not limited to, goths, emos, chess club members, cheerleaders, people who use too much eyeliner, people who smoke marijuana, women who give blowjobs, people with bright red hair, girls who take dance class, and homeless people). She's incredibly shallow, constantly focusing on outward appearance first and foremost. She constantly complains about suffering stress from the various hardships she has to deal with, but she does virtually nothing to solve the problems herself. Instead, she waits until the end of the book, when Nyx magically tells her what to do and gives her the powers to do it. When we see her meeting her mother on her birthday, she constantly reacts in a condescending manner, and makes no effort at all to reach her mother halfway on any attempts made to bond with her.
• Patch, from Hush, Hush. We're meant to feel sorry for him for losing his status as a well-respected archangel and the mortal woman he loved, as well as pity him for lacking the ability to feel things. Trouble is, he chose to abandon his job and home for a girl he hardly knew. Upon losing his wings, he sought out a Nephilim and forced the poor guy to be his slave for eternity, stealing his body for two weeks out of the year (and with the Nephilim able to feel everything). In other words, his situation is entirely his fault, but he never really acknowledges it. Oh, and his ultimate plan to become human and fix his problems centers around murdering an unsuspecting girl. He doesn't go through with it, but he does lure her to a motel room and hold her on the bed while threatening her, which is supposed to be steamy but comes across as something else entirely.
• In the YA novel Ill Give You The Sun, we're supposed to see Dianna Sweetwine, mother of Jude and Noah, as a loving but flawed mother who is an incurable romantic and her death tragic. But when you look at how everyone else reacts to her decisions in the novel, she comes off incredibly selfish and irresponsible. Noah's sections of the story make it very clear that his parents are unhappily married and it's later revealed that Dianna is in love with Guillermo and on the night of her death, she was going to propose to him and divorce her husband. But she shows absolutely no regard to how her husband feels, nor do we ever see her trying to fix the marriage as she claims she has when confronted by her son - she instigates the separation and Benjamin is shown utterly miserable without her, losing weight, barely sleeping, while Dianna blossoms and acts as if nothing is wrong. Sure, you can't help who you fall in love with, but she never seems to take the feelings of her husband or children into consideration, even though she insists to Noah that she still very much loves him and his sister. Her treatment of Jude is also quite painful to read about, almost bordering on emotional abuse, as she clearly prefers Noah over her daughter and on the day of her death, she and Jude have an enormous fight where she subtly SlutShames her own daughter and throughout the book seems to constantly neglect Jude (including leaving her behind at an art museum and not even noticing she wasn't there - when she and Noah realise and drive back for her, Jude is huddled up on the street outside, clearly having been crying) or chip away at her fragile self-esteem. It doesn't help that Jude blames herself for her mother's death and is wracked with grief over what happened, even though it was entirely Dianna's fault and Dianna spends the separation exclusively comforting Noah, not Jude, who is far closer to Benjamin than Noah.
• In In a Minute, Mom, all of the non-Rory characters are supposed to be sympathetic for being frequently inconvenienced by their son/brother/friend delaying answering their requests. However, the only one who actually comes off as sympathetic is Rory's friend — his family made him pay for the delaying by doing it back to him, which comes across as mean because it's conniving and resembles Copycat Mockery. Particularly mean-seeming is Tina, Rory's older sister, since the thing she made him wait to do was use the toilet.
• Jeff the Killer: One of the most common criticisms of this story is that Jeff falls into this. He's meant to be seen as a Tragic Villain who snapped after the severe physical and mental trauma he went through. However, many people think he loses the "tragic" angle when he murders his own family, who mostly hadn't done anything to deserve it. While killing his mother could be seen as a twisted form of self defense given that she told her husband to get the gun and kill Jeff and he just caught her saying this, his father did not agree to her request or even have a chance to before Jeff killed them both, and barring some minor negligence, he really had nothing to do with his son's suffering. The implication that he killed his brother Liu as well especially makes people abandon sympathy for him considering the fact that Liu took the fall for a crime Jeff was accused of committing and went to juvie for him.
• The main characters of Left Behind are supposedly models of great Christian virtue who we are supposed to support, sympathise with and emulate. Critics of the series are more likely to describe them as callous, spineless, misogynistic, self-righteous knobs.
• Pedro from Like Water for Chocolate. He only marries Rosaura de la Garza to be close to her sister Josefita aka Tita (who's stuck as The Dutiful Daughter), heavily neglects Rosaura which furthers her increasing Jerkassery and ultimately destroys her and Tita's already shaky relationship, causes poor Tita quite the misery as well (and she doesn't forget to call him out on it), and years later bullies and pressures Tita when Nice Guy Dr. Brown shows interest in her. (Not to mention, he barely seems to acknowledge his and Rosaura's children unless it's needed for the plot.) So, Pedro is supposed to be Tita's One True Love and the right guy for her... why?
• Marcus Yallow, The Hero of Little Brother. You're supposed to feel sorry for him because of the abuse he goes through from the Department of Homeland Security, but he comes off as incredibly self-righteous. During the book, he gets into an argument with his father, who agrees with the DHS's methods, but he had every right to since for several days, Marcus was missing after the terrorist attack that triggered the book's conflict. He regularly ignores his friends' warnings that he shouldn't pick fights with the government. Finally, him being monitored by the DHS is his own fault because he did nothing but make himself look suspicious at the beginning of the book. He used his hacking skills to cut school, and according to his principal, it wasn't even the first time he used hacking to screw around in school. When he got interrogated, he refused to hand his phone over to the Big Bad of the story. Not because he had anything incriminating on it, but because of the principle of privacy. Finally, to make a point to his father, he tampers with the DHS's security system to cause a city-wide halt on everything, but that leads to the DHS to start increasing security, making things worse for Marcus. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero at its finest.
• Melanies Marvellous Measles: Tina's mother is supposed to be the voice of reason because she's the Ms. Exposition. However, she's often hated by readers because she claims measles is harmless and even deliberately sets her daughter up on a playdate with a measles-ridden girl in hopes she'll catch it.
• The Mister: While he's not as obnoxious as Christian Grey, Maxim Trevelyan is introduced remorselessly having sex with his dead brother's wife just two days after the funeral. He doesn't really improve from there, coming across as a hedonistic and irresponsible Upper-Class Twit who has never done any real work. He does help Alessia hide from the sex traffickers who are after her, but this is undermined by his narration revealing he has the ulterior motive of getting into bed with her; he also constantly thinks about her in sexual terms even after learning of her past (to the point it feels like he's objectifiying her rather than simply finding her attractive) and shows his affection for her by constantly buying her expensive things - thus making her feel indebted to him - which is an astoundingly ignorant way to treat a trafficking victim. While this could be justified as him lacking education around this subject and being overly sheltered due to his privileged life, he makes little effort to rectify this. He also doesn't seem nearly as concerned as one might expect about the woman he loves being kidnapped, wastes a lot of time on trivial stuff while he's meant to be rescuing her and seems to severely underestimate her plight.
• In Moonlight Becomes You, Neil's attempts to track down Maggie in Newport and insistence on helping her investigate Nuala's murder is intended to show how much he loves Maggie and wants to prove this to her after his previous neglect. While Neil's actions are well-intentioned and Maggie states in the end she doesn't mind his protectiveness as it's nice to have someone looking out for her, Neil can at times come off as rather pushy and borderline stalkerish towards Maggie. She tends to find his attempts to insert himself into her life frustrating and is outright cold towards him sometimes, yet Neil persists in trying to get to her to open up to him, telling her what to do and showing up to her home uninvited. It's not like they're in a relationship either; despite their mutual attraction, at this point they're still just friends who have only known each other for six months, so Neil can seem a little overly familiar and presumptuous (Maggie herself even calls him out on this).
• Alec Lightwood from The Mortal Instruments qualifies several times for this. When Clary realizes that he is gay and, in addition, falls in love with his parabatai, he hits her with full force against a massive wall. Alec is a trained and superhuman shadowhunter, and he believes Clary is a mundane at the time. A real mundane he would probably have hurt in this way, significantly.
  • In the course of the plot, he falls in love with Magnus Bane. After spending some time together, Alec realizes that as a warlock, Magnus will live considerably longer than he does. When Camille offers to take his immortality from Magnus, Alec immediately agrees. Understandably, Magnus is very angry about this, but can thwart this plan. When Alec and Magnus come to an argument and a split, Alec blames the vampire Camille for this, and plans to killing her.
  • Alec is constantly lamenting that everyone is discriminating against him for his homosexuality. He simply overlooks the fact that there are already people who accept him as he is, including his sister and his parabatai. And even though he is treated unfairly more than once for this reason, morally, he is no better because he openly shows his racism against vampires. Of course, apart from Simon.
    • He even openly admits to Simon that he has racial reservations about vampires and does not like him getting intimate with Alec's sister Isabelle.
  • Alec kills the half-fairy Meliorn from a short distance with an arrow. And although Meliorn is anything but innocent, in this case he was still a person who was completely unarmed and already defeated on the ground. This is nothing but a cold-blooded murder.
  • Alec is still doing enough heroic things not to be a designated hero, but compared to the other protagonists, he's quite a bastard.
• November 9:
  • Ben has several instances of this (he's also considered a Designated Hero by many readers).
    • Ben is intended to be someone who doesn't judge Fallon for her scars and encourages her to not base her self-worth around them or others' opinions on them. However, the way he does this makes him come across as condescending and presumptuous, completely dismissing Fallon's feelings towards the situation and essentially dictating how she should react to it; it particularly sticks out considering they barely know each other. It doesn't help that Ben's approach also tends to revolve around heavily sexualizing Fallon and pushing her to do things like wearing revealing clothes and exposing her breasts to him despite her saying no and expressing discomfort, giving the impression it's more about Ben wanting self-gratification than making Fallon feel better about herself. It gets ten times worse when it's revealed Ben himself is responsible for Fallon's scars and trauma.
    • Ben is Easily Forgiven for starting the fire that scarred Fallon and irrevocably changed her life because he was a grieving teenager who didn't intend to hurt anyone. However, this overlooks that he chose to commit arson for extremely silly reasons, with grief for his mother just not covering it; there was no logical reason for him to assume Donovan had anything to do with his mother's suicide and it's indeed confirmed he wasn't a factor in her decision. Rather than confront Donovan, Ben's response was to commit a violent and dangerous criminal act with no proof of wrongdoing. While Ben didn't mean to harm anyone, it doesn't change the fact that his actions did cause serious long-term harm to Fallon, which he never truly accepts responsibility for or does anything to make amends over. His subsequent deception of Fallon only makes it worse, with his actions coming off more as an attempt to make himself feel better.
  • Fallon is much more sympathetic than Ben, especially given the plot twist, but there are moments where she comes off as irrational, self-centered and short-sighted to the point of frustration. During the third year, her initial response to Ben telling her he can't meet her because his brother died is focused more around her disappointment that Ben will miss their date than feeling empathy for Ben's grief. She also thinks little of ditching Ben in the middle of the night, while he's still in mourning and without even a goodbye, because she decided on her own Ben should stay in California with his family (the last time they spoke, they'd planned for Ben to move to New York with her). She fails to explain her reasoning and comes off as either dense or callous towards Ben's feelings, especially when she claims it hurts her more. She later acts like Ben betrayed her by moving in with Jordyn, even though it's been a year with no contact, she failed to make her feelings clear despite having plenty of time and opportunity to do so and they were never in a committed relationship; at best they hung out a few times and slept together once, plus their arrangement permitted and even encouraged them to date other people. On an unrelated note, some readers found Fallon's comment about pad Thai and sushi being the "almost the same thing" because "they're both Asian" to be ignorant, not to mention just plain wrong; her comment about how Ben couldn't be gay because "No gay man I know would have left the house looking like you do right now" also rubbed readers the wrong way due to stereotyping gay men.
  • Fallon's mother comes off as insensitive and unempathetic towards Fallon near the ending, when she reads Ben's manuscript and urges her daughter to read it too and forgive Ben. Fallon's mother says that Fallon is disregarding how much pain Ben is in, completely overlooking and being apparently unbothered by the fact Ben traumatised and nearly killed her daughter with his selfish and reckless behaviour, kept this from her for all the time they knew each other while engaging in an intimate relationship with her and ended up re-traumatising her when she found out. She also doesn't seem to care that Ben violated a restraining order to get back in contact with Fallon. Nor does it help that she's basing a lot of her opinion upon Ben's manuscript for a fiction book; she has no way of knowing how factual it is and has never even met Ben in person. Overall, Fallon's mother cares more about coddling Ben than protecting her own daughter.
  • The mother of Ben, Ian and Kyle comes off as quite selfish and bone-headed based on what little information we're given about her. While it's understandable she would want to end her life on her own terms after being diagnosed with likely-terminal ovarian cancer, she loses a lot of sympathy because she utterly failed to explain this to her sons; they didn't even know she had cancer until they read her suicide note, so they were completely blindsided by her death and not given a chance to say goodbye to her despite this absolutely being an option, compounding their grief. To make matters worse, she chose to end her life in a way that resulted in her sixteen-year-old son finding her corpse (as she'd shot herself, it was especially gruesome), which severely traumatised him.
• Emerald “Emry” Blair in Only Superhuman is presented as a Broken Bird, but all her pain is self-inflicted. She spent several years as a juvenile delinquent and mod-gang member called Banshee. This was a rebellion against her father, who was once a member of the Vanguard habitat-nation. However while the other members were legitimate victims of Abusive Parents she ran away because she blamed her father for her mother’s death. While they just wanted some place to belong. Her recklessness Serial Escalation not only nearly led to two of her friends death but the death of an innocent person. Since it was entirely her fault her My God, What Have I Done? didn’t hold much water.
  • She also comes across as a Karma Houdini as she got Off on a Technicality and was Easily Forgiven by her victim. What truly makes her this is that even after she nearly killed someone she still hated her father going so far as to disowned him. When he tried to reach out to her after this. Her response to this is to become angrier and blame him for not being there for her when he was forced to keep tabs on her because she violently refused to stay with him.
  • She never even bothered to find out who actually killed her mother. Specifically invoking her mother’s memory for why she didn’t do it. Stating that she didn’t want to make her an excuse for hurting someone (even though she did) but had no problem making her an excuse for hating her father. It took seven years and finding out he was dead to forgive him
  • It’s also telling that she didn’t blame Arkady the Troubleshooters that was present during her mother’s death. He even vouched for her to become a troubleshooter. While her becoming a troubleshooter could be seen as was atonement. She completely misses the point. Her obsession with modifying her body came across as another way to spite him then guilt over her actions. As it was more for her mother and the fact that she couldn’t save her friends then guilt over how she treated her father
• In Krystal Sutherland's Our Chemical Hearts, Martin and Mary Sawyer are minor but important characters whom the narrative treats as near-saints, which ignores the fact that situations becoming as bad as they did was largely their fault. To elaborate, they adopted their son Dominic's girlfriend Grace to get her away from her abusive mother, but a few years later, Dominic was killed in a car accident, which traumatized Grace and caused her to blame herself. The Sawyers continue to provide for Grace, which only feeds her feelings of resentment toward herself as she feels she doesn't "deserve" their love, and sets out to deliberately ruin her own life, up to the point of physically mutilating herself, to repay what she sees as a "debt" to him, with her mental health only growing worse after she falls for the protagonist Henry despite not being finished grieving for Dom. The Sawyers are, apparently, entirely content with letting her flagellate herself, and it's never even mentioned if they found her a therapist. We're supposed to see both Henry and Grace as having entered their relationship for selfish, unhealthy reasons, but not once are the Sawyers called out for their own selfishness and neglectfulness.
• The Railway Series:
  • It's rather difficult to sympathise with the barber from "A Close Shave" when he's angry at Duck for crashing into his shop, considering that he somehow thought it was a good idea to set up shop at the end of a train track without any buffers. While he does get a Jerkass Realization when the Fat Controller explains to him that Duck prevented a more serious accident^note though the barber and his customers would have most likely all been killed if this was real life, nobody In-Universe calls him out on his lethal stupidity regarding where he set up shop.
  • Similarly, the stationmaster and his family from "Thomas Comes to Breakfast" are rather unsympathetic. While Thomas wrecked their house after taking his driver's joke about not needing him anymore way too seriously, the stationmaster's family could have easily avoided their situation if they had simply chosen a sensible place to live, instead of, you know, at the end of a train track. The fact that Thomas could only move because a careless cleaner had meddled with his controls, and gets blamed for the accident while the cleaner receives no punishment, doesn't do the family any favours either.
• Jane Rizzloi of the Rizzoli & Isles books. Certainly the first one. The reader is presumably meant to empathize with her feelings of inadequacy regarding her plain looks and struggling for recognition at work and in her own family, but she comes across as so unlikable that it's difficult. Her dislike and resentment of Catherine Cordell—a woman who was drugged, raped, and nearly disemboweled by a psychopath and is now being stalked by a copycat—for no reason other than that Catherine is beautiful and her warped belief that Catherine stole her partner's affections from her don't do her any favors either. It's also hard to sympathize with her jealously of beautiful women when she practically refuses to put any effort into fixing herself up — the Serial Killer that she's tracking is among the people who note that she'd look prettier if she wore makeup and more flattering clothes.
• The protagonist of Sad Book is meant to be The Woobie because he's grieving his mother and son, feels he has to hide his sadness, and he states that he's "sad, not bad". However, he admits to doing "bad things" to vent his sadness, that are too bad to tell about and "it isn't fair on the cat". No matter how sad he is, he has no right to do things that are unfair to his cat, and if he can't control himself, he should give the cat away rather than continue to do the unfair things.
• Searching For Davids Heart: On one hand, given her circumstances, we're supposed to feel sorry for Darcy throughout the story; on the other hand, she often displays selfish, sometimes callous, and overly Wangsty behavior towards her equally-unsympathetic friends and family.
• Serge Storms:
  • In The Stingray Shuffle, entertainment troupe members Andy, Frankie, Dave, Jeff, Saul, and Spider are portrayed as downtrodden, amiable underdogs who (minus Saul, who dies of a stroke) get a happy change in circumstances in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue. This is in spite of how (unlike one or two of their friends) they are completely indifferent toward their hypnotist Preston's penchant for using his craft to subject women and teenaged girls to a Bed Trick ploy (although Spider has the excuse of being under hypnosis himself, causing him to fixate on other stuff throughout most of his page time).
  • Even some people who love hammy Vigilante Man and Anti-Hero Serge throughout the series as a whole and/or dislike rude and self-centered Girl of the Week Rachael from Atomic Lobster admit that Serge's treatment of Rachael can get very creepy and unpleasant. Shortly after meeting her, Serge unilaterally announces that they're going to have sex because she is dancing erotically and he is such a Chick Magnet. He twists Rachael's arm when she initially ignores him to keep dancing (although a Gilligan Cut makes it possible that she did consent before the actual sex), and "thrust[s] violently" to deliberately hurt her when she annoys him as they copulate (something which he repeats during a later scene). While Rachael ultimately turns out to enjoy having sex with Serge, being hurt in the middle of sex and hurting Serge back, many fans still find Serge's actions throughout that subplot to be worse than plenty of things Serge has killed Asshole Victims over. It doesn't help that Serge is openly happy at finally having an excuse to kill Rachael in the climax after she turns out to be the sister of his old accomplice turned victim Sharon and tries to kill him and Coleman. Serge also tells another woman he sleeps with (he and Rachael are seemingly polyamorous) that "No" Means "Yes" when she initially asks him to stop his advances. Finally, while Serge is unusually heroic in the book's A-plot, protecting his friends Jim and Martha Davenports from killers, he also gets a Kick the Dog moment when he and Rachael roleplay as the Davenports during sex. Serge's Jim impression is noticeably more insulting and crude than Rachael's Martha impression, and he knows that Jim is within earshot. In the very next book, Serge assumes his new Girl of the Week will have sex with him again because they did the previous night, but drops the issue when she refutes this notion, but whether this mitigates his previous actions or makes their wrongness more pronounced is debatable.
• In Shadow Song, we're told that Bobo Murphy and Amy Lourie/Myers aren't in particularly happy marriages, and their chance meeting at Avrum's funeral is portrayed as fulfilment of a destiny, a teenage romance finally getting a chance to bloom away from meddling parents and whatnot. It's certainly portrayed as romantic, but at the end of the day, they are cheating on their spouses.
• Okonkwo, the protagonist of Things Fall Apart is meant to illustrate both the good and bad sides of the rich Igbo culture that was destroyed by the European colonists. But he seems to have far, far more of the bad side in him, given he's a racist, sexist control freak with few to no redeeming qualities who savagely beats his own son after they convert to Christianity, causing them to leave the family and whose actions are looked down on by his fellow Igbo. The finale of the book where he kills himself is meant to be tragic or at least an Alas, Poor Villain moment, but it can instead come across as justice being served.
• Janie from Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her first husband spends the first few months of their marriage waiting on her hand and foot, but when he eventually starts expecting her to pull her weight around the farm she runs off with the first young hottie she sees. She even tells her grandmother that Husband #1 is completely incapable of ever being loved by anyone...because he's ugly. Her issues with Husband #2 are more legit (he hits her at one point), but even then it's hard to sympathize—unlike Husband #1, he doesn't want her to work much, but then she just complains more about being bored and how the little work she has (watching the store) is too much math for her poor little head. Then she tells him off on his deathbed and at one point blames all her problems on her dead grandma, who told her not to run off with Husband #2 in the first place. Jeez!
• In Trixie and Dan's interactions in the Trixie Belden book The Black Jacket Mystery, neither of them are portrayed as completely innocent. Trixie, however, is the main character, and it is obvious from the narration that the audience is supposed to side with her. However, looking at the book from Dan's perspective, a sheltered, spoiled, wealthy girl who is loved by all continually belittles and insults him, destroys his chances of turning over a new leaf, temporarily ruins his relationship with his uncle, and makes false accusations against him, and leads to a dangerous criminal being able to go undetected. It's a wonder why Dan bothered becoming friends with Trixie afterward, let alone saving her and her younger brother's life at the end of the book.
• The Twilight Saga:
  • Bella Swan whose helplessness, constant whining, frequent disdain for other people, and lack of any real problems cause many to regard her as little more than a whiner. Ditto for her love, Edward, who is so smug and perfect that it's hard to care about any emotional issues he has.
  • The Cullens in general could count. They are held up as the epitome of generosity and goodness. Even so, they generally are cold and anti-social to anyone who isn't another vampire or Bella, they are hostile towards the werewolves even though some (for example, Alice) never even met the werewolves before, and they are perfectly fine with letting vampires that do drink human blood hang around the area. Apparently their desire to protect humans only counts as long as they themselves are killing, and so long as the human isn't Bella. Also, every one of them except for Carlisle has killed at least once in their past, and recollections of said murders are generally treated as embarrassing incidents that are swept aside.
    • There's a scene in Breaking Dawn where the Cullens invite a bunch of vampires into town and give them keys to their cars so that they can feed on humans from out of town, because apparently their friends murdering people is okay so long as they don't know the people being murdered.
  • From the latter half of New Moon and on, Jacob generally becomes this. His endless pining after Bella, even though it's obvious she'll always choose Edward over him, makes him come across as pretty dense (and also raises the question of what he finds so great about her that he constantly returns for more abuse). In Eclipse we're meant to feel sorry for him for being rejected, but he becomes unlikable when he continuously guilt-trips Bella into showing affection for him. This reaches its peak when, upon finding out she got engaged to Edward, he threatens to let himself die in battle if she doesn't kiss him... and then complains mid-makeout session that she's not putting her all into it. Any sympathy Jacob still has is lost in Breaking Dawn, when he becomes infatuated with a baby. Thanks to convenient superfast aging, she looks 17 by the end of the book, but he's still helping to change her diapers while planning to later make out with her, making him look like a pedophile grooming an infant for sex. Which he is. Naturally, this is presented as romantic.
• Ugly Love
  • Miles:
    • While Miles' backstory (losing his mother to cancer, his father almost immediately moving on with another woman and his girlfriend leaving him after their baby died) is undoubtedly tragic, a lot of readers felt this didn't justify or excuse his selfish and callous treatment of Tate. Despite claiming he only wants sex from her, Miles sometimes treats Tate more like a girlfriend, only to coldly rebuff her if she tries to reciprocate; this includes telling her he wishes he could love her, thus giving her false hope. He gets annoyed or gives her the silent treatment if she asks him personal questions or unwittingly triggers him, but he utterly fails to explain why it upsets him and just takes out his frustrations on her. Even after becoming aware that Tate has deeper feelings for him and that his lack of reciprocity hurts her, Miles continues to use her for sex. That Tate is his best friend's sister but he's still willing to sneak around with her behind Corbin's back also didn't go over well with some readers. While Miles does get called out for his treatment of Tate in the end, he gets Easily Forgiven by everyone after telling Tate he loves her, with not much acknowledgement of how awful his behaviour was or what he's going to do to change.
    • Besides his poor treatment of Tate, some readers felt that Miles' behaviour towards Rachel came off as weirdly obsessive and entitled rather than truly loving. The moment he meets her, he's insisting that they have a special connection and will be together despite him barely having spoken to her and her giving him no indication she feels the same. He also internally says that she's "already mine", wants to let all the other boys in the room to know they have no claim on her and covertly takes pictures of her to show her off to his friends, blatantly objectifying her. His angst over supposedly being unable to be with her because their parents are in a relationship - technically making them stepsiblings - also struck some readers as eye-rollingly melodramatic because at this stage Miles has only known Rachel for a few days; in fact, he knows so little about her he didn't even know her mum was dating his dad.
  • Corbin's over-protective, My Sister Is Off-Limits schtick is treated as him being a loving older brother to Tate who wants what's best for her and just gets a bit over-zealous. However, there are several occasions where he instead comes across as controlling and patronising towards Tate, with little respect for her autonomy. Notably, he tells Tate he doesn't want her hanging around Dillon because he's beneath her, as opposed to him being a serial cheat and sexual predator. The response from Corbin and his friends to Dillon's unwanted overtures towards Tate and Corbin's reaction to Miles hooking up with her is based more around them not respecting him and getting his permission to be with his sister, as opposed to concern for Tate's well-being. Tate notes that he's been hostile towards both her past boyfriends and even her friends because he deems them unworthy, dismissing his sister's thoughts and opinions. He also seems repulsed to hear his sister is having sex, even though she's an adult and he's far from chaste either.
• The protagonist of Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War, John Rumford, is cashiered out of the US Marines when making a principled stand... by refusing to let a woman Marine honor the dead of Iwo Jima. Because, you see, no women fought at Iwo, therefore no woman deserves to honor the dead as a Marine. This is his character introduction, by the way, and it only goes downhill from here.
• Joane Walker from The Walker Papers. While admittedly having a metric ton of very good reason to be sullen, cynical, and unwilling to take up her intended calling of Shaman, the way she was written comes off as bitchy, idiotically immature, and obstinate out of spite towards the world, and her redeeming qualities are there just to artificially induce sympathy.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Depends on who you ask, but some people dislike Squirrelflight's treatment of Brambleclaw in the second half of The New Prophecy. After three books of slowly falling in love, Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw are on the verge of officially becoming mates, but when Brambleclaw befriends his half-brother, Hawkfrost, he and Squirrelflight have a falling out. Squirrelflight distrusts Hawkfrost and this distrust is ultimately proven right when he reveals himself to be an ambitious, murderous Manipulative Bastard. Judging by the authors' comments in Squirrelflight's Character Spotlight page and on other pages, readers are supposed to see her as being entirely in the right. However, some people argue that just because Squirrlflight was proven right about Hawkfrost in the end doesn't mean the way she acted and treated Brambleclaw was okay. As soon as Brambleclaw befriends Hawkfrost, Squirrelflight immediately loses her temper and starts yelling at him, berating him when he doesn't immediately agree with her and even though she has no concrete proof for her accusations. She even outright accuses him of being disloyal in front of their Clanmates, which only ends up pushing Brambleclaw away from Squirrelflight and into Hawkfrost's influence.
  • Ashfur. Canonically, he's in StarClan, and is not meant to be seen as evil, just passionate and heart-broken. However, his actions, involving attempted murder of Jayfeather, Hollyleaf, his former apprentice Lionblaze, and his own Clan leader, make him seem a lot more evil than he was intended to be. Many felt bad for him when he was an apprentice who lost his mother to Tigerstar's dogs, and even worse when Squirrelflight rejected his romantic feelings for Brambleclaw, but lost all love for him after he revealed himself to be a traitor who later had his crimes excused as "loving too much".The authors apparently changed their minds, as Ashfur later betrays StarClan and becomes the Big Bad of the seventh arc, all for the sake of being with Squirrelflight.
  • Needletail. She's meant to be seen as heroic for helping to try to stop Darktail and sacrificing herself to save Violetpaw, but many readers point out that she only does it after her mate Rain is killed by Darktail, thus making her actions seem selfish (prior to Rain's death Needletail never shows any problems with Darktail's cruelty). Not helping matters is that even after she gets to StarClan, Needletail lays all of ShadowClan's problems in the arc on Rowanstar and never takes any responsibility for her part in shattering the Clan. Even Yellowfang and Shadowstar point out how absurd her way of handling it is.
  • StarClan gradually slid down to this over the franchise, due to fans being irritated with how they act like deities when they're just dead cats, but it reached a breaking point in A Light in the Mist. They reveal they denied Juniperclaw StarClan because he broke the code and being sorry at his death wasn't enough, even though they have let in cats like Mudclaw for the exact same thing. They criticize and condemn Juniperclaw and the Dark Forest cats who want to redeem themselves, saying redemption isn't possible, when atoners like Needletail and Skystar are in their ranks. They proclaim the code is the most important thing, when the whole arc was about showing the weaknesses in the code and how it can be exploited. But the nail in the coffin is that they say all this after letting in Ashfur, a mistake so monumental it caused the entire events of this arc, a mistake that shows their judgment is not nearly as perfect as they'd like to pretend—yet this flaw and their double standards are ignored by the narrative, suggesting readers are supposed to see them as being in the right. Taken all together, they come across as judgmental, self-righteous, and hypocritical instead of the wise ancestor guides they're supposed to be.

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