Loser
I am down with your plan. I think situational use of No Sympathy is kind of different from a character who just lacks empathy, especially in how I think the former can probably be played for laughs more than the latter.
Oh yeah, does anyone have any insights about the extended birthday example in the description? It's clear enough to me, but I wonder if it's really needed. Come to think of it, I feel like the description is a bit long anyhow. Maybe I'm completely wrong about that, but it might be worth thinking about.
edited 31st Mar '12 10:09:22 PM by LouieW
"irhgT nm0w tehre might b ea lotof th1nmgs i dont udarstannd, ubt oim ujst goinjg to keepfollowing this pazth i belieove iN !!!!!1 d
I'd tend to leave in the example. There are similiar tropes that are not No Sympathy (Comedic Sociopathy, Lack of Empathy, No Social Skills etc.) and the example has always done its job in distinguishing it and demonstrating why it's often a Pet-Peeve Trope. On a personal level, I don't get all the hate that's been levelled at longer trope descriptions and Example as a Thesis lately - it's just that, with Lack of Empathy around, the trope is doing two jobs when it only needs to shoulder one.
I think taking out the character-examples and shifting them to Lack of Empathy would trim the trope nicely, so I'd be inclined to do that first before we started clipping at the rest of the article.
Ravenous Sophovore
Clocking due to lack of activity.
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
Sympathy and empathy are not the same thing, so I don't know if the examples should just be moved, going by their names these two tropes should not be about the same concept.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
They aren't the same, but that's no reason to keep "character has a lack of sympathy" examples on No Sympathy. It might be a reason not to necessarily add all of them to Lack of Empathy, though.
So, shall I remove the "character" bit of the description?
No significant activity since the clock. Locking.
"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer
There's nothing wrong with No Sympathy's main definition ("the characters show a woeful lack of empathy towards someone who is clearly distressed, despite allegedly being decent human beings"). However, the trope also includes a "character variant", with a character who habitually shows No Sympathy and is deliberately designed to have that in their make-up. With the younger trope Lack of Empathy, this is pretty redundant, since all of the examples fit in there. Would there be any objections to shifting the "character trait" examples to Lack of Empathy, and directing the reader to that trope instead of including it in the definition?