Characters in Fan Works (most specifically fan fiction) appearing Unintentionally Unsympathetic.
The following have their own pages:
Crossovers
- The Bloody Ashikabi
tries to make Lily and James Potter out to be sympathetic in their introduction by revealing that they had Harry sent away to protect him from Death Eaters wanting to avenge Voldemort's death. The problem is that not only did they never BOTHER checking up on Harry or see where Dumbledore left him (which should have clearly been their first priority to begin with), some reviewers pointed out that they had more children, making their point about Death Eater attacks void, as they are just putting more kids in danger. Not only does it fail to present them as Parents as People, but it makes them borderline incompetent. Their anger at Dumbledore should have made them out to be Mama Bear and Papa Wolf respectably, but again, they never bothered checking to see if Harry was safe to begin with, meaning they had no right to be angry at the old man when they acted no better. - Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail:
- While Chloe's reasons for not expressing her own interests and hobbies are understandable and sympathetic — namely that she was bullied for her differences — the fact that she stonewalled efforts to get to know her better makes her subsequent complaints that nobody ever bothered to try seem somewhat self-defeating. It is very easy to see her as being at fault for several key aspects of the poor communication that drives the story. Initially, the narrative is heavily slanted in her favor, defending her anger at Goh, Ash, her father, and others even when she's clearly in the wrong. This eventually leads into the series heavily deconstructing the very concept of an Accusation Fic, delving into the Double Standards on all sides.
- While Ash is normally sympathetic, even during periods where the narrative is slanted against him, more than a few readers raise their eyebrows during his argument with Delia. Ash is highly aggressive during this sequence, calling his mother 'petty' and comparing her to Parker at his worst. Chloe notably displays a similar attitude without being called out for it right away, and narrative beats that underscore how Delia's insistence that he's forgiving too easily make him come off as worse in the argument than he was meant to be.
- Parker, in his courtroom scene, is supposed to be seen as a poor kid who's fallen off the deep end for reasons beyond his control, but there are a lot of reasons why this is a herculean task: first of all, the ramifications of his actions are far too big to make him seem sympathetic, a sentiment not helped by him showing the same condescending "I'm better than you" attitude of snapping at people that he had before, making it look like he learned nothing from it. And finally, he just can't help putting his foot in his mouth, going on a massive Motive Rant against everybody in the courtroom that, given everything else that's been shown of him, seems more like a spoiled rotten kid whining at the world how everything is their fault while ignoring how he's done much more, potentially irreparable damage compared to them.
- Mallow's supposed to be a sympathetic character whose snapping at her friends for not taking Gladion's disappearance seriously is meant to be cathartic. The problem is that she kept the existence of the Train a secret for what turned out to be a complete misunderstanding on her part, making her plight come off more as something she brought upon herself.
- In Silent Reproach, Steve "Captain America" Rogers gives a polite and understated but firm Quit Your Whining to Buffy about her life as a Slayer, likening her to a draftee during World War II, and saying that whether drafted or volunteers, the soldiers simply did their jobs. We're meant to conclude that this is a well-deserved reality check for Buffy, but Cap fails to acknowledge that not only has Buffy been fighting for much longer and from a much younger age than he has, but she also receives much less help and no pay, with her duty only ending when she dies. One reviewer even points out that Cap should be outraged over Buffy being treated this way. Someone later wrote a response to the story where Xander chews Steve out over those exact points, including that Buffy died twice to save the world.
- Touken Danshi and The Order Of The Phoenix: Harry and the Touken Ranbu cast are supposed to be seen as cool, confident, and assertive, but in practice they are snobbish (openly look down on and insult Hogwarts and wizarding Britain), entitled (verbally attack and threaten Dumbledore into allowing preferential treatment for Harry), myopic (given that Harry is a prince of Japan, they never consider how their actions can affect foreign relations), annoying (assert their Japanese identity in tasteless ways, which include Gratuitous Japanese towards people who don't speak the language) and violent (the swords often assault the British for the slightest perceived slights).
- Iris lands in this territory in The Fey Family Cousin. Not only in this continuity was she watching Phoenix's trial without lifting a finger to help him (whereas canon implied she didn't learn about it until it was already over), but her motivation for not telling him the truth about herself moved from "I Want My Beloved to Be Happy" to "I don't want to be hated" and from there to "Just leave me alone", making her seem rather selfish.
- How I Became Yours:
- Prince Zuko, upon finding out that Mai hid his letters to Katara, hits her, divorces her, and runs off to go to Katara. He's meant to be motivated by love and reacting to Mai's betrayal, but he comes off as an abusive husband and irresponsible ruler.
- Similarly, Katara is portrayed as grieving over her baby's death, but comes off as selfish by inexplicably emphasizing that her unborn son died a day before her birthday, and the morality of her decision to kill Mai with bloodbending instead of taking her in alive comes off as fairly questionable.
- Towards the Sun: While the author tries to explain why Katara is more hostile to Zuko than anyone else is, she's still considerably more antagonistic than the rest of the Gaang. While Toph is friendly, Aang is naive and idealistic, and Sokka is mostly being tripped up by the Culture Clash, Katara takes everything Zuko does as a personal slight against her and finds fault with everything he does, including not wanting his crazed warmonger of a father released from prison. When Zuko is actively dying of a heart attack, Katara refuses to heal him, going so far as to freeze herself to the ground when Toph tries to force her. The biggest sticking point is that the author goes into detail about Katara's sense of hopelessness trying to heal Aang, who was nearly killed by Azula, and, without Zuko joining the Gaang and bonding with her, her feelings of bitterness over Zuko helping Azula in Ba Sing Se increase.
- Despite Word of God trying to avert this, a number of Hero Antagonist characters in the Super Fic Dominoes have fallen into this category at various points:
- The Irregulars, a Deconstructed Character Archetype of the Teen Titans. All of the characters go through a lot of problems and most appear to have good intentions somewhere along the line, but the disproportionate laying of the burden of consequences at the feet of their mentor's son, Shinichi, someone they've deliberately deprived of the knowledge, power, and ability necessary to consent or protest this treatment, lends itself to an interpretation of the Irregulars as extremely exploitative. It doesn't help that the power and privilege that enables them to (at least passively) contribute to the rather extreme psychological abuse inflicted upon Shinichi also shields them from most of the consequences for their actions, which instead seems to give some readers the impression that these characters deserve more consequences rather than sympathy. This can, depending on the reader, make the Irregulars' various grievances come across as self-centered and entitled rather than sympathetically morally conflicted. This sentiment seems to overall be changing by the end of Part 1, appearing to correlate with the shattering of Part 1's status quo.
- Kazuha got hit with this particularly hard in chapter 11. While Aoko, Hattori, Ran, and Hakuba each have their own developed emotional hardships and consequences, debatably sympathetic though they are, Kazuha has only had one big character moment so far, and it's not a pleasant one. Due to her past with Hattori and his secrets, she is the Irregular with the most similarities between her relationship with Hattori and Shinichi's relationship with Ran, so she feels she has the right to judge Shinichi's reaction to learning Ran's secrets. In her one perspective scene, she responds to Shinichi dumping Ran by declaring that she is "going to kill someone" and that she'll make Shinichi wish he was never born, before writing off Shinichi's abuse pejoratively as "daddy issues" and trying to comfort Ran by saying that Shinichi will "get over it." It's worth noting that, in this moment, Kazuha is also simultaneously reacting to the emotional strain of an extremely dire and stressful primary conflict and thus was probably not thinking straight. Word of God has said this particular reader reaction is one that really took them by surprise, because badmouthing a friend's ex after said friend is dumped in order to comfort said friend is a pretty normal thing that the writer themself has experienced. Unfortunately, the context of the breakup means the scene reads like Kazuha's enabling Ran's terrible treatment of her now-ex-boyfriend and, worse, blaming the victim, which instead made Kazuha's only stand-out scene in Part 1 come off as a serious Kick the Dog moment.
- Yuusaku was intended to be a Jerkass; he wasn't intended to be The Scrappy.
- In New Hope University: Major In Murder, Saya, the protagonist, comes off this way after the first trial, when she gets upset over Lucina calling her out over her manipulative tactics during the trial, and becomes very defensive. What's worse, she's more upset over Lucina's reasonable points than she is over the deaths of the first victim and culprit.
- Fragments tries to be a Fix Fic for the Tenth Doctor's regeneration, but he comes across as incredibly selfish, hating the Eleventh just for being the next Doctor and wishing he could die so the Tenth would be the last one.
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Dr. Gero's obsession with killing Goku becomes somewhat more understandable when Bulma finds out that his son (whom he built Android 16 to resemble) was among the many Red Ribbon Army soldiers who died when Goku destroyed the organization's HQ during his youth. There are just a few problems with that. First, the Red Ribbon Army was a tyrannical organization responsible for the injuries and deaths of many innocent people, including several of Goku's friends, and had several dangerous fighters in the ranks before King Piccolo came about. And Gero and his son willingly worked for these people despite most likely knowing that. Goku's rampage that took Gero's son was triggered when they screwed with him and his friends for the umpteenth time, so you can't say that Goku went after them unprovoked. Additionally, the video shows that Goku didn't attack the son directly, so the death was accidental. The son might have survived had he fled instead of trying to give a proper farewell in the video.
- Five Nights At Freddy's: Lost Souls: Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. From the start the comic makes it clear that she's deeply distrustful of the Fazbears and that she carries some sort of grudge against them. This is implied to be the result of past trauma, most likely to do with the Fazbear murders or a springlock incident, making her pretty much a Hero Antagonist. However, this Freudian Excuse did nothing do endear her to readers, who primarily saw a massive Jerkass isolating and ruining the Fazbears' friendships with Cody and Bridget out of pettiness. This wasn't helped by her continued sour and cold behavior toward Bridget, down to deliberately traumatizing her by telling her the animatronics' Dark and Troubled Past, in order to scare her away form them.
- Egon in Fridays Are for Handling is meant to be sympathetic due to being lonely and injured, but even though he beat himself up for doing so, he still felt up a sleeping Ray. That's meant to come across as not so bad, because it turns out that Ray liked Egon back, but he had no idea, so it was still wrong.
- Egon in Jenny, Ray's Girlfriend is meant to be sympathetic, since he wants to be with Ray, but she's with Jenny. However, he breaks his laboratory equipment in anger and whines, "I want to sit next to you!", making him seem like a Manchild.
- In Faery Heroes, Harry, Hermione, and Luna are shown to be Anti-Heroes who have to do terrible things for the greater good. Even as they belittle their peers, rob the Purebloods blind (likely ruining lives in the process), and inflict multiple Fates Worse Than Death on their enemies.
- My Immortal:
- According to the author, the reader is supposed to like Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, who is written as every negative stereotype about goths made manifest, in the vessel of a self-centered sociopath. Of course, it could be that Ebony's meant to be intentionally unsympathetic if one subscribes to the theory that it's a Troll Fic instead of just really bad writing.
- The readers are also, provided the author is not a troll, supposed to like B'Loody Mary Smith. However, she's not only just as much of a negative stereotype about goths as Ebony, she murdered Willow.
- In One World, Ron Weasley ended up becoming this before he even appeared in the story. After some people complained about the author's decision to stick with canon pairings, the author said that he'd portray Ron as "a prat and a git" but not a Death Eater. For some readers, this wasn't enough, and they insisted that Ron's Belligerent Sexual Tension with Hermione would inevitably lead to a toxic and abusive relationship. That being said, other readers believe that the author's analysis of Ron ignores his more positive aspects and the reasons for his behavior (both for good and for ill).
- The Alternate Universe Fic Not Everything is Silver and Gold tries to paint Prussia/Gilbert as sympathetic because he lost Ludwig, and can't get him back unless he finds a Pure One, a being that can find treasure easily, to Arthur, the guy who murdered the reader's parents. However, the fact that chapter 2 involves Gilbert raping you instead of explaining what's going on, and why, then constantly forcing himself onto you and basically behaving like an abusive boyfriend doesn't exactly win sympathy from the readers.
- Go Away I'm Watching Porn:
- Kuroka in Chapter 17. She starts a catty argument with Raynare, gets all vicious when the Fallen Angel rightly calls her out on lying to Issei about her past, and then tricks her into springing a trap out of petty vindictiveness. Raynare's subsequent punishment is viewed as Laser-Guided Karma in-universe, but it instead comes off as Kuroka being a Dirty Coward who can't take what she dishes out, with Vali and Jasmine simply brushing it off.
- Jasmine in Chapter 18. In a blatant Author Tract to the constant complaints about Jasmine being a sex worker despite being in Issei's Harem, Jasmine proceeds to attack everyone sans Issei and Kiba, who are too busy fighting, with her Sacred Gear, using an attack she normally uses to shatter skulls. Why? Because Sona insulted her for being a sex worker, and only after she goaded Sona by hitting her insecurities with Serafall. The only reason Vali doesn't get affected is because he managed to put a finger in his ear which reduced the effects. Later, she brutally rapes Raynare with a Sybian while beating her ass with a riding crop just because the Fallen Angel accused her of padding her breasts—and given what happened earlier, it's highly likely that Jasmine said or did something to provoke her first.
- Her ensuing rant about what she suffered as a result of what happened to Issei is supposed to make her come across as sympathetic and make it look like Sona was needlessly antagonistic, but it rings hollow because, as Jasmine even admits, Sona is still being kept in the dark about everything, and that she still only did this just because Sona is Serafall's sister. Making matters worse is that she hit everyone too, including Rias who Issei has started considering part of his hoard, just for being in the area, yet doesn't appear apologetic for her actions, and instead of actually telling them about what they're being kept in the dark about, she just continues to keep them in the dark.
- Likewise is her reasons for becoming a sex worker. She says she became one as a way of sticking it to the people watching her and waiting for her to degrade herself, a means of demonstrating they had no hold on her. Many have called these reasons flimsy at best, and regardless of her reasons, it doesn't change the fact she also abandoned Issei in order to pursue her own issues. She even notes that she could have easily stuck by Issei and let him help her instead of doing any of this, but asked him not to just so she could do this instead, and just for him to trust her, making it sound like she's angry at being in a position that she put herself in.
- Even the reveal that her dad committed suicide years ago did nothing to win over her detractors, as they lambasted it as nothing more than a blatant attempt to make her look sympathetic without actually addressing the issues of the prior chapter.
- Issei himself is slowly sliding into this trope. His brutal treatment of Raynare is particularly repulsive (ranging from threatening to deny her food to attempted rape), he never outright apologizes for his mistakes even when acknowledging them, and he keeps excusing Jasmine's awful behavior—both towards others and himself—because he's too pathetically in love with her to care. He's got a traumatic past and his share of decent moments, to be sure, but he's such a colossal prick most of the time that a good number of readers just don't care anymore and want him to stop hiding behind what happened to him and move on
- One particularly egregious issue is his hypocrisy: he mocks Kiba and Gasper's respective Freudian Excuses and forces them to confront their inner demons while obnoxiously telling them to get over it; and yet he staunchly clings to his own Freudian Excuse, demanding sympathy and various forms of compensation when he's really owed nothing at all, while viciously lashing out at anyone who tries to help him get over his own issues, or trying to turn it around on them without actually answering the criticism.
- Secret Love has Ducky and Petrie fall in love and have to keep up the secret, eventually learned by their friends, their mothers, and Littlefoot's grandparents. The fic tries to show Ducky and Petrie as being victims of prejudice (which is brought up quite a bit in the story), but those who do protect them are bound to be very angry with those who don't tolerate them (such as Mr. Threehorn, who got turned into an intolerant interspecies-hating jerk). There's also a chapter when Hyp's father is chewing out Hyp for being a bully, but he seems more angry that his son is against Petrie and Ducky's secret relationship than he is about Hyp swatting Ducky into a tar pit.
- Lincoln in After the Events in Deep Cuts is meant to be seen as the victim, but he tried to murder Lori and Luna multiple times, all because they shouted two words at him and later gave him a Death Glare.
- Anger Management (TLH): All of Lynn's siblings, plus Lynn Sr., and Lincoln's friends, think it's cool that Lincoln beat her up to the point where it hurt her just to walk, because they see it as "sticking it" to her. Especially unsympathetic is Lincoln, who's the one who did the initial beating, just because she broke his stuffed toy, and then later knocked her unconscious and felt no remorse. Lisa also calls Lynn crazy when she's only just recovered from unconsciousness.
- Diary of a Loud (taken down, but covered in Episode 7 of Peeking Through the Fourth Wall), Lincoln is meant to be sympathetic because Lola humiliated him, but he punched Lola in the eye hard enough to be sent to hospital and doesn't feel any remorse for doing so.
- Lincoln is Done: The reader is meant to feel sorry for Lincoln being supposedly unloved by his family, but it's hard when he beats up his remorseful little sister twice.
- One Angry Person — Lincoln is supposed to be in the right and the family's Butt-Monkey, but he did all manner of mean things to his sisters (with the exception of Lucy and Lily), up to and including breaking Lynn's nose. Furthermore, most of what his sisters did to him wasn't even that bad; it was just minor things like accidentally stage-diving onto him or taking a piece of food he wanted to eat.
- Lincoln, Rita, and Lynn Sr. in Party of None — Lincoln throws a party and doesn't invite the sisters as revenge for them being uncaring to him earlier on in the story — true, the sisters were being mean by not sparing his feelings on their weekly mall trips, and they deserved to be knocked down a peg, but Lincoln went way overboard by throwing a whole party. The parents come across as unsympathetic too because not only do they side with Lincoln and join in the party, they act like they will let the sisters in, and then only let Lily in.
- Stories and Tales from Dimension 63: Linka ( as in, Lincoln's female counterpart), who, after becoming stuck in Lincoln's body, proceeded to turn his life upside down, without his permission, and worst of all, shows no desire to go back home. It can be hard to feel sympathetic towards her with what's implied in the backstory when her reaction is to do... this.
- Lynn Sr. from the other dimension can also count as this. His overly-protective nature towards Linka can turn annoying after a while, and his interaction with Ron Andy in chapter 17, if you don't find it funny, doesn't help him at all.
- Likewise, the brothers during chapter 17. Whether they fit this in earlier chapters is up for discussion, but they definitely fit this in this chapter, since they basically sabotage Linka and Ron's date by going into his house and teaching him how to act around Linka, unaware of the pressure they were giving him.
- Lincoln, during the birthday party. She claims that she and everybody needs to take a breather from all the madness, but there are two problems:
- Linka is telling this to Nyla and Neil, who are experienced with this stuff, and would know best.
- William gave her the location of the final fragment, and she chose to ignore it in favor of a party.
- In Substitute Roommate (now taken down, but covered in the second episode of Peeking Through the Fourth Wall), Luna is meant to be seen as sympathetic since she's lonely. However, she belts her brother Lincoln and forces him to play music that he doesn't like just because she misses Luan, who's away at camp, making her hard to sympathise with.
- Syngenesophobia: The girls despite all of them feeling remorse and disgust for their actions and accepting that they have became outcasts as a result. They've still sent Lincoln to the hospital to the point he's afraid of them. It also doesn't help that the readers never actually see the fallout of their friends and peers until chapter 38 with Leni confronting Becky and Mandee for avoiding the former. Nor the reveal that Lynn allowing Ronnie-Anne to beat her up and Lori was the one that cut off ties with Bobby, not the other way around. With all of the girls being Unreliable Expositor, it's hard to feel sorry for them when vindictive readers see them as Dirty Cowards.
- In Bring Me Home, Adrien falls into this pretty heavily after his decision to shut Ladybug out of his life without saying goodbye after the defeat of Hawk Moth, and it unfortunately still applies even after the story's attempts to redeem him for it, thanks to a few unaddressed factors:
- First of all, regardless of Adrien's actions toward Ladybug, his overall situation is frankly not as bad as it's made out to be. We're told more than once that he "lost everything that day" after his father was unmasked as Hawk Moth, but the fact is that we see little evidence of him suffering socially or financially from this, since he willingly sold the mansion and his stake in his father's company the first chance he got, none of his school friends have been shown to treat him differently because of his father, and he isn't shown to have any regrets about leaving behind modelling to pursue his interest in teaching, nor does he seem to deny that he has a lot more freedom now than he ever had when Gabriel was running his life. For comparison, other noteworthy fanfic portrayals of Adrien in a similar position have had Gabriel being killed in the final confrontation and Adrien being taken in by resentful guardians in another country (Back To Us) or had Adrien's career explicitly suffering because of his father's reputation and forcing him to leave Paris just to find designers willing to work with him (Ruined With You). It is eventually revealed that he's been suffering nightmares of the final battle, but that only excuses so much.
- While this isn't the first "post-victory separation and reunion" fic to involve Adrien consciously choosing to leave Ladybug behind without revealing his identity because of his father, it comes across as a lot more unforgivably callous here because, as Marinette points out, he always had the choice to come back to her. For comparison, Ruined With You!Adrien made a snap judgement to return his Miraculous to Master Fu without waiting for Ladybug, thus leaving her with no illusions about seeing her partner again, and he regretted it later but couldn't take it back so easily. Bring Me Home!Adrien knows that Ladybug has been sitting on their rooftop meeting place every night for years, occasionally crying, but despite still having the ring locked in a safe in his bedroom, he still isn't willing to return to her. And while he is of course called out on it after the reveal, it arguably becomes a case of Easily Forgiven due to subsequent events, thus pushing him further into this category.
- One of Adrien's stated excuses for not contacting her is that he honestly thought she was crying over some problem in her civilian life, because he didn't think that she'd miss Chat Noir this much if she only saw him as a friend. Even if any of this had still been correct, it doesn't make it any less callous that he wasn't willing to comfort her over whatever this civilian problem was, especially after he saw her crying for multiple years without getting better. It also raises troubling implications about how much Adrien values his other friends such as Nino.
- In one of Adrien and Marinette's scenes together before the reveal, he calls her out on the way he's been shutting people such as Alya and her parents out despite her obvious growing depression. Okay, it's a fair assessment (especially after we learn that Tikki herself had been encouraging Marinette to reveal herself and get support), but coming from him it's staggeringly hypocritical given what he's been doing to Ladybug so far. Particularly jarring is this line delivered without a hint of self-awareness: "You’re not the only one who’s hurting. My mother’s dead, my father’s in jail, I’ve pushed the only woman I’ve ever loved away, and yet you don’t see me going around making everyone pay for my sorrows." In fact, he outright states eventually that one of his reasons for abandoning her was not wanting to burden her with his family's problems. He apologises for the outburst later that night, but the hypocrisy goes unaddressed.
- As for why Adrien's "redemption" does little to turn any of this around, it comes shortly after the reveal and Marinette's justifiably furious reaction to it. When Tikki flies in his window and alerts him to Marinette getting in a car crash just outside the city, which no one else will be able to rescue her from in time, Adrien refuses to put his ring back on because he wants to avoid Plagg's anger at him for taking it off in the first place. Even when Tikki tells him that he's going to need Cataclysm to get her out of the car, he still insists on leaving the ring behind, once again putting the pain he wants to avoid above that which he knows the woman he loves is going through, and it takes a withering verbal beatdown from Tikki to change his mind. As such, what was almost an effective (if rather contrived) redemption falls flat because he fails to demonstrate that he's learned anything from the consequences of his mistakes. Nevertheless, it's accepted as one in-universe and he and Marinette have only gotten closer since.
- Marinette also comes across as unsympathetic. She spent years refusing to open up to anyone about her problems, despite Tikki encouraging her to unmask herself if it would help and despite Alya, her parents and others being openly worried about her, and it seems that she never went to any effort to track down Chat Noir beyond sitting at their meeting place - if Ladybug had spoken to the Ladyblog about his disappearance, Adrien at least wouldn't have been able to fool himself about what she was crying about. Her excuse for this is that to unmask to anyone before Chat Noir would have felt like she was betraying him, but she continues to do this even after finding out he was Adrien (and had effectively betrayed her first), choosing to leave town rather than seek help from Alya or her parents (which gets her into the aforementioned car crash). What's more, after the rescue and her reconciliation with Adrien, she lies to them about the cause of her depression and why she walked out on Adrien, and there's little indication that she's planning to reveal to them despite the story having progressed two years since this scene. Eventually Alya finds out herself but doesn't tell them, for some reason feeling guilty about not being there for her even though she had clearly tried to be.
- Used In-Universe in Scarlet Lady: in "Darkblade", D'argencourt tells Adrien the story of how his ancestor used to rule Paris with an iron fist until someone used gold to bribe the lower class into rebelling against him. It's clear from D'Argencourt's feelings about it that we're meant to sympathize with his ancestor, but Adrien privately notes otherwise."If someone giving money to the poor while your ancestor ruled with an 'iron fist' caused a revolution...then maybe your ancestor was kind of a dick."
- Tales of Karmic Lies Aftermath: Adrien's conversation with his father is meant to be a triumphant moment of him Calling the Old Man Out after finally growing a spine. However, this is undercut by how Tales is a Recursive Fanfiction sequel to The Karma of Lies, in which Adrien never acknowledges the role he played in his own downfall, remaining willfully ignorant to the end. As a result, his callout comes off more as Adrien continuing to pass the buck and blame his father for his own mistakes.
- Izuku Midoriya in All For Power loses his mother when Inko takes a bullet meant for him. Ordinarily, this would be heartbreaking, but Izuku willingly joined the League Of Villains twelve years prior in order to take over Japan and never once contacted Inko after he ran away. She died saving him because Izuku had befriended her under his new identity Imoku, roughly two years after he ran away. At Inko's funeral, Bakugou (who knows Izuku's true identity due to Something Only They Would Say) calls out "Imoku" for letting her waste away and never once telling Inko he was still alive.
- Coyote: Riley and Izuku, due to the discrimination they faced for being a foreigner and Quirkless respectively, dig up information on all of their potential teachers and send it to any student who wants to know more information about those teachers. Barring how disproportionate this attitude is, Riley is even worse in this regard by deciding to charge people money for this information, a decision that seems to be motivated by only greed considering neither Riley nor Izuku has any financial problems and Riley's family are rather well-off as Royalties Heirs. Additionally, if his treatment of Aizawa is any indication, Riley is not above physically assaulting teachers he does not like. Moreover, the story does not acknowledge the possibility of how their system could be used to spread false information about teachers they don't like and get their way (especially in a world where nearly everyone has a Quirk).
- In Wishing Well, Wysteria and Sparkleworks have a volatile relationship full of Belligerent Sexual Tension, with Wysteria usually being the instigator of the arguing. They switch between periods of constant arguments before going into a Sickeningly Sweethearts phase where they do nothing but kiss, then going back to their arguing. On at least one occasion, Sparkleworks has ended up bruised. None of the other ponies care much about their arguing due to how common it is. Sparklework's and Wysteria's relationship is supposed to be seen in a light-hearted relationship, but it comes off more as abusive.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- The 800 Year Promise has this happen to two separate characters:
- Celestia, rendered distraught by the horrors of Nightmare Moon and Discord followed by seeing the Crapsack World that is medieval Europe, promised a 12th century English peasant named Willelmus (later ponified into Prince Blueblood) a soul, afterlife and salvation for the human race at his behest. While it was framed as Celestia trying to do the right thing, perhaps maybe clouded by idealism, lot of readers saw Celestia as being a Manipulative Bastard that exploited the man's lack of education and poor living conditions to provide a flimsy justification for invading Earth.
- The 12th century English peasant named Willelmus was intended to be seen as a hero for giving humanity the keys to salvation, but readers came to saw him as a selfish man selling out humanity for his own salvation.
- The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle had Princess Luna learn of the assassination plot, but fails to stop it due to The Mole she planted being ousted. She then takes revenge against the mastermind behind it by giving them nightmares until it destroyed their sanity, unaware of how it would lead his daughter to become a more dangerous villain. But despite this willingness to act, Luna never does more to stop the plot or even warn Twilight or the others about it. When she does act, her unwillingness to straight-up kill allowed him to corrupt their daughter, making it obvious Luna's impulsive act of revenge would do more harm than good. Had the story continued, Luna would have called out and punished once this went public and realize she let her desire to play the hero cloud her judgment, but by then the author author admitted it was part of their mishandling of the Genre Shift that cost so many fans they decided to scrap the series.
- Princess Celestia in Chains. Even though it's made clear she didn't enjoy turning the humans living in Equus into slaves for the ponies and she is genuinely haunted by her decision, the fact that the flashbacks explaining why humanity was enslaved in Chapter 15 made Celestia look like she was carrying a massive Idiot Ball, her weak attempts at justification to a very angered Luna, as well as the fact that she refuses to overturn slavery overnight have made her come off as a weak and incompetent leader easily manipulated by her Evil Chancellors to many a reader. The fact that it took protests from pegasus abolitionists to outlaw the practice of human gladiatorial rings, as well as the fact that a great many slaves are being mistreated (Twilight and Applejack are very clearly exceptions rather than the rule), yet Celestia doesn't seem to have done much to improve those conditions doesn't exactly help her case either. The author eventually had to pull an Author's Saving Throw of sorts with the reveal that Celestia funds anti-slavery movements and is playing the Long Game, and with Celestia herself feeling she can never truly atone for what she did, but for some readers it just didn't cut it.Celestia: Luna, please, I need your help. I want your help to bring things to how they should be, with humans free.
Luna: Why don't you just force the council to do as you command?
Celestia: That would not solve the problem. Ponies have had humans as slaves for centuries, to just force them to give it up would be difficult, these things will take time, but...
Luna: You say you want to set things right, but you're not willing to do so in the quickest and simplest way? - Frigid Winds and Burning Hearts claims to be even-handed in the "Princess Luna vs. Princess Celestia" argument, but swiftly comes down on Luna's side. Even as it is revealed she was perfectly willing to have all of Equestria collapse into riots and civil war if it meant she could leave. Even as she bullies, lies, and manipulates every other pony she meets to have her way.
- Little Sun has Sunset Shimmer as Princess Celestia's biological daughter, with her anger over being given up for adoption and keeping it secret during years as Celestia's student leading to her Start of Darkness. This was after Celestia saved her from an assassination attempt, showing that the reasons for secrecy, which weighed heavily on Celestia and leaked through no fault of hers, were fully justifiable. Then there's Sunset inexplicably, instantaneously becoming a jerk, forgetting all the good times they had together and rejecting everything Celestia offers to reconcile insisting she be made an alicorn, the one thing beyond her power.
- Eroninja: Suzume is meant to be a Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist who is opposing Naruto because she doesn't realize he's a good person and because the ancient order she belongs to is too indiscriminate. Suzume believes Naruto is a "Corrupter" (that is, someone using the Temptation's Touch Jutsu) and is raping women to build himself a harem. Her logic amounts to "Naruto seems popular with women but also has a girlfriend, therefore he must be a Corrupter," but her investigation goes nowhere no matter what she does. Even her attempt to (fake) drunkenly seduce him fails with the young man seeming more mortified than she is. So her solution is to encourage her barely legal student Moegi to act on her longtime crush for Naruto. At best, Suzume is setting her up for failure since she knows for a fact Naruto is already in a relationship. At worst, she's presenting a serial rapist with a brand new victim who will be his eager slave even after he's killed or Moegi will sell her out and they'll both be the willing slaves of a serial rapist. Even her preferred outcome amounts to her student being almost or actually raped but Suzume killing Naruto and saving his victims. Not helping matters is that Suzume admits she doesn't actually think Naruto is a Corrupter and she might be jumping at shadowsnote but she's willing to go through with it anyway even though her only "proof" is that several of Naruto's many friends are women. To make matters worse, the order's training method amounts to an older woman taking a barely teenage girl as her sex slave in order to "train her to resist a Corrupter". Suzume comes across as He Who Fights Monsters at best and Knight Templar at worst.
- The Last Prayer:
- Hinata's shyness is turned up to eleven, to the point she can barely keep from fainting around an illusion of Naruto that doesn't speak. Months of exposure therapy show very little progress on her end, causing many fans to lose interest and wish the author would just get on with it already. It takes Hinata learning she's probably already lost her chance due to multiple women already being in romantic and sexual relationships with Naruto for her to actually talk to him about her feelings.
- Chapter 38 had some fans feeling Kurenai lost a lot of sympathy regarding her relationship with Naruto due to her being manipulative and openly controlling about who Naruto marries. Despite knowing for a fact that Naruto had been in a sexual (and later romantic) relationship with Ino even longer than she had, Kurenai only intended to tell Ino if Hinata decided not to marry him. Furthermore, Kurenai acts like it's a given that she'll marry Naruto and that she "can accept" him marrying other women. By contrast, Ino has long since come to the conclusion that she actually wants Naruto to marry her and Sakura.
- A few stories written by Northstar Pokeshipper (which have all since been deleted) had their moments:
- In the original version of The Longest Road, the author clearly intended for the readers to side with Ash regarding him being banned from Erika's Gym for not liking her perfume. Unfortunately, the fact that he got her ousted from her job for being a lesbian (for some reason, the story revealed that LGBT members cannot be trainers, let alone Gym Leaders), made him come across as just as bad if not worse than Erika. It doesn't help that as soon as everything was said and done, he was all cheerful and ready to go to his next stop like it was just everyday business, and without a care that the rest of the Gym's staff might find themselves out of a job. The writer of the story later rewrote the chapter to exclude that portion. Instead, Erika's just a jerk who gets in trouble for denying Ash a battle simply due to his hatred of perfume.
- In Broken Legs, Unbroken Love, as a reviewer pointed out, Misty fails to gain empathetic reactions from her situation (having both legs broken), other than some faint sympathy one would have for someone they didn't know being in a similar situation. It straddles the line between Angst? What Angst? and Wangst, given that the author didn't specify exactly how grave Misty's injuries were (nor how she sustained them, for that matter), other than saying she'd take a full year to recover, so it's hard to tell whether it's a Major Injury Underreaction or a Minor Injury Overreaction.
- Chapter 25 of 151 Pokeshipping Stories had a flashback of the death of Misty's mother. It was supposed to play out as a tragedy and the reason why Mother's Day wasn't a happy day for Misty. The problem is that the moment was too rushed and happened so brusquely that it failed to sink in. Not to mention that Misty's mother (who is supposedly a Water Pokémon expert, by the way) ended up killed because she didn't keep a hold on her daughter, or better, get away from there ASAP when there was a Gyarados sleeping on the shore, which borders on Too Dumb to Live.
- Pokémon Insurgence tries to make two of its major villains at least somewhat sympathetic, but both attempts fall flat:
- Persephone's villainous actions are revealed to be rooted in a Freudian Excuse: she was a captive of the Infernal Cult alongside her sister when they were young, and said sister abandoned her when she escaped. Her sister even asks the player character not to judge her for her actions, given how badly she's had it. The problem is that the game outright started by showing Persephone Mind Raping a child with intent to kill them afterwards, followed by killing no less than three of her subordinates in quick succession. This, combined with the fact that she never grows beyond her spiteful and murderous personality within the game's time frame, led to multiple players calling bull on the idea she's supposed to be even slightly sympathetic.
- Nyx, the game's Greater-Scope Villain, is presented as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who only did what she did so she could save her people from life in the Distortion World. However, the fact that she's both directly and indirectly responsible for literally every bad thing that happens in the game makes it seem more like she's just using that as a weak excuse to justify the atrocities she's committed.
- Pokémon Zeta and Omicron has an interesting case of this with Zeta/Omicron, your Evil Twin who corrupted and stole the signature Legendary Pokemon of Gold, the protagonist of Pokémon Gold and Silver, resulting in him becoming a Fallen Hero in an effort to get it back. They are clearly not supposed to be a sympathetic character as they smugly rub their theft in Gold's face, show little concern when you snag said signature Pokemon from them, and acted out said theft (which ultimately resulted in every bad thing that happens in the game) solely so they could be the owner of every Pokemon in the world; despite this, it's clear that the creator intended for them to have a biting "Not So Different" Remark/What the Hell, Player? moment, when (after going back in time and witnessing them stealing said Pokemon) they tell you that you're no different since you snag every Shadow Pokemon you find (including Brendan's Rayquaza, which indirectly causes his death), capture every Olympus Mons you can, and never care to think of the consequences, before leaving without any consequence for her actions. The problem (aside from them being a massive Hypocrite with a super-flimsy At Least I Admit It justification) is that the circumstances are almost entirely different: the player was railroaded into snagging Brendan's Rayquaza (and on the Heroic Route, you're doing it to stop a much larger threat), and have been snagging Shadow Pokemon to free them from their Shadow state (including the aforementioned Rayquaza); Zeta/Omicron deliberately transformed Gold's signature Pokemon into Shadow Pokemon for entirely selfish reasons, and has made absolutely no efforts to purify it (thus causing it to suffer, as Shadow Pokemon are The Heartless). Because of all this, Zeta/Omicron come across not as an unrepentant monster who nonetheless raises some serious moral questions, but an unrepentant monster whose actions are made even worse by her almost sociopathic lack of self-awareness.
- Coeur Al'Aran's works are guilty of this.
- The Beast of Beacon:
- Tsune's argument invoking He Who Fights Monsters on the now-disgraced Team CRMN comes off as this to many readers. They note how Adam literally had no other option to stop their bullying without making an example of them in a strong way that would discourage such behavior such as what Adam did during the match. This is because while Coeur attempts to invoke a Gray-and-Gray Morality in the fic itself, moments where Adam would literally be in the wrong during his time in Beacon before Chapter 11 were sparse and few in between.
- Blake is seen like this by many readers by chapter 13 for her lack of understanding of how Adam is slowly changing throughout the story. This is taken even further in chapter 17 when she displays a Never My Fault attitude when she leaks an edited video of Adam and Yang fighting that leads to Adam getting beaten by racist students in the cafeteria.
- Forged Destiny: Blake is considered to be this to a fair degree. Books 1 through 4 helped to establish a lot of sympathy for her and implied an interesting and complex past for her while still highlighting her genuine strengths and capacity to be a great teammate, friend, and lover. However from Book 5 onwards, she's begun to be stripped of a lot of the positive elements, and poor handling of her character results in her being seen as a self-righteous hypocrite who seems to expect others (Jaune especially) to treat her secrets with gentle hands, while she oftentimes is shown to have a disturbing lack of sympathy or understanding for others' issues or secrets (again, with Jaune). While the author has gone out of his way to try to establish her reasons for doing so (some more reasonable than others), the questionable logic and reasoning combined with a lackluster showing in the story, Jaune's sometimes excessive self-deprecation mixed with borderline Character Shilling of Blake's character have arguably only made her seem even more insufferable as a character.
- Made all the worse in Book 8, where her abandoning the Guild in order to rush off and kill Raven on her own, and for reasons that either was never hinted at, if not expressly contradicted, cement her as a Hypocrite of the worse possible kind.
- Relic of the Future:
- Many readers feel that the narrative treats Raven far more kindly than she deserves to. Jaune considers her to be something of a friend and an ally worth trusting, despite the fact that she has, in the previous timeline, allied with Salem's servants and directly attacked Jaune's group. In contrast, Ozpin gets little trust or sympathy from Jaune, despite being portrayed far more sympathetically than Raven in canon, as he always tries his best to protect the people around him and to make the best out of a bad situation - though that is largely a result of Canon Marches On. Chapter 113 helped to alleviate this, with Raven still being a remorseless bandit and calling Jaune out for deluding himself into believing she's a good person at heart.
- Some feel Pyrrha forfeited her right to sympathy in chapter 91. After insisting several times that she wanted to stop fighting in tournaments, especially once she started attending a Huntsman Academy, Pyrrha is pressured into entering another tournament but Helena helps her by announcing it's Pyrrha's final tournament before she retires. Despite finally having the perfect out to give up tournament fighting for good, Pyrrha still confirms in a press conference that she's not retiring and will continue fighting. Made worse by the fact one of Pyrrha's opponents in the tournament vastly outclassed her and offered the girl the chance to forfeit, but Pyrrha insisted on fighting on anyway rather than bowing out, and then she and Helena put all the blame on Jaune for “escalating the situation” when he continued to provide her an out.
- Based on how the story is framed, the audience is supposed to accept the idea that Cinder could be swayed to the side of good if Jaune gave it a try, but Jaune is too set in his ways to try that. It's an interesting idea that Jaune doesn't seem to argue against, but the fact that Cinder is the exact same power-hungry psychopath that she was in canon despite all of Jaune's changes to the timeline really seems to suggest that Cinder is completely irredeemable.
- The Beast of Beacon:
- Emerald of I'm Here to Help can come across this way, especially if one interprets the fic as him being right.
- Various records throughout the fic hint at an extensive terrorist record in the future, which involves multiple attacks on Crystal Tokyo that put a lot of people's lives in danger. It doesn't help matters that the Senshi of the future aren't shown having actually done much wrong and actually try to create a peaceful world where everyone's safe.
- The fact that it's implied that Emerald and his teammates chose to attack the Senshi first makes them not come across as particularly admirable or make the Senshi look very unlikable for choosing to send them away regardless of who was in the right about the purification.
- AfterThe Metarex: While the readers are meant to see Amadeus and Rosemary Prower as well-meaning yet strict parents, instead they come off as stuck up and hypocritical, especially Rosemary considering that she behaves nastily towards Sonic just because he tries to get Tails to help him fight with Eggman and hating Knuckles and Amy just because they have anger problems and not trying to see that they are good people at heart. While her forbidding Cosmo from dating Tails was meant to be seen as Jerkass Has a Point given that Cosmo couldn't prove that she had returned from the dead, it instead comes off as racist considering that one of her reasons was because she was an alien.
- The Stargate SG-1 fic "None So Blind" opens with Daniel Jackson deciding to transfer to Atlantis after Sam Carter starts a relationship with the now-retired Jack O'Neill, as he's been in love with Sam for years and can't bear the thought of seeing her and Jack together when he'll wish it was him. This aspect of his personality is relatively sympathetic, but after Sam learns about his feelings for her and reveals that her relationship with Jack didn't work out, she agrees to go on a date with Daniel, prompting Daniel to state that if she can't feel that way about him he'll be relocating to Atlantis. Daniel's initial emotional pain is relatively understandable, but his subsequent declaration to Sam could amount of emotional blackmail, as he's basically saying that she'll lose him as a friend if he can't win her over.
- The End of Ends: Beast Boy is this, even before he becomes Count Logan and starts destroying entire worlds. He is supposed to be seen as a guy tragically separated from his true love and betrayed by his friends; but his whining over Terra wanting a normal life, even one away from him, easily qualifies as Wangst; he essentially stalks Terra, and he resigns from the Titans because, after they call him out on beating up Terra's friends, he's convinced none of them like or appreciate him. Meanwhile, Count Logan being a Count Bleck Expy means he is also intended as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, but this is undermined by his sheer Adaptational Villainy by comparison. Bleck carried a heavier implication of corruption, underwent a crisis from Tippi's mere presence, actually wanted the good guys to stop him and was pleased when they did, and then helped fix everything via Heroic Sacrifice. Logan's Face–Heel Turn comes across as more voluntary, he actively invokes Kick the Morality Pet on Terra, and he's ultimately a stubborn and Wangsty Sore Loser.
- Purple Jealousy: We're meant to root for Raven and hope that she gets with Beast Boy. However, between Raven's irrational jealousy of Beast Boy's new girlfriend and her controlling, downright abusive attitude, it's hard to really feel for her. During one chapter where she questions and criticizes Beast Boy for finding his new significant other, she berates him and insults his choice in women; when he retorts that she too once fell in love with someone who manipulated her, Raven acts shocked and hurt and we're meant to be on her side, despite the fact that she instigated the entire confrontation. Raven comes across as more of a Spoiled Brat who is upset because her Love Interest doesn't bow to her every whim. It's a story where you actually feel more inclined toward the Romantic False Lead.
