Unintentionally Unsympathetic and Unintentionally Sympathetic Cleanup

So uh does this trope apply to characters who don't even appear in the plot because Yggdrasil actually never appears in person in tri. So I'm not even sure what was intended.

• Though Yggdrasil in Digimon Adventure tri. is indeed the main villain, he's intended as a Well-Intentioned Extremist: his actions against humanity are to protect the Digital World, because he believes that humanity is a threat to Digimon. This is more or less a Recycled Script of his actions in Digimon Savers... with one big exception. In Savers, the villain for the first half of the series was an evil human who, of his own initiative, did some rather horrible things to Digimon, so Yggdrasil's fears, while ultimately inaccurate, weren't unfounded. In tri, there is absolutely no precedent to this idea that Humans Are Bastards. Every single threat the Digital World faced in the Adventure continuity was the result of an evil Digimon, with the sole exceptions being the Digimon Emperor and Oikawa, who were mind-controlled or manipulated by an evil Digimon. On the other hand, those same threats were resolved by humans bailing the Digital World out, so not only does this attitude make little sense outside of naked prejudice, but he's also an Ungrateful Bastard.

Nothing suggests it gets any in-universe sympathy for that, which sounds like Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole. It's already under The Scrappy so this seems redundant.

Can anyone who has seen Playmobil: The Movie confirm or deny if the entries from the YMMV page are shoehorns or not? The first bullet does a great job of explaining the unintentional part (the character acts rude, but the person he was rude to is the one who learns a lesson as opposed to him), but the other two bullets don't explain the unintentional part.

So from Cold Case. We have th is clusterfuck. Most of these guys are supposed to be villains ,assholes and jerks intentionally. So I'm not sure what these are even saying.

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Several examples throughout the series; one very common type is a character who, while not the killer or even usually an antagonist at all, played a major role in initiating the chain of events that climaxed in the murder. It's also common with the Sympathetic Murderer, who is often not really that sympathetic at all. Examples include:
  • The killers from "The Hitchhiker" and "Dog Day Afternoons".
  • The killer in "The Letter". Yes, his girlfriend was being violently gang-raped by his friends. But he didn't do anything to stop them and, even considering that, suffocating a person so she doesn't have to live with the trauma of being raped seems like...a decision that should not have been left up to him.
  • Brandi, the Alpha Bitch from "The Sleepover" (and some would say her brother, as well.) While both have Abusive Parents, there's a strong streak of Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse in the horrible things both do just to cover it up.
  • Leah, the victim's female "friend" from "Wishing".
  • Audrey Metz, the victim in "World’s End". It's less that she deserved to die for cheating on her husband, and more that it's portrayed as a feminist victory although it is totally avoidable in every way.
  • The girlfriend from "Family" who even as a Broken Bird status still dumped her baby in a garbage can.
  • The fathers from "Jackals" and "Blank Generation". One was imprisoned for a despicable crime (stealing benefit payments from disabled and dead veterans) instead of being on the outside and protecting his daughter and the other was an Insufferable Genius / Jerkass whose cold, unloving attitude drove his son to join a dangerous cult.
  • Speaking of fathers, there is also the father from "Justice". His 18-year-old daughter was raped and when she came to him and told him what happened, his response was "Nice girls don't invite boys up to their room." As a result of his words, the poor girl ends up eating her gun. It's only then that he's remorseful and says to the (sympathetic and willing to help, but her superiors didn't take the matter seriously) officer, "Why didn't anyone help my little girl?"
  • The victim in "The Key" manages to avert this, at first but later in the episode dives headfirst into this trope. She's the only person in her inner circle of friends not to want to screw around with somebody's partner but her hubby disagrees so she decides to give it a go and falls in love with her fellow adulterer but decides she doesn't need a man in her life. Sounds fair right? Well see the thing is, during these revelations she discovers that shock horror, her new man and best friends husband isn't interested in staying loyal to her. How does she retaliate? By bumping and grinding against his fifteen year old son. Oh and it gets better she's actually surprised when aforementioned son gets the wrong idea!
  • The so-called best friend from "Kensington".
  • The mother and the killer from "Time to Crime", but particularly the mother. The former cheats on her hard-working husband out of "loneliness" with a slimy, serial cheating arms dealer and still tried to get him back even after learning that he cheated on her, causing the murder in the first place. The latter ended up killing his younger sister in a drive-by shooting when he tried to shoot the dealer instead of shooting him the moment he received the gun from him.
  • Scotty at times. There were so many bad things that happened to the people in his life (his mother's attack, his brother being molested as a kid and being haunted by it and what happened to his fiancee), but these things happened to them instead of him. In addition, a lot of the bad things that occurred in his life, such as his suspension, were of his own doing.
  • Ariel in "The Sleepover" as well given the fact that not only did she not tell anyone what happened but spent all those years as Brandi’s supplier.
  • The eldest daughter in "A Dollar, A Dream" came across as incredibly spoiled always blaming her mother for not being able to fix the horrible situation they were in. when she found out her mother was killed she changed her stance from her mother abandoned her and her sister to her mother killed herself to get away from them. It can be seen as a form of Laser-Guided Karma that her life turned out completely different from her sister's.
    • The mother didn't come across much better. Her refusal to face reality was partially responsible for their situation, and she kept it up with lies and false promises to her daughters, which were clearly for her own benefit not theirs. Her killer was a glimpse into how she could have turned out living in that mental state long enough.
  • James Hoffman in "Knuckle Up". After discovering the academic rigging in the school, he became disillusioned and joined the fight club. When his father confronts him about it, James lashes out at him, blaming him for chasing their mother away and scraping his neck. Somewhat Averted at the end of the storyline, where he regrets his actions and is killed for refusing to cover up the murder of a businessman.
  • The killer in "It Takes A Village" barely avoids this, and is still probably a lot less sympathetic than he may have been intended to be. However one sees the childhood incident (see Alternative Character Interpretation), he doesn't go after his tormentors or people who are actually like them in terms of hurting others. Instead, he picks random children based on their performance in a video game. Not to mention that his Motive Rant makes him come across as having a serious god complex.
  • The hypocrisy and sheer patheticness of the killer and victim in "Lonely Hearts" make them this. Especially since they, not the con artist, were the one who escalated it to that point.
  • Done in universe in "Strange Fruit" while one of the suspects questioned didn’t have anything against the wife of the killer personally, the fact that she was ignorant of the goings on in her own home made him not like her.
  • The killer in "Officer Down" do to being Too Dumb to Live, though this may have been intentional as the cops had to force themselves not to shoot him.
  • Nick on occasion. The events of "Flashover" in which a man he wrongfully accused of murdering his children some years ago has been killed in prison and then causes him to go into a downward spiral involving drunk driving, finding out his ex-wife has remarried and had children with someone else and temporarily getting suspended come off as Laser-Guided Karma more than anything else.
  • The (innocent) frenemy of the victim in "Factory Girls". We're supposed to empathize with her unrequited love for the victim's husband. Except that she blatantly tried to interfere in their marriage and made an advance to him when his wife was barely cold in her grave. Despite him adamantly rebuffing her, at the time of the episode, she has spent 60-something years pining away for the man, even proudly declaring "To this day, I would jump for him if he wanted me." Surely she must have received offers from numerous other eligible men during all this time, all of which she turned down in the faint hopes that he might someday change his mind. Overall, she just comes across as pathetic.
  • Both of the parents in "Baby Blues" who were too wrapped up in their own lives (her job and his affair) to care adequately for their daughter, tried to blame their son for the murder (who was only seven at the time of her death) and the father leaving the family after said daughter's death.
  • The best friend from "Detention". Even with an Alcoholic Parent and him knowing that the death he caused was an accident, he still went on to become an addict to "honor" his friend and tell everyone under the sun that he committed suicide.
  • The victim's boyfriend in "Our Boy Is Back". We're supposed to sympathize with him for having lost his girlfriend and having been suspected and harassed by Vera for the past five years. Except (a) Vera actually listed some perfectly valid reasons for thinking he was the killer, and (b) When they finally do test his DNA and realize that it isn't a match, Lily realizes that the real reason for his refusal is that he didn't want it known that he wasn't sleeping with the victim. This supposedly innocent victim of an overzealous detective was actually a self-centered jerk who cared more about protecting his studly reputation than finding the man who raped and murdered his girlfriend.
  • The mothers Sandra Riley and Tina Bream from "Revenge". One blatantly ignored her husband molesting her son as well as kidnapping other kids to molest because she enjoyed being Hot Guy, Ugly Wife. While she eventually felt guilty it was only after the boy was killed and even then she never went to the police. While the other constantly enjoys Playing the Victim Card repeating blaming others for her son’s death even though both his kidnapping and their failing to retrieve him was entirely her fault. Not to mention causing her husband to be consumed by guilt.
  • Betty Sue Baker from "Pin Up Girl". Even with her troubled upbringing where she has to strip to support herself and her alcoholic, abusive father, the fact that her best friend/cover girl Rita herself also had a similar childhood and was able to make something of her life undermines this. Also, while her friend gave her numerous outs for her situation—i.e., "I can give you money", "You can stay with me", etc.—she still had no real desire or common sense to better her situation, blaming her for the Jerkass she had a date with who only went out with her to get an autograph from Rita, then shot her out of jealousy and tried to "atone" for her crime by becoming a goody two-shoes nun who ostensibly cares about people (and which she tried to invoke right before she was arrested.)

Wow, we have a long list of “sympathetic” characters right there. I’m gonna root for them!

YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 1 E 5 Griffon The Brush Off

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Pinkie Pie. Anyone who's ever traveled a long way to visit a close friend that moved away, only to have one of said friend's new local friends constantly horn in on everything you want to do together and try to dominate their time as well, may find themselves sympathizing with Gilda instead (jerk or not).

Fails to explain how she was supposed to be seen as sympathetic. Also, I don’t think they would’ve sympathized with Gilda either, considering she’s a Jerkass at this point.

YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 1 E 11 Winter Wrap Up

• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Spike at the end of the episode. While you could argue that him catching a cold is just Laser-Guided Karma for his Jerkass behavior throughout the episode, you could also argue that it was a little disproportionate and that the other characters essentially laughing at him about it was rather.. cruel.

Cute that it tries to argue the example.

Also the fact that this entry and Jerkass Woobie try to say that the ponies were cruel at Spike for laughing at his cold... I really don’t think this was so much out of malevolence. I don’t know what it is, it’s just a way off track theory.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jun 20th 2020 at 8:40:48 AM

cut those

If no one gives me an objection to an entry on that cold case tree in three days. I'm nuking the entire thing.

Yea, go ahead.

YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 9 E 15 Two Four Six Greaaat

• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Rainbow Dash is supposed to be seen as the episode's antagonist due to her apathy towards the cheer squad, but it's hard not to feel for her getting unfairly chewed out by Smolder when she had no experience with said job and thus was unaware of how to make it better. It doesn't help that Twilight knew exactly how she would react and thus comes off as Innocently Insensitive for trying to get Rainbow to do something she frankly hates.

The last sentence seems like a Logic Bomb to me. Twilight knew that Rainbow would react this way and yet she's insensitive for it?

BTW, a Base-Breaking Character entry exists on this page now, and it has Rainbow's name all over it. It suprisingly dosen't mention this, so I added this to that.

Edit: has it been decided that BBC or Broken Base and UU are mutually exclusive?

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jun 20th 2020 at 9:51:59 AM

Were any of those Cold Case Characters meant to be sympathetic?

Also I don't think Unintentionally Sympathetic / Unintentionally Unsympathetic and Broken Base should be mutually exclusive, since a character being UU or US to a significant part of the fandom is a pretty common cause of a Broken Base

Nope for alot of the. Hoffman from knuckle up in particlur felt seriosuly bad for what happened and ended up dying trying to fix his mistake. So listing him feels just wrong.

As a matter of fact, let's look at all the MLP Unintentionally Sympathetic entries on the main page

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • "The Great and Powerful" Trixie, while bringing it upon herself with her boasting, ends up losing her reputation and probably almost everything she possessed at the end of her introductory episode, which many people believe was disproportionate to her wrongdoings. Much of the sympathy arose from her "boasting" being fairly typical Stage Magician banter, that all she managed to do was introduce herself as "Great and Powerful" and shoot off some fireworks before Rainbow Dash and Rarity decided to loudly heckle her show, that all the truly obnoxious things she did were in direct response to them disrupting her act, and that Twilight exposed her without meaning to. It certainly doesn't help that Snips and Snails get forgiven for bringing the Ursa into town, which was not only a much worse act than anything Trixie did but was also the reason things went so sour in the first place. Season 3 actually refers to this later on, when Trixie returns to Ponyville to get revenge for having her livelihood ruined. It also makes Trixie far less sympathetic, punishing the entire town for the actions of the few hecklers and those who were bullying her and vandalizing her wagon, using Snips and Snails as slave labor, and targeting Twilight Sparkle who did nothing wrong to her. It should be noted though that she was corrupted by a powerful amulet at that time and that she apologized after she was freed from its influence, going on to eventually become a mainstay recurring character.

What "truely obnoxious things"? Elaborate. I also haven't watched this episode in a long time so I forgot if Snips and Snails were actually forgiven. I don't know what the Season 3 paragraph was going on about though, since that seems to be the expected audience reaction.

• Queen Chrysalis. Even though she happens to lack Nightmare Moon's backstory or Discord's wackiness, and could arguably be considered worse than both of them, some fans tend to look upon her attempted takeover of Equestria as her merely doing what she thinks is right for her species, or possibly that Changelings operate on Blue-and-Orange Morality rather than Always Chaotic Evil and Chrysalis herself has a particularly sick sense of humor.
• The changelings species tends to get a lot of leeway and sympathy from the audience. While opinions on their boss go either way, most fans consider the changelings to be doing what they have to do to eat, a Henchmen Race that's Just Following Orders, or even a Woobie Species taking orders from a Bad Boss. The one lone changeling attending the wedding in Slice Of Life, who was dubbed "Loneling" by fans and ultimately released as a friend-class in the CCG named "Kevin", show's that even in canon they're Not Always Evil.
  • Season Six elaborated on this with Spike befriending a friendly Changeling named Thorax while explicitly showing changelings eating love is a definite case of Horror Hunger. Then, in the Season Six finale, the Changelings found out that not only could they end their Horror Hunger for good by sharing love with one another, but that Chrysalis knew this all along and manipulated all of them for her own selfish gain, making the changeling species as a whole more sympathetic while making Chrysalis herself much less sympathetic. The changelings earn a much better life by following Thorax's example and metamorphize into complete beings while under the benevolent and new King Thorax, and end up getting much better relations with Equestria and the Crystal Empire, as they're shown wandering in the background shots past Season 7 with no one else minding.

A lot of this just seems like fan theories and Draco in Leather Pants, at least untill Season 6.

• Rainbow Dash in "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well." The episode is notorious for making it look like the rest of the cast goes overboard in trying to teach Dash humility, thinking that Dash's actions weren't bad enough to merit the treatment she got. Conceited about it or not, Rainbow saved no less than six lives.

I believe we already talked about Rainbow in this episode? That she wasn't sympathetic for her ego?

• Lightning Dust from "Wonderbolts Academy." Her recklessness and lack of regret for nearly killing Rainbow Dash's friends by accident led to her being booted from the team. But between Lightning's superiors encouraging this attitude prior, her not getting a chance to change her attitude after her superiors decided it was wrong, how "at fault" she was for the incident being debatable^note Fans, particularly those in the military themselves, have pointed out that Twilight and her friends really had no business wandering into what amounted to an active training zone unannounced like that, equating it to someone who was nearly run over at a NASCAR race for hopping the fence and running out into the track, and putting the blame squarely on them for trespassing (if they just showed up) or The Wonderbolts organization (if they let them in)., Lightning's heartbroken reaction to being booted, and many other characters being Easily Forgiven for as bad or worse, she topped the poll for villain fans wanted redeemed. This would have happened in the original ending where she merely got demoted to Rainbow's wingpony instead of being booted from the team entirely and stayed friends with her. Instead, by the time the show came to an end Lightning Dust remained one of the few antagonistic characters to go unredeemed, with her only other appearance emphasizing that she and Rainbow are "rivals for life".

I think the part about Twilight's friends trespassing can go since that's an Unintentionally Unsympathetic tangent.

• The Pinkie Pie clones in "Too Many Pinkie Pies". Their exact nature is still left up for debate: the writers tried to make it clear that the clones are just purely magical manifestations of Pinkie's basic personality, but they are shown apparently having actual feelings and emotions and learning just like real ponies. Theories crop up all the time, and it makes the climax of the episode with all the clones getting sent back to the pool, that is effectively destroyed, without the ponies even considering alternatives feel far too morbid for many. The fact that at least one clone apparently survived, now living a perfectly normal life, doesn't help as it apparently cements that they Really Were Born Yesterday rather than mere manifestations of magic.

Again this feels like theory crafting.

• "Putting Your Hoof Down" tries to push Iron Will as a jerkass who deliberately turns Fluttershy into a bully, but his advice isn't quite as mean-spirited as the episode would like you to believe and Fluttershy makes her own choice to take his teachings too far. He also proves rather reasonable when she refuses to pay up, quoting his "satisfaction guaranteed or you pay nothing" policy. Accordingly, when he returns in "Once Upon a Zeppelin", he is much more overtly sleazy.

"Fluttershy makes her own choice" I thought I remembered that all the other ponies were holding the Jerkass Ball that day and that pushed her to hold it too. But otherwise fine.

• The Cutie Mark Crusaders in "One Bad Apple" were supposed to have become as bad as Babs Seed when they retaliated against her bullying by sabotaging her parade float. But it's shown it only would have gotten her slightly covered in mud, which seemed childish and minor compared to how frequent and severe Babs' bullying was portrayed as. It doesn't help either that the Cutie Mark Crusaders did attempt other ways of avoiding and dealing with Babs and only "became as bad as Babs" out of desperation when the other ways failed, and that the end of the episode makes it fairly clear that Applejack wouldn't have done anything about the bullying if they had just gone to tell like she wanted them to.
  • Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon come off as this in the same episode. After entering the episode with their typical "Blank Flanks" bullying routine (which is what leads to Babs joining them so that she won't be bullied herself), they don't really do much of anything except laugh about the bullying that Babs is doing to the CMC. Yet at the end of the episode when Babs tells them off for picking on the CMC, they fall into mud and get laughed at by Babs and the CMC. We're supposed to see this as their comeuppance, but not only did it not feel earned but it creates a Broken Aesop since Babs and the CMC are now bullying the bullies, the very thing that was framed as being wrong when the CMC tried to do it to Babs (and what made them Unintentionally Sympathetic.)

Wasn't it determined sometime ago that Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara weren't sympathetic? Not sure about the CMC either, since Babs was already listed as Unsympathetic.

• Spike in "Just for Sidekicks" is the Butt-Monkey whos treatment is supposed to be karma for pawning off his responsibilities on others and taking on more than he can handle. Unfortunately, the episode begins with him not being invited back to the Crystal Empire which he helped save, which makes it hard not to feel sorry for him, and led several fans to feel his Butt-Monkey treatment was in poor taste. It also doesn't help that his driving motivation is simply wanting a small quantity of gems to bake a cake which is somehow treated as wrong and greedy in and of itself (complete with a scene of Zecora stealing one of his gems and giving it away because it's apparently wrong for dragons to want payment for doing a job) and how the pets are acting WAY worse than they normally do with Angel Bunny deliberately making Spike's life miserable For the Evulz. The next season revealing that he suffers from self-esteem issues certainly didn't help either.

Maybe this is alright? Remove the last paragraph since that's intended sympathy.

• Spike gets it even harder in "Princess Spike" where he's hit with the same Butt-Monkey treatment from "Just For Sidekicks", but this time as "punishment" for genuinely trying to help Twilight Sparkle^note While he does do some self-serving stuff, this goes completely without consequence and isn't any different than the ways Twilight or the other princesses reward themselves for doing said job. Between taking all the blame for merely trying to do a job that was given to him (with none falling on those who gave him said job), as well as some blows he takes from a plant called Dragonsneeze that does exactly what you think and was inexplicably planted all over the place, most felt it went too far and saw it as a Sadist Show: it's been panned as the worst episode of season 5, one of the worst episodes overall, and even series director Jim Miller agreed that perhaps they hit Spike too hard this time.

This is too complainy. Maybe remove the part about it being "THA WURST EPISOODE EVAR!", and the natter, and it might be fine

• Applejack in "Hearthbreakers". The whole episode is supposed to be about her learning that she was being too closed minded about Pinkie's family and their Hearth Warming traditions, to the point where even her own family worn her that she shouldn't be interfering. However this glosses over the fact that the Pie family can easily be accused of the exact same thing, seeming to expect the Apples to follow their traditions without question and never allowing an alternative point of view. In fact, Applejack was the only one who did try and embrace the other's way, forcing herself to eat their rock soup when the rest of her family only complained.

This feels like a Unintentionally Unsympathetic entry disguised as a US entry.

• "Parental Glideance" had Rainbow Dash depicted as being totally in the wrong for snapping at her Amazingly Embarrassing Parents, even though she had good reason to be upset at them cheering on every little thing she did, including interrupting a Wonderbolt show with fireworks. While Dash handled her conflict badly by screaming at them, Dash's mom and dad were the ones antagonizing Rainbow, while she was just supposed to grin and bear it.

This should be reworded a bit. Maybe say that "objecting" rather than "snapping" it just makes it seem like her yelling was the problem.

• Like the Pinkie Clones, the "Mean" clones of the Mane Six get a similarly morbid hand dealt to them that garnered some pity, especially since they're definitely sentient. Their entire existence is spent basically being slaves of Queen Chrysalis and threatened with death every step of the way if they don't do her dirty work, and while for the most part they are genuinely bad ponies (especially the clones of Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle), they don't seem any worse than the pre-redemption changelings who came off as equally evil and eager to do wrong complete with Evil Laughs and grins while attacking Canterlot. They also never get the chance to do much villaining outside of scheming to free themselves from Chrysalis (or anyone's) control, prompting them to attack the tree and be unceremoniously and graphically destroyed for it. Evil or not, it's hard not to sympathize with six villains Born into Slavery, threatened every step of the way by an Evil Queen, and ultimately killed for trying to free themselves from it. This is taken Up To Eleven with the clone of Rainbow Dash, who actually does nothing even remotely evil or bad in the entire series (even sitting out the attack on the tree) but is killed off all the same: even most of the fan art of her portrays her as a Complete Woobie.

I forgot, did the show ever dwell on them?

• Cozy Glow was supposed to be as unrepentantly evil as the worst villains despite her age and thus deservingly locked up in Tartarus and turned to stone in the series finale. But many found treating a child as so irredeemable without giving them backstory to show how and why they turned out such as unfair after all the times adults received leniency, especially considering the main cast had ulterior motives for Easily Forgiving Starlight Glimmer and Discord which makes it seem like the main cast base who they will and won't forgive on how useful they are rather than altruistic motives like the magic of friendship. Even the equally unrepentant Queen Chrysalis was allowed by the heroes to flee. Jim Miller stated that "It seemed fun and subversive at the time" but acknowledged how some would take offense. The Villain Episodes starring her that gave her some Character Development and Grogar keeping his minions in line with intimidation and Implied Death Threats, which implied a Heel–Face Turn was possible but just not an option, certainly did nothing to make her unsympathetic either.

The part about the Mane cast's ultier motives should go, as that's kind of going off track into Unintentionally Unsympathetic. The first part of it also feels like a They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character entry.

• In "2, 4, 6, Greaaat", we're supposed to feel upset at Rainbow Dash for essentially ditching her duty of coaching the School of Friendship's cheer squad to do something she would rather do like watch and help the buckball team. The two major problems are, Twilight Sparkle couldn't have picked a more disinterested and underqualified mate as Rainbow repeatedly states, and it's revealed in the end Twilight Sparkle purposely Voluntold Rainbow Dash to do a task she didn't want to do to teach her a lesson. Why the audience is supposed to be upset with a character for having a perfectly reasonable and understandable reaction to unfair treatment by someone who purposely made them do it because they knew they wouldn't want to do it is anyone's guess, especially when both times Discord has messed with Twilight in a similar way to teach her a lesson she was every bit as upset as Dash was and this was treated as a reasonable reaction.

This seems complainy, especially since it potholes to Double Standard. Rainbow was kind of being a jerk about it too, so she isn't the innocent saint that the example is making her out to be.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jun 20th 2020 at 11:40:25 AM

Regarding "Mare Do Well" Since it's one of the few episodes I actually know decently well...a lot of people find Rainbow very sympathetic in that episode despite her ego, because she's shown hitting an emotional downpoint we've never seen her in before then and despite that her friends are portrayed as in the right for their actions.

An Unintentionally Sympathetic character can still have unsympathetic qualities, the key is just that they garner audience sympathy when we're meant to be rooting against them. Squidward is a good example; he's a Jerkass, but he suffers so much shit that people find him more sympathetic than he's meant to be.

I think that example can stay.

Honestly, the thing that bothered me with Unintentionally Sympathetic is that I always saw it as a way for people to be apologetic and excusing a character's actions because the people around them were being terrible allegedly.

Cozy Glow is a good example of this. People are protecting her like she didn't do any wrong because "the big bad heroes punished a poor innocent child while they forgive Complete Monsters".

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jun 20th 2020 at 4:27:34 PM

It's a legit audience reaction. You don't have to agree with it for it to be valid. The examples should be deleted if they're exaggerated, factually inaccurate, or don't reflect the fandom, and if it's too bash-y or gush-y we can rewrite it, but still.

I know, it's just I'm frustrated all over again with how I see it being used sometimes, like using it to bash characters that allegedly wronged them. I'm also probably just exaggerating in my mind how sympathetic people find the Jerkasses and Villains in these examples.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jun 20th 2020 at 5:01:42 AM

Could I try my hand at a write-up on Unintentionally Sympathetic for Square Peg, Round Trope?

• Unintentionally Sympathetic is when a character is supposed to be seen as unsympathetic, but ends up feeling for them for a plethora of reasons. It is not for using a character to bash the Unintentionally Unsympathetic characters around them, nor is it to be used to be apologetic towards Jerkasses and villains.

Well, what constitutes apologia, rather than just happening to sympathize with a jerkass or a villain?

Treating them like they did nothing wrong and then bashing the "unsympathetic" characters for messing with them.

Was that bad for me to add that?

Since this seems to be pulling double duty as an Unintentionally Sympathetic cleanup, this is an entry that was posted on YMMV.Community S 2 E 01 Anthropology 101:

Unintentionally Sympathetic: Jeff is the sympathetic one in this episode. He points out to Britta that making a public declaration of love in front of a crowd put a lot of pressure on him unfairly, and proves it when he does the same thing to her. Likewise, he told Annie their kiss was a mistake because he sees her as a kid and there's a power imbalance. It was unfair for everyone to judge him for sleeping with Britta and then kissing Annie because he wasn't together with either of them and isn't looking for a serious relationship.

As I detailed in this ask the tropers query, it also might be a stealth edit war, since the troper in question, Jayalaw, was adding it back from the main page where it was listed under Jerkass Has a Point. I deleted that earlier with this reasoning: Jeff is not the sympathetic one in this episode. He isn't really considerate of their feelings and is just doing it to one up britta. That makes him kind of a jerk (without a point)

Furthermore as I also detailed in the query, this feels like Jayalaw is just trying to push his own personal opinion rather than a substantial opinion the fanbase holds.

From YMMV.Meet The Parents:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Jack. Sometimes, his reactions towards Greg's obvious lies are justified but for the most part he would bully Greg around and Greg would still be treated as the bad guy. He claims that he is a very accepting man when it came to meeting his daughter's fiancés but his past history of interrogating them as well as his behaviour towards Greg throughout the first film says otherwise.

Not sure it counts as unintentional, since the whole point of his character at the climax is that he realizes he was wrong to go overboard with his actions.

@PlasmaPower: my thought's on your mentioned MLP entries:

• Trixie: Cut, that's Designated Villain. She was arrogant, but not to the degree the heroes treated her which is addressed in later episodes.
• Queen Chrysalis: Cut, they did plenty of cruelty irrelevant to and detrimental to potentially sympathetic goals.
• Changelings: Cut as regardless they were dangerous and it happened too fast for the narrative to give them a sympathy value.
• Rainbow Dash in "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well". Cut as their actions do become harmful. The problems with that episode I added to Broken Aesop.
• Lightning Dust from "Wonderbolts Academy". Keep as the Twilight's friends thing was a small part of it and there's a poll suggesting she's such.
• The Pinkie Pie clones in "Too Many Pinkie Pies": keep as the creators acknowledged it.
• "Putting Your Hoof Down": replace "Fluttershy makes her own choice to take his teachings too far" with "the problems were caused by Fluttershy inadvertently taking his lessons too far". The rest should be kept, tweaked it need be.
• The Cutie Mark Crusaders in "One Bad Apple": I previously cut "It doesn't help either that the Cutie Mark Crusaders did attempt other ways of avoiding and dealing with Babs and only "became as bad as Babs" out of desperation when the other ways failed, and that the end of the episode makes it fairly clear that Applejack wouldn't have done anything about the bullying if they had just gone to tell like she wanted them to." as that's Strawman Has a Point / Informed Wrongness / Broken Aesop as opposed to that. I, admittedly biased, say keep the rest.
  • Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon same episode: CUT. They show no regret or reining in how much worse Babs' bullying was and the problem come from the Broken Aesop not their sympathy level.
• Spike in "Just for Sidekicks": Agree with just cutting the last, intentional part for now.
• Spike in "Princess Spike": Cut as fails to explain why he was supposed to be unsympathetic and redundant with Designated Monkey.
• Applejack in "Hearthbreakers". See my thoughts on it here.
• "Parental Glideance" Sure, reword.
• The "Mean" clones: as is fails to explain why they were supposed to be unsympathetic and many did legitimately unsympathetic stuff. Rework at least.
• Cozy Glow: Cut the stuff about the Mane Six's motives as that speculative. I admittedly wrote the rest so am biased to keep. What sentence exactly cased the They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character reaction because that might be fixable.
• "2, 4, 6, Greaaat": I'd say cut and move to Informed Wrongness.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Jun 20th 2020 at 10:35:34 AM

I disagree with your assessment of Lightning Dust. It was pretty much being misused to pin everyone else around her as unsympathetic and hypocrites. I don't think that was part of it at all.

It was mainly her change in heart, seeming like she learned her lesson that made her sympathetic.

What Twilight and friends did was more What An Idiot, and for LD's superiors... I'd say Moral Dissonance, but we're planning on moving that trope to YMMV, so I dunno if it'd be a good time to put it there.

Edit: Now that I think about it, the Hearthsbreaker thing could probably be put under Moral Dissonance too...

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jun 21st 2020 at 3:33:45 PM

Stating just in case considering this is about The Last of Us Part II

Obviously the YMMV is either locked or considering being locked and people will probably suggest the character Abby for Unintentionally Unsympathetic considering how a grand part of the internet seems to dislike her.

My question is, does she fit Unintentionally Unsympathetic? Does the trope require citation or has any guidelines to follow? Any waiting periods I ask because anything regarding TLOUII is volatile and i want to be careful about this.

Of course, pretty sure there is a few months wait before a new work is allowed to have entries like these right?

To answer your questions in order:

• I have not played TLOUII, so I can't say if Abby counts or not.
• There are no citation requirements but there are guidelines and standards to follow, which unfortunately no one ever heeds.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic doesn't have a timer on it, though now that you've brought it up I'm wondering how many of the "examples" we've had to go through were knee-jerk reactions. It really should have one, actually...

I would argue that TLOU 2 example fits. The game does make a fair effort to explain her motives and make her sympathetic to the player, which to a lot of people wound up failing due to the reasons on the trope page. It imo meets all of the criteria cited on the trope page too, so it should stay there. I'm more iffy on the other examples listed however, which do feel a bit too much like knee-jerk nitpicking.

Moral Dissonance sound pretty good for Lightning Dust and Hearthbreakers. (Still trying to figure out the difference between Hypocrite and Moral Myopia, but I digress).

On the subject on The Last of Us Part II:

• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Ellie herself becomes this due to how unapologetic the game feels at portraying her revenge as both petty and villainous. Despite this, one cannot ignore how she was held down and helplessly forced to watch Joel being brutally murdered in front of her. When she ultimately confronts Abby, you are forced to play the latter, which is made worse by how visceral and violent the fight is. In their second and final confrontation at the end, Ellie chooses to let a beaten Abby live — itself a controversial decision (see Ass Pull above) and returns home to find Dina, her lover, gone along with their son. In the end, everyone she has ever known and loved have either abandoned her or are dead.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • One of the biggest criticisms the game faces is that, despite its numerous efforts to the contrary, Abby is stunningly unlikable and unsympathetic. While just about everybody understands why she would want to kill Joel, and her central arc of the game after this being centered around how she needs to let go of her hate and move on with her life., many players felt that it was unearned and a case of too little, too late, given the insanely vicious and sadistic manner of Joel's murder, even after he'd risked his own life to save her from the infected, and her overall mean and ruthless personality destroys a lot of the sympathy the player may feel for her. It also really doesn't help that she basically gets away scot-free at the end, While Ellie herself ends the game with her life in ruins. The developer's attempted to stop her from being a complete Karma Houdini by having her lose almost all of her friends and loved ones to Ellie's wrath, but to many players it instead came off as her getting away with everything while her friends died for her mistakes.
  • Even her father Jerry is considered an example of this. The game tries to present him as an innocent victim of Joel's actions but his death was the result of him attacking Joel with a scalpel at the end of the first game, meaning Joel was acting in self-defense. There's also the fact that he was willing to cut open a 14-year-old girl's brain on the slim chance that it would help make a vaccine for the cordyceps plague. In addition, when asked if he would go through the operation if it was Abby on the operating table, Jerry dodges the question, suggesting he would have done the same thing Joel would have, thus making him a hypocrite.

All this sounds like complaining about intentional parts.

• Ellie: it is portrayed as unfair but self inflicted by her understandable (she's the main character for this reason) desire for revenge, the rest is compelling about events as opposed to intended sympathy. At least redundant with Abby's UU entry.
• Abby: again intentional as the reason players are hunting her, and Fourth Wall Myopia meant Abby didn't know Joel was sympathetic and lacks an objective reason her Heel Realization was too little too late. The last part is valid save for WHY loosing her friends and loved ones wasn't karma enough.
• Jerry: the "cut open a 14-year-old girl's brain on the slim chance that it would help make a vaccine for the cordyceps plague" overlooks it would have save all of human civilization, they weren't happy to do so but thought it necessary, and said 14-year-old girl would have been willing to make that sacrifice such they were unhappy about being saved once they realized this. The rest sounds like moral grayness and nitpicks.

Thought? The only UU part I can see for Abby comes down to the Broken Aesop about revenge as Abby only stopped after achieving it and winds up better off than Ellie who meaningly let go of their revenge, Abby not putting effort into letting it go.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Jun 21st 2020 at 8:15:01 AM