Unintentionally Unsympathetic and Unintentionally Sympathetic Cleanup

From the UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.Miraculous Ladybug subpage:

• Chloé during the Queen's Fight trilogy behaves in a very selfish manner, which makes Marinette's decision to pity her and give her the Bee Miraculous more jarring, although some may argue that it was more for Adrien's benefit and due to what he told her about how Chloé was in the past than anything Chloé did in the present. Many fans felt that Chloé had proven she was not deserving of being Queen Bee. As it turned out, they were right, and Word of God stated that this was the Intended Audience Reaction and that she was a terrible Queen Bee◊, with Marinette trusting her with it as a Horrible Judge of Character.
  • Played with but still present in the "Battle of the Miraculous" two-parter. While Chloé is meant to be seen as sympathetic for her frustrations about not receiving the Bee Miraculous and how Ladybug’s actions frustrate her and lead her to siding with Hawk Moth, Chloé refuses to acknowledge that Ladybug is trying to protect her, that it was her actions that led to her being unable to have the Miraculous (i.e. exposing her identity on live TV), and all season long Chloé has grown entitled to be a hero when she's still a Spoiled Brat who feels no remorse for hurting others much less when she forcibly reveals the identities of the temporary Miraculous holders and ruins everything for Ladybug, Cat and the other heroes out of pettiness.

So besides the fact that YMMV can't be played with, as the entry outright states, it's been confirmed that this was not unintentional and that we're supposed to think she's unsympathetic. Cut?

I'm pretty sure if Word of God says the character is not sympathetic they can't be Unintentionally Unsympathetic. Cut.

YMMV.The Cat In The Hat

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The Cat, despite wanting to "have fun", he has a complete Lack of Empathy towards the destruction he makes and he almost kills Sally and Conrad a few times. He also makes the mess worse, so much he could've crossed the Moral Event Horizon.
  • The kids don’t exactly come across as any better as Conrad repeatedly breaks the rules just for fun, which caused the Mother-of-All-Messes when he breaks the Cat’s one rule of leaving his crate closed at all times. Granted, it turns out the Cat planned for him to disobey the rule, but still. As for Sally, she renounced her friendship with other girls for rather selfish and inconsequential reasons. It’s almost as if the Cat was made to be humorously cruel to the kids in order for them to be better people.

Both of these fail to explain how they're supposed to be sympathetic.

Cut them then. Maybe PM who added them so they can add that if it is legit.

Relating, I’ll remove these recommended cuts unless anyone objects and PM who added them to see if they can add them back with due context.

They are still there.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Sep 28th 2020 at 12:35:24 PM

Those entries were added over a year ago, so I don't know if they'd still be on the site or not.

Thanks for the feedback. How is this for a rewrite?

• RWBY, JNR and Qrow's collective actions towards Ozpin when the Awful Truth is revealed in Volume 6. While they have every right to be angry, the depth of their aggression towards him shows no regard for Oscar's innocence as Ozpin's host, or the fact that they've been shown such a personal, tragic back story that Ozpin has been reduced to tears right in front of them: Qrow punches Oscar as he disowns Ozpin; Yang's rage is complicated by the audience not knowing whether she's ever revealed the secret she's keeping about Raven; and Jaune slams Oscar into a wall because he's so angry with Ozpin. Their behaviour towards Ozpin is exacerbated in Volume 7 when they decide to keep the same secret from Ironwood that Ozpin kept from them, leading to Ironwood eventually turning on them the way they turned on Ozpin.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Sep 28th 2020 at 11:42:50 AM

I meant the person who added them originally.

, I've made the replacement and the proposed cuts.

Thoughts about adding this to Unintentionally Unsympathetic? "Contrast Karma Houdini, who is deliberately portrayed as getting unfairly well off despite their misdeeds (these can overlap if they get away with thing different than intended)." Cleanup said KH had to be intentional.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Sep 28th 2020 at 6:35:08 AM

I have to question these entries from Victorious:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Jade in The Worst Couple. The writers want you to feel sorry for her that Beck broke up with her, but it's hard to actually do that when she acts like a spiteful bitch to everyone. Giving a "Reason You Suck" Speech to her so-called friends and breaking Sinjin's leg by running him down make the audience cheer for her misery rather than feel sorry for it.
  • Tori in "The Hambone King" when telling her friends about her time with Gerald. Her statement, "Gerald was jealous of me, because everyone knew I was better at hamboning than he was," puts on the impression that she actually told people she was better than him, and makes her seem arrogant rather than sympathetic. It's no wonder he partnered with Suzie McCallen.

I have never heard anyone claim that Jade was unsympathetic in "The Worst Couple". And the second one just seems like an excuse to complain about Tori rather an example of her coming off as unsympathetic. I mean the weird thing is they both have a plenty of episodes where the fandom found them unsympathetic when they were supposed to be sympathetic. However these episodes are rarely braught up as those in my experience. However I am not super familiar with the trope. And would like some other opinions.

Edited by Bullman on Oct 2nd 2020 at 4:23:22 AM

Jade is way clingy to Beck that it can be insufferable. If the episode was supposed to have the audience feel sympathy, some fans wouldn't see it as much because of her behavior.

Okay. I get that. What about the second one?

Edited by Bullman on Oct 2nd 2020 at 4:34:18 AM

Personally, I never thought Jade was sympathetic. I think the entry needs more context on how her behavior negates the attempt at gaining sympathy, though. Same with the Tori example - it doesn't clarify how she was meant to be sympathetic in that statement. Both examples also suffer poor indentation.

Edited by mightymewtron on Oct 2nd 2020 at 5:34:44 AM

I could rewrite them. I would have to rewatch the episodes, but I could rewrite them. Though I can think of better episodes to point out when talking about Tori coming off unintentionally unsympathetic.

Edited by Bullman on Oct 2nd 2020 at 4:44:30 AM

YMMV.Digimon Adventure Last Evolution Kizuna

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Due to her lack of screentime, Sora's refusal to fight has garnered a lot of criticism. Even putting aside the Values Dissonance entry on her, she loses Biyomon offscreen without any clear shots of her digivice being in the same state as Tai and Matt's, which would have made the audience more understanding of her situation. The only time her digivice was shown was in a Freeze-Frame Bonus during the intro, which made things even worse.

Besides failing to explain why she was supposed to be seen as sympathetic, the complaints elsewhere over her lack of screentime suggests she’s a non-entity in this story as opposed to having a intended sympathy value. There’s a lot of salt about the work so even if it is an example it could use scrutiny.

Is Unintentionally Sympathetic, the Opposite Trope, also within the scope of this thread? I think it would attract complaining (and possibly gushing) as well. For example, from the Western Animation subpage:

• The title character from Arthur in the episode "Arthur's Big Hit" is supposed to be the bad guy when he hits D.W. However, not only was she told not to touch his plane countless times, she chose to deliberately disobey him, throw the plane out the window and blames him for "making a plane that can't fly" instead of apologizing for what she did. D.W's never even told she did anything wrong by their parents. Given that this is a pretty famous episode, a lot of people view the episode as one of the worst. And what's even worse is that later in the episode, Arthur is hit by Binky, who mind you didn't even want to hit Arthur and only did it because his friends dared him to in order to prove that he's still tough, and Arthur's parents' response is basically: "Well, how do you think D.W. felt?" So to recap, Arthur hitting D.W. in a fit of passion for breaking his plane is treated as the worst thing ever, but when Arthur is hit, his parents essentially imply that he deserved it.

That's just overzealousness.

Could you clarify what you're talking about?

Oh boy, Arthur. We have a whole cleanup thread that talks a lot about that one, especially "Arthur's Big Hit."

I know one thing. Arthur getting Hit by Binky does make him sympathetic since the narrative portrays it as him getting karma even though he doesn't do anything to Binky to warrant it.

You're speaking mightily objective there for a subjective trope.

Im just saying from the perspective of the trope. The narrative plays out that Arthur deserved being hit by Binky. Even his dad more or less agreed with it. The audience are suppose to see it as deserving. Which makes the no hitting aesop a broken one. But some viewers thing otherwise.

The Broken Aesop bit isn't quite accurate since the point was "violence doesn't help anything, as you can see by not only D.W. getting hit but Arthur getting hit." It's less "you got hit as punishment" and more "now you see the other perspective." I do think it still might fly for Unintentionally Sympathetic since it's still suggesting Arthur getting hit on by someone who wasn't even targeting him about the D.W. thing (he was only punched on a dare) is a good way to teach him that punching is wrong.

I'm not saying it couldn't count as US, just that you framed it as an objective "it makes him sympathetic" and not "it makes viewers sympathize more".

This is on Monk:

• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Some of Monk's OCD tendencies, such as wiping after a handshake and cleaning obsessively, have become this in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It even gest lampshaded in "Monk in Quarantine."

Considering how it mentions COVID, it should probably be cut. Also, didn't the show end before the pandemic?