Unintentionally Unsympathetic and Unintentionally Sympathetic Cleanup

Not to mention Monk is supposed to be sympathetic, given that he's the main character and his symptoms, while often Played for Laughs, are both tied to trauma and sometimes beneficial to the mission. This reads like a poor attempt to get around the Hilarious in Hindsight cleanup.

EDIT: Well, I was part right - it was a cut Values Resonance entry. Should probably send that troper a notifier.

Edited by mightymewtron on Oct 5th 2020 at 10:11:51 AM

I found this one on UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.Anime And Manga while cleaning wicks to Het Is Ew, how do we save it?

• Shitsurakuen ends on the note that most of the boys in the story were just as victimized by the sexist and patriarchal system at the story's foundation as the girls, and with most of them being apparently paired up with the girls they used to be with. Except in the actual story, the girls's role in the system consisted of being turned into slaves, frequently physically, sexually, and emotionally abused, treated like objects, tortured, and trapped in these relationships for use as magic weapon fuel. The boys's role in the system was... doing all that stuff, often happily, with no justification for all the bad things they do besides, at most, peer pressure and ambition, and yet they claim they were hurting just as badly and the girls should have thought more about their feelings. Claiming they were equally victimized comes across as a baffling invocation of Both Sides Have a Point in a situation where they flatly did not, with a side of Victim-Blaming in a story that'd previously been about how abuse and bullying were bad. Not to mention that there were a number of boys in the story who didn't become psychopaths when the opportunity to own women presented itself, yet this is still all blamed on the system. Needless to say, readers had reasons besides Ship Sinking and Het Is Ew to be horrified at the implication that these boys would be getting back together with their old paramours...

Edited by FernandoLemon on Oct 14th 2020 at 7:47:59 AM

There's a better-written version on the work's YMMV page.

Done deal, thanks a lot.

YMMV.Kamen Rider Build

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While he has aspects of Jerk Witha Heart Of Gold, Sento may come across as this to some people. His rudeness can be a bit too much to other people.

This fails to explain why they were supposed to be not in the wrong in those cases and lacks objective reasons why it was too much. Cut?

Sento is an Insufferable Genuis and him being rude is intentional. He's also a genuinely good person though who risked his life to save the world and citizens because it was the right thing to do. So not an example in any way.

Also what does that entry mean aspects of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold . He risks his life over and over across the entire show to do the right thing because it was the right thing.

Edited by miraculous on Oct 15th 2020 at 11:25:24 AM

The Fairly Odd Parents S 5 E 10 Its A Wishful Life

• It's easy to not laugh at Jorgen's usual violent sense of humor considering the premise of the episode.

Considering Jorgen is someone who flat out admits, (even in this episode), the misery of others makes him laugh and how it doesn't say why he's supposed to be sympatheitc, seems like something that should be cut, right?

Edited by MatthewLMayfield on Oct 17th 2020 at 12:31:15 PM

TBH, it's such a weird, nonsensical episode that it's hard to tell if Timmy or Jorgen are meant to be seen as sympathetic. But considering Jorgen's the one trying to make Timmy end his existence and fall into Hell, I think we're not really meant to side with him.

EDIT: NVM, somehow misread that as a Sympathetic entry. Agreed that he's not really meant to be sympathetic so much as symbolize Timmy's karma, though Timmy may qualify as Unintentionally Sympathetic nonetheless.

Edited by mightymewtron on Oct 17th 2020 at 1:23:26 PM

Timmy does all these favors for his parents for his parents, his teacher and AJ, with none of them showing him any appreciation for him. Something that understandably upsets him and makes him wish he was never born. And Jorgen shows him that life would be a lot better had he never come along. Sure there was the fact he needed to learn the lesson of not expecting anything in return for the good deeds, but to do them because it's the right thing to do, but I feel for Timmy in this episode. Where would the "unintentional" part come to play here?

Because the episode apparently expected us to side against Timmy. Why? I don't know. But it did by making him learn the lesson at the end, instead of being treated with any sort of respect for his hard, selfless work. We were apparently expected to see Timmy as being in the wrong.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 17th 2020 at 2:20:38 PM

I think tropers need to learn that just because one character is Unintentionally Sympathetic doesn't mean the character opposing them is automatically Unintentionally Unsympathetic. Sometimes both characters can be intended as unsympathetic in a work one way or another.

Hmm, interesting points you make. Definitely makes me wonder they could have delivered these lessons if it were more competently written...

UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.Live Action TV has plenty of natter where people comment that the characters are actually meant to be unsympathetic (Friends, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Everybody Loves Raymond). In cases like these, do we just delete the natter or the entire entry? I'm not familiar with any of the work to rewrite it properly.

The entry for Ripper Street also reads more like Evil All Along than this trope (there's not enough context to know if the character is meant to be sympathetic after being involved in those evil acts).

Pretty sure in the case of 30 rock. Liz is an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagnist for one.

On the Raymon example, Debra can be kept. The Raymond one could be removed since he almost always in the wrong and the third point is confusing.

Found this example on The Haunting of Bly Manor which is violating our rules about trope slashing:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic / Unintentionally Sympathetic: It can be very hard to sympathize with Viola/The Lady in the Lake as much as the show wants the audience to at the same pace it can be very easy to sympathize more with Perdita. Viola's background of wealth, emotional and even physical domestic abuse of her own sister (when the latter takes care of her while she's ridden with tuberculosis, putting herself at risk of catching it) doesn't endear her to many audiences, while Perdita suffering under said endear her. Viola being essentially the person responsible for all the story's woes via her refusal to let go, leading to the very Bittersweet Ending can only make things worse. With that said, the narrative is clearly meant to be morally ambiguous, so how much of that is "unintentional" is unclear.

So....not an example then. Cut it.

How can someone by sympathetic and unsympathetic at the same time?

It's not that, the entry's just lumping two entries together for different characters.

But if it's supposed to be morally ambiguous who you root for. I don't think you can call it an example of either.

Uh, so this is up on Blood of Zeus.

• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Hera. While she is the Big Bad of the show, it's hard to not see her point in how she's being constantly humiliated by her husband, who is more willing to spend time with his mistress and bastard son than doing his job of ruling the world and she has to pick up the slack and make him respectable at all. This is not helped by the massive adaptation-induced nicety of Zeus, in which he seems uncharacteristically nice, sweet, and loving to his mistress and son, a nicety hardly extended to Hera.
    • While this is true, most of the goodwill the audience may have felt towards her is likely to take a swift dive after watching her smirk with glee at Electra's death (not to mention playing a large hand in said death), and her willingness to slaughter thousands of people who had nothing to do with her own suffering.

Not only is it a bad example clearly arguing with itself somewhat, with the first part leaving out some key details, such as Hera's willingness to murder countless people and the second part violating Repair, Don't Respond, it also strikes me as more as a misplaced Unintentionally Unsympathetic example for Zeus. (Which I think would actually be a good idea, as the show glosses over some of his worse qualities.)

Worse qualities in the show or in mythology? Because if it's the latter they aren't super relevant.

In the show, Zeus is constantly cheating on his wife, pulls a Bed Trick that the show really goes out of its way to try and convince you isn't rape, not to mention trying to exempt himself from the rules he himself set.

My issue would be that I think it might be intentional considering how his story ultimately goes, but I'm not sure.

I think the entry on Hera should definitely go though. The potential sympathy does kinda evaporate when she's willing to murder innocent people just to spite him.

Found this on RoboCop 2. Seems like an example that's arguing with itself:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: A lot of people were confused or even annoyed when it came to the death of Hob. He acts like a dying child—which of course he is—and Robocop obviously treats him with some measure of implied sympathy, particularly since he was murdered by his old boss Cain. The problem is that Hob is a really, really evil dying child, who was involved in Murphy's dismantling, shoots two police officers and we've spent the movie watching him establish himself as an extremely ruthless Manipulative Bastard and aspirant drug lord. Basically the problem is, if he wasn't a kid, the audience probably would have been cheering. It has also been said, according to some fans, that Hob brought his death on himself. Hob was the one who made the decision to leave Cain for dead, which likely factored into Robo-Cain killing Hob, and there was the glee he took in damaging Robocop and trying to garrote Officer Lewis (even taunting her about it: "You're looking a little out of breath, bitch).
  
  Though it could be argued that Hob being a child makes him more sympathetic in spite of his sociopathic tendencies because, unlike an adult, it's implied that Hob had little choice in being a gangster. Hob was by all indications most likely an orphan and when your father figure is someone like Cain it's hard to see how Hob could have turned out any other way (Hob was in fact deeply troubled and disgusted by Officer Duffy being vivisected and Cain held his face toward the screaming man being cut up). Keep in mind to that Hob is still a child and hasn't experienced anything beyond his violent upbringing which means it's all he know so even when they have to leave Cain and he still acts like a criminal, it's because it's all he has to fall back on.