Unintentionally Unsympathetic and Unintentionally Sympathetic Cleanup

That's a good addition. In terms of the wording, I'd re-write it as "Nor did Discord give them any chance to redeem themselves, as he himself was given"- I think that flows better.

The amended entry for UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic:

• In "The Ending of the End" Discord was revealed to have impersonated Grogar and brought together the villains for Twilight Sparkle to defeat thus teaching her confidence, unwittingly making them a genuine threat. After being called out for it and risking his life redeeming himself his turning Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow to stone as a Fate Worse than Death was treated positively as they proved that evil and irredeemable. However, many fans objected as Discord was punishing the villains for crimes that he intended them to commit in the first place and "Grogar" used violence and Implied Death Threats to force them to partake. What the villains did against Discord's intent wasn't worse than what "Grogar" intended nor their prior evildoing^Explanation They brought apocalyptic scenarios before (Chrysalis indirectly) before but wanted to prevent the one they unwittingly caused here as a threat to them. Their attempt to kill the heroes was seen as evil as ever just averting Bond Villain Stupidity.. Nor did Discord give them any chance to redeem themselves, as he himself was given, which was seen as negating the one justification to risk enabling the villains despite the countless safer ways he could have taught Twilight which is different than what he's called out on.

Any last thoughts/addtions?

Done and added.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Dec 2nd 2020 at 3:11:48 AM

I'd re-write the one line as "was treated positively, with the villains' actions being portrayed as proof that they were that evil and irredeemable" as that explains the issue better. It's good to go after that.

Edited by Javertshark13 on Dec 1st 2020 at 2:44:33 PM

I found two entries in Mortal Kombat 9 that I wasn't sure if they would fit or not so I decided to bring it to this thread.

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Scorpion has been getting some of this sort of reaction from those who were introduced to the franchise via MK9. Granted, it is unfortunate that he lost his clan, and especially his wife and infant child, in a brutal massacre and is intended to be a tragic figure. However it doesn't justify him aligning with the likes of Quan Chi and by extension Shinnok and instead makes Scorpion look more like an angry asshole who jumped out of a Dark-Age, Liefeld-inspired comic book. To the credit of the creators, this is somewhat acknowledged at the beginning of Chapter 16 when Raiden chews him out for his continued service to Quan Chi which will do nothing at all to revive the Shirai Ryu or at the very least do something with some sort of good intention.
  • To some degree for some fans, Liu Kang, while he is right about Raiden in the end to an extent, he loses trust in Raiden because of Raiden's changes of time. This is in spite of the fact Raiden has to juggle the responsibility of protecting the heroes and change the timeline for the better, which is not an easy task. However, Liu Kang is justified as he did not actually see the visions.'

When it comes to the first entry I think this is coming from the fact that the entry is talking about Scorpion who is considered one of the most sympathetic characters. But the thing is Scorpion is not treated sympathetically by the narrative he does have some sympathetic traits and you can feel bad for what he has gone through. But his actions are painted as wrong the entry even admits that Raiden calls him out on it which should say everything you need to know. His sympathetic traits come in the next game.

The second one is a bit harder to explain and you can really only argue against if you know a lot about that game like I do. But Liu Kang's actions in response to him losing his trust in Raiden is not treated sympathetically as he flat out tries to attack Raiden when he tries to reason with him to not fight Shao Kahn and when Raiden tries to defend himself when Liu Kang tries to kill him, Liu Kang blames him. It also tries to justify this in a way that makes no sense Liu Kang may not have physically seen the visions but he was told about them and reacted badly when Raiden made a few mistakes.

Maybe the second entry could be revised instead but the first one in my opinion should definitely go.

The whole entry of Discord in “The Ending of the End” looks so baffling. It’s seems to imply that Discord was motivated purely by malice toward the villains, when that clearly wasn’t entirely the case. Discord clearly did have the best intentions for Twilight, he just made very poorly thought out decisions. And there is a difference between coming across as unsympathetic and coming across as foolish.

I swung by YMMV.Rent because I had an entry in mind about Mimi, only to find several more entries that might be questionable.

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: A common complaint among non-fans.
  • Mark and Roger, who are squatters by choice and only refuse to pay their rent because they aren't willing to "sell out" (read: get a job). Mark even moreso: the only reason he doesn't want to go back to his perfectly supportive and loving parents is he thinks they're kind of lame. Roger at least has an excuse of being a shut-in due to recovering from his addiction and dealing with his AIDS diagnosis. Mark, meanwhile, gets a respectable job in his field of choice that he openly resents because it's not respectable. Mark is definitely seen as unsympathetic to some, since he's the only character not explicitly part of a marginalzied group or suffering from HIV/AIDS. But this entry is kind of weirdly written, mostly the self-contradictory "gets a respectable job in his field of choice that he openly resents because it's not respectable" part. What they probably mean is that Mark turns down profitable jobs just because they go against his principles and then complains about being poor. Roger calls him out for this but Mark is still generally meant to be seen as righteous. I think this can stay if rewritten.
  • Angel, despite being arguably the single purest character in the whole show who does honest work as a street entertainer, happily accepts payment to take out a hit on what turns out to be Benny's dog. I don't think she's meant to be sympathetic in that moment, and most people still like and sympathize with Angel despite being uncomfortable with the dog thing.
  • Maureen, who is not only emotionally abusive but shamelessly perpetuates the stereotype that bisexual = slut. Maureen is clearly not meant to be sympathetic. The bisexual stereotype stuff is just meta Unfortunate Implications.
  • Even Joanne, Mimi, Angel, and Collins, characters who all have jobs (some of which highly respectable) enable Roger and Mark's entitled attitudes and are depicted as rebellious, but never make it clear exactly what they're rebelling against except... society. A lot of this can be chalked up to Values Dissonance, as audiences from The New '10s onward (and even some from as early as the 2000s) have had a much kinder attitude of LGBTQ+ lifestyles and sex workers than the 1990s did. Okay, this example is frustrating, probably because of how general it is. Collins and Angel are both victims of homophobia and usually racism in the former's case (Collins gets brutalized in his first scene), Mimi is a poor drug-addicted sex worker who gets sexually harassed, and Joanne is pretty well-off but she's still a lesbian during a time of high homophobic tensions. It is very obvious why they would be disillusioned with society even if their "revolution" is written somewhat vaguely. Also, I wouldn't say Joanne is depicted as "rebellious"; she supports her girlfriend and her friends' causes, but mostly through tech work or using her law expertise to help her friends not be homeless. It's true that many people find the characters a bit pretentious but that's mostly directed at Mark and Roger.

Edited by mightymewtron on Dec 5th 2020 at 4:23:38 AM

I found this on Judge Judy:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Judge Judy occasionally come off this way. While a number of litigants are scumbags who deserve her tearing into them, there are cases where her harsh and caustic behavior comes off as needlessly cruel or unnecessary. She also isn’t above judging things based on her own outdated values, such as demonizing the use of social media and online shopping, or one particular case where she ruled that a woman could not have owned a video game console herself (as opposed to having purchased it as a gift for her boyfriend) because video games, in the judge’s view, are not a ladylike hobby.

Are Real Life examples even allowed?

Edited by Bullman on Dec 5th 2020 at 11:29:21 AM

I'd say if the trope is under No Real Life Examples please, it should be safe to cut.

Found this on the YMMV page for the Simpsons episode My sister, my sitter.

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Bart's horrid and self-destructive behavior is meant to be seen as a kid who is reacting out of the sheer embarrassment over being babysat by his younger sister, but he goes out of his way to ruin and hinder Lisa's night job to the point where he deliberately makes his accidental injuries worse until he falls unconscious so he can ruin Lisa's reputation, causing viewers to see him as undeserving of Lisa's forgiveness, considering he never does try to make things right, unlike in other episodes where he screws over Lisa.

Pretty sure Bart is not meant to be sympathized with and his getting Lisa in trouble and accused of being a junkie is meant to be a MAJOR Kick the Dog moment from him.

I will say, that that entry used to be worse going by the edit history, and was basically bashing Bart for his behavior in this episode.

@Brian KT: I tried to acknowledge that about Discord in the first part of the entry. That he caused this is not this trope as he's called out and redeems himself. The UU stuff is separate from his intent and what he's called out on. If you have a way better convey that I'd be grateful to add it to the entry.

About the UU page quote.

• The page quote comes from Linkara discussing Ransik from Power Rangers Time Force. He notes the fandom considers Ransik a sympathetic Anti-Villain who was Driven to Villainy by the Fantastic Racism of humans against mutants like him. However, other characters claim that some people did try to reach out to Ransik, but he rejected them. Additionally, a flashback shows he killed a human who helped him by giving him a serum to help the pain of his mutations, and laughed at his charity as foolish. Furthermore, Ransik never shows any desire to help other mutants or make conditions better for them, and takes his vendetta a thousand years into the past where he just causes chaos for the sake of doing it. This is also compounded with the Fantastic Racism aspect being off-set by every mutant in the series save for one acting Always Chaotic Evil and justifying the fear normal humans have of them.

This is misuse. Ransik is called out in-work that his circumstances didn't justify his actions and in the finale he has a Heel Realization and allows himself to be arrested for such. The entry is also about fans see the character and not how the narrative treats them.

Any replacement page quotes?

Why do we need one? Even if the example is inaccurate the quote's fine.

Also, if the redemption arc was meant to make an unsympathetic character sympathetic, but the audience doesn't agree, then it still qualifies. A redemption arc can be seen as unearned, rushed, or unsuccessful if the character still acts in an unsympathetic manner.

That's not what the entry is arguing. It's stating fans are finding them sympathetic, arguing against this trope, but accusing fans of whitewashing them. And all the evidence I can find argues the villain is supposed to be in the wrong for what the entry accuses them of and is well received by fans for their handling.

They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot had it's page quote cut as misuse.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Dec 6th 2020 at 7:40:02 AM

I think this Draco in Leather Pants entry on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic's "The Ending of the End -Part 2" should explain why the Unintentionally Sympathetic entry should be deleted.

• A Vocal Minority believe that the villain trio should have been given one Last-Second Chance to surrender and redeem themselves after they were depowered at least before turning them to stone if they still refused, despite Chrysalis making it really clear that they will never surrender and try again next time if left alone. While only Chrysalis showed themselves unrepentant, Tirek and Cozy seemingly standing down was due to their being exhausted from their defeat and stripped of their magic, otherwise they likely would have backed up Chrysalis on her claim since they two have shown to be pretty firm on their decision to be evil and had no interest in changing their ways or accepting friendship. The same fans were uncritical of King Sombra never being offered redemption despite him not even realizing the value of friendship, but rejecting it like them.

Uh....you realize that the only criteria for Unintentionally Unsympathetic is:

• The character is meant to be sympathetic
• Fans disagree

I'm not seeing how that refutes either of those statements.

Those tropes are not mutually exclusive.

• DILP because fans are unfairly assuming them redeemable.
• UU/US because they weren't given a effort to redeem and seemingly were forced into a position where they would have been punished as harshly even if they hadn't proven so irredeemable.

While they were irredeemable beyond any reasonable doubt, the problem is that they were never given due process and treated as irredeemable before they showed they would have remained evil even if given a fair chance. They're treating them such thus came of as Right for the Wrong Reasons (right to treat them as irredeemable, wrong in the way they proved them such) and Moral Luck (treating them as irredeemable proved right accidentally as they were using them so before due proof).

I'm going to delete the Ransik example as misuse and take the page quote to the relevant cleanup. Any objections?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Dec 9th 2020 at 10:36:14 AM

There's an Unintentionally Unsympathetic subpage for Tangled The Series, and some examples there seem iffy and complain-y to me.

Let's start with Cassandra. As she is a Walking Spoiler, and there's a lot of text anyway, I think it's more convenient to put it all into a folder and warn you: spoilers throughout Tangled The Series.

Edited by Tenebrika on Dec 14th 2020 at 11:54:37 PM

Massive Tangled: The Series fan, and I was also the one that made the subpage. I was a bit suspicious of a lot of those entries, but I didn't do anything since I didn't understand the trope well. I will admit it is a bit hard to say as it can be hard to tell how sympathetic her actions are intended to be so I will weigh in on each of them.

Edited by Ordeaux26 on Dec 15th 2020 at 10:47:08 AM

From Happiest Season:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Harper. She is understandably afraid to come out to her conservative small-town family, but it doesn't excuse that she lied to Abby about being out and continuously acted in a way that made Abby uncomfortable.
  • There's also the unambiguously cruel way in which Harper outed Riley, which is largely brushed off but which other, thematically similar films have treated as a Moral Event Horizon.
  • And the fact that she smashed Jane's painting.

Now I have seen the first two points used by fans from research, haven't so much with the third, but as someone who hasn't watched thhe movie. can you explain to me how the second one is supposed to be the film painting as sympathetic because. The second and third points also comes as Natter to me, with the third sounding complainy to me as well. But I could be wrong there.

Edited by Bullman on Dec 15th 2020 at 3:04:50 AM

Since there are only three entries now, regardless of the result perhaps we can move the examples back to the YMMV page and cutlist it?

Edited by Loekman3 on Dec 16th 2020 at 10:01:49 PM

Good idea I will do that now.

I won't say I understand the Unintentionally Unsympathetic trope perfectly either; that's why I'm here, after all :) I looked through the thread, and actually, the very first post says Unintentionally Unsympathetic requires "large consensus in the audience disagreeing with the author over why the character is unsympathetic instead of sympathetic. If the audience is too divided and one section thinks agrees with the author and the other doesn't, the example is too trivial to count." If this is a required criterion, Cassandra is not an example because she is a Base-Breaking Character: the audience is divided, and some do find her sympathetic. Well, I've seen a lot of people agreeing that she is a jerk for sabotaging Rapunzel in "Challenge of the Brave" and for being mean to Eugene and for most things she does in Season 3, but I agree with Ordeaux26: all this is pretty clearly treated as wrong by the narrative - this is not unintentional.

So, I think this entry can be cut. Base-Breaking Character entry about Cassandra contains all of this information anyway.

Edited by Tenebrika on Dec 17th 2020 at 12:16:27 AM

Any opinions on the entries I brought up?

I didn't notice that part somehow. In that case, all the Cassandra entries should be removed in my opinion.

@Bullman: I'm not familiar with the work, but the way the entry is written makes me wonder if these actions were supposed to be sympathetic to begin with.

@Ordeaux26: Cool :) I'll cut it, then.

Moving on. I wanted to bring up entries about Rapunzel, and this one that I previously deleted was just added back by ~Neko Hybrid without explanation:

• It can be argued Rapunzel falls into this again in Season 3. In "No Time Like the Past", when Cassandra's belongings were getting hauled out by the staff due to her treacherous actions of stealing the Moonstone for herself, she gets angry at Eugene who sides with the staff, saying that she needs him to understand that real friends don't just leave each other. Eugene points out to Rapunzel that Cassandra was the one who left her in the first place and thus was the one who cut them all off. If Cassandra were a real friend, she wouldn't have betrayed them. Rapunzel had no counter to this, yet acts like Eugene was the one in the wrong as she refused to accept that hard fact. It just made Rapunzel come off as being self-righteous. There's also her seemingly putting Varian and Cassandra at a Double Standard, giving up on the former after he tricked her to get the Sundrop, yet repeatedly insisting the latter is still her friend following her betrayal, and attempting to force a nickname on Eugene despite his protests. But the biggest case is her saying she fears losing Cassandra as friend more than the destruction of her kingdom at Cassandra's hands. This comes off as Rapunzel having seriously Skewed Priorities, which doesn't reflect well for a future ruler as she prioritizes trying to redeem Cassandra over the safety and well-being of her kingdom, family, friends, and loved ones.

Was I wrong in deleting it? Here's the reason I left for the deletion:

In "No Time Like the Past", it's pretty clear that Eugene's supposed to have a point, so this isn't unintentional. Rapunzel fights against Cassandra when situation calls for it, just like it was with Varian. In "Once a Handmaiden," Rapunzel approves the defense weapon in case of Cassandra's attack, so you can't say she prioritizes trying to redeem Cassandra over the safety and well-being of her kingdom.

So, in "No Time Like the Past," Rapunzel has nothing to counter Eugene's argument about Cassandra leaving them, so I think he's supposed to have a point. The accusations about Double Standard and Skewed Priorities are far-fetched: while Rapunzel wants to reconcile with her Evil Former Friend, she still fights said friend when she has to and takes precautions to protect her kingdom.

Edited by Tenebrika on Dec 17th 2020 at 1:50:57 AM