Unintentionally Unsympathetic and Unintentionally Sympathetic Cleanup

Should I move it Memetic Molester? Because I did some more research and I think it might fit better there. Even if it might still need a rewrite.

Edited by Bullman on Mar 20th 2021 at 6:26:50 AM

How's this write up I'm making for YMMV.The Simpsons S 27 E 9 Barthood? How complainy is it? I'm only just going by the tropes page.

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Lisa was meant to be taken as a genius wrongfully blamed by her foolish brother for his failings. However, she consistently bragged about her accomplishments time and time again, and never felt any sort of guilt ever for how Bart felt towards her. She comes off as very callous and not taking any responsibility for her behavior while they were both growing up when she fires his "The Reason You Suck" Speech back at him at the climax.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 21st 2021 at 9:01:13 AM

I uhh... don't see how a story about Bart parodying Boyhood is meant to have the sister be sympathetic? Bart may be US though.

From My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rollercoaster of Friendship:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Word of God is that it was intended that Vignette Valencia "wasn't aggressively snobby, just carelessly self-centered in a relatable ridiculous way". While they got the self-centered part down, she had no redeeming or likable traits, no Freudian Excuse or other justification for her actions, and she was just as bad as before her phone was infused with magic as after, so she wasn't Drunk on the Dark Side like past villains. This left some fans feeling she was just plain awful.

I will mention that Sunset mentioned her being corrupted.

YMMV.Caillou

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Caillou himself, thanks to his near-constant Aesop Amnesia and Bratty Half-Pint behavior.

This doesn’t explain how he’s meant to be sympathetic. It’s basically a ZCE.

Delete.

From Camp Rock:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Pretty much all of Camp Rock in the sequel, as Camp Star really doesn't seem to deserve the vitriol thrown their way.

Okay first of all zero context. Secondly, I haven't seen the movie film in awhile, but this seems like a misuse from my memory. If anything you could only make this argument for Mitchie. As she was the only one actively hateful towards them from Thought the beginning. I could be wrong, like I said it has been a while.

Edited by Bullman on Apr 8th 2021 at 1:03:43 PM

So the Unintentionally Sympathetic section on YMMV.Persona 5 is... weird. The first and third come across as less "unintentionally sympathetic" and more "there are worse people in the game" which just seems like misuse. I also really like how the first opens with "the worst of his crimes just include murder and driving someone to suicide" which... really?!?

• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Madarame. The worst of his crimes was being responsible for Yusuke's mother's death via Murder by Inaction, his plagiarism indirectly driving a former student to suicide, and the protagonists only learned about the death of Yusuke's mom after they sent Madarame's calling card, meaning they were willing to change his heart without knowing about his worst crime. It does not help that even after Madarame's fall, Yusuke largely reacts to Madarame with a mix of denial, anger and self-loathing; this does not change when his desire of an ideal Madarame genuinely reforming and becoming his ideal mentor was "granted" by Maruki and Joker snaps him out of it, where he becomes noticably enraged that he's been tricked in comparison to the other Phantom Thieves, indicating that Madarame never took Yusuke in for good will to begin with. And last but not least, in Strikers Yusuke outright admits that Madarame used to have lots of students sleeping on the ground of his shack because there were simply no beds for most of them, all but indicating Madarame really treats his disciples like livestock. While Madarame's actions are certainly reprehensible, his villainy pales in comparison to the likes of Sadist Teacher Kamoshida and yakuza crime boss Kaneshiro, the two villains his arc is sandwiched between. There is also ambiguity over whether or not he really saw Yusuke as more than a tool, having one Pet the Dog moment when he desperately looked for treatment for Yusuke when he fell sick. On another interpretation, he can be seen as doing so for implanting Stockholm Syndrome into Yusuke. (Which actually indicates that he is even more dangerous and cunning than he presents himself to be.) Whether or not this is the case, people still see him as more sympathetic than Okumura, who had no such Pet the Dog moments shown on screen and whose acts of villainy will actually induce issues on western audiences.
  • Ryuji gets this at times, as he rarely deserves the misfortune and some of the harsh treatment he often goes through. In combat, for example, his successful criticals and any weakness appropriate hits that down enemies are rarely met with genuine praise (at best, he gets backhanded compliments) unlike everyone else. However the most prominent example is when Morgana ran away. While you can say Ryuji did seem to go out of his way to get under Morgana's skin, it's hard not to feel sorry for him when Morgana spent the majority of the game berating him, the fact that he was the only one forced to apologize, and that Morgana would continue to insult him even after making amends.
  • The Mementos targets are all treated like utter scum by the Phantom Thieves even though the crimes of a handful of targets are hardly crimes at all. Most notably is Yoshikuni Nejima, whose misdeed was that he was cheating at video games. And while Nejima was being a complete jerk about it, he's in league with the likes of serial abusers, perpetrators of child neglect, and former hitmen. Their Shadows do imply that they at least committed them for their own amusement, but cheating in a video game is small potatoes compared to a lot of other targets.

Mitchie does seem to have the biggest overreaction (if not, one of the biggest) to Camp Star from what I recall. It sounds fitting to her at least since the head of Camp Rock was legit afraid of the competition. What probably doesn’t help Mitchie’s sympathy case is pushing for a high-stakes competition they could likely lose (and do) just because she doesn’t want to lose the camp and is desperate to protect it (it does kind of become about pride by that point from the sound of it, though the movie might even call her out for it too).

Also, apparently Doug Walker was also mad that Tess joined the other camp and thought she hadn’t learned her lesson from the first one. He missed the point: being drawn into the flashiness was definitely in her character, but she’d matured and grown far beyond petty sabotage to avoid competition against herself to the point that she wanted a friendly contest and not do things the way she did in the first film too.

Edited by futuremoviewriter on Apr 8th 2021 at 12:52:22 PM

Going back to the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic series two-part finale "The Ending of the End", look at these entries I found under Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:

• It's revealed that Discord was imitating Grogar and bringing the villains together in a extremely misguided attempt to show Twilight she's ready for the job of ruling Equestria, thinking he could use the disguise and reputation to keep them under control. As you can imagine, giving villains the idea to work together and even moreso pointing them to a means to power themselves up was not the wisest of ideas, as when they figure out how to use Grogar's bell they quickly turn on him.
• At the very end, in a subversion of Defeat Means Friendship or any other more family-friendly solution, Cozy Glow, Tirek, and Chrysalis are all turned to stone as punishment for their crimes. All three had previously been defeated multiple times before now, and yet STILL decided to be evil, they also nearly destroyed Equestria and never demonstrated absolutely any remorse for not only this but also their previous crimes, showing themselves to be more evil than Starlight and Discord ever were. No one, not even rulers as forgiving and magnanimous as Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, are going to give them another chance after everything they've done, not even with Cozy Glow.

Since these were realistic outcomes, perhaps these should explain why the Unintentionally Sympathetic and Unintentionally Unsympathetic (the latter of which clearly may not have been unintentional) entries should be deleted. And honestly, this whole thing with Discord and the three villains seems so frustratingly Double Standard.

Edited by BrianKT on Apr 8th 2021 at 7:29:30 AM

I don't even know if this counts as Surprisingly Realistic Outcome due to the fantasy elements (i.e. petrification). Per the trope description:

The fantasy elements don’t even matter. What matters is that because Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow, in spite of all of their defeats, show no remorse for their misdeeds and refuse to ever change their ways after each of there were given offers of redemption, they are all deemed irredeemable as punished as a result. That’s what they mean by "realistic".

Edited by BrianKT on Apr 8th 2021 at 3:24:11 AM

I still don't know if that fits the trope. I think we should take it to this thread.

I still don't see why some people sympathize more with Chrysalis, Tirek and Cozy Glow, and less with Discord.

I could launch into a debate about why Discord is seen as the villain here, but I won't, because it's really not relevant. As I've said before, objective in-universe facts matter less here than how fans feel.

On The Loud House clean up thread , someone pointed out this example:

• A fridge example in "No Laughing Matter". Luan does come off as sympathetic when she gives up comedy, and the scenes where her sisters pick up on her serious behavior do work...until one realizes that she only had one interaction with each of her sisters, and that’s what tipped them off. Thus, it comes off as if Luan hasn’t once stopped being a Pungeon Master for a while, making her sisters pretty darn justified in complaining about her antics. To be fair to Luan, this was most likely due to the pacing of the 11-minute episode more than anything else.

This example seems to argue with itself, and I’m not sure if it really counts.

Has there been any discussion about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier? Because one or two people really want to put Karli Morgenthau to have an entry and I'm not so sure. Is there any teeth to that?

For the record here's the patest entry given to her.

• Karli is clearly meant to be a Tragic Villain with a sympathetic backstory and motivations, but many feel that she crossed the Moral Event Horizon too many times for them to buy into Sam and Bucky's view that she is ultimately just some troubled teen lashing out at the world when she commits multiple murders and attempted murders, blows up buildings, takes hostages and tries to set them on fire to prevent them from being rescued, and it doesn't help that she has nostalgia for the time when half the planet was dead and resents the Avengers for restoring billions of murdered people to life. Many see her as little more than a murderous whiny teenager with a childish view of how the world works and almost no empathy for problems that are not her own.

Edited by MinisterOfSinister on Apr 25th 2021 at 3:16:23 PM

Well, all I know is that you can only cross the MEH once.

I think it's safe to say that Karli was meant to be a Tragic Villain and I know there are fans who didn't feel she was all that sympathetic.

A lot of her actions are intentional moral ambiguity. How's this possible entry, boiling down to the unintentional parts:

• Karli was meant to be a Tragic Villain with backstory and motives the heroes sympathize with who's descent into clear evildoing was do to desperation, outside factors thwarting attempts to talk her down, and Psycho Serum. But as her motivations amount to being nostalgic for when half of humanity was dead and resentful for governments adding them upon resurrection at people like her's expense, many saw her as a whiny teenager with almost no empathy for problems not also her own lashing out over a childish refusal to see the moral complexities of the situation.

While here, this from YMMV.The Falcon And The Winter Soldier:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: When Bucky steps in to stop Ayo from hurting Walker, she strikes him in the shoulder to forcibly eject his metal arm, a function Bucky admits to having no idea about and is mildly distressed by. The situation is painted as a mutual degradation of trust in which both parties wronged and were wronged by the other. However, a lot of viewers with real-life physical disabilities felt that no matter how rightful Ayo's anger at Bucky may have been, that robbing a disabled person of their prosthetic without their consent is hard to justify and that Ayo crossed a clear line in doing so.

They were fighting each other at the time and Ayo did it in self-defense. This sounds more like an attempt to sneak in Unfortunate Implications. Thoughts?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Apr 27th 2021 at 2:00:15 AM

YMMV.The Powerpuff Girls

• Unintentionally Sympathetic
  • Buttercup once again in the episode "Down and Dirty". We're supposed to believe she deserves being run out of her home and town because she doesn't want to take a bath. As any parent can tell you, that's typical behavior for a small child.
  • The gnome in "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey". Yes, he turned Townsville into a giant Cult, but really think about this. The gnome rids the world of the Powerpuff Girls' Rogues Gallery at a time when they were at their worst, bringing the city into ruins and overpowering the girls. Had the gnome not intervened, it would have stayed that way. In addition, the reason the townspeople became the gnome's followers in the first place—willingly, mind you—was because they were genuinely grateful for how easier he made their lives by getting rid of the villains. As icing on the cake, the gnome was never shown to be hurting or terrorizing the townspeople, which is all the villains have been doing in the beginning of the episode. While the connections to communism aren't exactly subtle^note which might be a reason as to why the episode was banned, is this really any worse than worldwide destruction and chaos?

I thought I remembered in the first example, Buttercup smelt THAT badly thus justifying the need to get her out of town. Also, were we supposed to feel bad for her or not?

For the second one, I'm not too sure about, it seems like there's stealth complaining in it.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Apr 30th 2021 at 9:29:20 AM

Karli definitely is something. If not Unintentionally Unsympathetic then maybe Base-Breaking Character? The narrative has Sam refuse to fight her and overall treats her misguided not matter how murderous she got. At the same time, there are fans who go the other direction into Draco in Leather Pants territory who think she didn't do anything too bad and see her killing by Sharon as Sharon's Moral Event Horizon.

Yeah but Base-Breaking Character has a limit on posting examples less than six months after release. So it'll be at least October 23rd before she's elegible for that and even then, only if we're still debating her hard.

I feel like there's maybe enough material for an Alternate Character Interpretation for how much she's meant to be sympathetic.

Edited by MinisterOfSinister on Apr 30th 2021 at 10:24:01 AM

I think alternate interpretation and base breaking character would work best since the views seem to not have a consensus from what I've seen.

YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 5 E 21 Hearthbreakers

• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Applejack. The episode is supposed to be about her learning to respect the traditions of others and not be more open-minded about the Pie family and their own traditions. However, this glosses over that none of the Pies, not even Pinkie, ever bother to explain their traditions to the Apples and don't show any interest in what traditions the Apples might know. Applejack was trying to make the effort to get along with the Pies, but they did little to make her feel welcome.

This just seems more like an Unintentionally Unsympathetic entry for the Pies. Besides, Applejack already has an Informed Wrongness entry on that page. And I don't think Applejack was exactly sympathetic when she tried to force their traditions on the Pies

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 2nd 2021 at 6:42:54 AM