Unintentionally Unsympathetic and Unintentionally Sympathetic Cleanup

It's also kinda wildy out of character for the ponies who forgave ponies who doomed the world worse than she ever did.

That's not to say they won't eventually forgive CG should she choose to be legitimately good and earn her redemption so it's not forced and ham-fisted like Neighsay's was.

Edited by Klavice on Sep 21st 2018 at 11:38:27 AM

YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 8 E 22 What Lies Beneath

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Tree of Harmony puts the Young Six each through a test to prove that "You Are Better Than You Think You Are," and that The Power of Friendship is stronger than what Cozy Glow claims it to be. Yet it becomes rather hard to appreciate the Tree's efforts when some of its tests are rather harsh, since all but two of them play off of their worst fears, and the tests for Gallus and Yona could have been deadly if handled wrong.

1. that would would have been potentially lethal is speculation, 2. is it presented as wholly sympathetic?

Before I watched the finale, I thought Tirek had taken control of the tree of harmony and was using it to drain magic. Hence why the tests were brutal.

Also how can an object that's barely sentient be sympathetic or unsympathetic?

Something doesn't need to be sentient to invoke sympathy. Companion Cube is a trope for a reason. Just watch the first example (the IKEA ad) on that page for a quick demonstration.

In this case, though, I have my doubt about any intentional sympathy.

While I wait for it to be ruled whether or not Subaru's U.U. entry should be cut, this was on Detective Conan: The use of Asshole Victims during most of the cases may also provoke this reaction with some. While the audience is meant to find them despicable, sometimes, the author is too successful and the readers may stop caring for the case of their murder to be solved. Indeed, when the victim is worst than the culprit, it's sometimes hard to wish for the latter to be arrested.

I don't quite think that fits the bill. They're meant to be unsympathetic, and those cases aren't meant for people to care about those victims. It's also a generic "example", since it doesn't actually specify any example where it happens and why that case fits the trope.

Edited by AnotherDuck on Sep 25th 2018 at 9:36:08 PM

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus:

• Many players find Grace to be very unsympathetic. While she is one of the heroes, many people dislike her for her racist comments on white people and her Jerkass behavior towards Sigrun, and many don't find her backstory to be justifiable.
• Horton and his crew also come off as this to many people, due to the fact they're communists who ignored the pleas of the American government's cry for conscription to fight in the original war.

This doesn't explain why they are supposed to be sympathetic despite their flaws, or least why their intended redeeming traits don't pan out.

Cut it. As written now there not examples.

UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.Video Games:

• Mostly features in the Playable Epilogue (The Answer) of Persona 3; while it can be attributed to SEES falling apart due to their leader's (the main character) death, a lot of them become abrasive or take on idiotic actions that contradict their behavior from the main story. Yukari in particular acts hostile the entire time, and when the opportunity to possibly revive the MC is presented to them, she immediately decides to take that chance, despite the risks involved. Mitsuru is even worse - she supports Yukari because she comforted her after her father's death, and she wants to support her. Mitsuru is the granddaughter of the man who spurred most of the game's events, and she spent most of the game trying to clean up after him and atone for it. In a way, her actions are the most nonsensical out of everyone. The rest of the cast either acts rather passive about the entire affair, or acts like a boneheaded jerk, like Akihiko. It's very much a relief for many people when Aigis makes sure that nothing is reversed in the end, and even Yukari apologizes for her erratic behavior.

I'm gonna cut Yukari because she apologizes. What about the others? They are given a reason for acting that way and ultimately not getting what they want suggests it's not unintentional. Cut?

Honestly, it all reads like whining. There's also no indication that it's supposed to portray them as sympathetic.

UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.Video Games

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has Zelda's father King Rhoam due to the way he puts down Zelda's interests and accuses her of not trying hard enough when the player knows she's working tirelessly. It's made clear in his journal entries he loves his daughter and was trying to be an impartial King, and when he appears 100 years later as the Old Man, he is clearly extremely regretful of his treatment toward his daughter. However, to some fans, the damage his actions caused make him too difficult to sympathize with.

Why? Rhoam admits he was in the wrong for all the above and regrets it. I'd don't see anything unintentional about it.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Oct 20th 2018 at 1:24:32 AM

Who's to say he watched over the Shrine of Resurrection for the past hundred years as a spirit?

Maybe it can be considered a form of atonement.

I could write the same as my last post. The example also relies on the player thinking it's reasonable to hold a grudge for 100 years of game time.

I found this entry for Marge for The Simpsons episode, "Bart After Dark". There's been some disagreement and I'm bringing it here so I don't cause an edit war.

I initially removed it under the grounds that Marge was not meant to be seen as sympathetic in the episode. She was supposed to be seen in the wrong due to pressuring the town to shut down the Maison Derriere due to her own personal distaste. The audience is supposed to side with Bart and Homer as they try to stop her and the town from tearing the place down. This is intentional because Marge is the one who has to face the consequences for her actions, as she's forced to pay Belle back for accidentally bulldozing the front of the building.

I initially removed it on those grounds, but it was added back with the following edit reason:

I feel like my point may not have been clear, so I'm bringing it up here for a second opinion.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Oct 22nd 2018 at 1:06:53 PM

If she's portrayed as the one in the wrong, it's not unintentional.

• Severus Snape fell into this upon the reveal of his backstory. The fact is, pretty much everything that happened to him was directly his fault (from calling his best friend and crush a racial slur to ratting out the prophecy to Voldemort), and his status as The Atoner owed more or less to the fact that Voldemort killed a girl he wanted to get together with. And even if he did do a fair amount to help out the Order of the Phoenix as a Double Agent, it's hard to take his redemption seriously when he spends six books being a Sadist Teacher and taking a great deal of pleasure in bullying students. One of the flashbacks of his backstory basically exists to confirm he was doing everything strictly out of his commitment to Lily, and not any sense of altruism or concern for Harry. He wasn't an entirely bad person, but calling him "the bravest man I ever knew" and naming a kid after him when there's no shortage of genuinely heroic figures to revere feels like a rather overly generous appraisal of the person he was on Harry's part.

I removed this since his Unintentionally Sympathetic entry states Word of God that they were surprised that fans saw him sympathetically, meaning he wasn't intended to be sympathetic. Is there anything in this worth keeping or reworking?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Nov 3rd 2018 at 5:42:02 AM

There would have to be a really good reason for why a character can use both tropes that doesn't amount to "people are just complaining".

Word of God stated that Snape was never redeemed by the wizarding world, and Harry stood alone regarding his final opinion of Snape. So, Snape was never supposed to be a redeemable character either in-universe or out; it was yet another thing that was supposed to make Harry's 'kindness' somehow special for the setting (which was supposedly the key difference between him and Voldemort, this 'kindness' that he inherited off his mother).

I think Rowling was trying to show the reader why Harry eventually gains some empathy for Snape's courage, that even a bad person can have great courage. However, she wanted Harry's kindness to stand out in the face of an unrepenting wizarding world while criticising fans who side with Harry by developing sympathy or empathy for Snape. So, my suspicion is that she didn't write either Snape or Harry as well as she thought she did.

tl;dr — no, there's nothing salvageable about the Unintentionally Unsympathetic entry. You're right to nuke it and leave the Unintentionally Sympathetic entry standing.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Nov 10th 2018 at 4:19:06 PM

This was posted and removed from YMMV.Ralph Breaks The Internet, which has a major plot thread and resolution that some feel flies in the face of the first movie's message and ending and makes a character selfish, though their actions are treated as right. It was initially posted after the movie came out, then removed. In the intervening time I had seen Fix Fics, fan art, and general reactions discussing it and how unintentionally bad it makes the character look so I put it back with some edits to remove contentious bits from the first post. It was recently removed without an edit reason, so I'm sticking it here for a final consensus along with more of an explanation in the entry.

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Vanellope's decision to permanently leave Sugar Rush behind in favor of Slaughter Race out of boredom with her old game is treated as something Ralph has to learn to live with, and she's never treated as being in the wrong. However, it's made a number of fans feel that she's no better than Turbo, who selfishly abandoned his game and got it unplugged, and that it retroactively undermines the first film and the work Vanellope put in to be a Sugar Rush racer, especially with how happy she was when gamers loved her playing style.

Edited by lalalei2001 on Nov 25th 2018 at 4:28:41 AM

I have no idea without knowing anything about the work or fandom. Mostly, I can't really tell if those things are major or not. From an outsider's perspective, changing games when you get bored with them is what you should do.

It's reached Edit War levels, with the original entry being added with a reason and deleted again without reason. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=YMMV.RalphBreaksTheInternet

It's a little complicated to explain, but the first movie explains clearly that if you leave your game and then die somewhere in another game, you won't respawn since you don't belong there; the second movie gives this a Hand Wave at the very end where it no longer applies.

Vanellope's entire quest in the first movie is built around becoming part of her game, and she turns out to be the rightful ruler of Sugar Rush and the best character in the game. When another character in the first movie left his game, it led to his game being permanently unplugged, and the message of the movie was essentially to Be Yourself where you are, only for this movie to have the opposite message and have Vanellope leave. Some fans are proclaiming it an Esoteric Happy Ending, Broken Aesop, etc., but a major problem seems to be with Vanellope's characterization.

This issue was also brought up on ATT.

I'll just repeat what I said there: it appears fans are too divided over Vanellope's actions for her to qualify as Unintentionally Unsympathetic. If the debates continue six months after the movie's release, it could be Broken Base instead.

That works! XD

YMMV.Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny:

• Athrun slapping Shinn after the Battle of Gulnahan. Shinn may have gone against orders and used excessive force even after the EA soldiers were retreating, but he also saved dozens of innocent people being used as slave labor who the EA shot down for trying to escape the battle. Something Athrun in the prequel series would have at least acknowledged.
  • Athrun's character as a whole in Destiny. Aside from his failure to recognize and sympathize with Shinn's PTSD (especially considering what happened to his own mother) it's almost as if the character development he went through in the prequel series never even happened.
• Neo during the "Battle of Berlin". While he indeed regrets breaking his promise to Shinn to never let Stella enter the battlefield, this scene painted him as a massive Chronic Backstabbing Disorder person and a heartless jerk. Despite fans already knowing who he is and him actually being brainwashed by the Federation, most of them are unable to forget what he did to Stella that was absolutely unforgivable.

Athrun I don't think is unintentional as his failures to Shinn contributes to his decent into villainy and he realizes he's in the wrong for disregarding his character development (which stems from his own mental issues) such he pulls a Heel–Face Turn.

Neo sounds more like Never Live It Down, since fans acknowledge redeeming factors and it fails to explain why those factors don't redeem him as intended.

At least they could be reworked.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Nov 28th 2018 at 3:28:02 AM