Unintentionally Unsympathetic and Unintentionally Sympathetic Cleanup

I say just cut out the specifics and make it a general thing about how people tend not to sympathize with Justin...

...But on the other hand, I can't think of too many times where he's meant to be likable and the audience doesn't agree.

...isnt Justin supposed to be an Insufferable Genius Butt-Monkey though.

I'm not sure what's unintentional about that?

That's what I'm saying. There's plenty of episodes where he's an unsympathetic ass, but it's usually pretty obvious when he's the bad guy.

Alex is an Anti-Hero who is also unsympathetic at times, which muddles things, but IIRC, Justin's meant to be a jerk too. None of the Russo kids are really meant to be great sympathetic people — they all make dumb, selfish decisions.

Edited by mightymewtron on Mar 11th 2022 at 5:13:14 AM

Well I said I'd bring up more Tragic Villains, so here's an entry from Heathers (The Musical).

Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Some people think that J.D. is by far the most "evil" person in the entire cast. Sure, his backstory is tragic and he's clearly mentally ill, but it doesn't excuse his crimes, meaning romantic or heartfelt numbers like "Seventeen" can fall flat when you remember he's a manipulative murderer. Even his feelings for Veronica don’t make him very sympathetic as he comes across as so creepily possessive of her and blatantly ignores her pleas against his psychotic nature. Many would say his sacrifice for her also falls flat when you remember that he’s doing this selfless act for a single person, and was otherwise willing to kill hundreds of people only a minute ago.

All the stuff mentioned here seems pretty intentional to me. He wasn't meant to be excused for his crimes due to his backstory and mental illness, and his heart-to-heart with Veronica in "Seventeen" gets chucked out the window by the time of "Meant to Be Yours", where his for Veronica is shown in all of its unhealthy and obsessive glory. The fact that this entry talks about this stuff like it was even meant to be subjective is worthy of a cut.

Yeah the show kind of paints all three of the Russo siblings as kind of intentionally unsympathetic at most times. Its kind of where a lot of the humor of the show comes from. Do I cut the tree?

OK, so I want to make a prospective Unintentionally Unsympathetic entry for Namaari from Raya and the Last Dragon, as one of the most common debates and criticisms of the film is over her handling in regard to this issue. It's definitely not just me shoehorning my personal opinion into this, although I admit to not disagreeing (again, because it's easily one of the most common criticisms about the film from viewers in general).

The question is, as has been brought up here before, does it count if the character is already supposed to be seen as a villain (dark with shades of gray) and is getting punished for it, but fans read them as much worse than the narrative thinks they are (i.e. fans view her as pitch-black) and a Karma Houdini anyway? The idea the movie puts forth was that Raya learns An Aesop by showing Namaari trust when she was being needlessly suspicious of her, and that a previous incident in which she failed to show Namaari trust leading to Sisu getting killed was Raya's fault, but many fans believe that Namaari ultimately was at fault for the latter, that she didn't actually do anything of note to earn Raya's trust back during the climax, and also that the film never correctly assigns the blame it should to her for the inciting incident that kicks off the main plot.

I still believe that counts. It's the narrative asking the audience to show some sympathy in an allegedly complex situation and the audience deciding they are not sympathetic in this situation.

Have an example on Spinning Silver that I think should be looked at—

"Though Miryem has a perfectly good Freudian Excuse for why she's so cold-hearted at the beginning of the novel, she comes off as generally very arrogant and petty - a crowning example of this is when she tries to buy her mother some expensive new dresses that her mother has no use for. When her mother refuses to let her buy one, Miryem buys herself two new dresses out of spite and defiance that rubbing her newfound wealth in the other villager's faces is in poor taste. She does care about her family and grows to become a Benevolent Boss to her Staryk servants, but her haughty and confrontational behaviour with everyone else makes her quite unlikeable at times."

The novel takes place in a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of medieval Eastern Europe and the reason Miryem is "haughty and confrontational" is that the villagers are virulently antisemetic and have been mistreating her family for her whole life. Miryem gives many examples of how the Christian villagers cheat them (apart from lying to her kindhearted moneylender father about their supposed inability to pay back their loans, they also upcharge the family in the market, tell antisemetic jokes and stories, and fob off substandard goods on them whenever possible). Most of her "newfound wealth" is actually her mother's dowry coming back into her family's possession thanks to Miryem's debt-collecting efforts. She's also a Benevolent Boss from the start to her human servant Wanda.

However, I don't want to unilaterally remove the example because I'm not totally sure if it violates the criteria and I don't want to just take off a YMMV example because I don't agree (that's why it's YMMV). I do think it at least needs a rewrite for accuracy. If anything, the problem isn't that she's rude to people who have been cruel to her for her whole life, but that she's insufficiently considerate of her parents' fear of "provoking" retaliation (and one of the villagers does eventually attempt to knife her in the forest).

x5 Does anyone have any feedback on J.D.'s entry? I'm still saying cut because nothing about it sounds unintentional to me.

I'd cut it. He's basically the main villain of the piece, he's not UU at all.

Yeah cut.

So back to MHA, while I am debating whether or not to bring up Aizawa's entry on the series' YMMV page, I am willing to ask about his entry on the Anime and Manga U.U. page.

My Hero Academia: A portion of the fanbase sees Aizawa as this. While the story portraits him as a harsh Sink or Swim Mentor, it also makes clear that the reason behind Aizawa's teaching style is to make sure his students are properly prepared for a potentially dangerous job. However, many fans find his teaching methods excessively demanding, and his expelling of a whole class on the first day a previous year because he judged them unfit to be heroes was seen as extremely unforgiving and unreasonable. In the end, many fans see Aizawa less as a tough but fair teacher doing what he has to do in order to make sure his students are well prepared to be heroes, and more as somebody who holds his students to absurdly high standards, expects them to already behave like perfect pro heroes, and constantly dangles the threat of expulsion above their heads the moment their progress waver or break a rule. It seemed Horikoshi caught wind of this and did some damage control by retconning the aforementioned mass expulsions into being expelled for a single day before he re-enrolled them back so he could scare them into stepping up their game.

Well, the last sentence goes out of its way to contradict a lot of what is said previously. So, what happens when an aspect of a character that people find U.U. is remedied by an Author's Saving Throw? Is the U.U. entry kept but a note is made of said saving throw like this, or is the entry just cut or at least rewritten?

Though I'm also not sure if the reveal that he re-enrolls students after expelling them is actually is an AST or something Horikoshi had planned in advanced. The book copies of the manga have little character profiles in-between chapters and after this was revealed in Chapter 254, it shows a profile of one of students he re-enrolled^note Mawata Fuwa is her name and in it Horikoshi writes "The debut of the second years! Their introduction was always going to coincide with a conversation about Aizawa, but can you believe it took 26 volumes to happen?" Which, to me at least, gives some credence to the argument he had this planned out in advance. Honestly what do you guys think I should do with this entry, cut or rewrite?

And Then There Were None has an entire Unintentionally Sympathetic page. It lists every character and gives reasons why they might be sympathetic. This seems like a red flag to me. There's no way every character has a large segment of the audience that thinks they're sympathetic, especially since the killer is listed as an example for being a proto-Dexter Morgan.

I was thinking about adding an entry under WandaVision something like this:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Wanda. While the show readily reminds the viewers about all the trauma she's been through and shows how broken she really is, to some fans it just isn't enough to justify her brainwashing an entire town to live out her dream life. The fact that she comes off as a Karma Houdini to some, whose only punishment is a self-imposed exile, doesn't help.

I feel that this fits the criteria of the trope, and there's already a Base-Breaking Character entry on the YMMV page that sets precedence for some fans feeling unsympathetic towards Wanda. Let me know if you all think it's good to post or not.

I don't know, it's kinda weasle-word-y, but IDK how popular these opinions need to be in order to count.

I mean, I'm also not sure she qualifies as a Karma Houdini, and "to some" doesn't really matter for that; she was never officially punished, but she did destroy the hex, lose Vision and her kids, and exile herself from civilization. There's also the fact that she didn't create the hex intentionally...

I mean, I know these opinions don't need to be logical to count, but yeah.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 21st 2022 at 9:49:00 AM

So what am I doing with the Justin entry?

Personally, I'd say just cut the whole thing for now since many of the instances mentioned seem like he was intentionally unsympathetic and the edit reason they left on the show's YMMV page plus a lot of the phrasing in the entry makes it seem biased. If he can still count in some circumstances then I think it'd be better to start a new entry from scratch rather than trying to salvage the one already there.

Yeah, I second a cut.

Okay I cut them.

Edited by Bullman on Mar 21st 2022 at 10:22:30 AM

I found this on YMMV.Spider Man No Way Home:

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While Strange is right that Peter should have pleaded his case to MIT before trying to fix everything with dangerous magic, his anger at Peter for the broken spell is rather unjustified given the idea to “brainwash the entire world” was Strange’s idea in the first place (Peter was hoping to use the Time Stone to reverse Mysterio’s reveal and was about to leave when he realized the Stone was gone) and didn’t even bother to explain to Peter what would happen. As a result, his indignation comes off as a bit hypocritical and misdirected.

Is he supposed to be sympathetic here? I thought the movie was trying to paint as being to harsh on Peter. Am I wrong there?

Edited by Bullman on Mar 24th 2022 at 9:23:15 AM

Regardless, I don't think "sympathetic" is what they were aiming for. Peter's obviously the one we're supposed to feel bad for here- he's a scared, impulsive kid who didn't know what he was doing. Strange was portrayed as having a point, but he wasn't portrayed as being particularly sympathetic.

Any feedback on the Aizawa entry here?

Still awaiting feedback on Aizawa. In the meantime, this is on the Tokyo Ghoul page.

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Ghouls, as a species, can come off this way. There are those like Touka that despise the CCG for killing their kind and seem to see humans' persecution of them as unarguably unfair, not even considering the fact that most ghouls kill innocent people, often eating them alive, and a large amount of them are sadistic serial killers for whom not even children are off-limits. There are ghouls like the ones at Anteiku, who try to subsist off of suicide victims, but it seems that many of them (like Touka herself) just don't value human lives on the same level as their own. There's also Nishiki, who's pretty hard to sympathize with so soon after trying to kill and eat Kaneki's friend just because he can't grasp the concept of being friends with a human for real. When he later does have a genuine relationship with a human girl, said girl herself comes off as pretty callous — willing to turn a blind eye to Nishiki's serial murder (as long as he doesn't hurt her family) just because she loves him (though by the time she learns of it, he is ironically too weak to hunt, and joins Anteiku soon after).

Is an entire species capable of being listed as U.U.? Also, most ghouls who are serial killers (e.g. Rize, Yamori, pre-development Tsukiyama, Big Madam) are not meant to be sympathetic. Touka hating the CCG for the persecution of ghouls is more about them hunting them down just for being ghouls, like what they did with Hinami's parents. This entry also makes it seem like it's a black and white "one side is portrayed solely in the right and sympathetic and the other side is evil" scenario. Kaneki acknowledges that the CCG does it for the public's safety and it does make sense that ghouls are ostracized for killing humans, and his end goal near the end of :re is to make it so both sides can co-exist. It feels too morally ambiguous to warrant this entry.

I would cut it-as you say, calling an entire species UU is a bit too far.

I would also cut the Aizawa example.