The criteria for Unintentionally Unsympathetic says:
"When a character's supposed insecurities or embarrassing quirks are supposed to inspire sympathy, but fail to impress the audience because they're mishandled or plain written badly. It can be made even worse if they have to learn a lesson. Without being at least somewhat invested in the characters, the audience might have passed the point of caring when the character finally comes around."
This is the basic criteria of the trope. There is more after but I am not sure what was present from the start and what was edited in afterwords to expand the definition. This trope is becoming more popular, with the page starting to be split-off into sub pages and such. And like all popular YMMV tropes this is causing an influx of bad examples that are probably just one-sided complaining, shoehorning, and bashing which is not in the spirit of this wiki. You can see this is causing issues just by looking at the pages discussion thread. I felt that the trope needed a dedicated cleanup thread. This way edits can be done without causing edit wars and getting people banned.
Some guidelines if a character or event is Unintentionally Unsympathetic.
1. It has to be unintentional on the authors part. It is in the title. All examples that were intentional on the author's part are disqualified by definition.
2. The example should state exactly why the author or narrative intended the subject to have been sympathetic and why it failed to resonate with the audience. If the example can not clearly state these two points, it is a bad example and needs to at minimum be rewritten.
3. Neutral tone: No insults. I know it is fun to complain about stuff but complaining is not in the spirit of the wiki. So long as one side isn't promoting hate speech examples should be written without taking a side. Examples that are heavily favoring one side or insulting the other side are probably not valid examples.
4. There should be a wide accepted disagreement between the audience and the author to be a valid example. By that I mean that there should be 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 could be a pet peeve of a single person, which isn’t noteworthy.
Lastly, always consider Square Peg, Round Trope and be mindful if the example may fit better under a different trope such as Base-Breaking Character, Broken Base, and The Scrappy. Please visit other cleanup threads if you have questions about tropes that do not involve Unintentionally Unsympathetic.
Feel free to help if you spot some bad examples or can point out more rules for the trope. Or argue with me over the definitions, this is a cleanup thread after all.
MOD NOTICE: As of October 26, 2022, this thread now covers Unintentionally Sympathetic as well.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 26th 2022 at 8:15:48 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yeah I’d say cut.
Angry babby
I agree. The YMMV.Total Drama page had a bunch of examples framing Gwen as meant to be seen as wrong as well, despite the narrative clearly framing her as sympathetic and Justin as somewhat sinister and misleading.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
mightymoose101
Hey, just wanted to get an opinion on this example I found in the YMMV page for True Detective:
- It can be hard to care about any of the cops in Night Country; it's the first season of True Detective released after the murder of George Floyd and the worldwide rioting and calls for police reform that followed, and while the show tries to pay some lip service to the idea of racial inequality being maintained by police with its plotline, there are at least a few people who are rooting for the cast to get eaten by polar bears.
This doesn't really feel like it fits, given that its argument mainly centers around real-world events without really explaining how the characters in-story fail at being sympathetic.
I agree, that seems like a stretch.
Yeah, cut.
"I can't sympathize with police officers cause I only just now realized that copaganda is bad" is well outside the bounds of UU.
Cut. By that logic UU applies to any cop show.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has these:
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
- Amalthus. His final moments come across as this to many due to his actions causing many of the events in the story, and that his supposed generosity to refugees is undone by his desire to secretly kill them all with sadistic glee, eventually becoming even worse than the ones who killed his mother or took for granted his generosity.
- Malos. His last stand can also come across as this due to carrying out Amalthus' most violent desires without any mercy or question, refusing to defy what Amalthus has shaped him into, and often gloating about his various atrocities. When Rex attempts to shake Malos out of it, the latter shoots the former's proposal down in flames. Like Dickson in the first Xenoblade, despite evidence to the contrary, some people believe Malos too is in total control. Of course, this interpretation suits Malos himself just fine given his self-loathing mindset.
- Jin. Being angry at Indol for killing the love of his life is one thing. Wanting to wipe out all life over it is going too far. Add to that how he's fighting to destroy the world Lora fought to protect, as well as his killing of Fan La Norne/Haze, and his Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds schtick falls flat for some people.
- Albina in the "Mellica the Chorister" sidequest. We're supposed to sympathize with her jealously over members of Indol's choir being essentially set for life, and her desperation to achieve that status to escape poverty. It's a little hard to, given that she's a child who hires mercenaries to murder another child and receives zero punishment for this. Her target instantly forgives and befriends her after hearing her backstory, while most players are left thinking she got off easy for what she did.
- Generic Blades can easily fall into this, gaining no sympathy when being released because they're often The Load and assigned pointless/useless stats from the RNG system.
Outside of Amalthus and maybe Albina, most of these are not very common opinions among the fandom at all. Especially the Malos one, which admits within itself that this interpretation of him comes from a misunderstanding of the text.
...Phenomenal
Amalthus is fair, I haven't really seen much sympathy for him, it seems to be a pretty common opinion that his backstory doesn't really stack up to all the horrible stuff he's responsible for.
Jin and Malos should definitely be cut though. They're both wildly popular, especially after The Golden Country, and the entries are ignoring a lot of the nuance of their characters (and, in Malos's case, deliberately misinterpreting it).
The Generic Blades' entry isn't even talking about characterization, it's just complaining about gameplay mechanics. Which, yeah there's plenty of dislike for the RNG-dependent Blade system, but that has nothing to do with UU.
There remains a foothold out of this mire — now climb.
Alright, cut most of them and cited the thread.
Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 6th 2024 at 4:57:52 AM
Found this on the Solid jj page;
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: In "Doctor Doom Takes Charge", after Doctor Doom tells Spider-Man that his first act as ruler of the world would be the freedom of all slaves, the latter tells him the world stopped doing that a while ago. While the video portrays this as Doom and Latveria not being caught up with other countries, considering how many places there are in the world where slavery is still practiced, many viewers instead felt like Spider-Man stopped Doom from doing a genuinely great thing.
Not 100% sure if it this is the right trope for this to go under (perhaps it could go under Informed Wrongness instead) but wanted to check if my doubts were valid or not.
Angry babby
Some entries from UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.Total Drama.
- The remaining members of the Killer Grips in "The Chefshank Redemption" (Justin, Beth, Owen, and Lindsay). As already mentioned, them forcing blackmail upon a completely innocent person for something that they didn't have any knowledge or part of (Gwen because of how Trent kept throwing challenges for his team in order to keep her safe) ultimately paints them in a pretty negative light in spite of how the show portrays them as the ones who are right. The fact that they score their first of three wins of the season as a result of this doesn't do them much favors either.
They were not meant to be the sympathetic ones for the blackmail; Gwen was. I keep saying this. Justin was put in a somewhat menacing light when he found out about the challenge-throwing, and the others didn't really know Gwen wasn't in on the cheating because Justin was the one claiming she was. Gwen gets a Downer Ending, but I'm pretty sure we're meant to feel bad for her, especially with how the next aftermath goes.
- On the other side of that, Courtney. While the narrative showed her ramping up her controlling behavior of Duncan, it also treated her very sympathetically in the wake of her being cheated on. Gwen was booted off with no foreshadowing to her allergy. Courtney was comforted by Heather, had Sierra's backing, and overall showed to be heartbroken and in the right for her reaction. Her abusiveness towards Duncan during their relationship was never brought up by anyone, nor did she ever apologize for it in any episodes in any seasons. She was also never called a hypocrite for flirting with Tyler (who was dating Lindsay) soon after, nor was she ever called out for going after Heather's crush Alejandro (who she knew Heather had feelings for) despite Heather treating her sympathetically for being cheated on. The narrative treats her sympathetically, rightfully, for being cheated on, but for many of her viewers, that sympathy does not extend to how she mistreats other characters.
Eh I dunno, the narrative of TDWT seemed to be making fun of Courtney's reaction. Her abusiveness towards Duncan didn't need to come up explicitly in dialogue, because it's shown that she had a list of things she needs to change about him and she dumps spaghetti on his head and performs a Groin Attack on him after he cheats on her, which is depicted as undignified on her part. And the whole reason she flirted with Tyler was to prove a point to Duncan, IIRC, and Tyler said he didn't want to cheat on Lindsay, so I don't think they ignored that entirely nor was it meant to be legitimate. Heather even compares Courtney to Izzy for being so obsessed with spiting Gwen and Duncan — her sympathy towards Courtney was just to help get the negative spotlight off her and onto Gwen. Overall I think we're supposed to laugh at Courtney's reaction rather than sympathize.
- Cameron is this in All-Stars due to getting hit by the Idiot Ball, and failing to notice anything off about Mike until it is much too late. His status as an Elimination Houdini, where he evaded elimination several times only added more fuel to the fire.
This doesn't read like it has anything to do with him being sympathetic so much as just poorly written.
- Dave does little to nothing to help his team out and instead spends most of his time creeping on Sky or whining about getting dirty. When Sky rejects him in "Hurl and Go Seek!" it's supposed to be a sad moment, but most viewers felt the rejection was justified and that Dave was being Wangsty. And when he votes himself off, it's solely because he was rejected by Sky, and we're still supposed to sympathize with him the whole time. However, it may not have been as unintentional as expected, considering his actions in the finale.
The entry outright admits he eventually has a Face–Heel Turn, so I think it's another case in which we were meant to laugh at his obsession a la Cringe Comedy and then see him as insane and unlikable when it goes too far.
- Emma. We're supposed to feel sorry for her because her ex-boyfriend, Chase, won't leave her alone. However, her obsessive Jerkass to One attitude towards Chase (who, while deserving of it regardless of any care he might have, his worst actions are a result of idiocy rather than malice) makes her come off as petty and childish, making her come off as unsympathetic. This is compounded by how it's revealed in "The Truth, The Pole Truth and Nothing But the Truth" that he tried to legally have her name changed to "Chase's Girlfriend" and that he crippled her mother, yet she chose to stay with him until he cut her brakes. This is not helped by the fact that in "Tortoise Rigamortis", she actively sabotages Bowie throughout the challenge simply because he voted to have Chase eliminated, even blaming him for agreeing with her whenever she ranted about Chase, despite the fact that Bowie is right about Chase being a terrible person who Emma should have never gone back to in the first place. However, it may not have been unintentional as many characters, including Chris and Julia, are disgusted with Emma's decision to get back with Chase.
The vibe I got from that arc is that Emma is meant to be a comically poor judge of character — something they outright say in the second season. She's meant to be sympathetic in the sense that we're meant to agree Chase is the problem in that relationship, but we're very much meant to side with Bowie and think Emma is making the wrong decision. The entry also kind of contradicts itself, as it starts off by saying Emma is petty and childish for being so angry with Chase because it claims he's just Innocently Insensitive, but then chides her for staying with him.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
I've yet to see the revival season so I can't comment on that last entry but I'd say the first 4 can be cut, though I could also see an argument for keeping Courtney's entry as in-universe (in both World Tour and All-Stars) she's seen as a victim of cheating with Gwen and Duncan painted as the villains
Angry babby
Thing is, Gwen is Unintentionally Unsympathetic in-universe and out-of-universe. There's a Broken Base factor, but Gwen is meant to be mislabeled as a villain in-universe, but there's a lot of people who actually do think she was at fault for the cheating and don't think she owns up to it enough in TDAS (in part due to retconning some stuff to absolve Gwen of fault).
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
Cut the Total Drama entries.
From UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.Once Upon A Time:
- Ursula the Sea Witch in the "Queens of Darkness" story arc. While her backstory shows that she used to be a kind mermaid until Hook stole her voice, her transformation into a monster was self-inflicted yet she puts all the blame on Hook. Just as she’s about to strangle Snow, Hook brings her voice back and makes her reconcile with her father. She’s suddenly considered as good and free to leave the town even though she expresses no remorse in actively helping Rumplestilskin and the other Queens to turn Emma into a villain. Not helping is the later revelation that she and Cruella left Maleficient’s baby daughter to die.
Okay. I don't think she counts. The show doesn't act like her backstory makes her sympathetic and I wouldn't call what happened to her self-inflicted when she was holding up her end of the deal until Hook stole her voice just to get back at her father taking the thing that she promised him. I also don't get where the entry is getting the idea that she considered good now because she is not. She is still considered a villain and is only not punished because she leaves right after making up with her father and said father was also a bad guy. The heroes never act like she was good now and while they let her leave it is because it gets rid of one more villain. Also, like I don't think it should be said but her leaving a baby is not presented as sympathetic at all.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
This was cut from the The Amazing Spider-Man (2022) page, but I took a look and didn’t see this being discussed here so I want to bring it up for official verdict.
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: Peter is meant to be seen as being unreasonable emotional and overly attached to MJ, with his actions like leaving town for six months to deal with the aftermath of MJ's abduction being presented as irresponsible and unreasonable. Unfortunately, Peter doesn't come off as someone acting irrationally. He comes off as someone who destroyed his life to save the woman he loved, only for her to coldly and cruelly reject him once he saved her, with MJ essentially blaming Peter for something he couldn't have known. Made even worse by the fact that none of Peter's allies supported him during this time, and by the fact that the person MJ left him for turned out to be a genocidal murderer. Overall, the story tries to make Peter out to be the bad guy, when he is perfectly justified in being pissed off at the circumstances.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Mary Jane Watson, big time. The story wants to try and spin it that MJ was in a dire situation and no one is the bad guy. Unfortunately, the story shows MJ barely waiting a year before moving on from Peter, and coldly and cruelly rejecting Peter once he returns to save her. MJ never seems to acknowledge Peter didn't abandon her, especially since it was Mary Jane that threw him through the portal back to Earth when Peter wanted to send her back. MJ just treats Peter as if he did something wrong, and not once shows any sort of guilt or remorse for giving up faith in him and moving on to literally the only other human being on the planet. Made especially worse once her "children" are revealed to have been fakes, giving her even less reason to stay with Paul in the aftermath. Practically all sympathy is thrown out when MJ tells Peter the reason she is with Paul is because Paul reminds her of Peter, comparing the guilt Peter had for failing to stop the burglar from killing his uncle with the guilt Paul feels for helping to murder a planet.
- Reason Edit: Both Peter and MJ have been acting unsympathetically, with Peter stalking her and barging into her house to accuse Paul. And we still don't know if either one, MJ especially, have been in their right mind ever since being marked by Rabin.
As someone who’s been following this run, I can confirm that Peter has stalked MJ via repeated number of phone calls, but he immediately stopped after the first issue. However this didn’t exactly make him unsympathetic to fans, as mentioned by reasons above Peter is vastly emotionally distraught. The "accusation" happened when Peter realized that Paul was a native for the destroyed earth, meaning Paul didn’t assist Rabin in entering said destroyed earth, but assisted him in destroying it, even if unintentionally. The accusation being that Peter called him a villain for destroying the world. If this does make him an example of unsympathetic then is the proper trope here Base-Breaking Character then?
On MJ. It says that we don’t know if MJ (or Peter I’m assuming by the "either one") was in the right mind after being marked, but the "mark" was one of sacrifice, not control. And both by writers intent, flashbacks, the following story, Word of God, MJ did this by her own decision, and that she loves Paul. And the Authors and Editors have stated that they don’t believe MJ did anything wrong.
Also while not mentioned, not long after MJ returned with Paul, she completely cut Peter off from her life. And in "Spider-Man's First Hunt" a corrupted Peter confronts MJ and Paul, but it’s written as a Take That, Audience! to fans unhappy with the current situation, and when Peter isn’t corrupted anymore, he says that MJ did nothing wrong with MJ agreeing.
So is Peter not an example of Unintentionally Sympathetic and MJ not an example of Unintentionally Unsympathetic?
Edited by AzureLegacy on Feb 14th 2024 at 11:09:17 AM
the Retromancer
Unintentionally Sympathetic: There are those, after seeing the Signature Scene that was Aura's demise, and learning of Frieren's Fantastic Racism towards the demons, who dislike the portrayal of the demons' Always Chaotic Evil nature and the What Measure Is a Non-Human? trope. Not helping is how ... sapient and human-like the demons appeared to be, given their Blue-and-Orange Morality, in spite of the canon lore explaining that their Blue-and-Orange Morality was a survival trait from their primitive ancestors as the not-human looking Mimics, completely different from human or elven evolution, and despite the Demon King's best (but fruitless and bloodthirsty) efforts to learn and understand empathy. The argument is that, given their human-like appearance combined with their intelligence and their capacity to feel some emotions, it is unrealistic to portray them as an entire race of sociopaths.
This was moved from Draco in Leather Pants. But since it doesn't disagree that Demons are emotionless monsters, there's nothing showing them sympathetically.
Maybe the example can go entirely, it feels like complaining Our Demons Are Different are in fact different.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Yeah i would cut that
Yeah. Cut the whole example.
Agreed with what was said and say cut it.
the Retromancer
Kirby is shaped like a friend
From YMMV.Mobile Suit Gundam The08th MS Team:
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Shiro Amada leaving the titular MS team can rankle, especially his motivation for doing so. He’s abandoning his teammates and a cause he knows, better than any other Gundam protagonist ever has, is fundamentally valid and necessary; Shiro saw the Zeon gas attacks with his own eyes, with dozens if not hundreds of people dying hideous, ugly, incredibly painful deaths right in front of him. He doesn't quit because this gave him the worst case of PTSD ever, apparently having coped with it quite well during the ~six months before the series starts. Shiro quits because Aina Sahalin is hot. That's it. And that makes him a bit of a shit.
Cut. Its just needless character bashing and is outright lying in places.
Shiro had been growing increasingly disillusioned with the war and the Federation's tactics. He also fell in love with Aina, and part of the reason they loved each other is that she also was against the ceaseless struggle of the war.
The entry as written makes it sound like Shiro just saw Aina and immediately deserted his post, which is just a total lie.
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
Any opinions on this
?
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
Verdict on this?
