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
Jeezus fucking christ that last sentence is bleak.
Definitely a cut.
Edited by ArthurEld on May 7th 2024 at 12:41:43 PM
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
And I say cut ‘em both
I just cut it.
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
From YMMV.Invincible 2021
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: Mark after he considers quitting being a hero. Eve tells him that it is a jerk move, since he will feel guilty about abandoning people just because he has had a bad breakup. The problem is that not only did he consider it because of Amber, there is also him nearly being killed by Battle Beast, Cecil and his dad taking complete control of his schedule, it damaging his social and personal life and pretty much everyone expecting him to instantly get it and be exactly like his dad. Not to mention William blames him for Rick becoming a Reanimen, and Mark is worried he's making things worse.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
- Amber:
- In relation to her being revealed to have figured out Mark was a superhero a couple weeks before he told her, some viewers felt that this made some of her complaints about Mark ditching her and lying unfair, because for the last couple of weeks she knew that he was out risking his life trying to save innocent people, and that she was hypocritical for being a Secret Secret-Keeper herself. A common point shared by detractors is that her reaction would be more sympathetic and understandable if she learned during the episode she confronts Mark about it, but because she's known for weeks, it resulted in her losing any sympathy, and made her look like a hypocrite.
- For some viewers, while Amber going to console Mark after getting pummeled by his own father is well intentioned and shows that she has forgiven him, the fact that she kisses him while in such a vulnerable state came off as tone-deaf, especially since she was the one who broke up with him. Her saying "turns out I wasn't the only one being lied to" in regards to Omni-Man has also been criticized, as the two situations (Mark keeping his Secret Identity a secret from her for five months at the most, and Omni-Man lying to Mark and his mother for their entire lives and planning on enslaving their planet) are hardly comparable, making her come off as Innocently Insensitive at best.
- Mark during episode 6 for some. At this point some viewers were sick of him still stringing along Amber, as well as the fact that his refusing to take his own frightened best friend seriously and ignoring William's concerns, led to an already bad situation for Rick going even worse than it might otherwise have. On the other hand, this could easily be chalked up to Mark just learning to get used to his life as a new superhero and trying to figure out who to trust with his secret.
- Eve during episode 7, when Mark goes to her for comfort and advice as the one friend who can understand his problems. Like William, Eve doesn't console Mark at all, saying he should've been honest with Amber and shouldn't have "dicked her around". For some, this came off as cruel, as Eve herself is experiencing similar grief in her own home life, and she's also one to talk about honestly given her own feelings for Mark which she keeps to herself. It also comes off as pretty thoughtless in hindsight, since Mark was very supportive of her during her break-up with Rex.
- Amber:
Now I feel like Amber (though honestly it could be one entry) and Mark's UU entries are fine but Eve's UU and Mark's US don't explain how they weren't meant to be sympathetic/unsympathetic. That said I am not super familiar with the show. Thoughts?
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Found an entry on the Unintentionally Unsympathetic should be cut and is filled with headcanon, innacurate info, or just completely madeup.
From the World of Warcraft Unintentionally Unsympathetic page: "Before and during the events of Cataclysm, the dwarven General Twinbraid was portrayed as a Sociopathic Soldier who built a dwarven fortress on tauren lands to research a Titan complex and justified his actions because of extreme Fantastic Racism. When his son died in a flying machine crash caused by the destruction of his fortress, itself built upon stolen land at the expense of the tauren, Twinbraid opted to deal with his grief by attacking and killing innocent Bilgewater goblins solely out of his own hatred, admitting he would have done it even if there was no strategic value. This Hate Sink characterization apparently was not passed on to the writers of Mists of Pandaria, as there Twinbraid, now promoted to High Marshal, was re-characterized as a more sympathetic character, trying to stop the Horde to prevent other parents from suffering the loss of a child like he did, which not only doesn't gel with his existing personality but comes off as a complete abstaining of responsibility from his actions and those of his son which caused it in the first place."
I'm not sure where this comes from especially after looking over quest texts and dialogue. Twinbraid is shown to be hypocritical Knight Templar and racist bigot as shown in lore. In Mists, Wrathion hypes up the Alliance players to kill Bloodhilt in a legendary quest (link:https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/A_Change_of_Command_(Alliance)
) while doing the same for Horde players to kill Twinbraid (link:https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/A_Change_of_Command_(Horde) ). He doesn't even talk up Twinbraid and tells the players that he's a nuisance and an important Alliance figure. In both cases, Wrathion is manipulating players on both sides to ingratiate himself to them. In his journal (link:https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Journal_of_High_Marshal_Twinbraid ), he claims crushing the Horde would save a pandaren from knowing the pain of outliving a child but it just shows he is a hypocrite with Never My Fault attitude as he is a General Ripper who built his career on killing Tauren and Goblin civilians. He is not treated and depicted as sympathetic in the narrative. His case is similiar to Venom from the Sam Raimi films in that they both brought their so-called "tragedy" and blame others for the consequences.
EDIT: I'll just assume silence means support and cut the entry if I don't hear back in a couple days.
Edited by DukePresley on May 13th 2024 at 3:47:22 AM
- Unintentionally Sympathetic:
- Jan. The show frames her as a cold "ball-buster" and a selfish jerk who increasingly becomes abusive towards Michael, but as this video points out, the environment that she's expected to put up with as one of the few (if only) female chairs high up in the corporate branch of the company and dealing with Michael in general clearly has taken a toll on her sanity.
- Jan. The show frames her as a cold "ball-buster" and a selfish jerk who increasingly becomes abusive towards Michael, but as this video
Reading this, and maybe this is just me, it kind of felt like it was trying to downplay and even rationalize Jan's treatment of Michael. Bear in mind, some of Jan's actions included sexual abuse (pressuring Michael into doing acts he was uncomfortable with and ignoring his safe word). You can't really justify that by saying that Michael was hard to do with. What do you guys think?
I do believe Jan dating/being with Michael did deteriorate her mentally and that their relationship was mutual toxic. Though, it doesn't excuse her behavior towards him.
while I haven’t watched Invincible, those two latter entries are lacking for the reasons you cited
I don't think that's an unreasonable interpretation. It just felt like the example was saying Jan wasn't abusive. Again, that's just me. I took the example here because I wanted to know what you guys think.
The other thing is, I think the intended reading is that the relationship was mutually toxic. There's even a joke about how Michael caused Jan to hit rock bottom. So I don't think you can say that Jan being sympathetic is unintentional.
Avengers: Endgame has this under Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
- While the outcome of Thanos' plan was undeniably a traumatic experience for everyone, there is real discussion to be had about how unsympathetic the surviving Avengers can seem with how, rather than accept their losses, move forward, and heal, they instead decide that they have the right to bring back everyone who was snapped away and had thus lost half a decade of time, effectively throwing the entire universe into chaos again by upending not only their lives but also those of everyone who had survived the Snap without considering the consequences of this decision. This is most embodied when Steve, trying to find a silver lining by pointing out that nature is recovering, says that he spotted humpback whales in the Hudson only for Natasha to respond with "If you're about to tell me to look on the bright side, I'm about to hit you in the head,” showing an unwillingness to consider that Thanos may have been right and instead putting their own self-interests above the survival of life and stability of the universe.
- Not to mention at the beginning of the movie they murder a now retired and unnamed Thanos for no other purpose than revenge, these are our heroes folks.
On top of being poorly written, it's blatantly from those "Thanos was right" fringers.
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
This was recently added to the Fallout (2024) page under Unintentionally Unsympathetic;
- In general, the Brotherhood of Steel is viewed this way: from immediately suspecting Maximus of placing a trap in Dane's boot, to allowing Titus to remain immature and childish that results in the latter getting himself killed by a Yao Guai, all for the sake of granting Maximus the T-60 power armor.
Haven't watched the show myself, and am admittedly not overly familiar with the franchise, but, given the troper's past edits on the same page (and the reasons they've provided - both for prior edits and this edit) I can't felt but feel like this is stealth complaining about how the Brotherhood of Steel are portrayed in the show. Not helping matters is that the troper outright stated, in a prior edit, that they'd try and find "something more useful against Max" after their Unintentionally Unsympathetic edit on Maximus was deleted. Additionally, as, once again, I am not overly familiar with the show, I don't personally know if the Brotherhood of Steel is meant to be viewed sympathetically in the instances described.
Edited by WiryAiluropodine on May 19th 2024 at 10:19:36 PM
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
Cut. They are portrayed as abusive and cowardly in the show. A select few are sympathetic but the organization in general is meant to unsympathetic.
Yeah, definitely a cut.
And yes, that troper clearly has an agenda and is trying to find some way of bashing Max, even if they have to shoehorn something in, as they stated themselves. Probably worth keeping an eye on other edits of theirs for similar bias.
YMMV.Fallout 3:
Reads like a misplaced Rooting for the Empire entry?
The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable