Unintentionally Sympathetic / Fan Works

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Times where somebody proved Unintentionally Sympathetic in Fan Works.

• Absolution RP:
  • Adam. Granted, he’s still the Jerkass he was in Hazbin Hotel, but the other characters' insistence on calling him out for his exterminations rings more hollow than in Hazbin due to Absolution's Hell having war criminals, mass murderers, terrorists, and even sex offenders populating it, many of whom reject redemption, so his attack on them isn’t without merit. Plus, he notably lacks many of his flaws in canon, such as his perverted nature (this version is Happily Married to Eve) and his abuse of power (The Virtues and God manage his resources). It doesn’t help that the people who call him out aren’t as saintly as they claim either.
  • Satan during the presidential arc. Yes, he was slandering Lucifer in order to win and partially caused Mana's spore outbreak, but he is correct that Lucifer is unfit to be president considering how poorly he rules Hell and he didn’t intend on Mana's outburst, that was also Lucifer’s (unintentional) doing.
• Batman and Ladybug: Miraculous Knight: Sure, Chloé may have been quite the Jerkass as was the case in canon, and no different here, but some readers felt quite sorry for her due to getting her head blown off by a cellphone-induced bomb, which is, suffice to say, too much. Even the author themself has come to regret how callously they treated her.
• Blood Raining Night: The author clearly intended for Lucy to be a bitch and a half, but to most readers many of the things she does are mild compared to the ways Reicheru gets revenge for those actions, such as Reicheru pulling off Lucy's horns in response to being called a bitch. It doesn't help that Lucy has no friends, allegedly has brain damage and Reicheru outright admits that nobody likes her.
• Equestria Girls: A Fairly Odd Friendship: Timmy destroying Gary and Betty's truck is supposed to be treated as him crossing a line by the Rainbooms. Most viewers believed Timmy was in the right, especially since Gary and Betty are incredibly obnoxious characters who made Timmy's life miserable. It doesn't help that while the audience is aware Timmy can't kill people with his magic, the Rainbooms weren't aware of that fact.
• Friendship is Failure:
  • Twilight often becomes this in the various stories. She often has the moral high ground, but because of the author's backward sense of how things work, she's meant to be portrayed as in the wrong.
  • Ath-Lita in Pride and Punishment is meant to be seen as overbearing and trying to dominate her brother's life. She instead comes off as a sister who's worried for her brother's well-being and wants him to make something of himself instead of turning himself into a bum. It isn't hard to sympathize with her, especially during her Humiliation Conga and considering said brother is Talon Ted. Granted, she does often beat him. It takes several revisions for her to show clear signs of an abusive Control Freak, which still doesn't make trying to make her brother get a job evil.
  • Terra once again finds her way here. She's meant to be seen as in the wrong because of dumping Beast Boy in cold blood, but she goes through so much horrible stuff before having to dump Beast Boy (to no fault of Beast Boy, but Slade), and over the course of END OF ENDS, where it is Beast Boy's fault, it's hard NOT to feel sorry for her, especially since a good chunk of that horrible stuff only happens because Beast Boy essentially guilt-tripped her.
  • Violet in Love and Disparage. She's clearly meant to be unsympathetic because Courier claims that she picked on him back in school, but since then, she has become genuinely regretful of her actions and tried to turn her life around, and Courier put a restraining order on her for just trying to talk to him, never giving her a chance at all.
• The author of The Grinning Snake clearly dislikes Shizuru and believes she got her long-overdue comeuppance for killing the First District when the daughter of one of her victims makes a contract to send her to Hell. However, some, such as Shizuru's fans, sympathize more with her and may not believe she deserves to go to hell for massacring an evil organization.
• Hanging Ten Saga: Despite the story portraying her in the wrong and giving her not one, but two "The Reason You Suck" Speech through two different characters, Lo Ridgemount had valid reasons to break up with Ben Tennyson. Him hiding his secret identity did, however indirectly, lead to the groms' abduction, at the very least leaving them completely unprepared for the danger his very presence brought them. The experience clearly traumatized Lo, but the story takes the stance that her being upset is being selfish. Not only that, Gwen later assaults her with her magic, almost choking her, when arguing with Lo about the breakup, which is needlessly excessive force to make a point and against someone who poses no threat. Finally, the points brought up by Gwen supposedly showing Lo wrong boil down to "Ben is a hero, so shut up and be grateful", which doesn't really address the underlying issue of his lies putting her in danger in favor of Character Shilling and also blame Lo for not knowing the very past he kept hidden from her. Basically, the story turns Lo into Ron the Death Eater for having very reasonable complaints about her boyfriend.
  • The second story seems to lampshade this, with Ben and Lo's first scene together having her try to apologize for freaking out, only for Ben to bluntly state that she was justifiably scared and he doesn't hold it against her.
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail:
  • Word of God is that Goh is a deeply selfish and uncaring individual who holds the most responsibility for Chloe running away, and his efforts to fix things are wrongheaded and shallow. But his guilt and self-loathing come off as a little too genuine, and his fragile mental state (before, during, and after his Trauma Conga Line) makes the prospect of Chloe completely rejecting his friendship, something that the story insists is her right, seem more like a cruel Break the Cutie than anything cathartic or deserved. The Intermission attempted to amend that somewhat with Goh being sorely in denial about what Chloe actually wants from him, but not everyone felt that it was sufficient. Arc 2 made the amendment much better by making it clear that Goh's problems have gone beyond Chloe and him, making him reach the intended sympathy level for many readers (as in, little to none). Then the combination of Parker's "nightmare therapy" backfiring, his stay at a suicide ward, and his kidnapping made him truly sympathetic. And all of this ignores the fact that Chloe is not blameless in their deteriorating friendship.
  • Ash is already treated by the narrative as sympathetic compared to Goh or Professor Cerise, but a sizeable and very loud group of readers and critics of the story consider the treatment the story gives him to be unwarranted. These readers consider the berating of Ash for being on one end of a communications failure to a point of him developing a guilt complex to be entirely unfitting of the "crime". These readers also tend to be a lot less sympathetic to Chloe because to them, Ash is essentially being blamed for both their parts of Poor Communication Kills.
  • While the narrative frames Delia as being in the wrong during her argument with Ash, more than a few reviewers, and at least one co-writer, see Delia's disinterest in forgiving Chloe as her own choice that isn't being respected and think that the choices of words Ash uses, such as comparing her to Parker despite a demonstratively different approach to her views of guilt and blame, are uncalled for.
• Pokémon: Harmony and Chaos: The first chapter of Pokémon: Equestrian Champions has Flash have an angry outburst at his friends when Twilight pushes his buttons trying to get him to take a break and stop pushing his Pokémon too hard, saying he is sick of them always bossing him around and holding him back. This scene is meant to depict Flash as in the wrong, and that he is not himself due to his Heroic BSoD and sleep-deprived state. However, some may find it a bit satisfying to see, since the group has at times talked down to Flash and gotten in his way once or twice. So while Flash is meant to be wrong here, others find satisfaction in him finally letting out his frustrations on someone and standing up for himself.
• Raise Your Voice Against Liars: We're initially meant to see Adrien's treatment by the Phantom Thieves as karma for how he failed to support Marinette against Lila and how pushy he was in trying to figure out Ladybug's identity, but some readers felt they were being too harsh on him in some regards, especially as the story went on and he became more and more Locked Out of the Loop. Notably, the writers eventually came to agree with the readers, leading to the story deconstructing how he'd been treated.
• Of all the characters in A Red Rose in the Blue Wind, Ozpin and Qrow are given needlessly ruthless bashing by the story. True, both of them are in the same conspiracy group raging a Secret War against Salem, but Team Sonic and RWBY goes way too far in calling them out on this, more so than in canon RWBY, made worse when Shadow was the one provoking them the most while also keeping his own brand of secrets and never gets called out on this until 38 chapters in. Qrow in particular gets this the worst, with Yang cutting all ties from him just for being involved with Ozpin, and undergoing Adaptational Jerkass in order to further justify her behavior. While Yang is given a What the Hell, Hero? from Ruby over her unnecessarily cruel treatment and Hypocrisy Callout in how she still wants to find Raven despite her being way worse, the narration still makes it seems like Qrow is the one that needs to apologize, not the other way around. However, on the silver lining, this makes Qrow a lot better than Yang who remains unapologetic of her self-centered attitude.
• Buffy in Silent Reproach. The reader is meant to conclude that Captain America gave her a well-deserved case of Quit Your Whining by pointing out that in World War II, both the draftees and the volunteers simply did their job. However, the speech falls flat because, as quite a few reviewers point out, Cap fails to realize that Buffy was given a much more difficult and thankless battle to fight with less help and at a much younger age than most draftees. Draftees also generally have the hope of serving out their terms of enlistment and going home, while Slayers are stuck with the job until they die in the line of duty.
  • A fanmade sequel titled Disapproval Earned has Xander rip Cap a new one by pointing out how much worse Buffy had it than a war draftee, including that she died twice to save the world.
• Dumbledore in Touken Danshi and The Order Of The Phoenix is meant to be seen as unreasonable and incompetent in running his school, but it's hard not to feel sorry for him when the alleged heroes insult and threaten him with bringing an army over to station on Hogwarts grounds for the crime of not immediately granting special treatment to Harry and expecting him to finish his required schooling and not become an outcast.

Ace Attorney

• Morgan Fey in Transplanted Character Fic Tales of Attornia. She's evil because she demanded that Phoenix kill Maya. Except Maya blew up her hometown almost killing her and her daughter, and killing everyone else (except Athena). Phoenix actually wanted to kill Maya for exactly that. But then he found out that Maya is his mentor's sister, and suddenly Maya is the victim and Morgan is the villain (who gets immediately executed without trial) who "used" Phoenix to do something he intended to do anyway.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

• How I Became Yours does this to Mai. She was supposed to be the bitchy Woman Scorned standing in between Zuko and Katara's Super True Love, but she did have a good point in keeping the news that Katara was pregnant with Zuko's kid a secret in part due to the blowback that would happen if people learned he had an illegitimate child with a Waterbender. Plus, Zuko was cheating on her when that poor kid was conceived, so refusing to let him know is an understandable, if cruel revenge for that. At the very least, Mai didn't deserve to be bloodbended to death by a badly Out of Character Katara, when she could've easily restrained her with said technique so she could be sent to trial.
• Aang in The Stalking Zuko Series. Katara and the author often take the least favorable interpretation of his actions and motives, such as suggesting that he deliberately ran away before the Grand Finale and spared Ozai only to keep with Air Nomad teachings - Katara refuses to hear Aang's arguments in his own defense, and virtually everyone agrees that he owes her an apology for what he's done. While Katara claims to view Aang as a friend, she often seems to view him with a great deal of pity and reluctantly interacts with him, even when it seems as though he doesn't fully deserve that treatment. As a result, while some viewers believe this is necessary for Aang's Character Development, others believe that the story is too harsh on him.

Creepypasta

• In the Creepypasta Clockwork: Your Time is Up, after the protagonist, Natalie, snaps and becomes a Jeff the Killer Expy as a result of doctors experimenting on her, she murders her entire family in a disturbingly lovingly-detailed fashion. The author tries to portray this as justified by making her suffer massive abuse from them as a child, with her father being an Abusive Parent and the brother being an incestuous child rapist. Problem is, Natalie's brutal, over-the-top murders of her family are far worse, with the tamest one (her mother's) involving her paralyzing her, cutting her chest open, and ripping out her heart and waiting until she bleeds out (the more gory ones are certainly NSFW). Suffice to say, with how Natalie remorselessly butchers her family, it makes them surprisingly pitiable (yes, even the incestuous child rapist) and makes Natalie look a lot less likable.

The DCU

• The Supergirl story Hellsister Trilogy would have us believe that Superman is being irrationally overprotective when he comes to blows with Dev-Em... no matter what Dev-Em acknowledged he looked to pick up a fight with him. No matter what Superman may feel less than thrilled to hear his cousin has become the lover of a former delinquent who screwed him up purely for fun. No matter what Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation hints their relationship will leave Kara broken-hearted.

Digimon

• Cyborg Davis: Sure, Kari and TK were a bit over their heads with their relationship, but the punishment ended up far more severe than the deed. It'd be near impossible for them to get jobs, they end up divorced, and now they have to live the rest of their lives thinking that they were partially responsible for what happened. Not to mention, they were filmed having sex without their permission.
• Digimon: A Seraphic Tale: Ayaka is written to be as unlikeable as possible. She keeps saying that her parents favour Yun over her despite their protests...except if you look closely at how they actually treat their daughters, it becomes clear that she's not entirely wrong.
  • Ayaka hates and fears Digimon due to the recent attacks, calling them monsters and demanding their parents make Yun get rid of her own partners. Her fear is treated as unfounded, with Yun’s partners even attacking her on several occasions due to them perceiving her as a threat to Yun.
  • When a Digimon attack leaves both her and her boyfriend Shunji’s Digimon injured, Shunji tends to his partner first with barely a glance at Ayaka. When she gets offended that he isn’t checking on her as well, Shunji screams at her for being “selfish.” The incident rattles her so much that she can only quietly run off to be by herself, and no one chases after her.
  • She is the only one to protest when the family agrees to house Lucero, a complete stranger to them, at extremely short notice and on a whim. Her reasonable arguments (they don’t know him, there’s no room, they never asked her feelings and only considered what Yun might want) are framed as her being unreasonable.

Fairy Tail

• Natsu in Lucy's Unwanted House Guest. He's a jerk to Lucy, but that doesn't mean he deserves to be framed for beating her up, given Fake Memories of actually doing it, and being barred from the S-Class Exam^note He'd seen becoming S-Class as a way for him to more easily find Igneel for five years as punishment. To make matters worse, he has no idea that the person who framed him is none other than his girlfriend Lisanna, and all the while, he's struggling with his unrealized feelings for Lucy. All in all, this makes him more of a Jerkass Woobie than a straight-up Jerkass, but the story never seems to consider this.

Five Nights at Freddy's

• Five Nights at Freddy's: Lost Souls: Golden Freddy has started to evoke that reaction in readers from Night 5 onward. He's meant to be an antagonist, but many readers found themselves sympathizing with him more and more, especially when he started to be contrasted against the far less fleshed out Kelly. His dislike for teenagers and adult humans is given a very good reason in his own side story Crybaby, his love for the Fazbears and desire to protect them is revealed as genuine, if misguided and possessive, and while he does do some reprehensible things, like telling Cody he'll hurt Bridget, he ultimately doesn't truly want to hurt anybody (until Night 6, anyway).

Harry Potter

• Britney in My Immortal. Sure, she (somehow) releases Snap, Loopin, and Hargrid from Azerbaijan near the end, but before that, she is treated with contempt by Ebony and her friends for the "crime" of liking Hilary Duff and not shopping at Hot Topic. Even after she breaks the aforementioned criminals out of prison, Ebony still shows more offense towards her prep status.
• In This World and the Next: The Weasleys of the new timeline have so many bad things happen in revenge for things that they would have done in the (original) future that one cannot help but feel sorry for them, especially since Mrs. Weasley is among the fic's strawmen with valid points.
• In One World, Ron Weasley is a bit of an odd case of this, since as of this writing, he's barely even appeared in the story. After the author's decision to stick to canon pairings led to backlash from people who don't like Ron, the author said he'd be sure to show Ron as "a prat and a git," but not a Death Eater, and he and Harry would take longer to become friends than in canon. Naturally, some readers thought the author didn't give Ron enough credit or understand him as a character, while others had the opposite reaction.
• In Princess of the Blacks, Lily Potter was initially intended to be a Jerkass who couldn't accept that her daughter wanted nothing to do with Lily or James. Instead, she became The Woobie who was willing to stay away from Jennifer in the hopes she'd one day be willing to reconnect. Word of God states that Lily is the equivalent of a kicked puppy whereas James has become the Jerkass.

High School D×D

• Go Away I'm Watching Porn:
  • Raynare. Issei and Jasmine treat her horribly, and their excuse that she failed to protect Asami falls kind of flat because she did everything in her power to do so and the effort nearly killed her. Prior to that, Issei chased her around for several hours with a pair of massive dildos, viciously threatening to anal-rape her with them. Yeah, she shouldn't have taunted him for screwing up Kuroka's backstory, and it was technically meant to be a training exercise, but Issei's response was wildly disproportionate, his threats were not idle, and he surely could have come up with another way to "motivate" her^note Such as threatening to stop cooking her lunches, which had worked before.. Later, Kuroka starts an argument with her, and when Raynare gets the upper hand by calling her out on lying to Issei about her past, Kuroka pettily gets her electrocuted, while Vali and Jasmine act like she deserved it and subject her to even more torture. In the next chapter, she gets tied to a Sybian and whipped just for accusing Jasmine of padding her chest (and knowing Jasmine, she likely started it), and then she is subjected to a particularly rough round of sex with Issei. While the latter was done with her consent, the handling was so brutal it came dangerously close to rape. Suffice it to say, rather than being seen as a bitch getting her Just Desserts, Raynare comes off more as a Jerkass Woobie being used as The Scapegoat by a group of petty assholes. Compounding the issue is that it's all but said Azazel is pissed at her too, and that she has no place with the Grigori anymore as a result of what happened to Asami, coming across as needlessly cruel to someone who nearly died trying to protect Asami, even if she failed.
  • Sona in Chapter 18. After being continuously left in the dark and forced to deal with Jasmine and Vali making rude comments, she finally reaches her wit's end and tries fishing for information from Jasmine about Issei's past. Jasmine then pokes at her insecurities about Serafall, and Sona chooses to insult her for being a sex worker in a blatant Author Tract moment. The narrative acts like she deserves to be attacked by Jasmine, but as several readers pointed out, Jasmine had done nothing but act condescendingly towards the group, and was taking her issues out on everyone for something that was not their fault. And for all her talk about her being a "stupid kid" being kept in the dark, Jasmine still refuses to actually tell them anything, leaving many to feel Sona was needlessly vilified for the sake of making Jasmine look good. This got furthered when ThirdFang decided to address the reaction to their treatment of Sona with a lengthy Dear Negative Reader comment, making many see them as doing it intentionally just to piss off the critics.
  • The Maou, Michael, and Azazel. Issei regularly lambasts them as incompetent idiots who are only trying to be nice to him so as to get back in his good graces for their own benefit, with him refusing to forgive them for "abandoning" him. However, their "abandoning him" is a large case of Show, Don't Tell, with several readers noting how they are going out of their way to try and make things right by Issei when they don't really owe Issei anything, and his treatment of them comes across as needlessly antagonistic.

The Land Before Time

• Hyp from Secret Love gets this pretty hard. While it is undeniable that his knocking Ducky into the tar pits with his tail was bad, that's when things go south when Ducky and Petrie's mothers come to scold Hyp alongside his own father, which turns from scolding him for endangering someone to outright screaming at him for not liking Ducky and Petrie's secret relationship. So instead of seeing a bully getting scolded for his bullying ways, we basically see more of a repentant bully getting yelled at for not supporting a secret forbidden couple.

The Loud House

• The Loud sisters, with the exception of Lori, Lucy, and Lily, in One Angry Person. All they did was minorly inconvenience their brother Lincoln (Luna, for instance, accidentally stage-dived onto him and she even apologised for it) but they're the ones who are treated as having to atone for it, while Lincoln does all manner of terrible things to all of them, including breaking Lynn's nose, and gets away with it.
• Reacting to The Loud House: The Loud Family except for Lincoln and Lily. We're supposed to find satisfaction over seeing their friends calling them out on their past misdeeds, with them supposedly having to learn a lesson from all of it. However, it's very hard to root against the Louds when they show genuine regret over their actions, and when their fellow audience members react to such misdeeds with violent, and sometimes, downright psychopathic threats. It doesn't help matters either that their host shows an unfair amount of bias towards Lincoln. So it's incredibly hard to feel any catharsis from seeing the Louds suffer like this, especially when their reactions to such moments are that of fear and regret.
  • Lynn tends to receive flack for repeatedly calling Lincoln "Stinkin" both in the show and in the story. While the nickname isn't exactly popular among fans, the problem is that she came to regret calling him that following the fallout of the luck incident, and when everyone reconciled, she vowed to stop, only calling him that once since, as a genuine slip of the tongue. Despite that, every time she uses the nickname in the show since then, the other members of the audience chew her out for saying it, even though it's not like she can change the events of past episodes.

Miraculous Ladybug

• Cheshire (Miraculous Ladybug): Adrien is supposed to be seen as the one in the wrong when it comes to Cheshire since he apparently can't see that she's actually a good person and is still somewhat antagonistic towards her. However, it's easy to forget he was told not only by Master Fu but Tikki as well that the Cat Miraculous was evil due to its predecessors. In the end, Adrien was just doing what he thought was good in opposing her because of what the people around him told him.
• Isekai'd as Chloé tries to present Adrien as a self-centered jerk when he immediately ditches the gift Marinette gave him in favor of the one given to him by the reader insert in Chloé's body. However, not only does he show no outward signs of disliking Marinette's gift (even thanking her for it), but the gift the reader insert gives him is an incredibly rare DVD copy of a film starring his Missing Mom — meaning it's only natural that he gets more excited about getting it. Not only does Adrien come off as Innocently Insensitive at worst, but the whole set-up makes the reader insert come off as a jerk for deliberately upstaging Marinette's gift just to push her own agenda.
• The Karma of Lies: Adrien is meant to be seen as a self-centered Entitled Bastard with a bad case of Never My Fault, and thus deserving of all the Laser-Guided Karma he gets hit with. However, a number of readers felt that his treatment fell into Karmic Overkill; not only does his life end up systematically destroyed until he's got nothing left, but it's stated in the narrative that he's suffering Lila's karma as well as his own, leaving her free from the consequences of her actions outside of some paranoia (when most "salt fic" writers at least make sure she gets punished alongside him). Several Recursive Fanfics aim to "fix" this Karmic Misfire by punishing Lila... and, often, Marinette as well, blaming her for Adrien's suffering.
• Marinette's Week Off:
  • While Marinette's classmates act as entitled and obnoxious as is usual for salt fics, they have a legitimate argument that they're being treated unfairly after the reforms. While they aren't allowed to leave school to go do personal activities, Marinette takes plenty of absences in order to shoot movies or model. Marinette eventually explains that she's in a special accelerated curriculum and is doing her schoolwork ahead of time so that her absences don't affect her academic performance, but none of the other classmates are allowed to do anything like that, even ones like Max, who could probably benefit from it.
  • For that matter, when the class demands to know why Marinette is vanishing so often, Bustier (under pressure from the teaching aides) eventually flips out at them, yells that they're invading her privacy, and threatens anyone who continues with detentions, suspensions, or even expulsion. This is even though they don't actually have a selfish motive and appear to just be worried and wondering why Marinette keeps going missing.
• Miraculous 1: Welcome to Paris: While Marinette/Ladybug's negative behavior is ramped up considerably, a combination of her going through most of her canon failures on top of new ones and Amber's tendency to insult her unprovoked make her a lot more sympathetic than the author intended. It doesn't help that all of her canon successes are instead given to Amber, which gives the impression that she'll never be able to win no matter what she does and thus makes her come off more sympathetically.
• In A New Leaf, Marinette is clearly portrayed as being in the wrong for quitting being Ladybug, judging by the effect her actions end up having on others, especially Adrien, as well as everyone saying how selfish she's being. Nevertheless, some people find it impossible to blame a 15-year-old girl for no longer wanting to be what's essentially a Child Soldier. It doesn't help that one of the reasons Marinette decided to quit is because she believes that she isn't best suited for the job after all, and that what Paris really needs is a Ladybug who can take the job in stride and who doesn't stand to lose everything that's good in her life to the point that she lives only for the benefit of others.
• The Wavering Peahen: Some people in the comments of the story noted that, while Lila was unquestionably villainous and deserved punishment, they weren't sure if she truly deserved the 50 year sentence (which exceeds the theoretical maximum juvenile sentence in France by 20 years) or to be permanently afflicted with debilitating symptoms from using the broken Miraculous. While there's an in-universe justification for why the heroes don't heal her — the only thing that can heal the problems caused by a broken Miraculous is wearing that Miraculous, and if the heroes give Lila the Peacock Miraculous to wear and be healed by, they can't be sure she won't try to use its powers to escape — but it still rubbed some people the wrong way.

My Hero Academia

• In Coyote, there's Shota Aizawa, who, after revealing that he was lying about his threat to expel the lowest scorer on his quirk test, gets kicked in the crotch and watches his entire class walk out on him. Shortly thereafter, he's called on the carpet for having expelled all of last year's class in the past (the fic was written before canon revealed that he immediately re-enrolled those students), accused of only wanting to teach students who excel without much instruction, and is suspended without pay. While his teaching methods are controversial, most people, even some of his detractors, see him as a strict but well-intentioned teacher who at least wants to make sure his students are ready to be heroes.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• According to the author of ARTICLE 2, you're not supposed to like the immature jerk that is Major Shane T. Doran. However, him being a Sole Survivor with severe Survivor Guilt that is unused to the kind of treatment he receives from the Equestrians, takes no shit even from the Princesses, and oftentimes pulls Crazy Is Cool and funny stunts makes it hard not to like him.
• The Conversion Bureau: The Chatoverse: The newfoals that make up the eponymous organization in The Reasonably Adamant Down With Celestia Newfoal Society. The narrative frames them as a bunch of ungrateful whiners who don't realize how great they've now got it since they're now magical creatures living in a Sugar Bowl utopia, but for a great many readers, their complaints are not entirely unfounded as several of them were transformed against their will (one was even ponified in her sleep).
• Queen Celestia from The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum is the absolute ruler of the Solar Empire, a brutal totalitarian police state that is committing xenocide on humanity, routinely does cruel experiments on humans, and Mind Rapes its citizens on the regular. Unsurprisingly, the narration frames her as an irredeemably evil tyrant. But with the revelation that she is possessed by the Bag of Tirek, the readers came to see her as the biggest victim in the story.
• My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic:
  • Starla's dad is mocked in-universe for having been an overly idealistic Control Freak with Suicidal Pacifism tendencies in addition to negatively criticizing Starfleet. However, his criticisms of Starfleet as racist and violent Knight Templars come off as scathingly accurate, his devotion to diplomacy and peace makes him look like the Only Sane Man in Unicornicopia, the Control Freak aspect is an Informed Attribute at most, and the circumstances of his death have led readers to suspect that Grand Ruler sent hitmen disguised as criminals to assassinate him.
  • Mysterious, Rep-stallion, and Dementia were originally meant to be The Heartless Artificial Ponies unable to express emotion, empathy, or personality. However, the fact that their actions not only say otherwise, but everyone, from their enemy, Starfleet, to their master Titan, who they genuinely care about, treating them as disposable and non-equine, has earned them the sympathy of many readers. In particular, the two Deconstruction Fics and one of beats0me's comics give them this treatment, and if the comment sections are anything to go by, many others agree with them.
  • Ace Ray: Even in the rewritten version, it is still this trope. For punching his sister upon being insulted and rejected by her, and the others who don't agree with him in making correct assumptions about Starfleet being an oppressive government, he is punished by getting his freedom taken away from him. Even though he's a clearly sane but jaded guy, he was pretty much stated to be imprisoned in an asylum for life. Wait, this sounds similar to Room 101. Seriously, read his entire chapter and see if you can deem him insane:
    No one had ever broken out from this asylum, and even If they had there was no way they could leave the planet. The warp portals that led out into Dimensional Space were inaccessible by all convicts. Any one of them who tried to enter only got tossed back out again.[...] Poor Ace, he did not take being locked up very well, and continued to insist he wasn’t insane, only to be restrained and sedated by the medical staff.
  • Human!Celestia in Starfleet Humans. It's shown at the beginning when Lightning sings and dances while in the middle of the road she is driving on, clearly stressed and upset. Granted, it's not a good idea to look at your notes while driving, but the story (and Lightning) shoehorns all the blame towards her for getting angry at him. When the fic reveals that her pet horse died, which led her into a Heroic BSoD courtesy of Sapphira, Lightning uses it as ammo against her. We're supposed to see the attack as hers instead, as indicated by Luna calling her a monster (even though, as mentioned earlier, Lightning was not hurt at all due to retaining his physical enhancements), but granted, Lightning, maybe saying that it's a good thing someone's pet is dead wasn't exactly the best course of action when you're trying to prove your friend's innocence.
  • Starfleet blames Twilight Sparkle for her own death because she disobeyed orders when she went to fight Raven. However, her actions impeded the potential assassination of a major political figure: if she hadn't intervened, Raven would've had a decent shot at killing Celestia.
  • The Crystal Prep Shadowbolts are portrayed as unsympathetic because they're trying to win the Friendship Games by cheating. However, in contrast to their canon counterparts accusing the Canterlot High students of using magic to challenge their winning streak, Crystal Prep is resorting to cheating as a desperate effort to break their own losing streak against the magically-enhanced Starfleet Humans at Canterlot High. Given that Starfleet's enhancements are described in a way akin to magical performance-enhancing drugs, it seems less like the Shadowbolts are dirty cheaters and more like they're trying to get on even ground by any means necessary, even if it means neither side is being honest. It doesn't help that the Starfleet Humans are all insufferably arrogant and love rubbing in their superiority, making the Shadowbolts' frustration much more understandable and making the reader want to see them take the smug bastards down a couple of pegs.
  • Brass Bolt is supposed to be seen as wrong for accusing Starfleet of being evil, but the writing never gives a good enough reason as to why the reader should side against him. The closest the story gets is having him release all of the prisoners from one of Starfleet's prisons, which actually makes him more sympathetic given that Starfleet's treatment of prisoners would likely qualify as a gross violation of civil rights (and probably the Geneva Convention as well) in real life.
• Princess Trixie Sparkle: During the Crystal Empire portion of the story, Twilight is meant to be seen in the wrong for pretty much letting her anger get the best of her and becoming like Trixie (right down to the smug look) for planning to backstab her after manipulating her into revealing the "truth". However, in the first half of the story, Trixie basically lies and manipulates Twilight by throwing her hospitality back into her face, switches bodies with her, throws her into the Canterlot dungeons, and mocks her (Twilight in Trixie's body) with the fact they she will remain in the dungeons to rot for the rest of her life while she (Trixie in Twilight's body) will take her friends, family, and life away from her. If anything, Twilight is perfectly in the right to be mad at Trixie, even if she does go a bit too far.

Pokémon

• In Alexa vs. Ash, Ash is treated as a bumbling idiot by the author, who can't even knock out one of Alexa's Pokemon at all (granted, she says that her Pokemon were hurt, but the first three battles shown have her Pokemon turn them into dust almost immediately). Alexa keeps singing her own praises about how she's so much better than Ash, gets pissed when Pikachu keeps using Volt Tackle just so they can get at least one KO on her Charizard (they don't), and when Ash compliments her by saying he enjoyed the battle, she outright bitches about how he let his Pokemon get hurt (even though she basically dished out heavy damage towards them, and battles are not outright cockfights where they need to slaughter each other), how he's an arrogant jerk (never shown, he was complimenting her), and all of Alexa's Pokemon root for her and agree with her. However, it's not hard to feel sorry for Ash, when he basically gets chewed out for the heinous act of being a good sport, and even though you know even if Pikachu defeats the Charizard, Ash is very unlikely to win the entire battle.
• The Longest Road has a very particular case of this in Chapter 28. While the author, like many, was understandably angry for Erika's attitude in banning Ash from her Gym just because he didn't like her perfume, his attempt to get back at her for it ended up going a little too far. For some reason the story reveals that there's a rule in the Pokémon League that forbids anyone in the LGBT community from being a trainer, let alone a gym leader, and she's ousted from her job for that. This also ends up making Ash and the others looking arguably worse than Erika, especially considering that all of her staff (being lesbians too) will probably be out of a job because of it.

Teen Titans (2003)

• In The End of Ends, the other Teen Titans and Terra are seen as this, especially in relation to Beast Boy. The narration indicates that they are to blame for everything that happened to Beast Boy; Terra for wanting to live a normal life without him, and the other Titans for not supporting his continued attempts to rekindle that romance. However, not only does the story start off with Beast Boy outright stalking Terra (which naturally scares and concerns everyone), but his refusal to accept that Terra no longer wants him anywhere near her leads him to become a supervillain known as Count Logan, who destroys entire worlds, including Tamaran, purely to spite Starfire and Robin for being a couple. By that point, there is no question that everyone else is right and Beast Boy should have respected Terra's wishes and just moved on.
  • Terra's friends in Chapters 1 and 2 are also this. They're treated as antagonists for keeping Beast Boy from seeing Terra. Consider the Titan in question's willingness to stalk Terra which, understandably, creeps the girls out. When he refuses to let up, they follow through on their earlier threats to hurt him, and Terra accidentally gets hurt in the crossfire, which causes Beast Boy to uncontrollably go into beast mode and nearly rip the poor girls a new one. You're supposed to feel justified in sticking up for Beast Boy when his fellow Titans yell at him and see the girls as Asshole Victims, but it comes across as two girls protecting their friend from a potential creeper and physically suffering for it.

Total Drama

• Total Drama All-Stars Rewrite: Courtney is treated with little sympathy by the narrative over how she's continuing to hold a grudge against Gwen and Duncan for what they did to her, with multiple characters stating she should just get over it already. However, as the grudge stems from the fact that Duncan cheated on her with Gwen, some readers felt more sympathy for her than the writers intended. It doesn't help that "Sundae Muddy Sundae", which already got her this reaction from the fanbase, was adapted nigh-unchanged.
• Total Drama: Cody's Redemption: Courtney tells Cody that they can't talk to each other during the competition after Dodgebrawl. While a sad decision, it's not unreasonable as they have to focus on the competition and Cody could be targeted as well for talking to the opposite team. And even though Courtney does act high-strung around him afterwards, Cody isn't portrayed any better. He goes off on her for her decision and even humiliates her in front of everyone at one point out of pettiness. There's also the fact that he once forced eyedrops onto her despite refusing and roared at her for it.
• Total Drama Domination:
  • Devin was portrayed as being the bad guy in this story over his breakup with Carrie, yet Carrie was the one who announced the breakup, and he tried to patch things up with her, but she refused to listen. Even after he stopped being a jerk, Carrie still wouldn't give him a chance.
  • Keith is portrayed as a violent Entitled Bastard and attempted murderer over Sky dumping him for Dave, yet it's not unreasonable for Keith to be upset over suddenly being dumped on national TV by a girl that seemed to sincerely miss him in her audition tape.
• Total Drama Tween Tour:
  • Edgar, after the reveal that Jethro had hypnotized him to turn evil. Yet, even after this, it's Jethro, the guy who ruined Edgar's life who we're supposed to sympathize with.
  • A lot of readers began to feel sorry for Emily after her Humiliation Conga.
  • Elvira was meant to be seen as an overbearing Control Freak, but some readers saw her as the Only Sane Woman of her team who just wanted order among all the chaos.