No joke, this guy is literally the reason I'm skipping on Royal. I cant stand him and his popularity in Japan is absolutely baffling to me.
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Characters Who Writers Want You To Sympathize With/Root For (and fail)
- Thread starter Z-Beat
- Start date
No joke, this guy is literally the reason I'm skipping on Royal. I cant stand him and his popularity in Japan is absolutely baffling to me.
speaking of which, Lena Luthor on supergirl is worse than Joy Meachum at this point, seeing as her response to being lied to was to attempt to reprogram the entire human race (despite the fact that the person who actually set her off is a fucking Kryptonian in the first place)
they just did this whole episode on Supergirl where they went through a bunch of possible timelines, and it turns out Lena was always going to be the worst fucking person about the secret identity thing unless kara literally told her before they were even friends
Supergirl lied to me so I'm going to brainwash humanity for the greater good! I'm such a good person.
Fucking yup. The writing jumping through as many hoops as it need to to have character mad at tho protagonist for dRaMa. An impressive fuck up considering how easy it already was to hate Danny.
Cant imagine the why of it all tho, she would have been an awful villain even with good/coherent motivations.
Jesse Pinkman of Breaking Bad.
His constant fucks up cause several situations to spiral out of control, his own actions are horrendous and destructive. It's through his own self destructive nature that everything he comes into contact with ends up worse or cause the deaths of others. He speaks often of someone being a bitch but only because he's King Bitch himself.
I really dislike that video. I like them overall, but that video...eh. The ending of GoW ruins any play on mythology it might have had. Really, the whole premise is kinda fubar from an ancient Greek perspective, since a story where the gods are actually killed is just asking for trouble, but a hero who did it would be rewarded for it with Godhood is just silly in their eyes. Hubris is translated as pride or arrogance, but that translation is imperfect and it's more along the lines of "Acting dishonorable" or even "acting blasphemous towards the gods". From that perspective, a story about a guy who slanders and then murders a god, and is then rewarded for it with fucking apotheosis of all things would be parody at best and profane at worst to ancient greeks.
If you were to retell the story of Jesus to christians where after he resurrected, Jesus takes the spear of destiny and uses it to to take on Pontius Pilate and his roman legions in an epic one demigod against a human army battle before ascending into heaven on a chariot of gold and babes, that's the level of faithfulness to ancient Greek values we're talking about here.
As for Kratos himself, I really just got to disagree. Kratos is established to be unusually bloodthirsty even then. For one, we can see how he acts like a blood psycho with our very eyes. They've made the very act of ignoring a conventional, efficient deathblow in favor of an unnecessarily long, inefficient, but torturous and excruciating killing a gameplay mechanic as part of his normal behavior. As I said, even the one single flashback we see of his wife is her begging him to stop being such a monster with fear, anger and hate in her expression towards him. Maybe that's not reliable, but we don't know that and it's the only memory of her we're shown. The one time we have another soldier to contrast him with is that one puzzle where we have a spartan soldier who thinks that Kratos freeing him will be the most natural thing in the world, but instead he just murders him to solve a puzzle. Everyone's perpetually shocked at Kratos brutality in a way they aren't for normal spartans.
Kratos is not normal. If they wanted me to buy that it was even possible for Kratos to be compassionate, they needed to SHOW that, but they don't do that throughout any of GoW1 or GoW2, and GoW3's relationship with pandora feels like a sick joke of what compassion looks like to Kratos. GoW Chains of Olympus was alright in this regard, Ghost of Sparta was....really super bad with how they depicted his relationship with Deimos and came off as more shonen rival trope shit, and I honestly don't even remember much of ascension. GoW2018 is the first and only time I felt I could believe in Kratos being capable of having normal, non-psycho feelings and at that point, he's basically top to bottom a totally different character, down to completely different mannerisms and personality.
If so, they did it in that wolf of wall street sort of way where it's "Wow, look at how super rich this guy is. Isn't it bad? But isn't it also really cool? Look at all the wild, fun stuff he gets to do! But don't get too caught up in it, it destroyed his life. But it was still so good in the moment! But these guys are absolute fucked up, don't forget. But also ABSOLUTE LEGENDS."
After all, the game DID get famous based off how much of an asshole Kratos is and how brutally sadistic the QTE's were. And when it came time for the sequel, what did they do but ramp both things up until the main thing people were looking forward to were the excruciating, exquisitely rendered ways Kratos would murder people.
So, at the very least, it was totally a selling point.
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I feel like that's sort of the tragedy of the first game (however effective it may be), and the second game doesn't really try to pretend that Kratos is all that justified in his quest, which is why it went down better for me.
God of War 3 really bothered me in this regard, and it goes overboard in trying to make Kratos sympathetic through the character of Pandora, the personification of hope (and goodness, thematically), who believes in Kratos throughout even as he behaves increasingly horribly. In the end, she sacrifices herself for Kratos's quest, a vision of her gets Kratos to forgive himself for murdering his wife and child, and Kratos ends the game by sacrificing himself so mankind can have hope. See, Kratos was good all along! All this destruction was what mankind needed! What a hero!
The newest game is another thing altogether, and I like what they did there, but in 3 whenever Kratos takes his rage out on somebody, it turns out to be justified because they're all corrupted by Pandora's Box. He destroys all the people he hates and gets basically everything he wants. The final turning point in the game is when he forgives himself for his earlier mistakes without demonstrating any real understanding of his own responsibility. I don't know why 3 tried so hard to make us feel sympathy for Kratos in that way. Even his accidental slaying of Athena at the end of 2 is recast as something good in light of her heel turn in the game's final moments.
To be fair, Dragon Ball is another anime that tried to give Satan a redemption arc, but actually succeeded
:P
They wrote their last episode before the public had a chance to hate them cause they could tell themselves just by watching what they had so far.
Katie McGrath carries some of the weakest character writing ever to disgrace television on her back every week. That women deserves all the awards for doing what she does with the terrible material she is given. Also, Melissa Benoist helps a lot too, but she isn't given much better.
Rin's mom didn't give a shit about Satan killing her teammates.
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Oh wow, how could I forget this one?
Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw 3D
So after the events of the first movie, an obviously very pissed off mob of people with guns and the cops show up at the Sawyer house to go murder the cannibals. The single cop who showed up tries to talk the mob down but it's hard to talk down a mob of angry Texans with guns in the 1970s with a 2nd mob of angry cannibals with guns pointing their guns back at them. A shootout ensues, and this becomes the primary focal point for why we are supposed to sympathize with and root for Leatherface because his family died in a shootout with an angry mob who were upset about all that cannibalism and murder. LEATHERFACE. Apparently to the writers cannibal murderer > vigilante justice. So anyway even the main character roots for Leatherface, and this is well after he's murdered all of her friends AND her boyfriend and almost murdered her but didn't because he found out they were related. Yay?
Imma add this to the OP because I don't think anything's beating it
Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw 3D
So after the events of the first movie, an obviously very pissed off mob of people with guns and the cops show up at the Sawyer house to go murder the cannibals. The single cop who showed up tries to talk the mob down but it's hard to talk down a mob of angry Texans with guns in the 1970s with a 2nd mob of angry cannibals with guns pointing their guns back at them. A shootout ensues, and this becomes the primary focal point for why we are supposed to sympathize with and root for Leatherface because his family died in a shootout with an angry mob who were upset about all that cannibalism and murder. LEATHERFACE. Apparently to the writers cannibal murderer > vigilante justice. So anyway even the main character roots for Leatherface, and this is well after he's murdered all of her friends AND her boyfriend and almost murdered her but didn't because he found out they were related. Yay?
Imma add this to the OP because I don't think anything's beating it
Because most CW characters have the emotional depth of a middle school student.
I cant believe Sasuke was ripped-off from Kurapika, what a shit character. Kurapika is so cool.
Yeah, but why do the CW writers write them that way? Are they just bad or is it like a corperate mandate thing?
Mike Dawson in Dark Seed II. Maybe a deep pull for some but it's interesting having a follow up to a point and click adventure game with a relatively undeveloped protagonist, but in the sequel through giving him more of a significant story presence they went out of their way to make him so unlikable that the climax of the story just feels like a whimper. He doesn't even do anything particularly bad or morally reprehensible, he's just kind of a whiny child in a 35-year old's body
How about Zeke from Attack on Titan?
Tragic as hell childhood but who the hell would agree with his end game plan?
So, the review thread for The Invisible Man got me thinking about Gone Girl again, and how there are people who think Nick is about 50% to blame for what happened, which, to me is like saying the assistant is 50% to blame for getting eaten by the Mosasaurus because she wasn't a good person. This spun off into me thinking about characters that writers want want you to sympathize with or like, only for the general public to respond with "Are you insane?!" and I wanted to know what characters from fiction you think fit this bill
To name off a few of varying degrees of "What? No."
Mrs. Ganush from Drag Me to Hell. So after getting into financial trouble and being denied a third loan from the bank, Mrs. Ganush opts to condemn the woman who denied her a loan to an eternity in Hell. Seems like a bit of an overreaction, but I did find out that we were actually supposed to sympathize more with her than the main character. They try to set up the main character as screwing over this poor old woman just to get ahead at her job, but she never does anything that doesn't make a ton of sense. She mentions that the bank's already given her two loans already and even after that asks her boss if there's anything they can do. Her boss inevitably leaves it up to her but even if there was nothing to gain from her denying the loan, realistically it makes sense that she'd say no. And it's not like the loan is her only option. The main character tells her that she should ask her family for help, but Ganush's own stupid-ass pride prevents her from doing so (but not from getting on her knees in the middle of a crowded bank to beg, apparently). Prior to this, Mrs. Ganush isn't exactly shown to be the nicest old lady. She's prideful, rude, and straight up attempts to attack the main character after making a scene didn't work.
Sasuke from Naruto. I'll just leave this here
And Warren from Life is Strange. First things first, I don't really like Chloe either. She's not a great person, but at least I get it. Warren...he kinda feels like a weird-ass afterthought in this game. It's clear that he wants to set HIMSELF up as a love interest for you and he's trying really hard to do so, but that's kinda the problem. At no point does Warren seem like a legit character to pick with your options. He's just kinda there, orbiting around you at all times (including at very creepy times). If he was supposed to be the stereotypical "nerd who gets the guy/girl at the end" they leaned into it far to much with the nerd part and nothing else.
Edit: Ah fuck I forgot
EVERYONE IN RENT
I wouldn't use Sasuke Uchiha as a good example considering how popular Sasuke is with Japan. I'd actually call him a success.
Sasuke is always in the Top 4 of popular characters in Japan too.
A failed character would actually be closer to Sai or Sakura in Naruto. Kishimoto has admitted as much.
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Popularity isn't always indicative of sympathy. Also I have the sneaking suspicion that a good chunk of his popularity comes from being the resident anime bad boy in one of the most popular anime franchises on the planet.
For me, it was Rand Al Thor in the Wheel of Time books. He was the protagonist, so of course you're supposed to side with him and root for him, but he was so incredibly unlikable, refused to listen to reason and the people who genuinely wanted him to be safe/do smart things, and eventually I just got tired of him. It's been a while since I've read the books, but I just couldn't keep reading the series because he pissed me off so much 😂😂
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I thought the ultimate betrayal was banging your best friend's girlfriend while Radioactive plays.
Well yes, it is. If Sasuke consistently jumps anywhere from 1st to 4th place on the favorite character polls out of the whole cast then most of those people probably root or sympathize with him. Favorite characters for people tend to be characters they root for after all.
Your intuition is just your intuition not evidence.
A better example would actually be Sakura according to Kishimoto. Kishi actually regrets creating her because of how badly she's been received and realized any effort put toward her wouldn't amount to anything with fans so he gave up on her
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I dunno, I don't sympathize with Walter White the most out of everyone in Breaking Bad but he probably ranks pretty high in those polls
Or Thanos
But yes I'll also accept Sakura as fitting this, lol
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Yeah, arrogant!Rand is no fun but...
by the point he starts acting like that he's genuinely insane. The glossary book notes that Rand's madness causes his arrogance and suspiciousness of others. He does get a whole lot better.
IDK about Thanos but Walter White for sure, yeah, and I would say that most BB fans actually sympathize with Walter White.
Sympathetic means 2 things:
It man's that you're attracted to them in the sense that they're compelling or it means that you approve of them.
That's why I say that Sasuke is a success because Japan's male half of the Naruto audience would actually prefer Sasuke to be the protagonist over Naruto.
I mean, the title question was about characters who writers want you to root for (and fail). Most people here are speaking for themselves and not the public at large.
Ah, then my bad.
I took it as us speaking for the majority of people.
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"Resident anime bad boy" doesn't just mean being attractive. I also meant in terms of being edgy
But Naruto being the way he is, I think there are a lot of character people would rather have been the focus than him (I mean, not Sakura, but there are others)
-Klaus from TVD and half the Orginals besides Rebekah.
-Itachi, Madara, Obito all the damn Uchiha villains
-Bakugo
-I HATE Subaru. I did not watch Re:Zero for him at all
-Deathstroke
-Itachi, Madara, Obito all the damn Uchiha villains
-Bakugo
-I HATE Subaru. I did not watch Re:Zero for him at all
-Deathstroke
You know Barlog was there for GOW2 right? The nonsense started with his shit. Despite loving the hell out of GOW2 at the time.
I have a complicated relationship with Kratos, especially as of the last game where he is now written super well, but Kratos of the previous games was such a bad fucking character.
First off, the basis of his character is false - Kratos was never tricked by Ares. He willingly sold himself to slavery with no conditions. Kratos became Ares' slave 100% of his own will and placed no conditions under which he would disobey. So, when Ares had Kratos kill his wife and kid, that wasn't Ares betraying any pact of trust between him and Kratos, it was him simply carrying out his role as his master.
Which you might still think is sympathetic since regardless of everything, this is the point that Kratos realizes he fucked up. Except he really doesn't. It's not like he realizes that he was enslaved by the gods to do evil - He's fine with the evil part. He continues murdering men, women and children across Greece for decades and obviously still does so by the time the player takes control of him, he's just salty that his wife and kid were part of the cavalcade of people he murdered. And that's what gets me personally, the sheer hypocrisy that I am supposed to feel bad that he lost his wife under his own willful wanton violence, but that he isn't equally deserving of the same retribution he gives the gods.
Then in GoW2, the same hypocrisy is on display. The game opens with him on a warpath while the other gods of Olympus have been begging him to stop. Keep in mind, this is literally the exact thing that they put a hit out on Ares for. And when they decide to put him down the same way they did Ares? "ZEUS, HOW DARE YOU BETRAYED ME?!" motherfucker what
And this same song and dance is repeated in GoW3, and it's the most strenuous of all. Gaia is climbing Mount Olympus and she is hit by one of Zeus' lightnings which gives her a major injury. She says she can't hold on with Kratos on her (why? He's like an ant compared to her size) and Kratos does his wah-wah about how she's betraying him now too.
Even GoW 2018 has Kratos give an allegory in the framing that a horse wanted to kill a deer, but couldn't without the hunters help, but when they killed him, the hunter wouldn't let him go. Fucker, what part of "Save me and my life is yours" left room for an escape clause? And I never understood how the GoW community seems to take this absurdly biased framing Kratos to his own story over the one they see with their own human eyeballs. When I point this out, they tend to just say "Well, but Ares/Zeus was still a bad guy", but it doesn't change that every time Kratos was punished, it was actually 100% deserved within the rules of the story. Kratos decided to be a slave, but apparently just didn't consider that meant he would have to do things he didn't want to do as well as things he did. Kratos became a god, but didn't seem to register that meant he was under Zeus' rule. So he cries "BETRAYAL" every time he decides he wants to renege on an agreement.
So that's it. Greek Era Kratos is so shit. He's absolute trash. Cory "Balrog" Barlog needs to find a delorean and go back and take GoW 2005 away from David "I think alt-right grifters are worth listening to" Jaffe so he can start this series off at GoW2018 quality.
Only the 2007 Barlog. I don't need him, all 2007 did was continue the problems Jaffe's GoW had. 2018 Barlog is the real one. He himself said how GoW 2018 was about him trying to improve on his mistakes, learn from his experiences and growth as a person. Hence why he needs the delorean. He needs to make the GoW that should be made, but can only make with the experience he has now. 2007 Barlog is just a competent maker of sequels for Jaffe's game, 2018 Barlog on the other hand is an artist.
Now, the REAL problem here is that this might create a grandfather's paradox, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
The ghost woman in Mama (2013). She conscientiously murdered people, yet the film tries to paint her as some misunderstood victim at the end of the film.
Uh-uh.
Uh-uh.
I absolutely began to loathe Walter White's entire family and everyone who dared to get in his way.
Yeah, this is such bullshit. Everything post TLJ that isn't The Mandalorian, Clone Wars or Jedi: Fallen Order is actually embarrassing.
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And poorly written. I can't believe I liked Name of the Wind. Good thing Wise Man's Fear disgusted me so much that made me a better man.
"I'M KVOTHE, I'M SO FUCKING PERFECT BUT I'VE HAD SUCH A BAD TIME UHHUUUUU. I'LL MAKE A SEX GODDES CUM SO MUCH, EVEN THOUGH I'M A FUCKING VIRGIN"
This sounds like Utrecht from The Last Kingdom. It's so hard to root for him since he's constantly doing stupid things.
If you're going to explore the idea that Megatron could be redeemed, you have to leave the possibility open, and part of that is giving the impression that the mutineers are irrational or bad, even though their actions are clearly rational and entirely understandable. But the end of the story clearly indicates the answer is "no." Even the supposedly sympathetic panel of the blue flowers isn't that. It's not to make you feel sorry for Megatron. It's to dramatically present the impossibility of what Megatron wants. Roberts is doing a lot of subtle stuff with Megatron's arc in MTMTE, to the point that it's easily and regularly misinterpreted. Megatron is not redeemable, but that doesn't mean a story exploring the idea that he could be is somehow impossible to tell. But if you think Roberts believes Megatron is worthy of redemption you haven't read the ending correctly.
Korra from The Legend of Korra.
The writers try so hard to make me feel sympathy for her. It is infinitely impossible. Korra has nothing going on than "I am a female avatar of colour and I like to punch things." She is so useless, toxic and gets everything handed to her in a silver platter.
She is trash.
Special Mentions: Alex from A Clockwork Orange, anyone in a shitty teenage netflix show (Riverdale,13 Reasons Why, Sierra Burgess Is a Loser), Phantom Thieves from Persona 5 and Ashley from Until Dawn
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Curious on your reasoning
Korra from The Legend of Korra.
The writers try so hard to make me feel sympathy for her. It is infinitely impossible. Korra has nothing going on than "I am a female avatar of colour and I like to punch things." She is so useless, toxic and gets everything handed to her in a silver platter.
She is trash.
Special Mentions: Alex from A Clockwork Orange, anyone from a shitty teenage netflix show (Riverdale,13 Reasons Why), Phantom Thieves from Persona 5 and Ashley from Until Dawn
Not only the worst character in P5, but potentially the worst character in the whole persona series. P4's antagonist was a psycho who was manipulated by a entropic entity. This doofus had no reason other than wanting to impress someone, and was absolute garbage. We're supposed to feel for him because he sacrifices himself at the last moment? Hell no.
I don't think we're meant to root for him. He's given so few redeeming qualities, if any, and no explanation of why he's such an idiot. I feel like he's comic relief and someone that's meant to be fun to hate.
I actually kinda like that Pandora is there as a misdirect, people think she's there to redeem Kratos, make him more sympathetic. But at the end, you see Kratos still get blinded by rage and choose vengeage on Zeus rather than keeo holding on Pandora. Kratos is not being redeemed at the end of GoW3 imo.
the last *four* texas chainsaw movies have tried to make you empathise or outwardly support leatherface and i hate it. it's like they just see how subservient he was to the other family members in the original and think that must mean he's sympathetic. the two reboot movies before 2013 still have him as a villian but you're meant to empathise with how he is treated by the outside world. texas chainsaw: the beginning shows that the family resorts to murder and cannibalism to *protect* leatherface. i hate it! the original four movies are uneven and weird but they're so much better than all of the garbage that comes after themOh wow, how could I forget this one?
Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw 3D
So after the events of the first movie, an obviously very pissed off mob of people with guns and the cops show up at the Sawyer house to go murder the cannibals. The single cop who showed up tries to talk the mob down but it's hard to talk down a mob of angry Texans with guns in the 1970s with a 2nd mob of angry cannibals with guns pointing their guns back at them. A shootout ensues, and this becomes the primary focal point for why we are supposed to sympathize with and root for Leatherface because his family died in a shootout with an angry mob who were upset about all that cannibalism and murder. LEATHERFACE. Apparently to the writers cannibal murderer > vigilante justice. So anyway even the main character roots for Leatherface, and this is well after he's murdered all of her friends AND her boyfriend and almost murdered her but didn't because he found out they were related. Yay?
Imma add this to the OP because I don't think anything's beating it
These two fuckers from season 1 of The Man in the High Castle.
She completely ruins her boyfriend's life because she's horny for the nazi spy. The entire season is nonstop selfish acts from those two and then it ends with the showrunners thinking I'd be sympathetic for them and would wish to see them succeed in season 2. No, fuck them. They're awful people.
yeah the show is so so cause i do not enjoy any of the leads, they're not great characters
whats funny is that it applies both to You and his former show , gossip girl.
well sasuke did save the entire world , and only did kill some fodder samurai , danzo sacrificed himself to try and kill sasuke , plus he's incredibly he reall couldnt be held m plus the hidden leaf and system did cause the death of all his family , sasuke is terrible but he's not as bad as some