: Re: Can a likeable character be unsympathetic? I believe an unlikable character can be sympathetic, although that's tricky. But can you go the other way? Can your character be likable but at the

@Sent2472441

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To answer your question it is best to look at the more commonly employed trope - not likeable, sympathetic - and see what would be required to reverse that.

In order to be sympathetic we must have some feeling for the things someone has done and the choices they have made. We can understand why something is but we may not like it. For example if a protagonist sees his parents and siblings murdered by gangsters and survives only by running, purely fuelled by instinct and adrenaline we may sympathise with them. If this incident is when we meet them for the first time we won't have enough data to know whether we like them.

In the following scene we skip forward fifteen years. The same character is now shown torturing some low-level pick pocket type for information about the whereabouts and defences of a major crime lord. We understand why this chracter might have become twisted this way, we sympathise with the situation but if the torture is extreme enough we may not like the character for it. In addition we could have another character who we can both like and sympathise with attempt to intercede on the pickpocket's behalf and get summarily dismissed perhaps physically by the not-likeable but sympathetic character.

In order to reverse this we need to not really understand why someone does something, or how they ended up in trouble but nevertheless find ourselves rooting for them. In this case I would argue that the Indiana Jones of Raiders and Temple of Doom makes a pretty good example. In fact many pulpy Saturday morning serial type characters are in the same vein. Indy is a likeable guy, flawed, sure, but he's on the side of the light. We are rooting for Indy, we like him. But when he finds a snake in the cockpit, is being chased by Nazis or finds a stone ceiling descending to crush him we are thrilled but we don't really sympathise... we can't really see why he would put himself on the line in this way, the fact he's this adventurer archaeologist is actually kind of ridiculous.

Sympathy in Raiders is used as a tool to make us like Indy and it's quite disposable. When Belloq takes the golden idol from him we are expected to sympathise in an everyman kind of way with the situation. But do we really sympathise with Indiana Jones specifically? Not really. He's a cipher, he's never more than a two-dimensional hero who's given some nuance by a skilled actor but as written he just is some heroic dude through whom we can live vicariously. We're almost pushing him into these crazy encounters just to get our safe audience based thrills. If Indiana Jones didn't do all this crazy exciting stuff then he would, essentially be of no further use to us. Any emotional investment we have in him is entirely selfish and not based on sympathy.

This is because Indiana Jones, and heroic characters of his type, do not appear to need our help. They are beyond us and above us already. We can only bask in their glow. Sympathy is about companionship, about helping, about realising we are together. These heroes seem untouchable, if they cannot do it then we certainly won't be able to manage it. We can admire them but we can't ever really stand in their shoes, only aspire to.

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