The Unfavourite: Difference between revisions

[[File:unfavourite pf 7171.jpg|link=Phineas and Ferb|thumb|400px|And the father prefers his dog, [[I Have No Son|Only Son]].]]

 

 

The nasty end of [[Parental Favoritism]]. Where there's an Alpha wolf, there's got to be an Omega. When there is a first banana, there is a second banana. This is the person in the family who can't get a break. For example, this is the child who's the big [[Why Couldn't You Be Different?|let-down]] to their parents, the daughter that was supposed to be a son (or vice-versa), the child the parents had by accident when they'd already decided they didn't need another mouth to feed. But all in all, this is basically the kid who is always getting the short-end of the stick.

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Jun Manjyome of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'', disowned by his brothers for his inability to live up to the family name.

** ...who is ''himself'' an Unfavorite {{spoiler|due to his short telomeres giving him frail health and a limited lifespan. Adaptations of ''SEED'' state that Rau was abandoned by Al de Flaga when he was very young, once Al found out.}} This is part of why Mu empathizes with him very late in the series.

* Abo Ozawa in the baseball manga ''[[Stripe Blue]]''. His older brother Bantarou is the closing pitcher on a professional team that owes its recent success solely to him. Being that Abo is ''also'' a baseball pitcher, he has to work extra hard to stand out, even to his own parents, despite frankly having not very formidable skills.

** [[Romantic Runner-Up|Canada]] might as well be invisible next to his brother [[Large Ham|America]].

*** And let's not even talk about Sealand.

** England is hated by his older brothers [[All There in the Manual|(Scotland, Wales, and most likely Ireland as well)]].

** Roman Empire clearly loved North Italy more than [[Jerkass Woobie|South Italy]]; the Chibitalia chapter said that he took Italy with him when he had to run away, but was shown to have left Romano. This pattern continues throughout their childhood, with [[Tear Jerker|Romano at one point lamenting his status.]] It gets better when Spain picks up on the situation and starts showing him as much love as he can (Spain can be weird sometimes, but at least he's trying).

* Definitely Ageha from ''[[Papillon Hana To Chou]]''<nowiki>:</nowiki> as an infant, her mother sent her to live with her grandmother in the country because she couldn't stop crying; her twin sister Hana/Kana (the translators kept switching) is popular and glamorous and steals her potential boyfriend; she's even screwed over by her only [[Poisonous Friend|"friend"]]. No wonder she's almost [[Driven to Suicide]]. {{spoiler|Fortunately her relationship with her mom improves dramatically when they finally start talking to each other. Kana/Hana, however, is becoming uneasy with her sister's newfound confidence...}}

* Asagi Ayase of ''[[Yotsubato]]'' gets far more than her share of crap from her mother. It's played for laughs, since Asagi tends to retaliate in kind, but at least one flashback has shown she's gotten this treatment for years.

* Moroboshi Ataru from ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]'' is another only-child example of this trope. His parents are constantly lamenting the fact that he was ever born, in his presence. Played pretty much entirely for laughs.

* Sachiko in ''[[With the Light]]'' loves both of her children—autistic Hikaru and his unafflicted little sister Kanon—equally; it's her mother-in-law who plays unfavorites. Having Kanon to interact with and a hard time accepting the fact that Hikaru's not going to "get better" and be exactly like "normal" people means that she is more affectionate with the girl.

* In ''[[There Beyond the Beyond]]'', both of the kingdom's twin princes are named Virid Visette Viridian. The one who would eventually become the [[Axe Crazy|"Mad Prince"]] was left to be abused and forgotten in a cell, while his brother got to be doted on in the palace.

* Seileiz, eldest of the three heirs to his country in ''[[Vampire Game]]'', is also by far his mother's most hated. {{spoiler|There are three reasons for this: he's adopted (as are his brothers), he's the [[Son of a Whore]], and he's the illegitimate son of the king. The queen was willing to put up with the first two, but having a reminder of her husband's refusal to sleep with her running around really pissed her off.}}

* In ''[[Nononono]]'' Nono's brother, Yuuta is like this. Both of them were trained by their ski-jumper dad to be ski-jumpers, hoping to go to the olympics. The problem is, Nono is the more talented of the two, but she can't go to the Olympics due to being a girl. Their father kept on pushing Yuuta to be as good as his sister.

* Moe Shishigawari from ''[[Bleach]]'' was {{spoiler|the only Fullbringer with whom Ginjo did not share Ichigo's stolen power, and Ginjo planned to kill him as soon as they were done, because he's potentially [[Too Powerful to Live]]}}.

 

 

 

 

* ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'' has some interesting cases with Jim being the unfavourite compared to ''his dead father''. His mother couldn't stand the resemblance between them and would often do nothing to stop his stepfather from beating him, neglecting him and traveling far away just so she wouldn't have to look at Jim.

** In one story, after becoming captain, to get back at his mother from neglecting and allowing the abuse to happen, Jim donated a huge sum of money towards charities where children had been abused, naming it her, "for all the things she did when he was a kid". Afterwards, people went up to her, asking her "how does it feel?" for raising such a nice kid and how ''proud'' she must be.

** For the record, there is little to no evidence for this in canon.

 

 

*** There have been other issues between J.K. Rowling and her father, besides issues of favoritism. Both admit they became distant after JK's mother died, and there have been issues over finances and money where JK's father is concerned.

* ''[[The Earth My Butt And Other Big Round Things]]'' is a great insight of being [[The Unfavorite]]. The narrator is a chubby, brown-haired, high-schooler with average grades living in a glamorous upper-class family of beautiful slim blond people.

** Denethor himself was the Unfavourite to Thorongil/Aragorn's Favourite.

{{quote|"Indeed [Denethor] was as like to [Aragorn] as to one of nearest kin, and yet was ever placed second to the stranger in the hearts of men and the esteem of his father." ''The Return of the King'', Appendix A, J.R.R Tolkien.}}

** Lucille lampshades this in the pilot: "I don't care for GOB."

** Even when Lindsey is revealed to be adopted Lucille mentions she still loves Lindsey as much as her other children and even more than GOB.

** Not quite a straight example. Socrata was bastardly and abusive to Kara because she knew Kara had a special destiny and didn't think she was trying hard enough to live up to her natural ability.

* Jan Brady of ''[[The Brady Bunch]]''.

* Curious example on ''[[Dirty Sexy Money]]''. In a first-season episode, matriarch Letitia says that Brian and Jeremy are their father's unfavorites; considering the fact that Jeremy is a drug-addicted layabout and that Brian isn't Tripp's biological son, this makes sense. But after learning about Brian's illegitimacy, Tripp starts liking him ''more,'' giving him a company job and calling him 'son' for the first time in the series.

* Possibly the example most familiar to American TV viewers, Robert from ''[[Everybody Loves Raymond]]''. With the slight reversal that Robert is actually the elder brother himself.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

 

== [[Theater]] ==

** Further expanded in Fatherklok, where Pickles' father straight out calls him trash.

* Sometime between the original run of ''[[Family Guy]]'' and the [[Uncancelled|current series]], Meg Griffin went from mildly ignored to outright hated by the rest of her family (caused in part by the running joke that Meg may or may not be the result of an affair Lois had behind Peter's back, which in turn cost her a chance to become an Olympic swimmer. Lampshaded in that the show itself has pointed out her unpopularity via doing an entire episode around the family being the subject of a reality tv show. In the episode, the people filming the Griffins point out that Meg is the least liked member of the family, resulting in her being replaced with an attractive actress. And this episode was ''before'' the [[Uncancelled]] portion.

* [[Mad Scientist|Dr. Doofenshmirtz]] on ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]''. His mother preferred his younger brother Rodger, while his father preferred the family dog.

** It didn't help that [[Jerkass|his father]] named their dog, "Only Son."

** In truth, it frequently zigzags between the two of them. Dr. Venture seems to prefer Hank in an adventuring context, and Dean in a scientific context. Needless to say, he's not the greatest father.

* As indicated by the page quote, [[King of the Hill|Hank Hill]] is the Unfavorite of his two brothers. His older brother, an illegitimate child born of Cotton Hill's affair with a woman in Japan, gains a surprising amount of affection since his mother is perhaps the only person Cotton ever genuinely loved. His younger brother Good Hank was born when Cotton was in his seventies, and at the right age to appreciate having children. Meanwhile, Hank was born in a bathroom in New York, not Texas, and Cotton never quite forgave him for failing to be a native Texan, hating him literally since the day he was born. Being saddled with a Jerkass father like Cotton affected Hank well into adulthood and left him with his uptight, close-minded personality.

* Saranoia and Carl from the show ''[[Yin Yang Yo!|Yin Yang Yo]]'' are both the unfavorites to their parent(s). It caused Saranoia to go quite insane while Carl has yet to go down that road, he's just very lonely and desperate.

* In ''[[Pepper Ann]]'', Nicky is convinced she's the Unfavorite, though a lot of it is circumstantial (and the fact that people ''other than'' her parents really do tend to favor her sister). For example, when they were kids, the exercise equipment was put in Nicky's room... because it was either put it there or in her sister's room, and they feared the sister, who has very weak arms, would be much more insulted by it than the surprisingly-strong Nicky.

* A lot of kids have suspicions that they might be this.

** That being said, in all likelihood there are probably a number of Unfavourites in the big bad world.

*** It's entirely possible to have more than half of the population the "unfavorite" if families have more than one child, or even if they have only one seeing as how you don't actually need siblings to be an unfavorite child.

** In any case, in families that are poorer, oftentimes when they have one child, they'll be able to afford new clothes and such for that child, but when the second one comes along being able to afford to take care of both will undoubtedly be harder, so the second child ends up with a lot of hand-me-downs from their older sibling, which can lead to them feeling like they are loved less, particularly when they're at an age when they can't really understand financial issues.

** Wilhelm felt very close and dearly loved his grandmother Victoria, who died in his arms. It would seem ''she'' got along better with him than with her son, the Prince of Wales, who appears to have been her least favourite child. This may have contributed to the deep antipathy between Edward VII and Wilhelm II. And it was George V who declared war on Wilhelm, not the other way around.

*** A lot of the bitterness between Wilhelm and his mother can be put down to Bismarck's political maneuvers. Victoria, Princess Royal/Empress Frederick, was a liberal, as was Wilhelm's father. Bismarck saw that when the Crown Prince came to the throne he would be ousted and so set to work distancing the oldest surviving children (Wilhelm, Charlotte and Henrick) from their parents and succeeded. It backfired on him eventually but the damage couldn't be undone. When Bismarck saw the writing on the wall for him he went to Victoria and tried to get Wilhelm to keep him but she just replied that there was no chance of that since there was no relationship between herself and her son. Bismarck had seen to that. It also stopped Wilhelm from listening to the liberals and pushed him into the arms of the military and while he was the favourite of his grandparents it did nothing to stop his ego from getting too big and being a major factor in starting [[World War I|WW1]]. He apparently tried to bully his relatives and did nothing to endear himself to them which wouldn't make him popular in anyone's family. Even with historial revision there's very little evidence that any of his outer family liked him.

**** It's possible to get permission to have a second child.

***** Or if you are rich enough to not care about fines/state taxes/additional expenses/etc., as many as you can afford.

* As shown in her book ''[[Chinese Cinderella]]'', Adeline Yen Mah was quite obviously the Unfavorite of her entire family despite being very intelligent, simply because her mother died giving birth to her and thus she was considered "unlucky". Her stepmother hated her most of all (though she also clearly favored her own two children over her stepchildren) because she stopped the stepmother from hitting the youngest sister. The rest of the book details the various circumstances the poor girl finds herself in, as everyone shoves her one way and another to get rid of her.

* In a supremely [[Irony]]-filled example (as chronicled in [[Freakonomics]]), there's the case of Richard Lane, who named one of his sons "Winner" and another younger son "Loser". "Loser" ended up becoming a police officer in New York City. "Winner" became a career criminal. Yeah...

** Though the father claims he didn't give Loser's name because of this: apparently he enjoyed the [[Book Ends|book end]] [[Theme Naming|effect]].

* Urban Dictionary: Middle Child Syndrome - "it is a known fact the youngest and oldest are treated differently than the middle child for the oldest is the first child aka favorite and the smallest is the baby aka the last child known for getting whatever they desire because they are the "baby". Middle Children sydrome includes neglect, forgotten dates, and sometimes in bad cases forgetting they even exist."

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Characters As Device]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Unfavourite, The}}