History Characters / ArthurYoungerChildren

* JerkassHasaPoint: D.W. could sometimes be a spoil brat, but she bring up valid points:
** In the episode “Ungifted” Arthur wanted to make it up to Buster for giving away a model Buster made for him. D.W. Suggested his autographed Bionic Bunny poster, at first Arthur said that it’s signed but D.W. basically ask him how the poster more important than his friendship with Buster.
** In “Mind your Manners” when the Tibbles wonders why their Grandmother don’t wanna go out to eat, D.W. flat out tells them that they are slobs and have horrible table manners. She even refuse to teach them because the last time she tried to teach Tommy to be good, he went back to his old ways.
** She was worried about James when he was invited to the sleepover with the Tibbles. She did have the right to worried because James is a timid boy and the Tibbles are rowdy and could take advantage of him.

* UngratefulBitch: Has shown herself to be this several times.
** PlayedForLaughs in "D.W.'s Perfect Wish". After Arthur has spent an entire afternoon convincing D.W. that she has had a very good year and that she's got many more happy times coming, D.W. actually wishes for Arthur to end up with cake in his face, which is exactly what happens at the dinner table a short time later.
** In another episode, D.W.'s parents spend the afternoon assembling a playset she has been wanting, but has [[KidsPreferBoxes so much more fun playing with the box that when it's ready for her, she doesn't want to try it out]]. Her parents call her out on her lack of consideration, and when she still shows no enthusiasm, they walk off totally deflated.
** In the episode "More!", D.W. is given her first allowance, and she spends the rest of the episode demanding more money when she fears the other kids in her class are getting more. She even gets sent to her room for it at least once when she's called out for being disrespectful.
** In "Arthur's Perfect Christmas", D.W. throws a tantrum when she doesn't get the toy she wanted for Christmas, instead getting a knock-off version because the actual version was the hottest toy that season, and as a result, was sold out everywhere. Even worse is that Mrs. Read is seen ''comforting her'', as if outright condoning her thanklessness. Fortunately, she does soon warm up to the toy she got and all is well.

* DependingOnTheWriter: Whether she actually cares about Arthur deep down or not. In some episodes she is shown to care for and be helpful to him, while in others she seems actively willing to make life hard for him or even outright get rid of him.

* EmbarrassingFirstName: Dora Winifred.

* BrainyBrunette: She has light-brown hair and is [[WiseBeyondTheirYears very smart for a kid her age]].

* ManipulativeBitch: She has been shown to be very skilled at manipulating other people for her own benefit for her age. For a notable example, "Prove It" has her pull off a ZanyScheme to trick Arthur into taking her to a museum, ''which actually ends up working''. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" implies that she was able to trick a ''licenced doctor'' into thinking she had laryngitis when she really didn't.

* PingPongNaivete: On one hand, she's often rather intelligent for her age and can be very [[ManipulativeBitch manipulative]]. On the other hand, she's convinced that unicorns and other fantasy creatures are real, is gullible enough to believe ''everything'' she sees on TV and get tricked by the Tibble twins on many occasions, and apparently didn't realize that Arthur's model plane wouldn't actually fly like a real one.

* {{Sadist}}: Sometimes, she seems to like making things hard for Arthur just for her own amusement.

* SkirtOverSlacks: Wears a pink jumper dress over [[InconsistentColoring white or light pink]] pantyhose.

* SpoiledBrat: Although D.W. Read comes from a modest middle-class household, she is sometimes prone to self-entitled, bratty behavior. One episode in particular which explores this is More!, in which D.W. tries to persuade her parents to give her more allowance after finding out her SpoiledSweet friend Emily gets more than her.

** Saw an octopus up close during a field trip to an aquarium. While recounting the trip to her family, however, [[BlatantLies she claimed to have punched it]].

* ToxicFriendInfluence: A bit of a Downplayed example: In "The Good, The Bad and the Binky", Binky offered to babysit her for a night and he introduced her to wrestling. She took a short-lived interest in it due to it being similar to dance, but it kind of got out of hand, necessitating Binky to intervene. She also picked up a habit of burping loudly, but only in this episode.

* SkirtOverSlacks: Starting from Season 16, she wears a blue jumper dress over light gray pantyhose.

* SkirtOverSlacks: Not her regular outfit, but while ice-skating, she wears a purple skirt over slightly lighter purple tights.

** In "Arthur's Chicken Pox", she gets jealous of the attention Arthur gets from Grandma Thora because of having the chicken pox, and draws spots on herself with a marker to fake having the chicken pox herself for her attention.

* KickTheDog: If her throwing Arthur’s plane and scolding him for not having it able to fly was any indication.

* OneSteveLimit: In "The Rhythm and Roots of Arthur" it's revealed that [[spoiler:she's named after her deceased great-grand aunt, who was also named "Dora Winifred Read"]].

* OneSteveLimit: {{Averted|Trope}}. In "The Rhythm and Roots of Arthur" it's revealed that [[spoiler:she's named after her deceased great-grand aunt, who was also named "Dora Winifred Read"]].

** Her last name is Reini in Finland.

* PinkMeansFeminine: Wears a pink jumper dress.

* ReverseArmFold: A common default pose of hers.

* AdaptationalJerkass: While she was still a brat in the books, the worst thing she ever did was lightly tease Arthur. In the cartoon however, her actions towards him can often fall into outright KidsAreCruel territory.

* BigSisterBully: Towards Kate at times; most notably when she threatens to pinch her for touching her toys, though unlike other times, she gets grounded for once. Inverted with Arthur, as she can be downright cruel to him at times, such as in "Arthur's Big Hit" when she broke his model plane and showed no remorse for it.

* ChromaticArrangement: In one episode, the Tibble twins do this to her clothes.

* IronicName: The name "Dora" means "gift". Considering [[BrattyHalfPint her]] [[KidsAreCruel personality]], she certainly isn't a gift to Arthur.

* ManipulativeBitch: She has been shown to be very skilled at manipulating other people for her own benefit for her age. For a notable example, "Prove It" has her pull off a ZanyScheme to trick Arthur into taking her to a museum, ''which actually ends up working''.

* NiceMeanAndInBetween: The Mean to Kate's Nice and Arthur's In-Between, but the In-Between to Emily's Nice and Timmy and Tommy's Mean. When she's around Arthur, she generally annoys him, but she's also friends with Emily and is hardier than her when it comes to dealing with the Tibble Twins.
* OnlyKnownByInitials: Nobody calls D.W. "Dora" or "Dora Winifred" unless it's her parents issuing a FullNameUltimatum or they want to deal with a major tantrum. In S2's "D.W. Goes to Washington," Mr. Read actually didn't seem to remember her full name.

* HairyBaby: The ColdOpen to "Operation: D.W!" shows that she already had her BoyishShortHair as a newborn.

** In "More!" D.W. finally realizes how foolish she'd been to be chasing her friends and family for money... only to be caught again asking Grandma Thora at the end of the episode.

* AmbiguousDisorder: D.W. has a massive LackOfEmpathy even by the standards of someone her age, is [[WiseBeyondTheirYears very smart for a four-year-old]] and can sometimes be [[ManipulativeBitch manipulative]], but does show the typical naivety of her age at times, and is capable of caring about her friends and family when it really matters. She also tends to have short-lived obsessions with very specific things, such as her current ones, ''Mary Moo Cow'' and "Crazy Bus".

** Dorau~inifureddo in Japan** .

* GirlsLoveStuffedAnimals: She has a large collection of stuffed animals and sometimes carries them around, though this seems to show up more often in the books. In the episode "Never, Never, Never" she is upset at the thought of getting rid of some.

* IronicName: The name "Dora" means "gift". Considering [[BrattyHalfPint her]] [[KidsAreCruel personality]], she certainly wouldn't be a very pleasant gift to receive.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: She's rude, bossy and is a right pain in the backside to Arthur, but deep down she is a good kid, and a couple of times it is shown that she actually loves and cares about her brother.

* PetTheDog: As seen in [[Heartwarming/{{Arthur}} heartwarming moments]], there are at least a few occasions where she does nice things for people.

* PingPongNaivete: On one hand, she's often rather intelligent for her age and can be very [[ManipulativeBitch manipulative]]. On the other hand, she's convinced that unicorns and other fantasy creatures are real and apparently didn't realize that Arthur's model plane wouldn't actually fly like a real one.

* RealTime: In "D.W. Gets Lost," Ed Crosswire asks for five minutes of Jane Read's time. This is how long she and D.W. are separated.
* {{Sadist}}: Sometimes, she seems to like making things hard for Arthur just for the fun of it.

* TokenEvilTeammate: Downplayed, as she isn't completely evil, but she does tend to be the most consistently mean of the five main members of the Read family. She's also this for Arthur's group of friends whenever she acts as their TagalongKid.

** In "Best Enemies," she is the Girly Girl to W.D.'s Tomboy. She loves unicorns while W.D. likes race cars.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: In "My Club Rules", when Arthur and his friends are in the treehouse discussing ideas for their parade float, D.W. barges in, wanting to hang out with them. Arthur, desperate to get rid of her, lies and says it's a "meeting" of the "Parade Float Club". D.W. immediately says she wants to "join." They have D.W. undergo "initiation rituals," such as kicking a bowling ball (which she refuses to do) and drawing a funny picture of Mr. Ratburn. They're so distracted from talking about the float that they're actually focused on making it a real club. A little while later, Muffy makes some snobby comments about how improvements can be made to Arthur's treehouse so it looks like a real clubhouse, and how club dues should be paid in order to implement the improvements. This leads to a fight amongst Arthur and his friends, causing them to form their own separate "clubs." They make up a few days later, of course, but still. It could be argued that if D.W. wouldn't have barged in to begin with, the argument wouldn't have happened and they'd still be discussing float ideas.

* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Saw an octopus up close during a field trip to an aquarium. While recounting the trip to her family, however, [[BlatantLies she claimed to have punched it]].

* AccidentalArt: The Teaser for "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Tibble".

* BearsAreBadNews: Downplayed. They are bears, but they aren't evil, just really annoying, and make D.W. look like a saint in comparison.

* DubNameChange:
** In the Spanish dub, their last name is Melo. In the German dub, it's Knibble.
** Their first names are Timī and Tomī in the Japanese dub.

* HairColorDissonance: According to official art (and the books) their fur is brown but within the cartoon they're a greyish color, sometimes with a tint of green.

* IKnowYourTrueName: An "Iron Fist" approach will not work when babysitting the Tibbles. Tell them a story, however, and they're more likely to cooperate.

* LionsAndTigersAndHumansOhMy: In the original books, the Tibble Twins and their Grandma were drawn as humans. They have since been anthropomorphized for the television series and latter books.

* TwinSwitch: When Ms. Morgan gives them time-outs in "My Fair Tommy," after Tommy has his time in the quiet corner, Timmy shouts "LookBehindYou!" to Ms. Morgan and switches their scarves so Tommy has to take a time-out twice. Apparently Timmy always makes Tommy do both time outs because "you're better at it than me".

** Emirī in the Japanese dub.

* ToxicFriendInfluence: A bit of downplayed example: In "The Good, The Bad and the Binky", Binky offered to babysit her for a night and he introduced her to wrestling. She took a short-lived interest in it due to it being similar to dance, but it kind of got out of hand, necessitating Binky to intervene. She also picked up a habit of burping loudly, but only in this episode.

* WiseBeyondTheirYears: Somewhat justified in that in addition to prekindergarten, she's also homeschooled by a tutor.

* DubNameChange:
** Elmar in the German dub.
** Jēmuzu in the Japanese dub.

* SiblingYinYang: A shy, kind boy who contrasts his sister Molly's tough customer act.

* DeathGlare: Normally done to frighten the Tibble Twins, in response to their making trouble.
* DubNameChange: Bado in the Japanese dub.

* NeverBareheaded: Ninety nine percent of the time, he keeps his hat on.

* PutOnABus: In ''A Duty Calls'', [[spoiler: he moves away from Elwood City because of his father's military service but he leaves behind Rapty for [=DW=]]]. We don't know if he'll be back.
* ReplacementGoldfish: We find out in ''A Duty Calls'', his dinosaur plush, Rapty, is [[spoiler: his second one. He left the first one behind when the Compsons moved from moved from Guam]].
* StaringContest: Bud is undefeated; he can beat all of his siblings and [[spoiler: scare off the Tibble twins.]]

* {{Foil}}: To D.W. Both are preschoolers who dislike their full names and prefer to go by the initials of their double-barreled first name, both have an imaginary friend, and both are portrayed by a male voice actor. However, W.D. is a full-on {{Tomboy}} as opposed to D.W., who is a TomboyWithAGirlyStreak, is an only child while D.W. has two siblings, and likes broccoli, which D.W. [[DoesNotLikeSpam hates]].

** Dorau~inifureddo in Japan.

* DubNameChange: In Sweden, her name is Lillemor. Almost all the other character's names are the same in the Swedish dub, but "D.W." doesn't flow very well in Swedish.
* EmbarrassingFirstName: Dora Winifred.

* InconsistentColoring: In promotional images (such as the one above), her pantyhose are colored white, while they are a light pink in the show proper. They are errorneosly colored white in the show itself at times as well. This may be because they actually ''were'' white with pink stripes in the books.

* SecurityBlanket: She has one called "blankie" which was the focus of both the book and television story "D.W.'s Lost Blankie." One of the show's title cards depicts her wearing it as a superhero cape.
* SelfServingMemory: In "Go To Your Room, D.W.", when she gets sent to her room for being mean to Kate, she tells Nadine a bunch of falsified memories of how her parents abused her, like when they forced her to be Arthur's slave when he was sick and not allowing her to attend Aunt Lucy's wedding. Nadine doesn't buy a word of it.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: In "My Club Rules," when Arthur and his friends are in the treehouse discussing ideas for their parade float, D.W. barges in, wanting to hang out with them. Arthur, desperate to get rid of her, lies and says it's a "meeting" of the "Parade Float Club." D.W. immediately says she wants to "join." They have D.W. undergo "initiation rituals," such as kicking a bowling ball (which she refuses to do) and drawing a funny picture of Mr. Ratburn. They're so distracted from talking about the float that they're actually focused on making it a real club. A little while later, Muffy makes some snobby comments about how improvements can be made to Arthur's treehouse so it looks like a real clubhouse, and how club dues should be paid in order to implement the improvements. This leads to a fight amongst Arthur and his friends, causing them to form their own separate "clubs." They make up a few days later, of course, but still. It could be argued that if D.W. wouldn't have barged in to begin with, the argument wouldn't have happened and they'd still be discussing float ideas.

* GrowingUpSucks: Recently she's been losing her ability to speak with pets, now that she's learning to talk and walk.

* HairColorDissonance: According to official art (and the books) their fur is brown but within the cartoons they're a greyish color, sometimes with a tint of green.

* ADayInTheLimelight: "Emily Swallows a Horse."

* AnnoyingYoungerSibling: To annoyingly frustrating degrees. She constantly whines and snarks to Arthur, invading his privacy in the process. DependingOnTheWriter, she can either be a typical annoying little sister or a borderline [[TheSociopath sociopath]].

* CreepyChild: Her behavior can be borderline sociopathic for a preschool-aged girl from time to time. Also, some of her {{Imagine Spot}}s involve either causing destruction on a massive scale or enslaving other people.

* DependingOnTheWriter: Depending on the episode, she can be either a typical bratty little sister, or come off as being a borderline sociopath.

* EnfanteTerrible: As mentioned under CreepyChild above, she can be borderline sociopathic DependingOnTheWriter, and "Prove It" shows that she is willing to do outright illegal things to get her way. Notably, "D.W. All Wet" seems to imply that she outright wants Arthur ''dead''!

* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: As has been said many times here already, her behavior sometimes goes beyond that of a typical bratty little kid and into that of a borderline sociopath, which is quite disturbing considering her very young age.

* LackOfEmpathy: One of her flaws. It's mostly expressed towards Arthur, but it's not limited to him: for example, "Arthur's Chicken Pox" has her take advantage of her grandma by faking chicken pox for her attention, not caring that it may hurt her feelings, and in "Prove It", she shamelessly cons her classmates out of their money just to make Arthur agree to take her to a museum. Granted, this may be partially justified by her being a toddler, but her lack of empathy seems to stand out [[UpToEleven even by the standarts of her age]].

* TheSociopath: Can be a bordeline example DependingOnTheWriter, and she does fit quite a few traits on the list for someone her age: she's usually very [[ItsAllAboutMe selfish]] and [[LackOfEmpathy callous]] even for someone her age, can be very smart and [[ManipulativeBitch manipulative]], has a NeverMyFault mentality and lack of remorse for her actions (usually), lacks impulse control (as seen when she breaks Arthur's model plane by throwing it out a window after he told her multiple times not to touch it in "Arthur's Big Hit", is a compulsive liar, and on two occasions, has engaged in outright criminal behavior.[[note]]She cons her classmates out of their money in "Prove It", and in "Go to Your Room, D.W.", it's shown that she tried to steal a doll from a store.[[/note]]

* SpoiledSweet: She's spoiled with tons of possessions, a private nanny, a tutor, and fancy food, yet she's generally one of the nicest and most polite kids in preschool.

* PutOnABus: In ''A Duty Calls'', [[spoiler: he moves away from Elwood City because of his father's military service but he leaves behind Repty for [=DW=]]]. We don't know if he'll be back.
* ReplacementGoldfish: We find out in ''A Duty Calls'', his dinosaur plush is [[spoiler: his second one. He left the first one behind when the Compsons moved from moved from Guam]]

* WholePlotReference: [[Theatre/MyFairLady "My Fair Tommy."]]

* AssholeVictim: Due to the fact that she likes making Arthur's life hard just for the sake of it, which includes embarassing him in front of his friends and causing said friends to turn against him, and the fact that her behavior is sometimes borderline sociopathic, it's usually very hard to feel bad for her when she's the one who has something bad happen to her, even when she did not directly bring it on herself with anything she did.

* EnfanteTerrible: As mentioned under CreepyChild above, she can be borderline sociopathic DependingOnTheWriter. Notably, "D.W. All Wet" seems to imply that she outright wants Arthur ''dead''!

* KidsAreCruel: Over the course of the show, she's been on both the delivering end of this trope (usually towards Arthur) and the receiving end (usually at the hands of the [[TricksterTwins Tibble Twins]]).

* KidsAreCruel: They tend to be rather mean to other preschoolers and occasionally even to each other.

[[/index]]