[[{{Gantz}} http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/baw.jpg]]
[[caption-width:500:NOBODY UNDERSTANDS!]]

->''Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.''
-->--'''Tom Lehrer''', ''That Was The Year That Was''

Angst can create [[EmotionalTorque compelling drama]] and CharacterDevelopment when done well; virtually all acclaimed works [[TrueArtIsAngsty use it to a degree]] and the appeal of TheWoobie is based around it.

But like all other good things, angst can be overdone or clumsily handled. {{Wangst}}, a {{portmanteau}} of "whiny" (or "wanker," depending on who you ask) and "angst," is essentially angst gone wrong. The intended [[TheWoobie Woobie]] becomes a [[EmoTeen pathetically whiny character]] who insists on moping (often loudly and repeatedly) about a tragic past or event instead of, you know, trying to deal with it and stop being depressed all the time. Especially if said "trauma" doesn't come across as nearly tragic as the character thinks it is, making his lamentations seem [[{{Narm}} way out of proportion.]]

However, though Wangst is most frequently associated with characters whining over petty "tragedies", it's not necessarily the scale of the tragedy that the character is reacting to that's the problem, but the way it's handled. Events that would be genuinely devastating in RealLife can become melodramatic Wangst if the sufferer's self-loathing drags on for too long or is used as a plot device so often that it becomes irritating. Likewise, events that the average person wouldn't worry over can be a great way to show a character's unique fears and weaknesses, and maybe even make it clear that he really ''is'' blowing it out of proportion and deserves to be mocked. It all boils down to quality and [[AngstDissonance personal tolerance level]]; what is grating and unrealistic to one viewer can be [[YourMileageMayVary genuinely heart-rending for another]].

There are some points that can be agreed on, though: Giving more than one character sources of angst and then picking one of them to be dramatic about his suffering (bonus points if you choose a character who has ''less'' reason for self-pity than others) will ''not'' make the audience sympathize with him over the other characters who handle their own troubles with more restraint and dignity. It only makes him look like a self-obsessed jerk. Also, TrueArtIsAngsty only goes so far -- miserable and conflicted characters who are poorly-written are not automatically more interesting than happy, well-adjusted, and well-written ones. Angst/Wangst is not a crutch for drama and CharacterDevelopment; good characters are defined by factors other than their {{Dark And Troubled Past}}s.

Wangst is a favorite of {{Emo Teen}}s, {{Sympathetic Sue}}s, and characters CursedWithAwesome. See also {{Emo}}, {{Narm}}, AngstDissonance. Compare DeusAngstMachina, which is about having too many ''sources'' of angst for WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief rather than too much ''response'' to sources of angst. Contrast AngstWhatAngst.

'''Note: This page is not here so that you can [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontLike complain about characters or shows you don't like.]]''' Try and use the RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment. If you can't think of at least one solid example of [[{{Wangst}} wangsty]] behavior in canon, then chances are it's not something that should be on this page. The subjective nature of the trope does not mean that the entries should be vague.

'''Important note: the mere fact that a character is sad does not itself indicate Wangst.''' There are some scenarios even in fiction where it is appropriate for the characters to feel sad and depressed and act accordingly; after all, if the same thing was happening to you in RealLife, chances are you'd be pretty upset as well. Wangst is a problem not because the characters are ''sad'', but because their sadness is poorly-written or inappropriately drawn-out and exaggerated. When including an example, try and establish ''why'' the example belongs here. Note also that some Wangst is also played deliberately, usually for humor - plenty of creators see the comic potential in ridiculing the over-angsty.
----
!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime]]
* Parodied in SamuraiPizzaCats with the character of Lucille, who is easily upset and has [[MacrossMissileMassacre missiles in her hair]] that launch when she's unstable enough. Pretty much anything can make her upset. One episode had Speedy run away in fear when she started whining about the unfairness of it all...because she was upset about her favorite soap being canceled. In this instance, she actually got over it and said it was ridiculous. A brief trip to New York revealed that one of the other branches of the Pizza Cats ''also'' had an equivalent to Lucille that had a gun in her hair instead of missiles.
* [[TheWesley Chris]] [[SympatheticSue Thorndyke]] from SonicX. Towards the end of the first series he endlessly whined about how Sonic couldn't leave him, because he'd be all alone. He seemed to have forgotten his [[FiveTokenBand school friends]], his [[CoolOldGuy Grandpa]], [[ApronMatron Ella]], and [[BattleButler Mr Tanaka]] would still be there. Most of the whining is about his parent not being around 24/7. For pity's sake...his Dad skipped work and his mom ditched the filming of a new Hollywood blockbuster just to visit him, when he was sick, dammit!
* Roy Mustang in Anime/FullmetalAlchemist TheMovie. He demotes himself, and basically exiles himself up north, because of all the people he killed. Keep in mind that he has come to terms with all the people he killed in the Ishval massacre well before the series began, and he could have easily atoned in better ways like helping to reform the country instead of running away to the north.
** To be fair, he had fulfilled his ambitions at the end of the anime by [[spoiler: killing the Fuhrer]], only to have the opportunity to [[spoiler: usurp him stripped away with the establishment of a democratic government.]] It seemed that Roy was taking some time to think about what his new goal in life should be, since his previous one is now impossible. Also, he [[IGotBetter Gets Better]].
* Everyone in ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' has been guilty of this. By ''End of Evangelion'', it's hard to tell who's more fed up with Shinji's Wangst - Misato or the audience.
** For their credit, they all have had pretty damn horrible experiences at the most sensitive age, and most of Shinji's whining happens in internal, rather than external monologue. Unfortunately, the audience is forced to listen it all.
** It must also be pointed out that Shinji's wangsting was completely in character for him, and though it dragged on for the watching audience, the other characters reacted properly - they called him out for it and told him to get over himself. Most wangst becomes wangst because the other characters just let him go on and on and on about it.
** I think it is a good time to reaffirm that the mere fact that a character is sad does not itself indicate Wangst. Evangelion is most likely an {{aversion}} of this trope, seeing as the plot of this critically acclaimed show is [[EmotionalTorque driven by the characters emotional drama]].
** It doesn't help either that the English dub makes him sound whinier than originally intended (and Asuka more bitchy).
** Shinji in ''Rebuild Of Evangelion'' is a little better. And even more in SuperRobotWars games - not even his giant angst could left away unharmed from confrontation with [[MazingerZ Kouji Kabuto]], [[GetterRobo Ryoma Nagare]], [[GaoGaiGar Guy Shishioh]], [[GGundam Domon Kasshu]] and [[OriginalGeneration SANGER]] [[EnsembleDarkhorse ZOMBOLT]], [[CatchPhrase THE]] [[{{BFS}} SWORD]] [[ThisIsSparta THAT]] [[CallingYourAttacks SMITES]] [[BadAss EVIL]]!!!
* Even though a good portion of the characters truly have traumatic pasts, the anime ''InuYasha'' reuses and makes references to the characters' plights so many times that it causes it to become forced and unappealing. An example is when dramatic scenes are repeatedly used such as with Kikyo and Inuyasha's supposed betrayal of each other and the massacre of the demon slayers. Granted, this is more often used as {{Padding}}.
**Kagome was the epitome of this. Even though all the others have legitimate things to be upset about, she was always the one complaining about how horrible the world has been to her, and how her boyfriend doesn't seem to appreciate her, and won't stop chasing after Kikyou...and she does this crying into a pink stuffed animal at her mom's house while her friends are in mortal danger fighting demons. None of the others even have parents, they were all murdered. This was particularly infuriating because of how InuYasha was villainized for his feelings for Kikyou. Even when it came down to life or death, he was still somehow the bad guy because he "hurt Kagome's feelings." The Kikyou situation was clearly harder on him than for Kagome, since it had led to the 50 year death of him and Kikyou, and since Kikyou was simply another iteration of Kagome herself (complete with a piece of her soul). How he was made into the bad guy of that situation, somehow. Kagome was at times ridiculously wangsty.
***One big problem for Kagome that the others don't really have is that she's really not that sure ''where'' she's going to be after the journey's over. Everybody else pretty much has an idea what they're going to do afterwards, but she's barely juggling between two completely different lives. The fact that she has a complicated relationship with Inuyasha doesn't help with her choices.
***Also, for a long time, no one is sure who's side Kikyo is on, which is kind of a problem when she's stealing shards from the main group. She also tries to kill Kagome (or at least let her die) pretty early on yet InuYasha does nothing so she has some rights to feel sad or confused about things, especially regarding her first love.
* The later episodes of ''KashimashiGirlMeetsGirl'' reach unbearable levels of wangst to the point of viewers wanting to throttle the characters through the TV while screaming "GET OVER IT ALREADY!"
** A sad case of AdaptationDecay. The manga averted this cleanly, mostly because the final chapters of the manga had the dramatic effect of [[spoiler: Hazumu's inevitable death for them to grapple with. Which the characters actually handled with impressive courage, maturity, and understanding. Even when the only way for Hazumu to survive meant her choosing one of the girls to share her lifegrain with (essentially choosing one girl for life), even after she made the choice, the losing girl still got over it with minimal time spent on her inevitable grief. The end of the manga showed her having moved on successfully.]]
** Still, the anime has the touching scene by the river, when [[spoiler:Tomari and Hazumu say their goodbyes]], so it wasn't all bad.
*Similarly, the latter half of the ''SchoolDays'' anime becomes a true wangstfest, with the main characters acting [[WhatAnIdiot irresponsibly and illogically]] to the extreme. Things would have been better if they would just stop and think from time to time.
**But then we wouldn't have Nice Boat.
*Yuka in ''ElfenLied'' whines constantly about the fact that Kohta doesn't remember the promise he made to her 8 years ago. This is made even worse by the fact that the other characters include two escapees from a twisted research institution, a child sexually abused by her step father, a girl whose mother committed suicide when she was a child and was rendered incontinent by her fathers physical abuse, and the aforementioned Kohta, whose whole family was brutally slaughtered before his eyes. Not to mention that she constantly bitches at Kohta about the fact that he doesn't remember her even though she ''knows'' it's the result of posttraumatic amnesia from seeing his sister and father being ''cut into two'' in front of him. Basically, Yuka was the only more or less ''sane'' person in the whole deal and failed to have true empathy about that.
*Sasuke in ''{{Naruto}}'' often gets accused of this somehow. He's actually an odd case because first it's granted, anyone would be pretty messed up if you were eight years old and came home from school to find that[[spoiler: the older brother you'd loved and idolized your entire life had, with next to no warning, murdered every single member of your extended family, right down to your mom and dad, and then Mind Raped you after telling you that you alone were so pathetic you weren't worth killing. And THEN promising to return someday to finish you off.]] Somehow, though, his angst being justified doesn't make it any less annoying to some people. And second, the really weird thing is that [[NeverLiveItDown everyone thinks of him as wangsty]], even though pre-time skip there are actually not many occasions that he even talks about it, much less cries or complains about his lot and when he does actually say something it's always vague allusions made during life and death situations. And post-timeskip he's even more aloof and [[TheStoic impassive]] like [[AloofBigBrother his brother]]. Actually nearly all of it is InnerMonologue, and what he says is usually declaration that he will kill his brother. The low level of tolerance probably stems from his FaceHeelTurn, and as backlash for all the people that take it [[DracoInLeatherPants in the opposite direction]] and the idea gets spread because he's often portrayed as wangsty in fanart and fanfiction. The fact that Sasuke is [[BrokenBase such a polarizing character]] doesn't help.
** It probably also doesn't help that more recent events have turned Sasuke into even more of a gray figure and given more fuel to those who see him as wangsty. Particularly for saying one thing and then saying something else which has caused more confusion then ever about his true motives and goals and it has become even more divisive amongst fans over whether what he's doing is or isn't justified.
** Not to mention the fact that other characters that met with similar hardship dealt with their pain a lot more positively.
** Pain/Nagato. Everything about him, his back story, and his philosophy OOZES of 100%, unadulterated Wangst.
* The main characters in ''{{Nana}}'' lead epic and exciting lives that most people would give an arm and a leg for, but they keep dwelling on the (comparatively minor) stuff that does ''not'' go right, making for quite a bit of hokey drama - especially the part of [[spoiler:one Nana's fear of losing the other]].
* Several characters in ''{{X1999}}'' are guilty of this, but most notably Kakyou. He spends half of his time wandering around peoples' dreams, saying in essence "We're all going to die eventually, so why do we even try to live?" The other half of his time, he wangsts profusely over the death of a girl ''he never even met outside of dreams and who died eight years ago.''
* The cast of ''{{Simoun}}'' does so much wangsting, it can make some viewers grimace with beams of acid hate.
** Neviril's 7-episode-long fit of locking herself away in her room over [[spoiler:the death of her partner in combat]] while the group was trying to reorganize and needed a stable leader deserves a specific mention here, as does Kaimu [[spoiler:blacking out (read: altering in her mind so that she was the victim) the ever-so-traumatic event of her seducing her sister]] and then hating Alti a result, too.
** Not to mention Paraietta spending almost the entire series angsting about Neviril's growing relationship with Aaeru, and her own unfitness for command in the absence of Neviril or Dominura. [[spoiler: So much so that her inability to respond because she was spaced out wangsting ''on a mission'' gets Mamiina killed]]. (Though she never actually raises this to get someone ''competent'' put in charge)
** Then again, it may not be the best idea to have religious relics used by young girls converted into weapons of mass destruction. [[TropesAreNotBad Which is pretty much the whole point of the show.]]
* Kenshin and Kaoru of the OVA ''[[RurouniKenshin Samurai X: Reflections]]'' spend the entire OVA wangsting about things that have happened in Kenshin's past as well as some of the events of the Rurouni Kenshin TV series. What makes it even worse is that the things these characters are wangsting over has already been resolved during the TV series, though none of the characters seem to remember that during the events of this OVA.
** Well, to be fair, Kenshin's desperate trek back home and [[spoiler:their inevitable and imminent deaths]] might have had something to do with it.
* A lot of the melodrama in the second half of ''OniisamaE'' comes from [[RichBitch Fukiko]], who can't get over the fact that 6 years earlier [[spoiler:the guy she loved didn't come to listen to her violin recital]]. She was 12 at that time.
* Those unfamiliar with ''YamiNoMatsuei'' accuse Hisoka Kurosaki of indulging in this ''a lot'', but consider what happens to the poor kid throughout the series (and his backstory): he was [[RapeAsDrama raped]] and cursed to a horrific, painful death; was often locked in the basement by his parents, partly because of his [[BlessedWithSuck EXTREMELY powerful empathy]] (and partially [[spoiler: because they didn't want him to be the prey of a powerful demon who cursed his family in a rather gruesome manner]]); was captured and tortured by the main villain who also happens to be his rapist/killer; later has to rescue his partner from the flames of Hell...
** Hisoka can still be considered wangsty, even to those familiar with ''YamiNoMatsuei''. Even excluding instances where the circumstances were out of his control, he still managed to create his own problems to wangst about. Example: His killing Tsubaki. If you're going to kill someone, then do it. But if you're going to regret it and wangst about it for several chapters / episodes, then don't. There was no real reason he had to dirty his hands like that other than for wangst sake.
** Tsuzuki certainly wangsts a lot. Considering that he's an [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld ancient god of death]], it would probably be more realistic for him not to constantly be crying and moping and going crazy over [[{{Muggles}} every single person's]] death.
* {{Wangst}} is a serious risk to ones own health in ''ParanoiaAgent''. It brings on Shonen Bat.
* Nozomu Itoshiki from ''SayonaraZetsubouSensei'' can and will become suicidally depressive over even the slightest provocation. However, the way the series plays it makes it [[CrossesTheLineTwice not intolerably annoying, but awesomely funny]].
** Parodied in the fourth episode of the second season, when aliens attack and he cries, "[[CatchPhrase I'm in despair!]] The human race giving up without a fight has left me in despair!" Abiru comments that he's in despair over something normal people would agree with, for once.
* A result of being BrainwashedAndCrazy turns [[spoiler:Gainer Sanga]] of ''OvermanKingGainer'' into a giant blue guy complaining about how no one loves him.
* The entire cast of ''PeacemakerKurogane'' is the living embodiment of {{Wangst}}. The entire show is pretty much about a bunch of [[{{Bishounen}} pretty, adult samurai]] crying and moping about problems they probably should have gotten over years ago.
* ''{{Gundam}}''. [[YourMileageMayVary You can maybe pardon most of the main characters if you try]], but there is no excuse for [[GundamSeedDestiny Shinn Asuka]].
** [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap Shinn in Super Robot Wars, however...]]
* Done intentionally for comedic purposes in ''AxisPowersHetalia'' for Ludwig/Germany. A song on his [[ImageSong character single]] titled "Einsamkeit (Loneliness)" is an over-the-top emo song about his loneliness that seems to be like this trope until it brings up potatoes. Still, it can truly be sad (even while you laugh).
* Lelouch Lamperouge from ''CodeGeass'' when Nunally redeclares the SAZ. Yeah, way too much wangst for what happened.
** Well, there was [[spoiler:genocide]] involved last time, that does tend to be a downer.
** He also subverts the all holy hell out of it as he marches to give his [[spoiler: immortal]] father a severe bitch slap, by Geassing a small army of mechs to create an arch for him to walk under with their spears, storming with his LargeHam in plain sight, delivering a line that should be Wangst-incarnate, but just comes off as "I've seen the worst, now bring your best."
--> ''Lelouch: "If anyone wishes to stop me, let them try. If there is anyone who can go beyond my despair...!"''
* ''TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' openly averts this. If anyone is Wangsting, expect someone else to either [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan punch them]] or [[RousingSpeech deliver a speech]]. The only major episode of Wangst in the series was [[spoiler: When Kamina died, Simon, and to a lesser extent, everyone, moped about Kamina's death. To be fair, the audience felt more or less the same, and Simon delivers such an awesome speech in EP 11 that it's all good.]] Nonetheless, looking at the backstories and such, there was great potential for massive wangst in the series. Thank God it didn't happen.
* In ''{{Maria-sama Ga Miteru}}'' this trope is largely averted, since most girls at the Lilian school turn out to be rather level-headed. The misunderstanding between Sachiko and Yumi in the second season comes close though--and Touko also at one point skirts the line by putting herself and Yumi through a lot of needless grief over her worries about [[spoiler:being adopted]].
* Wangst is used as a plot point in ''MahouSenseiNegima'' regarding Setsuna, who is constantly [[FailureKnight worrying about her perceived weaknesses]] even though all evidence points to the fact that she's one of the most competent characters. It was most humorously shown in chapter 252, where she starts angsting that her contentment is "dulling her skill with the blade". While she is in mid-brood she proceeds to save Konoka from a giant steel ball that's flying towards her by splitting it in half ''[[OffhandBackhand without even noticing]]''. Konoka then gives her a speech about how her happiness is ''not'' making her weaker... [[spoiler:and plants an [[LesYay enthusiastic and record-setting kiss]] to establish a Pactio]].
* [[GundamSEED Kira]] - he's been considered as the biggest crybaby and EmoTeen by mecha fandom, who angst because [[IJustWantToBeNormal he's better than ordinary humans]]. In SuperRobotWars Alpha 3 even [[NeonGenesisEvangelion Shinji Ikari]] told him [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan he's should stop beign a pussy]].
** Thinking about it, almost everyone in SEED at some point just sit down and cry for better or worse reason.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* This often happens with the ''Comicbook/{{X-Men}}'', especially during the mid-90s; some writers are better at the soap-opera style that made the team popular in the BronzeAge than others.
** They actually parodied it once, in an issue of WHAT TH', in which the team interrupted a training session for an angst-break.
** In a more recent example, Icarus from ''New Mutants''/''New X-Men'' would constantly bring up his dead girlfriend in every appearance. Made even more Wangsty, since they only [[TemporaryLoveInterest dated for a week]] before [[StuffedIntoTheFridge she ended up killed]].
* Comicbook/{{Batman}} constantly teeters on the line between angst and wangst, as writers vary their emphasis on his parents' death. "[[http://www.pvponline.com/my-parents-are-dead/ MY PARENTS ARE DEAD!!!]] MY SIDEKICK IS DEAD!!!" etc., etc.
* Comicbook/SpiderMan is usually pretty good about dealing with his problems, but mediocre writers send him into bouts of wangst from time to time.
**This tendency is very much pronounced in [[{{Film/Spider-Man}} the movie adaptations]], as Spidey's main wangst-fighting weapon, his constant joke-cracking, has been removed.
*** Spider-Man angsts a lot during Marvel Zombies. Even as a overpowered cosmic being he angsts and angsts. When he doesn't angst he jokes, and he jokes because he angsts.
*** Considering that his first act as a zombie was to ''eat'' the two people he cared most about, he has at least ''some'' justification for angsting. And he at least demonstrates ''some'' guilt and remorse for his actions -- in contrast to every other zombie, who all mostly seem amazingly quick to adjust and enjoy becoming a CompleteMonster whether they were a hero or a villain beforehand.
** In Clone Saga and One More Day Spidey angsts as hell.
* Speedball, after his transformation into Penance (a.k.a. "[[DorkAge Bleedball]]"), drives headfirst into all-Wangst-all-the-time territory, without as much as a rest stop in between.
** Admittedly, Penance is only played straight in the ''Thunderbolts'' series where he's a major character. Other writers tend to treat him as comic relief when he makes appearances; The scene where he explains his reasoning to [[StalkerWithACrush superpowered nutjob Squirrel Girl]] pretty much epitomizes what the other writers at Marvel thought of it:
--->'''Penance:''' You just don't ''get it,'' do you!? This self punishment thing! It's too ''deep'' for you!! See?! I'm ''deep'' now! And that means I do ''deep stuff!'' Like ''this!'' <''bangs head against wall''> And ''THIS!'' <''bang''> ''AND THIS!!!'' <''bang''>
--->'''Squirrel Girl:''' Oookay.
***Then Subvert once Doc Samson came (see below)
** A rare straight ''and'' well-written appearance by Penance (again, outside of his regular series) in a ''World War Hulk'' aftermath tie-in had one of the characters take him aside and gently suggest that he look into therapy for his guilt issues, remarking that self-harm (which is essentially where Penance's powers come from) is not a healthy way of dealing with your issues.
*** This, followed up by Robbie apparently getting just that (unplanned on his part as it was) via Doc Samson, the result of which shows that his old Speedball powers might be on the rebound.
*** Beating the crap out of the guy who killed his friends (and the 600 other people in Stamford) with a [[BatterUp bat]], trapping him in his spiked suit, and stabbing him for good measure helped too.
* A flashback issue of ''SpiderManLovesMaryJane'' sees Mary-Jane, who has just broken up with her first boyfriend, indulge in a pretty epic bout of EmoTeen self-pity in which she starts wearing all-black and comes out with pearls such as "I just don't think I was ever ''meant'' to be happy." It's established, however, that this is pretty out-of-character for MJ, her friends repeatedly point out how silly she's being (including a fellow EmoTeen who is ''just as wangsty'') and make numerous efforts to try and cheer her up, and to her credit it doesn't last very long; she quickly wises up and realizes how self-indulgent and ludicrous she's being, particularly after she encounters Peter Parker, who is dealing with the recent death of his beloved uncle and father-figure in a much more restrained and mature fashion. She's also helped by the recent debut of new superhero SpiderMan, whose bravery and spirit inspire her (even if she's unaware that the [[SecretIdentity former and the latter share a common link]]).
** Given that it's essentially a TeenDrama set in the ''Spider-Man'' universe, the series itself does a pretty good job of avoiding Wangst; it partly manages this by making Mary-Jane (the main character) something of a StepfordSmiler [[TheWoobie Woobie]] who tends to bottle up her insecurities and unhappiness rather than indulge in moaning about them. It also helps that when it ''is'' angsty, it's at least well-written.
* Way back in the 60's, when Johnny Storm of the FantasticFour's girlfriend Crystal was separated from him by a practically unbreakable dome, he practically angsted about it in ''every'' issue between then and their reunion. The difference was that he actively tried to find solutions to get through. On the other hand, nearly half of them were suicidal.....
** They fell deeply in love, for the two minutes they were together.
** Another Fantastic Four example: She-Thing. Sharon Ventura was angsty enough in her early days (having been a [[RapeAsDrama rape victim]] (though they couldn't use the word), but she became wangsty when she was exposed to the same cosmic radiation that gave the FF their powers. She becomes much like The Thing, super-strong, orange and lumpy. She immediately tries to kill herself. Repeatedly. And when she finds out she can't because her skin is just too tough for the rather uncreative ways she's trying to kill herself, she weeps and moans for issue after issue. Sure, being orange and ugly sucks, but come on! Still, it was almost worth it when several issues into the mope-a-thon, she whines to the wrong person. Beast from the X-Men was suffering from a condition that was slowly destroying his brain, [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan slapping her down]] (metaphorically) and reminding her some people have real problems. Her problem put in perspective, she calms down and becomes less gag-inducing. She eventually decides she rather likes being She-thing, which, unfortunately, triggers another wangst fest when she's re-humaned... and then she [[BrotherChuck unceremoniously vanishes from the plot]].
* Superboy Prime. Goodness gracious, Superboy Prime. His universe was destroyed, he was trapped in a paradise dimension, breaks out, and will not stop whining about his original universe was so much better than everywhere else. A good example of this is in Countdown, where, while he is flying through DC's 52 universes, exclaims "This universe isn't as good as MY universe."
** What's ironic is that when Prime ''finally'' manages to get back to his "perfect universe", he finds it's just as shitty as the 52 universes he just escaped from. This is because Earth-Prime is, for all intents and purposes, ''our'' world and anyone can pick up and read ''Infinite Crisis, Sinestro Corps War, and Legion of 3 Worlds'' and see that he was a freaking sociopath. Prime is reduced to a DC troll living in his parents' basement, wanting to get back to the Multiverse, because... well at least there, he had superpowers.
** "I'll kill you! I'll kill you to DEATH!!"
*ToddMcFarlane's {{Spawn}}. Wanda moved on. Maybe you should too.
* Strongly justified in {{Daredevil}} - he has very strong reasons to angst and every time he looks like could overcome them, [[ButtMonkey writers give him new ones]].
*[[GreenLantern Kyle Rayner]] as written by Judd Winick. When his long time girlfriend [[WomenInRefrigerators was murdered brutally]] he felt sad and angry but was ultimately motivated to become a better superhero. When he spent a thousand years dead before spending a short time undead then being brought back to life, he was fine. When he was Ion and experienced all of the darkness of humanity, he was fine. When he battled a physical manifestation of his own dark side, it made him a better person. But when his new assistant was beaten and hospitalized because he was gay . . . [[WallBanger he had to leave the planet.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Fic]]
* [[MarySue Ebony "Enoby" Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way]] of ''MyImmortal'' takes this to ridiculous extremes, slitting her wrists about once per chapter. (Or at least, it felt like it.)
* [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3186783/1/A_Crushed_Empire One]] {{Warhammer 40000}} fanfic has the protagonist wangst after his home planet was hit by an Exterminatus. He was a [[SpaceMarine Dark]] [[TheAtoner Angel]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* Anakin Skywalker from the ''StarWars'' {{prequel}} trilogy spends a lot of time crying and flipping out. Though most of us figured Darth Vader was a troubled youth, it was more of the ''Damien what are you doing with that tricycle?'' kind. Don't, just ''don't'', make us [[{{Narm}} spell it all out for you]].
** RiffTrax summed it up best in their RiffTrax of ''AttackOfTheClones'':
--->'''Mike Nelson''': Is that a ''grain of sand'' on you? You '''''HARLOT'''''!
** [[AngstWhatAngst Luke and Leia, on the other hand...]]
* In ''VanHelsing'', BigBad {{Dracula}} is introduced with a wangst about how he [[TinMan can feel no emotion.]] It's actually quite cool, [[LargeHam for certain reasons]].
** Although it does bring up the question of [[FridgeLogic how he can be sad if he has no emotions]]. Though yeah, it is ''deeply'' fun to watch him strolling across the ceiling ''shouting'' about how he can't feel anything.
* The third ''Spider-Man'' movie does this, probably deliberately.
**So does the second one, with the exception of the first 10 minutes, and the last 15.
** It's not just Peter Parker doing it; Harry has a ''serious'' problem with it.
*** [[http://it-is-law.com/dump/Batman-DeadParents.jpg My parents are DEEEEEAAAAAAAD!]]
** Brian Bendis told an anecdote about how he agreed to write some lines for the first movie and pissed off one of the producers because he wanted to add a few jokes.
*''InterviewWithTheVampire'''s first two acts are nothing but Louis and his wangst, first about the death of his wife and unborn child and then about becoming a blood thirsty vampire. He finally gets over it by the third act [[spoiler:after the death of his child vampire lover Claudia]].
-->'''Lestat''': I had to listen to that whining for two hundred years!
* [[TwoWordsObviousTrope Two Words]]: [[{{Clerks}} Dante Hicks]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* '''The''' defining characteristic of Edward Cullen in ''Twilight''.
** And the primary characteristic of most of its fans.
*Characters in {{Gone with the wind}}. Margaret Mitchell makes these spoiled vermins to whine how awful is to let slaves free and cook your own meal. Heartbreaking.
* Heroine in Quincey Morris, the Vampire by P N Elrod. Spoiled Jerk Sue never satisfied her life as one of wealthy succesful people of Victorian London. .
* HarryPotter in ''The Order of the Phoenix'' -- but then, that's [[EmoTeen just how teenagers are]], as Phineas Nigellus explains. Harry largely gets over himself at the end after his wangsting causes a major screwup that results in [[spoiler:his godfather]]'s death.
** What do you expect? [[PotterPuppetPals His parents are dead, his life sucks, he can't hold down a girlfriend, and he's surrounded by #*%$ing goblins and #$*& all the time! I mean, what the @#$%?]]
*** [[http://www.pvponline.com/images/batman/05.gif My parents are DEEEEEAAAAAAAD!]]
** YourMileageMayVary. Besides [[DarkAndTroubledPast the obvious]], being treated like a deranged lunatic/liar/idiot by 90% of everyone around him (many of these being former friends)? It would have been ''less'' plausible for him to angst less.
* Getting {{Mode Lock}}ed definitely wouldn't be fun, but [[{{Animorphs}} Tobias]] earned the FanNickname "Emohawk" from some fans because he kept whining abut it for the first ''years''' worth of books! Consider this: the [[CursedWithAwesome form he's stuck in is pretty badass]] (indeed, quite a few people think hawks are cute). Plus, he can fly, his life as a human was pretty terrible, neither of his estranged guardians notice he's gone (!?), and he could have always been trapped as a louse or something. Even more significantly, consider that he and his friends have been ''reeled in as fighters in an interplanetary war'' and yet everyone seems to be dealing with that pretty well!
** For awhile he also complained about [[CarnivoreConfusion having to kill mice to eat]]... as opposed to, you know, killing cows and pigs and other animals to eat as a human. (Generally, humans don't kill said cows or pigs themselves and eat them raw, but...)
*** He didn't just complain, [[spoiler: the first time he ate a mouse he had a major freak out and would have committed suicide by plowing into a glass ceiling if Marco hadn't been there to break the glass before Tobias could smash into it.]] Major overreaction.
** Then when he [[spoiler: regains his ability to morph, he often complains about his human morph's inferior eyesight and hearing compared to his hawk form.]] You can't win.
** YourMileageMayVary. In the early books, Tobias actually states that he feels his life improved as a result of his becoming an animorph and a hawk. His initial angst at being trapped in the body of a hawk was the result of feelings of uselessness on missions because being Mode Locked prevented him joining his friends on dangerous, life-risking missions. Moreover, since becoming an animorph gave him a sense of family and purpose that he had never had before, it's only natural that he would feel intensely guilty and hypersensitive whenever a mission rendered him safe and comfortable while the others cheated death, especially when the trauma that often resulted from life-risking missions could and sometimes did alienate his relationships with the others. Lastly, in the first book told from his perspective after he regains his morphing power, he discover out that [[spoiler: the father he never knew was actually none other than Elfangor, the badass Andalite Warrior who gave the kids their morphing powers in the first book. Far from angsting over the fact that he had lost, gained, and re-lost a new father in a short space of time, or having a bout of fresh grief over having watched his father die, or anything else to that effect, Tobias celebrates this discovery of his [[{{Badass Family}} badass roots]] by chowing down on birthday cake with Rachel, his sort-of-but-not-really-girlfriend because hawks and humans can't mate.]] Not much sign of an "Emohawk".
** Not to mention the others don't adjust all that well in the long term. Jake puts on a heroic face because he's the leader, but [[TheChainsOfCommanding doesn't much care for it]] and eventually [[HeroicBSOD loses it after the war]] because of [[IDidWhatIHadToDo What He Had To Do]]. Marco gets by with the same [[DeadpanSnarker dark humor]] he used after his mother "died", while not-quite-concealing how much he'd like reducing every Yeerk in existence to a fine powder. Rachel starts out as a major [[BloodKnight loose cannon]], and gets ''worse''. Cassie, meanwhile, [[TechnicalPacifist hates how they have to kill]] and eventually leaves the group over it ([[TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive temporarily]]).
*Max from MaximumRide. She does have actual reasons to be upset, and her life until book four sucked a '''TON''' of ass. However, she never fails to remind readers how much ''every single second of everything sucks!'' And what's really funny is when Fang, the designated "goth," gets a few chapters in book three, he rarely complains about ''anything''.
* ''TheEpicOfGilgamesh'': While Gilgamesh is wallowing in his loneliness after Enkidu's death and putting himself through all kinds of stress to find the secret of eternal life, one character after another tells him to just get over it already!
** Making it, pretty much literally [[OldestOnesInTheBook the Oldest One in the Book]].
* Played for laughs in ''TheBelgariad'', where Garion occasionally sinks into this... and is promptly told by the entire universe (sometimes literally) to grow up and get over it. Eventually his chief lament ("Why me?") becomes a RunningGag.
** Prequel novel ''Polgara the Sorceress'' proves that this is a hereditary trait. Polgara eventually got ''very'' sick of hearing generations of sandy-haired little boys ask that question.
*** At least Garion really did have the weight of the world on his shoulders. All those other sandy-haired little boys were just expected to live their life without drawing attention to themselves and to father children at some point - which is to say, their destiny was to be just like most people in their world. Unless you really have a [[IJustWantToBeSpecial craving for glory]], that's really nothing to whine about.
* Played for knowing laughs in ''The Malloreon''. By this time, ''Belgarion'' has started catching himself as he drifts into wangst, and cutting himself off as he starts to say "Why me?".
** It's particularly amusing when '''Zathak'' starts asking "Why me?" and Belgarion is the one who has to explain things to him.
* TerryBrooks, at least in the earlier ''{{Shannara}}'' books, has such a habit of repeating his characters' thoughts on their character development. Since a lot of them seem to think they can [[YouCantFightFate fight fate]], this comes off as Wangsty real fast.
* Victor Frankenstein of MaryShelley's ''{{Frankenstein}}'' never stops complaining to the reader about his miserable fate and how depressed he is, despite the fact that [[FrankensteinsMonster his creation]] is far worse off and doesn't whine half as much.
** This is done intentionally as a form of dramatic irony.
***The book is ironic to the point in which the monster is a far deeper and more relatable character than the intentionally uni-dimensional humans (except Frankestein himself, who is quite well developed -- albeit not very sympathy evoking).
*Stephen R. Donaldson's characters, especially [[ChroniclesOfThomasCovenant Thomas Covenant]], are frequently accused of this; Donaldson loves to [[DeusAngstMachina put his characters through hell]] so he can [[TheWoobie watch them suffer]], but sometimes they just Wangst because they can.
** I'd argue that Thomas Covenant is deliberate Wangst by the author- the whole ''point'' is that the readers want to slap him round the face and shout, "GET OVER YOURSELF!" Getting towards the end of the third book, [[spoiler: I was gratified to discover that, in fact, he does. (Haven't got any further than that yet, so he might backslide a little.)]]
** Covenant does backslide a bit in the Second Chronicles [[spoiler: because a whole new crop of bad stuff happens to him]], and new protagonist [[TheEmpath Linden Avery]] gets into it a bit as well. [[spoiler: Of course, [[BigBad Lord Foul]] seems to like deliberately cultivating {{Wangst}} in people as a means of pushing them past the DespairEventHorizon, and both Covenant and Linden get over it for good in ''White Gold Wielder'']]. Not that there's not ''angst'' in the Third Chronicles, mind- it's just not as intense as it was earlier, and therefore is more bearable and relateable.
* A vast quantity of {{Shakespeare}}an characters:
** Romeo in Shakespeare's ''RomeoAndJuliet'' is ''first introduced'' wangsting over Rosaline dumping him and being told by the other characters to snap out of it, with mentionings of him shutting himself up entirely in his room and closing the windows. And the [[StarCrossedLovers Star Crossed Romance]] that leads to suicide is not even an issue yet!
*** Ironically, things would have ended much better for everyone if he ''had'' taken a little longer to get over it.
** The award for Self Obsessed, Mopey Git has to be shared between Duke Orsino of ''Twelfth Night'' and Antonio, the ''Merchant of Venice.''
*** Antonio's angst gets not only more bearable but more understandable if you pretend he's the same Antonio as in ''Twelfth Night''. Try it sometime.
** The black-clad {{Hamlet}} at the start of the play: you can barely turn a page without someone telling him he's not the first person to lose a father and to just get over it already.... all this ''before'' any mention of murder. Cheer up, melancholy kid.
*** Hamlet is upset not because his father is dead, but because the people who should miss him most (his widow and his brother) are instead [[{{Squick}} married]] within a month of the funeral. However, there's plenty of wangst in Hamlet's relationship to Ophelia - "I never gave you love letters. Wait, yes I did. You're dumping me? Not if I dump you first! WOMEN ARE WHORES!" Then, at her funeral, "I miss her more than anyone else possibly could! Including you, Laertes! How dare you get offended that I'm directly responsible for the death of your father and sister!" Granted, he's been through a lot of stress up to that point, but one would hope a thirty year old prince would be a bit more composed when dealing with relationships than a hormonal teenager... [[WritersCannotDoMath oh, right.]]
*** Considering the dim view of the Danish shared by the English at the time the play was written, it's suspected that Hamlet really *is* supposed to come off as whiny as he does now and that the entire chain of events was a TakeThat on the Danes.
*** Hamlet's mention of 'antic disposition' in Act 1 Scene 5 also makes this more understanding when you realise he was at least partially acting crazy so that his Uncle/King wouldn't suspect him of plotting murder. It didn't work.
* Rand Al'Thor in the ''WheelOfTime'' books acts like this a lot. What he angsts about? Women dying because of him. Never mind that the women in question are ''[[AmazonBrigade soldiers]]'' and that they themselves don't mind risking their lives...
** It would be far less annoying if he would angst over the many things that he would be justified in dwelling over in such a fashion. Maybe he focuses on the lesser reasons to angst to avoid thinking too much on the mountainous problems and depressing path in front of him.
* The titular character of the ''{{Dexter}}'' books sometimes toes the angst/wangst line with his internal monologues about his inability to feel emotions, the idiocy of the human race, and the trials he is forced through by those around him. For the most part, however, his dry sense of humor and lack of actual grief (see also ''his inability to feel emotions'') keep him from straying.
* Parodied in ''DonQuixote'', when the ingenious Hidalgo decides to express his lovelorn grief by going crazy in the wilderness for several days. This is a {{homage}} to ''OrlandoFurioso'', who previously did the same thing, though at least Orlando was being genuine. Quixote just thought it would be a pretty good idea.
** Played straight in ''[[KingArthur Le Morte D'Arthur]]'' when Lancelot does this for several ''years''.
* In JaneAusten's ''SenseAndSensibility'', romantic, emotional Marianne Dashwood's response to her woes in love (which are at least genuine, if partially her own fault and resulting from her own headstrong nature and lack of restraint or moderation) is to loudly and frequently bemoan how pained and unhappy she is, which makes her come across as wangsty and self-obsessed, especially in contrast with her sister Elinor's much more restrained, dignified and rational-minded response to her own equally genuine romantic misfortunes (which eventually prompts a rather barbed condemnation on this point from Elinor when Marianne makes the mistake of [[BewareTheNiceOnes criticising Elinor's 'lack of feeling' once too often]]). Marianne eventually comes to realize that her wangsting is merely self-indulgent and unhelpful, particularly after she almost dies from a dose of pneumonia received after a wangsty, self-pity induced walk in a rainstorm, an over-dramatic response she realizes with shame would have done nothing but brought pain to those who love her.
* Mostly the entire plot of ''[[{{Twilight}} New Moon]]''. If you need a specific example, though, [[{{Narm}} the blank pages]]. After Edward pulls his "we must break up because you are in danger" bull, there are approximately ''ten pages'' that show how utterly ''bleak and hopeless and miserable and empty'' Bella's life is without him. By having absolutely no text except the names of the passing months.
** The other books in the series have more than their fair share as well.
** Stephanie Meyer says she listened to LinkinPark all the time to help her write those scenes. Which would explain an awful lot.
* Steven Erikson's ''{{Malazan Book of the Fallen}}'' series has a nasty habit of this. To be fair, things really are pretty bad for the characters and [[CrapsackWorld the world they are in]]. It wasn't too bad until the very latest installments, where not only did several characters (*cough* Seren Pedac *cough* Nimander Golit *cough*) complain ''all the time'' (sometimes just to themselves in their heads, but still) but they repeated each and every problem every time the characters reappeared in the story. ''We get it already''! SHUT UP for gods' sake!
** Somewhat {{lampshaded}} with the Tiste Andii, who are explicitly said to have Wangst as their [[PlanetOfHats Hat]]. But the lampshading is (perhaps unwittingly) subverted, since the Tiste Andii turn out to be no more Wangsty than everybody else.
* Lestat in Anne Rice's ''Vampire Chronicles'' series. And Rice herself when a number of Amazon.com reviewers dared criticize ''Blood Canticle''.
** Garth Ennis brilliantly parodied the Wangsty Lestat in ''{{Preacher}}''.
* [[spoiler:Ashfur]] in ''WarriorCats''. Of course, in the real world, his grievences are relatively legitimate (but completely overblown by his fans), but in series just filled with angsty kitties, he comes out as average...-ish, and the fact that he uses his past to [[DisproportionateRetribution justify trying to kill the main characters]] doesn't help either. It makes liking him in general possible only if you can try to sympathize with his wangst.
** Leafpool has a habit of blaming herself for other cats deaths ([[spoiler:Cinderpelt, Heavystep, Ashfur, etc.]]), but in ''A Dangerous Path'', Firestar turns it into an art form. He blames himself for [[spoiler:Swiftpaw's death because he tried his hardest to get Swiftpaw to be made into a warrior, but he failed, causing Swiftpaw to go out into the forest to prove himself, where he got ripped to pieces by the dog pack]].
* Flinx, the main recurring protagonist of {{Alan Dean Foster}}'s ''HumanxCommonwealth'' series, has developed a number of character flaws that ''may'' be irritating to long time readers of the novels. Foremost among these is his habit of indulging in bouts of near suicidal depression over the fact that he's [[IJustWantToBeNormal not a normal human]]. That and his gradual conclusion that HumansAreBastards, a LoveInterest he was forced to [[ItsNotYouItsMyEnemies leave behind]], half of the known universe seeking to arrest or kill him, the other half trying to make him into a ChosenOne to combat an UltimateEvil, and most recently, the revelation that he [[spoiler:doesn't have a real genetic mother or father]]. These things might make anyone a bit depressed, but he luxuriates in it to the point where one sometimes wishes the author would wrap up the series just to stop the whining. Even his ship's computer tells him to lighten up.
** In ''Flinx Transcendent'', the series' GrandFinale, he does... [[EpiphanyTherapy just like that]].
* ''ASongofIceAndFire'' has Dolorous Edd, whose habit of lamenting about how awful things are is played for laughs. [[CrapsackWorld It's funny cause it's true]].
* Lilly Bart from ''House Of Mirth''. Seriously, after three hundred pages of uninterupted self-absorbed {{wangst}}ing, many readers are so irritated that they actually cheer her on when she finally gets around to [[spoiler:offing herself.]]
* {{MichaelMoorcock}}'s Eternal Champion is a being who is repeatedly incarnated in different worlds and times, fighting a never-ending battle to maintain the Balance of the multiverse; doomed to never rest, to never cease fighting, to see his friends and loved ones die or worse (often by his own hand), and to never know any lasting peace as he [[CrapsackWorld wades through rivers of blood]]. Mercifully, most if his incarnations are blissfully unaware of this destiny; and therefore their angst over their grim and brutal lives is generally justified, if somewhat enhanced by gothic levels of pretention. One incarnation however, John Daker aka Erekosse, is fully aware of his destiny and ''every single one'' of his incarnations. While this could be considered justification for epic levels of whinging; being CursedWithAwesome (or BlessedWithSuck depending on how you look like it), he turns it UpToEleven.
* In ''TheGreatDivorce'', many of the damned are wangsty. The Tousle-Headed Poet sees himself as a misunderstood genius whom the whole universe has it in for, the Dwarf-And-Tragedian ghost has a long habit of wangsting for emotional blackmail purposes, and there is a grumbling ghost who may be redeemable or may be no more than a perpetual motion wangst machine at this point -- we never find out.
* Sort of toyed with in HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy, where Arthur Dent tries to process the thought that the [[spoiler:entire Earth had just been destroyed]]. He tried to think about how his parents and sister [[spoiler:were dead]], but it didn't work. He then tried to think about how everyone he was close to [[spoiler: was dead]], but that didn't work, either. Instead, what made him break down was the fact that a random person who was behind him in line at the supermarket [[spoiler: was dead]].
** To be fair, the first two concepts were so emotionally huge that he couldn't wrap his head around them. He kept pondering it from smaller and smaller perspectives until it clicked. Considering he's [[spoiler: one of the last humans alive]] he doesn't actually spend that much time wangsting.
* Heavily lampshaded in ''[[TheAbhorsenTrilogy Lirael]]''. [[YourMileageMayVary Depending on who you ask]], Sam, Lirael, or both can be viewed as wangsty. However, Lirael has bite scars from the last time she started [[DrivenToSuicide contemplating suicide]], since [[NonHumanSidekick the Disreputable Dog]] was [[GetAholdOfYourselfMan not amused]]. Sam just had to cope with absolutely ''caustic'' sarcasm from [[CatsAreMean Mogget]] when he got too obnoxious.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* In season 1 of ''{{Smallville}}'', Lana seemed incapable of getting through a scene without mentioning her pancaked parents. Actually, both Lana and Clark seem to suffer from perpetual Wangst in recent seasons as well.
** Recent seasons? That implies there was a season when they ''weren't'' suffering from perpetual Wangst. It's low-grade most of the time, but then Clark gets an opportunity to stare soulfully at Lana, and without him even saying anything, the Wangst just starts dribbling out of the screen. Makes a real mess on the carpet.
**Listen up, {{Smallville}} writers. This is why Lex is a compelling [[TheWoobie Woobie]] and Lana isn't.
* Whip-Snap in the second season of ''WhoWantsToBeASuperhero'' was ''constantly'' going on and on about how hard her real life is and how much pressure she's under. Eventually the rest of the contestants grew tired of it, and Stan Lee finally eliminated her for not being able to get over it and deal with the situation.
* ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' and ''[[AngelTheSeries Angel]]'' sometimes (or often, depending on just how unsympathetic you feel) wobbled into 'wangst' territory - this is largely down to ''every single character'' [[DysfunctionJunction suffering through miserable family lives AND unhappy romances]], [[AnyoneCanDie main characters dropping like flies throughout]] and a great emphasis placed on how the main characters were either BlessedWithSuck or CursedWithAwesome, thus raising the question at times of whether any of the main characters were capable of experiencing joy (in fact, one character ''was'' incapable of experiencing true joy lest he turn evil. Hoo boy.). Season Six of ''Buffy'' in particular is often criticized because of this.
** LampShaded in one episode of season 7 when Faith and Buffy talk about their "curse" of being slayers and Faith ends the discussion by commenting that they're [[CursedWithAwesome currently complaining about being "two hot chicks with superpowers"]].
* Duncan [=MacLeod=] of the Clan [=MacLeod=]. In the final season of ''HighlanderTheSeries'', no doubt many fans were rooting for the BigBad Immie to take Duncan's head and put them out of his misery.
* The Cartoon Network ''live action movie'' (we're already getting into WallBanger territory here) ''The Haunting Hour'' had the main character, a {{goth}}, sit in her room and listening to depressing music for hours while staring off into space because she dropped food on herself at school. Later, when she's asked to take her brother trick or treating, she sulks while the soundtrack plays the lyrics ''Walking down the street alone. Everything I've ever loved is gone gone gone.''. Perhaps one of the most extreme examples on this page.
* A combination of the Doctor's incessant brooding about the destruction of the Time Lords -- which, as much as being a self-inflicted LastOfHisKind as the result of a terrible war would certainly be devastating, he seems actively determined not to get over -- and an increased focus on how lonely and [[WhoWantsToLiveForever immortal]] he is sees the new series of ''DoctorWho'' often dance around this trope. This is heavily reflected in the frequency of scenes of the Doctor moping in the TARDIS by staring into space as a sad orchestral track plays on the soundtrack as a result of either factor. The fact that every series revolves around something just guaranteed to force those wounds right back open, including the fact that the Daleks, who caused the aforementioned war in the first place, just [[JokerImmunity will]] [[BackFromTheDead not]] [[WhyWontYouDie die]], doesn't help matters.
** A {{Shipping}} version [[YourMileageMayVary arguably]] occurred in season three, in which the Doctor remained hung up on the loss of Rose and Martha obsessed over his lack of interest in her. Averted by the end of the series, however, in which Martha accepts that she's a rebound companion and leaves without bitterness to sort herself out; later appearances suggest that she's over the Doctor. The Doctor, for his part, is also much better about it, though he also got a chance to properly let her go at the end of Series 4.
** Despite it's lack of focus on the emotional lives of the characters, the classic series also fell into the wangst-trap -- especially during the 1980s, where efforts to inject increased conflict between the Doctor and his companions was increasingly interpreted by less-than-stellar writers into 'endless scenes of the characters standing around whining non-stop about relatively petty things and getting into trivial bickering matches with each other'. See most of Peri's interactions with the Sixth Doctor, or most of Tegan's interactions with ''anyone''. This had the effect not so much of generating interesting conflict between the characters as prompting the audience to wonder why these people who so obviously couldn't stand to be around each other and were clearly not having a good time insisted on travelling around space and time together.
* In ''RedDwarf'' Arnold Rimmer's constant Wangst is used to underscore what a generally unsympathetic and unlikeable character he is; he's constantly heard whining about his past (about how his parents didn't love him and everyone picked on him or held him back, how he never got the right breaks in life, how girls didn't like him, how he's dead, etc), but whilst there are some elements of his past for which you can't help but feel sympathy towards him about, it's immediately clear to everyone around him that Rimmer's complete refusal to shut the hell up and get over it, even after his death, is just an attempt by him to use his wretched past as an [[FreudianExcuse excuse]] not to deal with any failings that are entirely his own fault. Furthermore, his past is never used to excuse his cowardly, snide and self-serving actions in the present, and he is justifiably despised by almost every character on the show as a consequence.
** Rimmer's wangst is most clearly juxtaposed against the existence of his alternate self, "[[TheAce Ace]]" Rimmer (what a guy!), who had exactly the same background that Rimmer did except for one key element and yet ultimately became a noble, heroic, successful, attractive, likeable and modest individual -- Rimmer's exact opposite, in fact. True to form, Rimmer used this as an excuse for yet more bitter whining about how that this was a clear illustration of what he could have achieved had he received the 'break' his alternate self had received, unaware that the 'break' was actually the alternate Rimmer being kept down for a year at school, when Rimmer himself was allowed to move up:
--->'''Ace''': By his terms, he got the break. But being kept down made me. The humiliation. Being the tallest boy in the class by a clear foot. It made me knuckle down, fight back. And I've been fighting back ever since.
--->'''Lister''': While he's spent the rest of his life making excuses.
--->'''Ace''': ... Perhaps he's right. Perhaps I ''did'' get the break.
* Parodied on ''TheYoungOnes'' - it's not entirely clear ''why'' Neil, the whining, sullen and passive-aggressive hippy with a martyr complex and suicidal tendencies is so miserable all the time (although the fact that he's the house's [[ButtMonkey dogsbody and whipping boy]] doesn't help), but he's constantly found moping around the house complaining about his lot in life - and not one person sympathises with him (or even pays attention most times). He's also determined to make sure that his housemates know that out of all of them, he has the most wretched life; typically, his response to the news that both parents of one of his housemates had died in a sudden accident was to moan "You think that's bad?"
* ''TheNakedBrothersBand'' uses this constantly. Honestly, [[{{Narm}} no 9-year-old boy would be that melodramatic]].
* ''LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' has a tendency to labour over the personal issues of the detectives with the crimes they're investigating roughly every episode. Granted, investigating sex crimes isn't exactly going to be ''fun'', but for all the angsting that the characters seem to do about it, you really start to wonder why they haven't just decided to transfer out for the sake of their own sanity, since every single character seems to have [[ItsPersonal a special and personal reason]] to angst about ''almost every single case they'll ever come across''. At times this also makes you wonder why they haven't been forcibly reassigned, as there are practical and reasonable ethical concerns about having detectives investigate crimes towards which they feel a significant emotional attachment to. The show also has a tendency to [[DeusAngstMachina lay it on thick, as well]].
** IRL, agents assigned to the FBI's serial killer unit are regularly rotated out to work on other categories of crime for a while before being rotated back in, for ''precisely'' this reason.
* Depending on your point of view, ''{{Supernatural}}'' can veer into this territory an awful lot of the time. Despite being hailed as a show about two brothers who hunt down demons and promising "No Chick-Flick moments", it's actually got two leads with two entirely different flavors of massive daddy issues, with the potential to cross the line between justifiable violence and just plain nastiness (especially to each other), an intense to the point of being unhealthy fixation on each other as the only person they can count on being there, and a whole heap of different problems not to mention often-suicidal, martyred natures. [[MisaimedMarketing Talk about false advertising, huh?]]
* A couple characters on ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' do this. By far the worst offender is Claire Bennet, her ability is [[CursedWithAwesome regeneration]], and she cries about it nearly all throughout season one, mourning how she's the freakshow of the cheerleaders, despite the fact that nobody except for a very select few friends, and family knows about her ability, nor is her ability all that apparent. Then in season two, it gets even worse, because she cries that she can't go around showing her ability and how restrained she feels. Nevermind the fact that the only way to show her ability to others is by injuring herself. Nevermind the fact that all she has to do in order to avoid suspiscion is lay off her masochistic tendencies. Then she cries the company might find her, because they'll run tests on her and stuff, poking and prodding her. She cries about this too, even though it seems that's all she wants to do to herself, seriously if you find an episode with Claire in it that doesn't involve a suicide attempt or self mutilation, you get a cookie.
** The fact that series supervillain Sylar is one of the only characters to [[JumpedAtTheCall actually appreciate his powers and enjoy using them]], [[CursedWithAwesome instead of whining about being different]], may be part of his DracoInLeatherPants appeal. Hiro, another fan favorite, also enjoys his powers (the only main character who does), although [[DeusAngstMachina the writers seem to be bent on]] [[BreakTheCutie making sure that doesn't last too long]].
*** Then again, Hiro and Sylar have powers that are easily displayed (teleportation/time manipulation and a variety of powers including telekinesis, respectively). Claire has to be injured in order for her powers to show up, so that's a good reason as to why she gets the crap beaten out of her on a regular basis. Sort of like Wolverine, only without any of the cool parts.
* In ''{{Spaced}}'', Tim's angst about his selfish, adulterous girlfriend dumping him and kicking him out of the flat was often comically amped up to Wangst levels, as he was at times almost ludicrously self-pitying and miserable about the decline of a relationship that was, by all evidence, doomed to failure from the start. He gradually gets over it in the first season and, when given the chance to get back together with her, decides to move on instead.
** Brian's entire character is also pretty much based on this, as is his entire motivation for his art; he's constantly in a state of brooding, wired angst, but it's never actually certain ''why''. It even seems that overblown wangst is his ''muse'', since when he's happy and dating, he finds his inspiration drying up.
* Played for laughs in ''GarthMarenghisDarkPlace'', in which Marenghi's character on the show is frequently described as a 'brilliant but troubled doctor'; the ([[StylisticSuck deliberately]]) poor quality of the writing means that this usually translates to him constantly wangsting about something or other, and since he's the CanonSue everyone else falls over themselves to accommodate him.
*As one would expect soap operas live off of this trope. One particularly notable example was Belle Black from ''DaysOfOurLives'', who seemed to have wangst about everything, even events in storylines that only remotely affected her. One notable instance of Belle's wangst was when her father's best friend Abe Carver was presumed murdered: Despite previously being the show's poster child for abstinence (even having a purity ring) she suddenly became determined to lose her virginity out of fear that she would die before ever having sex. Her issues seemed trivial compared to the grief that others were experiencing over Abe's death. Eventually, Belle's wangst was lampshaded in a fantasy that Belle's mother Marlena had in which [[ItMakesSenseInContext Marlena shot Belle's then boyfriend (now husband)Shawn]]:
-->'''Marlena:''' (to Belle) ''Stop it, Belle, stop it! Stop whining! Ever since you were a baby your whining drove me crazy!''
* ''thirtysomething'' was about Baby Boomers. Wangst abounds out of every pore.
* Everyone who loses on ''AmericanIdol''. Nuff' said.
** Applies to most other countries' ''Idol'' programs, too. There was a joke in [[LandDownunder Australia]] that (runner-up) Shannon Noll had done a (dire) cover version of ''What About Me'' because ''he lost''. After swearing up and down that he would be bankrupt and on the street if he lost, he's now become more successful than the guy that ''did'' win.
* Andy Millman in ''{{Extras}}'', particularly in the second series and the Christmas special; okay, the television show he'd dreamed about writing and directing ended up being riddled with ill-advised ExecutiveMeddling and broad humour that he didn't appreciate, but for someone who was quickly catapulted into wealth and celebrity, he sure spent a lot of time whining about it. This was increasingly lampshaded throughout the show, however, with one of his less successful friends pointing out that the show and fame he spent so much time bitching about had enabled him to buy a nice big house and made him a household name, so it wasn't ''that'' bad; he ignored her at the time. A certain degree of hypocrisy was also noted by some characters, with it being readily apparently that for all his whining about having to sell out to be famous, he was quite happy to sell out even more in order to become more famous. By the end of the series Andy decided to get over himself.
* Kate, from the BBC's ''Series/RobinHood'', is still wangsting about her dead "bruthah" long after everyone else has ceased to care. Made especially irritating considering it was her own stupidity that directly led to his his death, and because ''two'' other outlaws (Allan and Djaq) also had their brothers killed by the regime/war. However, ''they'' only ever discussed their grief with each other, in private.
* The amount of angst on ''{{Lost}}'' concerning the Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliet love quadrangle can get a bit ridiculous at times, especially since these characters are facing worse situations daily while being stranded on a desert island with hostile natives and all they can do is mope around like hormonal teenagers. Television Without Pity summed it nicely in the recap of the season three episode "I Do", after Jack sees Kate and Sawyer together on the Others' security monitor:
-->''It's kind of funny to me that this seems to be the worst thing that's happened to Jack on this island, like, "Must escape from Others' prison, and... wait, no way! Kate and Sawyer?? Oh, f**k!"''
* ''{{Chuck}}'' is pretty much the epitome of this trope. In every single episode he whines about how he has to do some minor task to save the world because it gets in the way of him having a normal life or a girlfriend.
** Most of these "minor" tasks have the potential, if they went wrong, to get him captured, tortured and/or killed. In fact, I would submit that he takes the abundance of life-threatening situations he gets thrown into seemingly every week much better than most real people would.
*In ''{{Medium}}'', the husband character wangsts it out all the time. Almost every single episode, he blows up at Alison about how life is so hard and confusing because his family feels the need to act on dreams and premonitions that are, in this universe, totally true. And every single time, logic pwns his whining.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* Two words: The Cure
* [[http://xkcd.com/97 Simple Plan. Dear LORD, Simple Plan.]]
** Seriously, [[http://www.lyricstop.com/w/welcometomylife-simpleplan.html here]] are the rest of the lyrics to "Welcome to My Life." Alas, we will never know why the guy in that song is hurting so deep inside, because the most specific it gets is when he asserts that "you" won't understand because ''"No one ever lied straight to your face, no one ever stabbed you in the back."'' Really? REALLY?
* Almost every song by the band LinkinPark can be summed up in six words: "[[WellDoneSonGuy Why didn't you love me, Daddy]]?"
**Ditto Papa Roach.
**And several Smashing Pumpkins songs, although thankfully they tend to keep it as an undercurrent.
**In fact, virtually ''every'' band featuring at least one member who is the progeny of [[DysfunctionJunction divorced parents or the member of a dysfunctional family]] is guaranteed to feature some degree of Wangst in their lyrics. This contributor isn't sure whether that says more about the convenience of wangst as a songwriter's crutch, or about the horrifically rising rate of failed marriages (with [[CreatorBreakdown concomitant effects on the children of those relationships]]). Then again, at least they aren't [[SillyLoveSongs singing about]] [[IntercourseWithYou love]].
*Thank goodness for TheyMightBeGiants, who usually play this sort of thing for laughs. Listen to the LyricalDissonance of ''They'll Need a Crane'' or ''Narrow Your Eyes'' and you'll see what I mean.
** TMBG still manage to have some very dark, disturbing, and/or depressing lyrics in ther happy, boppy songs. ''Museum of Idiots'' probably takes the grand prize: "Chop me up into pieces, if it pleases, if it pleases. And when the chopping is through, every piece will say 'I love you'." {{Squick}}worthy.
**As does WeirdAlYankovic, most notable with "Angry White Boy Polka".
*** There's also "Why Does This Always Happen To Me?" where he complains at length about being temporarily inconvenienced by other people's misfortunes.
**And British comedian / musician Bill Bailey, who often skewers the 'self-pitying whine' inherent in much rock music today, as such:
---->You picked me up from school
---->You attended all my sporting functions
---->You bought me a car
---->Gave me use of a credit card
---->But how can I feel pain,
---->How can I feel pain,
---->How can I feel pain
---->When you're being so supportive?
** And Ben Folds' "Rockin' the Suburbs". "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlGCTWL6djo Don't ya'll know what it's like being male, middle class, and white]]?"
*** Which makes [[IsntitIronic ITS inclusion on the soundtrack]] for the ''OverTheHedge'' [[AdaptationDecay movie]] a little jarring...
*** It's also worth noting that WeirdAlYankovic directed the song's video, and Ben Folds played piano on the aforementioned "Why Does This Always Happen To Me?" Two friends working together to demolish Wangst? Brilliant!
* ''Dashboard Confessional''. Consider the following passage from the song "Hands Down".
-->"My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me, so won't you kill me, so I'll die happy...my heart is yours to fill or burst, to break or bury, to wear as jewelry...whichever you prefer."-Chris Carrabba, wondering why he never has any luck with women
** And this is one of his ''happier, '''less wangsty''''' songs!
* Lucy Simon's musical version of ''The Secret Garden'' gets very wangsty, especially anytime Archibald is on stage.
* Every or almost every {{Enka}} song ever written, in particular ''onna uta'' (women's songs) and songs about sake. "Sake Yo" by Ikuzo Yoshi, tells of a guy whose lover deserted him, and so he's become an alcoholic who talks to his sake as if it were his girlfriend.
* Shakin' Stevens did a lot of wangsting over women in his songs.
* Tons of metal lyrics, when they are not about hating the world, are chock full of wangst.
** An example is {{power metal}} band BlindGuardian. Almost every song includes one or more of the words "sorrow", "misery", "pain", "despair", "tears" and so on. Especially notable because the wangsty lyrics contrast with the (by metal standards) relatively happy sound of the music itself.
*** Hansi Kürsch does seem to enjoy angsting and hating the world on the behalf of the screwed-up characters of fantasy and mythology, both with BlindGuardian and Demons & Wizards; however, the prize for {{power metal}} wangst goes to Sonata Arctica. While most of their songs are depressing love songs, one of them appears to be about how CelebrityIsOverrated. They're a ''reasonably popular heavy metal'' band.
** {{Metallica}} slips into this from time to time, usually when James Hetfield writes songs about his childhood. ''The God That Failed'' is about his mother dying from cancer after refusing treatment, the whole ''Unforgiven'' line of songs is an elongated whine about... something, ''The Day That Never Comes'' appears to be about how his father hated him and the entire ''St. Anger'' album is a therapy session turned into music.
* Tom Lehrer addresses this after one of his songs.
-->"One problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." - Tom Lehrer
* [[PinkFloyd Roger Waters]] in ''TheWall'' and especially ''The Final Cut''. As if he were the only one ever to lose his father in a war or to feel alienated from other people. [[IGotBetter He got better]], though.
** 'least he had the decency to write catchy songs to go with it on ''The Wall''.
* AliceInChains. Songs like "Down in a Hole", "Would?", "Angry Chair" put bands like Linkin Park and Dashboard Confessional to shame. Though unlike those two bands, Alice in Chains has justified angst. Layne Staley's life was a giant DeusAngstMachina and he had major drug issues and depression on top of it. Despite having real reasons for angst, they did occasionally play it for (very dark) laughs. Reportedly the band members found the song "Dirt" hilarious, with lyrics like "I want you to scrape me from the walls and go crazy like you've made me."
* The Offspring's song "She's Got Issues" plays wangst for laughs in an attempt to make fun of people who blame all their problems on external influences and don't try to get over them.
** Likewise, the subject of the song "Self Esteem" is a loser wangsting about how pathetic he is for for being unable to dump a girl who is constantly cheating on him and using him and generally treating him like a doormat. [[LyricalDissonance With an upbeat and catchy tune!]]
* One feels it's about time Maynard got over his mother's long illness and early death and stopped making {{Tool}} do constant songs about her... (The last album was *named* after her, so maybe he'll be able to let it go, finally.)
* "Institutionalized", as recently re-popularized by a brief scene in ''IronMan'', smacks of this. Particularly the singer concluding by deciding it all doesn't really matter, on account of the fact that he'll probably be hit by a car. Yeah, that's... real conducive to dealing with your problems.
** I've always been under the impression that the song wasn't meant to be taken seriously. "All I wanted was a Pepsi and she wouldn't give it to me"? I mean, come ''on''!
* Several songs from Counting Crows's latest album, ''Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings'', particularly the "Sunday Mornings" part. In fairness there were some [[CreatorBreakdown real-life reasons]] behind this - and as many songs in "Saturday Nights" amount to [[AngstWhatAngst "life sucks - let's party!"]].
* "My Chemical Romance". Aside from the fact that dang near every song is titled "Cancer", "Dead", "Desolation Row" (a ''Bob Dylan'' cover) "Famous Last Words", "I Don't Love You", etc? If My Chemical Romance's entire discography DIDN'T qualify as Wangsty, then what, pray tell, might? If nothing else, Gerard Way's repeated cries of "You don't understand, we're not emo, we're not, we're not, emo sucks, we're so not emo, damn your eyes, you don't understand our music" should qualify them wholeheartedly just for Way's repeated Wangsting about the classification of his band's music. Being from [[PlaceWorseThanDeath New Jersey]] probably doesn't help either.
* Trent Reznor of NineInchNails has made a career by milking the teen angst bullshit for all it's worth.
* [[RebusBubble Music + This Trope =]] {{Emo}}. Simple enough.
* While MichaelJackson's childhood ''was'' fraught with overwork and abuse, his 1995 song [[http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/michaeljackson/childhood.html "Childhood"]] comes across as a whiny defense of his AdultChild behavior...especially coming so soon after he was first accused of harming children himself. Of course, he'd been at this for some time - "Leave Me Alone" was noted for a groundbreaking video that notably featured nothing but images of Jackson complaining about the media refusing to give him privacy. Ironically, the song by itself is about a relationship and doesn't come off quite so bad in that context, but in the context of the video (which was also packaged with the self-important egofest ''Moonwalker'') comes off as extremely pretentious. He final album, Invincible, included yet another song, "Privacy", in which he complained more on the same subject. While he literally did have no privacy up to the end of his life, even then many are quick to ponit out that he often courted the same attention he claimed to hate.
*Pick a song, any song, by {{Radiohead}}, {{The Smiths}} or {{Smashing Pumpkins}}. While they don't tend to be songs like 'My daddy didn't love me so now I'm a priiiick' They are songs about how depressing it is being a popstar worth millions of dollars. The Smashing Pumpkins were made fun of for this in an episode of TheSimpsons where Billy Corgan says to Homer "We envy you, Homer. All we have is our music, our legions of fans, our million of dollars and our youth."
** Note that not all SmashingPumpkins songs turned out like this. Some examples would be "Lily (My One and Only)" (A love song about a CAT)", "Cupid De Locke" (Straight up 'Star-crossed lovers' dirge)", "1979" (Nostalgic look back at your teen years), "Tonight Tonight" (Joyous celebration of being in the moment). You have to remember, just because a song ''sounds'' whiney, doesn't mean it ''is'' whiney.
** I pick "Airbag"!
---> In an interstellar burst
---> I am back to save the universe
** How's that exactly about hating your newfound fame?
*The members of Brand New take this trope to an at-times ''criminally insane'' level.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
* {{WCW}}/{{ECW}} wrestler Raven dedicated his life to destroying the career of Tommy Dreamer, simply because, when they were kids, Tommy was a JerkJock and stole his girlfriend at summer camp. "What about ''me''? What about ''Raven''?!" "Diamond" Dallas page had the best response ever to this brand of Wangst: "What ''about'' you?!" To be fair, though, Raven was rather consistently shown as a psychotic, misanthropic bastard who probably would hold a grudge that long.
*Bret "The Hitman" Hart, in {{Kayfabe}} and later for real when the {{WWE}} DroppedABridgeOnHim, wangsted about getting screwed over by everyone. Someone should really tell him that [[{{Kayfabe}} wrestling isn't real]].
** But apparently being contractually allowed to dictate when and where you drop your title, and being reassured beforehand that the owner guy would let you peacefully relinquish the title on live TV before leaving for WCW, only to be legitimately lied to and cheated out of the title afterwards, is real. Locker-room PapaWolf the Undertaker reportedly got in the boss's face about it, and Bret himself supposedly slapped Vince McMahon.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Videogames]]
* FinalFantasy and, to a lesser extent, its sister series KingdomHearts are some of the best examples of just how subjective this trope can be. Both series' tendency to focus on their main casts coming to terms with their (usually severe) problems can lead to [[BrokenBase vastly different reactions from the fans]] as it is, due to [[AngstDissonance differing levels of sympathy for the characters]], and the altered characterization that tends to circulate as {{Fanon}} certainly doesn't help. Nevertheless, there are several examples which legitimately could fall into the realm of wangst:
** Vincent Valentine from FinalFantasyVII doesn't actually angst much during the game itself - however, he's found in a coffin, which he had locked himself in for several decades out of guilt. While he actually did have legitimate problems, the action itself could easily be seen as over-the-top. He also spends a good deal of time brooding in ''Dirge of Cerberus'' and he's still anti-social in ''Advent Children'', though both show him getting over it. ''AdventChildren'' cracks a joke about it.
** Cloud's characterization in ''FinalFantasyVII Advent Children'' could also be taken this way, since he spent most of the movie feeling guilty over things that had happened years ago. Tifa even takes him to task for this in the movie itself, though, and it's suggested that this is a side effect of the Cloud's Geostigma. The movie also focused more on one specific event in the game as opposed to the events he had explicitly been shown to get past. He gets over it. The real irony comes when people forget that he was also like this in ''FinalFantasyVII'' itself. As he does not collpase into a quivering ball of tears and insanity at any point in ''AdventChildren'', he's actually ''better'' than he was in the game.
***In ''Advent Children Complete'' it's brought up that Cloud's guilt is also due to him being unable to find a cure for Denzel's Geostigma, and his fear that if he can't even look after himself then he's not worthy to look after Denzel, Tifa and Marlene. So it's not just the events of FF7 that's screwing with him.
** [[FinalFantasyVIII Squall]] has FreudianExcuse coupled with amnesia to give him an extremely anti-social personality. However, he never burdened anyone with his problems and rather than invite everyone to a pity party, he just kept them at arms length. For some players, this came off as making him so anti-social as to be unlikable and his justifications unworthy of much sympathy for his malaise. Ironically, the entire point of the game was convincing him that it really was okay to express his emotions and problems to others - though this trope would suggest that most players would find that even worse. The game also makes a running habit of other characters ribbing him for his habit of internal monologues, something the players see all the time.
*** The Squall in ''DissidiaFinalFantasy'' toys with this, though his motivations for being a loner here are ultimately proven to be more practical than simply emotional.
** Dagger in ''FinalFantasyIX'' could be a rather ''meta'' example - while going mute might be a legitimate reaction to failing to prevent the destruction of one's entire kingdom (let alone the other traumatic events she suffers through), the possibility of failing to carry out commands in an {{RPG}} is probably the fastest way to cause a "just get over it already!" reaction from the player.
** Riku in ''KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'' tries to actively avoid this by fighting the darkness in his heart rather than mope about it (a decision helped along by Mickey Mouse's encouragement.) However, in the end he accepts his darkness, and it causes him no end of grief. In ''KingdomHeartsII'', he spends the ''entire game'' missing until the end, where it's revealed that [[spoiler: accepting the darkness has made him look like Ansem and that he's been deliberately hiding from his friends because he was convinced they wouldn't like him anymore, which naturally turns out to be completely false.]] And then we get the [[GaidenGame interquel between Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II]], where he gets to say lines like "You could say I'm...the biggest nobody of all", with his voice now sounding [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything remarkably similar to Cloud's...]]
* Aerie of ''BaldursGate II'' seemed to alternate between this and a more tolerable scarred-but-workable mood, really more annoying for the arbitrary bipolarity than for the actual whining.
** Some lesser examples in this game include Jaheira, who'll have some light wangst about having to fight her former allies, the Harpers, and Anomen, who'll throw a proper hissy fit if he's not allowed to join his beloved Order (which may or may not happen depending on the actions of the player thus far).
* Saruin from ''RomancingSaGa'', you would think the God of Destruction would be more fear inducing, but after hearing his dialogue, some of the Heroes start considering: Why do people even fear him? [[spoiler:Sif, Hawke, Gray, and Claudia]].
* [[spoiler: Oersted]] from ''LiveALive'', though in his defense [[spoiler:he was tricked into committing regicide, was forced to battle his best friend to the death, and saw his bride-to-be commit suicide before his very eyes.]]
* Kratos from the ''GodOfWar'' series, fell into this trope after learning that [[spoiler: Zeus destroyed Sparta.]]. He gets over it by [[HeroicSociopath killing things]]. Lots and lots and ''lots'' of things.
* In the third chapter of ''TalesOfTheAbyss'', Luke fon Fabre begins to whine incessantly about [[spoiler:being [[TomatoInTheMirror a replica of Asch]]]]. He develops an inferiority complex that becomes increasingly more crippling every time [[spoiler:he runs into Asch (it doesn't help that Asch doesn't even call Luke by his name; he just calls him Replica)]] and has lost any and all self-confidence he once had after [[TheAtoner his atonement]] for being such a {{Jerkass}} in the first chapter.
** In his defense, his confidence was from that he and his group were doing something, and they were succeeding. He was changing, and they were able to help people. [[spoiler:But the confrontation with the BigBad at the end of the second chapter has him questioning things because he's the guy Luke looked up to for his entire life and looks down on him as dirt; indeed, his final words are along the lines of "I never thought I would be defeated by such a failure..." and ominous hysterical laughing.]] Then Luke's cooped up in a manor being able to do nothing for a month other than letting things stew over while everyone else is out doing something for people, and all of a sudden the things he'd thought they'd fixed aren't so fixed and are falling apart now. That makes a guy feel great.
* Although it comes from a lineage which has usually handled drama well, Raiden and Rose in ''MetalGearSolid 2'' were pushing it. It's nicely deconstructed in the third act though (along with [[GainaxEnding everything else]]), giving us disarmingly realistic look into a relationship struggling with a dark secret. In the finale, they're not rolling in clover, but ready to start putting their lives back together.
** After revealing that all the terrible things that happened to Fortune were a set-up, MagnificentBastard Revolver Ocelot mocks her: "You were [[{{LargeHam}} hamming it up]] as the tragic heroine thanks to the script that the Patriots wrote for you. Pure self-indulgence, absorbed in your own misfortune - you couldn't get enough of the drama."
** In the forth game Raiden manages the impressive feat of [[TookALevelInBadass transforming himself into an awesome badass]] while STILL being incredibly wangsty. His truly epic line "It even rained the day I was born!" is already well on it's way to a meme.
** In the first game, Solid Snake had a terrible habit of using the phrase "On the battlefield, [[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: something wangsty and nihilistic goes here ]]
]", even when it had very little to do with the actual conversation. This can at times roduce a {{Narm}}y [[InSovietRussiaTropeMocksYou Russian Reversal]] effect.
--->'''Meryl:''' So. What's next?
--->'''Snake:''' On the battlefield, you don't care about what's next.
* ''{{Zone of the Enders}}'' tipped right over the edge, putting a ''prepubescent boy'' through the [[DeusAngstMachina anime wangst machine]]. It's just ''mean''.
** But don't worry, he's [[TookALevelInBadass doing much better for himself]] in the sequel.
* Mathias Cronqvist ([[spoiler:who later became Count Dracula]]) shows a considerable amount of Wangst in ''{{Castlevania}}: Lament of Innocence'' regarding his dead wife, Elizabeth, whom he obsesses over to the point of being bedridden. What's worse, his friend noble BadAss Leon Belmont [[spoiler:is forced to take his beloved's life, yet he still continues his resolve for revenge]]. To make it even worse, it turns out that [[spoiler:Mathias, proving himself a DiabolicalMastermind, orchestrated Leon's wife's death in an impossibly elaborate XanatosRoulette that ends up sacrificing his humanity and the lives of countless people, all just to make himself feel better by "SPITING GOD"]].
* ''MegaManX'' during the seventh game. Sure, he was a bitching pacifist before, but ''X7'' takes it to epic levels with almost every cutscene showing him wangsting over the amount of bloodshed in the world. This is all the more jarring when you consider that the ''first'' Megaman X game had X coming to terms with the fact that he has to fight for peace.
** X had a somewhat necessary personality snap after about two ''hundred years'' of seemingly constant warfare. There's only so long that you can reconcile a desire for peace with the ability to kick ass.
** Further compounding the problem, in the ending for ''MegaManZero'', X lamented that the most dreadful moment for him was when he "[[HeWhoFightsMonsters stopped caring about fighting enemies]]".
* In MegaManStarForce, Geo Stelar became very wangsty after [[spoiler: finding out that Pat sent out Anti-Brother waves and stopping him in the junk yard.]] As a result, he stopped trusting all his friends and broke off their Brother Bonds fearing that they would be like Pat [[spoiler: despite Pat having a [[JekyllAndHyde Hyde]] that made him do those things and being flat out told the fact before the wangst fest happened.]] If that wasn't bad enough, [[spoiler: Tom Dubius]] was going through trust problems much earlier in the game and it made much more sense, because [[spoiler: a man became "Brothers" with him just to steal his ideas.]]
** Star Force 3 has Geo [[AngstWhatAngst completely lose all of his angst]], [[LampshadeHanging much to the confusion of Omega-Xis.]]
* [[{{Xenosaga}} Shion Uzuki]]. So much as imply her dead fiancé ...
** Even bigger is when you compare her to her brother Jin, who has had no less a spectacularly sucky life and he deals with it with almost masochistic amounts of Stoic.
* Your wingmen in ''AceCombat 5'' can get really teeth-gritting. Every 5 minutes, in violation of any NORMAL Air Force's policy regarding radio discipline, someone in your flight decides to broadcast their views about how war sucks, and how wonderful it would be to fly with the enemy in peace. You'd think such rabid pacifists would find a different line of work.
** Well, they ''were'' pacifists. There hadn't been a war in almost fifteen years in Osea, so signing up for the Air Force was a way to fly, not to fight. Once war actually broke out, they sucked it up and killed people, but that didn't change their beliefs.
** You forgot ''Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War'' and your first wingman Pixy will fit the above description a bit and then tosses in a HeelFaceTurn at the end of the first war and joins a terrorist group. For a damn cynic on the war he does hold up to a twisted idealist cause. The Belkan war series felt like a political statement there.
* This is one of the reasons that [[SonicTheHedgehog Shadow The Hedgehog]] is [[TheScrappy hated by]] [[BrokenBase at least half the fandom]]. Lately he seems to have mostly gotten over it.
* In ''SuperRobotWars Original Generation Gaiden'', when you learn his purpose, as Kyosuke Nanbu said, [[SuperRobotWars Professor Wilhelm von Juergen]] was just a man who fell into a massive {{Wangst}} after the death of his family by the aliens. The result was his wangst was radically changing the ODE System, which was formerly a dandy network system for auto piloting... into a [[AIIsACrapShoot sentient system that kidnaps living humans and use them as live cores]], which eventually [[HoistByHisOwnPetard comes to bite him on the ass]] by absorbing ''him'' as well.
* In ''RainbowSix Vegas 2'' it's revealed via MotiveRant that the [[BigBad terrorist mastermind]] teamed up with radical terrorists and drug-dealing human traffickers and started a plot to blow up multiple ares in Vegas, flooded a gymnasium full of civilians with poison gas, betrayed the Rainbow organization, and was going to sell US government secrets on the Black Market, because Bishop and Six passed him up for promotion in favor of Logan Keller. Fair enough, except for the fact that reason why they did this was because the mastermind ''disobeyed orders and got a hostage negotiator killed''. How the hell could someone that unprofessional and inept even get into a secret antiterrorist unit?
* ''Overlord'' brings us the elves of Evernight, whose race was long ago completely wiped out, reducing them to telepathic ghosts. Much of their dialogue is spent lamenting their cruel fate and whining to their Mother Goddess. Their constant Wangst has rendered them completely useless, to the extent that when an important religious relic of theirs is stolen, their first reaction is to come crying to you and start mourning.
**...And of course being a EvilOverlord, you can kick them and steal their stuff.
* Niko Bellic in [[GrandTheftAuto GTA IV]] lays it on rather thick. Yes, alright, the universe has screwed you over. Nearly Everyone you meet betrays you, dies, or is several kinds of stupid. Your irritating cousin constantly pesters you with requests to go bowling, the bastard. But constantly complaining about your miserable lot in life sits very poorly with walking around richer than Croesus, armed to the teeth, and capable of surviving a high dive from a helicopter (if you land in water, completely unscathed; if you pancake on the tarmac, a small loss of money and respawning at the nearest hospital).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''ItsWalky'' fell victim to this trope on several occasions; David Willis' habit of dropping the DramaBomb meant that a lot of the time, when the characters weren't reeling from [[DeusAngstMachina the latest over-whelming assault of carpet-bombed unpleasantness to hit their lives]], they were angsting profusely about things that had happened long, long ago or blowing relatively small things out of proportion in order to angst about them. Sal in particular was guilty of this.
* Ash from ''{{Misfile}}'' has now reached this level. Her bemoaning how bad her life is since she [[GenderBender got turned into a girl]] rings increasingly hollow, especially since it's been pointed out she is [[CursedWithAwesome a lot happier]] whenever she forgets to remember this.
** [[YouNeedToGetLaid She really needs to get laid.]]
** The "Ask Ash" segments where readers get to send Ash questions has lampshaded this several times, with questions along the lines of "Would you really want to forget everything that's happened and go back to being a boy? (list of awesome things that have happened)" and the answer is inevitably "yes". Said answer is getting increasingly difficult to take seriously.
** Somewhat justified in that Ash's bent gender is a metaphor for the plight of transgendered persons IRL, who often seem to feel similarly about what they'd trade to feel right in their own bodies.
* In ''DominicDeegan'', Luna Travoria sometimes berates herself for her Wangst moments.
* Spoofed by Young Haley in ''OrderOfTheStick''.
* Faye in ''QuestionableContent''. She's working on getting better, but she continues to look at everything that anyone does in terms of how it affects her.
* Parodied in ''{{Homestuck}}'' with John Egbert's angst towards his father's unfailing love and support towards him. [[http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002074 This comic]] has Rose call him on it... [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002266 not that she's any better herself. (Keep Clicking)]]
* In ''TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob,'' Molly, who is normally very upbeat, can dip into Wangst when she is in XMen [[http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20070501.html fangirl mode.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
*Comes up so much in ''SurvivalOfTheFittest'' that it's impossible to list all of the examples. One particularly noticeable character suffering from this is Damien Carter-Madison (my mother hates me! ''sob''), who was pretty much angst-central for v2.
* Mackenzie, the half-demon main character in ''TalesOfMU'', comes close to {{Wangst}} with her continuous self-loathing and belief that her tainted blood makes her innately evil, despite being a more decent person than most of the people around her.
** Somewhat justified, in that you'd expect someone who spent nine years living in her grandmother's basement and being continually told that she's and evil abhorant abomination barely worthy of existance to have some major psychological issues, and that's before you take into account the fact that God literally hates her, and burned her mouth when she tried to pray to him.
** This is reversed when she [[spoiler:fails to "feed" her demon half and it comes to the surface, causing a massive change in personality, to a truly demonic outlook]], thus showing that she is at least partially justified in her belief.
* The [[{{ptitlegm3tnwe7}} Legion of Net.Heroes]] [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructs]] this. In ''[[http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.comics.creative/browse_thread/thread/f6008eec176c6ec2/00fb58879629dd30 ANGST: An Amazing Medical Discovery]]'', Doctor Stomper explains the difference between Low-Density Angst, which takes up a lot of space but never gets resolved and ends up as pointless brooding, and High-Density Angst, which is more concise and actually leads to CharacterDevelopment.
*Fun experiment. Go to {{WeBook}} and find a random work. There is a [[{{Sturgeons Law}} 90]]% chance that it will be chockful of it.
*Venom of the Axis of Anarchy in ''TheGuild''. Endlessly. Mostly as a parody.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* [[FamilyGuy Meg Griffin]] does this often. To be fair, she gets so much unwarranted abuse from everybody that it's kind of understandable. Which makes it all the funnier to see her get [[ButtMonkey kicked]] even more.
* In the 1990s ''Series/FantasticFour'' cartoon, Johnny falls in love with Crystal over the course of ''an episode and a half'', and when a barrier seals her and the rest of her fellow Inhumans in their city, Johnny spends '''literally every episode for the rest of the series' run''' angsting about it.
** Made even more amusing/ridiculous/something by the fact that he spent a ''considerably'' longer time drooling over Medusa, Crystal's older sister. It turns out she's married to Black Bolt, Johnny gets over her like ''that'', spends a couple hours with Crystal... and spends the entire final season in a pit of Wangst.
* Quite a bit of stuff Prince Zuko says in ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'', particularly in Season 3. Aang also got a bit "aangsty" in Season 2 during the period when Appa was missing.
** A bit of Zuko's behavior in Season Two was rather wangsty as well. Take for example, the scene where he [[SmiteMeOhMightySmiter stands on a mountain top and demands lighting to strike him, yelling that the world never had a problem screwing him over before!]] Granted, the man's got some problems, but [[{{Narm}} sometimes just goes a bit over the top]].
*''FairlyOddParents''-the song "Not On The List". They didn't get want they wanted for Christmas and sang an entire song to complain about it whereas some (not all) characters on the show with bigger problems don't complain that much (or at all) about their problems. However, its probably justified considering most of them singing were kids and one was a teen. Also, the people that were singing the song were some generic kids, Timmy's friends, his parents and Vicky. But even if it is Wangsty, its still an OK song. [[AnAesop The Aesop]] of course, was that the people were being Wangsty about it and should focus on what they can give, not what they didn't get.
*In ''{{Transformers}}: BeastWars'' Optimus Primal mourned for every ally's death, but he remembered he was in a war he needed to win. Series ends, he gives a prayer for the fallen who helped his victory and heads off. ''Beast Machines'' comes around and he cannot stop complaining over the cost of war and how little morale he has(though the fact that Megatron had basically conquered the entire planet may have had something to do with it). Even Cheetor, who formerly looked up to him, basically told him to snap out of it.
** In ''TransformersArmada'', Starscream's story-arc is generally considered to be fairly well-done. But even some of those who teared up at [[spoiler: his death]] have to admit that his angst was more wangsty when you consider that he's a ''high-ranking soldier'' in a ''military known for wrecking havoc'' and that the fact that Megatron hasn't killed him yet is ''probably the biggest sign of favor anyone will ever get from the mech.'' His back-and-forthing thus comes off less as conflicting beliefs and more "He'll miss me when I'm gone! DX" There's a reason why some call him [[FanNickname Emoscream]].
* [[http://www.platypuscomix.net/videos/curtiscalhoun.wmv Curtis Calhoun]], a character based on G. Brian Reynolds from the obscure Christmas special ''Up on the Housetop''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Truth In Television]]
* Ever wonder about the things former heavyweight champion [[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mike_Tyson#On_Himself Mike Tyson]] says [[SelfDeprecation about himself]]? Now you know.
* Far too common on certain internet forums, where you will find obnoxious users whining about problems that are serious only to them.
* You've done this ''and you '''know it'''.''
[[/folder]]
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