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"...Forever whining about how bitterly unfair your lives have been. Well, it may have escaped your notice, but Life. Isn't. Fair!"
I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
- The Garbage song "Only Happy When It Rains"
Angst, when applied properly, can create compelling drama and Character Development. There's something heartbreakingly elegant in how The Woobie or The Grotesque suffers in silence, as a fragile being hopelessly outmatched by the cruel harshness of the real world and/or his own inner demons. This may be the reason that True Art Is Angsty.
But angst, like humor, can be taken too far. When the Woobie becomes a pathetically whiny character moping about a tragic past or event that he should have gotten over and put behind him long ago, it becomes Wangst instead. Likewise, if the problem is something that, whilst it may be a bit of a pain to deal with, is nevertheless relatively trivial and (you would think) would be easy enough to overcome, but the character simply refuses to deal with it, then the character can quite easily slide into Wangst. In extreme cases, the issue might be something that no reasonable person would bother angsting about in the first place, as it's just that trivial.
Wangst is believed to have been coined as a Portmanteau between "whiny" (or "wanky", depending on who you ask) and "angst". Basically, Wangst refers to all the instances of angst done wrong, when the character seems to embrace its angst openly and (pro)claiming his suffering quite vocally, engaging in too much self-loathing for the patience of the public. It is especially bad if the character seems determined to simply moan about their circumstances rather than actually deal with them; few people have much tolerance for those who actively refuse to deal with their problems in real life, let alone within fiction (where it is generally expected that the characters will actively engage with and deal with their problems).
A very thin line exists between angst and wangst, as even superficially unimportant events can be realistically used to demonstrate a character's internal suffering, and even truly devastating life events can become melodramatic Wangst if the sufferer's self-loathing drags on for too long, or is brought up at every single opportunity. Angst can also devolve into Wangst if it becomes a regular plot device, which lessens its emotional impact over time. The latent self-pity inherent in this trope can also be especially glaring if the character who is doing all the whining is surrounded by other characters who have just as many - if not many more - reasons to spend all their time complaining, but instead cope with their problems in a much more restrained and effective fashion, particularly if the character isn't called out about it. The audience can also be turned off if the character is Cursed With Awesome and spends all their time moaning about something which is actually pretty cool if they thought about it.
What distinguishes Wangst from angst is the believability factor: Would a real-life person in the character's shoes have reacted similarly, or would only soap opera heroes be that dramatic? Because of this, wangst, much like navel contemplation, is closely associated with sloppy Character Development. A telltale sign of wangst is when it makes viewers sorely tempted to slap the character and yell, "Just get over it already!"
Can work with a Broken Hero, who doesn't complain but lets other people monologue about his struggle.
Most prevalent in "tearjerker" shows and a good number of anime. Frequent in Fanfic if there is a Writer On Board, as a way to give a Mary Sue some depth. The Emo Teen is also particularly prone to this.
The distinction/line between this and Deus Angst Machina is frequently a matter of opinion, but there is naturally a bit of overlap, since one tends to lead into the other; one key distinction between the two is that Deus Angst Machina is where there are too many sources of angst happening to sustain Willing Suspension Of Disbelief, whereas Wangst is where there is too much response to sources of angst. It should also be noted that Wangst can be subjective, and varies depending on the tolerance level of the viewer — what is gratingly over-the-top and implausible for one viewer can be heartbreakingly real for another.
See also Emo, Narm, Angst Dissonance. Compare Deus Angst Machina. Contrast Angst What Angst
Examples:
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 Woobie and Lana isn't.
- Whip-Snap in the second season of Who Wants To Be A Superhero 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.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel sometimes (or often, depending on just how unsympathetic you feel) wobbled into 'wangst' territory - this is largely down to every single character suffering through miserable family lives AND unhappy romances, main characters dropping like flies throughout and a great emphasis placed on how the main characters were either Blessed With Suck or Cursed With Awesome, 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.
- Six words: Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. In the final season of Highlander The Series, no doubt many fans were rooting for the Big Bad Immie to take Duncan's head and put them out of his misery.
- The Cartoon Network live action movie (we're already getting into Wall Banger 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.
- In Doctor Who, depending on your viewpoint (whether you accepted the Rose / Doctor OTP or not; whether you thought the Doctor should engage in romances or not) some fans believed that the Tenth Doctor's frequent lamenting about Rose's departure and the constant references to her in the third series began to get a bit wangsty. Although an attempt to reverse a trend in the old series wherein old companions, no matter how close to or valued by the Doctor, would just be forgotten about when they left (including, in one particularly egregious example, his granddaughter), these fans began to argue that this went too far in the other direction, made the Doctor look self-obsessed and whiny, and made it difficult to engage with new companion Martha, as she was always been compared to Rose and judged not good enough. On the other hand, however, Martha’s unrequited feelings for the Doctor arguably also belonged here, since she didn't seem to be able to not tell someone that she was in love with him but he didn't even notice her, which - according to these fans - made her seem a bit pathetic. Wangst all around, it seemed. In a refreshing subverting/averting example however, at the end of the third series, Martha actually realises she's a rebound companion and leaves to get her life sorted out without any moaning or bitterness. The Doctor seems less whiny as well. It has been a year.
- After having two years' worth of wangst about how Rose is the Doctor's wun twoo wuv and how his lives are meaningless without her, only to have him spend forty five minutes locked in a room with her before turning around and going "GTFO of my TARDIS and take Clone-Boy with you," this troper does not want to hear one more word about her pass the Doctor's lips. EVER.
- Several of the stories made in the eighties also fall here, as one of the things that the production team of the time tried to inject into the series was conflict between the Doctor and his companions. Unfortunately, a few too many of the writers seemed to interpret 'conflict' as 'endless TARDIS-based scenes of the characters standing around whining non-stop about relatively petty things and getting into trivial bickering matches with each other'. This had the effect not so much of generating interesting conflict between the characters as prompting the audience to wonder why these people insisted on travelling around space and time together when it was patently obvious that they didn't really like each other and couldn't actually stand to be in each other's presence, and furthermore weren't actually enjoying the travelling and adventures anyway. The first season with the Sixth Doctor and Peri was particularly bad in this regard.
- The Doctor's brooding about the destruction of the Time Lords and how he is the Last Of His Kind in the new series can also dance around this trope at times; granted, there is some justification involved, as having to destroy your entire race in a devastating war against an ultimate evil like the Daleks would be psychologically devastating, but every time someone mentions the possibility of him one day actually moving on he's quick to shut them down and assert how he'll never get over it, and every season there seems to be some new reason to force that wound right back open in order to prevent him from ever coming to terms with it. His grief can also be slightly jarring when considering that, prior to the new series, a significant part of the Doctor's character was that he actively disliked his people and avoided them at every opportunity, and they in turn attempted to kill him on numerous occasions.
- It would be much easier to come to terms with if The Doctor's arch-enemies, the Daleks, didn't keep coming back.
- Red Dwarf - Arnold Rimmer is 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. However, Rimmer is deliberately intended to be an unsympathetic and unlikeable character in many ways, and his ludicrous wangst is a device towards this end; while it is occasionally used to generate sympathy for him (and there are some elements of his past for which you can't help but pity him), Rimmer's complete refusal to shut the hell up and get over it, even after his death is part and parcel of his unlikeability. Furthermore, his wangst is never permitted to excuse his selfish and cowardly actions, it's immediately apparent to everyone around him that he only uses his wretched past as an excuse not to deal with any failings that are entirely his own fault, and he is despised by almost every character on the show as a consequence. This is clearly illustrated by the existence of an alternate timeline version of himself who, despite sharing much of the same past, had basically turned out as his complete opposite - daring, heroic, charismatic, successful - because of a single event in their shared past which had gone differently for the alternate: a letter determining whether Rimmer stayed down a year or moved up. Rimmer bitterly complained that this was a clear illustration of what he could have achieved had he received the 'break' his alternate self had received, unaware that by his terms he did; the alternate Rimmer was the one kept down for a year.
- Parodied on The Young Ones - 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 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?"
- The Naked Brothers Band uses this constantly. Honestly, no 9-year-old boy would be that melodramatic.
- Law And Order Special Victims Unit 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 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 lay it on thick, as well.
- 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. Talk about false advertising, huh?
- A couple characters on Heroes do this. By far the worst offender is Claire Bennet, her ability is 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.
- 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.
- Played for laughs in Garth Marenghis Dark Place, in which Marenghi's character on the show is described as a 'brilliant but troubled doctor'; the deliberately poor quality of the writing means that this usually translates to him constantly wangsting about something or other, and since he's the Canon Sue everyone falls over themselves to accommodate him.
Anime
- Edward Elric in the anime version of Full Metal Alchemist would constantly brood over his and his brother Alphonse's situation, which made him look whiny in comparison to Al, who was in a worse situation but seemed to take it much better.
- This troper disagrees. Ed is 15-16 years old and has already taken so many severe traumas that it's a wonder he can still behave relatively normally and interact with people. He essentially takes all the responsibility for Al's condition — and the responsibility of fixing it — on himself. Plus, he tends to act tough, doesn't complain a lot, and he goes through awful amounts of pain due to his Automail surgery. And don't forget the one who becomes a "dog of the military" is Ed himself, giving up his own freedom so that Al has a better chance at getting fixed.
- A more obvious example is Roy Mustang in The Movie. 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 Ishbal 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.
- Maybe this is alternate character interpretation, but while Mustang was undoubtedly wangsty, he seemed to have guessed that Ed would somehow magically resurface. I felt that he demoted himself and took the transfer so that he wouldn't be busy, and could spend unhealthy amounts of time sifting through news records, or whatever.
- Actually, Roy hadn't come to terms with his actions in Ishbal (see the episode Fullmetal vs. Flame for evidence of such.) His pursuit of the top of the foodchain wasn't an end in of itself, but a means to an end, namely the restoration of the true government of Amestris and the ending of the wartime atrocities the military was committing. Once he accomplished this by other means (outright revolution), Roy chose to deal with his own demons by going far away in atonement.
- Either way, they're both far less wangsty in the manga.
- Everyone in Neon Genesis Evangelion is 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.
- Even though a good portion of the characters truly have traumatic pasts, the anime Inu Yasha 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 Inu Yasha 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.
- Notice that, while overdone, Kagome had a valid reason to angst. Lots of people in the other era sees her less as the normal girl she is and more like the second coming of the Miko Kikyou (which she technically is), therefore Kagome either was seen as a poor Replacement Scrappy for her or a "living Shikon shard detector" (specially Naraku, who is specially good at taunting her with that). Combine this with Kagome having the revived and much more conflicted Kikyou as both her love rival and The Minnesota Fats, and with Inuyasha practically running off towards Kikyou whenever she was mentioned despite Kagome also needing his support (he even lampshades this to himself more than once... but does it anyway despite knowing he shouldn't), and it's just a thing of time before Kagome reaches her limits.
- Take any teenager who gets dumped in a romantic series. Anyone at all.
- To this editor, the later episodes of Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl get a bit melodramatic and Wangsty, to the point where he wants to reach into the TV, shake whoever it is at the time by the shoulders and yell "GET OVER IT ALREADY!"
- Similarly, the latter half of the School Days anime becomes a true wangstfest, with the main characters acting irresponsibly and illogically to the extreme. Things would have been better if they would just stop and think from time to time.
- Yuka in Elfen Lied 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 somehow. Granted, anyone would be pretty messed up if you were eight years old and came home from school to find that 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. Somehow, though, his angst being justified doesn't make it any less annoying to some people. The really weird thing is that everyone just thinks of him as wangsty, even though post-timeskip he's much more aloof and impassive like his brother. Actually most of this is Inner Monologue, and what he says is more often declaration that he will kill his brother. The low level of tolerance probably stems from his Heel Face Turn, and as backlash for all the people that take it in the opposite direction. The fact that Sasuke is such a polarizing character doesn't help.
- Still, that doesn't explain why Naruto himself doesn't make much of his life. The poor guy was completely alone for about 12-13 years, being looked down at by just about everyone in the village (except for
5 6 people. The 3rd Hokage, The Ramen Shop owner and his daughter, Iruka, Kakashi, and finally Hinata), for a reason no one bothered to explain to him. It's surprising he didn't turn into a Sasuke/Gaara combination. Recently in the manga, he finds out that Jiraiya died, he got kinda mopey for about half a chapter, but gets over it after talking to Iruka in the same chapter.
- This is actually mentioned during one of the first arcs. Kakashi is talking to a kid and explains Naruto's depressing back story. He theorizes that Naruto eventually decided to stop crying and start doing something. Which made this troper start to like him more, despite his bratty attitude (which does get toned down once he matures).
- Or just Gaara. Heck, his past is probably an integral part of his punch therapy. Instead of angsting, he's vented by killing people.
- And Shikamaru, who rather then wangsting over the death of his sensei, actually went out and did something (earning a Crowning Moment Of Awesome in the process).
- It is believable that Takayuki in Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien goes through a rough time after the girl he dates, Haruka, goes into a coma. But he gets major help from another fine girl, Mitsuki, so it is quite hard to grasp why he would still be in shatters when his former love interest wakes up three years later.
- 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 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 died eight years ago.
- Rakka from Haibane Renmei may also qualify for this. After Kuu has her Day of Flight, she becomes ridiculously depressed and apathetic, which takes her three episodes to get over it. Of course, losing your best friend in a strange environment after having your memory wiped out can be quite distressing, but still.
- This troper felt a little more sympathetic to her because she didn't whine about her "emotional pain" every episode but rather became quiet, antisocial and disconnected from everyone else, which is a slightly more realistic depiction of clinical depression (rather than self indulgent attention whoring).
- It's pretty strongly implied that abandonment issues are what made Rakka a Haibane in the first place.
- The cast of Simoun does so much wangsting, it can make some viewers grimace with beams of acid hate. Then again, it may not be the best idea to have young girls control weapons of mass destruction.
- Neviril's 7-episode-long fit of locking herself away in her room over 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 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.
- Kenshin and Kaoru of the OVA 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 their inevitable and imminent deaths might have had something to do with it.
- A lot of the melodrama in the second half of Oniisama E comes from Fukiko, who can't get over the fact that 6 years earlier the guy she loved didn't come to listen to her violin recital. She was 12 at that time.
- Those unfamiliar with Yami No Matsuei 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 Raped and cursed to horrific, painful death; was often locked in the basement by his parents, partly because of his EXTREMELY powerful empathy (and partially, IIRC, because they didn't want him to be the prey of a powerful demon who cursed his family in arather gruesome manner; was captured ant tortured by main villain who happens to be his rapist/killer; later has to rescue his partner from the flames of Hell — pretty much literally...
- Wangst is a serious risk to ones own health in Paranoia Agent. It brings on Shonen Bat.
- Nozomu Itoshiki can and will become suicidally depressive over even the slightest provocation. However, the way the series plays it makes it not intolerably annoying, but awesomely funny.
Comic Books
- This often happens with the X-Men, especially during the mid-90s; some writers are better at the soap-opera style that made the team popular in the Bronze Age 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 dated for a week before she ended up killed.
- Batman constantly teeters on the line between angst and wangst, as writers vary their emphasis on his parents' death. "MY PARENTS ARE DEAD!!!
 MY SIDEKICK IS DEAD!!!" etc., etc.
- Spider Man 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 the movie adaptations, as Spidey's main wangst-fighting weapon, his constant joke-cracking, has been removed.
- Speedball, after his transformation into Penance (a.k.a. "Bleedball"), drives headfirst into all-Wangst-all-the-time territory, without as much as a rest stop in between.
- A flashback issue of Spider Man Loves Mary Jane sees Mary-Jane, who has just broken up with her first boyfriend, indulge in a pretty epic bout of Emo Teen 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 Emo Teen 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 (even if she's completely unaware that he's actually Spider-Man, whose recent emergence has also inspired her to get over herself).
- Given that it's essentially a Teen Drama 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 Stepford Smiler 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.
- Step forward, Wonder Girl, of Teen Titans fame. What's that you say? "MY BOYFRIEND IS DEAD!". Well, there's no need to shout so loud, especially considering that you reminded us last month as well. Made worse by the fact that her team includes, off the top of my head, a girl who was drugged up and turned Ax Crazy by her supervillainous father, a boy who's lost three parents and at least two girlfriends in far more ignominious circumstances, another guy who's probably going to lose his soul, and a girl from a race of total sociopaths, who don't whinge nearly as much, or at least whinge more believably.
- Way back in the 60's, when Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four'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 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, 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 unceremoniously vanishes from the plot.
Film
- Anakin Skywalker from the Star Wars 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 spell it all out for you.
- In Van Helsing, Big Bad Dracula is introduced with a wangst about how he can feel no emotion. It's actually quite cool, for certain reasons.
- Edward Scissorhands. This is probably why teenagers like it so much.
- Batman Begins. Admittedly watching one's parents gunned down at the age of eight must be a horrific experience, but he's still obsessed about it years later. However it is averted by the fact that others characters are basically telling him to get over it, other people have suffered more than him and there are more important things to be focussing on right now.
- Ducard takes on the role of comforting him but this is averted too. While training, Ducard mentions that his parent's death wasn't his fault. But just at it's starting to look all nice, Ducard subverts it by adding: "It was your father's." Ouch. Low blow dude.
Literature
- Harry Potter in The Order of the Phoenix — but then, that's 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 his godfather's death.
- Getting Mode Locked definately wouldn't be fun, but Tobias earned the Fan Nickname "Emohawk" from fans because he kept whining abut it for the first years' worth of books! Consider this: the 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 having to kill mice to eat...as opposed to, you know, killing cows and pigs and other animals to eat as a human.
- Then when he regains his ability to morph, he often complains about his human morph's inferior eyesight and hearing compared to his hawk form.
- The Epic Of Gilgamesh: 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!
- Played for laughs in The Belgariad, 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 Running Gag.
- 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?".
- Terry Brooks, 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 fight fate, this comes off as Wangsty real fast.
- Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein never stops complaining to the reader about his miserable fate and how depressed he is, despite the fact that his creation is far worse off and doesn't whine half as much.
- This is done intentionally as a form of dramatic irony.
- Stephen R. Donaldson's characters, especially Thomas Covenant, are frequently accused of this; Donaldson loves to put his characters through hell so he can watch them suffer, but sometimes they just Wangst because they can.
- A vast quantity of Shakespearean characters:
- Romeo in Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet 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 Star Crossed Romance that leads to suicide is not even an issue yet!
- The award for Self Obsessed, Mopy Git has to be shared between Duke Orsino of Twelfth Night and Antonio, the Merchant of Venice.
Orsino: Why doesn't Olivia love me, WHY? *wangst wangst wangst*
Antonio: I'm very sad and I don't know why
... Just SHUT UP.
- 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.
- Rand Al'Thor in the Wheel Of Time books acts like this a lot. What he angsts about? Women dying because of him. Never mind that the women in question are 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 Don Quixote, when the ingenious Hidalgo decides to express his lovelorn grief by going crazy in the wilderness for several days.
- Active aversion in The Outsiders: The Troubled But Cute cast, who have no money and most of whom have no parents, never complain. Ponyboy starts to once, but Two-Bit quickly tells him to get over it. Life isn't fair, and they have to deal with it.
- Explored in Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility; 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-indulgent, especially in contrast with her sister Elinor's restrained and rational 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 criticising Elinor's 'lack of feeling' once too often). However, whilst Marianne comes to realize that her wangsting is merely self-indulgent and unhelpful - particularly when it eventually ends up with her contracting pneumonia and almost dying after a 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 - Elinor is also prompted to learn that her over-rational response to the situation isn't the most helpful either, in that it merely blinds people to her pain, and that in such circumstances a little angsting is perhaps appropriate.
- Though it's more her mother who only realises how very upset Elinor is when she turns white on hearing that her true love has married another. And given that Elinor's problem was (almost) insoluble, and that she actively wanted to spare her family grief on her account, it can't really be said that she did learn this lesson.
- Mostly the entire plot of New Moon.
- The Malazan Book Of The Fallen series has a nasty habit of this. To be fair things really are pretty bad for the characters and the world they are in. It wasn't too bad for this troper until the very latest installments, where not only did several characters complain ALL THE TIME (sometimes just to themselves in their heads, but still) but they repeated each and every problem every time they reappeared in the story. WE GET IT ALRIGHT! SHUT UP for gods sake!
- 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.
Western Animation
- In the 1990s Fantastic Four 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 [snaps fingers], spends a couple hours with Crystal... and spends the entire final season in a pit of Wangst. Oookay...
- Quite a bit of stuff Prince Zuko says in Avatar The Last Airbender, 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 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 sometimes just goes a bit over the top.
Video Games
- To the irritation of RPG fans everywhere, the success of Final Fantasy VII, particularly Cloud, Sephiroth, and Vincent, convinced many RPG developers that the only way to create a hit RPG was to throw in enough wangst to choke Trent Reznor. As a result, the genre was inundated for years afterward with characters who hated the world, their friends, and themselves with equal vigor.
- As a result, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (which was created eight years after the game) had Cloud (who had initially started off angsty but got better near the end) fall into this territory, filled with guilt over things the previous game had established he was now over guilting about. After all, nobody likes happy, well-adjusted characters, least of all the fans. To be fair, Cloud's indecision was almost explicitly stated to be caused by the Geostigma. Once that was cured, he had no problems becoming the ass-kicking pseudo-SOLDIER again.
- Tifa also takes him to task for this, basically telling him to "shut up and grow a pair".
- This phenomenon was brought to a head by Final Fantasy VIII, which was all-Wangst, all the time. In the climax, the hero finally courageously realizes he's not alone...except that he kinda is, wandering in a bleak void calling out for his friends. He only sorts out his wangst in the ending cutscene, after losing his memory again. This also happens a lot in wangst.
- Tidus from Final Fantasy X, who, like Cloud, started out Wangsty and got better.
- Riku from Kingdom Hearts, originally very self-confident, became understandably but overly wangsty in his story mode of Chain Of Memories, and continued this way into Kingdom Hearts II. Unfortuently, this was the chief component to his Character Derailment and Badass Decay.
- Aerie of Baldurs Gate 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.
- Saruin from Romancing Sa Ga, 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? Sif, Hawke, Gray, and Claudia.
- Oersted from Live A Live, though in his defense 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 God Of War series, fell into this trope after learning that Zeus destroyed Sparta.. He gets over it by killing things. Lots and lots and lots of things.
- Although it comes from a lineage which has usually handled drama well, Raiden and Rose in Metal Gear Solid 2 were pushing it. It's nicely deconstructed in the third act though (along with 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.
- Zone of the Enders tipped right over the edge, putting a prepubescent boy through the anime wangst machine. It's just mean.
- Mathias Cronqviest (a.k.a. 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 Bad Ass Leon Belmont 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 Mathias, proving himself a Diabolical Mastermind, orchestrated Leon's wife's death in an impossibly elaborate Xanatos Roulette that ends up sacrificing his humanity and the lives of countless people, all just to make himself feel better by "SPITING GOD".
- Mega Man X7's X. 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.
- This troper believes that 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 Mega Man Zero, X lamented that the most dreadful moment for him was when he "stopped caring about fighting enemies".
- Two Words: Shion Uzuki. So much as imply her dead fiancé ...
- Your wingmen in Ace Combat 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.
- This troper served in Iraq and quite a few of his fellow soldiers expressed distaste for the whole thing. All the same they did their jobs, and did it well. So, sod off
- 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 Heel Face Turn 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 Shadow The Hedgehog is hated by at least half the fandom. Lately he seems to have mostly gotten over it.
Music
- Simple Plan. Dear LORD, Simple Plan.
- Every song by the band Linkin Park can be summed up in six words: "Why didn't you love me, Daddy?"
- CRAWWWLING INNN MYY SKINNN!!! 'nuf said.
- Ditto Evanescence.
- And 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 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 concomitant effects on the children of those relationships). Then again, at least they aren't singing about love.
- Thank goodness for They Might Be Giants, who usually play this sort of thing for laughs. Listen to the Lyrical Dissonance of They'll Need a Crane or Narrow Your Eyes and you'll what I mean.
- As does Weird Al, most notable with "Angry White Boy Polka".
- 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?
- Hey! Don't ya'll know what it's like being male, middle class, and white?
- 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
- 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. A particular favorite of this troper's, "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 Blind Guardian. 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.
- 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
- Roger Waters in The Wall 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. He got better, though.
Web Comics
Web Original
- Comes up so much in Survival Of The Fittest 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 Tales Of MU, 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.
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