Discussion Main / WoobiedestroyerOfWorlds

Most Woobie tropes are subjective reactions. Destroyer of Worlds implies authorial intent.

Not from me.

A jerk and a person causing destruction are two distinctly different things.

Even assuming the "Jerkass" and "Destroyer of Worlds" were the same, Jerkass Woobie is an Audience Reaction, while this relies on Author Intent. For this, the work must portray the character as tragic and pitiable. Jerkass Woobie is more about how the audience sees the character.

I mean there are some pages that describe outright evil characters as being Jerkass Woobie

Yeah, that is possible.

While I am guessing it is from a game, proble a visional novel type, I too would like to know where it came from.

Me too. It looks like the characters from here: http://www.batoto.net/comic/_/comics/shinmai-maou-no-keiyakusha-r9175

Haven't read GG, sorry.

Inyouchuu. Don't pothole the image there, though.

I'm removing this example:"Glorificus, season five's Big Bad, is more of a Jerkass Woobie, but while she almost wrecked most of the known universe by destroying the barriers between dimensions, she didn't do it to be evil; she just wanted to go home."

Glory is not taking revenge upon a world that has done her wrong, which is the main thing that defines this trope. Plus, is "going home" so noble when you're a hellgod returning to a hell dimension to torture and kill your rivals and that dimensions' inhabitants? Moreover, she doesn't "suddenly" get the power. It's not a case of the abused powerless suddenly getting powers. She was a hell god and even in Buffy's dimension she has incredible power. Moreover, she deliberately pursues the power to destroy this dimension, the Key. On top of this, she never has a true breaking point. Yes, it's unfortunate she was betrayed and brought low to humanity and is in constant danger of losing her mind but didn't she earn this treatment by being a sadistic narcissistic hell god? She has passed the Moral Event Horizon with all the people she has murdered and Scoobies she has tortured. Finally, a character of this trope wants to destroy the world in and of itself. Would Glory bother if it wouldn't get her home? If she did, would it be out of hurt or spite? Besides, Glory did many things just to be evil (breaking Tara's hand comes to mind.)

Anyways, I'm new to the site so if I've done anything wrong, I didn't mean to offend. Please let me know if there's some wiki etiquette I have missed.

I'm not sure Nero doesn't qualify as both this and Put Them Out Of My Misery, or at least occupy some space between them — he's a woobie in his own crazy, genocidal way (especially if you ask the fandom). Iron Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds, perhaps? He doesn't see himself as the villain of the story, he genuinely thinks he's the good guy. The fact that he's so Ax-Crazy makes it harder to categorize him.

How is Gerald Robotnik from Sonic Adventure 2 not this trope? Dead Little Sister is just the start of it. This is a guy who felt like the entire world had turned against him. Throughout the whole project Gerald endured Executive Meddling from both aliens and the higher-ups on Earth. He wanted to develop a cure for Maria's fatal illness; the executives wanted him to develop a weapon. When GUN took over the colony they didn't just kill Maria, they also captured Gerald and forced him to continue the project under their supervision. So he decided destroy the world in a dramatic fashion. The military guesses that he might be up to something (they were right but they were only guessing) so they end the project and execute him. It's All There in the Manual.

Heck, pretty much everything this guy says screams this trope.

"I lost everything. I had nothing more to live for... I went insane."

"All of you ungrateful humans, who took everything away from me, will feel my loss and despair."

About Nightmare Moon: I may be remembering wrong but wasn't she possessed by some evil force that was influencing her actions? I thought that was what the main characters exorcised that time they faced off against her.

So it doesn't really count, as it was the demon who was doing the world-destroying and not her.

^^ You may be right. But demonic possession doesn't qualify for this trope either.

Inversions can overlap with each other, especially when we are talking about the mindset of a mentally unstable person. :-)

Should I edit the article to say that overlaps are possible?

Sure.

That's Cosmic Temper Tantrum, I think.

You did the right thing - it's a wiki, and we're encouraged to amend the examples rather than add bullet points. If you're ever in doubt, you can always list both the original and revised entries in a Discussion Page message, and why you changed it. But unless you're worried it'll be a controversial move, even that's not necessary.

Sheesh, that Exalted entry's a mess, but I'm not sure how to trim it down since none of it looks like natter. I guess that game's just chock-full of world-destroying woobies. :p

I should be blamed for the mess. I'm extremely prone to purple prose and no amount of meditation and training from hell could change that. <_<

Though there was also that more elaboration would clarify why I added such things on there. Perhaps I should trim it down to the bare essentials and, if necessary, describe them here? I figure that more than one person is looking at it from time to time, so...

Nah, it reads fine as it is (I don't know much about the game, but I still got the gist of it from the examples), and the way the bullet points are split up by characters works well. There's just a lot of woobiedom going on in that particular setting, and a lot of exposition needed for the woobieness to make sense. :)

There was a discussion about this a long time ago (or so it feels like). Someone had been complaining, (as I obviously have been here) about people placing any villain they felt bad for on this page. Somehow, the conversation got derailed (read it sometime, the discussion shifts out of nowhere and the Put Them All Out of My Misery (great title) page, who's purpose still mystifies me (the description was a little vague) got created while the core problem was still unsolved.

I think that most of the villainous Woobie examples could go on Jerkass Woobie: the character has suffered a lot, you feel bad for them, but you still want to punch them, whether because they're evil, or just plain mean. I don't think another trope is needed so much as people need to use the right one; the Villainous Woobie thing was just a random suggestion on my part, written out of frustration with the page (it's one of my favourite tropes).

Between them, Anti-Villain (sympathetic motivations, bad intent), Jerkass Woobie (horrific life, needs a hug, but an asshole, villainous or otherwise), and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds (life sucks so hard you try to take everyone you can with you) can handle most of the sympathetic if destructive characters. People just need to put them under the right trope.

As I may be missing the point here (it's a little late at the time of this posting) what do you mean by "too insane to rightfully exist"? If they're so crazy they're just whimpering, they're probably just a regular Woobie (the madness makes us feel bad for them). If they're doing standard villain activity (Take Over the World, Revenge on the person [or persons] they feel are responsible, maybe even Serial Killer behaviour) then they're probably a Jerkass Woobie (though maybe an extreme one).

Nice to see someone else taking an interest in this.

Ambar Sonof Deshar

What I mean is, for instance, someone who has gone totally mental because of what has happened to him, and are likely to cause a lot of death and destruction, but aren't a threat to the human race. This type of character is similarly more to be pitied than to be slapped aside from the Woobie hug.

And if what you described above is the definition of W Do W, how does that include Shinji, who doesn't necessarily seem to have the tacit intent of ending all human life, even though his post Despair Event Horizon actions would nonetheless lead to it?

The thing is, a lot of people were using this trope to mean exactly that, when it originally meant "trying to destroy the world to relieve his and/or the world's suffering". So the definition of the trope got changed to mean, well, exactly what you're describing, even though the "destroyer of worlds" part no longer fits. Meanwhile, the original trope definition was kinda/sorta split into Put Them All Out of My Misery, but some important elements of the original trope got lost along the way. All in all, I think it made more of a mess than it solved.

But in short: Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds now covers exactly what you're describing. Despite the name, it's meant to encompass all levels of destruction stemming from villainous woobiedom.

Yeah, I thought it did. So anyways, what stays deleted, and what can be put back?

Well, I would argue that any case in which you can't imagine the character simply blowing up the world due to how broken they are, shouldn't be here. Put Them All Out of My Misery may sound like it should be that, but when you read the page, doesn't refer to it at all. Something about seeing the world as sick and trying to fix it? Doesn't match its own title, and doesn't fix the problems connected to this. If we're going to use Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds as the catch all for "Villainous Woobie", then we need to make Put Them All Out of My Misery into a trope that encompasses killing everybody because you are miserable. Take out the Non-Malicious Monster examples and whatnot.

As is, I think the examples should be about overreaction to one's own misery. Carrie, Oswald Cobblepot, and Rau Le Creuset are all this, despite representing very different levels of threat and destruction. Why? Because the motivation is the same: I got hurt, so everyone I can get my hands on, has to go. Basically, if you gave Cobblepot or Carrie a nuke, they'd be every bit as destructive as Rau.

Someone like Norman Bates probably shouldn't be here. Yes his life has been torturous, but he only kills women who attract him, or people who are on to him. If Norman was given the chance to blow up the planet, he probably wouldn't do it.

At least that's how I think it should be. It's not the scale of destruction that matters, it's the flavour of it. It needs to be on the largest scale the character can manage. It needs to include the innocent and the guilty. And while the character is sympathetic due to how broken they are, what they seek to accomplish is not justified by Revenge or anything else, simply because it includes too many innocent people.

Yes, that's just my opinion, but the "I hurt so I'm going to kill everyone I can" thing is a popular, and common trope. The page in fact still reads as if that was what it means. If we are though, going to turn this into the Villainous Woobie page (with Take Over the World and robbing banks getting equal press with the School Shooter-writ large description that the page still appears to refer to and that I've been describing) then can we at least reformat Put Them All Out of My Misery to be it?

Ambar Sonof Deshar

PS-Yes I would agree Shinji should be here, despite being an odd example. Assuming I interpret what happened in End Of Evangelion correctly (and it's hard to do) his Woobiefication is directly responsible for the apocalypse. Unusual, but definitely this.

Indeed.

Likewise, I've found the Zero Requiem to be Lelouch's reaction to the betrayal and Nunnally's apparent demise and a destructive consequence to his pain from preceding events in his life that made him feel alone. That said plan supposedly results in world peace is a self serving excuse for him to die, and its success is an Ass Pull on every level, and one that doesn't guarantee a continued peace to begin with. And of course, the defining factor he ends up taking a lot of people with him who most likely would be alive otherwise.

That one's a lot more iffy though. Lelouch genuinely seems to believe he's going to save the world, so this certainly isn't his intent. Moreover, Ass Pull or not (and I'm inclined to think it is) the author's intent is obviously to show that "yay, he saved the world." I'd say put Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds on his character sheet, but not here, as the page is confused enough as it is.

On the subject of Put Them All Out of My Misery, can anyone tell me what, if anything, the trope name and description have to do with one another? Or why the description radically shifts halfway through? Just to make sure I have things clear, this is still the "I hurt so I'm going to cause widespread destruction" page right? I'd thought that (due to someone's complains about the Villainous Woobie) thing that we were moving that to Put Them All Out of My Misery, but the page description doesn't make it sound like it happened. And no matter what anyone tells you, the two are not opposites. Not even close. Seriously, how is this the inverse of Put Them All Out of My Misery?

Actually it's sounding more like "I'm hurt so now I've lost it and am going to destroy everything". There needs to be an inbetween trope for anyone who is clearly dangerous on some level but not omnicidal.

I wouldn't so much say there needs to be an inbetween, as there needs to be just a better definition of what this trope is all about. Possibly just something that sounds more evil than Jerkass Woobie where villainous—but not over the top destructive—examples like Bates etc could be put. I don't have a problem with putting someone like Carrie and someone like Rau Le Creuset or Spider-Carnage, or Batman Beyond Mr. Freeze on the same page because the basic motivation is the same: "I can't stand my own pain, watch me burn everything I can reach", whether it's the city or the world. You know what I mean? Same flavour, different scale. What I do have a problem with is stuff like Bates where you go Serial Killer with a specific target in mind. Still sympathetic, but not really as destructive.

Basically, that was my very long way of saying yes, we need another trope, but it should probably be something along the line of "evil and a Woobie" not "destructive and a Woobie but less so than the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds". Maybe then we could solve the problem that the original split was supposed to solve. At least I think that's what it was supposed to solve. Did I read that entire discussion wrong somehow?

Yeah, kind of. Though I still think it would be "less destructive Woobie than Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds" because both share the inability to rise above their pain, and that triggers their destruction.

All right, in the immediate sense, I think we're confused here because the description is overlong. I tried using the first paragraph as a baseline and remaking the rest of it as something more concise and coherent. Better? Feel free to change it if you see any issues.

Some Guy, I can work on this page when I have some time but you're probably right that a shorter description helps.

I can answer questions you may have about Put Them All Out of My Misery, since I remember participating in the discussion that led to splitting off that as a separate trope.

Ambar, The definition we settled on for Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds is, indeed as you stated. And you probably just described it more succinctly than we did, when we split the two tropes and cleaned up the page.

Regarding Put Them All Out of My Misery, the idea originally was to have a trope for characters like Mr. Freeze from Batman, if that helps. When the overlap with this trope was pointed out, folks looked at this page and saw it was spammed with tons of examples of characters who were essentially Jerkass Woobie or Draco in Leather Pants.

It was decided to take characters who wanted to kill everyone for rational reasons, or they were able to rationalize and articulate their vision for the future, i.e. to get back at someone for killing their wife by destroying the entire city, to cure the Earth of its human problem, that sort of thing. And Put Them All Out Of Their Misery with Mr. Freeze.

(Hey, maybe Put Them All Out of Their Misery would be a good name for that trope!)

The name Put Them All Out of My Misery ("my") does sound almost like a synonym for this trope doesn't it. Then again, given all the hair-pulling that was done separating out the two tropes, (just look at the post up top!) I'm reluctant to try and rename that trope, especially because I really like the name for this trope. But yeah, the two names are similar. It makes sense if you imagine the villain actually saying "I want to put them all out of my misery." It's a very self-pitying thing to say since the currently-named Put Them All Out of My Misery is a trope about self-pity, or rationalization.

Whereas the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, based on preponderance of examples became more of a poetic name for characters of the sort Ambar described, e.g. Carrie, who the audience pities even if you did put a nuke in their hand you could understand them putting the button but accept that they had to be stopped. I hope that makes sense :-)

There was a good reason to split the two, because when this page described both types, and they are sort of inverse of one another, well, you can imagine the opening that led to people putting in examples of every type of villain in-between... As can be seen from the examples listed up top, all of which got moved to Put Them All Out of My Misery when the trope was split. And the consensus trope definition is now as Ambar stated...

So would characters likely to kill some people, if not everyone, also fall under this trope?