Board 8 > Best of the Trope Season 2: Day 218 - Trauma Conga Line

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Best of the Trope!

Here are the rules. Each day, I will post a trope from TV Tropes, and each poster can name up to three examples of that trope. Whichever nomination gets the most mentions wins! Posters may also name as many Honourable Mentions as they like, but they are purely optional and will not count towards the running score. You may look at the TV Tropes page for that day's trope for examples, but you do not have to pick all your examples from the page. You can nominate whatever examples you like, as long as they qualify for the trope. Each trope will last around 24 hours before the next one goes up.

In the event of a tie between 4 or more nominations, a tiebreaker poll will be run the next day to determine a winner.

Posters may also nominate any tropes they wish to see come up during the series. This is optional, and you don't have to do it every day, or at all. Tropes will be randomly selected from the list each day, except for some occasions where I will pick a thematically appropriate trope that may or may not be on the list.

Here's the list of previous tropes, so if you wish to nominate some tropes, check on here that it wasn't previously done. http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Best_of_the_Trope

Trope list:
The Woobie
Punch Clock Villain
Torch the Franchise and Run
Trash the Set
Grand Finale

The winner of yesterday's trope, Evil Costume Switch, was Black Suit Spider-Man, which got 3 votes.

Previous winners: Day 181 onwards
Cliffhanger - The Snap (Avengers: Infinity War)
Anti-Climax Boss - Yu Yevon (Final Fantasy X)
Lights Off, Somebody Dies - Devil / Anthology of Interest (Futurama) / And Then There Was Shawn (Boy Meets World)
Broken Base - Genwunners (Pokemon)
Difficult But Awesome - Ana (Overwatch)
Disc One Nuke - Hawlucha (Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon)
Lampshade Hanging - How did Yzma and Kronk get there first? (The Emperor's New Groove)
Tier Induced Scrappy - Meta Knight (Super Smash Bros Brawl)
Squishy Wizard - Alakazam (Pokemon)
Clipped Wing Angel - Genie Jafar (Aladdin)
Cruel and Unusual Death - Executions (Danganronpa)
That One Level - Escape from the Water Slums (Jak II) / Water Temple (Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence - Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)
The Reason You Suck Speech - Quagmire to Brian (Family Guy)
Magic Knight - Geralt (The Witcher) / Bayonetta
Dem Bones - Jack Skellington (The Nightmare Before Christmas)
Acrofatic - Po (Kung Fu Panda)
Game Breaker - Detective Mode (Batman Arkham Series)
Fluffy the Terrible - Fluffy (Harry Potter)
Deathbringer the Adorable - The Grand Master of All Things Bad (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon)
Storming the Castle - Leeroy Jenkins
BFS - Buster Sword (Final Fantasy VII)
Fat Bastard - Eric Cartman (South Park)
Mentor Occupational Hazard - Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)
Oddball Doppelganger - Mimikyu (Pokemon)
Mood Whiplash - The destroyed village ends "A Girl Worth Fighting For" early (Mulan)
Names to Run Away From Really Fast - Shelly DeKiller (Ace Attorney)
Hostile Show Takeover - Monika (Doki Doki Literature Club)
Lean and Mean - Voldemort (Harry Potter) / Waluigi (Super Mario Bros.) / Slenderman (Marble Hornets)
Identical Stranger - Guy Incognito (The Simpsons) / Kingsonn Dededoo (Brawl in the Family)
The Only One Allowed to Defeat You - Bowser (Super Mario Bros.)
Humiliation Conga - Yzma (The Emperor's New Groove)
Shock and Awe - Pikachu (Pokemon)
Fat and Skinny - Junkrat and Roadhog (Overwatch)
Enemy Mine - Mario and Bowser (Mario RPGs)
Kindhearted Simpleton - Forrest Gump

Today's trope is Trauma Conga Line. Here is the link: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TraumaCongaLine

"If traumatizing a hero once can earn the audience's sympathy, then what better way to earn your audience's love for the character than to lay trauma after trauma on them like a falling row of dominoes?"

The usual results of a Trauma Conga Line are:

The hero perseveres over the trials of life, rises above it and becomes a better person for it all. Defining term: Iron Woobie
The protagonist throws off his hero mantle, tramples it, and in a cold rush of unrelenting cynicism becomes a villain just as bad, if not worse, than the antagonist. Defining term: Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds
The hero curls into a figurative or literal catatonic ball in a cold dark corner, then proceeds to give up on life and the world. Defining term: Despair Event Horizon
Goes out in a blaze of bloodthirsty rage realizing that the best way out is by taking it out on everyone. Defining term: Roaring Rampage of Revenge
The protagonist loses their sense of idealism, but not their morality. Most Anti Heroes who started out as an Ideal Hero are Type E. Defining term: Knight In Sour Armor
Rarest one: the protagonist just shrugs their shoulders at the Deus Angst Machina. No lessons are learned nor does the character behave differently. All that's changed is that the Bunny-Ears Lawyer now sleeps in a cardboard box and eats out of dumpsters. Defining term: Angst? What Angst?
Somewhere between the Despair Event Horizon and unbreakable resolve of the Iron Woobie is a common middle ground, where the survivor is clearly damaged by the ordeal, but is not lost completely or rendered insane (and thus has hope of recovery to Type A). Defining term: The Woobie
Loses all will, drive, ambition, or capacity for emotion from being broken so much. Defining term: Empty Shell

TL,DR: These characters suffer numerous horrific, traumatic events.

Nominations:
Shinji (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
Otacon (Metal Gear Solid)
Zuko (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Ragna the Bloodedge (Blazblue)
Guts (Berserk)
Shinji (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
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Harry Potter
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Okabe Rintaro (Steins;Gate)
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Alessa Gillespie (Silent Hill)
Spider-Man
Cooper (Black Mirror)
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John Davison (Scarletspeed7's DC campaign)
Spider-Man
Nico Robin (One Piece)

(I had to vote my own character because he's the reason I thought to nominate this trope)
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Rankings so far:
Shinji (Neon Genesis Evangelion) - 2 votes
Spider-Man - 2 votes
Otacon (Metal Gear Solid)
Zuko (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
Ragna the Bloodedge (Blazblue)
Guts (Berserk)
Harry Potter
Alessa Gillespie (Silent Hill)
Cooper (Black Mirror)
John Davison (Scarletspeed7's DC campaign)
Nico Robin (One Piece)