Heroic BSOD/Literature

Proving that all you need for a Heroic BSOD is paper, ink and whole lot of trauma.

"Garion: Bed....Baby....Wood..Fire, C'Nedra needs big fire..baby...
 * Alastair Reynolds - Revelation space's
 * Dash Rendar from the novel Shadows of the Empire, which takes place after Empire. The bounty hunter was suppose to have fended off a missile attack from the Suprosa, the ship carrying the plans of the new Death Star, when it wiped out the Alliance's Bothan ships. Dash doesn't take kindly to the aftermath and continuously blames himself at the end of the battle.
 * Inkdeath, anyone? Author Fenoglio spends almost the entire book being depressed and cynical because he no longer controls what happens in the world he created, and it's going to the H-word.
 * The Star Trek Voyager novel Mosaic details when Captain Janeway goes through one of these. Considering that Kathryn lost her father and her fiancee on the same day, she's entitled.
 * Captain Picard suffered something like this in Star Trek: Destiny when he came to the conclusion that the Federation could not win the war against the Borg.
 * In Anne Rice's vampire novels, Lestat spends several books in a catatonic state after an encounter with a being he believes to be Satan. It's not so much the encounter but the inability to accept that everything he has done after hearing Memnoch's story is a big Evil Plan and that all he has done is promote the Devil's agenda.
 * Lymond has these throughout Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles. The most blatant is when he freezes  and has to be led back to his room, where he promptly faints. He subsequently experiences blinding migraines whenever he is reminded of that trauma or when he feels that the life of someone he cares about is at risk because of him.
 * Ivan Karamazov's Freak Out near the end of The Brothers Karamazov is brought on by this, which takes the form of a conversation with a Manipulative Bastard.
 * Possibly subverted in Harry Potter, where Harry locks himself in his room and refuses to talk to anyone after hearing that . However, he is promptly told by another main character Oops. Admittedly, this trope was played straight elsewhere in the series a couple of times, specially in the latter books.
 * "The Forest Again." He's in total shock, which is understandable considering that
 * In "Deathly Hallows", Ron shuts down for several minutes when Hermione is being tortured.
 * Drizzt, in some of R.A. Salvatore's later books (specifically The Hunter's Blades Trilogy), especially The Lone Drow, where he flips back and forth between this, murderous rage, and pure Wangst for most of the book.
 * Jake has one that lasts a whole year in the final Animorphs book, as a result of the final battle, in which he . To his credit, though, he waited until after the battle was over to have his breakdown.
 * Bella spends nearly the entire book of New Moon in this state after . According to Word of God,   also spent most of this time curled up in a fetal position hating the world, before his.
 * In Twilight's fourth book, Breaking Dawn, Edward freezes up and apparently goes into shock after hearing  Vampires in Twilight are normally very in control of themselves (socially; bloodlust is another thing), and Edward's mind basically shuts down. He lets his phone ring for quite a while, and his expression doesn't change at all after hearing about Bella's situation. While this might not sound like much, it basically means that Edward's mind asploded.
 * Ender's reaction to  at the end of ''Ender's Game'...though this is somewhere between this and Angst Coma
 * Or his response after the fight with He held it together long enough to organise his army into formation, but then it's shown in Ender's Shadow that he has himself frozen and hands the whole army over to Bean. His attitude, or lack thereof, in his room after the battle might not be a BSOD on some characters, but for never-give-up Ender it's pretty serious.
 * Don't forget about the description of his trial for killing Stilson as well as Bonzo.
 * In the Hunger Games series, multiple characters hit the BSOD of PTSD. Katniss wanders out of coherence several times, most notably after . She also has a brief but vividly described one in the first book, right after Prim's name is drawn at the reaping.
 * A common theme the novels of HP Lovecraft is for the main character to witness something so horrifying that they pass out or go insane.
 * The Star Wars Expanded Universe contains a textbook example. In the book Wraith Squadron, by Aaron Allston, Myn Donos's Talon Squadron is destroyed around him in an ambush. He escapes, but becomes emotionally numb. Later, his astromech--whom he refers to later as "the last Talon" -- is destroyed when his X-wing is hit in combat, and he shuts down completely for a while, feeling that he had now completely failed his squadron.
 * It happens again in Solo Command. This time, it's accidentally revealed that the one responsible for destroying Talon Squadron is currently a member of the Wraiths. After this revelation, Donos suddenly goes berserk, and attempts to shoot down his squadmate (who had executed a Heel Face Turn in the previous book), nearly killing another squadmate in the process. He snaps out of it quickly, but this event reveals lingering issues that he still has to deal with.
 * Han goes through a pretty major one following.
 * This is how Aramis reacts to Porthos's death in The Vicomte De Bragelonne, but it's arguably more of a Villainous BSOD.
 * This happens to Miles Vorkosigan from time to time -- a particularly graphic example is in Memory. With all he's been through, it's a wonder he ever comes out of it.
 * At the end of the third Sir Apropos of Nothing novel, the titular (anti)hero gets an (anti)Heroic BSOD when he learns that Verah Wang Ho, the leader of an Asian-like crime syndicate and his temporary lover, is the Emperor's...brother.
 * David Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean:
 * Both Garion and C'Nedra have BSODs: Garion's comes after he  outside the Forest of the Dryads and is relatively minor as BSODs go. C'Nedra has at least one brief one in the Belgariad when she realizes the fate in store for the soldiers she has recruited as the Rivan Queen; it could be argued that she spends virtually the whole Mallorean in one, with brief remissions. And then there was Garion's reaction in the Malloreon to the birth of his son. His entire brain shut down. Of course, Garion's brain isn't the most powerful organ in his body. This leads to quite a funny moment:

Polgara: Oh dear, it's going to be one of those."

"Artemis: "You didn't. That never happened.""
 * The two companion books that serve as autobiographies of Belgarath and Polgara have an intersting case - after the destruction of Vo Wacune, Belgarath thinks Polgara has gone into this, but when you reach that point from Polgara's point of view it turns out she was faking it to get him to leave her alone while she orchestrated her revenge on the armies that destroyed it.
 * Polgara has a more serious BSOD when her sister dies. Belgarath snaps her out of it by giving her lots of orders to keep her mind occupied... and then promptly goes off somewhere private to have one for himself.
 * In Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony, Artemis suffers a very, very brief one of these when  To all appearences, he's completely unmoved, continuing to concentrate on the, ignoring everything else as the same guy who  goes on to quickly ; however, it's all he can do to keep his concentration, which turns out to be what saves them all. Just before Artemis gets killed himself, he looses a single shot from Holly's Neutrino in a seemingly random direction. Turns out that Artemis had the Timey-Wimey Ball all figured out, and the shot got pulled back in time to just the right second to

""I heard he called the Empress a bitch!"
 * In Nation by Terry Pratchett the main character Mau goes into this while disposing of the bodies of his tribe in the sea. While his body drags the bodies out and ritually prepares them, his mind goes somewhere else, refusing to let the faces of the dead register in his mind. His BSOD is so intense that he doesn't even notice the other main character, Daphne, even when she stands right in front of him. He only snaps out of it in time to prevent himself from drowning himself. Longterm effects of his BSOD turn him into a sort of Flat Earth Agnostic: he's unsure whether or not the gods exist, but he refuses to worship them if they do because they either sent or didn't stop the apocalyptic tidal wave that starts the story off and decimated Mau's people.
 * In the Discworld novel Men At Arms this is Detritus' reaction to  eventually snapping out of it into a Unstoppable Rage..
 * Vimes at the end of Thud. THAT! IS! NOT! MY! COW!
 * Rincewind in Sourcery. Finally returning to the Library after Coin orders it burned. What follows is almost tragic, as Rincewind frantically searches through the ashes for anything familiar, possibly sobbing.
 * Dangerous Beans has one in The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, after learning the book that inspired him to dream of a world where rats and humans live in harmony, Mr. Bunsy Has an Adventure, is merely a children's storybook by the Discworld equivalent of Beatrix Potter.
 * Ginger has one of these in Moving Pictures after seeing the creature from the Dungeon Dimensions fall off the Tower of Art. Justified, as the giant shapechanger had taken Ginger's own form (among others) as it plummeted to its death.
 * An early example occurs near the end of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. While exploring the lifeless ruins of London, and already teetering on the ragged edge of sanity, the narrator comes upon a tripod and a dead Martian inside it. The mixture of exuberance and grief that follows is too much for him to handle, and he only regains his sanity several days later, learning from his caretakers that he was found roaming the streets crying and shouting "last man in the world, hurrah, last man in the world".
 * Talia of the Arrows trilogy suffers two, one relatively minor one when she is forced to confront the fact that she has absolutely no control over her empathic powers, and a later, much more serious one when she lapses into an Angst Coma after . Naturally, The Power of Love brings her back.
 * Vanyel from the Last Herald-Mage has HeroicBSODs all over the place. The first is in his Super Hero Origin, where the death of his lover and a massive infusion of magical power sends him into near-catatonia, and the last comes after being tortured and using his magical powers to slaughter an entire camp of bandits in the culmination of a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
 * For that matter, Tarma and Kethry do this in their backstories, both of which involve rape. Mercedes Lackey employs this trope rather liberally.
 * Eragon has one of these after he finds out the identity of his father }. He gets better freakishly fast.
 * Bluestar of Warrior Cats suffers a major BSOD after the extent of her trusted deputy Tigerclaw's treachery is laid bare. She is almost completely withdrawn from the world for the next book, leaving Fireheart to pretty much run the Clan in her place, and in the next book,
 * This seems to have happened to
 * In HIVE: Escape Velocity, when Otto stares at Overlord in horror for a few seconds before
 * In March Upcountry, Prince Roger etc. Mac Clintock discovers a) that his father is a traitor, b) that everybody else already knew this, c) that everyone assumed he knew this already, d) that everyone thinks this is the reason he's such a jerk, and e) his mother sent him away because she distrusted him (for reasons a, c and d). This is why he's stuck on a Death World, and this is also why several hundred people have gotten killed trying to protect him. Understandably, he gets angry, swears at his guards, and trashes his room, causing everyone else to doubt his sanity.

"No, he called his mother a bitch."

"What's the difference?"

"One is treason, and the other is just being really, really pissed at your mother.""

""His shades flew to a far corner of the room, and became a puddle of burning plastic. Yellow eyes with slitted vertical pupils were revealed. Wet and steaming, face ash-blackened, as far from cool as it was possible for him to be, on all fours in the blazing bookshop, Crowley cursed Aziraphale, and the ineffable plan, and Above, and Below.""
 * Rand al'Thor from The Wheel of Time goes through several of these, such as when he hears about the death of
 * His worst one happens when He gets better.
 * Will from The Goodness Gene slips into this when he discovers
 * Rowan Mayfair has gone into one of these at the beginning of Taltos, (the third book of the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy).
 * Hana and Kip's backstories in The English Patient, when their father and mentor, respectively, are killed. Kip gets one at the climax of the book, when.
 * Túrin from The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin undergoes several of these, after.
 * In Watership Down, the rabbit language actually has a word, tharn, for this state of mind. Rabbits, being small, flighty animals at the bottom of the food chain, have a lot of opportunities in their lifetimes to bluescreen in the face of hopeless danger. Heartbreakingly, this is Truth in Television, as baby rabbits often suffer heart attacks if sufficiently frightened. Poor things.
 * If Watership Down were just a little more prominent, in fact, this trope might have been named "Tharn." It's shorter.
 * In The Stand, Stu recalls the description of tharn, realizes he's close to a similar mental state himself, and that he has to keep himself out of that state to have a chance at escaping from the Plague Center.
 * The eponymous character of The Dresden Files has one at the end of Grave Peril after, and another one in a later book after seeing an Eldritch Abomination. He arguably has one in Fool Moon as well, when he basically shuts down for a little while due to being completely worn out and completely despairing because.
 * In Turn Coat Harry Dresden uses his wizard's Sight to see the true nature of a skinwalker, and has a BSOD that is awesome in its proportions. He isn't just taken aback or slightly shocked - he loses consciousness, slowly comes to and realizes that he is crying hysterically, shaking uncontrollably, blacking out periodically, screaming non-stop, and is pretty much out of his mind. In a few seconds of lucidity he realizes where he is and manages to stagger to a friend's house that is luckily nearby, all the while counting prime numbers to keep himself sane. It's only after spending an hour in a dark room that he's able to pull himself together. Even days later he's still shaken by the memory.
 * Richard suffers this in Confessor, from the Sword of Truth series, after finding a contradiction that he can't explain.
 * Jonathan Harker, from Dracula, suffers one after his imprisonment in the villain's castle and no wonder. His physical health breaks down right along with the mental, and he doesn't even know if everything he saw was real or in his head until Van Helsing confirms it.
 * In Stephen King's Pet Sematary,, Louis Creed crouches down in a corner, and sucks on his thumb for two hours. And he doesn't get better; he's really just insane now.
 * Roland in Wizard and Glass goes to a catatonic state for weeks, after witnessing Susan burned to death.
 * Mike Jenkins has one after finding out that the young woman he loved was killed on a mission, in Unto the Breach. Granted, this is with a somewhat flexible definition of "hero", given the victim of the BSOD.
 * Achilles falls into one twice in The Iliad, first after Agememnon steals Briseis, and then again
 * Sinuhe from The Egyptian has several, usually triggered by the death of a loved one or the revelation of a secret.
 * In The Bible, David has an epic and heartbreaking one when he learns about the deaths of King Saul and his son Jonathan, David's best friend. It included David giving himself Clothing Damage, throwing ashes upon himself and screaming out loud that he had loved both of them greatly and never wanted such things to happen.
 * David has another after his rebellious son Absalom is killed.
 * It can be said that the whole "prayer at Gethsemane" scene is about Jesus having an Heroic BSOD as he realizes that he's just hours away from dying and only then fully aknowledges what that means for him.
 * In the James Bond novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service,  Bond does not take it well, and spends the first chapter or two of the next novel, You Only Live Twice in a drunken stupor, slagging off on work and generally acting an uncharacteristic disgrace. It gets so bad that M revokes his 00 number and finally, as one last attempt to shake him out of it, assigns Bond a suicide mission on behalf of their allies the Japanese, a mission that if Bond succeeds will convince the Japanese Secret Service to part with juicy information the British need. It works, especially when
 * The eponymous protagonist of the short story "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne suffers a crippling Heroic BSOD after he wakes up in the forest, unsure of whether or not the events of the previous night,, really happened or was All Just a Dream.
 * In Redwall, Matthias undergoes a short Heroic BSOD when he learns that  while he was in the loft.
 * Thematically in Haruki Murakami's novel The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Most memorably since the events are described in graphic detail, Lieutenant Mamiya describes himself as living in a functional, permanent Heroic BSOD state after having seen his commanding office flayed to death.
 * Les Misérables has quite a few... ok, better pick those rare characters who don't get at least one. Valjean has this at least 3-4 times. Then he gets better and saves the day.
 * In web phenom-turned book/film John Dies At the End, Protagonist Dave and best friend John find themselves in a confrontation with some Otherworld enemies. Dave is behind one of the mask-wearing alternate universe villains and during a struggle, John pulls off the villain's mask. Dave literally describes John's reaction as this trope 'like a computer crashing' or words to that effect. John just goes blank, no screaming, just blank. He recovers in time to join Dave in escaping and the incident is, to date, never referenced again and what John saw is never, ever raised.
 * Derek suffers once of these in The Reckoning after . The fact that doesn't make him feel much better about it..
 * In the Cal Leandros book, Niko has one of these when , and goes into a fugue state/rampage, in which he is later told that he'd
 * Phaethon, hero of John C Wright's The Golden Age, has two: a mild one when he finds his wife has committed suicide by checking herself into a Lotus Eater Machine; and a much worse one after  Fortunately for him, his wife made a backup copy of herself...
 * Kallista Varyl in The Eternal Rose has one when  dies. Since she can literally feel him get poisoned, starts healing him, then his head gets chopped off... she needs some time.
 * Crowley has a fairly epic one when he rushes into a burning bookstore to save Aziraphale, only to find that he's not there.

"Despair and bewilderment shook his voice. The girl murmured pityingly, not understanding it all, but aching in sympathy with her lover's suffering."
 * Karn the Silver Golem had a BSOD during a scene in Magic the Gathering: Rath and Storm. When he goes to kill the murderous traitor Vuel (Volrath before he was Volrath), he smashes a cart of food in a fit of rage to show his power to Vuel's men. However, the cart toppled over onto an innocent boy and crushed him, prompting Karn's BSOD and invoking a vow of pacifism from him.
 * Ben in Earth 2350 shuts down and dissolves into an emotional mess (tears and all) when the Apollo Shipyard Complex is destroyed, killing his former captain and acting as the catalyst for a long-overdue BSOD from the tragic death of his family in a genocide.
 * In Robert E Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "A Witch Shall Be Born", the thought of turning against his queen, even though she suddenly turned into The Caligula, drives Valerius into Brain Fever. Especially when he is called a traitor.


 * Bruenor is in this state for much of Starless Night after the loss of his adopted son, Wulfgar.
 * In the third Anne of Green Gables book Anne is told that Gilbert (formerly Unlucky, soon to be Victorious Childhood Friend) is dying. She's just returned from a trip visiting friends elsewhere, so she knew nothing of it. Her family wanted to break it to her easily, but a child just let it slip out. Cue a total segfault in Anne's mind. She speechlessly has to go up to her room to spend the night reevaluating everything she thought she knew about love.
 * In Alexander Yang's "Midnight World" Aeneas' BSOD after his wife's death lasted for several monthes. By his own account, it was something like "walking letargy".

"The frightful loss of Jeeves made any thought of pleasure more or less a mockery, but at least I found that I was able to have a dash at enjoying life again. What I mean is, I braced up to the extent of going round the cabarets once more, so as to try to forget, if only for the moment."
 * In A Song of Ice and Fire, Sansa Stark spends  in this state. She also has another when
 * In Little Women, the March ladies have more than one of these.
 * Beth in the backstory, when her Shrinking Violet tendences went to the extreme and she couldn't withstand going to school anymore, thus her parents chose to homeschool her.
 * Marmee, when
 * Meg, as ,
 * Jo, upon.
 * Both Vincent and Malim, in Unda Vosari, have their fair share of Heroic BSODs during the course of their adventures. Vincent ends up talking to himself using parody voices of other characters, while Malim makes hand puppets out of paper and goes completely nuts.
 * Honor Harrington spends a good chunk of "Field of Dishonor" in one after . She's just recovered from it in "Flag in Exile when the   sends her right into another one. And that doesn't even count all the BSODs that occur during and immediately after the battles in that series.
 * One of the young protagonists in Ransom goes into one of these after failing to Save the Villain, imagining that he can still see the villain's screaming face. (An unusual reaction for a thriller hero, perhaps, but after all, this is just a high school kid who's never even seen someone die before.)
 * At the end of Carnifex, Carrera collapses and slips into one of these both from the fatigue built up over the course of a long and hard campaign and the fact that.
 * Alex Rider: In the final book. After . He then, seemingly, gives up, becoming quiet and unresponsive, even when Gunter reveals Scorpia's plan to him. But.
 * In Death: Eve has experienced this a few times, like in Conspiracy In Death. Roarke definitely had one in Portrait In Death.
 * In Time Scout, Malcolm takes Margo to Brighton during her special trip to Victorian London. Normally, he doesn't take clients to the beach in February, and when they do go to the beach he usually avoids Brighton. That's because he's from Brighton and his younger brother drowned during The Accident, in February. He has a breakdown and Margo has to keep him in one piece.
 * Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Oh, boy! Nikki Quinn suffered this in the book The Jury. Maggie Spritzer suffered this in the book Hokus Pokus. Harry Wong suffered this in the book Vanishing Act. Jack Emery helped them out of this in all three instances.
 * The Idiot has this at the very end. In other words a typical Russian ending. There's a reason they invented Vodka.
 * In the Jeeves and Wooster story "The Aunt and the Sluggard", the aftermath of the latest Zany Scheme forces Bertie to stay in a hotel without Jeeves for an indefinite period. Bertie crashes almost instantly, losing interest in normal activities and even going through a period resembling mourning. He pulls himself together, vaguely, after a few days of this:


 * The Heroic part is kind of doubtful, but Delaney Mossbacher's brain definitely stops working after he hits Candido.
 * Draffut has one at the end of Sightblinder's Story when he realizes that he has accidentally caused the death of a human being. Since his entire existence had been dedicated to the service, protection, and healing of mankind, this kind of makes him lose his mind.
 * Dave Duncan's protagonist in The Gilded Ghain has one because of a death he causes. He goes close to catatonic, and is passively suicidal.
 * A major character in Patricia Mc Killip's Riddle Masterof Hed has one that spans the course of a book, via a personality change.
 * The protagonist of Beachwalker goes into one of these after
 * Kill Time or Die Trying:
 * James has one when someone suggests that he isn't more successful than Dylan.
 * Dylan himself has one when WARP is evicted from its club-room
 * Melvyn has these, out of sheer surprise, whenever he says something intelligent. It's suggested that it's deliberate: he knows the next thing he says will be dumb, so he doesn't want to spoil the moment.