Talk:Jerkass Woobie

I don't fully understand the reason for prohibiting real-life examples here. Adding examples such as "me" or "my little sister" is inappropriate for most tropes, except possibly if said person is a celebrity. Similarly, gossiping about celebrities (which could be the result of allowing real-life examples here) is usually not a good way to go, especially for other "jerkass" tropes such as Jerk with a Heart of Gold, which does have a real-life section nevertheless.

After all, I think one can add reasonable examples without resorting to gossip or self-diagnoses. For example, people with Borderline Personality Disorder tend to come close to this trope - or at least appear to others this way - due to their frequent emotional instability, manipulativeness, clinging, anxiety, tendency to use emotional extortion etc. Also, it is easy to come across as this when you have Asperger Syndrome and complain about feeling lonely, because others often mistake your social awkwardness, lack of cognitive empathy, focus on "unimportant" special interests etc. as jerkassery. People with mental disorders involving paranoia are also prone to becoming "jerkass woobies" from an outside perspective because their lack of trust in others and argumentativeness renders them isolated and lonely.

Because calling someone a jerk is rude, and so is calling him a woobie. Same reason the Trope Dumb Muscle does not allow real life examples.

May I ask just what sort of example you'd put if it was allowed?

Edit: I should clarify this a little more. A Jerkass Woobie is usually a villain, and always a character who has committed evil deeds, and also someone that the typical fan is NOT supposed to view in a favorable light. BUT, he's also someone who the typical fan is supposed to sympathize with, for one reason or another, maybe a tragic Freudian Excuse or Dark and Troubled Past that one cannot help but relate to. Look over the entries, and you'll see what I mean. Folks like Darth Vader do indeed have tragic pasts, but they go quite a bit beyond "social awkwardness and lack of cognitive empathy".

MOD: Questioning why a page has the "No real life examples, please" tag is always allowed.

TROPER: There are a lot of people who would consider people who they don't like to be jerkasses of one sort or another. Do we really want a trope page to turn into a "bash these people we don't like" page?

It kind of depends on how complete of an biography we get. I mean, the worst of the worst gets sent to Death Row and the only thing that's publicly available is the court records that involves their conviction.

If this is a villain trope, why is it called "jerkass woobie" and not "woobie villain" or the like?

Of course, calling someone a villain - even diffuse groups of people like sociopaths - is rude. But that doesn't come across from the trope title, neither is it explained in the "no real life examples" line.

Furthermore, if you need to be an outright villain to be this trope, what are you if you are just a bit of a jerk with also some Woobie traits? And what sets this trope apart from Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds? If I understand it right, both are essentially the same - just this trope has more dominant villain traits and the latter has more dominant Woobie traits.

It's situational to call someone else evil, which is kind of a rare opportunity, tbh.

If it's a villain trope ... but is this a villain trope? We have Jerkass Hero (which I'll grant is a redirect), after all.

Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds can overlap. The Trope page for Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds explains the difference, I quote, "Think of this person as a Jerkass Woobie, only with the jerkassery replaced by insanity (though many characters do fulfill both tropes)."

Basically, both characters are people who do inexcusable actions that are usually considered evil or at least unethical, but while nobody views them as justified or benevolent, they do have motives you can relate to.

I mean, at risk of politicizing here, if you're a pro-life advocate and hear that a doctor who runs an abortion clinic has been brutally murdered by someone whose sole motive is "abortion is evil, he deserved it", you aren't going to side with the killer and claim he's a hero who should be acquitted, but you can at least see where he was coming from.

Of course, to be fair, pretty much ANY murder or terrorist could find at least some way to excuse their actions, no matter how misguided they may be, that's what the whole Well-Intentioned Extremist trope is about.

So you could call a non-villainous character like Garfield a jerkass woobie (although the jerk - with a heart of gold - is more prominent in his case). However, the expression "jerkass woobie" is too bad an insult for most tropers that they don't even dare adding such rather lovable fictional characters as examples, let alone any real-life example.

Sorry, I didn't know that "woobie" is grossly condescending. At least not until I read a few psychology articles about pity and that being pitied is actually rather condecending to an average adult human. I thought the addition of the word "woobie" would somewhat alleviate the insult "jerkass", as the addition "with a heart of gold" does.

After all, relatively benign people like John Lennon have been called jerks on that site. And John Lennon is definitely not somebody many people would call 'evil'. (Although the man who murdered him might qualify for this trope here.)

Concerning Asperger Syndrome, whichs notion has caused heavy protest - I probably have to say here that I have it myself. Also no offense meant to people with paranoia and borderline personality disorder - some of them may be nasty, but they don't deserve being equated to villains. Just because I often have a foot-in-mouth tendency as above, I wouldn't like being called evil either.

The explanation was just misleading for me. One could also say "No real life examples, please - calling somebody this is rude and condescending." Or something similar.

"One could also say "No real life examples, please - calling somebody this is rude and condescending." Or something similar."

That makes sense to me -- and it's now on the trope page.

Showing pity and showing compassion are two different things.

Edit: "Some of them may be nasty" = really some, not the majority. (As words like "some" are often used as weasel words by people who say something unpopular without wanting to get critisized for it.) What I wanted to say is, having either of those disorders increases your statistical chance to be difficult to work with. Not necessarily evil and not necessarily deserving pity, but more difficult than the average neurotypical person.