Trauma Conga Line: Difference between revisions

{{quote| "Typical. Even when {{spoiler|you're dead}}, it doesn't get any easier."}}

** And he was right. After all he's gone through in ''Changes'', ''Ghost Story'' cranks it up beyond eleven.

* Murtagh from ''[[The Inheritance Cycle]]''. The main article describes his life as a series of people kicking him in the balls. As of the ending of the 2nd book, he's well on his way to becoming {{spoiler|Type B}}.

* This happens to most of the characters in ''Sometimes A Great Notion'', but the one who gets it worst has to be Hank. He loses {{spoiler|his father, who dies of blood loss after losing his arm in a logging accident}}; he fails to {{spoiler|save his cousin Joby from drowning while trapped under a log ''from the same logging accident''}}; his half-brother Leland {{spoiler|tells him he was having an affair with Hank's wife Vivian and then blames him for driving Leland's mother to suicide by having sex with her, even though she was several years older and it would count as statutory rape - and says all this ''immediately after leaving their father's deathbed''}}; his wife Vivian {{spoiler|leaves him}}; and the whole town gangs up on him for refusing to join their logging strike. ''All in the same day.''

* ''Chinese Cinderella'', full stop. The main character is blamed for her mother's [[Death by Childbirth]] and mistreated by her birth siblings and [[Wicked Stepmother]]. Her father disregards her to the point he can't remember her birthday or ''name''. She adopts a duckling that her family feeds to the guard dog. Her friends at school throw her a surprise party, earning her a vicious beating from her stepmother. She's separated from her beloved aunt and grandpa, then sent to a boarding school in the path of Communist uprisings. After her family moves, she's sent to a different school, but still neglected and then bullied by her peers. She wins a writing contest, but her grandfather dies immediately after. The closest the book comes to a happy ending is that her father notices her grades and sends her to college. And this was all based on the author's real life.

* [[Black Dagger Brotherhood|Zsadist]] has this in spades. He was abducted from his family as an infant, sold into slavery, and then the moment he became an adult his mistress began raping him. Often she'd let her other male slaves watch, or even have them join in. He was sometimes kept bound to a pallet on the floor, flat on his back, for days at a time--y'know, so he'd be in the right position when the mood struck her. She'd often neglect to feed him or give him the blood he needed, and liked to beat him when he offered any form of resistance. (His back is a mass of scars because of this.) It took more than a century for his twin to track him down and rescue him, and in the attempt his mistress' enraged husband scarred Z's face with a sword. Oh, and later on his girlfriend is kidnapped and tortured by vampire-slayers.

* ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'': Before the game even ''starts'', Cloud Strife has already: (1) endured a lonely, alienated childhood; (2) Being wrongfully held responsible for putting his childhood crush, the major's daughter in a coma by the major and everyone in the town (3) been told he's not good enough to become a SOLDIER; (4) watched his hero Sephiroth destroy his hometown, kill his mother and nearly murder both his childhood crush Tifa and his good friend Zack; (5) suffered over four years of sadistic experimentation from a [[Mad Scientist]] which reduces him to a vegetative Type C; and finally (6) helplessly watched Zack die in a gutwrenching [[Bolivian Army Ending|heroic last stand]] to protect him. After all this, Cloud suffers a very understandable case of [[Trauma-Induced Amnesia]], accompanied by some Types B and E behavior. During the game itself, Cloud ends up being [[Mind Control|mentally manipulated]] by the [[Big Bad]] Sephiroth into: (1) nearly killing his teammate Aerith not just once, but twice; (2) handing over the [[Artifact of Doom]] to Sephiroth (again, twice); and (3) questioning {{spoiler|[[Tomato in the Mirror|not only his memories but his very identity as a real person]]}}. He's also forced to watch Sephiroth {{spoiler|murder Aeris}} while being unable to do anything about it. Cue a second bout of Type C [[Heroic BSOD]]. However, after a [[Journey to the Center of the Mind]], Cloud finally ends up a Type A.

** ''Advent Children'' throws him back into C (not vegetative this time, but still giving up) by giving him, and the orphans he was taking care of at the time, a deadly disease, time to think about the promises he'd failed to keep and the lives he failed to save and also giving Sephiroth the time to [[Troll]] him through the earlier mentioned deadly disease. He seems to have snapped out of it by the time ''Dirge of Cerberus'' roles around though.

* Archer from ''[[Fate/stay night]]''. Having once been an idealistic crusader with a credo to [[The Messiah|save everyone]], Archer lost everything in the process of trying to save the people around him, while gaining [[All of the Other Reindeer|nothing but scorn from his fellow humans]] and losing his friends, his lover and everything. In the end, after having [[Deal with the Devil|sold his existence to Earth for a miracle that would save a few dozen people]], he lost his life by being betrayed by someone he saved and ended up a Counter Guardian -- one of Earth's "[[Dark Messiah|garbagemen]]", used to ruthlessly exterminate anyone who would threaten the safety of mankind by whatever means possible and no matter the collateral damage. By the time the game rolls around, Archer has become a broken, bitter person, [[Knight in Sour Armor|consigned to his fate as one who saves people only at the cost of killing others]].

* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'':

* In ''[[Mass Effect]]'', depending on how s/he's played Shepard will have gone through this starting years before the games even take place, and that's only the backstory. In-game s/he suffers a continuous Conga Line from all sides, and it's particularly amazing that Shepard [[First Episode Spoiler|getting killed]] in [[Mass Effect 2|the second game]] is ''not'' his/her lowest point. Then ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'' puts Shepard through the wringer, forced to flee Earth as it gets [[Curb Stomp Battle|annihilated by the Reapers]], suffers from extreme [[Survivor Guilt]] for those who have died in the series thus far aided by nightmares of a little boy s/he failed to save on Earth, [[The Woobie|and that's the most positive point in the game for him/her.]]

** Tali has this happen in full force during her loyalty mission in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]''. After all that happens, it's a wonder that Tali is even still functioning, much less sane.

* The [[Cerebus Syndrome|Bad Boys]] [[Wham! Episode|Love route]] of ''[[Hatoful Boyfriend]]'' is one giant Trauma Conga Line for all characters in general, but its main victim is Ryouta. Ryouta, the sweet and adorable childhood friend of the female protagonist, who {{spoiler|finds [[Stuffed Into the Fridge|her severed head in a box]], is constantly harrassed by a terrifying [[Scary Scarecrows|scarecrow mecha]] as he tries to find out who killed her, only to learn that '''he''' is the one who unintentionally killed her after [[Person of Mass Destruction|being infected with a human-killing virus]] by the resident evil doctor who plans to use him as a weapon to exterminate the entire human race, [[Be Careful What You Wish For|all due to a well-intentioned wish]] that Ryouta made when he was a fledgling that the doctor proceeded to [[Jackass Genie|twist and warp beyond recognition]]. Oh, and that scarecrow mecha that Ryouta managed to kill with a stungun? Its head contained the brain of his supposedly dead childhood friend, which is now effectively damaged beyond medical repair thanks to being fried with Ryouta's stungun}}. Is it any wonder why he comes ''this'' close to crossing the [[Despair Event Horizon]] after all of this?