Wangst/Playing With

Basic Trope: A character engages in excessively or poorly-written self-pitying or angsty behaviour about a particular event or events in their past.

Straight: The character repeatedly brings up a past trauma, acting tormented and brooding about it in the process. The trauma was the death of his/her beloved parents.
Exaggerated: The character repeatedly brings up a past trauma, acting tormented and brooding about it in the process. The trauma was a paper cut.
Justified: Character has clinical depression.
- The trauma the character is fixated on actually is a pretty big deal, or something that is not easily dealt with.
Inverted: See Angst? What Angst? and Stoic Woobie.
Subverted: The character pretends to be tormented over an event in his past because (s)he's attempting to manipulate the other characters; (s)he actually got over it a long time ago.
Double Subverted: The character pretends to be tormented over an event in his past because (s)he's attempting to manipulate the other characters; deep down, however, (s)he still hasn't managed to get over it.
Parodied: The character acts in such an excessively self-pitying fashion that they even feel self-pity about having nothing to feel self-pity about.
- The character angsts about something stupid, like the time his mom didn't get him a pony for Christmas.
- The character angsts about comparatively recent things and switches topic rapidly- there's no mayonnaise left, we're going by bus, that hobo is asking for a sandwich, etc.
Deconstructed: The character's excessive self-pity and refusal to engage with his past and trauma in favour of lengthy self-indulgent brooding and complaining eventually drives away anyone who initially cared, resulting in the character ending up alone and even more miserable.
Reconstructed: They start brooding about how alone and miserable they are instead.
Zig Zagged: The character experiences rapid Mood Whiplash, from Wangst to good cheer and back again.
Averted: The character's reaction to the past trauma is appropriate to the nature of the trauma, and raised only when relevant. They are able to function sufficiently beyond the trauma.
- Alternatively, nothing bad or worth angsting about happens in this world.
Enforced: "True Art Is Angsty, people; we should give this character something to feel bad about. And have them mention it often, so that the audience is aware of it."
Lampshaded: "Boy, he sure does a lot of brooding, doesn't he?"
Invoked: "I'm incredibly tormented about this!"
Defied: "You'd like me to lose myself in self-pity about this, wouldn't you? Well, I'm not going to!"
- The character feels Angsty but keeps it to a limit.
Discussed: "You know, maybe it's time you stopped moping about this and moved on..."
Conversed: "Characters who spend all their time moping really irritate me. I don't like to spend time with people like that in real life; why does this author think I want to read it?"
Plotted A Perfectly Good Waste: The character is intentionally made overly angsty in order to deliberately make him unsympathetic, by indicating that he refuses to deal with his problems in favour of whining about them.

Back to Wangst...Oh, please! Cut it off already!