Fantastic Angst

In fictional media, authors tend to avoid certain issues because they are considered too dark; these issues are very hard to justify without Unfortunate Implications or creating a Moral Dilemma. In fantasy, Angst can be caused by means impossible in Real Life.

This is often used for Getting Crap Past the Radar, but in addition to avoiding Moral Guardians, it can also be used to avoid Unfortunate Implications or make the show Darker and Edgier. Typically, the focus is on the suffering rather than the cause; for audience members, this makes the character sympathetic by showing that their life isn't perfect, and while the cause of their Angst may be very different from the audience members' own situations, the emotion generated is similar to all - too - common Real Life situations.

While Supernatural Angst is about a character feeling Angst due to something that is entirely fantastical, Fantastic Angst is about Angst over an issue that does occur in Real Life, but the issue is caused by a fantastical event. For example:

• A child suffers Parental Abandonment (a Real Life issue) because his parents Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence (fantastic cause). Because the cause does not exist in Real Life, the moral ambiguity associated with Real Life Parental Abandonment is removed, without removing the tendency of anyone who has suffered Parental Abandonment to see themselves as the child.
• A character is turned into a monster and imprisoned in an Elaborate Underground Base. If being turned into a monster is the main issue for them, it's Supernatural Angst. However, if being forced to leave their old life is the main cause of angst, it's this.

Subtropes include:

• Fantastic Racism
• Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?
• Space Jews
• Stages of Monster Grief

This trait is commonly given to an Escapist Character. Sister trope of Does This Remind You of Anything?, Supernatural Angst.

Examples of Fantastic Angst include:

Anime and Manga

• In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Fate Testarossa was not loved by her mother because she was a clone of Precia Testarosa daughter. Her "mother" is only using her to resurrect her dead sister.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Asuka's mother's soul was "sucked" into a giant robot. As a result, she confused her daughter with a doll and committed suicide.
  After that, it's hardly surprising Asuka graces the page image for Jerkass Woobie.
  • Also, Rei. Not all withdrawn teenaged girls with little social skills are that way because they were created as a tool to end the world, infused with a soul that once belonged to the progenitor of humanity and raised in a cold, sterile lab with the knowdledge that there are clones to replace her even if she dies but many of them can still emphasize with Rei's feelings of loneliness and insignificance, her feeling of being "different from everyone else" and her problems to communicate her feelings - Some scenes from her life look remarcably like those an authentic outcast teenaged girls who were shunned for "mundane" reasons like being a geek, being shy or Intelligence Equals Isolation might encounter, like the way her classmates talk about her, the way she reads science books in a corner and how she is mistreated by more popular girls like Asuka.

Literature

• In Anita Blake Vampire Hunter, Anita wangsts over her lifestyle of having sex with hot guys due to being a vampire, and the fact that her lifestyle, profession, and religion are at odds.
• In Harry Potter, the title character is an orphan because his parents were killed by an evil wizard with a magical curse.
• In The Dresden Files, the title character is an orphan because his parents were killed by an evil vampire (probably) with a magical curse.

Web Original

• Jonathan Coulton songs are made of this trope, including such things as:
  • A song about feeling uncomfortable with all the genetic enhancements one's significant other is getting.
  • A song Charon sings to Pluto so Pluto doesn't feel bad about not being considered a planet anymore
  • A song about a lonely giant squid.

Western Animation

• In Young Justice, Superboy has parental issues and lack of parental bonding due to the fact that he is a clone of Superman, who is also having a hard time coping with this fact.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender has a fair share of this, perhaps most notably:
  • Aang lost everyone he'd ever known due to being cryogenically frozen, including the only mentor he ever had. As if that weren't enough, because he is the reincarnation of the avatar, it's his responsibility to keep the balance between the nations. He doesn't actually angst as much as you might expect, though.
  • Zuko longs for the affection of a father who kicked him out of his home and expelled him from his own country, as the result of his refusal to participate in the Agni Kai