How to reconcile logic and emotions? Ever since humanity has become able to think and reason, we've wondered about that, hence tropes like The Spock, The McCoy, Straw Vulcan, and Emotions vs. Stoicism. This trope is the exact opposite of Straw Vulcan, in that it makes a strawman of the more emotional character. The tactics often used include:
- Making the more emotional character The Ditz, a Cloud Cuckoolander, or a Leeroy Jenkins.
- Making an incredibly cynical world, in which more emotional characters are Wide Eyed Idealists to be broken, and playing off very amoral behavior as only "correct" and "realistic."
- Conveniently forgetting that empathy is emotional, too.
- Having every single emotional character be a blind believer in a corrupt system of authority.
- Having the emotional characters see absolutely no value in logic.
- Emotionalism is sometimes associated with weakness and femininity, whereas the rational man is portrayed as the strong one. Extra bonus if she keeps insisting she's Closer to Earth.
- Painting intuition as always silly or wrong, ignoring the fact that intuition is simply the ability to pick up on subtle cues without realizing it, and that following your intuition can often be very logical.
- Making them a Glurge Addict or a Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher.
- Painting them as a Wide-Eyed Idealist or even a New-Age Retro Hippie who's too dippy or weak-willed to Shoot the Dog.
- Making evil itself, or an equivalent malevolent force, powered by emotions or passions.
- Making them a Principles Zealot, and or Conditioned to Accept Horror.
- Portraying realistic responses to trauma and mental illness as Wangst, and making the "correct" reaction to hellish experiences be to just get over them (never mind that this is illogical in itself, as the human brain doesn't work that way).
This trope is different from Emotions vs. Stoicism, in that Emotions vs. Stoicism portrays logic and emotions as both having strengths and weaknesses, whereas this trope strawmans emotion much the same way Straw Vulcan strawmans logic. This trope is less often played straight than Straw Vulcan, because, well, strawmanning emotion isn't very logical (that and, since art and fiction require emotional investment on the part of the audience, using such media to vilify emotion makes little sense). In fact, an author who plays this trope straight is likely to be a Straw Vulcan themselves. They are also very likely to fall on the Enlightenment side of Romanticism Versus Enlightenment.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four comics. While none of the characters outright reject the importance of emotions, Johnny is by far the most emotional and the most likely to get smacked to the pavement when he charges blindly into battle. Reed Richards is by far the least emotional, and is right so often that every time he's wrong the world makes a little less sense.
Films — Live-Action
- Star Wars: Anakin Skywalker in contrast to the rest of the Jedi, who believe emotions lead to The Dark Side. Palpatine banks on Anakin's emotional problems to pull off his plans to become the emperor and topple the Jedi Order.
Literature
- Just as Ayn Rand 's heroes are (non-Straw) Vulcans, so her villains tend to be Strawman Emotional characters with a senseless hatred of the heroes. Many of them—James Taggart being probably the most articulate example—expound a philosophy that although a man like Hank Rearden is more productive, an emotional man like Taggart is superior because he bases his actions on "love"—while of course, Taggart and others like him show no sign that they are actually capable of having love for anyone.
- Prospero, in Greg Egan's short story "The Planck Dive
", though he may be more of a "Strawman Artist". He travels from Earth to a far-off space colony orbiting a black hole in order to observe an experiment so he can write an Epic Poem about it, but shows absolutely no respect for the scientists or science itself, insists that science is "empty" because it doesn't involve ancient archetypes like mythology, is willing to believe in any sort of pseudoscience if it fits his archetypes, and is actually a terrible poet but doesn't realize it. Because surely everyone who has described science in poetic terms has no respect for the discipline— Oh wait... What's more, it's implied that all Athenans are just as close-minded and arrogant as he is, except for his daughter, whom all the other characters feel sorry for.
Live-Action TV
- Stephen Colbert's character. His job isn't to report the news to you, but to ''feel'' it at you.
- Star Trek:
- McCoy could occasionally slip into this, much as Spock could occasionally be a Straw Vulcan.
- The Romulans, as well. Since breaking away from the Vulcans over a disagreement over using logic to control emotion or not, they became incredibly amoral. Since it's said that the Vulcans turned to logic because their emotions were so strong they were overwhelming, the Romulans are probably behaving like Vulcans used to, which helps explain the enmity between them.
- In House Dr. Allison Cameron, who occasionally veered into Strawman Idealist.
Video Games
- Mass Effect 3: There's a nameless human crewman on the Normandy who is seen chatting with Garrus and Javik, after the Lesuss mission. The human makes pointlessly childish comments about how evil the process of indoctrination is, and he's only there so that Garrus and Javik can lecture him on how there is no such thing as good or evil in war.
Web Video
- The Nostalgia Critic is as cynical as they come, but almost always runs on emotion instead of logic.
Western Animation
- Jake Morgendorffer in Daria. Most of the ensemble characters carry this particular Idiot Ball regularly, but Jake is probably the most consistent.
- The Simpsons:
- Helen "Won't someone please Think of the Children!?" Lovejoy
- The segregated girls' math class Lisa is stuck in, where the students learn how numbers make them feel, but not how to add or subtract them.
