Strawman Emotional

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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 Cloudcuckoolander, 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.
• Paint them as a Wide-Eyed Idealist or even a New Age Retro Hippie who is too dippy or weak-willed to Shoot the Dog.

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. 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 of Strawman Emotional include:

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.

Film

• Star Wars: Anakin Skywalker in contrast to the rest of the Jedi, who believe emotions lead to The Dark Side.

Literature

• Just as Ayn Rand's heroes are Straw Vulcans, so her villains tend to be Strawman Emotional characters with a senseless hatred of the heroes. Many of them -- James Taggart from Atlas Shrugged 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.

Live-Action TV

• Stephen Colbert's character.
• Star Trek TOS: 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.
• On Star Trek: The Next Generation Data and Lore are androids of incredibly similar construction, the difference being that Lore has emotions and Data does not (at least until the movies). This makes Data a hero and Lore a villain.
• On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xander's opinions -- especially those regarding women he's been involved with -- are often blown off by most or all of the rest of the group because he's clearly basing it on personal sentiment rather than logic. Examples would include everyone else ignoring his objections about Buffy and Angel's relationship (clearly he's just jealous!), or disagreeing with him that Faith was misunderstood and in pain and still reachable (beh, he's just stupid and horny because he slept with her once!), or that Buffy's wanting to kill Anya for having gone demon again despite her consistent refusal to stake Angel for the same reason is hypocritical (of course Xander would say that, he's jealous of Angel and Anya is his ex-fiancé!). Of course, while Xander was motivated by personal emotion in all of these incidents, Buffy and the gang consistently overlook something else -- notably, that he was eventually proven right in all instances.
• In House Dr. Allison Cameron, who occasionally veered into Strawman Idealist.

Western Animation

• Jake Morgendorffer in Daria. Most of the ensemble characters carry this particular Idiot Ball regularly, but Jake is probably the most consistent.
• Helen "Won't someone please Think of the Children ?" Lovejoy
  • Another Simpsons example is 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.

Politics

• Liberals, according to Conservapedia. Their article on liberalism outright says that there is no such thing as coherent liberal beliefs, and liberals are actually just conservatives who disagree for no logical reason because they want attention. Kind of ironic as many of the editors of Conservapedia who aren't Trolls are Strawman Emotionals themselves.