Despite Anneka and Will’s competition in the previous vignette, today’s ep of Love Has Fangs proves that Dom wins the angst contest hands down…well, at least in his own mind. The mope meister is, of course, treating his depression with a cheery tune by Type O Negative: Everyone I Love Is Dead.

Dom is one of my most enjoyable characters to write because he’s just so clueless. I don’t think it’s ever dawned on him that his life is so miserable because he spends most of his time whingeing and lashing out.  He’s not a bad kid, despite his murderous vendetta against Anneka. It’s just that he has very little empathy because he’s too wrapped up in his own pain and suffering, which is, of course, of epic proportions. Being an eternal teenager doesn’t help matters.

Today’s angst-ridden word of the day is Weltschmerz. It comes from the German “Welt,” meaning “world,” and “Schmerz,” meaning “pain.” Like that other wonderful German compound Schadenfreude, [“Schaden” -> “damage” + “Freude” -> “happy” = “delight caused by the sufffering of others”], Weltschmerz describes a state of mind both dismal and enjoyable. Weltschmerz is defined as “sadness over the general state of the world.” Coined by Teutonic author Jean Paul, it refers to disappointment that one feels when one realizes that the physical world cannot satisfy one’s spiritual longings. This pessimistic yearning for transcendence shows up in a lot of Romantic poetry.

To put it another way, Dom would like to think that he has Weltschmerz. But he probably just has Schadenfreude.