Woobies Wanted

[thefourthvine]

brown_betty and I have been discussing woobies. Further research - for the good of science! - is now required, and so I come to you for help. I need a list of woobies.

TVTropes has a great page on woobies [Warning: cherry_ice and I have determined that TVTropes is a black hole. If you click on this link, there is a chance you will never escape from the website. Leave a message for your loved ones before you click. Also it's a good idea to pack a lunch.], which features this definition:

"[The woobie] is that character you want to give a big hug, wrap in a blanket and feed soup to when he or she suffers so very beautifully."

And there is, of course, a huge long list of woobies attached, but a lot of those people are woobies in canon more than in fan fiction, and I want the fannish ones. I'm looking for the person in a given fandom who is always being hurt (and then comforted), the person who you just know is going to have a secret shame or a secret trauma or a secret disease, probably while he is being raped and beaten in prison by Nazis with spiky boots. In other words, I want to know who, in your fandom, is the character who you'd immediately think of if you read this header:

Title: Recovery and Revelations Part 7, 1/???
Series: Hold Me Tight Tonight (Confronting the Darkness)
Author: I <3 Woobies!
Summary: To protect the ones he or she loves, Character X sold his or her body to evil slaver alien wizards. Now Character X is finally back home. Can the [team/family/friends/loved ones/etc.] help him or her recover?
Warnings: Noncon, dubcon, torture, past child abuse and incest, betrayal, cutting, slavery, underage sex, involuntary drug use, porn, some swears.

In the future, there will be a poll. But first, I need the names to go in the poll. So tell me: in your fandom, who is the woobie? To make this extra-challenging, especially for you people in Harry Potter and Supernatural: you can only nominate one person per fandom. I want to hear about the Woobiest in All the Land.

Comments

[lilyleia78]

I'll start with an easy one

Daniel Jackson - SG-1

[thefourthvine]

For sure. (First one mentioned on both sites!)

[zeborah]

Criminal Minds - Spencer Reid
Star Trek Voyager - Harry Kim
ST: DS9 - Bashir
ST: TNG - ... I think Picard?

[thefourthvine]

Man, apparently Spencer Reid is just all filled with woobieness, and I hadn't even heard of him before this post. I have learned something today!

[naraht]

Fox Mulder - X-Files
Paul McCartney - Beatles RPF

[thefourthvine]

...Paul McCartney? Really? I don't read Beatles RPF (I have this tragic allergy to famous people that prevents me from reading any kind of RPF), but from my limited knowledge of the canon, I would have expected Lennon to be the Woobie of Record.

[isagel]

Another absolute given: Lex Luthor, Smallville.

And I'm going to say Alex Krycek, The X-Files, although I'm not entirely sure he's woobier than Mulder.

[jmtorres]

I think fanon makes Krycek lots woobier; you don't have to try to hard with Mulder.

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

For the Newsies fandom: Jack. He actually sacrifices himself, several times, in the movie. Also in the slash fiction. (The het fiction is almost universally Mary Sue-ish, I don't go there.) Authors tend to have David get beat up too, but it's Jack who throws himself on his sword... usually followed by a h/c scene of David patching him up. Yum. (It does not hurt that Jack is played by Christian Bale. Seriously, that movie needs a sequel. Set in the Roaring Twenties. With lots of subtext.)

For the NCIS fandom: Tony DiNozzo. Not that he would admit to being a woobie, but again with the falling on his sword thing. Gibbs occasionally does this too, but Gibbs is kickass enough to plan ahead and never actually get beaten up in the process.

For the Torchwood fandom: Ianto. This doesn't actually require explanation, does it?

For Star Trek: Reboot: Spock. Obviously. Uhura does a wonderful job of keeping him not-dead-yet. Or, you know, Kirk does. Whoever's on call that week.

For Star Trek: TOS: I don't actually read a lot of fic for this, but I'd have to say McCoy. Kirk and Spock also frequently sacrifice themselves, but when McCoy does, he always gets a lot more injured than they do.

For Psych: Shawn. I'm not actually sure I've seen fic where anyone else gets seriously injured, it's always Shawn. And it's usually because of some harebrained scheme of his to save everyone, though occasionally it's just random. Also, he has serious issues with both his parents.

For LOTR: Frodo is pretty much a walking billboard for this, isn't he?

For Firefly: ... now that I think about it, Firefly may be that one rare fandom which is entirely without woobies. I mean, Simon almost would be, but he's far too snarky, and always has to patch up himself. And Wash plays one for fun, but isn't really.

For House: Oh, House himself, obviously. You've seen the fic where he allows himself to get the shit regularly beat out of him, and then be framed for murder, to save Wilson's life? I hear rumors that the show itself has started showing his woobieness, but I'm a couple seasons behind right now.

[thefourthvine]

For the Torchwood fandom: Ianto. This doesn't actually require explanation, does it?

Not at all. Ianto Jones = Woobie. It's a first principle, really.

For Psych: Shawn. I'm not actually sure I've seen fic where anyone else gets seriously injured, it's always Shawn. And it's usually because of some harebrained scheme of his to save everyone, though occasionally it's just random. Also, he has serious issues with both his parents.

Seriously? I would so have predicted Gus. He's a woobie if I've ever seen one! (Admittedly, I've only watched about 15 minutes of Psych, total, all carefully selected and screened in advance by BB, because that is not the show for a person with an embarrassment squick. But even in vids, Gus just looks so very woobie.)

You've seen the fic where he allows himself to get the shit regularly beat out of him, and then be framed for murder, to save Wilson's life?

...No. No, I haven't seen that story.

[brynwulf]

You are so cruel to deny us at least THREE votes for woobies in Supernatural. :)

I will have to say Sammich. But I want my protest recorded that it was under duress because I also want to say Dean and Castiel and maybe even John.

[thefourthvine]

You are so cruel to deny us at least THREE votes for woobies in Supernatural. :)

I have been keeping a secret from the internets: I am a cold, cruel, evil woman. I also plan to make you CHOOSE between Dean and Sam, later on. *cackles*

[naraht]

Oh, also...

Star Trek: James T Kirk

[thefourthvine]

TOS or Reboot? It's an important distinction!

[copracat]

SGA: John Sheppard
The Professionals: Doyle
I would disagree with the commenter above and say Star Trek Voyager: Tom Paris (though, to be honest the mix of Tom's fanon abusive Dad and canonical jail time plus Harry's experience in The Chute likely make them neck and neck for fan whumpin'.)
Blake's 7: Avon
The Sentinel: Blair

[zeborah]

Oh, I forgot about what fandom does with Admiral Paris. Yes, you're probably right; I was letting myself be influenced by actual canon. <shame>

[northern]

Xander.

[thefourthvine]

Apparently so!

[petra]

DCU: Dick Grayson

[thefourthvine]

Well, yeah. I mean, even Batman wants to woobie up Dick.

[ct]

White Collar: Neal.
Criminal Minds: Spencer Reid, like someone else said above.
HP: I'm gonna have to go with... Draco.

[dragonfly]

Oh and here is Neal Caffrey, already claimed. *g*

[melannen]

Okay, in vaguely chronological order:

Harry Potter: Draco Malfoy
Pirates of the Caribbean: James Norrington
X-Files: Alex Krycek
Good Omens: Crowley
SG1: Daniel Jackson
SGA: Rodney McKay
Highlander: Methos
DC Comics: (very wide category, but probably) Bruce Wayne
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, et al: Spike
From Eroica With Love: Klaus Eberbach, oddly
Supernatural: Dean Winchester
House: James Wilson
Pundits (fiction-verse): Stephen Colbert
Pundits (reality-verse): Anderson Cooper
Doctor Who, et al: ....Vislor Turlough*
Torchwood: Ianto
Star Trek Reboot: James T. Kirk
Star Trek TOS: Leonard McCoy
BBC RPS: James May
Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Holmes

*I want to put the Master or the Doctor or Jack here, but it's *never that simple* with them, even in badfic, it would be more like "To protect the ones he or she loves ^without actually having to admit even to himself that he loves them^, Character X sold his or her body to evil slaver alien wizards ^and willingly agreed to help them take over the universe in deeply immoral ways^. Now Character X is finally back home ^having been dragged back by his loved ones against his will and with a great deal of unnecessary death and destruction^. Can the [team/family/friends/loved ones/etc.] help him recover ^or will he diligently refuse to be forgiven until he has a chance to run away/kill himself out of spite/change the timelines so they never met/all of the above repeatedly in random order]?. ....Actually, come to think of it, that's the plot of pretty much every Master arc in canon.

Whereas Turlough is just plain pretty when he suffers.

[dragojustine]

"To protect the ones he or she loves ^without actually having to admit even to himself that he loves them^, Character X sold his or her body to evil slaver alien wizards ^and willingly agreed to help them take over the universe in deeply immoral ways^. Now Character X is finally back home ^having been dragged back by his loved ones against his will and with a great deal of unnecessary death and destruction^. Can the [team/family/friends/loved ones/etc.] help him recover ^or will he diligently refuse to be forgiven until he has a chance to run away/kill himself out of spite/change the timelines so they never met/all of the above repeatedly in random order]?

I DESPERATELY, DESPERATELY, want you to write this now. With Jack as character X. PLEASE. *g*

[ilyena_sylph]

Gundam Wing: Duo Maxwell &/or Trowa Barton. (traumatic canon backstories from Hell, so at least there's reason...)

Seconding Dick Grayson for DCU, and Lex Luthor for Smallville.

Transformers G1: Bumblebee.

Fast & the Furious: Brian O'Conner, to my neverending rage.

Cyteen: Grant. Not that the canon doesn't do that enough...

Dark is Rising: Barney Drew.

...I may be back later, once my brain decides to function again on the rest of my fandoms.

[tiamatschild]

I'm not sure about Grant. Cherryh doesn't map well onto these tropes because, well, yes. I mean. Grant. But, at the same time, Grant. He is just so incredibly and utterly badass and schemey and emotionally resilient that you don't so much want to feed him soup and get him a blanket as you want to break out the pom poms and the postage stamp skirts and set up a cheering section for him. Yeah, you go Grant! Pwn everyone who ever underestimates or patronizes you! Whoo, whoo! (That might just be me. Well, and Ari. But Ari would go for black postage stamp skirts with sparkles. ...I suspect this would happen with the pompoms, too. Ari is never allowed to design cheer uniforms.)

I think woobiefication has an element of fetishizing the loss of power and the aftermath of that. Grant has nearly no power from the outset, and he learns to leverage what tiny amounts he can scavenge. (*swoon* *swoon* *doubleswoon*) I dunno. Maybe I'm wrong.

if there can be only one

[aethel]

I nominate Draco Malfoy for HP fandom, but I haven't exactly done a complete survey of the literature.

For SGA... John Sheppard?

Re: if there can be only one

[torachan]

No way, Rodney is way more woobified than John. Post-Trinity!

[stepps]

I find it funny that there are several different answers of who is a woobie in STReboot fandom. I would have thought it was Chekov, personally, but then I'm not really in that fandom.

Bandom: Brendon Urie. Without a doubt Bden is The Character to hurt and then comfort with cuddles and snuggles and love. There are other hurt characters, but they tend to be to prickly to comfort in a woobie way.

Jonas Brothers: They are all the same boys, at different stages of life, it is so hard to split them up. Kevin maybe?

[mllesays]

Bandom: Brendon Urie.

Yes, this!

I'm trying to think if there are other band-specific woobies, but Brendon just eclipses anyone else.

[dragojustine]

I am going to assume that I don't need to say Daniel Jackson or Ianto Jones, right? Those are sort of a baseline.

But over in SPN, Dean Winchester was clearly the woobiest woobie to ever woobie. I mean, I was an early-seasons SPN fangirl, so it's possible things have changed from the Ultimate Woobiness of Season 2, but still.

West Wing: Toby Ziegler. But West Wing was awfully low on actual physical violence (I mean, by the standards of other fannish things that involve wands and swords and automatic weapons), and his woobiness was mostly emotional.

Sports Night: Dan Rydell. See above with the "mostly emotional," but he sure did angst pretty on the show and that was multiplied several-fold in fic.

BSG: For a time there, Kara Thrace was pretty woobilicious.

Leverage: I started to say Eliot, only to realize I've never actually seen a fic that does this. It just seems pretty self-evident to me. But I might be completely making that up.

[brownbetty]

Def. Eliot Spencer for Leverage. I mean, he gets beat up in canon, and is personally abrasive, meaning he's hiding all of his desperate manpain and really just needs love!

[umbo]

Tim Bayliss (Homicide) for sure needs to be nominated for this one. I mean, canon put him through enough already, but some of the stuff that fanfic put him through (including, I'll admit, yours truly)....

ETA: The fandom is very new, but I'd say Ben Sherman (Southland) has already been put through the wringer in more than one story and probably qualifies as a woobie as well.

(no, I don't have a type at all, do I? ;-))

[semielliptical]

ST: Voyager - Tom Paris

[fox]

Parenthetically, were you participating this summer (wasn't it summer?) in dira's Worst Fanon Childhood tournament? I bet you'll get a lot of woobie material over there.

Also parenthetically, what vowel do you have in "woobie"? Does it rhyme with "newbie" or with "bubbe" (you do have "bubbe", I assume, and are not about to pronounce that with the same vowel as "Bubba")?

So, to answer your question: because I like to do things methodically, in the fandoms I've written, reading from left to right, I'm going to say:

TPM (i.e. all Star Wars prequels, really): that's easy. Obi-Wan Kenobi; it's no contest.

Sports Night: this is where your canon vs. fanon question comes in. Since you're asking about fanon, I'm going to say Casey is woobier* than Dan, but only just.

[*w/r/t 'woobier' - sorry about that. Note that I do not believe "woobie" is an adjective; and yet somehow, this is a noun that can take a comparative suffix. Go figure.]

The Sentinel: Blair is woobier than Jim, but it's actually not as open-and-shut a case as you might suspect.

Due South: I think Fraser wins this one (over both Rays), interestingly for exactly the same reason as Jim Ellison loses above.

Harry Potter: oh, man. You're right that this is a toughie. :-) For maximum contrast between fanon woobieness and canon support, though, I think I'm going to go with Draco Malfoy. That's a crowded field, though, and I'm sure my colleagues will have nominated other strong contenders. I can think of three more without breaking a sweat, and at least another three or four after only a moment's consideration. Heh.


I also have a Random Fandoms category, so I have more to play with! Yay. Let's see:


West Wing x Buffy: I'm going to be good and only nominate one character from both shows, and it's going to be Sam Seaborn.

Torchwood: Ianto Jones. Next question.

Romeo and Juliet: for those of us who wrote Romeo/Mercutio that one year at Yuletide, I think in ever case the woobie is uncontroversially Mercutio. Yes.

A Knight's Tale: WAT.

Chariots of Fire: Aubrey Montague, if I had to pick one, but I don't think of this as a fandom that really goes in for woobies.

Galaxy Quest: hard to say. Probably Jason.

Willow: ... you know, I don't think there is a woobie in this movie.

[dragojustine]

Due South: I think Fraser wins this one (over both Rays), interestingly for exactly the same reason as Jim Ellison loses above.

I kind of want to hear you expound on this interesting comparison now, despite having seen only 20 minutes of TS ever.

[dragonfly]

Ah hah! I have one no one has thought of. (Because there are only so many of us crazy people in this fandom)

From Once Upon A Time in Mexico

Agent Sands

[brownbetty]

BtVS: Spike
ST:ToS: Spock
DCU: Dick Grayson.
Merlin: Um… Lancelot?
Firefly: …unexpectedly difficult! Possibly the answer is Jayne. I'm uncertain, though.
Bones: Booth!
Angel tS: Wesley Windham-Price

[brownbetty]

Since I'm partially at fault, can I help you tabulating the answers?

[melannen]

Oh, god, and because I can't imagine how he has been left out thus far:

Tony Fuckin' Stark.

(Also, Kris Allen in AI8 fandom. Not that I'm reading that fandom or anything, nope not me.)

And I second the Lone Power mentioned on the LJ post. The archetype of all woobies everywhere. :D

[aldanise]

Seconding the Tony Stark wholeheartedly. (With equal disbelief that he didn't get mentioned earlier)

And I totally never thought that about the Lone Power, but se does get pretty woobified, doesn't se? Thirded.

[msilverstar]

Lotrips: there's no doubt, it's Orlando. Oh the torture they've put him through... Tied for second, Elijah and Dom (not like that! wait, sometimes like that, both gay and bondage)

[axelrod]

Yeah, I've heard dark rumors about Legolas fanfic ... (don't read any LotR fanfic, ever, at all). Legolas for fandom, but Frodo for canon (book or movie) surely?

Or are you talking RPF? Strange land, never been. People seem friendly, but their ways are not mine.

[coraa]

Kingdom Hearts - Riku
Final Fantasy 7 - Cloud Strife
Fullmetal Alchemist - Edward Elric
Dragon Age: Origins - Zevran
Elfquest - Redlance
Dragonriders of Pern - Brekke

[axelrod]

FMA: Definitely. Though Roy, too, possibly - he's really hard on himself. And then you can enter the two of them into a feedback loop of woobie-comfort-woobie.

I can see a good fanfic which actually develops the character of, say, Breda or Havoc or Fury (not Hawkeye) and which allows them to fulfill the woobie tropes. You know, Breda has sacrificed himself for the good of the Cause and is broken, can is commanding officer put him back together? And it all takes place in a corner of an abandoned warehouse because they're Hunted. Uh, I'd probably read it ...

(haven't been keeping up with canon lately, btw)

[somnolentblue]

(here via network - I could not resist the woobie challenge!)

SG1: Daniel Jackson

Supernatural: Dean Winchester

CWRPS: Jensen (Jared has a strong presence in the woobie category, but I think Jensen wins on sheer numbers in the fic I've encountered. Although I could see an argument being made for Jared starring in the selling-himself version of this fic; Jensen would star in the 'born into slavery' version of it. Nonetheless, I'm going to go with Jensen.)

Leverage: surprisingly, I'm drawing a blank. Given that there's canonical manpain (Nate) and they all seem to have mysterious pasts with degrees of tragedy, this surprises me. Obviously I don't read enough in the fandom.

Buffy and Angel: Spike (with a side of Xander, or, for woobius maximus, Spike/Xander, 'cause none of their friends understaaaaaaaaand)

Harry Potter: Draco Malfoy

Farscape: John Crichton (although I didn't actually see a lot of this in fic, yay)

[dragojustine]

Although I could see an argument being made for Jared starring in the selling-himself version of this fic; Jensen would star in the 'born into slavery' version of it.

This is self-evidently true- I can think of, like, 5 fics. Off the top of my head.

As a further refinement- they may both be born into slavery, but if anybody is born into sex slavery, it's obviously Jensen.