thefourthvine | Woobies Wanted

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Woobies Wanted

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'll start with an easy one

Daniel Jackson - SG-1

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

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

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!

+1

I have three characters that came to mind, and am working through the comments to see if they've been given, and here Reed (sp?) is mentioned already.

He's an adorable wooby.

Have to disagree with the ST:Voyager woobie - Tom Paris, not Harry Kim. Fanon that Tom had a physically and sexually abusive father, was abused in prison, and in the Maquis is pretty pervasive. By contrast Harry is a normal all-American boy.

Fox Mulder - X-Files
Paul McCartney - Beatles RPF

...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.

Following normal Earth logic, yes, but when has fandom done so? If I were merely going on the basis of personal taste I'd vote for Brian Epstein, followed at some distance by John. But Paul has Big Eyes and is Cute, therefore ends up getting most of the gratuitous torture by teenage girl authors.

If I were merely going on the basis of personal taste I'd vote for Brian Epstein

That's how I'd cast my vote too. (I think Ringo has a lot of untapped Woobie potential but, well, it's Ringo.)

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.

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

THANK YOU for mentioning Lex. I was waiting for someone to get around to him! And also Krycek; Betty and I listed him, but tentatively, because neither of us is in XF. (And Krycek is the perfect example for my Secret Future Research. I neeeeeed him.)

Wow, the Krycek vs Mulder woobie face off would be a hard call! On the one hand, there's, like, Oklahoma and the Mulder Torture Anonymous, the archive that sorted stories by type of injury. But on the other hand, there's, like, every Krycek story I ever read.

I think Mulder and Krycek, really, take turns. Sometimes chapter-by-chapter in the same fic (I give you "The Gift of an Enemy" as an example of that.)

I want to third the woobie-ocity of Lex Luthor. I don't think he could get much woobier.

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.

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.

It's... interesting. The fascination the author apparently has for torture made reading it kind of like an extended car-wreck gawker's-gap from hell, but it is fairly well written nonetheless.

Also, House has a stuffed animal named Mr. Vicodin at the end, which is just delightful for several reasons. I can't actually remember the name of the fic, but it's *the* standby House-torturing epic, apparently.

I really like the idea of having a standby House-torturing epic. The go-to story for all your House torture needs!

Now, of course, I am wondering what other go-to stories are. The go-to story for ridiculously prolonged Kirk/Spock courtship! The go-to story for time traveling bondage porn! The go-to story for all of your one-stop Victorians in Space with Dragons needs!

...I need a list. Another list. AIEEE.

I didn't even know I had Space-Victorian-Dragon needs, but now I YEARN.

That'd be The Contract by DIY Sheep.

Yep, that's the one.

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.

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*

I feel like Dean comes out ahead, but that's because Dean spent 40 years in hell and hates himself for it. But then, Dean's issues are more obvious than Sam's - Sam is a lot more contained.

Because we more see the consequences of John's choices instead of the angst which went into his making them, he's woobie-ish, but not *the* woobie of the show.

Poor Castiel. There isn't a support group in the world that can help him with *his* family's problems. Or a good dictionary for Dean-ese.

Oh, also...

Star Trek: James T Kirk

TOS or Reboot? It's an important distinction!

BOTH

Look, in main canon, he grows up on a hell planet, loses his only son, and gets eaten by a space ribbon!

In reboot canon, he loses his daddy, becomes a teen prostitute, and has to watch the two loves of his life make out in front of him! (Unless you're a Kirk/McCoy shipper, which has its own pains.)

In both, he gets beaten up for fun regularly. Plus he gets his shirt torn off for no reason.

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

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>

No no, I see your choice as well, because I think The Chute changed things. Ah, The Chute. What a great episode.

On my Top Two Voyager Episodes of All Time, The Chute is only just outranked by Warlord.

Ooops, and now I'm scrolling down see that Tom as the fanon woobie has already been picked up on. *g*

Star Trek: Voyager? Is that the one with all the femslash vids between the robot-y woman and the older woman? THERE ARE SO MANY FANDOMS I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT. I feel I have failed to use my fandom time constructively!

Seven of Nine/Janeway: PRACTICALLY CANON. Fourth season is a Xena-like heaven. Oh, TFV, it's like Bechdel every day. If you see one episode, that episode should be The Omega Directive.

You tempt me strangely!

We watched an episode of Deep Space 9 (because it came on the TOS set), and I was ASTONISHED at how good it was. (Although, in fairness, I should also mention that it featured TOS parts and one of my nearly bulletproof narrative kinks, so. But there were moments of meta commentary and characters I mostly liked, too.) This makes me think the other shows might also have things worth seeing, although I suspect that anything without a Spock in it would not be worth extended viewing.

Seven of Nine/Janeway - the thing is, the very first vid I watched for this pairing (and there are a LOT of them, wow) suggested a more mother and child type relationship, so I was really QUITE surprised when vids 2 through, like, 50 were more along the lines of THE SEXIN, OMG THE SEXIN.

But. Hmmm. Bechdel passing! Xenaesqueness! (Although I have never actually seen an ep of Xena, and many of the vids seem to feature her in het relationships, so I am not sure I can quite imagine this. Unless it's like Boom Boom Ba, in which case holy GOD sign me UP.)

And, hey! Speaking of, you know, things f/f - this vid is relevant to your interests. (Anime vid, which means it's on a site that requires membership to download, so I linked to YouTube.)

Oh, that video, thank you. How gorgeous! Amnesia and girl assassins on a quest, what Vera-nip!

And as for Xena, both she and Gabs were obviously bisexual in canon. You know all that footage in Boom Boom Ba where it looks like they're in a bath together? They were usually in a bath together. Or where it looked like they were kissing? They were usually kissing. All for the story, of course, but when the story is Xena waking Gabrielle from an enchanted sleep with a kiss, I think you see where I'm going.

...I clearly need to watch more Xena than I did.

You wouldn't catch me disagreeing.

My opinion: DS9 is actually good (by and large; it still has clunkers), whereas Voyager brings home report cards saying "Has potential". So much potential, so cruelly squandered. You can be watching an episode for 55 minutes saying "Wow, this is actually good!" and then they'll manage to retroactively spoil the whole episode in the last scene. And yet I'm still by and large a fan, because how can you ignore potential like that?

Seven/Janeway -- I'm pretty sure I wrote the very first Janeway/7 fanfic ever. It was appalling, particularly because I live in New Zealand and this was before bittorrent so I wrote it based on episode summaries and got a bunch of things wrong. But it's my claim to fame so I cling to it anyway. --I think in the show, really it is primarily a mother/daughter relationship, though not a terribly healthy one; though that's possibly my bias against Janeway, who I increasingly saw as so unpredictable in her leadership style that it's almost abusive to the whole crew. But when did canon ever get in the way of fanon?

Xena has a sidekick Gabrielle. I've hardly watched any Xena but I can wholeheartedly recommend the musical episode. Apparently much backstory happens before it but I managed to figure out enough of it to enjoy the episode without any of that context. It's full of Xena/Gabrielle "You betrayed me! No, you betrayed *me*!" angst and the slashy subtext isn't all that far sub.

Oooh, somebody got to Pros before me! :) Yeah, I definitely have to agree that Doyle is the woobie--both in canon and out. We probably wouldn't have half as much woobie-fic if he didn't spend so much time tied up on the floor in canon...

His sacrifice, our gain! :D

Xander.

Apparently so!

DCU: Dick Grayson

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

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

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

EVERYONE is saying Spencer Reid. What do people DO that poor man? (Woobies, by default, being poor men.)

Apart from the usual stuff that fic authors do to all woobies, they extrapolate on what we've been given in canon. Poor man has a background to match Daniel Jackson.

Seriously, he does. Child genius. Mom is schizophrenic, and he had to take care of her by himself from the time he was ten until the time he was 18, at which point he was finally able to legally have her committed. Why was he taking care of her on his own? Because his Dad left when he was 10 never to be heard from again, even though he'd only moved elsewhere in the city. Fast forward to canon, and he's been kidnapped, tortured, addicted to Dilaudid, nearly killed by anthrax... fic authors don't *need* to do new things to him.

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.

"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*

That icon is gankable, right?

Go ahead!

Alas I cannot write this sort of fic, I have tried! It ends either poorly, or with everybody being sensible and going home. I have deep, deep respect for the people who can, though.

(I will bet you a wooden nickel that I'll find at least one story exactly like that before I'm finished working through

stellar_dust's Jack/Ten recs list, though.)

Just adding my voice to the clamor of Nu Who fans calling for this fic to be written! This is the funniest thing I have read in a long time, and just totally made my day. (I may possibly be too obsessed with Jack/Doctor...)

Ah, you got Methos. Okay, I'm all out of woobies.

You are TOTALLY allowed to expand upon the story summary - who doesn't occasionally leave things out? Except the thing is, I actually want to READ the story you summarized.

Also, what is the difference between fiction-verse and reality-verse pundits? I am not wise in the ways of that fandom!

The Daily Show/The Colbert Report (And to a much lesser extent the other shows) have the pundits playing deliberately fictionalized versions of themselves, in a world where things like mpreg and time travel and crossovers with the Marvel Universe are *totally possible*. People write about both the world that's drawn in the shows, and the real people as they are in interviews and other appearances.

The most relevant difference to this discussion is that, canonically, real!Stephen Colbert is a well-adjusted moderate liberal with a happy family life, and fictional!Stephen Colbert is a deeply closeted doctrinaire conservative with an abusive childhood and a secret history as a gay prostitute.

ETA: And I think what I was going for in that summary - before I, um, distracted myself - is that for me, part of the point of a woobie is that TERRIBLE THINGS happen to him, but it's not his fault. (He might blame himself - or everybody else might blame him even though he knows he's innocent - but we all know that Character A is pure as driven snow, and in the end, so does everybody else who matters.)

Whereas with the Doctor and the Master, and to a lesser extent Jack, it's *totally* at least partly their own fault, and everybody *knows* it's their fault. Oh,they get forgiven - they get forgiven as hard and often and passive-aggressively as possible - but even in badfic they don't generally get the vindication and/or redemption that's part of the woobie experience for me.

Edited 2010-02-28 18:46 (UTC)

Pundits (fiction-verse): Stephen Colbert
Pundits (reality-verse): Anderson Cooper

This.

lilalanor asked the woobie question last night, and I couldn't decide between character!Stephen and Anderson. You, however, have fixed that problem. (Real!Stephen is a little woobie-ish, but I think Anderson still has him beat.)

It's interesting that in bookverse fics Holmes is the more woobie one, but I am seeing a big trend for Watson woobieness from movieverse fic.

Well, in bookverse we've got the canon bit about faking his own death and going into hiding for years just to protect Watson, which is what tips it over for me, though I think it's a close race in both versions...

Crowley? Crowley?! I... I... *head explodes*

Crowley was consigning himself to the eternal torments of Hell to save the person he secretly loves, only to be dragged out and cuddled by his Angel, long before Dean Winchester ever got the idea. :D

(Though admittedly that may be more about how hot angry-Aziraphale-wielding-a-flaming-sword is than about how pretty Crowley is when he's being tortured.)

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.

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.

Heh. You are not wrong, but it's normally Grant I see getting whomped on in Yuletide fic, to some degree.

Though maybe Justin's worse, because anything that fucks up Grant is automatically his fault?

Yeah, and I think you're right, I think that's the canon speaking. Because oh my god, the shit that's done to Grant, and the fact that Grant more or less has to deal with it entirely on his own.

Justin hits the trope better in some ways, I think. More than Grant, really, because the thing about Grant and Grant stories is that Grant cannot confide in anyone. He's supposed to be able to, but Justin is so very damaged himself that Grant just can't. It hurts Justin too much, and Grant is too protective. So Grant self edits to keep Justin calm. Justin is not supposed to unload on Grant and he knows it, but he lacks Grant's control and so it tends to slip out - you could really do things with the scene where Grant tells Justin that as far as Grant's concerned, he's everything good.

Sorry, obviously I can't read.

If I have to pick one, for GWing it's Duo.

I too vote for Duo as woobie.

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

For SGA... John Sheppard?

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

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?

Bandom: Brendon Urie.

Yes, this!

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

Well, Gerard, Mikey and Frank could be woobies, but nowhere near the extent of Brendon.

So that's why I couldn't come up with a good candidate for bandom, all the badfic h/c writers are writing about Panic ;-) I mean, I see headers for stories that seem to indicate that the writers are doing their best to woobiefy Frank or Gerard but neither of them is really cut out for woobiedom so it doesn't really seem to be working

I think the problem is that a woobie has an essence of innocense and naivety, and neither Frank nor Gerard (or the other one Mikey) have that. Not that Bden is innocent, but still, he is the one-time goofy mormon boy with unfailing smiles no matter what the situation, he's the perfect woobie.

Yeah, that's true. And a bit of a martyr complex too. I mean, I can totally see a story where either Gerard or Mikey is prepared to do pretty much anything to spare the other, get kind of broken by it (e.g.

mahoni's The Uncharted Sea) and need help to remake themselves afterwards but they wouldn't become woobies. And Frank would just snark and bitch about everything :-)

Haha, I totally thought Brendon too.

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.

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!

Agreed!

I was hoping someone would say Elliot. He's the one I most want to wrap up in a warm blankie and give him cocoa with marshmallows.

the woobiest woobie to ever woobie

Gosh, no matter what they do with this list, I have to hope and pray that they use your line as a subtitle. I haven't stopped laughing over it.

I've seen several Eliot woobie fics, but then I've also seen a really bad woobie!Sterling fic.

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? ;-))

Edited 2010-02-28 05:05 (UTC)

ST: Voyager - Tom Paris

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.

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.

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

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

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

YES PLEASE. The easiest way (for me!) would be for you to pick either DW or LJ (you don't have to do the whole thing at whichever site, just, you know, note where you stopped) and record by fandom, then character, like: X-Files, Fox Mulder.

Oh my god I did not expect that there were this many woobies in the WORLD.

Sure, I'll do the DW ones.

For the sake of having a system, where people nom. > 1 per fandom, just take the first?

Indeed. Or the one that you agree with more, if you know the fandom. Or the one that might be Most Appropriate to Our Interests. (I see no reason not to slant things in our favor.)

Thank you! This will be SO HELPFUL, because honestly I was not expecting quite the, um, outpouring of woobieness. It has made me think Deep Thoughts about the whole trope, honestly.

Firefly: Nah, not Jayne. Jayne has a minimal angst quotient. Actually, I'd vote for Mal - and not because he's my favorite character. Simon is too ... self-sufficient and focused to be a woobie and he'd only do horrible, painful things for the sake of River which is a different dynamic (the potentially incestuous siblings, I guess). Mal just can't get over what happened and he's prone to self-sacrifice in order to prove something and he needs to be told, "there there, you can stop wearing your brown coat now."

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

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.

I'm fairly sure there's a world out there somewhere in which "Fairest and Fallen" in the Speech translates most directly as "you're pretty when you suffer". :D

Now what Fandom do I put Tony Stark under? I'm guessing the movieverse?

I would say Marvel Comics or the Avengers? Movie!Tony is woobie *too*, but you don't get into the real *depth* of the woobie of which is capable until you start reading comicsverse fic - the movie only touched about 2% of his canon trauma, and then there's what comics fanon heaps on him on top of that as a result of Civil War.

Definately 616!comics -- there are actual comics panels where the writers tell you in textbox narration that "everyone would totally be sorry for misjudging him if they knew he was dying!" (or words to that effect). At more than one point in canon.

I'm sure he's the woobie in movieverse fic, too, but like melannen said, the movie doesn't begin to touch the depths of Tony-torture the comics have carried out over the past forty years.

Thirding Tony Stark. I mean, I probably wrote a good 10% of the woobie Tony fics out there myself (he's captured by aliens and tortured! He's dying of a mysterious illness! Everyone hates him because of Civil War and then he's electrocuted! etc.)

Please never stop writing these fics, btw.

IAWTC. :D

I suspect you are right, although I also suspect the amount of blatant woobie!Tony written by canon writers outweighs the entire output of the fandom by at least one order of magnitude. :D

Tony, much like Zuko in A:tLA and Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond, pretty much has "woobie who is misjudged by everyone, while suffering terribly" built into his basic character template.

Fourthing. I think what really does it is how much of the canon and fanon harm done to him is self-inflicted for the good of others. If he must kill himself to save his team mates, he will do it. If he can kill himself to save his team mates, but there are two or three other, more reasonable ways to save them, he'll probably still kill himself. It's epic woobieness.

If he must kill himself to save his team mates, he will do it. If he can kill himself to save his team mates, but there are two or three other, more reasonable ways to save them, he'll probably still kill himself.

And that's why we love him. Well, that, and the red thong.

Oh, the thong definitely plays a part!

I have one issue of Teen Tony, and what does he do? Disobey Cap to go help the Avengers, and dangerously drain the power to his heart while doing so. He positively delights in near-killing himself. I think it's basically how he shows he cares. If he likes you, he'll try and employ you. If he really likes you, he'll hope for an opportunity to kill himself for your benefit.

The only reason they didn't replace Tony with a Skrull is because they figured said Skrull would stop his heart before he was off the starship, I reckon.

The only reason they didn't replace Tony with a Skrull is because they figured said Skrull would stop his heart before he was off the starship, I reckon.

This makes total sense! I imagine they tried to sneak multiple Tonys onto Earth before they figured this out.

I also have one issue of Teen Tony, but I wasn't as lucky as you. In mine he hits on Pepper and she slaps him. I try to pretend I didn't read it.

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)

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.

yep, friendly stranger! Lotrips = LOTR RPS, and for a few of us, it's compelling. I'm not trying to draw you in, just want to say that we're relatively sane and aware that we're writing complete fiction.

Yeah, I just meant that RPF isn't my thing : )

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

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)

I actually waffled for a while between Ed and Roy, because yeah, Roy gets it a lot too. And they do tend to do the woob feedback loop thing when paired together. (Lots of fics where one of them is feeling awful, and then the other goes into a guilt death spiral about it, at which point the first one comforts them, and around and around and around...)

Fullmetal Alchemist - Edward Elric

The fact that it's Ed and not Roy being the woobie in so many fics puzzles me, actually, since Roy is IMO the woobier of the two in canon (the onscreen suicide attempt would earn him permenent ultra-woobie status in most fandoms). I guess it's because Ed is smaller and younger.

If you are working off of manga canon (which I prefer, and which is less angsty generally), then Roy is significantly less prone to woobiedom. But yeah, age and size have their influence, alas. They both are so unforgiving of themselves, but Ed had major trauma when he was eleven, and lost a parent when he was younger than that. And he's dealing with a lot of the same stuff Roy is, but as a teenager. I think he kinda needs a hug more than Roy - luckily, Izumi and Winry can do that, whether Ed wants them to or not.

There are a not-insignificant number of fics/discussions that woobify Roy, of course, but yeah, I think age/size has something to do with it. Also, a lot of people find confident-mastermind!Roy really sexy, and that seems to take away from the woobie factor somewhat in fanon.

Dragon Age: Origins - Zevran

Maybe it's just the particular fan community I move in, but I think Alistair definitely gives Zevran a run for his money in the woobiness department.

Heee, Redlance! The canon woobie! There's so little fanfic, though, is he actually a woobie in fanfic, too? (I want fanfic with woobie!Rayek. I'd read that in a hot minute. Also, where are my AUs where Rayek and Cutter and Leetah all try living in a dysfunctional three-way-relationship and nearly kill each other? But eventually work it out? Sexily?)

(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)

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.

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

AHAHAHA yes, this.

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