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

[derryderrydown]

Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell fandom is almost non-existent. However, David Mitchell is still the woobie. He's even been a woobie zombie.

Lawrence of Arabia: TE Lawrence. The canon makes it kind of tricky to paint anybody else as woobier, although Ali gives it his best shot.

Top Gear: Richard Hammond. He is small and cute with big eyes and has nearly died.

[melannen]

Is there David Mitchell fandom somewhere? I have found bits of fic by way of QI fandom but I kind of need more. (Also: totally a woobie.)

Also, I would say Richard Hammond is more likely to get randomly tortured for fun, but James May is more likely to voluntarily sell himself into sex slavery, and will probably angst about it more (at least in the slash part of the fandom...)

[dragovianknight]

Final Fantasy VII: Sephiroth (but the summary would be more like melannen's Doctor/Master/Jack summary)
Supernatural: Dean Winchester
SGA: Rodney McKay, but there would be a lot of bitching about it (from Rodney, I mean)
SG1: Saint Daniel Jackson, hands down
Heralds of Valdemar: Vanyel...oh, wait, that was canon, nevermind

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

Sephiroth, you don't think it would be Cloud? Or am I getting confused between emo and woobie. ;)

[signedwapo]

Howard Moon, the tragi-comic jazz enthusiast from 'The Mighty Boosh'.
Oh, dammit, that's pretty much all canon. Also, often portrayed as song and dance numbers. With animation and/or puppets.

[brownbetty]

Memo to self: You stopped updating here!

[parhelion]

Nero Wolfe: Archie Goodwin, although I keep wondering why we bother since he's almost a stereotype of the stoic woobie, subdivision smart-ass, in canon.

Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Holmes, who is yet another stoic woobie in canon.

Bujold's Vorkosigan universe: Miles Vorkosigan, who's so centrally and transcendentally a woobie in canon that it has often rocketed past bad and circled around the universe to become very well written, indeed.

[axelrod]

Vorkosiverse: well, Aral, too, esp pre-Cordelia. And Ivan could be ficcified* into a woobie. Mark gets woobie treatment canonically, just not all of it on-stage. I mean, there is *actually* healing sex! But yes, Miles, is the central woobie.

*That's one strange looking verb.

[jain]

Angel: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Xander Harris
Dong Bang Shin Ki: Kim Jaejoong
Harry Potter: Draco Malfoy
Horatio Hornblower: Archie Kennedy
Lord of the Rings: Legolas
Merlin: Merlin
Nobuta wo Produce: Kiritani Shuuji
Phantom Menace: Obi-Wan Kenobi
Saiunkoku Monogatari: Li Kouyuu
Saiyuki: Sha Gojyo
Sentinel: Blair Sandburg
Smallville: Lex Luthor
Star Trek XI: Jim Kirk
Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Julian Bashir
Star Trek Voyager: Tom Paris
Supernatural: Dean Winchester
White Collar: Neal Caffrey
X-Files: Alex Krycek
X-Men (comics): Gambit
Yami no Matsuei: Tsuzuki Asato

[lady_ganesh]

Seconding Gojyo like crazy here. The guy's mom tried to kill him with an ax and he was going to let her so maybe she wouldn't be sad any more.

Seconding Tsuzuki too.

[order_of_chaos]

Here's my list. No doubt many of these have already been offered up for hugs and torture.

Wesley (Angel the Series)
Zuko (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
The Doctor (Doctor Who)
Vegeta (Dragonball Z)
Cloud (Final Fantasy VII)
Duo Maxwell (Gundam Wing)
Harry Potter (Harry Potter)
Methos (Highlander)
House (House MD)
Tony Stark (Ironman)
Sarah (Labyrinth)
Sam Tyler(Life on Mars)
Merlin (Merlin)
Naruto (Naruto)
Lex Luthor (Smallville)
Rodney McKay (Stargate: Atlantis)
Daniel Jackson (Stargate: SG1)
James Kirk (Star Trek Reboot)
Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars prequels)
Legolas (The Lord of the Rings)
Ezra Standish (The Magnificent Seven)
Ianto Jones (Torchwood)
Joxer (Xena: Warrior Princess)
Alex Krycek (X-Files)
Tsuzuki (Yami no Matsuei)

[melannen]

...Naruto is woobier than Sasuke? Really?

There must have been canon developments since I stopped paying attention, because I would have said that *nobody* is woobier than Sasuke.

[damned_colonial]

Hornblower (TVverse): Archie Kennedy

[auburn]

NCIS LA: G Callen
SGA: John Sheppard (I have seen that header for more than one SGA story and to my ever lasting shamed clicked to read... )
X-Men (comics): Remy LeBeau aka Gambit
Due South: Ray Kolwalski
OUATIM: Agent Sands
TPM: Obi-wan Kenobi
Alias: Eric Weiss
Weiss Kruez: Aya aka Fujimaya Ran
Tour of Duty: Myron Goldman
SG-1: Daniel Jackson (even if I want to kick him a lot of the time, that still counts for the hurt in hurt/comfort, right?)
Serpent's Reach (C.J. Cherryh): Jim the azi
Without a Trace: Martin Fitzgerald
CSI Original: Greg Sanders
Star Trek Reboot: Jim Kirk
Star Trek TOS: tribbles

[axelrod]

Are woobies necessarily male? Cuz I don't think I've seen a single woman mentioned? Which is very, very interesting. Possibly woobieness exists in the contrapuntal relationship of, otoh, an unambiguous masculinity and, otoh, pain and suffering which that kind of masculinity prevents a person from expressing openly. Women are stereotyped as weak (lol), and therefore their fictional representations can't bear the weight of woobiness.

But I'm open to exceptions. I just thought of one: Starbuck from BSG. But so many people on that show on contenders, I mean, the basic premise creates such fruitful ground for angstmuffins and woobies. Still, Starbuck is one of the central woobies. (btw, never got past the beginning of S03, have been spoiled for [some?] character death in S04, not really interested in further spoilers.)

[twtd]

I was actually wondering this same thing (though I've only read the list on DW and not LJ). I keep trying to think of woobies in femslash fandom and it's hard. I'm wondering if that's because the tropes are just different or if there's something else at work here.

[wychwood]

SGA: Rodney, which I have never really understood. I mean, seriously.

[sholio]

I started to say Rodney too, but then I got to thinking about it and realized that if there's a character who tends to get dropped into the type of scenario described in the OP's fake story description, it's Sheppard -- there are vast tracts of SGA fandom that like to write Rodney as the miserable butt of the expedition's jokes who has to go cut himself in a corner, but there are also vast tracts of fandom that write chapter after chapter of Sheppard being horribly tortured and traumatized and then cuddled by his friends while sobs wrack his beaten and emaciated frame ... I really can't choose between the two! (Like SPN fandom, SGA needs two slots for this. XD)

[dragojustine]

I can only pray that you are going to do this poll tournament style. (seeded by size of fandom? Or number of mentions here? Or maybe genre of canon?) It'll be like March Madness!

[twtd]

Law & Order: SVU: Olivia Benson, at least in her own mind, which a lot of fandom seems happy to agree with.

If you're reading Criminal Minds femslash instead of slash: Emily Prentiss.

I would contend that in Xena fandom, it is as hard pin down one woobie as it seems to be in Supernatural fandom, though I would say Xena, if I had to pick one. I can't agree with Joxer because he almost never even got mentioned in the fic I was reading. It was all about Xena's dark past and her suffering and Gabrielle redeeming her.

Bab5: Susan Ivanova or possibly Marcus, again, depending on whether or not you're reading the femslash.

Devil Wears Prada: Andy. The bad things always seem to happen to Andy (in order that Miranda's heart might grow three sizes and she can fall in love with her).

CSI: Sara Sidle, at least back when I was reading it regularly.

I'm sure that one of the characters in The Sarah Connors Chronicles is a woobie, but I don't follow the fandom, so I don't know if it's Sarah or Cameron, though I suspect that they trade off.

[axelrod]

SCC: I didn't get far (stopped somewhere in the 1st season? didn't have time), but I didn't think Sarah was a woobie. And the first season seemed to be about Cameron growing into the charismatic leader he has to become - so he didn't read as woobie. More like wasisface Cameron's uncle - unhappy childhood and youth, lost his beloved brother, lost his team, and generally seems to produce more angst that Sarah and Cameron combined.

[axelrod]

I'm not familiar with a lot of X Men canon, much less the fic, but Logan/Wolverine?

[dysprositos]

I'm so surprised by all these Harry Potter: Draco Malfoy comments. I mean, yeah, he suffers a lot in canon and he does it so prettily and all, but dude. Severus freakin' Snape, man. Shitty childhood, shitty adolescence, shitty early adulthood, shitty later adulthood, shitty death scene (in which he, of course, didn't actually die)... I mean, Remus and, to a lesser degree, Sirius, had it bad, but Severus Snape's life has basically been what Harry Potter's is supposed to be, only subtract all the parts where you're vindicated and a hero and everyone likes you. (People are mean because they think you're evil, people are mean because they think you're evil, people are mean because they think you're evil...and then it turns out you actually are. So you seek redemption, rinse and repeat, including the part where it turns out you outsourced your conscience to good guys who weren't so good after all.)

Maybe it's just that I started out in Snapedom, but yeah, Severus Snape is the Woobiest Woobie in all the land. I mean, I've read the fic you summarized (countless times), except that a great deal of the time, the "friends help him recover" is either left out or more like "friend help him survive". Wait, is he supposed to come home from the evil slaver alien wizards? He's not disqualified on the basis of not having a home, is he?

Warnings: Noncon, dubcon, torture, past child abuse and incest, betrayal, cutting, slavery, underage sex, involuntary drug use and addiction, porn, some swears,prostitution, attempted suicide.

FTFY! ;-)

[melannen]

I think that's why I went for Malfoy instead of Snape - he was really, really tempting, but the stories where Malfoy has given himself up to be Voldemort's sex slave because his father's abuse has taught him that it's the only way to prove his love for Harry are *far* more likely to end in blankets, cuddling and soup than the ones starring Snape.

Icon has no relevance*

[carnadosa]

Smallville: Lex Luther
Harry Potter: I was surprised by the lack of Severus Snape too. Though this fandom is so huge you can self select for anything.
Leverage: well, so far I've really only found the one story that qualifies, so Eliot.
Supernatural: Dean, enough though I self select for Sam centered stories, it's still Dean.
NCIS: Tony DiNozzo
BTVS: Xander (but I select for Xander centered stories)
Avengers: Tony Stark
Highlander: Methos
Man From UNCLE: Illya?
Startrek Reboot: Kirk
Startrek TOS: Spock

*while there is a particular author on DA who has two woobie!Deadpool stories that I love entirety too much, I'm pretty sure he'd do his forth wall thing and kill me if I nominated him.

Re: Icon has no relevance*

[axelrod]

woobie!Deadpool? This I gotta see to believe.

[axelrod]

Is there a difference between "woobie" and "angstmuffin"? I tend to define angstmuffins as masculine badasses who feel responsible for things they have no control over and don't like themselves much and feel guilty about stuff and are closed off emotionally. So it's like, an angstmuffin might be woobified and woobies are usually angstmuffins but not always?

There's also the difference that you can kind of croon "woobie" at the TV screen when someone is an angstmuffin is being a total woobie.

[dragojustine]

OMG, so THAT'S what John Sheppard is. He's not a woobie, he's an angstmuffin! (I was having such trouble figuring out why just the woobie label didn't seem to fit...)

[avendya]

Star Trek Reboot: Jim Kirk
Doctor Who (2005-now): The Master
Harry Potter: Remus Lupin, although Draco Malfoy comes in a close second
Young Wizards: The Lone Power. Oh, the Lone Power.

[ladydreamer]

ilu for mentioning the Young Wizards, or for just knowing what it is. And I agree.

[turlough]

I seldom encounter woobies when I read because they mostly figure in the kind of story I keep a looooong way away from so these are mostly picked from what I remember of the headers for all those stories I DIDN'T read :-)

Fandoms I've read in:

Classic Doctor Who - Vislor Turlough
X-files: Mulder
Buffy - Xander Harris
Andromeda - Harper
Weiss Kruez - Aya (Fujimaya Ran, not his sister :-)
Gundam Wing - Duo Maxwell
Yoroiden Samurai Trooper - Hashiba Touma (Rowen in the American dub)
Saiyuki - Sha Gojyo
Stargate SG-1 - Daniel Jackson
Harry Potter - Draco Malfy
Popslash - either I never saw the badfic in this fandom or the severe h/c stories didn't exist (which I doubt!) but I can't think of anyone right now
Bandom - in the My Chemical Romance part of the fandom Frank Iero and Gerard Way seem to be about equal amounts woobiefied but neither of them is really made for woobiedom so I hesitate to nominate one of them, and I don't keep up with what the rest of the fandom does

[lady_ganesh]

WK: I dunno, Yohji got a lot of manpain/woobification too.

[msilverstar]

No one's mentioned Merlin, but in that one, it's almost always Merlin getting captures/tortured/needing soup. But canonically, he's very strong, so tends to escape rather than be rescued.

[laughingrat]

Hmm. Peter's good for Surprise Heroic Nobility, but if you really want to brutalize a charater--to mess up his body, torture his soul, twist up his spirit--it's got to be Egon every time.

Oh yeah, and the fandom is Real Ghostbusters. Forgot to mention that.

[stone_ocean]

Metal Gear - Four way tie between Otakon, Raiden, Snake and Big Boss
Mother 3 - Lucas
Silent Hill (4) - Henry
Tales of the Abyss - Luke (going mostly off j-fandom here, as I'm kinda out of touch with the English side)
Tales of Destiny - Leon (same as Abyss)
Bersserk - Gutts
Hetalia - Prussia
FKMT - Kaiji, oh god KAIJI
Sengoku Basara - Date Masamune and, in a rare female example, Oichi
Vocaloid - Len, for the sheer ammount of songs that have him either dying, or being forced to watch Rin die. Kid has it rough.

[mommy]

I'd put Asch over Luke for English-language fandom.

[sholio]

As people have already said, I think SG-1's Daniel Jackson is a shoe-in. Ditto for Sentinel's Blair Sanderson.

SPN: Dean WInchester
NCIS: Tony DiNozzo (oh, so very much)

SGA: Wow, did I ever have to struggle with this one, because my first thought was "Rodney, of course!", but when I really got to thinking about it, I think the swathes of fandom that like to write Rodney as a wibbling psychological mess are actually outnumbered by those who write Sheppard undergoing horrible tortures and then suffering through innumerable chapters of PTSD and infirmary cuddling. And Sheppard has a whole comm devoted to torturing him, while I don't think Rodney does. So I'm going with John Sheppard here. :D

[mackiedockie]

Methos probably appears most in Highlander as the woobiest angstmuffin, though Duncan would closely follow as the angstiest woobie. Joe is often overlooked in Woobieville, because he's so stoic and secretive and generally misses out on the necessary comfort part of the equation while Duncan and Methos muffin each other.

TOS-McCoy.
Sherlock Holmes-I go with Watson, all the way.
CSi-Nick, closely followed by Greg, though early Grissom had a number of woobystories.
Burn Notice-Mike is the obvious choice, but Sam has real possibilities.

[calime]

You know, re: Highlander, it suddenly struck me that as to fanon, it seems that in according-to-canon fic Methos gets woobiefied more (especially post-Horsemen), but in AU's it's more likely Duncan, who gets to bat his pretty eyes woundedly and bruises so deliciously (remembering a sentiment expressed by someone I felt echoed in my soul, on the lines of 'Duncan and a whip, what more can one want?'*grins*). By no means hard rule, but still, that seems the impression to me from memory.
I wonder whether it has to do with Duncan essentially being very good woobie material, while Methos makes a more convincing woobie only more or less when there's Adam Pierson's shadow showing through, yet we have that nice canon emotional nuclear strike that is the Horsemen arc that gives points to Methos...
It's too difficult. Those two would have to duke it out between themselves. Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the woobiest of 'em all? There can be only one...

[elspethdixon]

Magnificent Seven: Tie between Vin Tanner and Ezra Standish

SG1: Daniel Jackson

SGA: Tie between Sheppard and McKay

SPN: Dean. Definately Dean. His woobieness is epic in canon.

A:tLA: Zuko (his own father horribly maimed him, his sister wants to kill him, he was banished from his home at 13 with orders not to return until he'd completed a task thought to be impossible, and everyone either thinks he's evil or thinks he worthless. He is the best part of the entire series other than Toph and Iroh. Particularly since he doesn't *blame* his father for deliberately maiming and then exiling him).

Marvel Comics: Tony Stark, Gambit, Spiderman (who is less a woobie per se and more the guy with a cosmic "kick me" sign taped to his back who can never get a break), and, weirdly, Deadpool. Wolverine pings a lot of people's woobie radar, but it's difficult to really beat him up given the healing factor. Daredevil is a total woobie in canon, but there's very little fic about him.

ST: Reboot: Kirk, particularly in Kirk/McKoy stories, where the fragile woobie Kirk trope seems strongest.

ST: Voyager: Tom Paris. He was raped in prison, you know (or at least, so every slash writer ever tells us)

NCIS: DiNozzo

Smallville: Definately Lex, in canon and in a lot of fic, but there are a lot of authors who enjoyed woobifying Clark, as well.

Gundam Wing: Duo Maxwell. Why did I read all those abused!cutter!Duo stories back when I was nineteen? I knew they sucked even then.

FMA: Edward Elric (in canon, Roy probably shares top woobie billing with him, though)
Harry Potter: Draco, Harry, and Snape in a three-way tie, I think. Sirius comes in just behind them in forth place, though, and if you're going directly off canon, it's a Sirius/Snape two-way tie for experiencing the most canonical misery and suck.

Warnings: Noncon, dubcon, torture, past child abuse and incest, betrayal, cutting, slavery, underage sex, involuntary drug use and addiction, porn, some swears,

This is essentially a summary of everything that happens to the hero in canon in the Lymond chronicles, if you subtract the noncon/child abuse (keeping the incest) and replace it with "goes temporarily blind from sheer angst" and "repeated suicide attempts."

[axelrod]

*checks out Lymond Chronicles on wikipedia* I am so going to read those.