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

[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*

[axelrod]

That icon is gankable, right?

[dragojustine]

Go ahead!

[melannen]

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.)

[rose71.livejournal.com]

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...)

[dragonfly]

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

[thefourthvine]

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!

[melannen]

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.

[sarken]

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.)

[torachan]

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.

[melannen]

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...

[khym-chanur.livejournal.com]

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

[melannen]

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.)