Keep Hoping Machine Running (
thefourthvine) wrote2010-02-27 06:56 pm
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Woobies Wanted
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TVTropes has a great page on woobies [Warning:
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"[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.
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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.
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I DESPERATELY, DESPERATELY, want you to write this now. With Jack as character X. PLEASE. *g*
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(I will bet you a wooden nickel that I'll find at least one story exactly like that before I'm finished working through
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Also, what is the difference between fiction-verse and reality-verse pundits? I am not wise in the ways of that fandom!
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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.
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Pundits (reality-verse): Anderson Cooper
This.
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(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.)