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

[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.

[ilyena_sylph]

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?

[tiamatschild]

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.

[ilyena_sylph]

Sorry, obviously I can't read.

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

[lady_ganesh]

I too vote for Duo as woobie.