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

[brownbetty]

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

[brownbetty]

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

[thefourthvine]

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.

[brownbetty]

Sure, I'll do the DW ones.

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

[thefourthvine]

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.

[axelrod]

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."