< The Woobie

The Woobie/Fan Works

  • The Homestuck bloodswap AU fanfic Red Dead Virgo has a red blooded Kanaya fit this trope very, very well. Due in no small part to copious amounts of well written but heart-breakingly tragic Break the Cutie.
  • The author behind Tiberium Wars and Forward has a borderline obsession with Woobies, pointing out in one of his author's notes that (paraphrased) "if I like a character, I hurt them. A lot." This is especially prevalent in Forward, where River Tam is regularly put through the wringer, suffering constant mental breakdowns, injuries, and at one point is tortured by Niska.
    • In Tiberium Wars, Sandra Telfair becomes a complete woobie, with her being wounded and captured by the Black Hand for interrogation, then being beaten and nearly raped by a Nod soldier, then having to slit another Nod soldier's throat and being horribly hurt psychologically by doing so. Commander Karrde goes through this too, regularly beating himself up over the deaths of his own men.
  • Anyone who's read a certain Pokémon fiction involving a boy named Tommy will feel horrible, burning sympathy for pretty much every character. Not only for what's happened in their past, but the fact that once the protagonist manages to escape from the deserted island the story takes place on, he can either leave behind his only friends that aren't dead, or live in ridicule by all other humans who know who he is. But hey, his parents would never reject him. Neither his presumed dead birth parents, or his for sure dead adoptive parents. Gotta catch em all.
  • freya_sacksen likes hurting the That Guy With The Glasses cast. A lot. Especially of note is her "In Space" fic, where everyone gets broken but probably the main two suffering in that one are Marz Gurl and the Nostalgia Critic. Marz Gurl is generally like River Tam in an apocalyptic future and as for the Critic? Well, you try being tortured for centuries by Ask That Guy and Dr. Insano, end up failing to save the world and then actually give Ask That Guy the idea to start the whole thing off anyway and see how you feel.
  • Kaorin, Sakaki and Chiyo get a bit of this in Differing Paths, though partially undone by the series' Black and Grey Morality.
  • Challenge: step 1 - log into Fanfiction.net, step 2- search National Treasure fics step 3- try to find a fic that IS NOT about Riley Poole tragic past, tragic present or tragic future...mixed with healthy doses of whumpage and comfort.
  • The Migou of Cthulhu Tech are this for Earth Scorpion, the author of Aeon Natum Engel, where the Migou have a very,very good point about humanity being idiots.
  • Read this Percy Jackson and The Olympians story and tell me you don't feel sorry for Melanie.
  • While he was portrayed as a Butt Monkey in the canon series, Daisuke Motomiya is usually portrayed as a woobie in non-canon stories. Two of them which are so excellent written that you would believe that they're canon in the first place. The first one is Zero 2: A Revision and the second one is Walkabout. In both of them, he's usually portrayed as a guy with an inferiority complex and behind his boasting and carefree nature is a lonely boy who just pretend this facade in order to cope with his unpopularity within his Digidestined group, at school and at home. In A Revision, his suffering at the hands of his nakama, who never seems to appreciate his hard work and is always putting him down for the smallest thing, allows the digivolved version of Devimon to put him through a Mind Rape which turned him into the homicidal, ruthless fighting-killing-machine Darkheart. In Walkabout, he didn't get promoted to a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds but he still kept his woobie status. In this story, he decided to do an "walkabout" through the Digital World in order to search his soul and improve himself so that he could be accepted by his peers. These stories are developed his character very well, making him an intelligent yet naive person who clearly has issues with himself and the others, and those who were disappointed on the canon's lack of Character Development on him should read these stories.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles section on fanfiction.net, Donatello seems to be rather popular with being hurt in some fashion on top of being emotionally abused by Shredder, and in some cases, his own brothers. lion-of-judah is one author that pretty much attacks Donatello at every moment.
  • Nobody Dies has, suprising as it may sound, Asuka as a woobie. Having her parents divorce early, being rejected from the Evangelion program and treated like shit by her mother in favor of a surrogate son shook her up so badly that she permanently scarred her back and neck so that it might look like she had a contact experiment. Problem is, everyone thought that Kyoko beat her at first. When Asuka confessed, Kyoko got drunk and lapsed into a five-minute My God, What Have I Done?. Even during the school dance (which might very well be Asuka's first real moment of joy in her life), the bitch couldn't resist to hint that there's no way Shinji might actually love her, he's probably only taking advantage of her; the poor girl fell for the trick and got so spooked that she ran away screaming. Rei and Kensuke retaliated by filming Kyoko and her ex-husband going into a storage closet and getting it on, then putting the footage onto Youtube. Even better, Yui completely agreed with their initiative and forbid removing it from the site!!!
    • It gets worse. It turns out that ND!Asuka is so emotionally messed up as to have developed multiple personality disorder. That doll the Canon!Kyoko talked do as if it were Canon!Asuka after literally losing her mind? ND!Asuka talks to it... and it "talks" back.
  • Team Fortress 2 masterpiece Respawn of the Dead has the Medic as Herr Woobie. To only list a few of the horrible things that happen to the poor guy, he has to put down his pet zombie (is much more heartwrenching than it sounds), has to leave his beloved behind to die in a zombie attack, and is forced to decapitate the member of the team who was most depending on him so he doesn't become a zombie. The poor guy just can NOT catch a break.
  • The Final Fantasy I Fanfic The Power of Light, which can be found on the game's Fan Fic Recommendations page, has a huge case in Black Mage, who has attracted the attention of Kary, the Fiend of Fire, from since he was a young child. Ever since, she has haunted his dreams making him feel as if he is burning for all eternity. Needless to say, once he puts two and two together with the help of the team leader, he's more than ready for a little payback. Especially when she harms his sister and two other teammates. Cue Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • Morphic has Gabriel, a Slugma pokémorph who struggles with daily life due to his screwed up biology. Being a mix between a human and a blob of lava, he's basically at risk of overheating and dropping dead. And then It Gets Worse - the chances of overheating heighten when he experiments with his Pokémon side.
  • Travels Through Azeroth and Outland portrays the draenei as a borderline Stepford Smiler society focused on always remaining joyous and faithful to the Light (not to mention, as empaths who can tell if someone's slipping). However, draenei who suffer great trauma, especially while isolated from their fellows, can end up very unhinged. These draenei are called ashem. While not exactly shunned by society, they are kept at arm's length for fear that their unhappiness will spread to others. Balaa, an Ashem that the narrator meets in Azuremyst Isle, has struck at least one reader as a Woobie: One of the few survivors of a major orc attack, she's battle-scarred, missing a horn, and is painfully ashamed of what seem—to the narrator and the reader—to be perfectly understandable flash points and minor freak-outs.
  • This is a common Alternative Character Interpretation of Britney from My Immortal. She's cast as a Designated Villain for simply not sharing the protagonists' tastes in fashion and music. Until the very end of the story, she does absolutely nothing else to warrant the abuse and bullying which she constantly receives from the "heroes". Instead, the mere fact that she exists is considered an offense all by itself. And her behavior at the end can easily be interpreted as a response to the abuse leveled at her for the whole story.
  • The Metal Gear Solid fanfic Revolution (a side-story to a much longer fanfic that basically lives off the continuity of The Last Days of Foxhound) takes Big Bad Extrodinaire Liquid Snake and turns him into the woobiest woobie that ever did woobie. If anything, this is probably the first fic to ever attempt that feat.
  • Another Metal Gear fic, The Joy of Battle presents all of the Cobra Unit members with woobie moments but none so bad as the Fury who is injured and emotionally tortured to the point where he breaks, only to be sedated by the End's tranquilizer rifle.
  • Everybody in the Death Note fic Second Chances -- but especially L. The author's putting the poor guy (maybe literally) through hell. Without even going into detail about the way his bad sleeping and eating habits are finally taking their toll on his body, he doesn't make friends easily and knows it, so his habit of losing left and right the few people he comes to care about hits hard.
  • In the Kingdom Hearts fanfic Fill the Moon, the author's mantra seems to be, "make the entire cast suffer until they break down and cry. Then sell ringside seats. You think this is an exaggeration? Please. Literally EVERYONE in the cast is given a day as a Woobie, and some of the cast just push down on the Woobie button and don't let up.
    • The best example is the little OC Nobody, the Cute Monster Girl Senayax. While being basically seven years old and trapped in a body that's just going through puberty already nets some major Woobie points, the author just will not stop making her suffer. To date, after around one hundred and fifty chapters of fanfiction, she has been both Driven to Suicide and murdered before being brought Back from the Dead, been forcibly impregnated on orders from her father by her lover, Zexion--who, as it should be noted, is around five years older than her--been forced to eat her beloved grandfather to survive after murdering him due to being an Unwitting Pawn in one of her parents' schemes to get her grandfather's money, being subject to an incredibly nasty and disgustingly sexual Mind Rape from the giant fucking Eldritch Abomination that lives inside of her body, almost dying due to the consequences of the previously mentioned forced pregnancy, and spending around four months in agony due to treatments designed solely to keep her alive during this pregnancy while The Messiah completely forgets her existence. To top it off, she watches her lover perform a Heroic Sacrifice to save her life, and thus get murdered by Sora before she decides to follow in his footsteps and commit suicide using the Keyblade as her murder weapon. Despite all this, she remains an eternal Cheerful Child who is a Friend to All Living Things and tries to put on a happy face for her family, including the father figure who ordered her to be impregnated. Want to hug her yet?
    • Considering the above troper's remarks on Xemnas, this troper feels it's appropriate to bring up the fact that the author makes him out to be a woobie on occasion. Sure, she doesn't exactly justify or excuse his impregnating of Senayax, but considering he hadn't been around when the original experiment failed horribly, he wasn't out to murder her. If anything, the author makes him incredibly sympathetic with his My God, What Have I Done? freak outs and habit of becoming The Atoner. While what he did is certainly horrible, he's not as much of a monster as, say, the fic's Complete Monster Hollowmoon, and it wasn't on purpose. If anything, he's there to represent the consequences of being the leader and Superior. Despite the fact that he's incredibly flawed, this troper firmly believes he's still a woobie, (although definitely not to the extent of the rest of the cast.)
    • Pff, please. While Senayax certainly gets the worst of it, Demyx is probably the one who gets hit the hardest aside from her. After being emotionally, mentally, and physically abused by an older brother who he was desperate to gain the approval of for his entire life as Myde, he is suddenly and brutally almost-murdered by said older brother, who would have finished the deed had a Heartless not come along. Afterwards, he has such deep emotional and mental scars that he has a major Freak-Out-cum-Minor Injury Overreaction on Xigbar's behalf after the other man is mildly wounded on a mission, not to mention a downright suicidal attempt to clean the entire castle using lye. Which is corrosive and leaves behind horrible chemical burns and open sores. And this is all due to his Complete Monster older brother beating him and breaking him down until he was horribly, horribly mentally scarred, enough so to believe that he deserved to be bitten and beaten by Xigbar. Of course, he eventually gets better, but that doesn't change the fact that he still needs hugs.
    • Larxene actually might tie for second place with Demyx. Yes, that Larxene. Considering she was raped and abused for three years by her ex-husband, who she brutally murdered in self-defense after he attempted to rape her for a fourth time, and is implied by Word of God to have had many, many abusive relationships, and, due to the fact that the author of the fic is open about being a rape survivor, has very realistic reactions to traumatic triggers or events. Despite this, she manages to maintain her normal Deadpan Snarker-slash-Dark Action Girl personality, albeit with a bit more depth under her sarcastic and caustic surface. She really, really deserved all the Cooldown Hugs from Lexaeus that she got. Poor girl.
    • Hell, the author just likes taking the strangest of characters, and turning them into massive, massive woobies. Case in point; the next biggest woobie in the story? Xaldin. And because of the way that the Mooniverse's canon works, this makes perfect sense. Let's see...
      • Before he finds his "soulmate," Luxord, he is twenty-nine, and quite blatantly a virgin. Now, that isn't a bad thing, per se, but considering his older brother, who he loves more than anyone else in the whole world is implied to basically do anything that moves, the pressure to find a lover wears down on him, especially considering he doesn't have a heart to really experience love. It takes him a long time, but he does finally accept Luxord's love and does end up happy. However, considering the author plans on going into their backstory as Apprentices to Ansem, in which Braig is still a slut and he's still a loveless virgin, expect him to get even more Woobie-fied later on...
    • You know who else gets beaten with the Break the Cutie stick? Of all people, once again, Vexen. He's constantly stalked by a lover he doesn't want, well, initially, at least, he's thirty-four and alone, and is shown to be cracking under the strain of having basically raised the other five Apprentices by himself. While he's not tortured as much as some of the other members of the cast, (perhaps due in part because of the author's major PSL for him), when he is hit with the woobie treatment, the author hits him hard.
    • You think Vexen being a Woobie is bad? Try Axel. Yes, Badass Deadpan Snarker Axel. While the author doesn't turn him into a Draco in Leather Pants, and actually makes him out to be the violent, dangerous, deadly-loyal man that he was supposed to be in Kingdom Hearts, his friendship with Isa/Saix, who is now in love with Xemnas, (whom Axel is not exactly on the best terms with), nets him some woobie moments, especially when he feels like Isa has stopped caring about him. And as of the more recent chapters, his pining for Roxas, who doesn't even exist yet, might qualify.
    • Ansem can definitely count as this on occasion. Considering Ansem watched his sons lose their hearts by basically being eaten alive right in front of his eyes, while he was powerless to do a thing, it's no small wonder that he's more than a little messed up by the time he's introduced in Fill the Moon.
    • To sum it up short, everyone in this fic is a Woobie of epic proportions.
  • Rain Nook in the YoshiEgg Series, up until you find out that she's being manipulated through her stone by an Eldritch Abomination-like demon. But you start loving her again in the beginning of Fantendo Chronicles: Episode 1, where she and Unten paired up and "went forward" after the Chaoti swarm, Rain supposedly still alive and not possessed anymore.
  • The fanfiction Street Sharks: Redux is basically the result of rewriting a silly cartoon in a way that's actually kind of dark and scary. As a result, the heroes have to go through a lot of nasty stuff, what with being kidnapped and mutated and all. Of particular note are them turning into sharks and flashing back to how it happened, and chapter six, which is the start of a story arc that gives a lot of unpleasant details about how Slamu gets kidnapped again and painfully experimented on a second time.
  • Jim Kirk gets Woobified quite a bit in reboot fanfics. In fact, there is an entire comm on fanfiction.net entitled "Hurt!Jim fans unite" and it's gotten to the point Kirk-centered Hurt Comfort Fics have become an in-fandom cliche. Spock and Chekhov get it alot, too, but in Spock's case it's justified since he is an outcast due to his half-human heritage, has daddy issues, and his planet blew up. In Chekhov's case it's justified because Chekhov has big adorable puppy dog eyes.
  • Poor, poor Rei Kakizaki, of Yukari Is Free. Develop poor social skills due to crippling shyness? Check. Have father and sister killed in zombie outbreak? Check. Be forced to beat her zombified mother to death with a bat to save her other sister? Check. Nearly raped by one of the soldiers who saved her? Check. Be constantly harassed by the team Jerkass? Check. Further traumatized into becoming mute by her sister sacrificing herself to save her? Check. Attempt and fail suicide? Check. Be told by a hideous demon that he's going take her to hell to serve as his endtable unless the man she loves kills thirteen random people? Oh my goodness, Check. At any rate, she seems to be, at long, long last, getting better.
  • If the title character “The Harper Drudge" in this Dragonriders of Pern fic isn't a Woobie, then I don't know what is!
  • Mao in Code Geass Mao of the Deliverance becomes this in the very first chapter! And from there it doesn't let up, all the way through a Trauma Conga Line of Doom Magnetism, It Got Worse, Love Martyrdom, Butt Monkeying and Love Makes You Crazy, finally culminating in a Despair Event Horizon, all the while he's hiding his mind numbing misery behind a Stepford Smiling Jerkass Facade. Break the Cutie? Check. Troubled but Cute? Check.
  • Heather is portrayed as one in many Total Drama Island fics, either what made her into such a cruel girl or after she got back from the show and is ridiculed by many.
  • Another Total Drama Island example: In Keepers of the Elements, you can't help but feel sorry for Carl. The man got kidnapped by the Big Bad Radcliffe himself, put under constant mind control, is used as target practice for Courtney's training and apparently because of this, his health is declining rapidly.
  • DC Nation featured a series of flashbacks involving the life of Tempest focusing on the courtship and loss of Tula towards the end of a 5 year story arc involving bad things constantly happening to the character. The intent had been to show why Tula rocks and to break with the path DC comics had him on. What the writers ended up doing was causing Garth to earn the nickname "King of the Woobies" among the player and reader base.
  • And then there's poor Nyx. She starts out as a sweet, shy, curious little filly who just happens to have been created from a failed attempt to resurrect the evil Nightmare Moon. After Princess Celestia, terrified by the possibility Nyx could become Nightmare Moon, accidentally delivers her into the hooves of exactly the wrong people, things get very bad very quickly. When she seeks out the kazoo she had during her abbreviated childhood and gives it a mournful toot, it's hard to want to do anything but give her a hug and tell her everything will be all right.
  • The Axis Powers Hetalia fanfic Debt gives this treatment to England and America. By the end of the first chapter, they'd had their limbs cut off, had been raped multiple times, were utterly humiliated, and had their eyes torn out. That's barely scratching the surface of all that they go through in that fanfic.
    • There's also Feverish, which takes poor Canada's tendency to be overlooked and makes it even worse, as his actual government begins to forget about him. This leads to him getting horrifically sick (vomiting, flue-like symptoms, passing out, extreme nosebleeds, paralysis, panic attacks, and, at one point, respiratory arrest) while America, Britain, and France try their best to keep him alive.
    • Awakening does this to America and Canada. They were captured in battle and delivered to Joseph Mengle. The story begins with Russia finding them dead. In flashbacks, we find out everything that happened, including Canada having his eyes injected with dye to "correct" the color and America being infected with diseases and vivisected. They are rescued, but then they have to live with the knowledge that they couldn't stop Mengle or save any of his prisoners.
    • By the same author who did Awakening, there's White Winter, which woobie-fies America as he is kidnapped by General Winter and used as a toy for his amusement. The Nordic countries, Canada, and Russia can all be seen as this as well, given that the fic says how they all went through the same things America did when General Winter was interested in them.
  • Glee's Hunting the Unicorn: Blaine starts out as a Relationship Sue for Kurt--and then we find out all the shit that happened to turn Blaine into one. It involves Love Martyrdom, Parental Neglect that he's at least slightly in denial about, and a healthy dose of Fridge Horror. When Kurt, a Parental Substitute, and the Warblers are the only people who care about you (that aren't traveling or halfway across the US), the general consensus is that Blaine needs a hug.
  • Collection of Sacrifices, a MLP: FiM fic, has Jadie. In the first two chapters alone, she's torn away from her family, kidnapped and forced into the army, forced to watch a public torture session on someone she presumably looked up to, has no friends in the camp (so far), and we leave off at chapter two with her being attacked. The one character who provides her any sympathy is still a rather large Jerkass. It seems like this many twists wouldn't work well, but the author(s) manage to pull it off spectacularly.
  • Speaking of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fics, many of them portray Derpy Hooves this way, even though in canon, she's just one of several ponies who appear in the background, who just happens to have a strabismus. "Bubbles" and "Today, Tomorrow, and Forever" are two noteworthy examples.
  • If you thought Shifty Dingo was a sympathetic character in The Adventures Of Blinky Bill the fanfic Scars Are Forever takes this trope and cranks it Up to Eleven. In the first chapter, he is verbally abused by Blinky to the point where he breaks down in tears and all he wanted to do is give Blinky a cookie to cheer him up. In the 3rd chapter, he is kidnapped and tortured by Jeromy, a Complete Monster villain who burns him with matches, cuts his tail off and uses his severed tail to strangle him. He spends the entire 4th chapter in a coma because of this and in the 5th chapter He finally wakes up and Nutsy and Danny Dingo tell him they killed the Complete Monster. Shifty then chews them out for fear they will be arrested and locked up, cries himself to sleep and becomes mute for TWO WHOLE WEEKS only communicating with heartwrenching whimpers. Oh yeah and in the final chapter, Danny Dingo commits suicide and Shifty cries hysterically at his grave At least Nutsy is there to comfort the poor little dingo.
    • Splodge also gets the Break the Cutie treatment, considering the fact he has to be babysat FOR A MONTH by his psychopath cousin who plays Russian roulette with him. Jeromy is so terrifying to poor Splodge that he manages to reduce Splodge to tears and vomiting.
    • Danny Dingo easily qualifies as a Jerkass Woobie in the fic after he gets infected with AIDS/HIV In the final chapter, his tragic past is revealed, he had an abusive father who locked him in a closet and once threw him off a cliff just cause Danny was born with black fur. Furtermore, Ma dingo bartered him off in exchange for sex only to buy him back after his father was institutionalized. No wonder Danny because such a scheming jerk.
  • The official one is James Norrington in the Mega Crossover fancomic Roommates (he even has an OH NO! James! club, he is the Token Good Teammate and Being Good Sucks), but sometimes also Jareth has his moments (as he tries to fit in way too hard while being blessed with nonhuman personality traits and a family from hell... his father stole James' soul once).
  • Several in The Tainted Grimoire.
    • Luso: His mom, sister and grandfather died in the first chapter and his dad died before that. There is hope for him as Luso wrote his grandfather's and sister's name in the book so there is the chance that they are alive.
    • Adelle: Her father was brutally murdered in front of her. She understandably still has nightmares about it.
    • Kanin: Has been on the receiving end of Fantastic Racism, due to being a Feol Viera.
  • Firefly from Ace Combat: The Equestrian War. She lost virtually everything dear to her as a filly, thanks to Black Star. It's understandable that her wingmares, especially Rainbow Dash sympathize with her greatly.
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