Sandbox / The Woobie Re Evaluation Page 15

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Jim is a pretty decent candidate for this trope as well. Despite being a runaway slave, he risks capture several times to protect Huck.
• The Count of Monte Cristo: *Abbe Faria, as well. Despite being innocent, he spends approximately a decade longer in prison than he has to because his most viable escape plan might involve killing a guard who's just doing his job.
• Jean Valjean and Eponine in Les Misérables.
• With all the crap that the Baudelaire siblings endure in A Series of Unfortunate Events one would think they'd be broken about ten times over by now. While they may come close they always manage to continue on and survive in some epic way by sticking together through the hard times.
• Nevare Burvelle of The Soldier Son suffers in much the same manner as Fitz, though Hobb has only tortured him for three books thus far.
• Sofia Mendes in The Sparrow.
• Toni Ware in The Pale King has a horrifying backstory, but she's easily the toughest and most dangerous of the main characters.
• Matt from The Power of Five, once he learns that his destiny is to be tortured by the Old Ones and given a Mercy Kill by Richard and still manages to keep going.
• Dwight in the Origami Yoda series. Harvey constantly makes fun of him and his puppet Origami Yoda out of jealousy, but he's usually pretty happy.
• Augustus from The Fault in Our Stars is this from the start of the novel. Despite having a prosthetic leg, he takes everything in stride and tries to make the best out of his situation. He begins to crack by the end.
• Mr. Spock from Star Trek. He is perfectly willing to sacrifice himself for others. He will also stand by his principles even when he expects that Kirk, McCoy, or his parents will hate him for it.
• Heroes: Claire has been one throughout. An alternate universe showed what would happen if she did break and it was frightening (but also aw* Baldrick, Edmund Blackadder's hapless manservant in the British comedy series Blackadder. Not very bright, but always cheerful, no matter how much his sarcastic master abused him.
• Cameron in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, who is almost a literal Iron Woobie. Well, she's a Coltan Woobie, at least.
• The title character of Veronica Mars. No person should go through as much crap as she does, and the majority of people would have some kind of breakdown - but no. She'll move on with a plan and a quip, and try and help people.esome)
• Doctor Who
  • Rory, particularly the resurrected Auton Rory. To make up for a moment of weakness where his Auton programming overrode his mind, he spends two thousand years guarding a box holding the body of his girlfriend. Two thousand years with nobody to talk to, no way to heal injuries, and nothing to think of but his love, his guilt, and his worry. And despite having no way to heal injuries, two thousand years later, he hasn't a scratch. His Iron Woobie status got another major upgrade in the series 6 finale, when a device he was wearing would cause him agony or even death if he kept it on. But since he needed the device to save the others, he refused to take it off:
  Amy: You have to take your eye drive off.
  Rory: Can't do that, ma'am. Can't forget what's coming.
  Amy: But it could activate any second.
  Rory (with clenched, trembling fists): It has activated, ma'am.
  • The Doctor himself. We don't know exactly how old he is (and neither does he) but for somewhere over a thousand years now he's been coming up against the worst monsters the universe has to offer, day after day, and although he always tries to save everyone, he very, very rarely succeeds. He's been forced to commit an act of absolute genocide against his own species although due to Timey Wimey Ball reasons, it turns out he hasn't. He's watched friends and family die - sometimes because he wasn't fast enough or clever enough or because they gave their lives to save him. It's pretty clear by now that, underneath the manic enthusiasm and bad sense of humour (which may or may not be more than just a coping mechanism), the Doctor has the worst case of Survivor Guilt in the history of time itself. But he rarely if ever lets himself angst about it - there's adventuring to be done, after all. Then he tells it all to a parasite god that feeds off emotions and experiences.
  Matt Smith: That’s what interests me about The Doctor because, actually, look at the blood on the man’s hands. 900 years, countless very selfish choices, and he’s literally blown planets up. His own race, you know, that’s all on his hands. Which is why I think he has to make silly jokes and wear a fez. Because if he didn't, he'd hang himself.
• Christopher Titus plays up this part on Titus; as does his fiance Erin. His father, though, is the ultimate, an Iron Jerkass Woobie.
• Scandal: Abby and Mellie.
• Babylon 5 has G'Kar, who develops into this over the series.
• The narrator of Labi Siffre's classic Something Inside So Strong.
• The main character of the video of P!nk's "F***ing Perfect".
• The main character of Joshua Radin's "Brand New Day" video. Heartbreaking that through it all, he keeps singing. Especially so since it's such a happy, upbeat song.
• The hospital worker of The Antlers' album, Hospice.
• Ilmater, the God of Suffering, from the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting Forgotten Realms and his followers.
• Warhammer 40,000: Humanity as a whole. When you check the fluff you discover how badly they get screwed every time they try to make things somehow better; some of the rulebooks go as far as having a planet which managed to get rid of all disease invaded by the Chaos God of Desperation and Plague because it took offense at such achievement, while in another rulebook the Imperium manages to get some technological relic which may allow to cure all diseases only to get it stolen by the Dark Eldar, just because one of their leaders wanted to show they could harm humanity as a whole, and then there's the whole Horus Heresy with half of the Space Marines turning renegades. Yet, in a one on one none of these or any other major factions can truly match mankind's military capability whenever the Imperium gets enough time to mobilize their armies and specialists or just pulls some ruthless scorched sector tactic.
• Tevye the Dairyman in Fiddler on the Roof.
• Max Payne talks a lot about how bad his life is, yet he manages to keep his emotions in check through and through. And kill lots of people. Gulping pain killers like Pez helps a lot.
• Gorath from Betrayal at Krondor. Most of his suffering is the result of his own difficult decisions, which he keeps making afterwards without complaint.
• ''Final Fantasy':
  • Ramza from Final Fantasy Tactics. Sure, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. So get the whips and chains ready, because he's going to do good anyway.
  • Zack Fair Crisis Core From the start to end nothing get's better for this poor dude but he always has a grin on his face and refuses to give up fighting no matter if he's fighting his best friend, mentor, or an entire freaking army.
• Ethan Mars from Heavy Rain. The man goes through hell, all to save his son from a serial killer.* Timothy Pike from Dark Fall: The Journal is level-headed, affable, and helpful despite his unpleasant past and horrifying present.
• Iji woke up after losing nearly everything. Whether she "breaks" or not is up to the player.
• Klonoa exists simply for multiple realities to screw him over. And he will bear on to do the right thing without hesitating. The first game is one giant Break the Cutie aimed squarely at Klonoa's head.
• Zootopia
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Yes, Bellwether has been treated badly. Yes, the Villain Has a Point about how predator species have been dominating prey species. Still, none of this justifies the character's willingness to hurt or kill innocent people... erm, animals. Some argue that Bellwether's "point" is largely In Name Only, as since the predators are a minority who make up 10% of the city's population and already face widespread prejudice and suspicion due to their carnivorous ancestry. The police are a mixed bag, but for the most part, it appears that the majority of them are large prey animals such as rhinos and elephants. So if the prey are even the majority of the police force, some argue that her "plan" was already in effect since the system is already not entirely in the predators' favor. She just exacerbated the problem. Or perhaps more accurately, threw up a mirror to the situation, which may have actually helped ease some tensions between prey and predator animals by the film's end.
    • Nick. He Used to Be a Sweet Kid with dreams of an honorable life, but since foxes are expected to be cunning and dishonest, he instead became a Con Artist and a Stepford Snarker.
    • Though maybe he doesn't have it quite as bad as Bellwether or Nick, Finnick might count as this, if Zootopia: The Essential Guide is any indication. According to the book, he's often mistaken for a toddler, even when he isn't pretending to be one. For example, he apparently has been pulled over for underage driving. This might explain why he's so bitter and angry all the time. Also, if the movie is any indication, he lives in a van, which might imply he's poor (he does make money but it's only about $40 a day, which isn't much...)
  • The Woobie: Manchas, Mr. Big's limo driver whom Nick and Judy try to question in the Rainforest District. He seems a fairly nice guy, but he was attacked by a savage Mr. Otterton and is turned savage himself. His on-screen transformation to a savage beast looks rather painful.
• Zootopia
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: A seemingly sweet Beleaguered Assistant with a Jerkass boss... which puts her on the path to inflame Zootopia's historical tension between predator and prey launching civil unrest so she can use the fear and chaos to rise to power.
• Fire Emblem Fates:
  • Iron Woobie:
    • The Power Trio of Laslow, Odin, and Selena are revealed to be this, since they are Inigo, Owain, and Severa from Fire Emblem: Awakening. (Or at very least, one of the Ylissean worlds there.) This means these three have led incredibly hard lives: they saw their original world die, time traveled with their True Companions to go Screw Destiny, continued dimensional travelling together until they landed in Nohr, and rebuilt their lives there as much as they could... while being perfectly aware that one day, they'll have to decide whether to stay or not, which could destroy these new lives and identities. And yet none of them whine, cry, or wangst, and keep doing as well as they can. In fact, when Laslow/Inigo finds out through supports that his partner Peri also lost her mother in a horrible way, he's the one comforting her!
    • The Avatar definitely experiences their fair share of trauma, detailed in The Woobie below, but they never let that deter them from the path they choose.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Those who don't consider Rhajat The Scrappy view her as this. One one hand, she is incredibly lonely but truly doesn't know how to change it, and she does get Pet the Dog moments (like her supports with her potential moms, or those with Selkie). On the other, she at very least starts as a creepy jerkass to almost anyone around her, and her localized supports with the Avatars do crank up her worst flaws rather than her good sides.
• Stoic Woobie:
  • Beruka, who has a huge Dark and Troubled Past that more than once comes back to haunt her, but she remains stonefaced and strongwilled. Even in the cases when she defrosts.
  • Flora hid the fact that she was being held prisoner by Nohr for years, never telling the Avatar, or Jakob, or even Felicia. Even after she escapes her captivity, the only one she reveals the truth to is Jakob, who she is prepared to either kill or be killed by.
  • Niles, arguably, toes the line between this and Jerkass Woobie. The guy has had his own Dark and Troubled Past and once was incredibly close to the Despair Event Horizon, and even now he's damn bitter about it, but he also keeps going on.
  • The Woobie:
    • Peri skyrocketed to this position for some, once her reasons to be a Cute and Psycho woManchild were explained.
    • Kaze can count as well, as he was present when the Avatar got kidnapped by Garon and spent his whole life blaming himself for being unable to prevent it. Even after Queen Mikoto told him it's not his fault, he still feels like that it is. This goes as far as not having the Avatar A support him will give him a Plotline Death where he confesses that, in his view, he doesn't deserve to live anymore.
    • Oboro. Her parents were murdered by a Nohrian assassin, which traumatized her so badly that she struggles hard with her hate of Nohrians and overworks herself at night so she won't have flashbacks of it. And yet she is still one of the most kind and outwardly cheerful members of the army.
    • Heirs of Fates Shigure gets even worse when you remember that since all of the men Azura can marry have children, this means he likely had to watch his own sibling die as well. And if you happen to ship Shigure with the Avatar... well, that means his son died, too. And he never says anything about this despite everything.
    • Even before they met the Avatar, the Nohr siblings didn't have it easy. The Nohrian Court has them witness the deaths of not only their own mothers, but several other women Garon tried to marry as well as their children, and it's heavily implied that they had to kill to survive themselves. This happened when the oldest, Xander, was probably just a preteen/young teenager.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening:
  • Jerkass Woobie: Severa. For all her selfish spoiled behavior and sniping at everyone in her path (except Noire), she's just as damaged and in need of cuddles as the rest of the children.
  • The Woobie:
    • Brady, Maribelle's son, looks like a bandit, has really poor self esteem, and wishes to be strong like the rest of the army.
  • From the first generation there's also Ricken, a boy from an impoverished noble family who's been heavily bullied and has trouble being taken seriously by those he admires due to his age and height.
  • Tiki and Nowi are both manaketes who live for thousands of years. Nowi is well aware she'll outlive everyone she loves and is shown to cry about it, while Tiki has sadly come to accept this fact despite memories of how painful it was to lose Marth and the others and knowing she'll outlive Say'ri and anyone else she befriends.
  • Libra's parents wrongly assumed he was possessed and abandoned him, and he was completely alone until he joined the priesthood. Then all his fellow men of the cloth died against Gangrel's might. His inner pain is so strong it even scares his potential wife Tharja.
  • Maribelle is this and a Jerkass Woobie. She's prickly and snobbish, but as a child this caused all the other children to hate her and spread rumors about her. She was terribly lonely until Lissa reached out to her.
  • Sumia has next to no self-esteem, to the point where she loses herself in books so she doesn't have to think about how pathetic she feels. She tries her best to help everyone out, but her clumsiness usually makes things worse and she usually ends up in tears.
• Soul Series:
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Tira probably "wins" this one hands down. Raised by cutthroat assassins from a young age to become one of their tools, her rite of passage within the organization was to kill the woman she saw as a mother, leading to the creation of her split personality. After a fateful incident allowed her escape, Tira was adopted by a kindly family and began to think she could enjoy her new life... only to murder them in a fit of rage. As she was conditioned to enjoy killing, Tira convinces herself that she absolutely cannot live like normal people do and wanders the land in search of some purpose to her tormented life. This leads her to Soul Edge, which Tira views as a kindred spirit able to understand her. And so, Tira throws herself into the role of Nightmare's deviously crafty Dragon, committing heinous acts in the name of a master who cares nothing for her. Her ending in IV has Tira heartbroken and devastated, pleading to not be left alone when it seems that Soul Edge will perish; this is widely seen as a moving scene by fans. Despite all this, Tira's genuine love for Soul Edge, and her effectiveness as a villain, it is rare to see Tira get the Draco in Leather Pants treatment by the fandom, perhaps because of the magnitude of her villainy while doing Soul Edge's bidding. Project Soul seems to have began course-correcting following IV, possibly in an attempt to lessen any sympathetic qualities Tira possesses. V has Tira acting as Pyrrha's Toxic Friend Influence, emotionally manipulating the girl and grooming her as the next wielder of Soul Edge (with some very creepy Wife Husbandry undertones thrown into the mix), though it's vaguely implied in supplemental material that Tira was, in some way, trying to legitimately honor Sophitia's Last Request by becoming Pyrrha's caretaker. VI then went the Adaptational Villainy route by stripping away nearly every lamentable aspect of her backstory: Tira is so mentally unstable that Jolly and Gloomy existed long before she left the Bird of Passage (whereas Tira was originally a highly irritable Mood-Swinger who only developed two distinct identities when her soul had to reconstitute itself after being torn in half); willingly kills her Mother Bird and numerous other assassins raised alongside her with relish; only leaves the organization because she'd rather kill people on her on own terms; has an utterly euphoric reaction to murdering her foster family (whereas the first timeline's Tira was suggested to be at least somewhat remorseful); and is generally depicted as being even more vicious, bloodthirsty, and sadistic than her original self.
    • Siegfried started out as one of these himself, only to develop into an Iron Woobie/Stoic Woobie in the interim between Soulcalibur and SCII and again once he was freed from Soul Edge's control for good in III, though his disposition ultimately improved enough after IV to push him mostly out of Woobie territory.
    • A more sympathetic analysis of Patroklos's character arguably paints him as this, too (emphasis on "sympathetic"), but he's heavy on the "Jerkass" portion of the trope.
  • Iron Woobie: There are a few characters who fulfill the requirement, like Siegfried and Kilik, but none perhaps more so than Hilde. She was a young girl of eleven when Siegfried took hold of Soul Edge and unwittingly unleashed the Evil Seed upon the world, an event that caused her father George to lose his sanity. Hilde was forced to rule Wolfkrone in her father's stead, and had to sacrifice any sort of ordinary childhood in the process. At one point, Nightmare comes knocking, and while Hilde is successful in fending the Azure Knight off, three close friends/members of her royal guard are turned into Malfested — and those are the casualties explicitly mentioned. Then, Hilde discovers that Wolfkrone is no more following the destruction of Soul Edge, with her father having gone missing. Hilde, now a mother of two, spends her time negotiating land for her kingdom's survivors and replies to Siegfried's summons against the forces of a resurrected Nightmare, knowing that this is a battle she may very well not return from but a battle she must fight for the sake of her people and her children. In some form or another, Hilde has been warring nonstop for over two decades of her life, yet possesses so much resolve, willpower, kindness, and determination that she ends up being the one to absolve Siegfried of his sins during her ending in IV... after he outright tells her that putting an end to his life would be for the best, given his bloody past.
• The Woobie:
  • Sophitia in IV. The emotional turmoil she has to endure due to the villains targeting her loved ones is so great that even her artwork shows Sophie in tears. By the gods, does this woman need a great big hug.
  • Aeon Calcos. It doesn't help that with each game, he gets further away from his humanity as opposed to making any progress in getting it back. It makes his fans wish the writers would throw him a bone for once.
    • Aeon himself decides to go the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds route out of spite for Hephaestus (who appointed Aeon as a holy warrior tasked with destroying Soul Edge in the first place, which arguably led to his current predicament). Can't say we blame him.
  • He may fall into the Jerkass Woobie category, but Raphael Sorel qualifies. He killed a man who was possessed by an Evil Seed out of self-defense and was immediately cast out of his family and sentenced to death. He only managed to survive thanks to Amy and then decided to dedicate his life to creating a better world for her. He actually FREES Siegfried from Soul Edge's control but loses his humanity from the battle against him and gradually loses himself as he becomes Malfested. According to Word of God, he dies at some point during SCIV, and in V, his body becomes Nightmare's new host.
• Super Secret Secret Squirrel: Greg, considering he had his leg bitten off.
• The Lion King Adventures:
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Shocker. You feel sorry for the guy at some points, but he's horrible.
    • Simba in Series Five.
• What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown!: Snoopy. It's hard not to feel for him when he starts crying just before he turns feral.
• Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories:
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • When one considers Zexion's life, from his childhood in Birth by Sleep to when he meets his end in Chain of Memories, he sorta becomes this.
    • Vexen and Larxene also count, mainly due to their deaths, which are played tragically. Larxene gets bonus points in the Japanese version due to being voiced by Yuko Miyamura.
• The Woobie: Naminé. She lived the first part of her life entirely alone in Castle Oblivion, spent the rest under the Organization's emotionally abusive thumb, is forced to do their bidding to assist in breaking Sora, and is perfectly aware of her status as a Nobody.
• Chicken Little(2005): Chicken Little, especially in the beginning.
• Armed Girl's Machiavellism:
  • Iron Woobie: Rin and Nomura in particular, but Satori shows hints of it as well.
• Honkai Impact 3rd: Kiana becomes this once it's revealed that unbeknownst to her, she's the clone of the real Kiana - and god knows what would happen if she ever figures out. Not to mention the string of tragedies and tribulations that she's gone through, both in the past and present, detailed in her character section.