Why Do We Woobify Morally Ambiguous Characters


 

What is woobification?

 The term ‘woobification’ comes from the noun ‘woobie’. A ‘woobie’ is a fictional character who is written to peddle sympathy from the reader. A woobie is a tragic character with no agency. They face misfortune after misfortune and are so helpless that they can do nothing but suffer.

There are characters with tragic backstories but the key difference is that those characters overcome their suffering and achieve some sort of a reconciliation. A woobie, on the other hand, goes through no such change. This character is written to be coddled by the readers. Their whole personality is just their suffering. Woobification usually happens in fanfiction.

So why do we Woobify morally grey characters?

Art is a mirror of life but it is true that morality is skewered in art. Characters whom we love in art may not be very palatable to us in real life. A lot of people fail to realize this:

It is completely alright to love character in art while condemning them in real life.

I love Severus Snape from Harry Potter. He is one of the best characters in the series for me. But as much as I love Snape, I wouldn’t tolerate him if I had him as a teacher. I would hate him in real life.

On this note, I would also like to say that I love Snape for his ambiguity. His greyness is the beauty of his character. I wish more people would love him and appreciate him for that.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. A lot of people apply real life morality to fictional characters and go through a dilemma. If they love a character who has done deplorable things, what will they do?

This is when the woobification begins. They take the redeeming qualities of a morally grey character and amplify it to such a degree that the character looks as innocent as a lamb.

I also believe that people Woobify because we have a primal instinct to think in binary. Us vs them. Good vs bad. Light vs dark. Because of this instinct, we struggle to accept ambiguity and tend to categorize things under either good or bad.

Again, I am using Snape as an example here, people who love him tend to blow his redeeming qualities – his love for lily – out of proportion. They vilify James Potter and Sirius Black while portraying Snape as a morally upright person who was pushed to a corner by all the abuse and bullying.

I love Snape but the truth is Snape was never morally upright. His morality has always skewered and this is one of the reasons why he was attracted to Lily, a morally upright person.

We understand Snape’s suffering but we need to hold him accountable. However, it is also okay to love him but love him as he is.

Woobification, I believe, is a disserve to a character. If one has an uncontrollable urge to categorize characters as good or bad then the best thing to do is to properly analyse your character. Where do they fall on the spectrum of ambiguity? Is it the lighter side of grey or the darker side? If it is on the lighter side then you can write them as morally upright in your fanfiction. If not, you should just leave the character as it is.

This advice, however, still wouldn’t apply to woobification. I’ll maintain that it is the worst thing we can do to a character. Learn to embrace ambiguity. In real life, for justice to prevail, ambiguity must be ignored but we don’t have the constraints of law in art.

We can love whoever we want and we can love them freely. There is no need to do mental gymnastics to justify our love.

 


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