Sorry..I'm at work, so blame it on the day job:
woobie n. a security blanket; a blankie; a favorite toy or object. Also wooby
Citations: 1989 [
billd@fps.com (Bill Davids_ on)] Usenet: rec.arts.movies (Dec. 2) “Batman (spoiler)”: The scene where he was trying to tell Vicky Vale that he was really Batman reminded me of Mr. Mom where Keaton is trying to explain to his son that he’ll get him another “wooby.” 1999 Rita Kempley Washington Post (Oct. 1) “‘Grouchland’: Everything’s A-Okay” p. C5: The resident villain, Huxley (Mandy Patinkin, suitably silly in a scenery-chewing turn), steals Elmo’s “wooby"—his word for the blanket—thus forcing the littlest Muppet on a perilous quest to retrieve it. 1999 Times-Picayune (New Orleans, La.) (Dec. 5) “Myers’ Family Comes Together To Help Heal Grief” (in Cincinnati, Ohio): In the same way that each member of the family chose something that represented them, and placed it in Chip’s casket. Adam and Holly and their children chose Connor’s pacifier and Janie’s “woobie.” 2004 Gwen Schmidt Library Squirrel (Can.) (Nov. 20) “The Woobie”: I don’t actually even know how to spell the word “woobie.” All I know is that the Engineer always used it to mean “a shirt that is really warm and comfortable, but that is in such bad shape that you could never wear it outside your house.”
in fandom and fanfiction circles,
“A character, usually male and good-looking, who is constantly be in a state of woe, misery, or sheer unlucky suckitude to a degree that fans want to figuratively scoop him up and cuddle him. This causes friction when fans of normally “unwoobie” characters (ie. Lucius Malfoy) go wildly out of the canon way to concoct ways to make him/her a woobie and thus deserving of much mooshy sympathy.” from
http://www.subreality.com /glossary/terms.htm#W
by ruthc 13 Feb 06, 0301 GMT
Second example of the fannish use of woobie:
“A woobie (named for a child’s security blanket) is that character you want to wrap in a blanket and feed soup to when he suffers so very beautifully. Woobification of a character is a curious, audience-driven phenomenon, divorced almost entirely from the character’s canonical morality, as witnessed by the woobification of Lex Luthor on Smallville.”
http://www.tvtropes.org/p mwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/The Woobie
which includes multifandom examples
Woobification can tie into a disturbing hurt/comfort dynamic, in which fans enjoy seeing the Woobie tortured, if only for the chance to wish the hurt away.
A properly executed Woobie inspires deep fannish devotion. A poorly executed Woobie earns scoffing and mockery, perhaps at the same time.” from
http://www.tvtropes.org/p mwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/The Woobie