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If the fanfic writers had their way.
When a villain is lionized out of or excused of their evil traits, it is Draco In Leather Pants. But since he's no longer a villain... what happens to the other guy? After all, the hero opposes the villain, the guy you're rooting for, so what about him?
In a standard Heel Face Turn Draco, he simply joins the other heroes. But the Fanfic author doesn't always want that; a firm conviction that the canon hero cannot be on the same side as the "redeemed" villain may hold. Maybe the hero changes sides because he doesn't want to be on the same side as the Draco. Or maybe the Draco was the hero all along, and the hero is the real villain! This, like the Draco himself, requires some character " tweaking".
The result of shoehorning a canon hero into being a villain — and not just any villain, but an evil bastard — is Ron The Death Eater. The inverse of Draco In Leather Pants. This is often the result of a Draco In Leather Pants, but it doesn't have to be — some characters inspire this sort of hatred on their own, either by their canon merits or by being in an Official Couple that interferes with the writer's One True Pairing.
Often, in creating Ron The Death Eater, the writer spins his canonical (non-evil) actions into evil acts. This can be seen as a kind of deliberate Flanderization — every possible negative trait of the character is exaggerated until they become a Complete Monster. A measure of ruthlessness becomes complete and utter sociopathy, a tendency towards holding grudges becomes an obsessive hatred of anything they dislike, slight denseness becomes raging stupidity, et cetera.
And then sometimes, people just seem to do this for its own sake, as if they can't tolerate a hero and have to find some way in which they must be a Complete Monster and why can't everyone else see that they need to be stopped!? Some trope pages can wind up made mostly of this.
This can extend beyond Fanfic, especially in cases where fans are Running The Asylum. Also, some series and efforts are really just asking for this, especially when they portray Evil Versus Evil, Black And Gray Morality, Gray And Gray Morality, or have heavy cases of Protagonist Centered Morality without the appropriate lampshade-hanging that the protagonist (or at least the series) knows he's acting less than heroically.
Named for the tendency in Harry Potter fanfics where Draco turns good and hooks up with Hermione to have Ron lose his mind and, often, join Lord Voldemort just for a chance at killing the sainted Malfoy. (Harry Potter himself doesn't get hit as hard with this because he's not in the canon Hermione pairing.)
Note that this and Draco In Leather Pants, especially paired together in the same fic, are polarizing tropes; it's unlikely the writer will accept suggestions of compromises like an OT3 or a Tenchi Solution.
See also Die For Our Ship, which can cause this trope. Compare Historical Villain Upgrade which is essentially this trope applied to Real Life.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Mamoru/Tuxedo Kamen/Endymion of Sailor Moon is a frequent target of this in stories that pair Usagi off with someone else. Don't be surprised to find him revealed as the true mastermind behind everything, a Complete Monster on the level of Wiseman and Sailor Galaxia (combined!) who wants to take over the world or destroy it, especially if the new love interest turns out to be Seiya.
- He's also always cheating on Usagi, usually with Rei but sometimes with Setsuna. 'Cause dying for Usagi over and over is apparently just a front to hide his ecchi ways.
- "Betrayal" fics tend to do this to all of the Inner Senshi (the ones who showed up in the first season). They kick Usagi out of the team (sometimes literally) and almost always make Rei/Mars the new leader despite it being Canon that Minako/Venus is next in the chain of command after Sailor Moon. Speaking of poor Rei, she ends up being Flanderized into The Umbridge who won't listen to reason, which over time often makes the other Senshi regret their actions and beg Usagi for forgiveness.
- Well, the fact that one of the SNES fighting games did something similar as a plot doesn't help...
- And the fact that the English dub made Rei into something of a Starscream character. Even to the point where, in one episode, it was implied that she stole the Moon Stick. In the original, Usagi gave it to Rei for safekeeping.
- And don't forget about the aforementioned Pluto, who is sometimes written as one who will go to any lengths to ensure the rise of Crystal Tokyo, up to and including letting billions die despite there being better alternatives to the future and murdering anyone she deems to be a threat to the timeline. The rest of the Senshi are either blind to her designs or otherwise agree with Pluto, and most of the time either Original Characters or characters from other media will be the ones to call them out and battle, often to the death.
- The fanfic I'm Here to Help plays the above straight, with the notable subversion that Sailor Pluto had absolutely no choice in the matter due to being bound by a vow to Queen Serenity, but through a loophole manages to manipulate somebody else to prevent the future Instrumentality of the human race.
- Of course the rest of the future Senshi go all Ron The Death Eater through Utopia Justifies The Means route in this fic as well, and with them it is played straight. Seriously, their life philosophy is nothing less than the direct opposite of the one that Usagi clearly espouses and follows in the anime (the first time as early as the end of season 1) and that decides her galaxy-shaped choice in the manga. Their present-day selves remain relatively in-character, though.
- There was a fanfic, no longer available, that cast Sailor Moon in this role, to a gay Mamoru.
- Ranma characters in general are often subjected to this, especially in cases where Die For Our Ship is in effect. The characters' quirks, odd personalities, and goofy plots are taken out of the realm of silly comedy and made Serious Business (while similar behavior on the part of the preferred characters is ignored or excused). Those most subject to this trope are Akane (who goes from Tsundere to Ax Crazy), Shampoo (who goes from somewhat plotting Genki Girl to, well, Ax Crazy), and Cologne (who goes from her own slightly more canny plotting and occasional antagonist moments to a ruthless, callous schemer matching wits with Nabiki). To exemplify: the Akane example on Jerk Sue has had to be deleted twice because, despite having some grounds, people tend to rewrite it to make Akane look almost like a Complete Monster.
- Occasionally Ranma himself gets to be the total bastard, whether to get him away from one of his fiancées for shipping purposes, or if one of his rivals gets the sympathetic POV. And then there are fics like A Real Man
 , which intentionally casts Ranma as a cold, narcissistic chauvinist pig whoring his way through most of the female cast, as a sick-but-extremely-funny Deconstructive Parody of Ranma's canon fixation on proving his manhood. Just goes to show that Tropes Are Not Bad.
- No mention of Ryouga? A surprising amount of fanfiction chooses to ignore the Character Development the poor guy gets in favour of having him continue to chase Akane, pretend to be P-Chan, and try to kill Ranma even in post-continuity stories, despite the fact he's repeatedly saved Ranma's life and (more or less) moved on to building a relationship with Akari.
- Doujin that focus on Token Loli Mizuno Azusagawa (and that actually have a story) tend to have her older sister Tsukino do a 180 personality flip and actually be selfish, entitled, spoiled, and unappreciative of her employees, to make Mizuno's own spoiled brat nature more sympathetic. Note that these doujin try and pretend the two's eldest sister Yukino doesn't exist, since Tsukino would have to be a serial killer to get worse than her.
- Lelouch's entry on the Draco In Leather Pants page used to be a little more... shall we say... extreme than the one currently on there, the whole matter of someone being leather pantsed when their name is on the series aside. A particularly vicious version that endured for awhile literally referred to him as a sociopath who would "shoot you in the face as soon as say hello"... rather a far cry from someone who was nauseous for a few days after killing his first person, and was willing to do the likes of jumping off the edge of a building to save Shirley from falling, and giving a veiled Facing The Bullets One Liner in order to drive Kallen away from getting shot down by the Black Knights who had just betrayed him, all his other actions aside.
- Suzaku gets smacked around quite a bit too, by fans who tend to forget that at the very least, his actions are pushed (at least at first) by extreme naivete and idealism at worst. Essentially, being the embodiment of "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" didn't do him any favors with certain sections of the fanbase, who often completely ignore the idealism and good intentions and maximize his self-loathing, hypocrisy (which he lampshades at least once), and willingness to use violence if he thinks it's needed. The crowning example of this being the people who hate Suzaku for killing Lelouch, despite the fact that Lelouch asked him to do it. Or people who decide that killing his father when he was 10 is a sign he was obviously a heartless sociopath from birth, which ignores the fact that being traumatised and remorseful for what he did is pretty much his defining characteristics.
- Never heard of fan reaction qualifying for What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic before.
- And euthanasia is illegal, you know. Unless Lelouch really was murdering his own citizens, which is kinda crazy.
- That depends on where you live, and is beside the point, anyway. And, for good or for ill "crazy" tends to describe Lelouch's default method of operating.
- The Black Knights did commit quite critical mistakes that brought lots of tremendous trouble later, but Lelouch rabid fans "forget" that Zero/Lelouch himself abandoned them when they needed him (in the first season finale, being chased by an unstoppable juggernaut aside) and that the deaths of some of their members during the Geass Cult Massacre made them suspicious for a while before Schneizel came in. No, they must be a bunch of Complete Monsters, and even Ougi and Viletta's unborn baby must pay with their blood for it.
- Even though I wasn't a fan of the betrayal in the least, among other assorted thoughts, I will agree that a lot of the blame rests on Schneizel, the man responsible for taking no shortage of liberties with the evidence he presented. Thee likes of Tohdoh can be forgiven for being suspicious of Lelouch as Zero. However, there's no excuse for Ohgi, who bought into Villetta's evidence of Geass a little too easily evidently because of his romantic interest in her, which is what led to the betrayal, and also highlights the hypocrisy of the event, especially on Ohgi's part, who uses Kallen as bait despite being against that sort of thing. That this is the event that pushes Lelouch over the Despair Event Horizon and eventually leads to the Zero Requiem, which of course ends in Lelouch's death, and Ohgi afterwards HappilyMarried and Prime Minister of Japan, is why Ohgi gets a ton of the post-show hate.
- It also doesn't help that the logical thing to do is to arrest and restrain him, and present him to their leaders. Actively murdering him is going a step too far if he doesn't make any threatening moves towards them, and especially with the logic of "Zero has mind control." + "Zero is a Britannian Prince." -> "Britannians have mind control". (Which Villeta knew was true.) But then they go raving mad and claim to be willing to kill Kallen to kill Lelouch... it's all quite bizarre.
- In the most shocking development, Shirley of all people, given her over-the-top Scrappy status, has become a Ron The Death Eater in training, of sorts. No, nobody's outright called her a villain, but some of her detractors blame various problems of the series on her, or else make her out as completely stupid and incompetent for not understanding everything; and there's also the Draco In Leather Pants treatment that Mao and Rolo receive, some of which is just because they decided to hurt her (and yes, both of them are complex characters with decent Freudian Excuses and so on and so forth, but we're talking about Shirley and it makes zero sense for the two of them to score points just by virtue of hurting her, when she never deserved it in the first place)....
- While Neji Hyuga of Naruto did hate his cousin Hinata for years, in some fanfics, he's portrayed as still hating her even after Naruto defeats him and he starts warming up to her, and one fic even turns him into a Complete Monster rapist who relies on his uncle Hiashi's influence to avoid the consequences of his actions (which is beyond stupid, as most of the reason he hates Hinata in the first place was their placements in the branch house means he was born into a life of having to protect her or die).
- The lengths fans will go to mangle Sakura and Sasuke's characters are truly staggering. Sakura is often turned into a hateful bitch with no redeeming qualities whose favourite past-time seems to be "beat Naruto". Sasuke is a strange example because while he does become a Rival Turned Evil people still tend to find an inaccurately negative view of his personality, even before his Heel Face Turn. Often turning him into an incredibly arrogant prick who thinks no one is better than him and his family, who absolutely cannot allow/believe Naruto to/can catch up at all.
- This troper has seen some pretty vicious ones of Hinata too. Sometimes they take her "I'm just being selfish" line right before her Heroic Sacrifice too literally, sometimes she's accused of being a stalker, sometimes it just defies logic.
- Lacus Clyne suffers this fate from a large part of the Gundam SEED Destiny community. While certain parts of her actions, and moreso in the case of her accomplice Kira Yamato, could certainly be a question of perspective, large portions of the community have decided that the anti-war, egalitarian Idol Singer who declined to take control of her country at one point, is, in truth, a psychopathic Manipulative Bitch who hires assasins to attempt to kill her to motivate her retired boyfriend return to piloting so that she can usurp control of her home country from the wholly benevolent dutifully electly squeeky clean current ruler of said country.
- If you mention Lacus, you have to mention her precursor and probable Expy source material, Relena Darlian Peacecraft. The fics that don't portray her as The Ditz Stalker With A Crush tend to make her a violent, hateful homophobe who's willing to commit murder to break up the object of her affection and his gay partner. And then there are the truly staggering number of Alternate Universe fics where she's a female Sauron, forcing her idea of peace (IE, serving her as slaves) upon an innocent world and needing to be stopped by the Gundam Boys (all of whom are gay in the story, natch).
- Also in Gundam SEED Destiny is one Rey Za Burrel, who often times gets turned into a Manipulative Bastard that tries forcing Shinn into reshaping the whole world due to his own vision and view his best friend more as a tool than anything else, willing to kill him if he steps out of line. Compare that to his Well Intentioned Extremist self in the series who genuinely stuck his neck out for Shinn on occasions he didn't need to and made his and Shinn's life harder (returning Stella for instance) and eventually straight-out telling Shinn exactly why he was doing what he was doing and giving decent motivations why.
- Flay Allster suffers from this a lot. While she isn't exactly innocent in canon (she does go Yandere for a while), there are reasons for her Sanity Slippage, mostly how she witnessed her father getting blown up. A stunning number of Alternate Universe and High School AU fics, which don't feature Flay's traumatic experience or the existence of Coordinators (thereby removing the Fantastic Racism), nonetheless decide to make her a Complete Monster. She's invariably the bitchy, spoiled, jealous and unfaithful girlfriend that Kira is dating at the fic's beginning solely so that he can break up with her to be with Lacus (or Athrun). She always goes out of her way to pick on poor Lacus, and does her best to make all the characters miserable, for absolutely no reason. Even the kindest and most forgiving characters will feel nothing but scorn for her, and of course she feels nothing but hatred for them (as a being of pure evil, she can't feel love). Needless to say, Flay's canonical redemption will be completely ignored.
- A few Gatchaman fics have portrayed Ken as an insensitive jerk who chases after leggy blondes in order to facillate Jun giving up on him so she can be paired with someone else.
- Back in the day, Pokeshipping fanfics would use Brock (part of the rival Gymshipping pairing) or Gary (Ash's then-Jerk Ass rival) as the villains, having them kidnap or hurt Misty or try to kill Ash in order to add an element of drama to the story and drive the lovers together.
- Conversely, in Ash/Brock and Ash/Gary fics Misty is turned into a whiny psychobitch the boys wish they could be rid of, or a cackling witch out to destroy the oh so pure love between them.
- Ash himself suffers this in Rocketshipping fics, being made to look like a selfish monster whose existence is somehow a threat or personal affront to Jessie and James's love.
- England from Axis Powers Hetalia is turned into a sick, twisted Yandere and/or a Manipulative Bastard who physically and/or mentally abuses America in a number of fics written by people who don't like the America/England pairing, want to woobify America, or make England's characterization "more in-line with actual history." Not only is this a massive distortion of his canon Tsundere personality, but it also completely ignores that England is shown in canon to have been unable to harm America during The American Revolution (breaking down into tears instead) and that his treatment of America after that, while not exactly polite or friendly, gets no worse than snark and complaints, not to mention that America himself is hardly innocent of behaving in the exact same fashion towards England (in fact, in the manga America is a lot harder on England than the other way around).
- There are some rabid Canada fans who give America a similar treatment, making him an insensitive and heartless Jerk Jock while derailing Canada into a mix of Purity and Sympathetic Sue (if not into a Jerk Ass Stu). Yeah, America isn't exactly an angel, but that is a bit too much.
- The Japan haters... Oh God, the Japan haters. Accusing Kiku of being a Mary Sue in-story on little to no evidence (i.e., forgetting that in his and China's backstory, China was the one who came off sympathetically and Japan was a tremendous Jerk Ass to him) and screaming because of what fandom (and NOT canon) sometimes does to him? Conveniently forgetting that the Western tends to do the same thing with America? What the Hell.
- On the other hand, Japan isn't really demonized in the actual fics; he's much more often just made blander than cardboard or left out altogether. And this troper hasn't seen any major Die For Our Ship aimed at him, except maybe from a minority of Turkey/Greece shippers who feel threatened by his close relationship in canon with Greece.
- Happened a lot in the Digimon fandom. For example, Taichi/Sora/Yamato: Taichi/Sora fics would turn Yamato into an abusive jerk who mistreats Sora. Yamato/Sora fics would turn Taichi into a jealous baby, even though he was totally okay with his two best friends getting together in canon. And Taichi/Yamato fics would turn Sora into a crazy, homophobic bitch who tries to ruin the guys' pure love. Even though she's a sweet girl who has the crest of, well, love.
- Happens to Daisuke as well for Takeru/Hikari. Like Yamato, he, too, wields crest of friendship. As retaliation, Daisuke/Hikari supporters have been known to do this to Takeru. Ditto Miyako or Hikari for Ken/Daisuke.
- Yes, Haruhi Suzumiya is a Jerk Ass. Yes, she probably deserves a good whack on the head. But no, she's not the antichrist, she does get better with time and killing her in cold blood won't help poor baby Mikuru either. The fact that she's this trope to her Hatedom and worshipped by her Fandom, makes her
one of the most polarizing character in recent memory.
- Oh gawd Inu Yasha. Nearly all the female fanfiction writers seem to go out of their way to make him a back-stabbing, two-timing asshole who abuses Kagome (who usually gets twisted to Mary Sue levels) and runs off with Kikyo (also portrayed as a bitch) at any possible moment. There are times this troper wonders when was the last time those girls have actually read or watched the series itself.
- Kagome doesn't get scot-free either, as her Clingy Jealous Girl traits (which are very mild, compared to other Tsunderes) are cranked Up To Eleven by Fan Dumb, her more or less legitimate angst because of her insecurities is dismissed as Wangst, and her conflict with Kikyou that comes from her identity problems is shown as "OMG she hates Inuyasha's Twu Wub". Bitch, PLEASE.
- One of the most straight examples of the Ron/Draco dichotomy of the applicable dyad of tropes in anime would be Joey Wheeler/Katsuya Jounouchi, when sized up against Seto Kaiba, the Draco In Leather Pants of Yu Gi Oh. Part of Kaiba's fanbase considers Jou/Joey a Jerk Ass whenever he dares to stand against Kaiba, even when reasonably provoked, and especially considering the fact that Jou/Joey has long been Kaiba's personal Chew Toy. While it's easy to see from the standpoint of the people who look mainly at Kaiba's childhood, there are fans who feel this way regardless, and still cheer Kaiba on when he gives Joey/Jou similar, yet arguably worse considering how much more powerful he is, abuse. In either case, though especially the latter, it's Jerkass Dissonance at work.
- What about Anzu/Téa? Being the Only Sane Man in the group and trying to do her best despite not being a Duelist? Horrible, terrible, what a friendship-speech-touting WHORE. Nevermind that Yugi, Yami Yugi and Jounouchi makes as many friendship speeches as she does, Anzu is the only one who gets hated for them.
- And then there are stories that do this to Yugi's Nakama, usually with them abandoning poor little Yugi for Yami/Atem (Who just happens to have his own body) for the shallowest of reasons. The ones who don't, if anyone, are usually Kaiba, Serenity/Shizuka, Mai, Bakura, and/or maybe the Ishtars (And even they in some stories have their moments). This usually results in Yugi running away from home and/or getting a new set of friends (Usually the main cast if in a crossover) to show just how better off he is without them. Some stories lead to his former friends regretting their actions while others... not so much.
- In L X Light fanfics Light’s father and the rest of the Police Taskforce tend to be a jerk asses about it at best... as does Misa...
Comic Books
- X-Men fandom has a fair number of these, since every character has done some rather unsavory things at some point due to all the Armed With Canon fighting that goes on with the title; since Marvel editorial has never done much of anything to rein this in, characters often drop relationships, leap into relationships, pick up the Idiot Ball, turn into a Jerk Ass, and so on based on the writer's own shipping and character preferences, leaving angry fans (and anti-fans) plenty of ammo for mudslinging.
- Fans of Wolverine and fans of Cyclops frequently claim the one they don't like is the biggest asshole ever, for the sake of the one they do look like coming off better. It definitely doesn't help that both characters have gone into and out of periods where they actually have acted like titanic assholes.
- Jean Grey gets it and is turned into a sociopathic manipulator, deliberately leading multiple men on to keep all the attention on her, to the extent that there have been rape/death fics written about her where the author clearly intended you to root for the rapist.
- Professor Xavier gets it fairly bad too, especially from fans who prefer the Anti Hero characters of the series/setting. Some of his more... questionable... choices and actions get spun into him being an even more cold-hearted, ruthless, villainous bastard than Magneto could ever be (which, of course, winds up making Magneto look much better in comparison, especially if the story takes place in one of his less villainous phases).
- Batman is pretty much canonically a dick ever since the nineties, with the level of his dickishness depending on the writer. Of course, just being demanding and emotionally closed-off isn't enough for some fan writers, and he's often turned into a full-out abusive parent and utter misanthropist who'd just love an excuse to off every costume but himself. (Oddly enough, other fics that have him abusing his preteen male charges sexually... don't seem to think that's abuse and seem to believe that's portraying him positively. Fandom is weird.)
- Superman himself doesn't get this treatment a ton... but alas, poor Lois. If she actually shows up at all in fanfics where Superman and Batman (or Superman and any other costume with a penis under it) are getting it on, expect her to be a shrieking Tsundere in the style of psycho-Akane at best.
- Admittedly, her Silver Age characterization provides some basis for this.
Harry Potter
- The Trope Namer, Ron Weasley. Since Draco In Leather Pants is often a result of Draco/Hermione shippers, Ron is turned ragingly evil and joins the Death Eaters to oppose the now-good Draco, never minding the massive OOC-ness of the action.
- The Grangerverse, a group of fans who believe that Hermione Granger is the true hero of the books (making Harry Potter himself something they call a "frontkick", meaning he's a Sidekick even though his name is on the cover) do this as a matter of course, because their favorite character is far too good for Ron Weasley. Usually, Ron ends up being a semi-literate attempted rapist thug whose best features are his lack of comprehension and his atrocious table manners.
- In fact, just about any time Draco gets a Heel Face Turn, whether he gets with Hermione or not, Ron will be the Idiot Of The Week who rants and raves about Draco being "the enemy". Granted that Ron is canonically the most hotheaded and reflexively anti-Slytherin of the Gryffindor Trio, you can still overdo it, and many fanfic authors do.
- "Did you know [Ron] tried to rape last year?" Presented entirely matter of fact and never referenced again. (Link NSFW.)
- Dark Secrets presents an example of literal Ron the Death Eater, though it's for the sake of the Draco/Mary Sue ship rather than Draco/Hermione. Also not work safe.
- Subverted in Secret of Slytherin, in which Ron is the only one of the Trio to fully accept Draco's genuine Heel Face Turn:
Harry: (to Ron) I mean, most of the time, it's one of the things I like best about you, that things are so... simple for you. But Malfoy's been raised for this, trained for it. He told me once that a murder is just taking control of someone in a final sort of way, like it was nothing. I knew he'd be a Death Eater then, a murderer. I should've listened to my instincts.
Hermione: Oh, Harry. We all could have guessed it, but we didn't want to believe it of him...
Ron: You two sure do turn on a knut, don't you?
- Ginny Weasley gets portrayed as a shrewish whore a lot. Sometimes it's ship-related and sometimes the author just doesn't like her. Harry/Hermione fics in particular almost invariably cast her as an evil, deceitful bitch trying to steal Harry. Since the same pairing tends to make Ron evil, as noted above, these fics often vilify the whole Weasley family.
- And the proof that Ginny haters have of her being a "slore" is that she dated three boys (not at the same time, and the last one ended up being her husband) within two school years. Whereas Hermione is a paragon of purity — no, she would never date anyone just to get attention. Viktor and Cormac? Who are they?
- Harry Potter and the Marriage Contracts is perhaps the archetypical example of Ginny Weasley as the Village Bicycle. Ron also gets the standard sexist Jerk Ass treatment re: Hermione, even though Harry is paired with someone else.
Molly: Ginny, you've got to calm down. Minerva has caught you four times with different boys.
Ginny: That just goes to show that she's not as informed as she thinks. She missed five others, Mum. Look, with everything I'm doing for you, you can cut me some slack. That pathetic half blood upstairs must be a eunuch. I haven't managed to get a bit of action out of him.
- The Weasleys in general are prone to this sort of treatment. In Alternate Universe Fics in which the Hat put Harry in Slytherin, Draco will usually be put in leather pants and the Weasleys will suddenly become the biggest assholes in the world. Often, it is Ron who gets the worst of it with the rest of his family acting little to no different (especially the twins), though there have been instances where all of them will look upon and treat Harry with disdain just because he's not a Gryffindor.
- In general, whether or not Ron will immediately become a complete psychopath is determined solely by what house Harry is sorted into, or as noted further above if Hermione is with anyone else. That is, anything but Gryffindor (mostly Slytherin, but he's still usually a huge Jerk Ass if Harry is in one of the other two houses) or Hermione being in love with anybody besides him = It's All About Me, Ax Crazy Ron. In the latter case, he will more than likely want to murder her rather than let anyone else have her.
When Ron Weasley was sorted Harry looked up. Ron gave him a look of deep hate and Harry knew that his short-lived friendship was over. - Harry in Slytherin, Chapter 1
- In the same story mentioned above, Ron assaults Hermione at their first flying lesson, and in his second year nearly kills her with a lethal spell. He is expelled from Hogwarts for this, but ends up being accepted as a student at Durmstrang (which is often referred to in fanfic as the dark, evil school, despite Viktor Krum being shown in two books to not be part of the stereotype). Chance of him later becoming a literal example of this trope: 100%. Hermione herself also murders Draco Malfoy, and completely gets away with it (with absolutely no remorse from her, Harry or anyone) because Dumbledore doesn't bother to check her wand because "she was such a sweet girl".
- It's not just the Slytherin!Harry fics, or even the Draco fics. There is an entire subgenre of fanfic where Harry's "chest monster" turns out to be because psycho stalker Ginny is dosing him with love potion. Often they also throw in that Ginny got the potion from her mother, who is secretly an ambitious shrew hoping to enrich herself by having her daughter marry Harry and then inherit all his money if/when Harry dies fighting Voldemort. Things like Ron having been hired by Dumbledore to spy on and manipulate Harry are very frequent in such fics as well. Oddly, even in the worst fics of this example Arthur Weasley and the older Weasley brothers (especially the twins) still remain honest, well-meaning people (except Percy, but he's an asshole in the canon, so it's not like he's any different). It's just Molly and her two youngest that get their characterizations done over.
- It's especially interesting when Ron gets this, but Ginny does not. Cue their relationship going straight to what would be Cain And Abel levels if the author hadn't seemingly forgetten that they are brother and sister. Sometimes she goes so far as to not even care if he dies, which, of course, has the intended effect of making her look like a sociopath. Even if he did join the Death Eaters, become eviler than Voldemort and tried to ruin the author's One True Pairing, you'd think Ginny would still experience some angst over his death.
- In one Peggy Sue fanfic, Ginny poisons all of her children and tries to do the same to Harry, to "have the Potter fortune and fame" all to herself. Once in the past, Harry prevents Ginny from ever existing by secretly sterilizing Molly Weasley after Ron is born (who is actually not evil here, for once). Because Ginny is apparently pure evil from birth and unredeemable.
The Deathly Hallows Epilogue was truly unsatisfying. Here's the rest of the story that begins about two years after the DH Epilogue. Not for Ginny enthusiasts. Character Deaths. Time Travel. Avenging!Harry. - Author's Note, Time to Fix the Mistakes, Chapter 1
- There is only one time This Troper can remember a fic where Ginny The Death Eater was actually made plausible. To sum up in paraphrase: 'Hey Harry, remember that time I got mentally possessed by Voldemort but luckily didn't lose any of my sanity? Yeah, well, actually, I lost all of it, I've just got a really good poker face.' Oddly enough, that fic was also one of the few plausible "Harry gets sent to Azkaban" fics this troper can remember reading as well... given that what he was being sent up for was allegedly murdering Ginny, and its a lot easier to frame someone if the alleged victim is helping you fake her death.
- There is also a HPCC fic (pre - Oot P) where Ginny goes evil when Harry and Cho hook up - The remains of Tom's personality resurface.
- A very large portion of Slash Fic with Harry in the main pairing has its authors vilifying Ginny in any number of the ways detailed above. This has become increasingly common in fic written post-Deathly Hallows: ironically, it's especially true in fics that try to conform to canon up to and including the epilogue. Needless to say, the things they make Ginny do to shatter the obvious happiness Harry feels at the time of the epilogue are often downright heinous.
- What's particularly odd is these fics almost always contain the canon next generation, so apparently the fanfic authors don't mind the kids; it's just the women they don't like. Unfortunate implications, indeed.
- A rather bizarre version of all of this is done in The Girl Who Lived. The series started out with Rose and Ginny being best friends and fellow Druidesses (with behavior that invoked other...implications). On the other hand, while Ron basically fulfilled most of his uses at first, most of his good moments were eventually handed off to Hermione or Neville or Rose, leaving Ron to look like a lazy idiot who begged Rose in vain to let him copy her homework while she rolled her eyes and condescendingly told him to do it himself. The author also appeared to take care to leave Ron out of any discussions of Rose's power or knowledge or plans and tried to make his bad moments (like when he fights with rose in GOF) appear to be genuinely wounding instances which gives Rose the opportunity to strike back. The twins appeared to be on "minion" status as well, kissing her hand when they met her, Percy was outright hated, and the Wesley parents were hardly mentioned, with Rose stating at one point that she had five parental figures "if [she] could count Mrs. Wesley". After rewriting Order of the Phoenix however, Ginny appeared to lose favor with the author and by extension Rose and was replaced more or less with Luna. In the brief amount of time she is shown, Ginny is painted as a shrew who picks on Fleur wrongly and is yelled at by Rose for it (Mrs. Wesley gets the same treatment).
- Stories in which Harry is framed for a crime he didn't commit and sentenced to
the Chateau d'If Azkaban for life tend to have this happen to just about all of the characters except usually Snape, Neville, Luna and a random Weasley or two the Weasley Twins and (almost never Ron, and sometimes at least one of the older brothers who are barely mentioned in the series immediately becomes Harry's new best friend). Common murder victims include Neville, Hagrid, Ginny, and the Dursleys. Those who were supposedly his closest friends and trusted adults will suddenly denounce him as being evil on par or worse than Voldemort (if not joined with him), exaggerate or outright lie about his past misdeeds (often in the Wizengamot), assault or torture him (sometimes by illegal curses or means that should get them thrown into Azkaban), and destroy/break/burn all of his prized possessions, especially the photo album with pictures of his parents inside. Rarely, they may also go to the extreme of brutally killing Hedwig right in front of Harry just to spite him. Despite all of this, they will act like nothing has happened and ask for forgiveness nearly the very moment Harry is proven without a doubt to be not guilty, almost always by Voldemort telling everyone the full details of how he set up Harry and turned everyone against him, even though there is usually still no solid evidence of Harry's innocence.
- The second chapter of Betrayed Having a Father: Sixth Year has many of the betrayal examples listed in the entry above (and is also a Dead Fic, which many "Harry is Betrayed" fics end up as). Close to the end (after Harry's "trial"), Ron, Hermione, Remus and Sirius suddenly hack up into cruel, vengeful demons without an ounce of decency or mercy. One of the worst and most clichéd examples, but nearly all fanfics of this type follow the same basic template with few variations:
- Someone (usually Ron) screaming that Harry's a bastard or traitor after finding out about the murder(s) or by discovering him at or near the scene of the crime.
- Harry watching helplessly as his photo album is reduced to ashes (again, usually by Ron and sometimes followed by a Big No). Usually, he's also cruelly mocked by his house-mates at the same time.
- If Sirius is alive, most of the time he will be on the side of the accusers despite the same thing once happening to him! Seriously,
most all of the "good" characters will become Ron The Death Eater or Anti Heroes in these stories without exception.
- As for Harry, being locked away in a hellish, dark, damp prison patrolled by monsters that feed on emotions and make everything extremely cold around them will do great wonders for him, in the process becoming a God Mode Sue who turns out to be more powerful than everyone else combined and (very often) destroys Voldemort with no effort whatsoever.
- In the extremely uncommon instances where Harry doesn't become a One Man Army, once released from Azkaban he'll invariably turn into a depressed, suicidal individual and some of those who betrayed him will only hate him all the more, especially Ron. They may also go as far as labeling Harry a Dark Wizard and look for (or invent) any reason to try and put him back in prison, even though he did absolutely nothing wrong and was found innocent!
- At least one fic averts most if not all of those tropes. Must have something to do with it being among the first. Betrayed also largely averts it, but The oldest one I can find already has it all.
- This also tends to occur with regards to Albus Dumbledore, whose canonical status as The Chessmaster tends to be twisted and put through a strainer darkly until he stops being Dumbledore and starts being
Umbridge Voldemort with a beard. This tends to be especially prevalent in fanfiction that addresses (and usually overemphasizes) Harry's abuse at the hands of the Dursleys, in which this strange man completely unlike Dumbledore everyone is addressing as Dumbledore for some reason seems content to send Harry into the mouth of Hell (because protection from the Evil Overlord trying to kill him is best when placed over a house full of people trying to kill him) and mwa-ha-ha into his bowl of lemon drops rather than give them a stern talking to.
- The best aversion this troper has seen is in the fanfic, The Lie I've Lived, where Harry actually expected Dumbledore to turn out like this, but was downright surprised to find Dumbledore avert it by stopping himself after realising the extent of his actions thus far. Then he apologised.
- On that note, the Dursleys' canonical abuse of Harry (neglect counts, folks, and even if it didn't, Petunia swung a frying pan at his head and Vernon was one accidental-magic attack from killing Harry in OotP) is Flanderized into anything from regular beatings to rape. This is usually either to make Harry more pitiable (and usually Snape's the one to rescue him) or to make Dumbledore into a mustache-twirling evil bastard.
- Oftentimes, it's established that the Dursleys have just started treating Harry this way, which, it is frequently pointed out, makes no sense at all. Logically, if they were going to beat him, they would have done it when he was seven rather than wait until he's a teenager when he's not only physically stronger, but has wizard friends who will no doubt rescue him if he doesn't show up at Hogwarts.
- For possibly the most extreme and idiotic example of the above, look no further than A Sad Story:
"The family is going out to dinner" he began "You will stay here, but you will be somewhere where you can't make any trouble" He said as he grabbed Harry by the neck and dragged him to the garden Shed. He padlocked the door with at least 20 locks.
- This Troper once came across a Dursleys abuse fic which started off by imitating J K Rowling's casual scene-setting prose, resulting in unintentional hilarity somewhat along these lines: "Harry was not having a good summer. Uncle Vernon had started beating him and had brutally murdered Hedwig before his eyes. He couldn't wait to get back to Hogwarts."
- Child of Grace uses this, along with "alternate universe female Harry" and "Ron hates Harry for not being in Gryffindor", bringing us Holly Potter, a girl who swings between being a Purity Sue and a Jerk Sue and who begins the tale sitting out in the snow while the Dursleys are inside eating dinner. She is quickly established to be skinny, frightened by anyone touching her, heavily black and blue under her clothes from the beatings, and will curtsy to all strangers because the Dursleys had had such manners "all but beaten into her".
- Similarly, Lucius Malfoy, who is already plenty evil, often turns out to be an abusive bastard who beats Draco, giving the latter a Freudian Excuse. Narcissa tends to be cast as a battered housewife in this scenario. Blame Cassandra Claire.
- I would not like to be the guy who beat Narcissa Malfoy and then ate food cooked in the kitchen of her house, let's put that it way. That's aside from the fact that her older sister is Bellatrix effing Lestrange.
- This Troper finds this particularly interesting since by the end of the series, the Malfoys' love for each other is pretty much their only canonically redeeming qualities. Earlier examples can perhaps be excused, though, as their family mechanics were not deeply explored before we see Narcissa weeping over her son and husband's fates in Half-Blood Prince.
- The Marauders get it too, being Flanderized from jerkasses who grew out of it to psychopaths in training who'd make Voldemort himself disturbed. This is done, of course, to woobiefy Snape, and also ignores the fact that he's canonically established as getting them back (he was just sneakier about it).
- Your mileage may vary. The fact that Snape sometimes - certainly not always - got them back doesn't make it any less repulsive that they used to gang up on him four on one. There is barely any Canon evidence that James Potter ever "grew out of it" and there is plenty of Canon evidence that Sirius Black was a bullying idiot to the day of his death, though both of them clearly have positive characteristics as well.
- Some fans just see the entire core cast of the Marauder Age as complete assholes.
- In Dark Fic or Revenge Fic, this sometimes happens to Harry himself as well whether he joins forces with Voldemort or not, to the point where he becomes little more than a cruel blend of Voldemort, Snape and Bellatrix Lestrange, which the author expects the readers to sympathize with and root for. Apparently, having Harry becoming a psychotic, sadistic murderer on par or worse than Voldemort is what should have happened in canon post-Order of the Phoenix. Often, these stories are rife with the Manipulative Dumbledore and Abusive Dursleys examples explained above as an excuse for Harry to go to The Dark Side. Not surprisingly, one of his worst victims is
usually always Ron, even if he didn't turn against Harry.
"Diffindo." And his right arm was gone, blood spurting from the stump. Ron screamed again. Harry smiled sardonically, not even bothering to move as blood started seeping toward his feet. - Traitorous, Chapter 12
- It was hilariously parodied in The Unwritten comics. The comics are about a son of a writer who got famous after creating a series of novels very similar to Harry Potter. The first two start with fragments of those books, and the third with a fragment of Frankenstein. The first page of the fourth issue shows Harry's counterpart slaughtering Ron's and Hermione's counterparts in a really terrible way, only to have it turn out on the next page that it's a Dark Fic.
- My Immortal has some very atypical examples of this. For example,
Snape Snap and Lupin Loopin, who hardly ever meet this due to being two of the most popular characters in the fandom, are turned into a troublesome duo despite not being on great terms in the canon. Oh, and they're also both pervy pedophiles who in general resemble the canon characters in name only and sometimes not even then.
- And of course, Tara does this to Dumbledore too - after finding out that Draco is "in bondage" with
Voldemort Volfemort, Dumbledore refuses to help because he "never liked him anyway".
- But it's justified, because Dumblydore is trying to be all goffik, with a black bread and all! Fridge Logic dictated that, but think about it.
- Even though he "cried wisely" when he thought that Draco committed suicide.
- Again, this is atypical for Harry Potter fanfiction. Although Dumbledore is often Death Eatered, as noted above it's usually by turning him into a Manipulative Bastard. My Immortal goes the opposite route, turning him into a capricious, senile moron (it's even noted he has Alzheimer's at one point). Come to think of it, Dumbledore's portrayal in My Immortal is actually rather similar to the Potter Puppet Pals version of him except that in My Immortal he's inexplicably regarded as a villain.
- Oddly, despite having nearly every cliche you'll find in bad Harry Potter Mary Sue fic, it avoids doing this to the two most popular targets, since both Ron and Ginny are apparently friends with the Mary Sue. (Although in Ginny's case, you might have missed the fact that she was even IN the fic, since her name is only mentioned twice and spelled as "Jenny" the first time.)
- In most fanfic where Harry has a sibling, and is not or mistaken not to be the Boy Who Lived, James and Lily Potter end up being examples of this trope to the point where the Dursleys look like saints. They belittle, abuse and/or ignore him while heaping praise upon Harry's brother or sister, who is usually also a huge Jerk Ass that flaunts his or her status at every opportunity. Often, the three of them despise Harry for the mere fact that he exists, and more so if he befriends the wrong people (Snape, the Malfoys, or any Slytherin in general). Ron is usually portrayed as little more than a Gryffindor equivalent of Malfoy who often hates and mocks Harry for no reason at all. And heaven forbid if Harry ends up sorted into any house besides Gryffindor.
"I can not believe that you were put in Huffelpuff! You have disgraced your family and their fine Gryffindor heritage. We would have even preferred Ravenclaw over this. You will not be coming home for the Christmas holiday, that is your punishment." Mr. & Mrs. Potter - The Chronicles of Merlin: The Return, Chapter 1
- Face it, "Wrong Boy Who Lived" stories are pretty much a hodgepodge of every single example above and then some. Dumbledore is at best a Well Intentioned Extremist who chooses the wrong child because he thinks the scar on him or her is something Voldemort would be more likely to mark someone as his sworn enemy with, even though Voldemort was just going there to kill all the Potters outright. Sometimes, even if Voldemort doesn't attack them, Harry's brother or sister is still called "The Boy/Girl Who Lived" even though this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
- Snape has a large fan following, but there's still a vicious group of haters out there doing everything in their power to make him look like a bigger asshole than he already is, including degrading his love for Lily and his requests for Voldemort to spare her as a desire to keep her as a sex slave. This troper even found a fic that had him raping female students and then erasing their memories of the incident. Often in 'Super Powered Harry' fics, Snape will attempt to use legilimency or even outright attack Harry or one of his friends. Harry will then use his ultra amazing superpowers to defeat and utterly humiliate Snape in front of everyone. Snape is usually revealed to still be a Death Eater and then either gets killed horribly or goes to Azkaban for life. It's more often than not the former.
- And just to round out the entire cast, Lily Potter has earned a small but rabid Hatedom for daring to choose James over Snape. It's not Ron The Death Eater to disagree with her choice or her actions, but the fic and essays portraying her as an evil, stuck-up, abusive, shallow demon spawn because she didn't love Snape back (even though he at one point called her "mudblood," the wizarding equivalent of the N word) definitely is. Many of these fans don't stop to consider that this might have an indirect Ron The Death Eater effect on Snape as well, because if Lily is as horrible as they say she is, what does it say about Snape that he liked her so much? The true Wall Banger is when people argue that she has no concept of love or selflessness, even though her very first act in the book is to sacrifice her life for Harry's.
Literature
- In Wicked, most of the originally heroic characters are "reinterpreted" as stupid (Dorothy), conceited (Scarecrow), or a drunken mess (Glinda)... save for the Wizard, who is a genocidal maniac. The lion is about the only one who got off easy, seeing as he got his own book by the same author later.
- Poor, poor Raoul de Chagny. Just try finding an Erik/Christine fic that doesn't turn him into a drunk, wife beater, womanizer, or all of the above. (They exist, but dear Lord are they in the minority.)
- In Lord Of The Rings fandom, Arwen is all too often portrayed as a vicious, shrieking harpy who, in her all-consuming ambition to be Queen of Gondor, stole! poor Aragorn! from his true! love! (Said true love may be Éowyn, Legolas, or Marisuthiel, depending on the writer.)
- One particular fanfic series (about the Fellowship having survived to the modern day), while otherwise hilarious, was so Anvilicious about Arwen's evil for the sake of justifying Aragorn's Ho Yay that the writers had Arwen donate the mummies of their children to be put on display in a museum. Just to hurt him. Basically, any mention of Arwen in the otherwise humorous fics was enough to bring the comedy to a screeching halt. (The series in question was the Bag Enders series by Lady Alyssa and Random Dent. And for this troper's two cents, Arwen is such a bitch that it's possible to honestly read it as parody of the above fic style.)
- She's not the only one- Boromir and his father Denethor get it bad, too. Canonically speaking, Boromir is a good and honorable man whose tragic flaw (pride coupled with a belief in military strength as the best way to solve problems) made him vulnerable to the temptation of the Ring. In fanfiction, he's often portrayed as an Obviously Evil Jerkass the Fellowship should have dropped at first oppurtunity, and he's often a raging misogynist to boot (so that Mary Sue can prove him wrong, of course). Denethor canonically is a bit of a Jerkass, but he's also a strong-willed and highly competent leader who held his country together against Sauron for decades, only succumbing to madness when it looked like everything he fought for was in ruins. In fanfiction he's often reduced to a Smug Snake who was crazy from the start and has been leading Gondor to ruin all along. These portrayals of both characters are often used to turn Faramir into a Gary Stu and/or Mary Sue's love interest.
- Legolas' father, King Thranduil of Mirkwood, is frequently featured as an alcoholic tyrant who beats up, imprisons, exiles, and rapes his son so that the latter can be turned into a Sympathetic Sue who gets instantly cured by a bout of Healing!Sex with Aragorn.
- Let's just say that a lot of people on the internet remain convinced that Eragon is evil, Gallbatorix is just a king trying to do his job, the Varden are terrorists, the Dragon Riders were a horrible militaristic oppression, and that everyone in Eragon's hometown are horrible psychopaths that should have been killed long ago. Except for Sloan of course, because he yelled at Eragon.
- Some of this is probably just a little extra way for the Hatedom to do a Take That at the author.
- It's semi-canonical, in that the text can be read as involving Black And Gray Morality (YMMV who counts as which), but a lot of productions of The Merchant Of Venice (notably that with Laurence Olivier as Shylock) not only make Shylock as sympathetic as is possible, but also chose the most unflattering interpretations of the protagonists' characters.
- Warrior Cats: The more Ashfur is portrayed as an innocent little angel/the best character EVER/a total Badass, the more Squirrelflight will be portrayed as an evil bitch/a stupid whore/a useless whiny brat.
- There is more to it than that. Replace "Ashfur" with "Stormfur" or "Hawkfrost" and it still makes sense.
Live Action TV
- Long before Spike ever actually went good and got his soul back in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, he was being leather pantsed into Buffy's new beau in fanfic. Angel, of course, often wound up portrayed as sulkier than a spoiled ten-year-old who's just been told he's getting nothing but socks for Christmas... if he didn't go full-on abusive boyfriend on Buffy.
- But, really, every major character on the show has been victim to this trope in fanfic. Xander, Buffy, Faith, Willow and even Giles have been given exaggerations of negative tendencies to ludicrous levels.
- This troper recalls an entertaining parody fic which tried to do this to all the characters, while making Adam the hero.
- This troper has seen it done many times to Logan Cale in Dark Angel fics that ship Max/Alec.
- It's been done to Sam Anders in Battlestar Galactica fics that ship Lee/Kara.
- Battlestar is almost asking for this in total, considering it runs heavily on Humans Are Bastards. When one of the primary protagonists is most famous in the fandom for tossing people out airlocks, it's hard to say who's being made more rotten than they deserve.
- While it may have died down over the years, there are some Tommy/Kimberly shippers within the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers fandom who derail Kat into a bitch, usually portrayed as being the one behind the infamous "Dear John" letter. The fact that she was Kimberly's Jonas Quinn right after a Heel Face Turn as well as being seen as a Replacement Love Interest who has married Tommy in the Flash Forwarded (yet possibly retconed) future doesn't help.
- This tends to happen a lot in the Supernatural fandom. Either Dean is basically a Jesus-figure while Sam is The Anti-Christ or Sam did nothing wrong and it's all Dean's fault for choosing to go to hell. Telling this part of the fanbase that maybe they're both sympathetic, while at the same time completely fucked up and needing to take responsibility for their actions is really not a good idea.
- Lost's Jack gets this a lot, especially when compared to poor, innocent (former con man and murderer) Sawyer. This is despite the fact that the characters have been on the same side since season two, and aren't even rivals for Kate's affections anymore.
- Happens frequently to Chakotay in basically any Janeway or Seven romance that doesn't include him as part of the pairing.
- And happens right back to Janeway in any slash pairing Chakotay is in.
Miscellaneous
- For the Vocaloid fandom, pairing any Vocaloid that isn't one of the Kagamine twins with either of the Kagamine twins will generate this reaction. For the non-Kagamine vocaloid. There's a reason why there's so much Fan Dumb surrounding the Twincest fandom.
Video Games
- This happens to Sonic in Shadamy fanfics very often.
- And likewise, Amy in Sonadow fics.
- And to complete the triangle, Shadow's personality is often overdone in Sonamy fics.
- This tends to be done to Robotnik/Eggman. True he's already a badguy that puts squirrels into death machines but he's not totally evil and has Pet The Dog moments at least in the newer games. fanfiction tends to make him a Complete Monster.
- This tends to happen very often too with Tails in Coming Of Age fics, especially ones set in the Sat AM or Archieverse. It usually stems from having a sidekick or deformity complex, jealousy of Sonic or deliberately inverting the Chosen One trope. Some fics even manage to make his fully grown self far worse than Robotnik.
- And of course, no mention ever of the Canon Knuckles-Rouge-Shadow triangle.
- In Final Fantasy VIII fandom, the persistent Epileptic Tree that Rinoa is Ultimecia is very popular among people who want her to Die For Our Ship so Squall can get it on with
Seifer, Quistis, Zell, Irvine, Laguna or Mary Sue someone else. Anyone else.
- Final Fantasy VII's Shipping Wars aren't much better. Depending on which side of the Love Triangle you fall on, Tifa and Aeris are mercilessly tormented by members of the other camp. Cloud/Aeris fans decry Tifa as a sluttish whore and Cloud/Tifa shippers decry Aeris as a shrewish, deluded homewrecker.
- In an odd variation of this, Tifa seems to get it really bad from Cloud/Sephiroth shippers as well, often being written as a hateful abusive stalker who Cloud absolutely hates and rejects violently at every opportunity (while Sephiroth is a paragon of perfection and TWU WUV and never mind that pesky Nibelheim incident). Weirdly enough, Aeris does not get the same treatment and is usually either glossed over or treated sympathetically.
- This troper recalls two friends independently pointing him to the same (really well written) fic that took the threesome option. Given that each friend was on opposite sides of the Tifa/Aerith divide, he was temped to forward the e-mails of the opposing shipper to each to see if they spotted how they echoed each other in "Death Eating" their Hatedom.
- Yuffie was a non-shipping example. She was usually portrayed as being completely obsessed with materia to the point of being willing to betray everyone, and kept getting killed in horrible ways. This was mainly because of the Wutai side-quest where she steals all of your materia, forcing you through some tough fights without any magic whatsoever, but she did return the materia afterwards.
- Read through some fics. See how often Yuffie's negative traits (such as her stupid-sounding "Hyuk hyuk hyuk!" laugh, her thievery, her being scared) get used/overused/abused, versus Aeris' negative traits (laughing at Cloud, withholding information, being very breezy about others' feelings) or Tifa's negative traits (moping, being hung up on Cloud no matter what, indecisiveness). The Tifa and Aeris ones will of course be used in fics supporting the other, but the Yuffie ones are practically universal.
- In Ocarina of Time-based stories in the Legend of Zelda fandom, Ruto has a depressing tendency to experience this, depending on how serious the author treats her "engagement" to Link and who he's being paired with at any given moment.
- Oh, and let's not get started about Ilya, Link's childhood friend from Twilight Princess. She succumbs to either this or Die For Our Ship in about 80% of all Zelda-Link or Midna-Link stories. Looking at it like this, The Wind Waker got pretty lucky with having just one single, unrivaled "implied love-interest" for Link in its whole canon, (except for one giant fairy, and no one ever remembers she even existed) instead of a borderline harem, like in Ocarina Of Time or Twilight Princess.
- Ninian has become this towards the Hector/Eliwood pairing in at least one Fire Emblem fic. A good chunk of yaoi fans also see Priscilla this way.
- Some of the Kingdom Hearts fandom's more, um, militant Organization XIII fangirls will demonize Sora, painting him as an evil, "racist" bastard. Some even react in confusion when they meet a fan who likes both Sora and the Organization. As if being a fan of the hero and the villains were mutually exclusive concepts. And let's not even get started on what happens to poor Kairi...
- One of the most baffling views that fangirls (yaoi and non-yaoi ones alike) hold is that Kairi hates Riku and doesn't care about his wellbeing based on one joke she made in the first game about taking the raft from Destiny Islands and leaving him behind (and if there was sincere doubt toward Riku on Kairi's part there, it didn't turn out to be totally unfounded.) This is, of course, ignoring the fact that Kingdom Hearts II very blatantly shows that Kairi cares greatly about Riku and that the only reason Sora finally reuintes with Riku is because Kairi convinces Riku to stop hiding in the shadows and reveal himself to Sora. Really, Kairi didn't break Sora and Riku up, but helped bring them back together again.
- Arguably, Ansem (the real one) winds up often being portrayed as the real racist and that Sora was just a tool in his Xanatos Gambit. This is ignoring that one: Ansem had some pretty good reasons for his unpleasant personality, and that two: he actually sincerely repented for it in the end with a Heroic Sacrifice, whereas much of the Nobodies the fangirls love (namely those in Organization XIII) stayed evil to the end. But apparently, only sexy guys like Riku and Axel can be forgiven after redemption. Old people like Ansem should remain hated.
- This editor has seen more than one Metal Gear Solid fanwork demonizing Rose, coloring her up as a clingy, airheaded, obssessively possessive bitch who has Raiden's balls in a vice grip, essentially taking her more annoying traits from MGS2 to Flanderization levels. It's especially frustrating when you consider that her worst "crime" was nagging her emotionally distant boyfriend and compare it to things like being terrorists, murdering innocent people and trying to launch nukes on cities.
- This happens a FUCKLOAD of times in any Flash animation involving the Mortal Kombat universe fighting the Street Fighter universe. Eleven times out of ten the MK universe's characters will ALWAYS be typecast as evil evil EVIL. From vengeful spectre Scorpion to even fricking LIU KANG will end up suddenly becoming heartless monsters just to have a flimsy excuse to have Street Fighter win. Every. Single. Time. Even Proxicide is guilty of this.
- This reminds this troper of
a funny flash story the first MK vs. SF by Proxicide; Scorpion and Raiden were playing volleyball with Chun-Li's body. Then Ken come and kicked Raiden's ass.
- Marche gets hit with this by the bucketload. Much of the fandom of the game is convinced that Marche is a horrible Omnicidal Maniac who can't stand to see his friends and brother get better out of the changes made to the world than him. All that stuff about the world being an illusion, or that the world is Mewt's way of trying to escape from reality? Oh that's all just misdirection to keep you from realizing that you're playing as an evil, evil little man! Who cares if those zombies you killed were those bullies from the real world, or that you have no clue what happened to the kids' parents?
- The Jedi Knights from Knights Of The Old Republic suffer this from time to time. In reality, some were arrogant, set in their ways and perhaps overly cautious. Still, at the end of the day, they tried to do the right thing. When fanfiction takes over, they can often be turned into little more than Sith Lords who prefer green and blue lightsabres to red ones. In one fanfic for example, Vrook was written as some kind of undisputed dictator-for-life who ruled the Jedi with an iron fist who appeared to want Revan imprisoned for life simply for being in a relationship. For the record, the rules against marriage and reproduction weren't instated until the Russan Reforms, several centuries after Knights Of The Old Republic takes place.
- Pick a Touhou character. Any Touhou character. Granted, most of the cast is pretty batshit insane to begin with and are known to do anything from beating the crap out of each other to endangering worlds just because they felt like it, but portraying Reimu as a psychotic sadist or Flandre as an unstoppable murder machine is taking it a bit far, and the sheer number of rapists and Yanderes especially is mind-boggling to say the least.
- Ummmmm.... Flandre canonically is an unstoppable murder machine.
- Rabid fans of the Horde and Alliance in World Of Warcraft sometimes try to demonize the other faction.
- Yes, Zero from Mega Man X can be a Jerk Ass. Yes, he's supposed to be a Person Of Mass Destruction. Yes, he has a Superpowered Evil Side. And yet, the fanfics where he beats up X and treats him like his personal slave/uke still don't make the slightest bit of sense. This is the guy who got himself killed to save his friend twice and then gave his life again to save the world. And yet, people still like writing him as an abusive jerk who uses X as his personal punching bag, or him suddenly turning Maverick for no good reason except to be EVUL.
Western Animation
- In the Zutaran subset of Avatar fandom Mai cannot catch a break. In the series she is a cynical and at least outwardly apathetic noblewoman who demonstrated enough Hidden Depths to face near-certain death for the sake of a blatantly treasonous ex-prince Zuko; however when Zuko and Katara must get together she is lucky to be merely a spoilt Libby interested in little save her new position as Royal Consort and frequently ends up at least as evil (although never as competent) as Azula ever was.
- How I Became Yours is
one of the worst example of this, with Mai killing Zuko and Katara's unborn child (earlier, Zuko beats her up when she found out Zuko was cheating) and getting bloodbent to death in the daytime for her trouble. There's a reason why it's one of the most hated fan webcomics in the fandom, after all.
- In the case of Kid Hero Aang, whenever he is not paired off with Toph (or at least someone looking like her) or dismissed as a Celibate Hero, he ends up rapidly plummetting toward stalkerish madman territory if he had not driven Katara off via neglect or use of her as a prop for the Ancient Lost Ways Of His People.
- Aang also comes off pretty badly in some Toph/Katara fics, where he's distorted into an angry, jealous douchebag who would purposely hurt or outright abuse Toph for "stealing Katara from him".
- For the record Aang is not, nor has ever been a rapist who enjoys hurting and using women and other bad stuff.
- Nor would he take up the genocidal plan of the Firelord and go completely against his friendly, forgiving character just because Katara falls in lust with Zuko. I'm not willing to call what a number of fangirls write 'love'.
- Futurama fanfic sometimes does this to Fry or Leela, when the other is paired off with an Original Character (often a not-so-thinly veiled Author Avatar).
- Terra from Teen Titans is a rare example of someone who gets both Draco In Leather Pants and Ron The Death Eater treatments, owing to her canonical nature as a Chaotic Neutral whose great power, when coupled with her chronic inability to think things through or take responsibility for her own actions, made her an easy pawn for Big Bad Slade. Fandom tends to portray her either as a sinless saint who the Titans should have welcomed back with open arms, or a shrill, sociopathic harpy who deserved a Fate Worse Than Death. (The latter is fairly close to her original comics characterization, but the animated version is explicitly a very different person.)
- If she and her feelings for Robin are not ignored outright (or if she's not killed or paired off with someone else), Starfire will frequently get this treatment from Robin/Raven shippers, who usually twist her into at best a screechy jealous possessive shrew and at worst a maniacal bloodthirsty villainess hell-bent on ruining the couple's happiness, neither of which comes remotely close to her canon characterization.
- One fic I've seen tried to use events from the original comics (notably not at all canon in the cartoon, let alone what that implies for Raven) to justify Starfire being... well... completely pants-on-head crazy. Yeah, that fic was So Bad Its Good, at least at first.
- Another has Raven getting the Ron The Death Eater treatment, mostly due to Robin hating her because she gained an extreme amount of power and control and height.
- Another Ron gets this quite a bit as well. Seriously, you go on one Helm of Opposite Alignment-induced rampage and suddenly everyone's counting on you to be the next Dr. Doom.
- Oddly enough, a lot of the Ron-hate doesn't seem to come from shipping. The series' most popular alternative ship, Kim and Shego, tends to push him off into the background at the very worst, and more often simply hooks him up with the cute ninja girl that liked him. So this Ron's being Death Eaten on his own merits... if that's "better".
- It's not really hate that motivates this (well, most of the time), it's more because he's just so good at it. That, and Evil Is Cool ...Yeah.
- There's a lot of hate behind it too, in segments of the fanbase that don't like how central he was in the last season.
- Kim usually comes off worse when breaking up the Official Couple to ship Ron with someone else. Since they ended the series happy together, there has to be a reason for another girl to move in, and it's usually "Kim's a bitch/dead."
- Sometimes Global Justice becomes a victim of this trope, being depicted as corrupt if not Evil All Along. Commonly involved in "Betrayal" fics involving them framing Kim and/or Ron which usually sets up the basis of Kigo/Rongo fics.
- Invader Zim fanfiction is an interesting case: because the show features a Villain Protagonist (Zim) and a Hero Antagonist (Dib), Zim is often given the leather pants treatment. While this often involves a Heel Face Turn, it often doesn't, leaving several options for Dib. He could, a.) remain good and in-character, but be treated as a bastard no matter how reasonable his actions are; b.) have a Face Heel Turn and join Zim (which often includes lots and lots of gay interspecies sex); or c.) become a basic Well Intentioned Extremist whether or not Zim turns good or is just his canonically evil-but-incompetent self.
- This Troper has also seen a few fics that depict Dib as a kind of anti-alien racist. This is a possible interpretation of his character, but his apparent love of space and the paranormal implies he might like an alien who wasn't actually trying to enslave his species or screw him over in some way; he just never really gets to meet one.
- Plus Dib really is kind of a bastard, canonically. His actions usually aren't all that reasonable, he doesn't treat other people much better than he treats Zim, and he really seems to enjoy Zim's pain and suffering more than he does the idea of saving the planet, sometimes. Neither A or C are very off in terms of characterization.
- Zim and Dib enjoy each other's pain; if Dib is a bastard, Zim is definitely one too. And I can't figure out what you mean by him "treating others badly;" I seem to remember it usually working the other way around myself.
- Lilo & Stitch seems to get this quite a bit, which is rather surprising, considering the themes of the movie.
- In Stitch/Angel fics, Lilo will either be caring and understanding... or unnervingly jealous, clingy and stalky. Sometimes, a small thing will trigger her off into a veritable volcano of rage.
- In Stitch/Lilo or Stitch/Anyone-but-Angel fics, Angel will be portrayed similar to Lilo above, in addition to cheating on Stitch and/or otherwise really getting around.
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