Not Thriving: Analysis.Ron The Death Eater

The problem with the trope where fans deliberately make characters look worse than what they really are is that the analysis is a copy-and-paste of the Harry Potter description, and on top of that, is sort of a rambling "Yeah, here's one thing, but then again here's another, and on the other hand...".

Frankly, I'd like to ask permission if I could rework the Analysis because we already have an understandable Analysis for the trope's opposite, Draco in Leather Pants (where fans of a villainous character downplay or ignore those bad qualities, and I'm guilty of it). To me, it's a simple fix, because I believe the key examples I need to explain are these:

1. The Death Eater is made bad just so the Draco can look good.

2. The Death Eater gets in the way of a ship.

3. Values Dissonance and/or Moral Dissonance is involved. This sorta goes hand-in-hand with tropes like Americans Hate Tingle, as what some people may like in one culture may be undesired in another, which is why Americans often view the emotionally-wrecked male protagonist as a whiny-ass while the Japanese would be repulsed by a Cowboy Cop because his solution to problems is to just kill it.

4. Any bad thing a character does will be overplayed, especially if people feel like he or she didn't get any retribution for his or her crimes, when other characters got what they viewed as "disproportionate retribution". Bonus points if that "victim" was a Draco.

5. The character possesses traits in a show where the genre makes the "useless" (like a peace-lover in a war series).

Would this be okay?

edited 16th Nov '13 7:48:24 AM by JDogindy

I've fixed the link.

Yeah, I think it would be OK. Especially considering that the current page is an utter mess.

Thank you. This is my first submission.

I can understand the direction about the Draco in Leather Pants, which is that most of the examples are written in frustration that people like to forget that most of these characters are still evil, because it is Misaimed Fandom, but at least the analysis for that trope does explain why the phenomena happens. This one doesn't.

I do have a few rough drafts, but I'd like to post them in this thread before I go out and replace it.

edited 16th Nov '13 8:24:42 AM by JDogindy

Alright, here is my first rough draft. It needs a few special edits, which I expect others to do, and feedback is encouraged.

Ron the Death Eater is a deliberate Flanderization of a character, in which any negative quality (either real or supposed) will be stretched out in an attempt to make them a far worse character than what was intended. Often goes hand in hand with its sister trope, Draco in Leather Pants, where fans of characters with obvious negative qualities admire them without taking into account those aforementioned qualities.

1. The Death Eater is made bad, often just so the Draco in Leather Pants can look good in comparison.

This one is pretty self-explainitory. Unless the person likes to imagine a world where there are no bad guys and prefers dropping the characters from their Crapsack World into a Slice of Life situation, expect role reversal.

Sometimes, the writer will create a brand-new character that subverts these two, as it makes the Draco "good" without having another character look "bad", which results in an Enemy Mine situation. Most of the time, though, get used to the wisecracking sidekick now willing to sell his friends down the river for $1 (50 cents after negotiating).

2. The Death Eater gets in the way of a shipping relationship. Die For Our Ship fangirls will go the extra step by doing whatever it takes to make their desired relationship a reality in their works. This often results in the character of their ire being transformed from a well-meaning and kind-hearted partner into an obnoxious Tsundure or ends up doing something that turns off the other person in the relationship, allowing them to write in their preferred guy or gal to complete the couple.

3. The Death Eater actually has done bad things, but those bad things are amplified.

Any characters who are shown either crossing or have crossed the Moral Event Horizon, or even an obvious Kick the Dog moment, often stay on somebody's "crap list" for life, even if the character didn't understand why what they did was wrong. However, any character with a Dark and Troubled Past, who was a minor antagonist early on, or was responsible for bad actions without realizing it can be Death Eater material. This is how Never Live It Down gets involved.

It doesn't matter if the character realizes their mistakes, tries to make amends and succeeds, or even switches sides. Critics of the character will always go back to the fact that they were, at one point, evil or sympathetic to evil's cause.

4. Characters with "useless" traits will be targeted.

Bad quirks aren't the only reason to make a character look bad. Often, making somebody useless or incompetent is just as important as making them look evil.

The most obvious example would be simply a peace-seeker in a War Is Hell show, because their desire to put an end to conflict would be viewed as a sign of weakness.

Other traits include characters that only show their full power when the stars align, anybody who is suddenly unreliable at the worst times, the very stupid, the seemingly very stupid, Loads and Millstones, and Faux Action Girls (especially the rare "Faux Dark" ones).

5. Values Dissonance, Moral Dissonance, and play a factor.

This is the most common example. A stark reflection of Americans Hate Tingle, a character that is highlighted in one culture will be reviled in another, therby making it a potent candidate for Death Eater status. In trope speak, the icon in one region is another's Scrappy.

For example, in Japan, the emotionally-wracked male protagonist who has to fight his inner demons in addition to the obvious enemies will be potrayed as a whiny, annoying emo wuss by Western fans because we tend to prefer our protagonists to be badasses. Likewise, the Cowboy Cop who doesn't go by the book because he believes the law protects the villains would be a horrible person to the Japanese, who would view that character as even worse than the people he's trying to get because his solution to the problem is simply to kill them.

6. The targeted character affected or killed somebody that his or her critics loved without any punishment or consequence. Bonus points if that victim was a Draco.

The "I don't like So-and-So because he killed Whozits." example. Sometimes, fans don't forgive a character for ending another character's life or are sent to prison. This is only aggrivated if that person didn't suffer any retribution for it, or even got rewarded.

However, even if the character that got killed did deserve it, expect some critics to lambast the way it was handled, and how the avenger was even lower than the target, as perhaps the target never understood the concept of morality and only existed as an instrument of war, while the Death Eater gave in to temptation when they knew better. After all, in scenarios where there is even a hint of Gray and Gray Morality, there will be those who will side with the villain instead of the avenger because the villain often ends up at a disadvantage.

Regardless as to how you spin it, it's clearly an example of Fan Dumb that can border on Hate Dumb. But, remember this... characters viewed as Draco in Leather Pants also can become Death Eaters themselves if those critics don't even accept that character's problems. Essentially, you can hate a character that was designed to be jeered even more.

edited 16th Nov '13 1:23:15 PM by JDogindy

Aside from some grammar issues and broken Wiki Words, that's pretty good.

I'm not sure I'd agree that Values Dissonance is the most common cause of examples, especially because this isn't just about portraying a character negatively.

Fair enough. I was working this on my Notepad on my home computer, and it is just the first draft.

Fair argument, but often people will make characters and concepts look even worse than what they probably were if it was another culture's creation. I may consider just changing it to "Americans Hate Tingle plays a factor", as it's the general explination that "something one culture likes will be bashed elsewhere".

However, I do want to see if anybody can comment on how I'm doing the examples, because Ron the Death Eater is a trope where people make a character look worse than possible, and there might be more to it than what I'm jusy saying.

edited 18th Nov '13 9:07:45 AM by JDogindy

This looks pretty good. I agree about Americans Hate Tingle being a factor; the American Final Fantasy fandom, for example, tends to complain a great deal about Square's preference for "whiny emo pansy boy" protagonists and tend to portray such protagonists as ineffectual idiots who need to grow a spine. Japanese fans, on the other hand, appreciate these same protagonists because they gel with their cultural ideals of pacifism and sensitivity.

Like I tried to say earlier, the thing with that is that Ron the Death Eater isn't just about disliking characters. Unless the American Final Fantasy fandom is actually writing fanfics in which the "whiny emo pansy boy" protagonists are being portrayed as villains, it's not this trope.

edited 18th Nov '13 1:28:18 PM by nrjxll

I think that 5# can be left out - I am not sure at all on whether it happens.

#5 can be heavily debated, and I'm glad we are discussing it. However, it's sort of what happens when characters that are popular in Japan come over here to the States, and we browbeat them for possessing "bad" qualities and make them out to be complete losers (e.g. Sauske Uchina and Shinji Ikari). I guess what happened was I used the wrong trope examples.

I'm still working on a revised second draft.

I think that one thing worth mentioning here that was mentioned briefly in the edit banned thread... a trope analysis is going to be YMMV by default. How should that affect the writeup we'll adopt here?

Again, "browbeat and make out to be complete losers" is not this trope.

Personally, these entires are up for debate, as there are those who don't believe what would be said. But something has to be said, regardless.

However, in my personal view (which is the YMMV part), Ron the Death Eater doesn't entirely mean making people out to be pure evil villains, which isn't obvious, because there are multiple examples in those cases where people turn characters into pains in asses, as opposed to becoming contrieved monsters. Taking somebody that has flaws and making them annoying, obnoxious, or detremental to the other cast of characters is just as bad as just turning them into your personal Big Bad, simply because the job is to make them into an object meant to be hated, which IS this trope. I'm just trying to point out examples where people may turn characters into villains, or unrespectable cretins. That part still needs to be worked out.

Making a character out to be a total loser may "not" be this trope, but it often goes hand in hand with the other characters saying that this character sucks, which in the story, makes them a villain, ergo it actually fits.

edited 26th Nov '13 7:24:20 AM by JDogindy

This trope in its present state isn't precisely the opposite of DILP. Whereas the latter is a general Audience Reaction trope, RTDE only applies to fanfics. Not too long ago I made a crowner on the DILP page on where to go with it, and it was decided to eventually make it another fanfic only trope, and funnel all non-applicable examples, along with anything purged from RTDE, over to Misaimed Fandom, which would become the new home to any fandom misinterpretation case.

I was under the impression Draco in Leather Pants, whatever misuse it may have attracted, was always supposed to be about fanfics.

edited 7th Dec '13 7:43:14 PM by nrjxll

You know, I was thinking about what I had said. If you make somebody out to be a loser because you don't like them, then you're simply Flanderizing your Scrappy, which isn't the trope actually.

The reason why I wanted the description changed was that it meandered pointlessly, and because you only see RTDE in fanfiction, and not elsewhere. There's not a whole lot of detail here, and if we ever need to delete tropes, this might be one that could go to Hatedom.

I've seen the RTDE effect in fandom, rather than fanfics, in that fandoms misinterpret characters for being worse than they are. For instance I've seen a few people misinterpret the Scoobyugis as a bunch of insensitive jerks who preach to Kaiba about friendship without trying to understand HIS problems, and at the same time, put the proverbial leather pants on him by justifying some of the less savory stuff he does.

That's still just Misaimed Fandom. Ron the Death Eater is specifically supposed to be about portraying a character as worse than they really are, which requires fanwork of some kind.

Yeah, I know. The thing is that Draco In Leather Pants is still largely made up of "Misaimed Fandom" examples itself.

Given that the "examples must reference a specific work using the trope" requirement was added to improve the example quality, not to actually redefine the pages, I have to say that it doesn't affect the suitability of the Analysis/ draft. So I'd say go ahead and swap it in.

I feel I should clarify my earlier post. I was trying to say that, due to cultural differences, what Japan sees as virtuous, America may see as deserving of scorn and malice. That's where this trope factors in; people see a character as worse than they really are because of a cultural clash, my example being how Final Fantasy fans tend to demonize the protagonists of the later games for being 'weak' and exaggerating their flaws to make them sound like total louts.

And what I've been trying to say is that unless by "louts" you mean that the American fandom is portraying these characters as outright villains, it's not this trope. This is explicitly about turning a good character evil (or an evil character worse) in fanfic, not any case of demonization or Character Derailment.

Alright then. I guess I didn't understand this trope well enough.

The page could benefit from some routine cleanup, but I don't think any major repairs are needed. Cleanup and writing new analysis are one-man deals that don't need TRS discussion.