Leather Pants and Death Eaters

The only part of it I remembered was the part about visiting Harry Potter sections. That being said, I didn't see my comments here as especially inflammatory, and I don't think it counts as an edit war if it's not actually editing a page.

Edited by Kahran042 on Feb 3rd 2019 at 12:38:59 PM

Oh no! The DREADED AQUAE MORTIS! No, wait, it's just your imagination.

Mmmhmm, and now you're veering close to that line by getting mad on behalf of Harry Potter fans. Cut it out.

Anyway, while both of those titles are awful in light of current trope naming policies, they're ancient and we won't change them without a significant TRS effort, which is not relevant to this topic. By the way, "they hurt my feelings" is not grounds to rename tropes.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 3rd 2019 at 3:40:23 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I know when I'm beaten. I will not be returning to this topic, but I hope that someday people will see my point.

Oh no! The DREADED AQUAE MORTIS! No, wait, it's just your imagination.

"There are many reasons for the writers to portray a character as more evil or jerkass than in the original. It doesn't have to be a result of disdain towards the character."

My question is: if it's not out of disdain, does that still count as an example?

We can never truly eradicate the coronavirus, but we can suppress its threat like influenza

That's sort of the issue at hand. The description indicated that it isn't, but Fighteer said it is and the description was rewritten to match that. I feel this was improper and should have been done through TRS.

IMO author intent is very hard to gauge, and in this case would lead to a lot of assuming bad things about authors and thus potential complaining. We should go by Death of the Author and just talk about the outcome (Fanfic portrayal is more/less heroic than original work) regardless of intention.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

Agree.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I don't necessarily disagree, but the tropes have such a widespread implication of whitewashing/demonizing the canon version of the character that I wouldn't feel comfortable having them applied to fics that don't do that.

I also don't see why it needs to be separate from Adaptational Heroism and Adaptational Villainy, as this definition just makes them the fanfic versions of those tropes.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Feb 3rd 2019 at 9:56:53 AM

That is the crux, though. A character being made more heroic or more villainous in a derivative work is an objective concept. It is provably true or false. To go further and insist that the reason for the change is that the author is irrationally attracted to (or irrationally hates) the character is an assumption. That's the subjective part, and it comes across as snarky towards that author.

It ends up in much the same place as Mary Sue and its many variations: you are explicitly accusing the author of bias, and in so doing heaping a ton of baggage onto them that has little or nothing to do with their work specifically.

The main reasons we turned Mary Sue into Flame Bait and banned its use in examples are (1) because it became so widely and diffusely applied that it lost all real meaning; (2) because it was mainly used as a way to attack an author rather than to criticize a work.

I, too, find it somewhat redundant to have two versions of every derivation trope, one that applies to licensed adaptations and one that applies to fan works. Following that logic, however, leaves us in a bit of a pickle:

• Adaptational Heroism applies to all derivative works, regardless of who makes them or why.
• Draco in Leather Pants is a subtrope for when it's motivated by bias on the part of the author. This is the part that I don't like, because you're criticizing the motives of the author rather than the substance of their writing.

So, what are our solutions to this dilemma?

1. Make two versions of every adaptation trope, as noted above.
2. Make the AdaptationalX tropes apply to all derivative works, and retire DILP / RTDE to fanspeak terms, much like Mary Sue.
3. Come up with some broader trope about how authorial bias influences adaptational changes and roll DILP / RTDE into it.
4. Leave it alone and permit the confusion over which applies where to continue.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 3rd 2019 at 11:10:40 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

5. Fanspeak

Like you said, we already have Adaptational Heroism and Adaptational Villainy, so having Death Eater and Pants as actual tropes is redundant. Making them Fanspeak also avoids the whole "criticizing the author" problem.

Edited by Karxrida on Feb 3rd 2019 at 8:49:52 AM

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

I mean, we could leave them as YMMV tropes that apply to the original work as audience reactions. As in, "Character X is oftem demonized/whitwashed by the fandom".

Apathy is Death. Worse than Death, because at least a rotting corpse feeds beasts and insects.

Yeah, but that's pointless. If a work has enough fans, every character will get varying levels of love and/or hate from the audience, and will be written about in all sorts of different ways in fanfic. It's like saying that rain sometimes falls from clouds. See also: Shipping.

More technically, what you stated violates our rules about general examples.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 4th 2019 at 7:21:50 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Oh well, I guess it will be best to go with option 2 then. Making DILP and RTDE subtropes based on author's bias seems pointless, as few writers come out and say "I do not like character X and will make them an asshole because of it".

Apathy is Death. Worse than Death, because at least a rotting corpse feeds beasts and insects.

This makes the most sense to me. Derivative works exist in a variety of legal situations, and subdividing adaptation tropes for the various copyright statuses seems like something for lawyers, not fandoms.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

But Draco in Leather Pants has an additional characteristic not present in Adaptational Heroism: the sexualization. This seems distinctive to me, and something that leans towards happening more in fan works. It also connects to other tropes/reactions like Evil Is Sexy in a way that Adaptational Heroism doesn't necessarily.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

Earlier in this thread it was concluded that sexualization is not an essential part of DILP.

"Derivative work sexualizes a character" could also be considered a distinct, independent trope, although I'm not sure if we have it specifically.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That sounds like Adaptational Attractiveness and Self-Fanservice.

Anyway, I think judging fic creators for bias is pretty much troping the author rather than the work. As such, I also prefer just having one adaptational trope for all works, regardless of legality and canonicity. After all, if the trope is on the derivative work, that work is canon by default, and regardless of how official it is, it's the work the page is about that we're supposed to trope, not the source work or the author.

Edited by AnotherDuck on Feb 4th 2019 at 3:10:47 PM

Check out my fanfiction!

Where could we put "fanon has the otherwise X character as Y-natured" then? The "memetic X" ones get passes because they all play it for humor, but I don't know for DILP or RTDE.

We can never truly eradicate the coronavirus, but we can suppress its threat like influenza

The supertrope that all of this falls under is Alternative Character Interpretation.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Even if not officially part of the definition, the description and many examples heavily imply that Draco in Leather Pants is about making the villain hotter or an outright love interest. And Ron the Death Eater is often about making the character more villainous for Die for Our Ship purposes to allow a different pairing.

Even if these aren't the current definitions, they're very close to it. I would prefer to redefine these tropes to be distinctive rather than jettisonning them by making them Fan Speak, as has been suggested.

Edited by naturalironist on Feb 5th 2019 at 12:06:52 PM

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

With the billions of Shipping tropes that we have, I'm sure one can be found that fits those scenarios. More specifically, if the purpose of making a character more villainous (or heroic) is to enable the author's preferred pairing, then that can be described in both the example for the adaptation trope and the example for the relevant shipping trope, forming a complete description without needing an additional trope.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 5th 2019 at 12:11:06 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Given that the pages already exist, and examples of these definitions already exist on the wiki, it seems like much less work, and healthier in terms of preserving inbounds, activity, etc. to slightly tweak the pages to be more precise than to go about doing a ton of dewicking and dramatically changing the pages

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

What tweaks would you suggest? My concern is that changing the tropes to make them neutral will require a rewrite of nearly all examples, which is more effort than deletion.

Reporting my thoughts from a newer cleanup thread:

Fanworks aren't innately adaptations. The appeal is we're supposed to be able to imagine they're part of the canon (even Alternate Universe Fic are supposed to come off as close to canon enough the alternate scenario is plausible). RTDH and DILP are bad writing is because arbitrarily changing the characters portrayal breaks that immersion.

The question is how is/if RTDH and DILP are different enough from They Changed It, So It Sucks to be their own trope? Because it's a fandom trend to vilify/whitewash them? If so that rules out specific examples and by definition requires examples be general which violates Administrivia.Examples Are Not General.