Leather Pants and Death Eaters

Both tropes are about fan reaction to the character. In the case of Draco in Leather Pants, it's fans seeing a villainous character as good. In the case of Ron the Death Eater, it's fans treating a heroic characters as evil. These tropes are different from Adaptational Heroism and Adaptational Villainy, because adaptational changes don't necessarily represent the creator's attitude towards a character.

Many adaptational changes are done for practical reasons. An adaptation can remove a scene that makes a character more sympathetic for budgetary reasons or because of time constraints. It doesn't mean the director hated that character.

I’m concerned about defining the trope based on authorial intent. What is the standard for telling if a change to a character’s personality is because the author wants to vilify or exonerate the character, as opposed to some other reason?

Edited by TheMountainKing on Jan 13th 2020 at 6:58:27 AM

If we're talking about proper adaptations, then the author intents need not apply.

I might have said this before, but for DILP or RTDE, I thought it was indeed for both general fanon and specific fanworks...

It’s not any easier to divine authorial belief in fanworks. The question of if these tropes are for general or specific examples really needs to be definitively settled.

I was talking historically, i.e back then the examples are more akin to "Fanon thinks this character is more good/evil than how they really are in the story".

And authorial intent need not apply either.

Draco in Leather Pants and Ron the Death Eater are both about fan reactions to a character. While how a character is portrayed in fanfiction can be a manifestation of these attitudes, that shouldn't be the scope of these tropes. For instance, fans making excuses for a villain's actions is Draco in Leather Pants.

this, my point exactly

Sorry to bump this thread but, can villains qualify for Ron the Death Eater? Especially the Unintentionally Unsympathetic ones. I've seen cases where villains that are meant to be sympathetic aren't seen as such by a vocal portion of the fanbase.

Edited by xie323 on Mar 18th 2020 at 9:46:05 AM

Double post.

Edited by Adept on Mar 19th 2020 at 1:25:01 AM

Another suggestion: turn Pants and Death Eaters into subtropes of Alternative Character Interpretation, or something similar to Unintentionally Sympathetic and/or Unintentionally Unsympathetic—in which a large portion of the fandom either downplays or exaggerates a certain characters flaws due to bias, even if they might not be writing fanfictions about their bias.

I'm pretty sure Draco in Leather Pants and Ron the Death Eater are already subtropes of Alternative Character Interpretation.

Both tropes are about the exaggeration or downplaying of negative tropes, it's not exclusively a hero vs villain divide.

What I'm saying is that DILP and RTDE shouldn't be treated as "Adaptational Nice Guy / Adaptational Jerkass / Adaptational Heroism / Adaptational Villainy but for FANFICTION", which is redundant. Rather, it should be defined as a general fandom perception towards particular character, along the lines of US and UU, or even The Scrappy and Ensemble Dark Horse.

Edited by Adept on Mar 19th 2020 at 2:13:24 AM

That's already what these tropes are. The reason why there's such a focus on fanworks is because it's an easy way to quantify fan attitudes.

Edit: Another thing is that Ron the Death Eater often comes about because fans want to break up a relationship to make way for their preferred relationship. Since this usually happens in fanworks, examples usually have to include the fanfics where this occurs.

Edit 2: The other thing to consider is that Draco in Leather Pants and Ron the Death Eater aren't just thinking the villain isn't that bad or the hero isn't that good. One can argue that a villain isn't that bad without going into leather pants territory. One crosses into that territory when they deny the villain did anything evil or that their motivations were totally justifiable. Likewise, one can believe the hero isn't that virtuous without invoking Ron the Death Eater. It only becomes Ron the Death Eater when one attributes crimes to a heroic character that they did not or would never do.

Edited by SharkToast on Mar 19th 2020 at 8:37:48 AM

"A general fandom perception" is not a trope. Sorry, we've been over this before.

The problem with these audience reactions is that they attract examples like, "A lot of fans think this," which are ZCEs. This is why we require, or should, the citation of specific fanworks (or adaptations, in the case of adaptation tropes) in which those reactions can be found.

In turn, this means that the tropes become objective (instead of YMMV) for the works in which they occur. Ergo, DILP and RTDE should not be listed in the articles for the original works, but rather in the articles for the derivative works.

Perhaps not, but we do list/document Audience Reactions—such as Fan-Preferred Couple—and those aren't exactly "tropes" either. Anyway, pretty much any YMMV item can attract examples of "A lot of fans think this,"—including YMMV tropes that aren't actually Audience Reaction, such as Complete Monster (which is presumably why we have an extensive clean-up project for it, because it was attracting such bad examples), and the Character Alignment tropes.

Turning DILP and RTDE into objective tropes to list on the derivative works makes them redundant to other existing tropes, such as Adaptational Villainy and Adaptational Heroism (which, as far as I know, can be applied to fanfiction as well), Character Derailment and Derailing Love Interests.

Edited by Adept on Mar 20th 2020 at 12:10:10 AM

The thing is fan works don't count as adaptations. Fan works are by definition amateur works. Fan works for the most parts don't have creative limitations. An adaptation often has to deal with studio mandates and budgetary concerns. If a character is portrayed as being more villainous or heroic in an adaptation, it's usually for practical reasons (i.e. a scene that made them more sympathetic had to be cut, the studio was worried the audience wouldn't accept a morally complex hero). If this happens in a fan work, it's a safe bet that this was done because of how the author feels about the character.

Also, as has been pointed out, DILP and RTDE isn't just about making a villain less villainous or a hero less heroic. It's about trying to turn a villain into a hero and a hero into a villain.

An adaptation just means the work has been translated from one medium to another. Books rarely have to deal with "studio mandates and budgetary concerns". If a character is portrayed as being more villainous or heroic in a book, it's a safe bet that this was done because of how the author feels about the character. They don't have a studio that they report to.

It depends. If someone is writing a novelization, there will be someone who makes sure the book doesn't differ too much from the source material. The author can't suddenly decide to make a character a villain or that the villain is the true hero of the story.

I see we have to discuss terminology again. Incidentally, the TV Tropes Glossary may help here.

• A Derivative Work is a work based on, using elements from, analyzing, reviewing, etc. another work.
• An Adaptation is a derivative work that substantially copies the thematic elements of a work but uses a different medium, setting, characters, etc. All adaptations are derivative works; not all derivative works are adaptations.
• Sequels, prequels, etc. are also derivative works, but usually by the original creator or at least the IP owner.

All fan works are derivative works, by definition. Some fan works are adaptations, albeit not official. What makes something a fan work is precisely that it does not have the legal rights to use elements from other works, but does so anyway.

The distinction between, say, Adaptational Villainy and Ron the Death Eater is fairly thin, and it's one I've argued against in the past, but it boils down to intent. Adaptational Villainy covers any case where a heroic (or neutral) character is turned into a villainous character in an adaptation, including in a fanfic. Ron the Death Eater is specifically about that case where the character is made evil because the author wants them out of the way of a pairing or is otherwise playing favorites. In that sense, it would be a subtrope of Adaptational Villainy.

While it's certainly possible for a licensed adaptation to feature RTDE (or DILP for that matter), it is exceedingly rare because the licensor typically doesn't permit their original characters to be used in such a manner, and also because the licensee is (ostensibly) a professional author who doesn't let their biases show that obviously.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 19th 2020 at 3:38:56 PM

But that sort of contradicts the actual trope page, which says that the Death Eater'd character doesn't need to be hated by the author, because "Some writers find role-reversal stories to be interesting, need a character to be evil for some plotpoint to make sense, wish to present a drastic For Want of a Nail scenario or are doing stuff like that purely for comedy."

Right, but in that case RTDE directly overlaps Adaptational Villainy, with the only distinction being that it occurs in a fan work. This is meaningless and needs to be fixed.

For now I'm putting both tropes in the Tropes Needing TRS sandbox, because something needs to happen here.

So to sum it up, right now there are 2 purposes RTDE and DILP (as a "trope") is used:

• A general statement where "fans think of them that way"
• Pointing out a specific occurrence in a fan work where it happens

Do you guys think

1. they shouldn't be in the same page, or
2. one of them shouldn't be a "thing" in the first place?

I believe the first point (general statement thingy) is a thing, though

"Fans think of them that way" is Not a Trope by any definition one cares to use. The other one is absolutely a trope, but conflicts in some aspects with other tropes. That is the issue.