There used to be Darth Vader the Eldritch Abomination, but that was cut because most tropers can't handle anything that isn't pure black or white.
Oh no! The DREADED AQUAE MORTIS! No, wait, it's just your imagination.
…oh i was thinking more the description not quite acknowledging how even villains aren't immune to this.
I got my political views from reddit and that's bad
I was thinking about this Fanfic.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11wQHe-ZeAqutl8YPBUpVMjbJsi9yfb1abqqtcH1MF8A/edit
I think it has some traits of Ron The Death Eater or Draco in Leather Pants.
Redefined per TRS
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Rename or merge into Alternative Character Interpretation , started by Aquillion on Feb 14th 2011 at 7:22:01 AM
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Cut examples, started by Arha on Dec 22nd 2011 at 10:31:01 AM
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Needs Help, started by IndirectActiveTransport on Dec 25th 2017 at 3:31:11 PM
Something I think could be noted, but there's a strange tendency I've seen for tropes like Designated Hero, Unintentionally Unsympathetic, and other 'the main hero of this work is awful' Audience Reaction tropes tend to engage in this.
Obviously not all examples are the case, shitty writing does often mean we're meant to route for a dickhead, but I've seen quite a few times where people have added entries under those for behaviour that requires a lot of creative interpretation to get to. Both Man of Steel and The Amazing Spider-Man got this from DC, MCU, and Raimi Spider-Man fans where Clark and Peter have both been hit with accusations they were selfish monsters, when at most they've been troubled and flawed before undergoing Character Development. I've also seen it with regards to how people have written off either side of Captain America: Civil War, depending on which one they agree with.
Its something I've noticed in particular recently concerning Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where the YMMV page and the Base-Breaking Character subpage had lengthy rants accusing Daisy of being unreasonable because she was mad at a friend for torturing her against her will (which included describing events inaccurately to present her negatively).
I don't know if it should be noted here or on those particular trope pages, but there should be something linking how those reactions seem to often be a case of this.
If you don't mind me asking, why are sources needed for examples? Just wondering.
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What do you mean? You mean why we can't just go "Bob is frequently treated to this and portrayed as evil in fanfics"? Because general examples aren't allowed.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
Because Draco in leather pants doesn't need them. And moreover, it shouldn't need them. The fans cheering for Fortune, the Evil Power Stable who sold out to the Ancient Conspiracy, type group Immortal, eventually made TNA change its plans. There should be plenty of examples like that for Ron the death eater too. I can think of Rush in CMLL and Yoshiko from World Wonder Ring STARDOM off the top of my head but for some reason this page, this audience reaction page, is limited to fan work examples, as in "author" examples.
It makes no sense! It makes less sense than imposing the same limit on Draco In Leather Pants because many of those examples can overlap with Rooting for the Empire, even though they are technically two different things(one is rooting for evil, the other is ignoring, denying, or excusing evil but The Empire from Star Wars gets both from different circles.)
That's why he wants you to have the money. Not so you can buy 14 Cadillacs but so you can help build up the wastes
I want to bump this up and agree with Imperial and Indirect: it doesn't make sense for examples to be given, when: 1 DILP doesn't need them and 2 There are probably very many fics that Ron the Death Eater each of the examples given, and a 5 minute search on FF.net or other fansites could probably find several examples very quickly, which leads to 3 Feeling like you're picking on the author in question for using their fic as an example only because examples are needed, and not because they're the only one that does it.
If the trend is common enough that multiple fics or blog posts try to argue in favour of it, should a specific example really be needed here, especially when it's not for DILP for probably similar reasons?
Looking at the sub-page for Harry Potter examples, I'm wondering if we should break it up into separate folders.
Various Strawberry Panic fanfics will do this, trying to make Shizuma into a bad character so that Nagisa will end up with Tamao instead.
Sometimes Miyuki's fiancé will get painted as abusive or manipulative simply so she can end up with Shizuma (freeing Nagisa up for Tamao) or alternatively with Tamao in a "pairing the spares" trope. However, since we never see her fiancé in canon, with him mainly mentioned in passing, this may or may not apply.
Edited by jelabarre59
Imperial Court Mage
Umm regarding the Het Is Ew Cardcaptor Sakura fic not only do you click on the link is the story not there, but the entire website is gone. Is it me or does the whole Wiki need a system for reporting broken links?
"Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending."-Jim Henson
Not sure if this should be done or not, but is it safe to remove Sasuke's entry under Anime/Naruto since he's pretty much not a hero anymore? I'm asking here because the last thing I want to cause is a flame war over updating an entry after a character's allegiance has shifted.
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You could keep it for Pre-Face–Heel Turn Sasuke, but remove it for Post-Face–Heel Turn Sasuke. I suggest you wait for more answers from other Tropers before going ahead with removing anything, though. We don't want too many questions asked about its removal, after all.
Edited by SamMax
I've seen this trope done to a character officially clasified as Complete Monster, so no. As long as character is made more evil that he should be it's this, even if he was evil already.
I think we should clarify that this trope is different from simply writing an Alternate Universe Fic. If someone writes a fic wherein the Malfoys are a heroic family of philanthropists, while the Weasleys are shunned from polite society, and hence poor, because they sided with Grindlewald, then that's an alternate universe fic, not a Ron the Death Eater or Draco in Leather Pants. Those tropes are about deliberately or cluelessly misinterpreting a character to fit the author's preferences, without paying any respect to actual canonical characterization.
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An AU could still count if no reason is given for the change, though. Or if the character is completely unrecognizable from their canon self. Like, a hero being pushed over the Despair Event Horizon and becoming a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds probably wouldn't count, but a good character becoming a Complete Monster would.
This makes it sound like it's Always Bad Trope. If it happens in AU and there is a reason why someone is significantly more evil it would still be this trope, it will just be this trope done right
If a fanfic features an extreme amount of this trope, can it result in the fic sliding into Hate Fic territory?
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What's the difference between Ron the Death Eater and Adaptational Villainy?
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Ron the Death Eater is when audiences excessively focus on a characters flaws and mistakes, even inventing ones out of thin air, to the point of Demonization. If it is applied in the writing of a story, then there is potential overlap.
Tu put it simply, the first one happens in Fanon, the second in oficial adaptations.
LadyPhantomhive
Should I remove the Homestuck example? Dirk's characterization in that fic seems to be less due to intentional demonization and more due to the fact that not a lot was known about him when that was written, which wouldn't be this trope.
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Maybe not remove it, but I'd say it could be called either a subversion or something else. I mean, at the time the fic was written, Dirk hadn't been introduced yet, but we did know about his Beta timeline counterpart Bro, who, you know, beats the hell out of Dave to "toughen him up". Given what the author knew of Bro at the time, which included nothing about Bro's (or Dirk's, since he's the AU-timeline counterpart) sexuality, the author simply applied Alternate Character Interpretation, even if it was a pretty harsh one.
Technically, it would count as Ron the Death Eater in hindsight, but yeah, we should edit the entry so it doesn't sound so mean.
Moving this here:
- Meredith, the Knight-Commander of the Templars in Kirkwall, is often bashed by some of the more rabid mage fans. This troper's interpretation of her was that she was the only sane woman in a city of insane mages, and that she was doing what she had to in order to keep her city safe. While that does not give her an excuse all of her actions, the Meredith-bashers often fail to understand that Meredith is a nuanced character beyond her dislike of mages; her dislike of them comes from the fact that her sister was a mage, her parents hid the sister from the Templars, and then the sister became an Abomination and killed several people—including everyone in Meredith's family—which is a valid justification for her actions concerning them. While some of her actions did more harm than good, she is not the Complete Monster that some mage fans will paint her as.
- Any non-mage Hawke in Dragon Age 2 tends to get bashed by fans; mage Hawke is often treated as canon in many works of fanfiction and fanart. The mage fans go up in arms when there is a warrior or rogue Hawke portrayed, and insist that a mage Hawke is more connected to the story. While it is true that Bethany is an apostate mage and that the Hawkes are related to the Amell family, the fact is that in terms of the story, warrior, rogue, and mage Hawke generally end up playing the same or similar roles, and the rabid mage fans tend to latch onto mage Hawke.
Ron the Death Eater is when you "shoehorn a canon hero into being a villain — and not just any villain, but an evil bastard". Neither of the examples fit this. To start with, Meredith isn't a hero. She's the closest thing the game has to a Big Bad. The Templars under her command abuse the mages they are suppose to be watching. She orders all the mages executed for a crime that she knows they didn't commit, starting a war, while the real criminal is standing five feet away. Then she turns on all of her followers as well. Portraying her as a villain sounds entirely accurate.
The second example just isn't an example at all. Like, before, the entire idea behind Ron the Death Eater is changing a hero into a villain. This is just saying that some people prefer a mage Hawke, because they think a mage fits the story better. It doesn't mention morality at all. They don't like the other versions of the character, fine, but their dislike doesn't automatically make it this trope.
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The people who will write mage Hawke tend to bash everyone who can join that isn't a mage, in addition to seeming to support Anders burning down the Chantry. While that isn't everyone who writes mage Hawke, several mage fans will bash warrior and rogue Hawke and state that they and other characters must be evil because they are not mages.
As for Meredith, she is made out to be a worse person than canon in much of the fanfiction written about Dragon Age II. I tend to defend her because of this; while I know she is a villain, she is a villain that is always made out to be worse than she is in mage-based fanfiction or even fanfiction that has Anders as a shining paragon who did the right thing in destroying Kirkwall's Chantry. By "worse person than canon," I mean that people in my corner of the fandom will eagerly portray Meredith as a hateful and obsessive lunatic who loathes mages for no reason and will do anything to keep the "poor, innocent widdle mages who never did anything wrong" under the "nasty-wasty oppressive thumb of the Chantry." I know she's a villain, and would rather see her portrayed as a BELIEVABLE villain than a two-dimensional caricature of herself.
Is there a trope where a complex and nuanced villain is reduced to a two-dimensional caricature and loses much of the canon characterization that makes him or her interesting? The only reason I kept putting Meredith under "Ron The Death Eater" is because I have no idea where she would go, and thought "Ron The Death Eater" was for general character bashing due to not reading closely enough.
All right, if people are claiming that any Hawke that isn't a mage has to be evil, then that is an example of Ron the Death Eater (and one of the most bizarre things I've ever heard). Just add that they are portraying warrior/rogue Hawke as evil, and that example works fine.
As for Meredith, I don't know exactly which trope that would fall under. Character Derailment, Flanderization, or Canon Defilement, maybe. I just don't think a villain should be added to this page unless there's a seriously good reason to do so.
Edited by Jerrik
Thank you. Sorry about adding Meredith to this trope page; perhaps there should be a trope page for complex villains that are reduced to two-dimensional caricatures in fanfic and have all of their worse traits exaggerated to the point where anyone who sees this character would say that they were a complete monster. It happens often enough in fanfiction that there probably should be a trope; I've seen it happen to villains such as Voldemort, Darth Vader, and Sauron in fanfiction.
I'm going to make a page entitled "Darth Vader The Eldritch Abomination," which discusses a version of the "Ron The Death Eater" trope as applied to complex villains. I don't know if that's a good idea or not, but think there should be a trope for this phenomenon of turning interesting villains into monsters with none of their compelling characterization.
I thought that was a good idea, and it's a shame that it was deleted. But apparently most tropers are morons who can only see things in black and white, and that's why they deleted it.
Yeah, about the whole "seeing things in black and white"... not true for most tropers.
Then why do this page and drcnlthrpnts exist? Because they seem to be encouraging, or at least supporting, a very black-and-white world view.
Oh no! The DREADED AQUAE MORTIS! No, wait, it's just your imagination.
Why are there so few examples on the page, yet it's a "tropeoflegend"?
Edited by Smasher Hide / Show Replies
Because a bunch of the examples got purged because they didn't have a specific example associated with them.
Which I'm a little concerned about, because getting too specific is just asking to start a flame war. It's not like this article is already skirting being a really obvious target for anyone who cares enough.
TV Tropes' Sonic WikiCurator
Am I the only person here who thinks the page could stand to have a cleanup? I mean, the trope itself is valid, but the examples are pretty dang whiny.
Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows. Hide / Show Replies
My main problem is that I think it needs to be moved into seperate pages rather than seperate folders; it's gotten too big.
Would the original occurrence of this trope be the book "Paradise Lost," making this older than x?
TV Tropes' Sonic WikiCurator
Removed 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
Until some form of agreement is reached, let's keep this off the page.
If you ask me, this bit is just too pointlessly judgmental.
Edited by Komodin Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows. Hide / Show Replies
Not to mention that section is trying to defend this trope, which is the last thing we need.
Edited by KSonik
Welcome, traveller, welcome to Omsk
While I agree that Denethor's portrayal as an evil Smug Snake in fanfic is due to his portrayal in Peter Jackson's film adaptation, I'm fairly sure the same doesn't go for Boromir. If anything, the films made Boromir more sympathetic and layered than he was in the book.
It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird
The future of warfare in UC.
I'm probably going to catch hell for this, but I'm nuking portions of Gendo example expansion. No, he's not a child molester or a rapist in the canon.
But if he thought it was necessary for the scenario, Gendo would most likely do such things in an instant. What makes him a monster is that he will do ANYTHING he believes necessary for his ends. If he thinks beating up children or sexually assaulting women will further his cause, he will do it.
Nous restons ici.
"Kirk's stepfather from the Star Trek reboot movie. Granted, Stepdaddy's brief appearance in the movie consists of screaming bloody murder at a young car-stealing James Kirk, so it's not like they're portrayed as having a great relationship. But in fanfiction, Stepdad is popularly portrayed as a crazed, violent child-molesting sociopath so that victimized!Kirk can find solace with his love interest, usually Spock or Bones.
- To be fair, in the deleted scenes he was portrayed as about to sell something that wasn't his, and Word of Actor says he was abusive, which is the spot where fandom launches itself into molestation territory."
Does this really count here? If the example is of a character shown to be a bastard being twisted into an even bigger bastard, that's more Flanderization isn't it? Happy to be overruled, but it seems a bit out of place.
Knouge forever!!
My SATAM example:
Robotnik was always the villain, but in Sonic Satam, he was a Complete Monster!
I am completely, utterly, and thoroughly done with Sola Sonica and 2D Hide / Show Replies
This trope is about fan reactions and fanfic, not how a character is portrayed in two different instances of the same franchise.
Okay, sure, it's the Trope Namer, but do we really need a whole section on Harry Potter delving into such excruciating detail? Can't we just cut the whole thing and put an entry at the top of Literature saying, "Harry Potter is the Trope Namer. Let's just say it happens a lot."?
Edit: Hell with it, I pulled it. Original stuff is here:
- 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. There are various arguments as to why a Face–Heel Turn on Ron's part is plausible (and of course counter arguments to all of them), with some being more cogent than others. Rowling herself has admitted there were parallels between Ron and Peter Pettigrew. What the fanfic authors usually get wrong is that they have Ron joining Voldemort for revenge or other petty reasons.
- The biggest problem with the Ron/Peter Pettigrew parallels? Is that while Ron could theoretically make a Face–Heel Turn, he ultimately doesn't. This, by the way, is a recurring minor theme in the Potterverse - the difference between good and evil is the choice to reject dark impulses and urges. All of the characters have weaknesses that could theoretically lead them to turn evil, including Harry and Hermione. The reason this trope page exists is because of the Double Standard propagated by certain segments of the Fan Dumb: Harry, Hermione, Draco and Snape's weaknesses make them "human" and "complex", while Ron's equally human weaknesses are treated as proof that he's teetering on the edge of becoming more evil than Voldemort, Umbridge, the Dementors and Adolf Hitler put together.
- 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.
- The sequel Betrayed Revenge is more of the same, with the true gem of Hermione becoming a Death Eater. After revealing her treachery to Harry, she "disappeared" and is not seen again, and probably never will be due to the author having a "horrible case of writer's block".
- The sequel Betrayed Revenge
- 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?
- Also subverted in the first chapter of What Would Slytherin Harry Do?, where it looks like Ron has joined Umbridge's inquisition until Harry reveals near the end of the chapter that he was actually a Double Agent.
- 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 Jerkass 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.
- Harry Potter and the Marriage Contracts
- 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.
- 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?
- 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 Jerkass 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 forgotten 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 also a HPCC fic (pre - OotP) 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).
- Which makes sense, since Half Blood Prince was also when it became apparent that Ginny and Harry would hook up and the author was a confirmed Harmonian (Harry/Hermione shipper). The author also wrote on his profile on one website that the Ron/Hermione relationship made no sense because they argued, which would explain the Ron abuse.
- In one
- Stories in which Harry is framed for a crime he didn't commit and sentenced to
the Chateau d'IfAzkaban for life tend to have this happen to just about all of the characters except usually Snape, Neville, Luna anda random Weasley or twothe Weasley Twins and (almostnever 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,
mostall 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.
- The second chapter of Betrayed Having a Father: Sixth Year
- 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
UmbridgeVoldemort 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.- WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING MOTHERFUCKERS!?!
- Partially Kissed Hero is perhaps the single most extreme example of this, presenting Dumbledore as a megalomaniacal psychopath who secretly controls all of Wizarding Britain while hiding under the false front of a kind grandfatherly headmaster, to the point where Voldemort is an almost entirely irrelevant sideshow.
Harry: Think, Hermione! If you wanted to rule the wizarding world, what would you want that Dumbledore doesn't already have?!?
- Though that fic pretty clearly no longer takes itself seriously, since Harry has convinced Dumbledore that it's actually Colonel Sanders (Yes, That Colonel Sanders) behind it all.
- The very first Harry Potter fanfic, Harry Potter and the Man of Unknown, did this to an extent. While not Obviously Evil and maintaining the pretense of his canon personality, Dumbledore was nonetheless revealed to have given Harry to the Dursleys over his mysterious uncle (the Anti-Hero protagonist) and his reason for doing so was fairly dumb.
- Harry Potter: The Dark Wraith features said character as a horrendously evil man who steals souls to get stronger and (somehow) become immortal. Psychopath Ron (as mentioned above) also quickly emerges after being rejected by Hermione, who then immediately blames Harry for it and wants to kill him. The story wastes no time in derailing both of these characters as Complete Monsters, it does so in the first chapter alone. Sadly, it has not been updated since 2007.
- A notable inversion appears 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.
- One such 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. There's an irony to this in the canon, because 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.
- James Potter is often the subject of this- while canonically he was a Jerkass as a teenager, he was also a fiercely loyal friend and (later) devoted family man who gave his life to protect his wife and son. James the Jerk Jock who is personally obnoxious and is nasty to people he doesn't like is canon- James the abusive user who has minions instead of friends and spends his days doing nothing but thinking of new ways to hurt people (in other words, Tom Riddle 2.0) is not. Also, the fact that Lily (who previously wanted nothing to do with him) married him implies that he at least somewhat grew out of it, as does some dialogue from Remus Lupin (generally the most levelheaded and reliable of the Marauders).
- This is kind of helped by the fact that he was the childhood nemesis of Snape, a major recipient of Draco in Leather Pants treatment; as such, while it's fairly clear that James could be a cruel bully to Snape when they were growing up, this can be exaggerated to Complete Monster levels in order to make Snape more sympathetic.
- 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
usuallyalways 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.
- Oedipus Flower asks what Harry would be like without a fragment of Voldemort's soul inside of him. He ends up having sex with his sister and his mother, willingly, both separately at the same time. He murders his father and his brother as well, but takes the time out to mind-rape some poor girl into having sex with James several times as well. I'm not sure on the details, I was too fucking freaked out to understand it all. In short, Harry, without Voldemort's soul, is EVEN WORSE.
- My Immortal has some very atypical examples of this. For example,
SnapeSnap andLupinLoopin, 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
VoldemortVolfemort has Draco 'bondage', 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.)
- And of course, Tara does this to Dumbledore too - after finding out that
- 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 Jerkass 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
- A particularly irritating examples appears in the Sacrifices Arc by Lightning of the Wave, wherein Lily Potter puts the Knight Templar back in Knight Templar Parent by acting like the hellish product of an orgy between Altena, John Winchester and Sara Fitzgerald. She raises Harry to be a Tyke Bomb with no personality beyond 'protect [his twin brother] Connor, don't outshine Connor, die for Connor if you have to' because Connor is the Boy-Who-Lived and if one of your children is famous, it's okay to turn the other into a Child Soldier because no one will notice!
- 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. There's even a fic that has 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.
- Surprise surprise, the yaoi fandom has it out for Lily too... she must be evil to marry James and take him away from the Marauder orgies, after all.
- The level of Remus Lupin hatred coming from Snape rabid fans is becoming scarier and scarier. Apparently, he was an horrible bully as well as completely not trustworthy, a bad father who will pass his lycantrophy so he shouldn't have reproduced, an ungrateful bastard who kept making Snape suffer and/or an evil pervert who *raped* poor Sevvie-kins, thus he's a pedophile too.
- M Night Shyamalan apparently believes this too.
Restored. It was not Conversation In The Main Page, the majority of the entries were individual examples from named, and even cited fanfiction, showing different aspects of the trope.
There Is No Such Thing As Notability, if people want to list a billion different obscure fanfictions, they are allowed to do so as long as they fit the trope.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Highlighting it to delete, I had to hit Page Down more than 15 times. It's too damn long. No other series has its own section, and no series really needs it. If you need to cite different aspects, sum it up in a way that the section isn't longer than the whole rest of the page combined.
This is why we have folders. If you don't want to see Harry Potter examples, then don't click on it.
The whole HP folder is a convinience for people like you, technically those examples have all right to be posted in Literature.
There Is No Such Thing As Notability is one of our main directives. All works are equally notable, "if it fits the trope description, then it can be put in. All it requires is someone to put it in there."
Your action doesn't make more sense, than, for example removing the whole Anime section, and saying that " It happens a lot in Anime fandoms, but I don't care about individual examples, so let's just say that it happens a lot"
If someone put it up there, and it is a correct example, we need it.
Edited by Superior De gustibus non est disputandum.
"There Is No Such Thing As Notability" doesn't mean "go into excruciating detail for one series." And it's not that "someone" put it up there, it's that it probably began as an example similar to the one I put up, and then everyone who had ever read or written three or more sentence of Fan Fic decided that what they read/wrote had to be noted too. It's honestly ridiculous for one body of work to get its own section that is as big as the whole rest of the page.
There is nothing special about Harry Potter fanfic, and there's even less special about Harry Potter shipping. Every single other series entry consists of little more than the bullet point I put up in replacement of that ungodly mess of a folder.
I'd bet half the other single bullet point examples could be expanded into their own folders as well. Should we do that? Surely, only that would be fair.
Edited by MrDeath
Hey, why not? We could even hard-split the page if necessary.
I mean, don't we have an entire Brother–Sister Incest page for Code Geass?
What's precedent ever done for us?
This is a Fanfiction trope, because the fanfictions are the examples. This means, that we don't have one, excruciatingly long "Harry Potter example", but several individual works that use the trope.
My Immortal uses this trope. Child of Grace also uses this trope. Harry Potter And The Man Of Unknown also uses it. They are all existing (therefore notable) works, that have a reasonable four or five lines of description each, and the fact that they are all based on Harry Potter, is just like a genre for them.
The Harry Potter fanfic community is far the largest, while some of the other mentioned fandoms barely have a few dozen fanfictions, and one or two that fits the trope. If people would want to add examples from other fandoms, they could, but they didn't and it is not your job to make sure that they are equally represented. As I already said, this is barely different from cutting a whole genre or medium because you don't care about the individual examples that it has.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Hey, if you want to keep this up and effectively argue with one of the admins, be my guest. He's the one who deleted it the previous time.
I pulled it because of the natter it draws. If somebody wants to clean out the natter and make it clear that these are examples from fanfiction (calling the folder 'Fan Fiction' would help), I would have no objections to it going back in.
Another thing that would help is to have the examples in the form of ...
- Work Title: Blah, Blah, Blah
- Another Work Title: Blather, Blather, Blather
... making it crystal clear these are about individual works.
Edited by FastEddie Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Ok, tomorrow I will remove the natter out of it.
A fanfiction folder is not needed, it is already fanfiction trope. Theoretically it can also happen in canon with multiple writers writing the same continuities, but I didn't find such an example, every current example is frm fanfiction.
If you want to delete all examples that are about fanfiction, but not naming a particular title, you would need to cut about 50% of the Harry Potter folder, and 100% of the rest of the page.
Edit: Done. Now it is categorized with main indents standing for common subgenres of the fanfiction community, and subindents for the specific example.
- [Character name] is a frequent subject to this trope. Common portrayals include [this], [this], and [that] plot variations.
- Specific example
- specific example
- subverted specific example
- [Another Character] is a frequent subject to this trope. Common portrayals include [this], [this], and [that] plot variations.
- Specific example
- specific example
Uh, wait... We have a Brother–Sister Incest page for one anime series, but we can't possibly have a folder for the Trope Namer series on this page? Why not?
Seems like a good idea to me.
Edit: It greatly depresses me that I have heard of (and read parts of) most of those stories.
Edited by Medicus It's not over. Not yet.
I'm in agreement with the various people supporting the page. Make it a subpage if it's that disruptive to have it on the main page behind a folder you don't have to click on, which I can understand as far as editing goes. That said, cutting the Trope Namer and a large list of examples seems to be directly against the stated purpose of the Wiki.
If there's a huge example tree, doesn't that simply prove that it's an active trope? If we're going to start cutting those, there are plenty of other active pages that would probably need significant trimming under that interpretation.
I've gone ahead and created the page, and will be doing some editing of both pages shortly.
I expect it to survive for, oh, say, a week?
It's not over. Not yet.
(Touhou section) "...but portraying Reimu as a psychotic sadist or Flandre as an unstoppable murder machine is taking it a bit far..." I thought Flandre WAS an unstoppable murder machine but simply wasn't aware of it.
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Considering these same fans exaggerate Cirno's foolishness into being an outright lobotomized retard, I wouldn't be surprised.
I'm quite confident in my shitposting you know
Removed: * 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? Also, ignore the explicit statements by the game that as long as the fake Ivalice exists, everyone in the real world is trapped there and subjected to the whims of four kids.
Reason: Wrong trope. This is for all intents and purposes Alternate Character Interpretation, not a deliberate misinterpretation. See the countless cleanup-wars for that trope, the Tactics trope page and the forum. We don't need another instance of that here.
I think there should be something to be said about villains getting the death eater treatment, whether it be refusing to a knowledge that a villain has redeeming qualities or tragic backstory, or unfairly exaggerating their villainy in the description.
I got my political views from reddit and that's bad Hide / Show Replies