Ron the Death Eater: Difference between revisions

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"Ok, Ron is acting really dumb...but it’s my story. Ron is my least fave character and I make him how I want him to be dumb cuz he is. Sorry for the inconvenience."

—Author's note in a fic that is no longer available

The result of shoehorning a good canon character into being a villain or making a villain significantly more evil than in canon is Ron the Death Eater, the inverse of Draco in Leather Pants.

This can be seen as a kind of deliberate Flanderization—Often, in creating Ron the Death Eater, a fanfic writer spins his canonical (non-evil) actions into evil acts, and 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.

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 a romantic rival that interferes with the writer's One True Pairing, especially if the subject is part of an Official Couple.

In other cases, it seems like the target character, regardless of their original characterization, will simply default to one of two stock personalities, based entirely on their gender. Basically, male characters end up as drunken rapist assholes while female characters end up as manipulative vindictive bitches.

The fic may also have other characters who are canonically friends of the victim act as though he or she has always been an object of justified loathing, rather than going the "shocked at betrayal" approach. Or, even if these characters end up siding with the Draco in Leather Pants, they are subject to some Ron The Death Eater-ness themselves by way of "I was stupid to love him and not you".

In a number of cases however this is deliberately invoked by fans who think a good character looks better evil. This is quite common in doujinshi where an otherwise normal male character suddenly becomes a psychotic rapist or where a female character becomes a sadistic bitch who gets other girls raped.

Named for the tendency in Harry Potter fanfics where Draco turns good and hooks up with Hermione to have Ron—who in Canon is a decent, upstanding sort of fellow firmly on the side of good (he might be occasionally crass, boorish, or foolish but his ethics are firmly sound) who happens to have a long-standing enmity with Draco—lose his mind and, often, join Lord Voldemort just for a chance at killing the sainted Malfoy.

A Sub-Trope of Demonization.

Compare Die for Our Ship (which is a major cause of this trope), Historical Villain Upgrade, and Adaptational Villainy.

Contrast Draco in Leather Pants.

And last but not least, fandoms that have so many examples of this that they needed to be moved to their own pages:

Examples of Ron the Death Eater are listed on these subpages:

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-{{examples|Examples (sorted by the original canons' media):}}
-== Comic Books ==
-* [[Parodied]] in ''[[The Unwritten]]'', about a son of a writer who got famous after creating a series of novels very [[Captain Ersatz|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]].
-* The entire ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen|League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'' seems to be based around this trope. Mina, who at the end of ''[[Dracula (novel)|Dracula ]]'' was happily married to Jonathan Harker divorces her husband and presumably abandons her child prior to the beginning of the first volume. The upstanding [[Great White Hunter]] Alan Quatermain is an opium addict. Perhaps the most extreme example is from ''Black Dossier''. The comic features a violent, sociopathic, date rapist version of [[James Bond]] in a [[Lawyer-Friendly Cameo]]. Jonathan Harker goes from a loving and fiercely devoted husband to dumping his wife for being "soiled goods'.
-* ''[[Tron: Ghost in the Machine]]'' (based off the [[Alternate Continuity]] of ''[[Tron 2.0]]'') depicts Alan as somewhat callous, work-driven, and harsh towards his son. Of course, his circumstances in the 2.0 timeline suck worse than his circumstances in the ''[[Tron: Legacy]]'' one - Flynn still vanishes, but he's been relegated to a lab instead of the boardroom, and while Lora's alive in Legacy, she died in 2.0 - but the depiction ''really'' goes off the rails when he was shown ''murdering'' his wife in a jealous rage. {{spoiler|Granted, it was just an attempt to [[Mind Rape]] Jet, but...}}
-<!-- * Pete "the Pounder" Parker  is your typical [[Jerk Jock]] beating up poor [[Draco in Leather Pants|Eddie Brock]] in the ''[[Spdier-Man]]'' fic/fan art [https://web.archive.org/web/20130211083058/http://aragen.deviantart.com/art/Venom-Evolution-Instant-Karma-283318853 Venom Evolution - Instant Karma] by "aragen".  MOD: The Wayback Machine did not archive the actual artwork. -->
-* ''X-Men'' fandom sees a lot of this. Those most often targeted seem to be Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Professor X. Oddly enough, the character in X-Men with the largest [[Hatedom]], Wolverine, doesn't get it nearly as much... likely because Wolverine's haters also tend to be the sorts that hate on fanfiction.
-== Film ==
-* The ''[[Joker]]'' movie by Todd Phillips reinterprets Thomas Wayne, a widely beloved and good-hearted man in the original Batman comic books, into a very archetypal upper-class asshole whose good PR is all based on a facade he maintains to look better than he really is. {{spoiler|[[Asshole Victim|Even his famous assassination is treated as him getting what he deserves.]]}}
-== Live-Action TV ==
-* The ''[[Friends]]'' fic ''Somebody Save Me'' ([http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2719451/1/Somebody_Save_Me found here]) has portrayed Richard—a perfectly nice, well-loved guy whose relationship with Monica only broke up because of [[May–December Romance]] problems—as a drunken, selfish, physically and emotionally abusive rapist who does not care for Monica at all, so that Chandler can be there to protect and rescue Monica from her evil abuser. Why an [[Original Character|OC]] abusive boyfriend could not have been made up, seeing as Monica dates dozens of men throughout the run of ''[[Friends]]'', is a mystery. It's not the only one of its kind either.
-* One particularly bad and extremely unsettling NSFW [[Degrassi]] fic called ''[[Fanfic/The Junkie Journals|The Junkie Journals]]'' turns [[Lovable Jock|Riley]] [[In Name Only|Stavros]] into a rapist, [[Mind Rape|MindRapeist]], gay basher, drug addict, [[Jerk Jock]], [[Villain Sue]], and [[Karma Houdini]]. He's such a [[Complete Monster]] that people walk away from the story feeling like they've come across the seedy underbelly of the world. All of this without warning or explanation. The main character of the story is also rescued by Peter but it's a mystery why the so-called "author" couldn't just make up an OC who's a [[Complete Monster]] instead of having to defile Riley's character.
-* Allecto's [http://users.livejournal.com/_allecto_/34718.html controversial critiques] of ''[[Firefly]]'' are something of an extreme example of this; the actions of several of the characters (and especially the white male ones) are often twisted in order to fit an extreme feminist reading, thus unfairly painting them as evil.
-== Theatre ==
-* It's semi-canonical, in that the text can be interpreted in different ways, but a lot of productions of ''[[The Merchant of Venice]]'' (notably that with [[Laurence Olivier]] as Shylock) not only make Shylock [[Anti-Villain|as sympathetic as is possible]], but also chose the most unflattering interpretations of the protagonists' characters.
-== Web Comics ==
-* Bro Strider, Dave's badass older brother in [[Homestuck]], is subjected to this by fans who take his over the top [[Training from Hell]] of Dave too seriously and treat their relationship as down right abusive in one way or another, nevermind there is little to no evidence of this and Dave obviously loves and respects his older brother. A good example of this attitude is in [http://archiveofourown.org/works/293845/chapters/470055 Out of His Depth] A Dave/Tavros fic, where he is both abusive and a homophobic jerkass who's only real purpose in the fic is to provide a reason for Dave to be reluctant to admit his feelings and someone for [[Butt Monkey|Tavros]] to stand up to. This is a bit [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] as the fic was written before the Alpha Universe versions of the kids' Guardians were introduced and Bro's own counterpart Dirk is revealed to be both a pretty nice guy and, more importantly, openly gay.
-== Web Original ==
-* The [https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts?tags=pool%3AUnexpectedly_Evil+ "Unexpectedly Evil"] pool on Danbooru is dedicated to depictions of characters considered non-evil both in their canon and by most fans, acting out of character in a truly shocking and despicable way, generally by intentionally harming another character who did nothing to deserve it.
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