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  • ️Sun Jun 05 2022

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/RonTheDeathEater/LiveActionTV

Ron The Death Eater

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  • Back when he was first introduced to the show as Lucy's future husband, fics doing this with Kevin Kinkirk of 7th Heaven were a dime a dozen. The trend died down a bit after season 8.
  • SheldonxPenny authors in the The Big Bang Theory tend to ignore Sheldon's canonical aversion to romance, his unique brand of love for canonical girlfriend Amy, his close, almost father/son like relationship with his roommate Leonard, and the fact that, while he does count her as one of his closest friends, his relationship with Penny defaults to Vitriolic Best Buds. Instead, Sheldon becomes a poor soul who has been in love with Penny for years, but that "asshole Leonard" (canonically an incredibly nice, often stepped over, guy) saw her first (ignoring the fact they are canonically a loving couple). Eventually Penny (canonically an independent weapons expert/sharp shooter/Girly Bruiser) will escape from under his abusive, whiny thumb, and will somehow find her way to Sheldon.
  • Blake's 7: One recurring theme in B7 fanfiction is that the ace pilot Jenna is a jealous conniving bitch, an obstacle in the way of the most popular pairing B/A, or Blake/Avon. In contrast, although canon Jenna is interested in Blake, she is a good sort and level-headed. Another recurring theme is that fanon Blake is much more hypocritical, manipulative, devious, and stupid than the lone idealist he is in canon.
  • Di4ries:
    • Livia is a character that people tend to dislike because in season 2 she begins neglecting her old friends in favor of spending time with two clearly evil girls, as well as gets demonized as a siren who dares threaten Pietro and Isabel's relationship being jealous of their relationship when she was the one who started being hostile to Pietro. This ignores the fact that Livia regretted what she did and redeemed herself by realizing what a horrible person Katia is, apologizing to her real friends and defending Arianna from Katia's bullying. Livia also had good reason to be angry with Pietro at the beginning of the season because he had previously used her to win a bet with Giulio and he didn't admit it until she discovered the truth. And although she was jealous of Pietro and Isabel's relationship, Livia was never mean or selfish towards them and Pietro kept being the Master of the Mixed Message around her by showing interest in Livia when he was still dating Isabel.
    • On the flip side of the shipping coin, Isabel is a perfectly nice girl who has a lot more in common with Pietro than Livia does and she is perhaps the person who supports him the most throughout the series. However, in season 2 she began to receive a lot of criticism for falling in love with her friend's ex-boyfriend to the point of being called a bad friend. It didn't help that Isabel started a relationship with Pietro when Livia kept pining for him. These criticisms ignore the fact that it was Livia who broke up with Pietro and he comes to reciprocate Isabel's feelings. In addition, when she and Pietro formalize their relationship, it is Isabel who thinks about how this could affect Livia by apologizing to her due she did not want to lose her friendship.
  • Doctor Who: Dan Lewis from series 13 became the subject of various fandom memes where the character's kind-hearted ways are reversed to make him appear evil and cruel.
  • Cheers:
    • Diane. In the show, she is can be pretentious, insensitive and indecisive in matters of romance, and the toxicity of her relationship with Sam is delved into several times, but is also a kind and caring person with at least some self-awareness of her flaws. Out of the show, those who dislike her paint her as a sociopathic Femme Fatale.
    • In-Universe example: the gang at Cheers have an elevated Deconstruction about the Road Runner / Wile E. Coyote shorts to the point where an Orphaned Punchline has Norm sarcastically exclaiming, "Oh, I suppose that proves that the coyote is the Antichrist?"
  • Game of Thrones:
    • In Hadrian Lannister, Lion of the Rock, Catelyn becomes a hateful shrieking bitch when Ned tells her he cannot bring Sansa from the South because it would lead to his bannermen demanding that she be condemned to death for treason. All of this turns out to be so Catelyn can Die for Our Ship, allowing a somehow-still-alive Ashara Dayne to step in Catelyn's place almost immediately.
    • In many Season 8 Jonerys Fix Fics, Sansa is seen as an irredeemable, racist, power-hungry, cruel, idiotic character whose bad traits are often emphasized while Daenerys's bad traits are forgotten or seen as badass. And vice versa in Jonsa fics.
  • LazyTown: Several fanfics have the kids acting cruel to Robbie and sometimes even Sportacus, usually to push the two into a pairing or giving a reason as to why their relationship needs to be secret.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The Sauron/Galadriel shippers sometimes give this treatment to Elrond, who in canon is a decent, kind and idealistic elf who at worst is judgmental over the fact that Galadriel fell for Sauron's manipulations and skeptical of using the rings. In some fanfics, he's the one standing not only against Galadriel/Sauron but world peace thanks to his unrequited crush on Galadriel.
  • Don Draper from Mad Men arguably receives this on a broader cultural level, thanks to his being one of the iconic figures of the "Peak TV" trend towards Anti-Hero protagonists. To illustrate, as can be seen in the opening paragraph of this article he tends to be mentioned in the same breath as characters like Tony Soprano, Dexter Morgan, Walter White, Frank Underwood and Nicholas Brody, among others. However, a moral gulf can make itself apparent if you think about it; while the other names on this list tend to be varying combinations of criminals, murderers, drug dealers, terrorists and all-round corrupt individuals with a personal direct body count of victims to their names, Draper's sins generally extend little further than being a poor husband and father, a man working in an ethically questionable industry, a skirt-chasing sleaze, and a person whose character flaws generally embody many of the racial and gender privileges of the era he lives in. A flawed man who at times struggles to earn or deserve the audience's sympathy, certainly, but not exactly one of the borderline monsters he tends to be discussed alongside. Even his most sketchy act — stealing a dead man's identity and building his life from it — is still lesser than the others, since he wasn't directly responsible for the man's death, makes a point of treating the man's widow well, and comes from circumstances that would make taking advantage of such an opportunity entirely understandable, if not exactly admirable.
  • Done fairly often to Amita of NUMB3RS, usually by authors of Charlie Eppes slashfic to take her out of "contention" so Charlie can be free to end up with whoever the writer happens to have in mind. Generally, this end up taking the form of run-of-the-mill bad behavior (i.e. calling Charlie homophobic names) more than outright evil.
  • The Office (US): In keeping with a general tendency to apply Draco in Leather Pants treatment to Dwight Schrute, his rival and foil Jim Halpert tends to receive this treatment in turn. Most typically it comes in the form of treating him as a cruel, sadistic bully mercilessly picking on a helpless (and possibly neurodivergent, just to make him seem worse) victim in the form of vicious pranks. A fairer view, however, would suggest that while Jim's pranking of Dwight can occasionally border on excessive, which the show and even Jim himself acknowledges on occasion, it actually tends to come as a response to Dwight being particularly obnoxious, insufferable and arrogant, and that Dwight — far from being the helpless, innocent victim — is hardly free of malice himself; his own pranks towards others, while fewer in number, tend to be more mean-spirited and harmful in nature than Jim's typically more playful schemes. To compare: Jim will at times conspire to hide Dwight's belongings around the office or make him seem like a bit of a clown. Dwight will at times conspire to get Jim fired or inflict physical harm on him.
  • Zack from Saved by the Bell does act like a jackass on occasion, but usually just so he can learn better to serve the episode's Aesop. Zack Morris is Trash, on the other hand, deliberately invokes this trope for laughs and interprets every one of his actions in the worst possible light. Zack pours an ant farm down someone's shirt? Ant genocide and attempted murder. Zack locks a foreign exchange student in a closet? He's a violent anarchist who nearly reignited the Cold War. A character never appears again? They were Driven to Suicide by Zack's actions.
  • Meg Masters of Supernatural is a frequent victim of this, usually in fics which pair the angel Castiel with Dean Winchester. Admittedly, Meg was a very evil demon for a long time on the show, but she underwent a Heel–Face Turn due to Love Redeems with Castiel. Meg fans frequently refer to these as "proxy" fics due to their tendency to use Cas's relationship with Meg as a jumping off point to getting together with Dean. These frequently include other ship names in their tags and descriptions despite being very anti that ship. On Archive of Our Own, the vast majority of fics tagged "Megstiel" are actually Destiel fics, many of which fall into this trope.
    • Sam Winchester gets this pretty hard from the Dean/Cas contingent in terms of fic and meta spinning him as an evil, abusive narcissist who is too selfish (or homophobic) to allow Dean to pursue his love with Cas. While Sam is canonically jealous and possessive towards his brother (as best seen when Dean becomes close to the vampire Benny and Sam insists on distrusting Benny at every turn instead of being grateful he saved Dean's life in Purgatory), these fics ignore that through much of the series, it was Dean trying to stop Sam from leaving, not Sam trying to force Dean to stay with him. Also, Sam and Cas usually get along well, so Sam is pretty unlikely to want to stand in the way of Dean and Cas's romance.
    • Additionally, many fics and metas involving Sam/any other character tend to portray Dean as possessive and controlling to an abusive degree, with the Love Interest in question giving Sam respite from the abuse or otherwise "saving" Sam from Dean. Apart from the fact that Sam contributes as much to his and Dean's weirdness as Dean does, certainly has his own say between them, and has all the same friends as Dean, it's particularly odd when blended with the Draco in Leather Pants pairings of Sam/Gabriel and Sam/Lucifer.
    • Finally, certain subsets of Sam/Dean shippers who ship them together because of their canonical closeness, but who simultaneously dislike one brother while stanning the other. This can lead to a weird brand of Wincest fic where one brother is a long-suffering Love Martyr, while the other is portrayed as absolutely toxic.
    • While John Winchester was canonically a subpar father to Dean and Sam, whose drill sergeant attitude to teaching them hunting, emotional neglect, and enforcement of Dean's Promoted to Parent status instilled them with a number of psychological complexes he had never intended to create, he was not the alcoholic, verbally and physically abusive monster some fics depict him as. Even Sam, who was never his biggest fan, said explicitly in the episode "Nightmare" that John never beat them and didn't act like that. The fandom contempt for John's bad parenting has resulted in him winning crossover "worst father" polls on Tumblr even against characters like Denethor, who tried to burn one of his sons alive. The time he told Dean that if Dean couldn't save Sam then Dean would have to kill Sam gets divorced from the fact he was trying to prevent The End of the World as We Know It and he clearly didn't want to have to say that. Although this perception isn't helped by posthumous references to John in some later episodes seemingly having him undergo a Heinousness Retcon at odds with what we saw of him before, Depending on the Writer.
    • It's also a common belief that Dean is repressing his bisexuality because of homophobia from John, but there is no canonical evidence of this. Admittedly, there's no hard evidence ruling it out, either, other than Alternate John in The Winchesters having no problem with his friend Carlos's bisexuality.
  • Torchwood: A subset of the Torchwood fanbase that ships Gwen Cooper with Jack Harkness also does this to Rhys Williams, Gwen's husband, or Ianto Jones, Jack's boyfriend, despite the fact that in Canon, all of them get along fairly well with each other after a period of tension. And the fact that Jack is canonically an Extreme Omnisexual who has no problems with Polyamory, which would seem to make Die for Our Ship unnecessary.
  • Victorious: While Beck Oliver does have his occasional Jerkass moments in the show, he's overall a decent guy and arguably one of the nicest members of the main cast. You wouldn't know it if you only knew the show through fanfic, though, since a lot of people (especially Jade/Tori shippers) love portraying him as everything ranging from an abusive boyfriend to outright murderous.