#johnny is a lannister btw

[travllingbunny]

What even is a Draco in Leather Pants?

Look, I really like the Television Tropes website. It’s fun and you can spend a lot of time reading it. The tropes it has formulated are, for the most part, the tropes you can actually discern and find quite often in fictional works, and the descriptions are usually quite witty and well supported. The examples and their justifications can be...questionable, since anyone can provide them, and may lead to a debate between contributors (i.e. anyone who has bothered to register and post), but still, usually the majority of examples make sense and more or less fit with the description provided at the top of the page. 

But not always.

There’s supposed to be a trope called Draco in Leather Pants, which I had been vaguely aware for a while (basically, that it had something to do with people in the Harry Potter fandom stanning the character of Draco Malfoy and thinking he’s hot), and have been recently reminded because I’ve recently seen at least a couple of mentions of “leather pantsing”in various comments in fandom discussions, or links to the Television Trope page for said trope (for instance, a link to that page was provided in a page of a podcast about Jaime Lannister... who isn’t even among the examples listed on that page, BTW). So, it seems that this is supposed to be an actual trope and that people know what it’s supposed to be about.

Well, since I’ve actually looked at the above mentioned page, read the description and looked through the list of examples from various media given on that page, I understand even less what it’s supposed to be about. If anyone has a better understanding of it, please help me.

So, here’s the description from the Television Tropes page called Draco in Leather Pants:

”A form of Misaimed Fandom, when a fandom takes a controversial or downright villainous character and downplays his/her flaws, often turning him/her into an object of desire and/or a victim in the process. This can cause conflicts if the writers are not willing to retool the character to fit this demand.”

Then the text proceeds to talk about how such a character is treated in fanfiction, why this happens, and finally explains the origin of the term:

“ Named for a term in the Harry Potter fandom, for the mostly sympathetic Fan Fic portrayals of Draco Malfoy, who, in Canon, is a petty, smug, elitist Spoiled Brat. (The term originated in Hurt/Comfort Fics, where Draco was the comforter and Ron was the abuser, usually with Hermione being the victim. Not coincidentally, the Inverted Trope Ron the Death Eater also originated from such fics.) “

I have never read any of the Harry Potter books, and have only seen a couple of early movies on TV, so I’m largely unfamiliar with this entire franchise. But from what I gather, the point is Draco Malfoy is supposed to be merely an antagonistic bully and not a particularly sympathetic character or a sex symbol in canon, but fanon and/or fanfiction made him into both these things? Right? 

However, the description is both highly specific, because it includes several different things that don’t necessarily have to go together, but at the same time strangely vague and wide:

The character in question has to be “controversial or downright villainous”. What exactly does this mean? Does it have to be a villainous character, or a controversial one? Many characters are both of these things at the same time, but a villainous character does not need to be controversial (if almost everyone agrees they’re awful and almost nobody likes them, there’s no controversy there), and there are plenty of controversial characters that aren’t villainous. Controversial merely means that there are very strong and very different and polarizing opinions about something or someone, with opposing views being both shared by a significant number of people. Heroic characters or characters meant to be sympathetic can be very controversial.

The “fandom” takes this character and “downplays his.her flaws”. What exactly does this mean? What is meant by “fandom”? It’s really unlikely that it means “literally everyone who’s a fan of that franchise”, since it’s extremely unlikely that 100% of any group of people feel the same about something, so what percentage are we talking about? 90%? 75%? Two thirds? Over 50%? At least 20%? A vocal minority? A reviewer/blogger or two? Anyone who writes a fanfic or posts a Youtube fanvideo? Someone you’ve just argued with online? What is the cutoff?

 ...” often turning him/her into an object of desire and/or a victim in the process”. So, apparently the fandom, whatever that means, does not necessarily have to turn this character into an object of desire and/or victim, but what I gather from this must be a character who is not presented as an object of desire in canon, and is not presented as a victim in canon. At least not intentionally,  by the creators of said media. 

OK, now we’re getting somewhere. This is pretty specific. The character may or may not be a villain, but absolutely must not be presented in canon as either 1) sexy/desirable or as 2) victimized/suffering in any notable way? Got it. 

Now, I’m not sure why exactly this description suggests that it’s necessary to downplay someone’s flaws in order for that someone to be an object of desire or for that someone to be a victim. I mean, these are clearly three different concepts:

(relatively) flawless person

object of desire

victim

Of course, a real person or a fictional character can be two or all three at the same time, but that’s not at all necessary. They may be just one or those things, or two of these things, but not the third. They may be a character or characters who are none of the three in canon but are all three in fanon/fanfics - I’ll trust the Television Tropes page that Draco Malfoy is all of these things. But I’m not sure how many other fictional characters there actually are that fit that entire description. I can’t think of many.

But since the term “leather pants” is in the title, this should suggest that it’s the sex symbol status that’s the emphasis of this trope, right? Not downplaying of flaws or victimization? Because I really don’t see the connection between people wearing leather pants and people being victims or not having notable flaws. 

So, I guess we could say that Ramsay Bolton in his Villain Sue version in the TV show Game of Thrones is a Draco In Leather Pants, if we treat GoT as a fanfic, taking the canon Ramsay Bolton from George R R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, who’s described as a very ugly, fleshy dude with no appealing qualities, with a certain low cunning but no great intelligence or skill or courage, who’s not considered as sexy by anyone in universe (and has no consensual sexual relationship with anyone, instead only being interested in raping and torturing people) and turning him into a cute, frequently shirtless Rambo-style fighter with a loving girlfriend who even finds himself as an apex of a love triangle of sorts (even if it’s a one-sided triangle, in that the abused but smitten girlfriend is jealous of the hot new wife Ramsay will get to rape). This fits the trope pretty closely, no? 

However, Ramsay is not in the list of examples on the page. Here are, instead, some of the characters listed by various contributors as examples of this trope. These are about 90% of all character listed that I’m familiar with:

Film:

Jareth the Goblin King (David Bowie) from Labyrinth

Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from Pirates of the Caribbean

Riddick (Van Diesel)

Frank N Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Tony Montana from Scarface

Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs

Darth Vader from the Star Wars saga

Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire (as played by Marlon Brando)

Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator from The Terminator (it's actually mentioned that he literally wears leather pants in the movie)

Sarah Connor (specifically in Terminator II: Judgment Day)

Harry Lime (Orson Welles) from The Third Man (it's actually acknowledged that he's that "both Out and In-Universe)

Loki from MCU

Tony Stark from MCU, called an "Odd heroic variation"

Magneto from X-Men:First Class

Literature:

Hannibal Lecter (again) from Thomas Harris' novels (The Silence of the Lambs and Hanibal Rising are specifically mentioned)

Sandor Clegane from A Song of Ice and Fire

Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights

Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice (called "an unusual example of this trope”)

Live-Action TV:

Grant Ward from Agents of SHIELD

Dandy Mott from American Horror Story: Freak Show

Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel

Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel

The Master from Dr Who ("particularly in his Athony Ainley and John Simm incarnations")

The Tenth Doctor

Ianto from Torchwood (called "an odd heroic version")

Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica

Alex Krycek from The X-Files

Sylar from Heroes

Noah Bennet from Heroes

Cole Turner from Charmed

Phoebe from Charmed

Scorpius from Farscape

Eric Northman from True Blood

Lex Luthor from Smallville

Furio from The Sopranos

Ben Linus from Lost

Gene Hunt from Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes

Alex from Dark Angel ("somewhat. While he's a good guy by the end..." starts the description)

Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones

Dr Gregory House 

Barney from How I Met Your Mother

Tate Langdon from American Horror Story: Murder House

Regina Mills from Once Upon a Time

Rumpelstilskin from OUAT

Jefferson from OUAT

Captain Hook/Killian Jones from OUAT

Tony DiNozzo from NCIS (the description actually says "He's good person deep down (...) and isn't by definition an actual villain" before going into why he's supposedly a Draco In Leather Pants)

Walter White from Breaking Bad

Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries

Klaus from The Vampire Diaries/The Originals

Now, hold on. After going through this list, I’m even more confused. Either the above description of the trope is incorrect or really poorly worded, or most of the people who have posted supposed examples have no idea what that trope is supposed to be about.

Because, while quite a few of these characters - but not all! - are villains/antagonists or were villains at some point, many (in fact, the majority) of these characters are actually sexualized and presented as objects of desire in canon, by actual creators of the media in question. Now, I’m not sure if the writers, producers and directors of The Silence of the Lambs initially intended to make Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter a sex symbol (unlike Mads Mikkelsen’s Hanibal Lecter from the TV show, who clearly was intentionally presented that way and treated as such in-universe) - but I’m pretty sure they always meant for him to be fascinating and strangely appealing while also being super-evil and scary - the way they clearly did not portray Buffalo Bill, or even Chilton, who’s not really a villain but is clearly intentionally portrayed as annoying and hateful. However, I really want to know if someone is seriously going to argue that David Bowie’s extremely tight pants in The Labyrinth happened because the costuming department just couldn’t find anything bigger and looser for him to wear, or that characters such as (among others) Faith, Spike, Damon Salvatore, Klaus, Eric Northman, Grant Ward or Captain Hook from OUAT were not intended to be objects of desire, and that it was somehow the fandom that “turned” them into sex symbols, totally unprovoked, to the total shock and horror of the creators of these shows, who refused to “retool” these characters that were totally not meant to be sexy, no sir! I don’t think that anyone is going to argue that, and if they did, they either did not watch these shows at all, or are being completely dishonest.

What are we even talking about here? It’s really strange if not downright hypocritical to complain about the “fandom” putting certain characters in “leather pants”, when the canon has already put them in (metaphorical and in some cases also literal) leather pants to begin with. That’s not “Misaimed Fandom”. That’s the opposite of it - the showrunners were aiming for it and hit the target, intentionally playing up the actors’/characters’ sex appeal, often in really obvious ways. Unless I’m supposed to believe that things like frequent shirtless or nude scenes, tight/leather clothes, female gazey/male gazey (whichever applies) camera shots, and other fanservicey moments are there for no plot-related reason, just happened by accident, and that the writers wrote these characters as sexy and desirable in-universe with a bunch of other characters commenting on or falling for their charms, not to mention blatant ship teases or actual romantic/sexual relationships with protagonists - but somehow expected the audience to not see them as desirable, at all.

Which, BTW, does not necessarily have anything to do with downplaying a character’s flaws, or to what extent they are portrayed sympathetically. Many of the characters on the list are both given some sympathetic qualities and complexity and intentionally presented as desirable, but you can have one without the other. Case in point: Dandy Mott from AHS:FS - totally evil, no redeeming qualities, not sympathetic at all, but Finn Wittrock sure did not have all the nude scenes because the plot demanded it.

Furthermore, on the second point: most (actually, the majority, although there are some exceptions) of these characters were actually given tragic backstories and/or had terrible things happen to them in canon in scenes that were supposed to be dramatic and tragic and were clearly intended to elicit at least some degree of sympathy or empathy. For instance, you may argue how bad or evil or good Sandor Clegane is, but can anyone deny that he’s canonically a victim of horrible abuse by his brother, which has left him physically scarred and disfigured for life, and left even an harsher psychological and emotional trauma that’s defined his life? No. You can’t deny that. And some of the other above mentioned characters have had entire episodes and storyarcs or, heck, even entire movies devoted to their tragic backstories. It doesn’t make sense to accuse the fandom of “turning (x) into a victim”, when that character is already portrayed as a victim (among other things, and at least at some point in their arc or their backstory) in canon, intentionally, by the actual creators of said media. 

Which, BTW, has absolutely nothing to do with downplaying a characters’ flaws or the villain/hero status in the narrative. You don’t have to be a flawless person or even a good person in order to be or have been a victim (of abuse, rape, torture, murder etc.) and being a bad person or doing bad things does not disqualify you from the victim status. Conversely, being victimized at some point in your life does not automatically make you a good person or a hero, and does not preclude you from doing evil things and/or being a perpetrator of crime/abuse. I shouldn’t really need to explain this, it’s pretty obvious and basic.

In short, there is no reason why villainous, semi-villainous, anti-heroic or super flawed characters can’t canonically be objects of desire, victims, or both. Many, in fact, are.

So then, maybe half of the description of this trope should really be scrapped, and it’s all just about downplaying the flaws of villainous characters?

But that doesn’t fit either, because quite a few of the characters listed on this page either did not remain villains and eventually became heroes (Faith and Spike, for instance - and heck, even Darth Vader got last minute redemption) or simply aren’t and have never been villains. In fact, several of these - such as the Doctor, Sarah Connor or MCU Tony Stark - are definitely heroes and protagonists of their stories. Flawed heroes are still heroes. RDJ’s Tony Stark is clearly meant to be super flawed and occasionally annoying, but still likable, and certainly heroic. Others aren’t heroic, but are clearly not meant to be disliked by the audience, in spite of their shitty behavior (e.g. Barney from HIMYM). 

In fact, people who wrote some of these entries even admit that the character they think is a Draco in Leather Pants is “a heroic example” or “a good person deep down” - which contradicts what the trope is supposed to be about. Some entries are even complaining about the treatment of said characters not by fandom, but in the actual canon - which, again, completely contradicts what the description says the trope is all about (Misaimed Fandom).

OK, maybe listing heroic or other non-villainous characters does not contradict the description - because it says “controversial or downright villainous character”? But a controversial character is simply one that polarizes opinions. It’s usually pretty clear which characters are supposed to be villainous, but any character can be controversial. For instance, someone has listed Sarah Connor and said that people see her as “flawless icon of feminism” and then proceeded to criticize her character flaws - but someone else replied that many people may actually see the character as feminist exactly because she’s a heroine who is flawed and complex, rather than a flawless paragon of anything, and that it’s great to see female characters allowed to be flawed heroes, just like male characters so often are.

How do you actually separate the controversial from the non-controversial characters? If a bunch of people think a character is smart and awesome, and a bunch of others think the same character is stupid and annoying, that’s a controversial character. But do these groups have to be roughly the same in size for a character to be controversial? How many people in fandom need to hold one or the other opinion? Is Dawn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer a controversial character, or just an unpopular one? Many people often go about how hated she was, but I know quite a few BtVS fans who love Dawn.

And even if we agree on that, well - whether people are “downplaying” a character’s flaws is pretty debatable in itself, isn’t it? Yes, sometimes people ignore canon flaws or bad actions of their faves in fanfiction or fandom debates. But what if some fans acknowledge that their faves are flawed and have done shitty things, but insist that they also have good traits and the bad doesn’t outweigh the good, or even simply that they still like them in spite of all? Someone else who hates that character and thinks that they’re the Worst Ever and pretty much the closest thing to Antichrist may say that they are “downplaying their flaws”. But the other party may reply that it’s in fact the hater who’s overplaying their flaws. It’s not really an exact science - and that’s exactly what makes a character controversial. 

And, well, if the point of the trope is to complain that there are different and opposing opinions about controversial characters, in other words, that there’s controversy about controversial characters... well, duh? 

So, at the end of this analysis that’s probably way too long... I’m even more confused than I was at the beginning. I’d really appreciate it if someone would help me understand what this trope is about, if it’s even a trope, and why it’s called what it’s called. Is it supposed to be about:

complaining about characters that aren’t supposed to be sexy /desirable/ appealing in canon, but some rather sizable portion of the fandom treats them as if they were? (Which would be the one explanation that would fit the name of the trope.)

complaining about characters that aren’t victimized/don’t suffer in canon, but some reasonably large portion of the fandom treats them as if they are?

complaining about characters that fit both of the above, at the same time?

complaining about characters that are villainous, but a lot of people like them and sympathize with them anyway (regardless of whether the canon offers them material for that)?

complaining about the fact that authors of some canon works like to make their villains complex and somewhat sympathetic or give them heartbreaking moments and tragic backstories?

not being upset with canon for giving villains heartbreaking moments and  tragic backstories, but complaining anyway about the fact that a lot of fans sympathize with them, because you think that fandom should be stronger than that and bravely resist the authors’ attempts to elicit sympathy for bad people?

complaining about the fact that authors of some canon works portray their villains/antagonists as desirable and try to make them into sex symbols?

complaining about the fact that they’ve actually succeeded in that, which upsets you because you think that fans should all be morally stronger and be able to resists for the authors’ blatant fanservice and sexualization of morally corrupt characters?

just an umbrella term for people’s tendency to downplay or ignore their favorite characters’ flaws (which may apply to not just to villains, but to any character who has any flaws or has done something wrong or morally dubious)?

merely an excuse to bitch about the fact that, shockingly, there are some fans who have a different opinion than you and like a character that you strongly dislike?

[jonni-vaaramo-blog]

// important ooc message part 1

Browsing finnish cdon.com and seeing how people who searched for "monsters university" bought the first and the second season of Game of Thrones.

i am afraid.