EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Ahh, Draco In Leather Pants. One of the tropes I dislike most in all of fiction, alongside its inverted twin, Ron The Death Eater.
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D&D General When (or can) the fiction overrides the DM?
- Thread starter MichaelSomething
- Start date
GMforPowergamers
Legend
as funny as some takes are... "Magneto was right" and "Cyclops was right" both are movements about readers thinking the 'wrong side' had the right idea in comics (and this is before the huge can of worms call Civil War)
GMforPowergamers
Legend
may I ask why?
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I got distracted looking up other things, so I'll note here that I (only just) edited that post to include the trope's reverse twin, Ron the Death Eater, so I'll explain both.
I dislike DILP because it's willful blindness. It's making excuses for unrepentant jerks (or, frequently, much worse), glamorizing characters who do terrible things, and covering up, denying, or whitewashing their deeds. This is done, in the vast majority of cases, because the character is either (a) physically attractive, (b) perceived as having a (TVTropes term) "Freudian Excuse" or being the universe's butt monkey, or (c) more interesting than other characters because they get more freedom of characterization. (This third point is also often why the "lancer" character in a given work is often more popular than the hero character.)
If an author wishes to have a character that merits this kind of treatment, they should write that character. E.g. Prince Zuko from ATLA. He's a prime-time ultra-sympathetic character practically from the minute he's introduced, and the writing for his character earns forgiveness for his past deeds and shows, in almost painful detail, exactly how much he struggles to change his ways. DILP takes that whole process and says, "Nah, I'm just gonna pretend this terrible person did all of that. And then give them the smooches they truly deserve." It's not just a matter of ruining villainous characters, either; the DILP trope wishes away the consequences of wicked deeds. As someone who passionately believes in the power of fiction as a tool to teach moral lessons, applying Draco In Leather Pants to a character who has done wrong and needs to be called out is not just missing the point, but actively trying to subvert it.
I dislike RTDE for exactly the same reasons, just reversed. Instead of character whitewashing, it's character assassination. It turns flawed but otherwise good people into horrible monsters, often for no reason other than so a particular relationship can work out as desired by a fan (or, to be more specific, as desired by a fanfic author.) Where DILP ruins villains, whitewashing evil and subverting any value that can be obtained from the moral implications of a work, RTDE ruins heroes, turning minor or passing faults into unforgivable sins and poisoning the examples we should learn from or even aspire to.
When combined (as they often, but not always, are), this results in a warped world where egregious villainy is excused, often for petty and selfish reasons, while minor imperfections are inflated into eternal damnation. It entrenches a narrative of forgiving the beautiful and punishing the imperfect. I hope I don't have to explain why that particular ideology is a problem.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good redemption arc, and well-written antivillains are some of my favorite characters ever (I love Mr. Freeze, for example, absolutely my favorite Batman villain.) I also appreciate, though don't quite "love," a good corruption arc. If the temptation is real, then at least some of the time, it should actually succeed at tempting! Likewise, I appreciate it when characters are nuanced: a hero who has done bad things in the past but is committed to her new life, a villain who has very good reasons for being upset but still does horrible things. (I play FFXIV, I kinda have to like villains like that.) But it ultimately cashes out as "cool motive, still murder."
If an author wishes to have a character that merits this kind of treatment, they should write that character. E.g. Prince Zuko from ATLA. He's a prime-time ultra-sympathetic character practically from the minute he's introduced, and the writing for his character earns forgiveness for his past deeds and shows, in almost painful detail, exactly how much he struggles to change his ways. DILP takes that whole process and says, "Nah, I'm just gonna pretend this terrible person did all of that. And then give them the smooches they truly deserve." It's not just a matter of ruining villainous characters, either; the DILP trope wishes away the consequences of wicked deeds. As someone who passionately believes in the power of fiction as a tool to teach moral lessons, applying Draco In Leather Pants to a character who has done wrong and needs to be called out is not just missing the point, but actively trying to subvert it.
I dislike RTDE for exactly the same reasons, just reversed. Instead of character whitewashing, it's character assassination. It turns flawed but otherwise good people into horrible monsters, often for no reason other than so a particular relationship can work out as desired by a fan (or, to be more specific, as desired by a fanfic author.) Where DILP ruins villains, whitewashing evil and subverting any value that can be obtained from the moral implications of a work, RTDE ruins heroes, turning minor or passing faults into unforgivable sins and poisoning the examples we should learn from or even aspire to.
When combined (as they often, but not always, are), this results in a warped world where egregious villainy is excused, often for petty and selfish reasons, while minor imperfections are inflated into eternal damnation. It entrenches a narrative of forgiving the beautiful and punishing the imperfect. I hope I don't have to explain why that particular ideology is a problem.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good redemption arc, and well-written antivillains are some of my favorite characters ever (I love Mr. Freeze, for example, absolutely my favorite Batman villain.) I also appreciate, though don't quite "love," a good corruption arc. If the temptation is real, then at least some of the time, it should actually succeed at tempting! Likewise, I appreciate it when characters are nuanced: a hero who has done bad things in the past but is committed to her new life, a villain who has very good reasons for being upset but still does horrible things. (I play FFXIV, I kinda have to like villains like that.) But it ultimately cashes out as "cool motive, still murder."
Which, I suppose, presents another example here. If you write a villain, you can't just turn around and then declare that they're sympathetic and just...have that be true. Because that's really bad writing, and because the people who decide whether the villain is sympathetic or not are the players, not you. Instead of just fiat declaring it, you need to build up to it, as the writers of ATLA did with Zuko. It needs to be a process, an unveiling, a planting of seeds that will only flower much later.
GMforPowergamers
Legend
thank you for your insight
I never said the BBEG couldn't be redeemable. It's happened in my game. However, the NPC wasn't redeemed because the players just decided one day that they were really good, they were redeemed because of the interactions of the PCs and the NPC over the course of many (in-world) years. The NPC was actually a lot like Draco and because of the PC's interactions they finally rejected the indoctrination they had been raised in.
There's a difference between the players changing the fiction of the world by just declaring what the new fiction is and the PC influencing others around them and BBEG not being 1-dimensiol cartoon villains that cannot change.
GMforPowergamers
Legend
Magneto was right
Cyclops was right
What do you do when you make a villain and the PCs say "No, he's right, maybe a bit rougher then we like, but lets go talk to and join him"?
The ends doesn't justify the means. You can argue that Thanos was right, that didn't give him the right to end the lives of half the population.
GMforPowergamers
Legend
you are side stepping... if the PCs join thanos's black order then what?
Then in my campaign they become NPCs because they have decided that supporting an evil plan is a good idea. Things can get complicated. People can make mistakes. Sometimes there is no good solution. But the ends justifies the means as an excuse to knowingly commit evil is not something I support in my game for PCs because I have a no evil PC policy.
Also has nothing to do with the thread topic.
