Draco in Leather Pants/Literature/Harry Potter: Difference between revisions

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* Draco Malfoy is the [[Trope Namer]]. Even though he's a [[Smug Snake|smug]] [[Spoiled Brat]] [[Dirty Coward]] who only feels confident behind his burly cronies, fans like to paint him as a sexy and sensitive guy. He ''does'' get a little better by ''Half-Blood Prince'' and even becomes somewhat of a [[Jerkass Woobie]], but he's still far from nice, and never canonically lives up to the [[Estrogen Brigade Bait]] treatment by his fans.

** Some fanfics get a little ridiculous, [[Crack Pairing|pairing Draco with the most unlikely people]]. Several have paired him with ''Hermione''!

** Several? Draco/Hermione romance stories on Fanfiction.net outnumber Ron/Hermione, Harry/Hermione or Harry/Ginny stories by a substantial margin, which may demonstrate just how popular this trope is.

*** Hermione is certainly not the least likely pairing Draco has found himself in in fanon. Try Harry, or Hagrid.

** This was thoroughly mocked in the ''[[Potter Puppet Pals]]'' episode "Draco Puppet", where Harry responds to the numerous fan requests to introduce a Puppet Pal Draco. Having established that he's doing this, Harry spends the rest of the video in [[Sarcasm Mode]] as he introduces us to our new puppet friend:

'''Harry:''' What a wonderful person! }}

** A good possible explanation for Draco's fandom is [[Tom Felton]]'s portrayal of the character, especially in Half-Blood Prince, as well as possible [[Adaptational Attractiveness]].

** At the end of ''Deathly Hallows'', Draco at the very end appears to have {{spoiler|reformed and become the responsible parent of a Hogwarts student}}.

* [[J. K. Rowling]] has [[Word of God|spoken out]] against people who dare to suggest Draco/Voldemort aren't as horrible as she insists they are. Significant parts of Book 6 are meant as [[Take That|Take Thats]] against those people. For example, Tom lived in an orphanage all right (just like [[Little Orphan Annie]]), but the most horrible thing in said orphanage was... [[Creepy Child|Himself]]. He used his magic to bully other kids and was feared both by them and by the staff. It is clear that he was never a good guy...

* ''[[My Immortal]]'', in addition to fitting this Trope to a T, at one point does, in fact, feature Draco in leather pants.

** Naturally, ''My Immortal'' takes this to an absurd degree. So many fanfics portray Draco as a sensitive guy, basically the opposite of his canon personality, that it's a cliché in itself, but ''My Immortal'' goes so far as to make him so ridiculously needy that it seems he would fall straight into [[Wangst]] without encouraging words from <s> Ebony</s> [[Mary Sue|Enoby]]. The most (in)famous fanfic example is probably [[The Draco Trilogy]]. See that work's page for more.

* Bellatrix Lestrange. But that may be related to [[Helena Bonham Carter]]'s [[Monty Python and the Holy Grail|huge tracts of land]].

** And the "feminist fangirls" who refer to Bellatrix as a "role model" because she {{spoiler|almost kills a young girl and then mocks her very pissed off [[Mama Bear]] upon both that and the death of one of her sons. And then they bash said mother for killing their Bella and calling her "moo bitch".}} Never mind that Bellatrix is a [[Yandere]] who only has eyes for a man who doesn't give a damn for her, or that she's said that if she had kids she'd sacrifice them to Voldemort, or that {{spoiler|she was among the Death Eaters that tortured Neville Longbottom's parents into insanity}} -- she's a "super great feminist" for bashing motherhood. [[Sarcasm Mode|Which doesn't have any]] [[Unfortunate Implications]].

*** To be fair, not all Bellatrix "feminist" fangirls are quite as far-gone as the examples here; the main complaint seems to be that she's the only major female character who doesn't end up having a family, and the way this is used to contrast her with her sisters and with Molly Weasley. It's still inaccurate; McGonagall isn't a mother or wife either and, as her ''Pottermore'' material explains {{spoiler|she did turn down a chance at marital bliss with her childhood sweetheart because it would have come at the expense of her career in magic, and when she was briefly married later, she elected to keep her maiden name}}. And the "love and family are more important than ambition" message is hammered just as hard with the male characters; it's one of the major things dividing Harry and Voldemort, for instance. Besides, implying that a "good" feminist female character should be a [[Celibate Hero]] comes with [[Real Women Never Wear Dresses|its own set]] of [[Unfortunate Implications]], and it's not like all the mother characters were housewives like Molly was. {{spoiler|Hermione and Ginny end up as the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and a famed Quidditch player/writer, respectively, along with getting married and having kids.}}

* Inadvertently done in the film adaptations with Narcissa Malfoy, mainly due to the Quidditch Cup (which established her as well-bred yet unpleasant and elitist) being cut. Her first appearance, in Half-Blood Prince, is now entirely sympathetic--that of a terrified mother attempting to keep her only son from getting killed.

* Salazar Slytherin had a dream... a dream that one day, an adequately racist and motivated student would find the secret underground chamber he built to house a deadly basilisk and use it to mass-murder his Muggle-born classmates. And some fans would have you believe that's just dandy. (This one has actually been done well in some cases -- Slytherin lived at least a thousand years before the series takes place and conceivably could have been the victim of an in-universe [[Historical Villain Upgrade]].)

** It helps that the series implies that he wasn't ''always'' a "twisted old loony". In fact, according to the Sorting Hat, he and Godric Gryffindor had once been the best of friends.

*** The thing is that the books make it clear that Muggle "persecution" was never anything actual wizards couldn't deal with -- the only people who were hurt in witch hunts were other Muggles. And in the present day of the books, it's unequivocally the wizards who hold all the cards and can get away with abusing Muggles if so inclined and, within wizarding culture, the purebloods who are privileged and the Muggleborns who are discriminated against. Fanon likes to reverse this state of affairs, whether because it goes against the expected [[Cool Loser]]/[[All of the Other Reindeer]] characterization of the misunderstood hero's secret underground community, because they think that if wizards are a literal minority then they must a political minority too, or just because of this trope. Whatever the motive, it takes a lot of finagling to pull off reframing the whole history of magic in a way that doesn't blatantly contradict the books, and [[Sturgeon's Law|not a lot of people bother with that]].

* Severus Snape gets put in leather pants a ''lot'' by fangirls. There are the ones who want to know him carnally, and ''then'' there's the fans who have blamed Lily for Snape calling her "Mudblood", or even tried to justify it and deny its connections to real-world racism. Ah, and they also bash ''Lily'' for "not being a good friend" (aka, refusing to become Snape's [[Extreme Doormat]] [[Love Martyr]]) to the guy who called her racial epithets.

** Snape's fanfic reputation is somewhat generated by his [[Woobie]] status. Basically, his entire life has sucked, and the only good thing in his life, Lily, was murdered and he was largely responsible for it. His [[Heel Face Turn]] is based solely on this one point. Those inclined to put him in leather pants ignore that Snape did not care one bit about Lily's son being murdered as long as Voldemort did not kill her too, and that even after she was murdered, he continued to not only not care about Harry (Beyond what was ordered of him) but actively hate and abuse him. That he cared more that Harry was James' son, rather than that he was Lily's son does not speak well for, as Voldemort puts it, "Snape's supposed great love."

** Of additional note is that in the films, the negative aspects of Snape's friendship with Lily are omitted.

* Also, Petunia Dursley. Yes, the [[Jerkass]] [[Resentful Guardian]] and [[Stepford Smiler]] that abused Harry ever since he went to live with her family, is sometimes shown as a poor victim "bullied" and "insulted" by her "stupid and snobbish" sister Lily, thus she "can't help" but hate Harry and blame him for "[[Sins of Our Fathers|Lily's sins]]".

* In the case of the Dursleys, both Rowling and the fandom agrees that Vernon is the least sympathetic of the three. Rowling never gives him a [[Freudian Excuse]] and fanfics often portray him as a [[Complete Monster]]. However, while the fans seem to consider Petunia the most sympathetic Dursley, Rowling seems to consider that to be ''Dudley'', feeling that his actions were the result of bad parenting. Prior to the end of the series, fans guessed that Petunia would eventually apologize to Harry, but, to the surprise of many, it was ''Dudley'' who apologized while Petunia only got an implied [[Ignored Epiphany]].

** Dumbledore himself considered Dudley pitiful and called out his parents for raising him the way they did - as a selfish, entitled bully that thought he could get away with anything until he was a teenager.

* Barty Crouch, Jr. due to being played by [[David Tennant]] in the movie and having a [[Tragic Villain]] [[Backstory]] in the book. Sometimes he gets paired with characters nearly twenty years younger than him like Hermione or Luna.