Beloved mentor turns out to be bad?

[cimorene]

I've been thinking about this as a central trope and kinda wanting to write something with that, though I don't have any characters in mind.

But it occurred to me belatedly that I can't think of that many examples of what I'm talking about:

• Batman and Ra's al Ghul, at least in Batman Begins


• Dumbledore in HP, kind of, but this is arguable because it doesn't seem fully intended (understood?) by the text/author


• Dooku (in Star Wars) doesn't really work because all the mentoring happened off screen and he wasn't significant to the heroes before his introduction as villain. Besides, it's Qui-Gon who was his protege, and he's already dead.


• The wizard in The Riddle-Master of Hed books has the right vibe, but maybe he's not present and interacting with the plot enough prior to the revelation.

Now I'm thinking any this I'm pretty sure I've tried asking for other examples before. But no matter how I cudgel my brains, I can't seem to turn up any in my knowledge of media fandom and media sff. And that seems weird!

Comments

[alexseanchai]

there's sort of an instance in Miraculous Ladybug, but not really for the same reason Dooku and Qui-Gon is not really, and also we only heard about that teacher-student relationship from the teacher and Much Later; the student (who was Our Heroine's old and wise mentor for two seasons and has since got magic amnesia) has never mentioned any of his teachers by name, so we don't know if he loved this man, we only know he blames himself for [what he thought was] the lot of them dying. and we have negative reason to believe this man is on Team Villain, but he has done absolutely nothing to help Our Heroes (despite insisting they're subject to his authority, for reasons Our Heroine buys but Our Hero is real iffy on) and only some of that can be attributed to he's having trouble adjusting to the last couple centuries of tech developments, and from his own account of teaching her-teacher-as-a-teen, that he hasn't tried to teach Our Heroes means they're much happier than they would be if he had.

there's also one hell of a missed opportunity for this in Miraculous Ladybug. the series villain, in his civilian life, is a leader in the career field Our Heroine wants to enter. in season 2 or 3, maybe even 1, he could have taken her under his wing career-wise and then, when Our Heroes inevitably defeat the supervillain and discover that he's both Our Hero's father and Our Heroine's beloved mentor… but it's too late for canon to pull this off convincingly, I'm pretty sure, she's too aware of how he treats his son to want to work with him anymore

[cimorene]

Lol that sounds... no, tbh, I got lost there. Anime plots are frequently convoluted, I know.

[princessofgeeks]

The Wonder Woman movie!

[cimorene]

That was a cool reveal, but he doesn't have enough onscreen time doing mentoring.

[viggorlijah]

It requires a certain blindness in the student to not realise their mentor is evil, or a very deliberate double life for the mentor. In RL there are lots of outstanding men in their fields who are serial harassers and worse, and quasi cult people who dazzle their admirers in order to control them. But in fiction - for some reason I’m thinking of Goldfinch and Tam Lin as academic examples, though I’m not sure they fit.

There’s a significant difference to discovering your mentor is a nasty human but has been selectively kind and helpful to you - quite common - or discovering your mentor has been corrupting you on purpose for a scheme. I feel like Le Carré would be excellent for the second!

[cimorene]

That's true, of course. I guess the idea I'm thinking of theoretically writing is a reveal that the mentor, apparently earnestly believing they acted in everyone's best interests, turns out to have been participating in some horrible propaganda or coverup or something like that. I haven't managed to put together any coherent set of details. But I suppose it's like a combination of the first and second, the idea that it's quite sinister and knowingly done but they think it's for the best because they're brainwashed, or because they choose to believe rather than face the truth about themselves, something like that.

[redthedragon]

there's the Iron Man 2 movie, where Tony Stark and his uncle/business associate tries to have him killed for money; not sure i that quite fits the bill. the mentoring is also offscreen for most of this one

[cimorene]

I mean, Obie tries to kill him in the first IM movie, but I wouldn't count it because he isn't a solidly established important parental figure first; he's there a bit and he seems, like, sympathetic and a bit benevolent at best, not really a mentor.

[hebethen]

These are all kinda sidewise really, I think a lot of it is that the audience can quite clearly see the mentor is bad, but the protagonist is the one who doesn't see:

- New She-Ra has it ish in that sidewise way

- The Unspoken Name has this, again more obvious to the reader than the hero although it's not necessarily kid's-cartoon obvious. Bonus: lbh pbhyq nethr fur unf GJB rivy zragbef! And since that's more offscreen maybe it's more of a surprise? So between them...

- Since we're in this space, could Harrow the Ninth count for this? It's weird because she comes from a place of reverence more than loving trust to be broken, but there's *something* there...

I feel like there's a very straight-up, core-of-the-story example of this somewhere that I know but I can't REMEMBER it and it is driving me up the wall now. Whoops. Well, I shall sleep on it.

[cimorene]

I don't think I can comment on any of these. I vaguely intend to read these Harrow books after the series is finished or... something like that. I had not heard of The Unspoken Name before.

I hated [season one of] the She-Ra reboot so violently it gives me metaphorical hives, but I remember that it made Shadow Weaver at least more obviously evil through the addition of lots of flashbacks, where originally there was a very limited amount of interaction with her or Hordak before Adora joins the rebellion. Textbook abusive parenting definitely doesn't qualify. And in the original She-Ra, we later find out that the person Adora was most attached to was a nanny, so it's plausible that they were merely distant and not present and perpetrating psychological abuse.

[vass]

Seconding A.K. Larkwood's The Unspoken Name as a possible example of this trope. The evil mentor (well, one of them) gets a lot of time on-page manipulating his mentees into accepting his self-justifying bullshit.

It stars an orc lesbian fighter, and the evil mentor is an elf wizard, if that's any enticement. Also snakes. Big snakes. It's book 1 of a two book series, now complete.

I love the Locked Tomb (Harrow et al) books and highly recommend them, but I don't think they're what you're looking for with this specific trope. Or... actually kind of yes, and if the book was written from a different character's point of view I'd say definitely yes, but as it is the vibe isn't really what you're describing. It's less "I found out my PhD advisor sacrifices baby seals on his dark altar!" and more "why won't my PhD advisor ever give me advice on my dissertation or mediate in my (actually extremely serious) workplace conflicts? (also he seems to be sacrificing some baby seals on some sort of dark altar, but I never really expected him not to?)" Whereas for Zrepl naq Nhthfgvar it's more like "Lbh zrna nyy guvf gvzr jr QVQA'G UNIR GB FNPEVSVPR GUBFR ONOL FRNYF? Jr pbhyq unir qbar YVGRENYYL NALGUVAT RYFR?"

[cimorene]

Um, is this keyboardsmash sentence/quotation some kind of... meme?

[aurumcalendula]

I think it's spoilerly stuff in ROT13?

[vass]

That's ROT13. You can copy and paste it here to automatically decypher it, or here's a decryption key if you're incredibly bored and want to do it by hand:

ABCDEFGHIJKLN
MOPQRSTUVWXYZ

(A=M, B=O etc, and also M=A and O=B etc.)

People have been using it as a cypher since at least the first century BC, and as spoilertext on the internet since the 80s.

[cimorene]

Ahh, okay, thanks. Interesting!

[spark]

Hmmm I agree it does seem weird. The chief of police in The Big Easy?

[cimorene]

Wax knows this movie, but I haven't seen it. Too old I guess!

[aurumcalendula]

Off the top of my head, Sun Li in the video game Jade Empire and Jade Fox in the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

I feel like it's a trope that shows up in wuxia stories.

[cimorene]

Oh that makes sense! I haven't seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for a really long time.

[laurajv]

Does Saruman's heel turn in The Lord of the Rings count? It's never been clear to me if he's in a mentoring role but I suspect there's at least SOME aspects of mentoring in it

but you're right, I feel like this is a major trope and yet I'm struggling to think of examples

[laurajv]

tvtropes.org suggests that the Treacherous Advisor trope might be more suited to what you are looking for than Evil Mentor, as Evil Mentor is up-front and Treacherous Advisor is hiding their activity?

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TreacherousAdvisor

idk.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilMentor

[cimorene]

Good call! I went their list, but I didn't really get any more good examples there either. Lots of marginal situations and ones from media I don't roll with. However, the explanations were still interesting.

[cimorene]

Yeah kinda, he's definitely good, but he's not on the page interacting with people in a trustworthy manner for all that long first.

[bonibaru]

I was just peeking in here to see if anyone had said this. It mostly happens offscreen/retelling, but I think it should qualify.

[conuly]

If we're making a list of things JKR doesn't seem to understand about the world she wrote, we'll be here all day. Dumbledore is, in the end, very "ends justify the means", which... well, that may not make him bad, per se, but he's certainly not a good mentor.

[cimorene]

Lol, yeah, I wouldn't start doing that. It's more that I don't think Dumbledore or Harry conceptualize the use he makes of Harry and the other children as betrayal at all. Without that emotional journey for the former protégé, the theme won't appear.

[conuly]

You know, now that you mention it, I don't know why there aren't more fics about Harry realizing how toxic that mentor/mentee relationship was without going into straight-up Dumbledore bashing. Like, we can agree that it was bad without having to say "Also, he deliberately arranged for the Dursleys to abuse Harry, and did war crimes, and was transphobic, and...." at the same time.

What's on the page is bad enough.

[angelangel3]

The thing about Dumbledore, to me that is, is that there are some great fics where the author just totally trashes him but in a way that uses the text against him...if that makes sense. Anyway, I can't think of anyone in particular besides him.

[conuly]

Any chance you can rec some of those fics?

[angelangel3]

I will see if I can find them again! It's been awhile but I'm always happy to share recs when I can. :D

[cimorene]

Yeah, I can't really think of any off the top of my head, but like, at least SOME greater awareness has appeared fairly frequently in the HP I've read, to some degree or other. You could definitely get the impression if you mostly interacted with Harry Potter through like... Harry/Draco and... what other pairings have I read in recent years, idk, like, Albus/Scorpius at least? - that fandom had started to process it all and generally recognize that Dumbledore Did Bad. I definitely enjoy a good takedown of him and I've read a few... but it does often feel OOC for Harry and Ron and Hermione at least to be realistic about that.

[bonibaru]

I am thinking of the protagonist and The Other in Piranesi.

[cimorene]

Oh, that's a pretty good point. At least when I was reading it, it kind of felt like The Other was a partner and sort of an equal at first, although it was also clear that The Other knew a lot more than the protagonist - and was considered trustworthy, so kind of both I guess.

[bonibaru]

Yes, this relies heavily on the protagonist having been [spoilered] into blank naivety to achieve the endresult.

[bonibaru]

My partner just yelled "Gordon Gekko" from the kitchen lol

[cimorene]

So going by Google this guy is a typical Wall Street guy? Seems fake that anybody would assume one of them would be trustworthy in any way, but I guess some financial crashes have proven that some people do.

[bonibaru]

Ah but the movie is from 1987 when Wall Street was where everybody wanted to be (I am being told now from the living room)

[cimorene]

Well, I know it was pretty trendy at the time, but at the same time, the word "yuppie" was already derogatory and I'm pretty sure there was already a recession happening...but I'll allow "everyone" as "the mainstream" (not including the pernanently angry progressives like my parents).