(no subject)

[heidi]

Vintage January 3, 2001

Character Summary: Draco Malfoy
aka
"TooSexyToDieGuy"
========================================
Name: Draco Malfoy

Age: We don't know if he's older or younger than Harry, but as they are
the same year, he was born in either 1979 or 1980, and is 10 or 11 when
he first appears, in Madame Malkin's shop

Description: Blond, light grey eyes, pointy features, sneers a lot, well
dressed, or at least wealthily dressed. He has floppy hair on the
Mystery at Hogwarts card, at least in silhouette. Believed by many
fanfiction writers, teenage witches and grown women to look good in
leather.

Job: Student, Slytherin House
Slytherin Seeker, 2nd year forward

Personality: Very sarcastic, witty (yes, it's canon - his comment about
the blast ended skrewts is, at least), pretty good mimic (immitates
Colin in CoA), bigot (CoA. The whole book.), most likely at least
semi-smart (In the KNockturn Alley scene in CoA, lucius implies that he
expected Draco to be top of the class but he was trumped by Hermione),
sucks up to Snape (CoA, while Dumbledore is suspended), violent streak
(although there is some argument that when he "tried" to curse Harry in
GoF, he was just trying to get his attention & missed on purpose),
cowardly streak (ran from Voldemort in PS/SS)

Special abilities:

* Can be transformed into a ferret in a single bound
* Pretty good in potions
* Keeps up on the news of the outside world (he's always
the one with newspapers & magazines in his hands)
* Good seeker. 3rd year, he has a 3-1 record, and likely only
lost to Harry because Harry had a faster broom.

Obsessions:

Harry Potter. The times we see Draco when he doesn't know Harry is
there, namely the Slytherin Common Room scene of CoS, and in Knockturn
Alley, he doesn't stop talking about Harry

Good qualities:

Just because we haven't seen them in the text doesn't mean they're not
there. Or something like that.

Relationships:

Took Pansy Parkinson to the Yule Ball
Son of Lucius & Narcissa Malfoy
Fanfiction pairs him with Hermione and Pansy on a regular basis, one
story paired him with Professor Sinistra, and slash stories pair him
with Harry, Ron, occasionally Snape and once, for some reason, Neville

Questions:
1. Is Draco sexy?
2. Is Draco redeemable?
3. Does he have any friends? I don't mean flunkies or minders, I mean
someone who he can have a conversation with. If not, could he?

---

4. Professor Snape seems to trust him. In book 4, Snape accepts
Malfoy's statement about what happened when he & harry were trying to
curse each other. *IF* you believe that Snape has Dumbledore and the
Old Crowd's best interests at heart, it is possible that he would
support a completely evil and unredeemable Draco, in the interest of
getting Draco to change his ways and be on Snape's side, but it is
equally probable that Snape does not see Draco as being completely
evil and unredeemable *at this point*. If he's not unredeemable, then
it is possible that redemption and a turning away from Lucius and the
Death Eaters (tm) will happen in the future.
I recommend going to post 8471 and reading the replies to that post, including Caius's, Cassie's, Susan McGee's and owlman's. And this is a moment when we all should pause and sing folk's filk.

Now, the issue of right and wrong and stuff. I have heard tell (although I haven't read it myself, having read a random 400 or so posts of the last 1500 on my flist) that there are R/Hr shippers who have been recorded as saying that Ron and Hermione were snogging throughout book 4 or at least book 5 or would, at a minimum, be snogging *during* Book Six that all those who shipped either of those people with anyone else (except, arguably Lav Lav and Vik Vik) should admit they were wrong and didn't read the signs in the books properly, but, of course, anyone who actually thought that there was snogging between the two in Book Five was just as wrong. Right? And those who prophesized after Book Four that Harry and Ginny were soulmates and would shortly fall in lurve and lurve happily ever after but for the interference of You Know Who were also, er, wrong.

In other words, none of us predicted 100% what she was going to do. None of us have a clear line to her brain, and none of us should be slammed or laughed at or criticized for not being accurate with our predictions.

So I'm going to quote lupinslittlesis on this (although, unlike her, I am perfectly at peace with R/T) and leave it at that, for now:

I feel like I'm expected to be embarrassed or repentent or sorry about loving R/S and not liking R/T. I'm being told they're JKR's characters, and she is Goddess, and if she wants to write it that way, she can. Well, I'm NOT sorry I love R/S, or that I'm not crazy about R/T. Sure, she's got the right to write it any way she wants, but I've got the right to say "that didn't work for me." Given that I'm willing to say I LOVED the rest of the book, and this didn't ruin HBP for me, or the Harry Potter series, I don't see why it's such a big deal that I thought she hashed up one of her minor subplots, but there you go.

You can fill in whatever ship name you want in the above, right?

Comments

[mmichelle.livejournal.com]

So very well put. I feel like bitchslapping half of the shippers on my flist, but then saying that doesn't seem far to the not-gloating r/hr's and the not-whiney h/hr's.

but basically:

In other words, none of us predicted 100% what she was going to do.

that is just perfectly put. :x

[mmichelle.livejournal.com]

but then saying that doesn't seem far

er, doesn't seem fair, not 'far.'

[junesrose.livejournal.com]

You know, I've been trying to avoid lj like the plague till I'm completely done with HBP (sorry, but son#1's room took priority), but obviously, didn't. And, at this moment, I love you dearly for this post. Thankyou.

[no-remorse.livejournal.com]

If I had know that blind adoration for Rowling and her work is a minimum requirement for reading her work I wouldn't have touched a HP book with a ten-feet pole.

Seriously, no author is above criticism. No author's work is above being disliked by individual readers. I, for once, dislike Sense and Sensibility. I know it's Jane Bleeping Austen. And I still don't like it, big deal.

If someone seriously expects me to pay Rowling a courtesy I don't pay Austen - blind adoration - then they must be smoking something really powerful.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

Hee! Well, I think some people mistook the fandom for a cult when they signed in, and you're not allowed to criticise in one of those... ;-)

[flyby.livejournal.com]

Haha. Yeah, I think HP fandom has a lot more of that kind of attitude than others I've been involved in. There's a huge, huge sense of You Must Conform To Canon that really doesn't seem to exist elsewhere.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I have discussed with people at various times why this seems to be the case, and after five plus years in the fandom, all I can say is, it probably is due to a combination of HPfGU being Only Canon Please Dammit, Sugarquill being canon thumpers and even my site, FA, asking people to adhere to canon facts - but by that, FA means things like eye colour and the house one is sorted into, not personality issues. And I think it's a bigger thing than it should be, and to be honest, most of those who've been in the fandom four years or more aren't as strident about it.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the "Author is God" mentality is pretty foreign for me too, it didn't exist anywhere near to the same extent in my previous fandoms. But then again, those fandoms were for TV shows, and this one is for a book. I do believe that has something to do with it. A book series (at least like this one, where she's said there will only be seven ones) tend to be more planned out from the beginning, and more importantly it only has one author. So the author of the book series is, in that way, much more of a "god" than one for TV shows are. How is it with your other fandoms? One author or more? Planned out from the beginning or indefinite?

[flyby.livejournal.com]

Mostly anime and manga fandoms - single authors, though, and very much planned; none of my fandoms are open-ended canon, I don't think. Hmm. The difference might be that where a series has an anime and a manga, or whatever, there are differing versions of the canon (and some of them differ very significantly, too). But then the HP books and films do differ some, as well, and nobody really takes movie canon seriously. Huh. I guess all the animanga fandoms that I'm in tend to take canon as more of a jumping-off point than a strict set of rules, really; we feel freer to make small changes to canon in fic, and write outside strict timeline. It's the kind of 'all fic is AU, so a little more AUness doesn't matter so much' attitude, I suppose. Actually, now that I think of it, it helps that there's a strong tradition of canon-AU in animanga history - omake and AU episodes and stuff.

[cadetsandkings.livejournal.com]

D'accord.

Uh. I hope that's right.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I've found myself doing many two-word replies these days, too. Something about occasionally being just overwhelmed...

[hedwig-snowy.livejournal.com]

Sorry, was this person upset because JKR made some sort of logic/editorial error by not following the guidelines from previous books or is she upset that JKR isn't writing the book SHE thinks JKR should write? If I am reading this right...since JKR didn't write a gay romance because between Remus and Sirius and instead she wrote the Remus/Tonks relationship... JKR somehow screwed up because this person KNEW it was the other way around???

It would seem perfectly reasonable to WISH something would be written differently (certainly the biggee in this one comes to mind), but I can't really say, "Hey, that doesn't work for me. Go back and write it again!" LOL

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

No, it's that people have posted, re R/T, "Haha, well that's two fingers up to you, R/S shippers!" when (a) it's not, given that Sirius is dead and future romance between him and Remus is thus limited, and (b) at least some people who are saying things like that are those who, over the last few years, have said that (i) there would never be R/S because JKR would be cricified for writing gay characters* and/or (ii) the idea of gay wizards is ewwwwwwwwwww.


* Of course, that biographer and his "friend" had a certain ring to me, but I doubt the nine year olds pick up on it

[hedwig-snowy.livejournal.com]

You can't tell me Slughorn's not a gay character!!!! LMBO Come on....

Tough to look for sexuality in a teenage, asexual tome. The kids may be experiencing dating woes, but that isn't a huge theme and the adults are there (alot, not all...don't jump on me! LOL) as sub-plot for the action of the kids.

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

Heh. heidi8 summed it up pretty well, but since it was me she was quoting (thanks Heidi! :) ), I felt obliged to step in and clarify.

The whole post is here, and as heidi8 pointed out, my rant was directed at the people bashing shippers, not the ship.

My personal feeling is JKR CAN write whatever she wants, and I don't think she wrote it wrong. What I did object to was the lack of foreshadowing with the ship (at least from Remus's side), and the very, very immature way Tonks behaved- especially in the hospital. To me, the ship wasn't written convincingly, and it really wouldn't have taken much to convince me. (Example: I've been assuming Bill and Fleur were canon based on her interested look and one smart-mouth comment from the twins.) But when I say I thought Tonks was written inconsistently and I didn't like how it played out, I'm getting told by anti-shippers that it's sour grapes. Now, granted, I can kind of understand, because some R/S fans are scary. But to be told I must worship at the altar of JKR and that there's no way I could ever compare to her brilliance, and how dare I criticize her- which is the sort of response a lot of people who voice valid criticisms ARE getting from some people- is really, really irksome. And underneath that- and I think every shipper that didn't predict a ship is getting this a bit- is the feeling that "you were WRONG! Repent and be saved!"

So that's where I'm coming from.

I don't like R/T (more because of the character assassination I felt Tonks underwent), but that doesn't remotely mean I don't accept that it's canon! ;)

Anyway, hope that clarifies a bit!

[hedwig-snowy.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'm glad you didn't take my comment in Heidi's journal as a criticism because I was mainly asking what you meant. I have heard that some people are upset in such a way because THEY thought the book was going to go one way and that JKR just wrote it wrong and that she should go back and change it just for them. I'm not a big ship fan myself (like duels and action ;)), but I can certainly see your point as the R/T certainly came out of the blue for me as well. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, I don't think that sexuality plays a large part in the books. In this, I don't think there is actually an aversion to the R/S ship, just that it probably would side-track (for some) some of the other things JKR is trying to say. There's barely any romance in the Weasley Parents and I think Phlegm worshipping Bill comes the closest to sexuality in the series. Just my view. And I don't think you have to worship at "the altar of JKR". A tithing of $17.99 every 2-3 years is plenty. :)

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

And I don't think you have to worship at "the altar of JKR". A tithing of $17.99 every 2-3 years is plenty. :)

::snort:: That's worth quoting :) Although any woman who can get the number of kids reading that she's managed to get EARNS every penny she gets!

I didn't take it as criticism as all. The quote is slightly out of context, and you don't know me or what my posts usually look like. I'm a scientist, so asking for clarification made sense to me completely. ;) I'm just glad I didn't come off as super defensive!

I do agree completely that romance is secondary in the HP series, and in fact, I think that's precisely -why- I didn't like the way the R/T ship was presented. Me, I would have done it very differently, but I tend to write romance with a heavy background of action, not the other way around. I wasn't jumping with the way any of the romances were presented- even Bill/Fleur, which was probably my favorite (because it amused me). I mean, poor Bill barely said a word! (On the other hand, I was amused that he existed more to be her love interest than the other way around!) And it's exactly what you said- romance is secondary. That's why I'm NOT trying to rationalize out how R/T isn't everything it seems, even though I'm not convinced of Remus's feelings.... even though I might not be convinced, I'm meant to be, and eh- good enough.

Besides, the other 99% of the book was GREAT, so who cares if I didn't like one romance? :)

[doomandnachos.livejournal.com]

*wandering through LJ*
A bit of commiseration from the other side of the breach - I've shipped R/T since OotP, and I still think it wasn't done well in HBP. JKR definitely does better with the action/mystery portions, methinks. :)

Besides, the other 99% of the book was GREAT, so who cares if I didn't like one romance? :)
Amen!!

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

none of us should be slammed or laughed at or criticized for not being accurate with our predictions.

Except me. If Dumbledore is really, permanently dead, and never turns up for so much as some Obi Ann Landers ghost-advice, I will take my laughter like a man and pay up as circumstances require.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

What if he sends an email to Harry about eight years later saying, "I'm not sure you remember me, but..." ?

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

Ha!

I'm dead serious. If someone will point me to a bookie, I will drop a thousand bucks on the premise that Dumbledore Ain't Dead at any odds I can get.

[pottergirl26.livejournal.com]

A little before HBP came out Mugglenet did mention Draco's b-day being on June something.

[marauderthesn.livejournal.com]

What, they think we're all supposed to throw ourselves on the floor and wail, "Jo, we were so wrong, Remus and Sirius would have been a crappy couple, please forgive us"?