essay-a-thon assignment
For elsie_shade. Her request was: Describe and discuss the ways (plot devices, characterization, creating character histories, etc.) that slash fanfic writers bring Harry and Draco together as a couple, and evaluate the effectiveness of these methods.
This essay has somehow become heavily Draco-centric, with only sporadic comments on Harry. I’ll try to explain why; still, if this isn't what you expected, don't kill me. :)
Much Ado About Draco
Writing H/D
Whenever the writing techniques of H/D shippers are being discussed, I can't help thinking that H/D fics depend on Draco's character. This might sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but in the following 2000 or so words I'm going to try and prove you that my arguments are worth being considered. I'd like to explain how Draco's character determines both the background and the plotline of H/D stories, narrowing down what canon means.
First of all, it seems writers have a tendency to portray Draco in extremely different ways, while Harry's character seems to be more constant and more canon. The reasons for that are simple: Draco is an enigma compared to Harry. Or, some people say, he's shallower than Harry, and he only looks enigmatic because we know so little about him. As far as I'm concerned, I think JKR has wasted a great villain character. We already know she dislikes cowards. Draco is definitely a coward, we know that since the Forbidden Forest incident in the first book. All in all, it seems as if JKR was trying to make Draco less and less appealing on purpose - perhaps she isn't satisfied with the character she has created?
Of course, books and movies are full of villain characters, some of which are even cowards, and we love them. However, there is something which makes Lestat the vampire or Captain Hook different from Draco Malfoy: charisma. When I say charisma, I mean some kind of a grandness of personality*. When you think of Captain Hook or Lestat, you can see that even if they sometimes act like cowards, they have style. They have style, while Draco sometimes doesn't seem to have any - unless you consider being a wimp stylish.
He used to have style, back in the first, second and third book. Back then, he used to have original ideas. Sadly, by the end of Book 5, he's been degraded by JKR to the status of a "supporting villain". He's become nothing more but a sidekick to Umbridge; nothing more than a toad's toady. That's exactly what happens if an author doesn't let you know more about a character than superficial thoughts and actions. If the small gestures that make said character appear human are missing from a book, they might as well never have existed, and as a consequence, you'll see the character as a shallow person. Throughout the last two books, JKR has been making Draco less and less important, which is a serious blow to anyone who tries to write meaningful H/D fics.
As a result, the main task of any H/D writer is to enrich Draco's personality and make him Harry's equal, in order to create a balance between them. The problem is, thanks to JKR's recent treatment of Draco, any addition to the boy's personality counts as "uncanonical". That is, while you're trying to make Draco more interesting, you might easily make him sound out of character. In order to avoid that, fanfic writers usually take canon facts and see if they can expand them a bit without making Draco look too much like other, already existing canon characters.
For example, you know he knows extra spells because he could conjure a serpent from thin air when he was just a second year midget. Even if you argue Snape told him what spell to use on Harry, you must admit there was no way he could have taught Draco the wand movement on the spot. Therefore, it doesn't seem far-fetched to say that Draco must be a relatively intelligent student who can work hard to achieve whatever he finds useful and/or interesting enough. But this doesn't mean he's as clever or hardworking as Hermione.
The same stands for his Quidditch skills. There's no evidence he's worse than Cho Chang or Cedric Diggory, but there's evidence he's worse than Harry. Consequently, it would be difficult to make fanfic readers believe he's actually as good as Harry, only he hasn't been paid enough attention/given the proper training until now. Along these lines, it makes even less sense to say that the reason why Draco always loses against Harry is that he's been preoccupied with his love for Harry since second year, and this all-consuming love makes him unable to concentrate on the Snitch. Not to mention the opinion that he's a bad boy because no one loves him. (Insert random Harry-clone stud here, riding to Draco's emotional rescue.) No. The most constant and stable point in the boys' relationship is that they don't like each other. Or, more precisely, that they hate each other, truly, madly and deeply. It's an emotion you can't ignore because it's the key to the H/D dynamic.
I hope you can see now that the next task of a fanfic writer is to explain how is it possible for Draco to hate Harry and lust after him or love him at the same time. You have to explain what makes him need Harry. Hatred in itself usually doesn't make you want to be near the person you hate - just the opposite. And canon says that by default, Draco is probably more hateful than Harry. Harry is the typical liberal half-blood, and Draco is the typical conservative Pureblood.
Yes, not surprisingly, the main problem of the boys' relationship is racism. Racism is rooted deeply in Draco, as he's been raised in a racist family. Therefore, any changes you wish to make to Draco's personality are not likely to work unless they're supported by a believable family background story. Unfortunately, even the basic facts about the Malfoys are debated by fans. Fans who dislike Draco usually say that he's a pampered little prince, and that he's not only shallow, he's completely spoiled as well. At this point, people usually quote Harry's words from the first book about Draco being like Dudley - which, one has to admit, is a strong argument. In contrast to that, other fans think the Malfoy family must be strict and Medieval, because the books show that wizards are fairly conservative people - therefore, Draco must have had an unhappy childhood which has turned him from a charming little angel into a mean little bastard, so he must be pitied, not bashed.
As far as I'm concerned, I believe these two extremes aren't mutually exclusive. Judging by wizards' aversion to all things modern, I don't think it's far from the truth if we say Wizarding families are nearer to Pre-WW1 or Victorian standards than to modern norms of behavior. In the Victorian era, parents were allowed to beat their children. Physical punishment was, in fact, quite a common phenomenon in nineteenth-century England. And there's plenty of evidence in the five books showing that in the wizarding world, such customs were practiced daily, until not more than a few decades before Harry's time. Remember Molly's comment from GoF that the previous caretaker used to assign much more severe detentions than Filch? Remember Filch's glee when Umbridge reinstated whipping as a punishment? Let's face it: wizarding Britain is a place where pureblood families would probably approve of beating a child.
The point I'd like to make here is that pureblooded children are likely to see beating as something normal. For them, beating is probably something within their parents' job description. Maybe something positive even, a quality that makes them powerful. Especially in Lucius Malfoy's case, it's possible that his displays of violence just strengthen his status as an authority figure in Draco's eyes. I think a wish to become as powerful and strong as Lucius so that he could punish people the way his father does would be really IC for Draco.
If you think about it, this means that the hatred Draco feels comes from his ambition to follow his father's steps. Extending the analogy, we might say that Draco's love for his father is the counterpart to his love for Harry. At this point, you as the author have to decide if Draco is able to see that his love for his father has led him to believe in a false dogma. If yes, his love for Harry might become genuine. If not, he is likely to see Harry as a mere tool for future success.
These two options give you the main theme of your plotline. No matter how complex your plotline is, if you carry one of the two themes through the story, it will look coherent. Coherence is important, because only coherent stories can show the evolution of the boys' relationship. And the coherence of your plotline depends on how coherent your Draco is. The result will probably be a Romeo-and-Juliet type, extremely passionate romance. (You decide which boy gets Juliet's role. ;) ) In fact, the boys can pull off all kinds of extreme behaviour - usually involving astronomical amounts of sex and violence - which would sound clumsy or forced or plain ridiculous if we tried them with other pairings. These are two teenagers we're talking about, under the influence of their own raging hormones. They aren't likely to think their actions through. Even if we say Draco is a calculating Slytherin, there are limits to his foresight. That is, he's likely to plan careful attacks on Harry - that's what he's been doing ever since first year. But he won't suddenly switch to the Order's side and help them to get closer to Harry. His calculating Slytherin personalty isn't enough to make him start doing things which are out of character for him.
There's one plot device I wish we could erase from all H/D stories: money. We've seen enough Suefics where Draco has to (*gasp*) work, and he ends up as a world-famous Muggle fashion model, having more money than he ever used to. I think it's high time to make Draco see money issues in a more realistic way. For example, rich kids usually don't know how valuable money is. It's just a means for them to get themselves everything they want. They might mock others who are less well off, but it's sort of an automatic reaction because they've been raised to believe whoever has the more money is the better person. (Harry is definitely an exception to this rule - but then he hasn't known he had any money for a long time.) You can draw several consequences from this fact. On one hand, if rich kids start liking someone, they might want to stop boasting about their family's wealth - even rich kids are clever enough to see that could ruin a frendship. On the other hand, they won't be able to stop boasting about it completely, because being proud of their money is part of their personality. Thirdly, whenever they lose this money, they're likely to collapse or at least have an identity crisis. Remember, they think money makes them better than others. According to this logic, losing their money entails they become one of the despicable penniless nobodies they've learned to hate. In that case, it's not too likely for them to start searching energetically for a Muggle job, or any job at all - God forbid. They're more likely to sit moping in a dark corner, and try to overcome hating themselves for having sunk so low. Or go to the Dark Lord, swear loyalty to him, and expect him to fulfill his messianistic duties and give them some thousand galleons as a reward.
Apart from that, I wish there were more H/D fics without any references to money. It's really a sad turn of events if money becomes vital to a relationship. When people are in love, they tend to forget about money. If they can't stop thinking about money, then they probably aren't in love with the person. To return to our Romeo and Juliet analogy, if money had ever been considered in their relationship, Juliet should have chosen Paris, not Romeo. Good old Shakespeare knew love is not like that - why dont we listen to him?
Thank you for your attention.
Note:
* Just to make things clear, Draco is my OTC. It's not fun for me to rant about him, it's a painful necessity.
Feedback adored.
This essay has somehow become heavily Draco-centric, with only sporadic comments on Harry. I’ll try to explain why; still, if this isn't what you expected, don't kill me. :)
Much Ado About Draco
Writing H/D
Whenever the writing techniques of H/D shippers are being discussed, I can't help thinking that H/D fics depend on Draco's character. This might sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but in the following 2000 or so words I'm going to try and prove you that my arguments are worth being considered. I'd like to explain how Draco's character determines both the background and the plotline of H/D stories, narrowing down what canon means.
First of all, it seems writers have a tendency to portray Draco in extremely different ways, while Harry's character seems to be more constant and more canon. The reasons for that are simple: Draco is an enigma compared to Harry. Or, some people say, he's shallower than Harry, and he only looks enigmatic because we know so little about him. As far as I'm concerned, I think JKR has wasted a great villain character. We already know she dislikes cowards. Draco is definitely a coward, we know that since the Forbidden Forest incident in the first book. All in all, it seems as if JKR was trying to make Draco less and less appealing on purpose - perhaps she isn't satisfied with the character she has created?
Of course, books and movies are full of villain characters, some of which are even cowards, and we love them. However, there is something which makes Lestat the vampire or Captain Hook different from Draco Malfoy: charisma. When I say charisma, I mean some kind of a grandness of personality*. When you think of Captain Hook or Lestat, you can see that even if they sometimes act like cowards, they have style. They have style, while Draco sometimes doesn't seem to have any - unless you consider being a wimp stylish.
He used to have style, back in the first, second and third book. Back then, he used to have original ideas. Sadly, by the end of Book 5, he's been degraded by JKR to the status of a "supporting villain". He's become nothing more but a sidekick to Umbridge; nothing more than a toad's toady. That's exactly what happens if an author doesn't let you know more about a character than superficial thoughts and actions. If the small gestures that make said character appear human are missing from a book, they might as well never have existed, and as a consequence, you'll see the character as a shallow person. Throughout the last two books, JKR has been making Draco less and less important, which is a serious blow to anyone who tries to write meaningful H/D fics.
As a result, the main task of any H/D writer is to enrich Draco's personality and make him Harry's equal, in order to create a balance between them. The problem is, thanks to JKR's recent treatment of Draco, any addition to the boy's personality counts as "uncanonical". That is, while you're trying to make Draco more interesting, you might easily make him sound out of character. In order to avoid that, fanfic writers usually take canon facts and see if they can expand them a bit without making Draco look too much like other, already existing canon characters.
For example, you know he knows extra spells because he could conjure a serpent from thin air when he was just a second year midget. Even if you argue Snape told him what spell to use on Harry, you must admit there was no way he could have taught Draco the wand movement on the spot. Therefore, it doesn't seem far-fetched to say that Draco must be a relatively intelligent student who can work hard to achieve whatever he finds useful and/or interesting enough. But this doesn't mean he's as clever or hardworking as Hermione.
The same stands for his Quidditch skills. There's no evidence he's worse than Cho Chang or Cedric Diggory, but there's evidence he's worse than Harry. Consequently, it would be difficult to make fanfic readers believe he's actually as good as Harry, only he hasn't been paid enough attention/given the proper training until now. Along these lines, it makes even less sense to say that the reason why Draco always loses against Harry is that he's been preoccupied with his love for Harry since second year, and this all-consuming love makes him unable to concentrate on the Snitch. Not to mention the opinion that he's a bad boy because no one loves him. (Insert random Harry-clone stud here, riding to Draco's emotional rescue.) No. The most constant and stable point in the boys' relationship is that they don't like each other. Or, more precisely, that they hate each other, truly, madly and deeply. It's an emotion you can't ignore because it's the key to the H/D dynamic.
I hope you can see now that the next task of a fanfic writer is to explain how is it possible for Draco to hate Harry and lust after him or love him at the same time. You have to explain what makes him need Harry. Hatred in itself usually doesn't make you want to be near the person you hate - just the opposite. And canon says that by default, Draco is probably more hateful than Harry. Harry is the typical liberal half-blood, and Draco is the typical conservative Pureblood.
Yes, not surprisingly, the main problem of the boys' relationship is racism. Racism is rooted deeply in Draco, as he's been raised in a racist family. Therefore, any changes you wish to make to Draco's personality are not likely to work unless they're supported by a believable family background story. Unfortunately, even the basic facts about the Malfoys are debated by fans. Fans who dislike Draco usually say that he's a pampered little prince, and that he's not only shallow, he's completely spoiled as well. At this point, people usually quote Harry's words from the first book about Draco being like Dudley - which, one has to admit, is a strong argument. In contrast to that, other fans think the Malfoy family must be strict and Medieval, because the books show that wizards are fairly conservative people - therefore, Draco must have had an unhappy childhood which has turned him from a charming little angel into a mean little bastard, so he must be pitied, not bashed.
As far as I'm concerned, I believe these two extremes aren't mutually exclusive. Judging by wizards' aversion to all things modern, I don't think it's far from the truth if we say Wizarding families are nearer to Pre-WW1 or Victorian standards than to modern norms of behavior. In the Victorian era, parents were allowed to beat their children. Physical punishment was, in fact, quite a common phenomenon in nineteenth-century England. And there's plenty of evidence in the five books showing that in the wizarding world, such customs were practiced daily, until not more than a few decades before Harry's time. Remember Molly's comment from GoF that the previous caretaker used to assign much more severe detentions than Filch? Remember Filch's glee when Umbridge reinstated whipping as a punishment? Let's face it: wizarding Britain is a place where pureblood families would probably approve of beating a child.
The point I'd like to make here is that pureblooded children are likely to see beating as something normal. For them, beating is probably something within their parents' job description. Maybe something positive even, a quality that makes them powerful. Especially in Lucius Malfoy's case, it's possible that his displays of violence just strengthen his status as an authority figure in Draco's eyes. I think a wish to become as powerful and strong as Lucius so that he could punish people the way his father does would be really IC for Draco.
If you think about it, this means that the hatred Draco feels comes from his ambition to follow his father's steps. Extending the analogy, we might say that Draco's love for his father is the counterpart to his love for Harry. At this point, you as the author have to decide if Draco is able to see that his love for his father has led him to believe in a false dogma. If yes, his love for Harry might become genuine. If not, he is likely to see Harry as a mere tool for future success.
These two options give you the main theme of your plotline. No matter how complex your plotline is, if you carry one of the two themes through the story, it will look coherent. Coherence is important, because only coherent stories can show the evolution of the boys' relationship. And the coherence of your plotline depends on how coherent your Draco is. The result will probably be a Romeo-and-Juliet type, extremely passionate romance. (You decide which boy gets Juliet's role. ;) ) In fact, the boys can pull off all kinds of extreme behaviour - usually involving astronomical amounts of sex and violence - which would sound clumsy or forced or plain ridiculous if we tried them with other pairings. These are two teenagers we're talking about, under the influence of their own raging hormones. They aren't likely to think their actions through. Even if we say Draco is a calculating Slytherin, there are limits to his foresight. That is, he's likely to plan careful attacks on Harry - that's what he's been doing ever since first year. But he won't suddenly switch to the Order's side and help them to get closer to Harry. His calculating Slytherin personalty isn't enough to make him start doing things which are out of character for him.
There's one plot device I wish we could erase from all H/D stories: money. We've seen enough Suefics where Draco has to (*gasp*) work, and he ends up as a world-famous Muggle fashion model, having more money than he ever used to. I think it's high time to make Draco see money issues in a more realistic way. For example, rich kids usually don't know how valuable money is. It's just a means for them to get themselves everything they want. They might mock others who are less well off, but it's sort of an automatic reaction because they've been raised to believe whoever has the more money is the better person. (Harry is definitely an exception to this rule - but then he hasn't known he had any money for a long time.) You can draw several consequences from this fact. On one hand, if rich kids start liking someone, they might want to stop boasting about their family's wealth - even rich kids are clever enough to see that could ruin a frendship. On the other hand, they won't be able to stop boasting about it completely, because being proud of their money is part of their personality. Thirdly, whenever they lose this money, they're likely to collapse or at least have an identity crisis. Remember, they think money makes them better than others. According to this logic, losing their money entails they become one of the despicable penniless nobodies they've learned to hate. In that case, it's not too likely for them to start searching energetically for a Muggle job, or any job at all - God forbid. They're more likely to sit moping in a dark corner, and try to overcome hating themselves for having sunk so low. Or go to the Dark Lord, swear loyalty to him, and expect him to fulfill his messianistic duties and give them some thousand galleons as a reward.
Apart from that, I wish there were more H/D fics without any references to money. It's really a sad turn of events if money becomes vital to a relationship. When people are in love, they tend to forget about money. If they can't stop thinking about money, then they probably aren't in love with the person. To return to our Romeo and Juliet analogy, if money had ever been considered in their relationship, Juliet should have chosen Paris, not Romeo. Good old Shakespeare knew love is not like that - why dont we listen to him?
Thank you for your attention.
Note:
* Just to make things clear, Draco is my OTC. It's not fun for me to rant about him, it's a painful necessity.
Feedback adored.