Do you have a favorite Hermione moment from the HP books or movies that has influenced the way you have characterized her in Lionheart?
"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean everyone else does." Babygirl! Honeybear! You got your best friend's new broomstick confiscated because you were paranoid and didn't trust him enough to just talk about it! You fought with your other best friend for months because you couldn't admit your carnivorous pet cat might have done a very ordinary and predictable thing for cats to do, i.e. kill rats, because you didn't watch him properly! You get both of these best friends — neither of whom like schoolwork — homework planners for Christmas! You asked out an infamous douchebag because you wanted to make your crush jealous specifically by playing on his insecurity about his quidditch skills! You sent an attack swarm of birds at your crush when he kissed someone else, even though you never even made a move!
"You've got the emotional range of a teaspoon—" OH, HE DOES???
Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
I read your post that contained the sentence "Fundamentally, the thing that was wrong with Lord Byron is that he was a poet" and I feel like I had an existential crisis as my mind tried to grapple with "the thing", singular, that was wrong with Lord Byron.
(With reference to this post here.)
It helps to understand is that the idea of the "artistic temperament" – i.e., the notion that Artists are a specific, biologically distinct Type of Guy – was very much in vogue during the Regency. This is the era that spawned phrenology in its modern form, after all; such notions were going around! The idea that all of the various things that were wrong with Lord Byron were ultimately attributable to the singular cause of "being a poet" would have been viewed, at least by some, as perfectly plausible, at the time.
The most compelling thing about Umbridge as a villain is that most of us have experienced authority figures in school who were like Umbridge. That same inexplicable hatred towards some kids; the chaos of trying to keep out of trouble with someone whose rules are constantly changing; their implacable belief in their righteousness; the kindness with which they commit acts of cruelty (and stupidity) because they so earnestly want to teach children the Right Thing; and, all this, and barely-hidden, extremely short fuse to their temper.
It’s easier to hate Umbridge over Voldermort or even Belltrix because we know Umbridges, we’ve been under their power, or at least in their orbit, and we remember what hating our Umbridge felt like.
I’m glad at least Harry, Ron and Hermione ultimately got to defeat their Umbridge.
For me, personally, the canon ships of HP and canon ships of Avatar the Last Airbender (Sokka and Suki excluded) were the major (fandom related) disappointments of my youth 😂😭
I'm willing to bet a substantial amount of money that the Venn diagram of people who like Dramione and people who approve of Katara's canonical partner is a pair of circles located on opposite sides of the planet.
i was reading your thoughts on how fans felt about l&oha and while i concur it is a perfect piece of work in my head and have reread it 5x, i wonder if you think fans tend to be harsher/more critical of hermione and let draco slide? i see it a lot in fics where he's more of an alphahole type
Oh, man. Okay. The can is open, the worms are loose. Rant under the cut.
I'm actually going to set men aside entirely. Just. To the side with you. I desperately need more realistically complicated men, too, but that's a whole separate discussion. Right now: women.
There must be whole dissertations out there on the phenomenon of readers hating female characters with negative traits. I'm a fandom old, so I didn't grow up identifying with Hermione, and wouldn't have even if I'd been young enough to. I did that "which character are you" test just now and my top three matches were Janis Ian from Mean Girls, Jughead from Riverdale and April from Parks and Rec, which, massive grain of salt, etc. BUT gives you an idea. I am not a Hermione and never was, so she's never been a comfort character or self-insert for me. Some of my favorite fictional women are Sophie Hatter (mean, irrational, petty, old and mostly loving it), Harrowhark Nonagesimus (evil stick), Phryne Fisher (zero fucks to give). What I like about Hermione is how imperfect she is. I'm a "cleverest witch of your age I've ever met" truther (book!Lupin is absolutely saying "you're the canniest 14 year-old child I have personally met, saying this as a guy who doesn't get out much," not "you are a once-in-a-century genius"), and from my perspective, she's often wrong and often a dick, and not in a fun and fiesty burn-down-the-world BAMF way. Which. Good for her! Be human.
And that's the thing. I personally don't want Hermione to be perfect, I want her to be what I think she is, textually, which is intelligent, hardworking, loyal, competitive, compassionate, controlling, belittling, rude, petty, insecure, vindictive, volatile. She has the right to be that way, because she's human. The desire for perfected women (or unapologetically and unstoppably awful ones, another brand of female power fantasy) is not limited to Dramione fandom. I think it's amplified in DHr by many readers who DO identify as former gifted children, books-as-coping-mechanism kids and Strong Female Personalities who felt marginalized in childhood and want to see Hermione have it all: she's slim, she's tiny, she's fragile as a bird, she'll break your neck, she'll step on your throat, she'll tear down the system, she'll heal all wounds, she does not need help, she holds all the knowledge, she holds all the cards, she is forever wronged, she can do no wrong, her vagina is tight, her nipples are hard, her hair is on point, her waist is tiny, her tits are bouncing, her ass is in the style of Now. And like. This isn't at all unique to DHr and Hermione. It's pervasive in fiction written by and for women. Female power fantasies are obviously feeding a massive hunger. It's just not what I personally want. Personally, I find it alienating and uncomfortable, which I know equates to, "That is wrong and shouldn't exist" to a lot of people, but that's its own tale as old as time.
There's a disconnect that happens too often where a reader wants one (1) thing from their fiction, and receives something else, even when the contents are clearly labeled on the tin. In this case, wanting a female power fantasy and encountering a woman who's written with flaws makes people upset. And maybe if we could be more honest with ourselves about what we're looking for when we read, work to accept that not everyone wants the same experience, and learn to close a book when it's not working for us and say, "No shade, this isn't for me," it would be less upsetting when we encounter a character who isn't written to meet our personal expectations. I will open a book, realize the FMC is a female power fantasy archetype and close it, because that's not what I show up for. I like my women gritty and weird and foolish and vulnerable and liable to hurt people and feel terrible about it. Give me all the exhausting chatterers and evil sticks and jocks with swords and their hearts on their sleeves (their hearts ripped out), give me shy Anne Elliot and her suitcase full of regrets and the ugly fuckup who never has a glow up, give me dirtbag stoners and Fleabag and Alicent Hightower apologetics and every role Natasha Lyon has ever played. It's not a moral high ground, it's about a preference for seeing actual, demeritus flaws on the page and on the screen. Blame that woman. It's her fault. She has so many faults. Then show me how to forgive her so I can figure out how to forgive myself.
The thing is, I love women. I love women so fucking much. I want to be around them, to get to know them, to read about them, to watch them on TV and see them in films. And personally, I like them ugly. Physically. Spiritually. Morally. Give a woman a Bad Personality and watch her succeed in the most self-injurious way possible, fuck you. Give her a gaping chest wound and line it with teeth. Stick a piece of grit in that girl's tightly sealed shell so that a pearl is her only option. Make her love other women, make her fuck it up, make her have to earn them back.
Thankfully I do feel like we're getting more ugly women in fiction, especially BIPOC, queer and marginalized women who deserve gross, weird, nasty representation and not just didactic moralism, patronization and misguided sainthood. Some readers won't want that, and that's fine. Again, personally (it's all so personal, please, please remember that when you hit that comment button), I'm here for it. If you write about women like this, know that you have a thirsty reader here. I'm swallowing them up. I'm smacking my lips. I'm smashing my mug on the cafeteria floor and calling for another.
snowghoul
janainaart
ellievsbear
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn
