I saw someone essentially say that pornographic/lewd Malfoid fanart is good because sex is the point of romance. THIS, I fear, is another example of the way pornography has damaged people. 🧵
That idea misses the entire point of the Malfoid trend at large. To be fair, Malfoid has gotten so big it broke containment and now means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. That being said, I think the vast majority of those who enjoy this trend agree that Malfoid isn’t about sex, it’s about yearning.
To yearn for something, to long for it, is to deeply and often melancholically desire it. That sense of melancholy often stems from the understanding that whatever the object of your desire is will be difficult to obtain. Men are yearning for Malfoid because finding a woman like her is incredibly difficult, but she’s worth it. People are writing stories, making art, and changing themselves for the better in an effort to even get close to the feeling of achievement - to get close to her.
Making pornographic art in this movement cheapens all of this. The object of desire becomes not the woman, but her body. The way to express this desire becomes not hard work and effort, but masturbation. Looking at images on a screen and allowing yourself to be titillated will poison your soul against improvement, and you will seek to get your jollies off however you can rather than by becoming the kind of man worthy of a Malfoid, or the kind of woman worthy of a Harry.
Certainly, it is true that Harry and Malfoid are sexually attracted to each other. It’s also true that the vast swaths of wonderful illustrators in this movement depict Malfoid as sexually attractive. But Malfoid being sexually attractive doesn’t innately reduce her to the point of objectification.
Beauty exists, and Malfoid is beautiful. This aspect of her character is a virtue - it’s something that men often find lacking in modern women. To be fair, it’s also a quality that women find lacking in modern men, so there’s blame to go around. But that’s why people have started going to the gym over this trend, in pursuit of beauty.
Beauty may also easily be corrupted. Because beauty is a virtue, it goes hand in hand with other virtues - love, self-control, modesty, etc. - and if any of these other virtues are lacking in a person, so too does their beauty. Portraying Malfoid as a loose woman, exposing herself and engaging in all kinds of indecency, makes her less beautiful. It may make her “hot” or otherwise “sexy”, but this is a pornographic debasing of her. Those depictions are not worth your desire.
Malfoid is modest, in both dress and in mannerism; of course she is, as the heiress to the Malfoy name. And the people who get the trend don’t portray her as a ditz or an airhead, but as a confident, even prideful woman (it’s worth noting that such depictions have her putting down her supremacist pride in her bloodline and accepting her love for Harry, humbling herself, which is a virtue).
Keep Malfoid modest. Yearn for something greater.
@InspiringPhilos More nuanced question - Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:12 that what he says HE says, not the Lord. On the surface, this seems to be a matter of opinion - is it okay to disagree with him on that?
I'm sick of nobody speaking English.
I cannot even tell you how often I have to limp through a conversation with a foreigner, working in a shop, who can't communicate or who is barely understandable.
I went to CVS the other day. Asked an employee where something was. Zero English. POINTED at another employee for me to speak to. Go over to him. His English was broken.
This isn't even an isolated occurrence either.
Then I get to go out in public and constantly hear every other language but English.
I'm just sick of it all.
@Arty_ninny I definitely prefer the ice queen Malfoid. I don’t think that Malfoy as a character needs to be fundamentally transformed in order for the story to work better, my favorite fanfictions follow the original story closely.
I saw someone essentially say that pornographic/lewd Malfoid fanart is good because sex is the point of romance. THIS, I fear, is another example of the way pornography has damaged people. 🧵
That idea misses the entire point of the Malfoid trend at large. To be fair, Malfoid has gotten so big it broke containment and now means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. That being said, I think the vast majority of those who enjoy this trend agree that Malfoid isn’t about sex, it’s about yearning.
To yearn for something, to long for it, is to deeply and often melancholically desire it. That sense of melancholy often stems from the understanding that whatever the object of your desire is will be difficult to obtain. Men are yearning for Malfoid because finding a woman like her is incredibly difficult, but she’s worth it. People are writing stories, making art, and changing themselves for the better in an effort to even get close to the feeling of achievement - to get close to her.
Making pornographic art in this movement cheapens all of this. The object of desire becomes not the woman, but her body. The way to express this desire becomes not hard work and effort, but masturbation. Looking at images on a screen and allowing yourself to be titillated will poison your soul against improvement, and you will seek to get your jollies off however you can rather than by becoming the kind of man worthy of a Malfoid, or the kind of woman worthy of a Harry.
Certainly, it is true that Harry and Malfoid are sexually attracted to each other. It’s also true that the vast swaths of wonderful illustrators in this movement depict Malfoid as sexually attractive. But Malfoid being sexually attractive doesn’t innately reduce her to the point of objectification.
Beauty exists, and Malfoid is beautiful. This aspect of her character is a virtue - it’s something that men often find lacking in modern women. To be fair, it’s also a quality that women find lacking in modern men, so there’s blame to go around. But that’s why people have started going to the gym over this trend, in pursuit of beauty.
Beauty may also easily be corrupted. Because beauty is a virtue, it goes hand in hand with other virtues - love, self-control, modesty, etc. - and if any of these other virtues are lacking in a person, so too does their beauty. Portraying Malfoid as a loose woman, exposing herself and engaging in all kinds of indecency, makes her less beautiful. It may make her “hot” or otherwise “sexy”, but this is a pornographic debasing of her. Those depictions are not worth your desire.
Malfoid is modest, in both dress and in mannerism; of course she is, as the heiress to the Malfoy name. And the people who get the trend don’t portray her as a ditz or an airhead, but as a confident, even prideful woman (it’s worth noting that such depictions have her putting down her supremacist pride in her bloodline and accepting her love for Harry, humbling herself, which is a virtue).
Keep Malfoid modest. Yearn for something greater.
@ShamashAran Drat. Now I'll have to explain when people ask me that I learned legit self-defense awareness from Harry Potter fanfiction.
Good job, I really am enjoying your writing
imagine an American wizarding school where the defense against the dark arts class is restructured into a class on defense against firearms. a spell that functions as a bullet shield. would go hard
I love the whole "Malfoid" thing, I really do. And i'm not even the target audience. I've enjoyed writing it, and its totally unleashed my muse.
I've been thinking about why the whole Malfoid fanfiction phenomenon is doing so ridiculously well, and I think I've figured something out.
Men are absolutely STARVING for good romance. Plenty of women, too, I guess.
Not pornography. Not harems. Not some elaborate sexual power fantasy. Romance.
Two people who who are confused by their feelings, who make mistakes, who struggle to understand one another, and who slowly, awkwardly, sometimes painfully fall in love.
You know. That thing human beings have been doing to each other for thousands of years. In story form.
Somewhere along the way, the publishing industry decided that men don't like romance. (https://t.co/8Y5aPunizT) The alternatives everyone's been offered for the past couple of decades have been, to put it delicately, a radioactive dumpster fire.
On one side, you've got male-oriented harem fantasies where every woman within a fifty-mile radius is aching for a sexual encounter, in graphicly written detail.
On the other, you've got the darker corners of romantasy, where the height of romantic fulfillment involves being kidnapped, abused (physically, mentally, or both) or literally raped by a seven-foot-tall monster with the emotional maturity of a malfunctioning garbage disposal.
I'm sitting here thinking: CAN TWO PEOPLE JUST FALL IN LOVE WITHOUT SOMEBODY GETTING RAPED OR DEVELOPING A HAREM?
Apparently that's too much to ask.
This brings me back to Malfoid. Here's a huge set of stories written by many different folks, about two fundamentally decent people, raised in very different worlds, struggling with their feelings, their prejudices, their loyalties, and their expectations. Neither is perfect. Neither always knows what they're doing. Sometimes they're absolute idiots.
They have something, and we get to watch it develop in story form.
The romance isn't about sexual conquest or domination. It's about vulnerability, trust, affection, and the terrifying realization that another human being has become extraordinarily important to you.
And people are eating it up. Which brings me to my theory.
Malfoid has caused a false vacuum decay in the quantum field of romantic literature.
For decades, we've been trapped in a metastable state where the publishing industry insists that men don't want romance, and male readers have been conditioned to believe there isn't any romance worth reading. Now, comes along comes a wholesome little love story about two emotionally constipated school-age British wizards, and suddenly the entire field collapses into a new, lower-energy vacuum state.
The resulting energy release is absolutely catastrophic. Instead of gamma radiation annihilating the universe, we're getting seventeen metric gigatons of YEARNING.
Turns out men didn't hate romance.
They just wanted something worth falling in love with.
I love the whole "Malfoid" thing, I really do. And i'm not even the target audience. I've enjoyed writing it, and its totally unleashed my muse.
I've been thinking about why the whole Malfoid fanfiction phenomenon is doing so ridiculously well, and I think I've figured something out.
Men are absolutely STARVING for good romance. Plenty of women, too, I guess.
Not pornography. Not harems. Not some elaborate sexual power fantasy. Romance.
Two people who who are confused by their feelings, who make mistakes, who struggle to understand one another, and who slowly, awkwardly, sometimes painfully fall in love.
You know. That thing human beings have been doing to each other for thousands of years. In story form.
Somewhere along the way, the publishing industry decided that men don't like romance. (https://t.co/8Y5aPunizT) The alternatives everyone's been offered for the past couple of decades have been, to put it delicately, a radioactive dumpster fire.
On one side, you've got male-oriented harem fantasies where every woman within a fifty-mile radius is aching for a sexual encounter, in graphicly written detail.
On the other, you've got the darker corners of romantasy, where the height of romantic fulfillment involves being kidnapped, abused (physically, mentally, or both) or literally raped by a seven-foot-tall monster with the emotional maturity of a malfunctioning garbage disposal.
I'm sitting here thinking: CAN TWO PEOPLE JUST FALL IN LOVE WITHOUT SOMEBODY GETTING RAPED OR DEVELOPING A HAREM?
Apparently that's too much to ask.
This brings me back to Malfoid. Here's a huge set of stories written by many different folks, about two fundamentally decent people, raised in very different worlds, struggling with their feelings, their prejudices, their loyalties, and their expectations. Neither is perfect. Neither always knows what they're doing. Sometimes they're absolute idiots.
They have something, and we get to watch it develop in story form.
The romance isn't about sexual conquest or domination. It's about vulnerability, trust, affection, and the terrifying realization that another human being has become extraordinarily important to you.
And people are eating it up. Which brings me to my theory.
Malfoid has caused a false vacuum decay in the quantum field of romantic literature.
For decades, we've been trapped in a metastable state where the publishing industry insists that men don't want romance, and male readers have been conditioned to believe there isn't any romance worth reading. Now, comes along comes a wholesome little love story about two emotionally constipated school-age British wizards, and suddenly the entire field collapses into a new, lower-energy vacuum state.
The resulting energy release is absolutely catastrophic. Instead of gamma radiation annihilating the universe, we're getting seventeen metric gigatons of YEARNING.
Turns out men didn't hate romance.
They just wanted something worth falling in love with.
@ShamashAran I love this little scenario. Really minor critique, more of a nitpick, really, but since they're all British wouldn't they use Kilos or Stone as a form of measurement as opposed to our American pound? Enjoying your prose!
@AlbaLink We just have different ideas of what an "ideal solution" looks like lol
To me, in the ideal, no one would be gooning and so the art wouldn't exist. To you, you're thinking more practically, and talking about an "ideal scenario" given the reality that gooners be gooning
Beyond just that, it's a romantic and hopeful take on the current state of male/female relations. They're in the gutter.
No, that's not right. They're below the gutter, the sewer, through a few miles of dirt and rock, and are currently sitting at the gates of Hell.
Malfoid provides a romantic idea of "What if, despite all our differences and everything we've done to each other, we could forgive each other and fall in love? What if enemies-to-lovers wasn't just a trope but something we could have in our lives as well?"
Everyone wants that deep down. We have outside forces pulling us apart, forcing us to pick a side and constantly attack the other. We fight and we bicker about a war started long ago with no idea as to who fired the first shot.
At the end of the day, when we crawl into bed alone and drift off to sleep, all we want is someone there beside us.
I can only hope that Malfoid plays a small part in healing that divide.