Hurt-Comfort was Re: Draco Malfoy Is Ever So Lame.

[irene_mikhlin]

No: HPFGUIDX 39100

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "ssk7882" <skelkins at a...> wrote:

This was so packed with great ideas, I don't know where to start.

> What "Hurt-Comfort" comes down to is the fact that women are just 
> plain Bent, and adolescent girls even more so.  They *like* to see 
> male characters suffer, so long as they do so with some degree of 
> manly dignity, because it turns them on.  Male vulnerability 
garners 
> their sympathy, and it also kind of excites them.  They like 
> it.  No one ever wants to 'fess up to this, but it's true.  Just 
look 
> at the characters most often fixated upon as drool-worthy by JKR's 
> adult female readers, will you?  Lupin.  Sirius.  Snape.
> 
> We all know what's *really* going on there, don't we?  Are we all 
> grown-up enough to admit it?  All three of those characters have 
> erotic appeal primarily because they all *suffer* so much.  Lupin's 
> kindness wouldn't alone be sufficient to make him so sexy; it's all 
> of that exhaustion and illness and emotional damage that really 
> nets in the fans.  Sirius without all those years spent in Azkaban 
> wouldn't have nearly the following that he has.  And Snape...well, 
> it's all that angst that does it, right? 

If "Hurt-Comfort" is all it takes, how would you explain then the 
almost perfect dichotomy of Sirius and Snape fan clubs? I know 1 
(one) person who likes them both, for the rest they appear quite 
incompatible. (Oh, and don't tell me it's about that P***k, it's much 
more basic than that - they are different archetypes)

> 
> Female readers are almost always attracted to male characters who 
get 
> hurt a lot.  They just are.  And Draco does get smacked around a 
> *lot* in these books. 

Then how come Neville does not win any popularity contests? Not with 
the girls in the Hogwarts, not with the girls that read about 
Hogwarts?

>   I think that she knew 
> what she was doing when she gave us poor pallid haggard prematurely-
> grey Lupin, and I think that she knew what she was doing when she 
> told us all about Sirius' haunted Azkaban eyes, and I even think it 
> possible that she might have had some inkling of what she was up to 
> when she kicked Snape's emotional legs out from under him for just 
a 
> second there in "The Egg and the Eye." 

"The Egg and the Eye" is nothing compared to the end of PoA, I'm 
telling you. Granted, not even badge-wearing Snapefan like me wished 
Sirius dead just to make Sev happy, but why could not Dumbledore 
find   another way of doing it?
And I think Dumbledore himself had some regrets about choosing "the 
easy way" in PoA. He might have had an easier time in GoF, getting 
Fudge to accept Snape and Harry's evidence, if he did not leave him 
with the impression they are both mentally unstable just a year ago.
Back to "The Egg and the Eye" - it's not about Moody really, it's the 
thought that Dumbledore allowed, or maybe even instructed Moody to 
search his office - that was the main source of hurt in my reading of 
this scene.

Irene