ACID POPS and Teenager Draco

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 157461

> Sydney:
> Hee!  I have to say I prefer ACID POPS for fanfic, because it's just
> so hot... I mean, icily beautiful aristocratic married woman,
> friendless and alone... chip-on-shoulder lower-class Northern lad made
> good with roiling passions.. somebody hand me a fan!  *fans self*  
> 
> Sooo much hotter than Dead Perfect Lily and the whole Victorian
> Madonna on a Pedestal inspiring the sinner to goodness.. sigh.  But
> hey!  We're about *melodrama* around here, not hotness, so I better
> get back on the wagon. <snip>

Neri:
Well, I can tell you that if before HBP someone would have told me
that JKR will write lines like "His black eyes were fixed upon
Narcissa's tear-filled blue ones" or "her face close to his, her tears
falling on his chest, she gasped
" or "she slid off the sofa into a
kneeling position at Snape's feet, seized his hand and pressed her
lips to it" I would have told that someone that he/she had read too
much fanfic. Too much *bad* fanfic.

Also, while many of us did predict that Dumbledore will die in HBP,
how many of us even considered seriously that Snape will AK him off
the highest tower in Hogwarts? If someone had predicted that before
HBP, would you not have told him that he had read too many anti-Snape
fanfics? I would. But there you have it. Not often, but from time to
time JKR beats the fanfiction writers in their own game.

However, here I'll have to dissapoint Sydney and Dungrollin: I'm
afraid that I don't predict many sizzling ACID POPS moments in Book 7.
Simply put, Snape and Narcissa aren't that important to JKR, and their
romance must not distract us from the main storyline. It's more likely
that their SHIP will be like the Lupin/Tonks SHIP or the Merope/Tom
SHIP (both of which have fanfic potential too). That is, the most we
get will be rare ACID POPS flashes here and there where they help to
propel the main plot, and we'll have to use our sick imagination to
fill in all the rest. If, as I suspect, the main melodrama between
Snape and Harry will be about James (tons of foreshadowing and buildup
throughout the series) then either LOLLIPOPS or ACID POPS would be
redundant as melodrama generators. In that case ACID POPS would have
the advantage over LOLLIPOPS that she's much more compact and modular,
easy to fit into any kind of plot. If JKR merely requires a thematic
tragic flaw to trigger Snape's tragic fall, then ACID POPS is perfect,
and it can also be made to generate almost any Malfoy family subplot
that JKR might need to serve the main plot of Book 7. So overall I
won't even be very surprised if we have already seen the hottest ACID
POPS moment of the series in Spinner's End, and I note that at least
it's considerably hotter than Lupin and Tonks holding hands in a
funeral.  


> 
> Magpie:
> <snip> When this subject comes up in canon Draco 
> says "nobody can help me," not "Snape and Narcissa could help me, if 
> only there wasn't sexual tension between them that makes me angry at 
> them."  
> 

Neri:
Yes, well, that would kind of give things away, don't you think? But
you have to see that "nobody can help me" is totally OOC for Draco.
This is the kid who is used to get everything he wants and needs from
his parents and Snape. Special treatment at school, expensive race
brooms, a place in the Quidditch team, revenge on the hippogriff who
attacked him, protection against Potter and his gang. Draco believes
it is his birthright to get all these. So just when he's desperate and
needs the most help from his mother and Snape, Draco suddenly decides
it's the time for independence? There should be some reason for this
sudden change besides hormones.

> Magpie:
> The character starts out feeling that it's important 
> for him to do this and prove himself, and winds up paranoid and 
> isolated with two almost-murders on his conscience.  Neither of 
> those attitudes lend themselves to him going to Narcissa or Snape to 
> make things right.  The almost-murders themselves, imo, have far 
> more power to make him turn away from these two than any vague 
> problems connected to Snape/Narcissa I can imagine.
> 

Neri:
Not from Draco's PoV. From Draco's PoV Snape is a DE who would have no
qualms about killing Dumbledore to "steal Draco's glory", and Narcissa
is the one who told Harry in public that he doesn't have much time
left. It is also quite possible that Draco had heard something about
his mother's part in the Kreacher plot and death of Sirius. Draco has
no reason to be ashamed of Snape or his mother that he had almost
killed a blood-traitor like Ron Weasley and a Gryffindor girl like
Katie Bell. At most he should be ashamed that he had botched the killings.


> Magpie:
> And since this part was snipped, how does more insight and less 
> contempt for the teenager psych translates into the idea that Draco 
> didn't go to Narcissa and Snape because he thinks Snape likes his 
> mother?  Finding fault with the story as written doesn't support 
> this other storyline.  Draco isn't any smarter or less logical by 
> your definition in your story, he's not acting any less like an 
> adolescent cliche.  In fact, it makes his smaller, not bigger, imo, 
> all but shoving Draco aside in his own story for the real stars, 
> Snape and Narcissa.
> 

Neri:
In your version Draco's attitude towards his mother and Snape in HBP
is completely irrational. He was given a very difficult mission by the
Dark Lord, with a sentence of death on him and his family if he can't
complete it. He is offered considerable assistance from Narcissa and
Snape – the first his own mother and the second someone he liked a lot
for five years. And yet even when he is desperate enough to cry in
bathrooms, even after Snape saves his life, Draco wouldn't trust him
for help (and apparently not his mother, because if he had told her
she would have told Snape). The fact that his father is also in mortal
peril if the mission fails only makes accepting Snape's help more
logical and more urgent. So in order to explain Draco's irrational
behavior here you must introduce the Teenage Irrationality Factor.
That is, you must assume that Draco being a teenager will make him
"want to do it himself" and "have problems with authority figures",
and generally act against his own interests even if it kills him and
his family. IOW you have to assume that an angsty teenager equals a
complete idiot. I don't see JKR falling for this cliché.

In my version Draco has a rational reason to mistrust both his mother
and Snape. He has a rational reason to suddenly have problems with
authority figures. He feels betrayed by the important adults in his
life. He's afraid that his mother and Snape have reasons of their own
in helping him, that they might be manipulating him. He suspects that
they are conspiring together against his father, who is in jail so
Draco can't contact him. Maybe he even has suspicions that they
somehow engineered his father being caught and jailed. Maybe he isn't
sure to whom he even wants to be loyal – to his mother or to his
father. He is angry and jealous at Snape. In short, in this version
Draco is an angsty teenager with real, rational reasons to act like an
angsty teenager. We have just been told that Hamlet is one of JKR's
favorites readings. Don't you see the parallels?


Neri

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ACID POPS references for new guys:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/138593
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/138790
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/139141