Dark Book - Blood and Cruelty/ Draco

[starview316]

No: HPFGUIDX 177335

> > >>Alla:
> > Notoriety, I think? Harry is well known, yes, but to me popular
> > means **likable** all the time... <snip>
>
> Betsy Hp:
> Ah.  That's the mistake then.  No, "popular" does *not*
> mean "likable".  Actually, sometimes popular people are very much
not
> likable (though sometimes they are).  Which is probably why there's
> such a resistence to linking Harry with being a BMOC or popular.
But
> *all* it takes to be considered popular or a BMOC is to be have the
> student body all know you, all have an opinion on you, and to have
a
> certain amount of celebrity.  All of this Harry has.
>
> Notoriety is actually a part of being popular or the BMOC.  As I
said
> previously.


Amy:

If being known by all is all it takes to be a BMOC, then okay, Harry
is a BMOC (I still don't agree. But I'm also willing to forget this
point). I don't have a huge problem if you choose to see him as the
Big Man on Campus at Hogwarts, but you can't imply from their
interactions that *Draco* is "taking on the Man". That was the first
(really the only main) issue I had trouble with in one of your first
posts on the subjects, because if Draco were "taking on the Man",
that would imply that Harry is actually the traditional, *well-
liked*, everyone has a positive opinion on him, BMOC. That would
imply that Draco would be crazy to take on this BMOC, because it
would be the equivalent of social suicide. And whoever is more well-
known or liked better, we know for a certified fact that, on a school-
wide level, Draco is never farther from committing social suicide
when he takes on Harry (when I say school-wide level, I mean the
confrontations that happen in front of most of the school). In fact,
it's practically the other way around -- again, we don't know whether
Harry could muster the influence to get all the students to point and
laught at Draco, but we know from three separate occasions that Draco
can get at least a quarter, sometimes even three-quarters, of the
school to laugh at Harry, to publically humiliate Harry or one of his
friends. For all that Draco might be humiliated by Harry in turn, it
always seems to happen in private, never seen by more than ten
students (and this is a random estimate), and never seems to affect
his social standing.

No, taking on someone more magically powerful than him does not
count. Nor does taking on said someone when said someone's friends
are around count, either -- that's not taking on the Man, that's just
not knowing when to quit (either while you're ahead, or whenever).


> Betsy Hp:
> Oh, I'm not implying. <bg>  Seriously, the fact is Harry is a BMOC
> but *Harry* doesn't see himself that way.  It's not a position he's
> interested in having.  Therefore he doesn't think himself as BMOC,
> therefore readers can fool themselves into thinking he's not a
BMOC.
> But he is.  Therefore the idea that he's not a BMOC is the result
of
> JKR manipulating her readers into seeing him as not a BMOC.
>
> It's the way she has us on the edge of our seats at the climax of
the
> books: will Harry survive?  Well, of course he will, he's the hero
of
> the series, he's not going to get killed off in the graveyard in
> GoF.  That Harry is the hero is a fact.  But for the scene we
> believe, with Harry, that he's just a scared kid in the hands of of
> evil wizards.  Because JKR manipulates us to see him as such.

Amy:

I have to actually agree with Alla here; of course, the Harry filter
runs through the books, so what we read relies heavily on his
perception of things. But most HP readers aren't mindless drones, we
can look at actual events as they happen in the books and draw our
own conclusion from them. There is no Imperius curse on these books
to make us think what JKR wants us to think.

It feels like I might have said this before, but I have kind of
realized from seven books of "Is that Harry Potter?" and people
continuously looking at Harry's scar, and the dozens of newspaper
articles printed about him, that Harry might be famous. I have read
about the girls that chase him around and his super Seeker skills and
whatnot. I agree that a lot of people admire Harry for these things.
Just because I don't agree with your specific definition of Big Man
On Campus, doesn't mean I've been brainwashed by JKR. I've read the
exact same books, where Harry was chased by girls for the Yule Ball
in GoF, then treated like a pariah in OotP, and no amount of Harry-
filter can change these basic facts. From this you may have gathered
that the entire school has a firmly admiring opinion of him, but I
just can't, and that's why I can't think of Harry as a BMOC. Again,
the one truly canon BMOC we have in the HP books is *well-liked* by
the majority, and THAT is a firmly admiring opinion. If Harry were as
well-admired, we wouldn't see his so-called popularity seesaw as much
as it does.

Yes, everyone knows him. No, everyone does NOT have an opinion on
him. At least, they don't have an opinion on him that's not subject
to change by the merest rumour that might pass by -- which, imo, is
not an opinion at all.


> Betsy Hp:
<snip> So JKR gets us to forget that
> Harry is better liked than Draco, that whenever they clash Harry
> wins, and that Harry has more people backing him up.  That way we
get
> that viseral "Yay!" when Harry beats Draco down.  It's good writing
> on JKR's part, and that's the manipulation I'm talking about.
> <snip>

I really hope that by "whenever they clash Harry wins", you mean that
Harry ultimately wins (usually in the last confrontation of the book,
although this tends to vary in other books). Because if JKR does get
us to forget all this, there must be a successful method she has in
doing so, if so many people are, in fact, cheering for you to
recognize it as a problem. Not even a six-year-old would cheer for
Harry's beating Draco down if Draco hadn't (in a literary sense, not
just in the single confrontation-sense) been acting a nuisance for a
long enough time for it to get annoying.

I mentioned this to someone else when asked about why Draco would
keep coming back to bother the Trio if he were just going to be beat
up all the time. I know that for a lot of readers, it's the physical
confrontations that tend to stick in mind the most, but the fact is
that Draco does get in a LOT of quick snipes and jabs here and there
throughout the books, without any "beatdown" reaction. I'd say, on
average, that the ratio of Draco's jibes to the Trio et al's physical
reactions, is about a 3:1 ratio. They are not the best odds, but they
are still positive ones -- yes, if Draco is that determined to get to
them, I can see why he'd still come back.

So maybe it is manipulation, but if it is it's not entirely on the
part of JKR; at least 2 out of 3 times, Draco picks on the Trio
without anything happening to him, and *that* is what the cheering
readers most likely identify with, and respond to.


Amy