[not...not.... HP META??!?!]

[reenka]

...Can one actually be pretentious but not insecure...?? This is a theoretical question, understand. Pretentiousness is something I find difficult to grasp mostly because it involves uh, wanting the approval of other people(?) and/or wanting to impress people(??) and/or uh, pretending you are something you're not. (As in, well, why would you do that unless you have self-esteem issues?) So basically, are all pretentious people secretly crying inside that they suck and no one loves them?

This is vaguely related to me thinking (after a marathon Draco-talk session with Madames Maya & Magpie-- I think my brain is still buzzing gently while naked Dracos spin about & about) that one of the major things I like about Draco is that as attention-starved and drama-queeny and whiny & narcissistic (and probably insecure as all hell) as he is, he's not pretentious in the sense that he never pretends to be anything but himself. He just -is- whoever he is, and while he can mask some emotion fairly well (not nearly as well as fanon!Draco, but we just won't go there), he doesn't seem to project a front. If he did, I would find him so difficult to like as to be unsalvageable (which is why I really do hate fanon!Draco... somehow, he seems to take that little bitchy-yet-cute shtick and make it into something manipulative & therefore not at all cute). And yes-- Draco is all about the cute, obviously. Obviously!!

I think I always like people who're honestly bitchy and needy and annoying, while disliking people who try to cover up these traits and 'act good' or 'bad' or 'cool' or whatever. Draco is simply too sucky at being cool to pull it off anyway. I mean, people would laugh. I would laugh. Harry would laugh. It would not be of the good. (This is why I love Transfigurations, partly-- it took fanon!Draco and made Harry laugh at him and mock him and not be impressed, which is so my dream come true. I mean, if there's anyone who likes pretentious 'coolness' less than me, it's Harry. It even turned him off his -dad- in that pensieve scene in OoTP, okay. Hello.)

I also realized that my opinion of Luna drops like 300% when I finally get reminded that yeah, she admitted to being lonely & desperate for company in HBP (multiple times, apparently). At least, it drops my ability to really want to get into her head, because in many ways it breaks type-- it becomes a less interesting character to me if she's going to do the Remus thing and need acceptance. I mean, clearly everyone (not psychotic) needs acceptance, but when you have a person with unique/heretical views, to need that acceptance so openly and uncomplicatedly kind of makes me question their intelligence, y'know? Like, you need some degree of independence and voluntary social isolation to be a free thinker. That's just how it works. Only fake quacks travel in herds, y'know? (That doesn't make sense at first glance, I know, but. This is, after all, why I admire lots of goths & indie kids & hippies & ravers & skaters & nerds & gamers and so on and so forth, but never became one.)
    It doesn't make sense that she'd be so easy to get close to and get along with if she's been snubbed so long and she truly still believes things other people would laugh at. It just doesn't work that way as far as I know.

I mean, it works if she -allows- company and gives people a chance-- not being too invested, that's easy. But you know, actually seriously needing attention creates a whole different type of personality altogether, it seems to me....

...In other news: I am so uncool, I know, but I will -never- bloody get an S2 layout, ahahah. -.-;

Comments

Re: from fandomdirectory

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I suppose I hated High School in part because everyone is acting but I refused to-- act -or- interact, largely. I basically thought everyone was stupid and unworthy of my time, ahaha, and I dunno if that made me pretentious so much as antisocial, which is more where I placed Luna (ie, without questioning it or myself, I thought she'd think of the people who mocked her as unworthy of her time on some level, with no evidence to back me up, I know).

I came close to not surviving High School, yeah, but I just wanted to say it's certainly -possible- to reject the whole social sphere (like I did) and get the job done well enough (I was valedictorian... in a school for delinquents). All you really need to do is keep your head down, ignore them, and get the work done on time. I mean, you don't ever have to play by the social rules if you're willing to be ostracized and ignored-- and that was just fine by me, because as I mentioned I thought they were all morons anyway. So... I thought then than people who 'kept up' a social identity that was false were losers, and I still think that now but realize it's necessary. On the other hand, I still think you can choose not to.

Re: from fandomdirectory

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

But, like I said below, why would you consider Luna anti-social or thinking other people not worth her time? To me it seems like she is always very aware of peoples' reactions to her and in her own way is trying for reactions all the time, which indicates that she's not anti-social at all, she just gets attention this way instead of some other way.

Re: from fandomdirectory

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think it's just that I was responding mostly to this:
I can't see how you could possibly survive high school without putting on a bit of a show
--so I was saying you -can- survive it if you don't care about fitting in. With Luna, it was only when I realized yeah, I agree, she -does- care about fitting in-- that's when I lost one of my central links to her that were mostly actually projection (which I knew... which is why I barely wrote her, of course). I think I just didn't -want- to see it, I guess.

I'm not sure if she's trying for reactions when she says 'shocking' things-- I thought that was just what she thought, which may make her naive or clueless, but that's part of her charm, or something. She -is- very aware of people's reactions, but then so am I. Being aware doesn't have to translate into playing for them or being motivated by them, though of course it could. I wouldn't really ever have said Luna thinks other people aren't worth her time, that's definitely me alone ('cause I'm much more bitter/borderline autistic), but it did seem she wasn't unhappy, precisely, like she wasn't being brought down by the mockery or harassment or whatever. And not that she enjoyed the 'attention' of people hiding her things but rather that it wasn't -that- important; like, she was zen-- there were more important things. At least, that's what I wanted to think, I suppose.

Re: from fandomdirectory

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

This may be the same as your point -- but in OOTP, I had the sense that Luna wasn't doing anything calculated, that she was just being her totally eccentric self, tuned in to her own private satellite signals. But in HBP she seemed more of a self-conscious "personality," like someone who had settled on a personal style that served her agenda, and who knew what she was doing with it. The lion-hat seemed like a deliberate affectation, not something you'd do without thinking about it. And her quidditch commentary seemed to be all about "I'm part of Harry's circle now." It made her seem to have less integrity than before -- I mean, if she's playing ordinary social games, then she should drop the "flake" act, because that's sort of like asking to have it both ways, and it's not really an attractive persona to choose as opposed to just be.

Since I'm writing this after pleading tiredness on you other thread, I have to ask -- does that remotely make sense?

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

You know, I just intuitively liked Luna less in the sixth book, without really knowing why-- and of course it rubbed me the wrong way when all these people seemed to say she was more engaging this time somehow. Hmph. Not that, you know, I could really be said to like her, precisely, in the first place-- I mean, she's not my type so much as I am hers, if you know what I mean :> But yeah-- this definitely makes sense, verbalizes what's been teasing at the back of my mind a bit with this.

I do think the lion hat was more of an affectation, a peace offering and/or a sign of solidarity/community, but-- here we see how little I remember details from canon off the top of my head-- Well, but I think she's become part of Harry's extended 'gang' as we see from that initial scene with Neville, but Harry's not so keen on it as they are. She's inevitably become... associated with him rather than just-- um, affiliated, maybe? Though I don't think it's calculating but rather an awkward attempt at playing for the crowd.

I dunno. At the Quidditch scene, I got uncomfortable for some reason-- like, omg so -lame-, you know, but.... In a way, I agree with Sister M that she was playing it up but at the same time I just don't want to believe it, I guess--? A loss of integrity would be a grievous injury to her character overall, and I don't believe JKR -intended- it, but....

It makes no sense, basically, that she'd suddenly -choose- to be like that if she was -already- like that to start with, you know? But perhaps yeah, on some level she could've been doing what was expected of her. Though... in the end, it's hard to tell. It's possible, I think, that she went on about clouds because that's what she noticed, but at the same time maybe she didn't feel competent enough to do a 'real' commentary, and-- well, I just can't bring myself to believe it's an act, because in the end that would totally invalidate her whole character. But it's possible she might be reaching sometimes.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Eh, sometimes I think that having too good a memory for canon gets in the way of a good theory. Actually, now I'm going to sort of whipsaw a little bit because you've got me thinking about Luna and I always like to try on opposite ideas. So how about this:

I wonder if sometimes when we see a person who's a total original, who seems totally self sufficient, if we don't tend to give them too much credit for integrity, for having worked things out to their own satisfaction. I mean, a lot of people looked at Luna in OOTP and said way cool, but in fact, wasn't there a lot of pain there, and a lot of maladaption?

Her fantasies about various spiritual things related back to her inability to deal with the loss of her mother, and her fondness for conspiracies maybe related for her need to believe that her father wasn't a hack, that the Quibbler wasn't just some cynical Enquirer-style rag. And we know that people stole her stuff so we can assume she got treated badly by a lot of her fellow students -- so maybe her pose of disconnection was about pretending not to feel that. And if we just focus on her style, then maybe we're aestheticizing her pain, maybe it's another kind of Harry-obtuseness.

So if that's the case, then her attempts to break out of her shell, to relate more directly to people, in HBP are somewhat more sympathetic. And yeah, it sometimes seems awkward and affected because she's still figuring out how to do it, maybe even only gradually acknowledging the extent of her previous defenses and compensations. But maybe, if we're rooting for her long-term health, we should want her to break away from the "integrity" of her former personal style.

I don't know, I just made all that up this minute, and it's a somewhat more sympathetic take on Luna than I've tended to have in the past. But I'm still in the trial-and-error phase of figuring out Luna, so it seemed a theory worth kicking around!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Now I wonder why you had a non-sympathetic take on Luna, but, uh, the reason I don't tend to talk about her is that I tend to take it too personally, I think. Well, obviously, right :> I wasn't exactly like her (always more... um, pragmatic? but just barely), but it's not like I trust the people who coo over her & think she's so great either. In the end, a lot of the depth I can see in her is most likely of the projected kind, the same sort of 'wah' feeling I can see fluttering vaguely when people diss Ginny. Ginny is a badly-written character, but I wanna defend her as a -girl-, if that makes sense. I think that's where things always get messed up though, don't they? That line between 'character' and 'person', where anyone's fine with feeling any way about a character, but person.... It shouldn't exist like that, but it does.

Anyway, I think you're definitely on the money with Luna's distance & head-in-the-cloudness being a defense mechanism, and there being some denial about her mother & her loser/quack father-- I should know, I've had a similar deal with my father dying when I was 11, and the loads of displacement that went on. Everyone has a trigger, generally, something in real life that drives them to take a natural tendency and drive it to an extreme. When I say 'integrity' I don't mean 'purity', though; integrity is only being true to yourself, whatever reasons you have for behaving the way you do. Everyone has traumas they deal with in their own ways, and contrary to modern psychiatry, I don't believe trauma -explains- things so much as contributes to their rate of development.

I agree with your point about the pitfalls of aestheticizing her pain (or anyone's), though I don't believe I've ever done that. I do think people overprettify/overglorify Luna, but they do that to some extend to every character they like. I think people oversimplify characters/people like her in general, so they're 'cute' or disturbing or inspiring, but not all these things at once. Of course it's easy to say Luna's attempts to break out of her shell are a good thing-- I mean, how wouldn't they be? That is really her journey, to reach out to people, etcetc. It's not something to be taken lightly; it's taken me years and I'm still lagging behind 'normal' people.

I guess you probably wouldn't have read them, but Francesca Lia Block's books really explore characters like Luna a lot better; I think you'd get a better understanding with Witch Baby ;) There are layers of truth to these things; the thing that bothered -me- wasn't the idea that she was reaching out to people but rather that she was playing for attention, which is different. I mean, I never cared about her style in the first place-- it's everyone else who focuses on it 'cause it's surface & obvious, though I think it's JKR's usual bit of social parody, really, so over-the-top as to be ridiculous.

However, you'd have to be careful with that 'pose of disconnection' bit; for some people (especially some male people I'd known who are hacks and jerks and let's not go into that)-- anyway, yeah, for some people it's a sort of dissociative full-on neurosis. For some, it's partly a defensive mechanism but partly a genuine predisposition to be more concerned with the world of ideas. Not that being alone by necessity doesn't hurt, but it hurts -less- when you're okay with that on some level. I mean, it just bothers me to see all introverts as extroverts in disguise. 'No no dear, don't you -want- to go play with your friends?? Come on...' I mean, no, I don't. Sometimes I do; sometimes I do :> But I did say I took it too personally :>

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

the reason I don't tend to talk about her is that I tend to take it too personally

Well, before anything else, there's of course no intended personal commentary here at all -- I mean, I feel like maybe my observations here are pushing buttons that I want to be totally clear I have no intention of pushing. Obviously, for whatever reason, I don't personally identify with Luna so I just sort of see her from a distance, perhaps even coldly. I never saw her simply as the type of true introvert or person who lives self-sufficiently in her head -- both of these, I should say, are types I do kind of identify with and certainly have a lot of respect for.

But Luna always struck me as something different from that, and frankly as a character I didn't like. I think I tended to react to her the way Hermione did, just losing patience sometimes, feeling she took things too far, though that's as much a reflection on me as on the character. Also, maybe I was a little muddled between my reaction to Luna and my reaction to what I thought was JKR's take on Luna -- you say: it's not like I trust the people who coo over her & think she's so great, and again: I do think people overprettify/overglorify Luna. And I think in OOTP and possibly in HBP, JKR wants us to react that way to her, and I sort of recoil from that.

I guess in the end I think why I reacted negatively to Luna in OOTP was that I sensed a complacency about her character, I thought that she had willfully walked away from any responsibility for introspection, for self-criticism, for the pursuit of health (which is by no means the same as the pursuit of "socialization" or extroversion for a person who is naturally an introvert.) And that might have been an uncharitable reading -- maybe it's more sensitive to read her as someone who really needed a kind of moratorium for a while, where she just exempted herself from that kind of pressure.

I think that's where things always get messed up though, don't they? That line between 'character' and 'person', where anyone's fine with feeling any way about a character, but person.... It shouldn't exist like that, but it does.

Yeah, I think this is a general issue in meta about characters, and I've certainly gotten heated about differences in interpretation sometimes because they seem to reflect issues that it's really important to take a stand on in RL. I mean, ideally, literary character types are a safe(r) kind of proxy for engaging directly with personal issues. It's a sliding scale, I guess, rather than an absolute distance -- it gives you a little more room for talking over feelings and possibilities without cutting too close to the bone, but you can still feel the edge or the point even through the layers of insulation, and it still can bruise. If that makes sense! :)

Anyway, nothing I'm saying about Luna is meant to be conclusive or a definitive evaluation, of course -- I'm just puzzled by her, and trying on one possible interpretation after another.

It may be a doomed effort, though: I mean, to some extent JKR's premise is that she's exploring traumatized people and how they work their way to health -- that's certainly true of Harry, and of Neville, Sirius, Remus . . . you can apply it to some extent to nearly all of her major characters. But just when you want to give JKR credit for being profound and empathetic and all that, it seems like she forgets her starting point, and her attention wanders, and she just gets into the comedy of it without maintaining the connection to a deeper character analysis. So Luna, and the other characters, might just not be imagined consistently or rigorously enough to stand up to that kind of analysis. Maybe projection is the best we can do?

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think some of JKR's characters are either personal or universal enough to be consistent-- where she doesn't laugh at them, really, and just observes. I think Harry & Sirius & Ron & Hermione & Remus (and Snape--?) all give me that vibe of believable depth. With Luna, it's more complicated because to me, she's always read as imcomplete-- like a shorthand character, a hint at a type which I understood in general but which was a bit lacking in execution. So I don't think it's that I projected onto her out of nowhere, but rather saw an invitation in her. I can basically intuitively tell why she'd act the way she does, whether or not it's really 'true', if that makes sense; same goes for Harry and Ginny to some extent, and perhaps Remus. With Draco, it only came from long analysis, and even now he pisses me off too much to be -obvious-, y'know?

I get the feeling like her calm (or 'complacency', yeah) is what puzzles you most, and I guess since I do act like that a lot of times, it's just easier for me. I think it comes from a precociously high emotional intelligence and a lack of true friends-- so you could just observe people and go 'oh, well, that's interesting'; turn off your emotions as much as possible, in other words. Introspection & self-criticism are important, but at the same time they could be pretty destructive if you sense there's this void that threatens to consume you if you look too long. It's a sort of precarious balancing act, like walking a tight-rope, I guess. I wouldn't claim it's healthy, but to me it's just so -obvious-. I mean, it doesn't work if you're trying to act holier-than-thou or anything-- this is just classic, genuine dissociation.

Perhaps she annoys you-- and Hermione-- not because she's introverted (thinky) type but because she seems more like an introverted (feely) type. She's basically 100% Classic Original INFP (http://www.typelogic.com/infp.html). She seriously reads as if she was taken from a psychology textbook on this-- it's just completely by-the-letter. Needless to say, I'm an INFP with some INTP tendencies :)) I suspect you're an INTP or an INTJ like Hermione, and TJs (thinky-judgy types) just have a natural befuddlement by the (purer) NPs. Regardless, the FP seems more important than the IN, come to think of it, so in some ways the introverted vs. extroverted point is vaguely moot :>

I do think JKR's writing itself is to blame to some significant extent, definitely-- too comedic often enough to stand up to close scrutiny. I'm also the sort of reader who naturally built up a defense against JKR's moral meta-imperatives so that I could read her books at all-- otherwise I'd have given up 10 pages into the first book (which I did to start with). With Luna moreso than other characters, though, people who don't just see her the way I see her puzzle me-- in some ways I panic a little, suddenly taking qualities I've always taken for granted as alien and 'weird'. It's like looking in the mirror and suddenly not recognizing yourself. Not that we're -that- similar, but in enough ways that it makes me feel odd to see her as manipulative (which is my anthetical quality if there ever was one-- like, I'm largely incapable of it and also hate it most of all human qualities and cannot see Luna through that lens without freaking out).

The people who coo... well, I try to ignore them, though the fandom cooing bothers me more than the stuff in canon. In canon, I feel like she gets patted on the head a lot and smiled indulgently at, which is-- fine, I can see the characters acting like that. But it really really REALLY pisses me off to see her paired with someone like Draco, who'd laugh at her more than anyone. People are so insensitive, I swear :> Well, and some are oversensitive, heheh :> That would be me :>