[not...not.... HP META??!?!]
Nov. 27th, 2005 04:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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. -.-;
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. -.-;
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-27 09:47 pm (UTC)Anyway, I was never denying I or anyone without a serious mental disorder wouldn't want companionship-- point was the -degree- to which you let the desire for it motivate your social behavior. Me personally-- it motivates my behavior kind of in the opposite direction, because I actively swerve to avoid passerby, y'know? Though it seems fruitless to seriously compare my theoretical amount of mental damage & Luna's, somehow... -.-;;
I suppose on some level you're right & Luna -is- just plain delusional (and/or mad), but I think there's enough ways in which she's perceptive or is shown to see things more clearly & calmly than others, especially when it has nothing to do with magical creatures. I think I take the magical creatures more metaphorically, because while -in context- we know that of course no such things exist in JKR's world & JKR knows, it doesn't -have- to be true, you know? I think her approach is valid enough because I think she's capable of being swayed by evidence, though this belief isn't necessarily grounded in anything but personal gut feeling. Bleh.
Most of my resistance here is because I think it -is- possible (merely rare) to think freely, or at least rather closer to it than you seem to think, ahahah. As I tried to tell you, my asocialness was worse when I was a small child, though my actual social skills were probably better in some ways (ie, I felt more comfortable with making friends, maybe). I don't think you could entirely make a case that environment forced this personality upon me, y'know? And I had a mother & a (distant but present) father until the age of 10. I didn't 'hide away' when I was like, 4, even though I did later doing the same thing; I just... uh... well, was naturally introspective/dreamy. It's a personality type, not necessarily a defect. I wasn't escaping anything (as in, I had a loving mother & father, some friends, no overt ostracism in kindergarten, was cute and well-enough liked, etc), I was just exploring.
It's true that Luna swallows her father's BS, and that bothers me now more than before. I never just believed anyone (or anything) blindly-- you may choose not to believe this, of course~:) By 'free thinker' I just meant someone who thinks for themselves, and uh yeah, those people do exist~:)) Just v. few of them.