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. -.-;

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From:

yourpoison.livejournal.com

Hmm, well, sometimes I push my weirdness for -humorous- effect, but it's hard for me to relate to pushing it for attention (since, well, I actively -don't- want attention). It also bothers me when one insists Harry wants attention (though I agree he was suspiciously pissed about being on page 8 of the Prophet or whatever)-- I think, though, that he only wants attention of certain kinds or from certain people (that he likes). He's gotten used to his fame/notoriety, but at the same time I don't think he's extraverted enough to bask in undifferentiated attention. I'm probably oversensitive to this distinction, but there it is. I don't find Harry to be extremely introverted by any means, but introverted he is regardless, from what I could tell. Not that introverted people can't want attention, it's all about the degree to which they want it, really.

Maybe I'm just insensitive to this pushing thing with Luna-- I didn't notice, though I can admit the possibility, which is why I like her so much less. I can't help it, it's just the sort of thing that annoys me in most people. I don't mind over-acting for humorous effect or to prickle/annoy people or something, but if you do it out of desperation and passive-aggressiveness, that's when it gets to be a sort of fakeness I dislike.

I can deal with them jumping ahead and appropriating bits of themselves they want but don't have yet-- I think this depends on whether I think the character/person will get there or has 'grounds' for acting that way-- like, can they live up to it? I think Harry can, for instance, and so can Percy, probably. That's why I was including 'success' in my own understanding of 'pretentious' above; like, at least, truly pretentiousness and desire to 'put on airs' seems to be all about -wanting- success, at least, wanting to 'pull one over' people. I dunno -.-; Heh. Maybe there's different degrees of pretentiousness like with everything else.

Though I do agree with e-san below, like, that's what I was trying to say: that while Luna may want friends like a normal person, she's not really willing to change for them like Remus had been, and that's probably what I'd always focused on before.

From:

sistermagpie.livejournal.com

Harry strikes me as pretty average in terms of wanting attention. He'll dream about having lots of fans screaming for him like Krum, but he doesn't want the pressure of constant attention all the time. He doesn't go phoning the paper to get himself in. He's used to a certain amount of attention so that when it's taken away he notices, but he rarely does things to draw attention to himself really. The paper is lying when it says that he makes up stuff about Voldemort to get attention. He uses the paper to get the truth out in OotP, but only after a fake story is told about him. Most of the stuff about him was done without his wanting it, and isn't true anyway.

I don't know whether Remus reallly changes himself. He does choose to keep quiet rather than have his friends see him as a stick in the mud, even when he thinks they're wrong, which is a slightly different thing, but that still seems to be part of his personality. He doesn't really care enough about these things to risk confrontation with his friends over it, and he hates confrontation. This isn't something Luna would do, certainly, but it seems to be part of Remus is. As an adult he seems more confident, but he still makes similar choices. It's kind of a grey area--if you are non-confrontational, is becoming more confrontational making you more or less your authentic self?

Luna does seem to refuse to change to conform and so be more accepted, but that doesn't necessarily make her less needy than Remus--she may just have different needs. I mean, rather than saying that Luna refuses to give up her radish earrings to have friends, one could just as easily say that Remus doesn't need to wear radish earrings to be noticed or seen as having a personality. Nobody's asking Luna to give up her earrings. It's hard to say she'd be popular or not without her weird quirks because we rarely see anything beyond that.

I think if I knew Luna I would probably treat her a lot less condescendingly than people in canon do. If I got impatient with her I don't think I'd say, "you're weird," or "act normal" so much as "stop pretending to be weird" (because I think it would drive her nuts to have someone suggest she's normal, and also because I think she strives to be really authentic). Almost every scene with Luna is about Luna being strange--she grinds lots of conversations to a halt by bringing in some thing that's a special interest of hers, and she's the most decorated character in canon. She's kind of the opposite of Remus in that way. If Remus was asked to do Quidditch commentary, for instance, he'd probably try to be unobtrusive and make the game easier to understand for people watching. Luna gives us 90 minutes of what Luna thinks.

From:

yourpoison.livejournal.com

I think my only discomfort is with any implication that Harry wants attention than he 'should' or than is 'normal' or reasonable for him, like, uh, because that's one of the ways people who don't like Harry put him down (like, oh, he complains but he's really desperate for everyone to lick his butt or something). Like, I think he's pretty normal but on the low side because of the whole... not particularly -wanting- to go out and make an impression on strangers, though perhaps that might have to do with them all knowing he's the Boy Who Lived. It just doesn't seem like he thrives on it, not -particularly- much, anyway--? That's all I meant. I'm not sure why I even brought that up anymore, btw -.-;

With Luna, it's less about 'would she give up her earrings' and more 'would she compromise herself in any significant way', which I doubt she would because of that thing with authenticity, as you said. I don't think Remus has any particular issue with putting up a front or what have you ('cause he does), but Luna would. I do think we see her saying intelligent or insightful things sometimes, if a bit off-kilter, though I can't give you any quotes, so it's not -all- about her little quirks, which I always found rather irrelevant though omnipresent. It's like, in a way she has a more fresh/unbiased outlook on (certain) things than most people, and that's not just a quirk.

I agree it's likely she has different needs; that's totally in keeping with my initial impression of her and my whole thing where I Mary Sued her all to hell. It's perfectly possible to have needs that -don't- include being desperate for human contact above all else, though one may need it still. However, I think Luna's apparent self-centeredness is less about demanding focus on herself and more about not being aware of the 'right' amount of modesty/sensitivity she should have. I totally know people with low social skills (myself included) who make the common mistake of just, um, being so solipsistic that they can't help but see everything through their own special lens of self, in an oblivious sort of way. It's a disconnect of sorts, I guess. I think typical for nerds ^^;;; Like, 'what do you mean, this isn't deeply fascinating?? Aren't you intrigued, I found that... blahblahblah....'

I think with Remus, it's not that I meant he's not himself but rather he's more socially aware/intelligent and thus more willing to see his situation rationally enough to realize there need to be choices & compromises made. I don't think Luna even sees it as a choice, and wouldn't take it if it existed because in the end her ideas are more important to her than people (well, she's probably Ravenclaw for a reason where Remus isn't). This is the basic problem I have with needy-for-a-friend/boyfriend!Luna, especially -so- needy she'd tolerate more of the same abuse/condescention that's coming from everyone else coming from that person too (ie, Luna/Draco). It just ain't gonna happen; she's not gonna stick around if you laugh at her because if she was going to do that she would've done it already.

I don't think she'd be popular unless she changed her whole personality anymore than Neville would be popular even if he stopped being chubby and clumsy. They're just dorks. Teenagers especially smell it on people; not that I'm bitter (precisely), it's just been my experience that dorks don't get popular no matter what, unless you mean with other dorks. And actually sometimes even with other dorks (like Luna and Neville), the bonding doesn't really happen because they're just too different. I guess I take the whole believing-in-nonsensical-creatures thing as a metaphor for something like being a fantasy-reading RPG-playing videogame-obsessed Wicca-practicing teenager who everyone avoids; I mean, it doesn't help that I -was- that teenager (more or less), but still, Luna rings those bells for me. The clothes are only a symptom, it seems to me.

Though I do know you'd not treat her condescendingly 'cause you just don't treat people you consider out of their gourd condescendingly in the first place~;) Though that bit with pretending to be weird... ouch. Straight for the jugular, there :>