[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

[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 :>