Draconia Malfoy

I've been fascinated while traveling for work with the "Malfoid" meme, which I heard about on various YouTube channels that I occasionally watch. Real fake wizard and Shad talked about it, it was a major topic of one of the Friday Night Tights group discussion, and Jon Del Arroz made several videos of it. Even WDW Pro, Clownfish TV and That Park Place were forced to mention it—and they're pretty mainstream. Heck, even Variety made a mention of it.

What is it, you may be wondering? Basically it's a "meme" running rampant through fan fiction, fan art, and now fan AI animation of the concept of "what if Draco Malfoy had always been a girl?" The concept itself isn't super interesting just because, but what it says about the culture is fascinating. The general gist of these fan fiction rewrites is that Draco (or Draconia, as she's often called, although other alternative names have been made too) is still an arrogant, spoiled, aristocratic Slytherin princess, but because Potter, famous in his own right already, rejected her offer of friendship, she got mad at him and became his rival, just like Draco really did. The difference, of course, is that when a bratty little princess finds a guy who blows her off, she's immediately fascinated with him. Secretly underneath the barbs, rivalry, and sometimes outright bullying, she slowly starts to fall in love with him... and to a lesser or at least slower degree, he with her. This usually culminates in them going together to the Yule Ball in book four as normal.

However, the complication comes up when Voldemort returns later in that book, since the Malfoy family is heavily embedded in his inner circle, and Draconia (or whatever name they use) gets put in an impossible situation. Her true love and what she knows is right means sacrificing like she cannot believe; her family, her position, possibly even her life, as she becomes an obvious easy target if her true sympathies are known. And... of course, what are her true sympathies? What she grew up with and was indoctrinated in, or what she is slowly coming to understand is really right?

And, she eventually makes the right choice, at incredible cost to herself, proving herself to be the worthy love interest that Ginny Weasley never does.

Much of this is pretty cliché, but it's a story that people really yearn for; in fact, the hashtag #yearn or #yearning is heavily associated with this theme. This is definitely the boy's fantasy; a girl who really is worthy. But it's hardly new. In fact, Edgar Rice Burroughs perfected essentially this same story back in 1911 with A Princess of Mars (my second favorite book of all time, I might add) where John Carter goes to Mars, meets an aristocratic princess, immediately offends her, manages to kind of claw himself back into a brief friend-zoned relationship where he discovers that he's falling in love with her, only to quickly offend her even worse than before, engender all kinds of rude and dismissive behavior, even though part of this is because she has fallen for him, but is terrified of the consequences of it. After a series of incredible misadventures worthy of a true hero, he saves her from whatever dire fate is in store for her, which means that not only does she prove herself worthy of him, but he proves himself worthy of her too.

It's also worth pointing out that the plot of Pride and Prejudice is essentially exactly this too (without chases, swordfights, aliens and naked beautiful people on Mars) although Malfoy has many of the personality traits of Mr Darcy, and having the roles gender reversed has obvious changes on how it develops unless you want Harry Potter himself to come across as an unlikeable beta who acts like a woman. Which, in some versions, he does.

What is the interesting cultural discussion around this? Multiple things. Here's several in a dot point format.

• A big part of this is being associated with dissatisfaction of the new "Black Snape" streaming show. Also, the fact that a very traditional romance, but a "guy's romance" plot is at the heart of this complaint, especially after years of gay romance, race mixing, and girlbosses being pushed on us in spite of their unpopularity. This is being associated by Hollywood as a frightening thing; due to the timing, it's seen like a fan uprising of sorts against their new interpretation of the IP.
• In fact, that's become such a thing, that this is anti-Blake Snape, anti gay romance, very traditional, etc. means that Malfoid has become, at least in the twisted and ridiculously broken minds of the BlueSky Left, that Malfoid is a MAGA character that appeals to chuds or something stupid like that. Although it's making the rounds among the West just recently (relatively) and is, probably, mostly associated with boys and men who wish that this had been the original plot all along, that's not where the root of this actually is. It really started mostly in Asia, and most of the purveyors of the art, fan fiction and AI short movies are from Asia still.
• Sadly, this has a downside to what otherwise sounds like a good thing, and which mostly is. The most common interpretation of the characters is very anime/manga, or that the plot is a typical "k-drama". Although the story beats and character tropes have a long English language tradition, including Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jane Austen, and William Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew was basically a riff on a stock story and stock characters in his time, so it's not like he invented them either) a lot of people call this a Japanese tradition, and casually drop some anime Japanese stock plot label (borrowed from Western literature) in conversation about it. This is... sadly cringe. Actually anyone with any form of Yellow Fever is kind of cringe unless you're Asian yourself and it's your culture and your people, I think, but people who are unaware of how cringe it is and drop anime terms in discussions about other fandoms with the expectation that people will get the reference are the cringiest betas I know.
• As mentioned briefly above, the fact that many betas find this fantasy very appealing means that a lot of iterations of it are kind of beta. Harry is often a passive victim, an object with no real personality or agency, and the plot is just what happens to girl Draco and her emotions. Why exactly is Harry supposed to be the object of this burning love in girl Draco if he's not masculine, decisive, or in any way likeable or attractive really? Just because? That's part of the beta fantasy, and its one that mimics the girl fantasy, of being some mid nobody who for no reason whatsoever is suddenly the object of intense pursuit by a bunch of hyper-high status rich powerful guys, or even rich powerful but sexy brooding monsters like vampires or whatever. It's kind of an entitled fantasy; the idea that all you have to do is show up and not be anything really likeable or special, but somehow you're treated is if you are in fact both of those things for no reason whatsoever. 
• Of course, the better ones have Harry being Harry, much as he's written in the books. He's famous, he's mostly a nice guy, and he's likeable, but he also gets angry and doesn't take that much crap from Malfoy before he decides he can give it back just as hard. Harry starts falling for Malfoy too, because he sees that there's more there than initially meets the eye, but he sees that there's more there than meets the eye, he doesn't see something that isn't actually there, like in the fantasy version that is unrealistic. And, of course, Malfoy's character development has her turn into the kind of woman that any man would be happy to have at his side; she earns the right for Harry to love her; she isn't just entitled to it.
• In fact, this last development, which would typically happen in the "typical" Malfoid arc to a small degree before the Yule Ball and kinda sorta reconciliation and early attraction/dating vibe, but most especially after Voldemort returns and Malfoy has to make the hard decisions on what she's going to stand for kind of makes it somewhat different than the Edgar Rice Burroughs prototype of the story arc... although similar themes are certainly explored in Pride and Prejudice. In an Edgar Rice Burroughs story there is less character development and more characters actually just understanding that their counterpart actually was worthy all along. They don't become worthy, they already were and just need to prove it. Girl Draco has to become it in order to prove it. Part of that, of course, is that the characters are young. Teenagers, of course.
• It's also interesting to me that so much of it is AI generated, which is deflating a lot of the "moral panic" around AI. Lots of people who a month or two ago thought AI was the worst thing ever are now literally saying, bring on the data centers if they're going to give us Malfoid content!

Anyway, I don't know. I like the idea. If a really good novel, animated movie or whatever is out there, I'd be happy to consume it. When the first Harry Potter movie was imminent, I decided I ought to read the book first, and I ended up reading all four of them that were in print at the time several times over.  When the movie wasn't really all that good, and then that was followed by the fifth book, which also wasn't that good, it lost me a lot. It never recovered the book 3 and 4 glory that it briefly had. And while I can't deny the cultural touchstone that it's largely become, I'm also ambivalent to what it's largely become. Plus, it's YA anyway, even to an extent that stuff like The Hobbit or the pulp stories never were; its a little cringe for adults to be too into Harry Potter, although adults who are my kids age and who grew up with it the same way my generation grew up with the original trilogy Star Wars movies get a bit of a pass there. Like I said, while I like some of what it's doing, and I don't mind seeing more of it if it can avoid the beta poseurs, what I think is ultimately much more fascinating about it is what it's saying and doing to the culture wars and the cultural landscape. It's indicative of a massive shift back to normalcy. Many long-time younger Millennial or Gen-Z fans are saying that this story arc is significantly better than the original with much more potential. Because of its roots in traditional romance and characters who earn and deserve an iteration of the greatest love story ever told, it is a fundamental rejection of years and years of indoctrination, which ultimately proves that Leftist dogma is incapable—in spite of many structural advantages in our culture that have lasted for many, many decades—of overcoming the core of human nature and what people yearn for.

And it's not really right wing. That's kind of silly. The reality is that Leftism is so alien and strange that anything that is normal and usual about human nature is called "right wing" because it's opposed to Leftism. I guess, if that's what you mean right wing is, and lots of people do, then sure, I guess we can call normal human behavior and human nature right wing. All that that really does is indict Leftism with demonstrating how anti-human and dysfunctional it really is, though.

My favorites are the cheeky ones probably made in the West, however. Sure, sure; they're almost more like skits than stories, but they're pretty hilarious and show that, even with AI generation, these characters have humanity, chemistry and charisma than anything that the Left can manage to create, and that is super engaging. Hence the Left's rage at the meme, I presume.

And speaking of not being too beta and passive...