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Harry Potter and the R63'd MalfoyDræcina Malfoid and Male Romantic Fantasies
I want to talk about the other major AI-driven development that burst onto the internet this week. RW Twitter has been having a tremendous time rewriting Harry Potter with a Rule63'd Tsundere Draco Malfoy, who eventually falls for Harry despite family upbringing, pureblood prejudice, etc. This intersects with the CW in several ways so I'm going to have to put it here, but despite that I think it's all been a tremendous amount of fun.
Some examples: Harry loses a bet and has to ask Malfoid to the Yule Ball, AI video version of various Malfoid images/writing.
I'm going to speculate on why I think this has caught fire now, but the thing I think most interesting is how pretty much all the Malfoid stuff I've seen is actually quite wholesome and earnest, and that it's a really interesting data point in the endless discussions around sex, dating, and love we have around here. The next few paragraphs are context for people who might've missed it; skim or skip them if you like.
This doesn't feel like it should be new. Harry Potter was one of the biggest fanfiction communities back in the day, and that community has already gone through and shipped pretty much everyone with everyone else, and I'm certain any given character in the books has been sex-swapped at least once. But this time we get a very right-wing chud take on the Wizarding World: 'our wholesome, blessed "Malfoid" vs. their godless, degenerate Fem!Draco' (as in that meme with the two kingdoms).
So why now? I didn't see the inciting event, but I think the ground has been fertile for something like this to crystallize out of the Harry Potter universe for a few reasons. Harry Potter seems like cultural ground ripe for squatting or recapture: through the 2010s and early 2020s it was so thoroughly associated with a certain type of NPR-liberal-quirk-chungus lefty, to the point that "READ ANOTHER BOOK" was a common RW dunk whenever political/cultural events were compared to Literally Wizard Hitler. Rowling herself was very much in lockstep with her progressive readership on pretty much every issue, but broke ranks with them on transgender issues, leaving the average progressive more than a bit unsure what to do with their fondly re-re-re-read collection of HP novels and their Gryffyndor scarves. The result, I think, is that it's something like an abandoned fort in the culture war - nominally held by the left but not strongly, because of the uncomfortable association with Rowling. On top of that, Harry Potter was one of the last big cultural forces that reached nearly everyone - the title reveal of one of the later books was a story worth printing in a newspaper on its own and bookshops had massive queues on release day. On top of that, the story and world don't hang together if you look at all closely, so it's a tempting target for fanfiction writers to reach into and change or fix. On top of that, there's the absurd casting for the new series featuring (to use the the most prominent example) Paapa Essiedu as a very urban-looking Professor Snape that makes it ripe for mockery from the right.
The result has been a lot of chaotic glee that Harry Potter is up for recapture and reinterpretation. Cedric Diggory becomes Chudrick Diggory, whose absurd musculature would require him to walk sideways through doors and transfigure his shirts on and off each day; Luna Lovegood seems like she'd cheerfully mention crime statistics without caring who was in earshot; and Snape seems to be either played straight in the Alan Rickman style or used as a vehicle to mock woke casting or urban norms and behavior. The chuds are rediscovering fanfiction from first principles, using it to poke sticks in eyes or roll back some of the idiocy of the past few years, and they're doing a lot of it with AI.
The online right's willingness to use AI to make media seems to me like it's going to become an increasingly valuable strategic asset that the left is not going to be as able to pick up (because anti-AI/anti-datacenter viewpoints are now part of the standard lefty package). Even before AI, memes have had very short lifecycles, and so having an AI-literate bunch of memers messing around means they are able to reinterpret and exploit memes much better while they're relevant. A competent right would be able to use these skills to improve general messaging and react better to moves in the wider zeitgeist - I think we saw a bit of this with the "Amelia" character in the UK, where a purple-haired radical in an anti-extremist "game" was discovered by the right repurposed into a waifu and used to drive some of the early Restore Britain messaging from outside the party.
"Malfoid" is also an interesting name for the character. "Foid" seems to have lost a lot of the hateful connotations that the original incel use carried, and gets a bit of use as an ironic term of affection similar to some of the wifejak memes from a couple of years ago. But "Malfoid" is not that at all. The name is a funny pun whose time has come, but her character is proud, competent, well-bred, told to consider half-bloods like Harry beneath her, but unable to completely extinguish her growing feelings for Harry as he grows in courage, skill, and daring into the hero of the series. It is the re-emergence of a romantic fantasy for men that we haven't seen for a long time: a woman who falls for a man just the way he is, because he's grown so much that she can't help it.
So, with all that context aside, let's talk about male romantic fantasies. It is extremely interesting to me that there seems to be very little goonbait in the Malfoid stuff I've seen, but a lot of the writing has hit a nerve for romantically starved men in the current sexual climate.
@kenzietuffon X, in the credits for an AIgen animation of Harry and Malfoid dancing at the Yule Ball, gives special thanks "to all chuds with sensitive hearts who still believe in love, despite it all". There's a sincerity in the writing that's very endearing, and the almost complete absence of smut contrasts it to the femgooner booktok slop that's been doing the rounds online (we've discussed e.g. Morning Glory Milking Farm in these threads before).@TheBrandonMorseon X put it very well, so I'll just quote his tweet verbatim:Another X commenter (
@Kit_Shicker) also deserves to have insight recognized:This certainly resonated with me and reminded me of my lonely years trying to find someone to love. An old reddit post I revisit now and then sums it up thus: "A man wants to be loved for who he is, not for what he does in order to be loved. [...] When he can finally let go of the crank he continually turns day after day in order to earn love and, even if only for a moment, it turns by itself to nourish him in return, that is when he will know he is loved." Malfoid is exactly this, but without the unhealthy "someone should love me the way I am, so I should never have to change", because that last part is replaced by Harry's growth. His growth earns the love because it's not done to earn the love. I've always hated the "men only want one thing and it's disgusting" accusations and I think they actually wouldn't truly hit a large proportion of actual men, but the number of cads and lotharios who seduce and disappoint many women through their interactions skew those perceptions. Sure, male sexuality also involves getting one's own rocks off from time to time, but for a man like me there's a big spot in my heart for some good honest love, and it's really interesting and gratifying to see that spontaneously re-emerge in the online cauldron.
If you want MOAR:
I think it's the first time fanfiction and really pierced into some of these circles, and AI makes a rather attractive blond.
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"Clever kids in Ravenclaw, evil kids in Slytherin, wannabe heroes in Gryffindor, and everyone who does the actual work in Hufflepuff."
Comically unflattering image aside, I feel like Vance, Kushner, Hegseth, Issacman, and a bunch of others in the MAGA coalition would actually embrace this characterization.
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I recently finished the book Fathers and Sons and found myself amused by the way Turgenev described three different young ladies (each quote taken from a different part of the story):
For being three different characters, these sure are all the same character. Clearly Turgenev had a type. (An archetype!) But it's probably also the type that many (most?) guys have. And in 19th-century literature, characters could just exist as that archetype without needing to justify it.
Whereas in the context of modern media — post-postmodernist but still poisoned by the subversions of postmodernism — it seems like the archetype can't exist without justifying it somehow. When I see quotes like this:
…I'm strongly suspicious of whether that's actually the reasons why the character is appealing vs being the necessary rationalization baggage for the modern reader, so that they can accept the character as "realistic". And it seems like the necessary rationalizations are getting ever more elaborate, where now you need to borrow a whole media franchise's backstory and then additionally rewrite a good chunk of its content further.
All this is to say: Turgenev comes across as quite horny, but his writings are still probably healthier to consume than whatever the internet is doing.
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Your Nitter link doesn’t work.
Harry and Malfoid dancing at the Yule Ball
Working nitter instances
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I love this. It’s sort of gooner slop, but it’s also unexpected and wholesome (though the art is too, I’m mainly referring to the surrounding vibes), like wplace…and we’re finally getting some popular right-wing art! Even though it’s like every other fanart except from an “evil” franchise, it’s progress.
(I didn’t read the fanfic, I just saw the drawing that started it and spinoff drawings. I also don’t think most of them were AI-generated, anyways I’m still not convinced AI art is as good as even lower quality human.)
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My issue is that, narratively, gender-swapped Draco Malfoy doesn't make any sense as a love interest for Harry.
There is definitely a male fantasy that a nice lady will fall in love with you for no reason at all, because girls and boys falling in love with each other is just a thing that happens naturally, no further explaination required. It took me until I was about 20 years old to realize that this isn't true. A lot of the stories you linked come off as quite juvenile. I suppose it functions as decent romance slop for teenagers.
Yeah, I don't think anyone's making a real story here. Although if you're a Death Eater trying to foil (or turn!) Harry Potter, a cutie Slytherin honeytrap would have been a better way to go than anything the canon Slytherins came up with.
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Ok I read the first story linked. I am confused but how is this RW? Race-mixing is bad and should be avoided especially when the pure-blood is female and not the pure-blood colonizer boy mixing with muggle female variety. AOC being infatuated with Elon Musk is RW fan-fic.
Honestly these stories seem very LW coded to me. This is very LW coded that the person on the right can’t help but fall in love with the other because they are like “good and funny and virtuous or something”:
“Malfoid was brought up from birth to hate everything about Harry, but despite everything in her corner of society pushing her to despise him and see Harry as a foe, she can't help but love him because he represents something her side of the wizarding world could never show her; honest love and a relationship not based on how useful someone is - which was one of the core themes of the books anyway.”
The only thing a little similar on the right is Vance and Usha. But in that case we are marrying off our lowest class pure blood to an elite foreigner of money and ability. Still Male taking female.
RW Potter fanfic is like Voldemort winning.
It portrays a woman loving a man.
The RW believes woman are capable of love?
Correct.
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No, Voldemort was a degenerate obsessed with his own personal immortality; he was just using the mudblood stuff to get support (though when he was just half-blood Tom Riddle he believed it)
The only thing we actually see harm pureblood families is association with Voldemort. The ones that go extinct are because of him, he preserves nothing.
It's almost too on the nose that, as his enemies start to finally get a bead on how to kill him, Voldemort becomes occupied taking pleasure in bullying the aristocratic Malfoys and putting their only living heir in mortal danger.
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It’s been a long time since I read Harry Potter, because I was in middle school the last time I read them.
But I don’t remember the characters being much like you’re describing. I remember Luna as being someone who was probably fairly moonbattish rather than a right wing Twitter enthusiast, although I suppose she’d be sharing schizo conspiracy theories(not racist ones in particular) there. Not crime stats. Malfoy came off as a true believer who got in over his head- and there were lots of those in the books. Mcgonnagal came off as a very serious career teacher. Etc, etc.
That's because I was trying to describe how the other characters have been reimagined in some vignettes as the chuds have played with the supporting cast. I'm sorry if I was unclear.
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While there's no doubt that ai slop has been shoveled onto this trend, from my twitter the most prominent and load bearing works in this trend have been created by human artists.
Yes, that is true. My point is that the ability to ideate on the setting is being accelerated by AI. Both that it lets people make new media but also that it's probably more impactful to certain viewers when you can also present images, videos, and comic versions of the writing at nearly the same pace. I remember reading warnings against asking ChatGPT to generate an image of potential kids from one's photos because you while you know how reproduction works from biology class, you still might not be ready for what you see when you see it presented in an image with your face.
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