![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I was reading this really interesting post here about a troubling fanfic trend I was unfortunately unaware of, which is that apparently post-HBP Blaise is less interesting than he was before...because he's black? Um, what? I recommend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jazzypom's post because it is about fanfic depictions of black characters in HP in general. I don't read fic about the adults very often so I didn't know about the clichés concerning Kingsley Shacklebolt. As a Slyth fan I do know a bit about Blaise, though, and the post made me really think about
...how my own feelings about him have changed since HBP and I'm sticking them here too. Nothing coherent, just thoughts here and there:
I would never deny that one of the things about Draco Malfoy as a slash character is that aesthetically; it's interesting putting him with contrasting people. Harry, of course, is the main person I contrast him with. The two of them are like blood brothers with the black hair/white hair, green eyes/grey eyes, etc. I've always liked Blaise and was very happy with fics that created a sort of European Malfoy-ish family that probably taught the Medici’s a thing or two. I always saw Blaise as a boy, and pictured him as dark haired, tanned, big brown eyes.
My view of him shifted after I got the truth in HBP, but I honestly don't understand how the back-story we have for him could in any way be considered less interesting. The main difference for me is that where I used to imagine Blaise as part of a big family, now I see him isolated, more just him and his mother, though he probably has lots of relatives scattered around. He still seems continental to me, I think because I imagine his mother traveling around to all the hot spots to meet her rich husbands, with little Blaise in tow. How is this not a rich life for a Slytherin character? Especially one we now know is friends with Malfoy?
Plus he's also a Pureblood snob, so you figure his mother must be from a good family. She's not a little chorus girl who was pretty and so used that to snag a man of a better bloodline. Maybe she's from a family like the Blacks but they'd lost their money, so she took it upon herself to win back the life to which she was accustomed.
I wonder, too, if anyone would do anything with the fact that Blaise is the most sexualized kid in canon, and he has no father and a highly sexualized mother. Is this another woman who's bad because she's sexually aggressive? Is Blaise "bad" because of this quality of his mother? (The books don't have the best track record there.) Is anyone writing incestuous scenes where he and his mother engage in sexual conquest contests when they're bored in Monte Carlo? Somebody could probably write a really funny story where Draco visits Blaise over the summer and gets his mind blown at one of Blaise's mother's parties, or just in general gets an education.:-) Or he and Blaise wake up in Borneo with raging hangovers, wearing women's underwear. I mean, Blaise is totally cool by sixth year, but that's why it seems like it would be fun to see him at 12 when he hadn't gotten it down yet.
Perhaps Blaise's mother is distant. Perhaps they're very close and have a wonderful relationship that's lots of fun. Perhaps all the Slytherin boys adore her. Was Blaise close to any of his stepfathers? Did he hate any of them? Did he kill any of them? Perhaps the rumors about their death are just that, vicious rumors. Blaise is not the Slytherin boy who'd seen death, interestingly enough, so perhaps he and Draco are more alike in that way, surrounded by death but thinking it a game. Did Blaise help Draco out at all during the year?
What were anyone else’s thoughts about Blaise in HBP? Unfortunately anything about the character seemed to get overshadowed by the idea that ZOMG heez black and that totaly sux in a totaly non-racist way I swear but I'm gonna keep him white anywayz!!11!
jazzypom's post because it is about fanfic depictions of black characters in HP in general. I don't read fic about the adults very often so I didn't know about the clichés concerning Kingsley Shacklebolt. As a Slyth fan I do know a bit about Blaise, though, and the post made me really think about ...how my own feelings about him have changed since HBP and I'm sticking them here too. Nothing coherent, just thoughts here and there:
I would never deny that one of the things about Draco Malfoy as a slash character is that aesthetically; it's interesting putting him with contrasting people. Harry, of course, is the main person I contrast him with. The two of them are like blood brothers with the black hair/white hair, green eyes/grey eyes, etc. I've always liked Blaise and was very happy with fics that created a sort of European Malfoy-ish family that probably taught the Medici’s a thing or two. I always saw Blaise as a boy, and pictured him as dark haired, tanned, big brown eyes.
My view of him shifted after I got the truth in HBP, but I honestly don't understand how the back-story we have for him could in any way be considered less interesting. The main difference for me is that where I used to imagine Blaise as part of a big family, now I see him isolated, more just him and his mother, though he probably has lots of relatives scattered around. He still seems continental to me, I think because I imagine his mother traveling around to all the hot spots to meet her rich husbands, with little Blaise in tow. How is this not a rich life for a Slytherin character? Especially one we now know is friends with Malfoy?
Plus he's also a Pureblood snob, so you figure his mother must be from a good family. She's not a little chorus girl who was pretty and so used that to snag a man of a better bloodline. Maybe she's from a family like the Blacks but they'd lost their money, so she took it upon herself to win back the life to which she was accustomed.
I wonder, too, if anyone would do anything with the fact that Blaise is the most sexualized kid in canon, and he has no father and a highly sexualized mother. Is this another woman who's bad because she's sexually aggressive? Is Blaise "bad" because of this quality of his mother? (The books don't have the best track record there.) Is anyone writing incestuous scenes where he and his mother engage in sexual conquest contests when they're bored in Monte Carlo? Somebody could probably write a really funny story where Draco visits Blaise over the summer and gets his mind blown at one of Blaise's mother's parties, or just in general gets an education.:-) Or he and Blaise wake up in Borneo with raging hangovers, wearing women's underwear. I mean, Blaise is totally cool by sixth year, but that's why it seems like it would be fun to see him at 12 when he hadn't gotten it down yet.
Perhaps Blaise's mother is distant. Perhaps they're very close and have a wonderful relationship that's lots of fun. Perhaps all the Slytherin boys adore her. Was Blaise close to any of his stepfathers? Did he hate any of them? Did he kill any of them? Perhaps the rumors about their death are just that, vicious rumors. Blaise is not the Slytherin boy who'd seen death, interestingly enough, so perhaps he and Draco are more alike in that way, surrounded by death but thinking it a game. Did Blaise help Draco out at all during the year?
What were anyone else’s thoughts about Blaise in HBP? Unfortunately anything about the character seemed to get overshadowed by the idea that ZOMG heez black and that totaly sux in a totaly non-racist way I swear but I'm gonna keep him white anywayz!!11!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
One thing that I really like about the HP series is the way racism has been turned entirely perpendicular to its normal meaning: witches and wizards are black, white, Asian, even partly nonhuman - but what matters to the wizarding "racists" is the purity of magical blood.
From:
For once, using my default icon on purpose.
People try to figure out minor characters, and they sometimes put a lot of work into it. Blaise Zabini offered the opportunity to write about a Slytherin who wasn't Draco Malfoy, and who hadn't already been described as ugly, stupid and mean. (For Americans, especially teens and twentysomethings who grew up with the regrettable American notion that any remotely euphonious male name should be appropriated for girls, because heaven forbid an American boy should be named something less butch than well, Butch, it was doubly confusing.)
Despite all the tortured explanations for how Zabini could legitimately be an "African" name, the fact remains that it IS an Italian name, with origins in the Tuscan area where the Italian witchcraft tradition of stregheria (not to be confused with Riley's 'strega' in Pawn to Queen--I actually do like that fic but her definition of 'strega' has nothing to do with consensus reality whatsoever, not to mention that streghe are from Tuscany, not Sicily). Now, when you consider that Imperial Rome and Renaissance Italy (and Florence is in Tuscany, btw) are eras rife with Slytherin potential--we're talking about the folks who brought us Machiavelli--it is quite understandable, I think, that people are attached to the fanonical Italian Zabinis. (And really I would have to understand it since I've more than done my part to contribute to this piece of fanon.)
"I'm keeping him the way I see him" is not necessarily a racist battle cry at all when it is attached to as much work as has gone into something like World Well Lost, not to mention the works of
I will not argue with you about the people who can't understand how he could be both sexually attractive and black. That is racist. I don't think not being attracted to people outside your own ethnicity is racist (mostly because I do not think people can or should be expected to be able to decide who they are sexually attracted to--are straight and gay people sexist?), but I think not being able to understand how they could be attractive is.
But I think the tortured etymologies put forth by some of the black Blaise supporters as reasons why he was never, ever meant to be thought of as Italian are equally fanciful and say just as much about their origins, especially when accompanied by artwork and icons that depict BlackPowah!Blaise as ebony dark with incredibly short tight hair as though he were no more than a generation out of Africa.
I mean, Europe is full of mixed-race people. Why couldn't he be both black AND Italian?
My biggest problem with Blacktivist Blaise is that I don't think his mother's a very attractive portrait of blackness. The phrase "black widow" for a woman who murders her husbands may not be as common across the pond as it is in America, but anyone who knows about the habits of spiders can make the connection--and to make her actually black comes uncomfortably close to being a totally-non-racist I swear ethnic joke. The sort of thing I'd rather expect from Jo Rowling.
From:
no subject
Which is why I was surprised to see Blaise with a big fanbase here at LJ.
I do like the backstory that has been created for him. It kind of explains his arrogant behavior. Blaise is overcompensating for his broken family. It seems that they are keeping up appearances. His family exists in that grey area between the down-on-their-Luck Weasleys and the hoity-toity Malfoys.
I would really like to know how the pure-blood network really works. But I don't think the books will ever address that issue.
From:
no subject
I get a little uncomfortable with racial/ethnic/national diversity in HBP. Some of the names JKR chooses to name her characters are less than politically correct. She might as well have named Cho Chang "Chinky Chink."
I would love -- love -- to read a Blaise fic where he's not used as a plot device or a sex object. Where it actually goes into depth into his past life and his relationship with his mother. Oh man. Especially after you've made these great suggestions here.
From:
Re: For once, using my default icon on purpose.
Oh my God. I never even thought of that. Wow. If it was purposeful, then it's very not funny.
From:
Re: For once, using my default icon on purpose.
The other thing that irritates me about Blaise's mother is that it's apparently simply not possible for a Slytherin to have a non-sinister history, except for Slughorn, who screams "Token" like a very loudly screaming thing and comes off like a pedo anyways (I call him Humbert Slugbert).
From:
no subject
From:
Re: For once, using my default icon on purpose.
That's very true, if mainly in the lack of many Slytherin characters' history. When we do get a slight fill-in on a Slytherin's history, it does have sinister implications like you've said. But with other Slytherins like Pansy Parkinson or Millicent Bulstrode, we don't really know. All we know is that Pansy wears a gold watch and is a "mean popular girl." Yep.
And I do agree with you on the mixed thing. I always imagined Blaise's father being Italian or of Italian descent -- hence the Italian last name. Or Zabini could be Blaise's mother's last name and she herself is racially mixed. So many possibilities here.
From:
Re: For once, using my default icon on purpose.
Oh yes, absolutely. It just seemed like most interesting discussion about Blaise got drowned out by this and the reactions to it, which is a shame, because views like yours are more interesting because it was character-based--when I was trying to think about good discussions about Blaise during HBP your lj was the one place that came to mind. As you said, the fact that his name is Zabini did give fanfic writers something to go on--and, I mean, it's not like this is a series where one could usually go wrong depending on a name that way. Seamus Finnegan anyone? Cho Chang? Padma and Parvati Patil? Why shouldn't Zabini, the only Italian name in the series I can think of, have an Italian background as well?
I did not mean to imply--though I see I sort of did--that keeping one's previous background for him was necessarily racist. That's just a standard fanfic thing--do you rewrite your characters when they get rewritten in canon? In many cases the sensible answer is no because there's no reason to. With Blaise especially you're talking about someone who was once only a name so fanfic authors did all the work. They'd be starting from scratch now for no good reason. That too, I think, got lost in the F_W cliche of young girls who were writing badfic to begin with saying they were going to continue to write badfic making him white with black hair (and probably calling him Zabini). That didn't seem to happen when we found out he was male and plenty of people continued to write him as female or say they were going to do that. It wasn't a sexist thing, it was just about their fic.
But I think the tortured etymologies put forth by some of the black Blaise supporters as reasons why he was never, ever meant to be thought of as Italian are equally fanciful and say just as much about their origins, especially when accompanied by artwork and icons that depict BlackPowah!Blaise as ebony dark with incredibly short tight hair as though he were no more than a generation out of Africa.
Wow--see, this is how clueless I am about Blaise in fanfic at all, because I didn't know anyone had tried to argue he was not meant to be thought of as Italian. For the reasons I mentioned above, that I don't get. I mean, *I* don't look Italian at all and have an Italian last name, but of course I'd assume that if all you had of me was my name and you were supposed to build a character for me based on those two things, I'd probably be more Italian than I am. Any fanfic writer has to come up with an explanation for his name, just as fanfic writers often come up with an explanation for the Malfoys having a French-y name.
And of course, having seem specifically like a black activist again goes against canon, because Blaise is supposed to judge himself based on his magical blood, not the color of his skin. It's again bringing our racial concerns into a place where they are not supposed to exist, even if they of course exist for the author.
From:
no subject
I wish the books would address the Pureblood issue. Well, this is just the type of thing Slytherin fans are interested in, but we don't get, unfortunately.
From:
no subject
The only legitimate complaint I can see people having is their (sometimes numerous) fic/art/RPG now being AU, but really, the new details about him and his mom should have spawned a huge amount of fic. I second your request for Blaise in Monte Carlo, Blaise at 12, etc. ;)
From:
no subject
Yes, and there's also the nice little plus when you see someone who gets shrilly self-righteous about how they hate the Slytherins because "they're racist" then suddenly can't deal with one of them not being white because it turns out they're not racist at all, in terms of the real world.
I get a little uncomfortable with racial/ethnic/national diversity in HBP. Some of the names JKR chooses to name her characters are less than politically correct. She might as well have named Cho Chang "Chinky Chink."
It's so sad, because that's almost exactly what I thought when I heard about people not getting that she was Chinese when she was cast for the movie. Cho Chang wasn't enough of a clue? What did she have to be named for you to think she could be Chinese? Chinky McChinkerson?
Of course, that's also why you can't then turn around and pretend it's strange for anyone to think Blaise was Italian.
I would love -- love -- to read a Blaise fic where he's not used as a plot device or a sex object. Where it actually goes into depth into his past life and his relationship with his mother. Oh man.
Not to mention that in canon Pansy says he's hard to please, and one of his few lines is to say he wouldn't touch Ginny because she's a blood traitor. One could easily go the other way and give Blaise a complete horror of sex because of his mother's past.
From:
no subject
The only legitimate complaint I can see people having is their (sometimes numerous) fic/art/RPG now being AU, but really, the new details about him and his mom should have spawned a huge amount of fic. I second your request for Blaise in Monte Carlo, Blaise at 12, etc. ;)
Yeah, and really I kind of like the idea of pre-HBP Fanon!Blaise being a cousin or something. Somebody could write about the two of them hanging out together.:-)
From:
Re: For once, using my default icon on purpose.
From:
no subject
I really feel that she went overboard in the amount of information she threw at us re: Blaise. I honestly wonder how much of this came from the fact that people have been pestering her for ages about this mystery Slytherin, whose only real claim to fame before this is that Zabini was the very last surname called out in Harry's Sorting Ceremony. Fandom grabbed hold of Blaise as an ambiguous character with an ambiguous name who could be used for anything the author wanted -- he (or she!) could be an Italian sex god or Snape's love-child or strega or the 'good Slytherin' or any of a hundred other fandom variations. And now that Blaise has been given a backstory (and once which feels a bit tacked on to me), I don't find it all that surprising that interest in him has dropped off. And I don't think it has so much to do with race as it does with a lack of the ambiguity that drew many fans to his character.
From:
no subject
From:
Re: For once, using my default icon on purpose.
I mean, for every ten twinkie fangirl who still insists on writing female and white Blaisie Sue, or that they want to write him white because that'd be hotter somehow, there are also two or three people out there pointing to this essay
Now nonstandard etymology can be fun. I've tied "Malfoy" to things other than "mal foi" in part because if you're going to do that you might as well just name the character Dr Evil, and lord knows Rowling has done that before. But if you are doing it to prove you're not racist, or to prove that JKR is Cool....... ...... ...
Yeah, okay, sure.
And yes, the scorn FW has heaped upon those who think of Blaise as Italian after she practically named Cho Chang "Chinky Chink" and named a vampire Sanguini and a werewolf Remus Lupin? Totally uncalled for.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Cho isn't actually a Chinese name, according to at least one Chinese friend of mine.
From:
no subject
I don't think there is any editor in control of JKR's monster right now. It's running rampant,picking up speed, and getting set to crash with a big boom.
She could quote "Mary had a little lamb" for one whole chapter and her editors would let it go. Because she is making them mega-bucks.
From:
Re: For once, using my default icon on purpose.
Where as it is very fun thinking up the background for a name that you get. Even if you have in your fic that Malfoy is bad faith (which is right up there with ickle Slytherin MALcolm BADdock) it would be fun to come up with a reason for that. I mean, I'm not an expert in where names come from but they might have gotten the name Bad Faith for a noble reason. To some fundamentalist Christians who hate the books the name might simply imply that they are witches. (But then, I often feel like a lot of the stuff with Slytherin and Purebloods could be read as the Old Religion vs. the New Religion represented by Gryffindor's crusaders.)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Exactly. I would have started hacking away at GOF, cutting out 9/10ths of the stuff about house elf liberation and trimming away some of the fat around the meaty parts of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. (You don't even want to know what OotP would have looked like if I'd been able to get my hands on an early draft.)
It's lovely that she's building a world from the ground up, but when all is said and done you can't lose sight of the main goal of the story. And some of her detours have left her perilously close to doing so at times.