Hope I'm not burying you with replies but you keep saying interesting things.
I saw it as a kind of neediness and grandiosity that's only stoked, never satisfied, by ordinary connections.
I see what you mean...and yet it's fascinating trying to figure out just what it is, given the way his story has gone. Like, the thing with Draco that I think a lot of us who like the character see is that he's never quite enough of what he wants to be. He wants to be evil, and it's not that he's a nice guy, but he's just not really good at evil. Lucius is a screw up, but he's got no trouble with the evil part.
With socializing it's like you say--Draco obviously wants social success and attention and validation. Yet he does things like brag about his father--wtf? It's suicide. Yet he's not clueless socially either. He's not David Brent who wants to be liked but has no self-perception about his real talents or sense of humor. He does have some success. Even Harry notices some actual skills--he does fly well, his impressions can be accurate. Some of his insults to Harry are socially aware--like when he accuses him of liking the Weasleys because they have that family vibe and he's sniffing around like a puppy looking for a mother. That's kind of advanced stuff.
So why the other failures? Why does it so often seem like Maya's Draco is so accurate with friends that are protective of him or sometimes just cut him loose to take his lumps on his own because they're not signing up for that? Or at least they seem to have normal relationships with him--some people describe Blaise as seeming to not like Draco in HBP but to me they seemed like perfectly natural friends. Blaise wasn't sucking up to him, but his put downs about how no, he didn't believe Draco became Voldemort's bff over the summer didn't seem cruel. They seemed like something you'd say to a kid like this--obviously it's okay to call Draco on his shit.
So because of that it seems like he actually has made relationships that are real. I was reading a book recently where the main character didn't like this one boy because he was a know-it-all etc., but later did come to like him, noting that even though he was still a pain he also sometimes made sacrifices for the other kids. And he also noticed that the kid had all these issues with his mother that he was probably covering up. So you wonder if maybe there is something in Draco that keeps him from being the Luna of Slytherin, so that all the times when people are laughing at his jokes in CoMC they're not just setting him up.
Hermione should have taken him to Slughorn's party! And now I'm nostalgic for the days of OOTP meta and H/Z!
Zach wouldn't have been attacking her under the mistletoe! Perhaps she asked him and he turned her down, having figured out that she was just using him to make a Weasley jealous.
Re: (Corrected version of comment)
I saw it as a kind of neediness and grandiosity that's only stoked, never satisfied, by ordinary connections.
I see what you mean...and yet it's fascinating trying to figure out just what it is, given the way his story has gone. Like, the thing with Draco that I think a lot of us who like the character see is that he's never quite enough of what he wants to be. He wants to be evil, and it's not that he's a nice guy, but he's just not really good at evil. Lucius is a screw up, but he's got no trouble with the evil part.
With socializing it's like you say--Draco obviously wants social success and attention and validation. Yet he does things like brag about his father--wtf? It's suicide. Yet he's not clueless socially either. He's not David Brent who wants to be liked but has no self-perception about his real talents or sense of humor. He does have some success. Even Harry notices some actual skills--he does fly well, his impressions can be accurate. Some of his insults to Harry are socially aware--like when he accuses him of liking the Weasleys because they have that family vibe and he's sniffing around like a puppy looking for a mother. That's kind of advanced stuff.
So why the other failures? Why does it so often seem like Maya's Draco is so accurate with friends that are protective of him or sometimes just cut him loose to take his lumps on his own because they're not signing up for that? Or at least they seem to have normal relationships with him--some people describe Blaise as seeming to not like Draco in HBP but to me they seemed like perfectly natural friends. Blaise wasn't sucking up to him, but his put downs about how no, he didn't believe Draco became Voldemort's bff over the summer didn't seem cruel. They seemed like something you'd say to a kid like this--obviously it's okay to call Draco on his shit.
So because of that it seems like he actually has made relationships that are real. I was reading a book recently where the main character didn't like this one boy because he was a know-it-all etc., but later did come to like him, noting that even though he was still a pain he also sometimes made sacrifices for the other kids. And he also noticed that the kid had all these issues with his mother that he was probably covering up. So you wonder if maybe there is something in Draco that keeps him from being the Luna of Slytherin, so that all the times when people are laughing at his jokes in CoMC they're not just setting him up.
Hermione should have taken him to Slughorn's party! And now I'm nostalgic for the days of OOTP meta and H/Z!
Zach wouldn't have been attacking her under the mistletoe! Perhaps she asked him and he turned her down, having figured out that she was just using him to make a Weasley jealous.