When Black Is The New Blonde
While being a devoted D/G shipper myself, I’ve slowly worked my way across most (het) pairings – from Remus/Lily to Ginny/Harry to Ginny/Riddle to Ginny/ -- well, Ginny anyone, frankly.
But recently, I’ve been browsing the Ginny/Blaise section, and I have to ask – is Blaise the New Draco? Now, before I get cries (and flames) from die hard fans screaming that Draco is an Original, and Incomparable and a Unique – let me agree. In canon, Draco is unique. No one else in the books are really quite so spoilt (with the exception of little Dudders) or quite so petty. The first time we see precious Draco Malfoy in PS is at Madame Malkin’s, and the first thing he says is; “Hullo. Hogwarts, too?”
Which is irrelevant (as is the next sentence), but what he says after than is not. Draco Malfoy is going to “drag [his parents] off” to look at racing brooms, because he can’t see “why first years can’t have their own.” Not only that, but he’ll “bully” his father into buying him one. (At this point I started to go off on a tangent about abused!Draco, but I’ll save that for another time.) As for petty; “born in a bin” ring any bells? “Potty and the Weasel”? Creative, our chap, isn’t he?
I’m not actually worried about canon Draco, but it’s important to make the differences between canon “we’ve-eaten-all-our-food-and-you-still-seem-to-have-some-so-we’ll-just-take-it”!Draco and fanon leather-pants-and-nice-guy-on-the-inside!Draco.
There’s nothing wrong with fanon. I adore fanon Draco – my Draco is arrogant, mean, snippy, over-protective and nasty, but his moral compass is firmly pointed right side up.
Through fanon, most characters, and our perception of them, have been distorted, even indirectly. In my early days, I wrote gleefully of leather-pants!Draco, thinking I was oh-so original...until I found out that I’d subconsciously taken the idea from Cassie Clair (despite having never read her stories) via a friend who used to talk about them.
Fandom, or rather, the Draco Fandom – has this mass mentality that Draco is a strong, handsome and brave male who is going to sweep [insert hero/heroine] off his/her feet.
But as the fandom has gotten older, people have tired of familiar characters. They seek out even lesser known characters such as Hannah Abbott, Theodore Nott...
...and Blaise Zabini, who has conveniently never been mentioned after the first sorting. A blank slate for a bored writer.
General fanon consensus writes Blaise as having brown/black hair; a dark to Draco’s light.
But lately, that seems to be the only difference. Is Blaise simply Draco with a hair dye?
Fanon Draco is considered someone who won’t play by the rules, who is ambitious, cunning, snarky, confident, etc. (After all, he is in Slytherin). And charming. And disarming. And arrogant. The other character cannot help but fall for such a person. Draco is a hard, cold person with a cruel streak but [hopefully] also a sweet streak.
Surely Blaise is something more than that. Too many people fall into the trap of forgetting that just because you’re in the same house, you are the same as a house mate. For example, Hermione and Lavender are not at all alike.
The same holds true for Slytherin houses. Yes, Slytherins have traits in common (and there is a fantastic essay on Slytherin characterisation here), but just as Lavender is not a bookworm, Blaise is not Draco.
And so it is illogical to assume that Blaise is exactly the same as Draco, even if they share similar tendencies. At present, I haven’t found a great example of what Blaise could be, but hopefully that will change.
Comments/questions/criticisms more than welcome.
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