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justanotherdaylikeanyother-blog1 · 5 years

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Pacat flattered herself with the idea her world had no sexual taboos. For all her talk about sex positions meaning nothing, bottoming is described negatively in the books. And it’s a sign of dominance in Akielos. Everyone is horrified that Damen was a slave because that means he had the same sexual role their slaves do. And I’m not sure a world that forces people to have same sex sex is any better than ours.

It’s pretty clear you have some definite opinions on this, anon. I might be the wrong person for you to talk to about this, since I don’t really care what an author says about their work after the fact (learned that one back in 2007 when JK Rowling started running her mouth at a hundred miles an hour and never stopped). So if Pacat has said any such thing in interviews, or back in the LJ comments or whatever, I wouldn’t really know. What I do is just take what’s on the page and interpret it myself without worrying about the author’s intention.

Having said that, there certainly are taboos still in place in the Capri universe. The real-world taboos against homosexuality and bisexuality were removed (though it’s still kind of referenced when they deal with the Vaskians), but that doesn’t automatically suggest there are no taboos left at all. If nothing else, there are obviously things that are taboo in Vere that aren’t in Akielos and vice versa.

Tbh, I never took the reaction to Damen being a slave to be ‘oh no he’s taken it up the ass so now he’s automatically less of a man’. It’s more complex than that. Bottoming is not the same as submission, and I’d argue that’s true even as far as the Akielons are concerned. It’s about context, and it’s more particularly about who’s in control. I mean, it’s pretty fucking clear that Damen has sucked some cock in his life before ever meeting Laurent and has thought nothing of it, because that’s not necessarily submissive in itself. But if you provide the Akielons with a mental picture of Damen on his knees before Laurent so that he could ‘service’ Laurent, suddenly to the Akielons it’s akin to the position of a slave because it seems like a willing submission rather than just another sex act. The same, I would suggest, would be true of bottoming; when the Akielons think of Damen as a slave, I’d say they picture him getting on his hands and knees and passively taking it while Laurent called the shots. Would they have such a problem with it if Damen was the one in charge but just happened to be taking it up the ass at the time? I can’t say for sure, but probably not. I’m not saying that casting submission in a negative light, as if it makes someone lesser, is any better than doing so regarding bottoming, but there’s really no way around that in a society built on slavery, where everyone is convinced the slaves are there due to willing submission. Of course the two things are going to end up being conflated, under those circumstances.

But speaking of conflating, you seem to be assuming that the Akielon view of things is the view we’re being told to adopt as readers. We have a whole other country full of characters with different beliefs from which to draw. I think it’s pretty clear that Laurent owns the fact that Damen has fucked him. He doesn’t let anyone see it as making him lesser. All of his men were under the impression that Laurent was bending over for Damen long before it actually happened and yet that understanding never made them question his authority. Yes, our PoV character is Akielon, but I don’t think the point of the books is to encourage us to believe as he believes. Damen has a lot of skewed perceptions. You have to read his account critically, and compare it with the other more peripheral information we’re given. That applies not just to this, but to most everything we’re actively told by Damen.

#captive prince #the author is dead #unreliable narrator #probably not safe for work #but I'm wary of tagging anything that way these days

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dictacontrion · 7 years

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I'm a different anon to the previous and I'm actually really interested to hear your thoughts on Pansy and Draco now. I would love it if you could write some meta on it?

Prefect!Pansy and Prefect!Draco - it’s an interesting question, right? Thanks for being lovely about it, anon!! Here’s why I think Pansy and Draco were the right choices.

As with Ron, we have to consider the options, and consider them in the context of the war. Dumbledore would have needed prefects who were as tactically advantageous as possible, but in the context of Slytherin house, and given the choices he had there, he would’ve needed to use slightly different criteria than he would for Gryffindor. He wouldn’t have been able to think so much in terms as making the Order stronger, as in terms of making sure that the Death Eaters didn’t gain strength or attack Hogwarts.

Unlike with Ron I don’t think we can make an argument that at 15 either Pansy or Draco were especially upstanding or full of leadership potential (nor do I think that Dumbledore would have made those arguments) so it comes down much more to a question of damage control.

First, the girls:

Millicent Bulstrode had shown that she was inclined towards brute force (as when she broke the rules at Duelling Club to put Hermione in a headlock, which in a magical context would suggest that she’s both violent and unpredictable). We also see signs that she’s neither liked nor respected by her peers, and JK Rowling has suggested that she’s a half-blood, which would’ve had the potential to put her in the position of having to prove herself to the Death Eaters. It’s unlikely that she would have been able to do much as a prefect in terms of keeping order or lightening the adults’ load, and hard to know how much damage she would have done. You don’t want to give authority to someone violent, unpredictable, and with something to prove to your enemies.

Daphne Greengrass and Tracy Davis are question marks tbh which probably puts them in the same category as Dean for the Gryffindors, wherein they could have been fine but, as far as we know, were not particularly advantageous (and if they were going to be particularly important to the war in some way that would make them advantageous or dangerous, we would know more about them)

Pansy Parkinson has some of the same liabilities as Millicent Bulstrode, but more advantages.

She’s already the leader of the pack so is going to be taken most seriously by her peers, and she’s going to have an interest in maintaining her status, so she’s most likely to lighten teachers’ loads (thereby giving them more time to devote to the war effort) by dealing with things independently and exercising judgment about what really really needs adult attention.

She’s not physically or magically violent. Mean, yes, and laughs and encourages it when other people do bad things, but she doesn’t instigate violence, which limits the amount and type of violence she’s going to cause with her authority as a prefect.

The Golden Trio probably could have taken her. Push comes to shove, she wasn’t going to be able to get in their way.

Pansy is clearly motivated but not clearly principled. This would be a liability in an ally, but is an asset in an enemy. She doesn’t give any sign of having actually bought into the idea of blood purity, it’s more that she’s interested in her own influence, power, and comfort. Even when she wants to turn Harry over, it’s more about an easy solution than an ideological crusade.

All of this would have made her easy for Dumbledore to manipulate if he’d needed to. She wasn’t ideologically motivated enough to go on a recruiting spree, and she was predictable in her responsiveness to promises of status, safety, luxury, and comfort - which, by making her a Prefect, Dumbledore was demonstrating that he could make and keep.

Then the boys:

Vincent Crabbe is everything Dumbledore wouldn’t want in a prefect. Violent, loyal and closely tied to the Death Eater cause, lacking the independence or critical thinking skills to question Death Eater ideology or to negotiate/finesse orders to mitigate damaging shows of force, lacking the foresight to consider even the possibility of losing and to hedge his bets accordingly (/act less poorly/respond to incentives from Dumbledore), willing to recruit, and willing to recruit through coercion and threats. He would’ve been a disaster.

Greg Goyle is in the same position as Crabbe, basically.

Theodore Nott might have been an interesting choice, because he’s smart and because he’s not a joiner/part of Draco’s gang, but he is the son of a Death Eater and we don’t see signs that he wasn’t on board with that, plus his loner status probably made him harder to manipulate. Also, tbh, making him Prefect likely would have incurred the wrath of Lucius Malfoy, which Dumbledore needed not to do - more about that below.

Blaise Zabini could have been another interesting choice, but with the same issues as Theodore Nott - not clearly manipulable, not as clearly influential, and not a problem to not pick him.

Draco Malfoy was basically the only possibility because of his father, and outside of that he’s a compromise choice in a lot of (understandable) ways.

If Draco hadn’t been made a Prefect Lucius would have thrown a fit and retaliated. We know that Lucius is on the Board of Governors and was able to arrange to have Dumbledore expelled from the school in Chamber of Secrets. That wasn’t a risk Dumbledore could take.

If Draco hadn’t been made a Prefect Lucius would have been genuinely angry and might have lashed out. Following Fourth Year, when Dumbledore had to make the decision, Lucius and the Death Eaters were ascendant and Lucius still felt he had, and did have, the power to direct their attention. Giving him a reason to be angry, and to direct that anger at Hogwarts (which he’d already shown he would do - children were definitely not off limits, as with the whole Chamber of Secrets/basilisk situation), was unwise. Not that Dumbledore couldn’t have taken him, but that it could have caused collateral damage that would have made people panic, disrupted the social order, had kids pulled out of Hogwarts (where especially the half-bloods and Muggle-borns would be even more vulnerable), and depleted the Orders resources and attention.

Like Pansy, his social status means that he has an interest in maintaining his authority by dealing with things himself instead of calling in the adults unless it’s really necessary

Having Draco as a Prefect gave Dumbledore and other adults in charge a legitimate reason to keep an eye on him and interact with him. If they’d succeeded in bringing him over that would have been a good cover for convincing him and arranging meetings, and if, as happened, he was going to becoming a Death Eater that meant that they were going to be more able to get to know how he worked and to monitor his behavior.

Being a Prefect would keep Draco busy - it filled his time, kept him out of the common room, kept him on patrol and therefore meant that he was often being patrolled by both the other Prefects and teachers.

Draco talked a big game but, like his father, was largely interested in power. Being the one to give Draco power meant both that Dumbledore could see how he was going to behave once he had it (which could be useful for any number of reasons to do with understanding and changing how the war might unfold) and that Draco would have a little bit of an incentive not to go against Dumbledore too openly or to associate working with Dumbledore with getting what he wanted. At least, it would have made Draco understand that his father wasn’t the one and only power broker in town.

tl;dr: Neither Pansy nor Draco was a perfect choice, but they were the best ones available as far as we can see. Neither of them is a hard-line advocate of blood purity, neither of them is gratuitously violent, both are predictable and can be manipulated, both of them would have done the basic job without needing a lot of energy/time from the adults, both have enough social power that it would have been advantageous for Dumbledore to get a sense for how they worked and to give them reasons to understand what he could offer them, and both of them were worth keeping a close eye on. And, with Draco, picking him was probably very tactically necessary.

#hp #hp meta #prefects #draco malfoy #pansy parkinson #slytherins #dcsays #yay asks!

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