myrddin @ April 27 2003, 09:06:00 UTC

Yes, I did notice that earlier. Hmm... who knows what she is up to.

notapipe @ April 27 2003, 09:16:41 UTC

What do you mean she's sober?

katrionaa @ April 27 2003, 09:20:34 UTC

Well much more sober than Narcissa. In her first comment she sounds very lucid. Maybe she's just making fun of Narcissa in her reply.

notapipe @ April 27 2003, 09:21:53 UTC

I think she's just sorta drunk and types very well while inebriated.

notapipe @ April 27 2003, 09:22:57 UTC

Or, considering the first one, not. Never mind me. But she's definetly got some alcohol running through her system. (hey, maybe she's trying to get Narcissa drunk so they can be joined at the hip as well)

katrionaa @ April 27 2003, 09:25:23 UTC

Aha, that's it! ;) Why should Lucius have all the fun?

sistermagpie @ April 27 2003, 10:00:12 UTC

That's what it seems like to me. It's quite a turnaround for Vector to be having a nice discussion with Narcissa after their last exchange over Draco. Perhaps Narcissa gave her an encouraging account of that morning with Lucius...though I can't really imagine that. If Vector is drunk she may just be responding to Narcissa as a person and not as any student's mother. According to Colin everyone is snogging except him so...;-)

Anonymous @ April 27 2003, 10:48:53 UTC

According to Colin everyone is snogging except him so...;-)

Ah, but also according to Colin (who might not be the most reliable source ^_~):

everybody is gay excdtp me and ms.m and she is durnkg and she wont set let me hage any.

Colin vouches for Narcissa's heterosexuality.

(who had the Colin/Narcissa OTP?)

anjaliesque @ April 27 2003, 11:42:45 UTC

*raises hand* That would be me! Well, not completely originally. But I did say it would now be my OTP!

At least, that was until the good ma'am shot me down... :( My theory uses the process of elimination. What heterosexual couple is left but Narcissa and Colin? Sail the S.S. Milk and Vodka! :D

zorb @ April 27 2003, 10:45:58 UTC

Vector really confuses me. It makes sense for McGonagall and Snape to hand out punishments to Draco, but where does her interest come from? Is she just that nosy that she feels a need to get tangled in the Malfoy drama? Does she have some bizarre ulterior motive? Cannot figure her out.

katrionaa @ April 27 2003, 10:50:05 UTC

Sometimes I think she just likes to stir up trouble. Whatever else she is trying to do, I suspect she wants to get some 'dirt' on Draco that she can use against him.

Anonymous @ April 27 2003, 10:52:11 UTC Crush

Vector has a crush on Draco-- Opps! I mean, she sees him as a young child in need of guidance and doesn't want him to fall through the cracks so to speak. I think she fancies herself his mentor. The thing with hurt, prickly people is that they do not accept help/guidance from just anyone, and I do not think she realizes this.

sistermagpie @ April 27 2003, 14:47:30 UTC Re: Crush

What's cool about Armithmantra as a character, I think, is that she does get off on seeing herself as the One Good Teacher with Draco's best interests at heart. (God knows with some of these other guys it's understandable she feels like the best teacher in the world!) I think she actually does know that people like Draco won't accept help from just anybody. For instance, I know some people thought Draco was just taking advantage of her with the whole "I give you house points for accepting help" thing but really, I do think Arithmantra got what she wanted out of that. She really wasn't expecting Draco to have a breakthrough about it, just really try to give him the slightest motivation for doing this thing, knowing full well he would be snarky about it and think he could take advantage more than he could.

So I don't think that's her problem, exactly. It's more, I think, that she gets sidetracked seeing herself as this capable teacher. When that happens it's not that Draco can take advantage of her or will throw her help back in her face, it's that the help becomes more about her liking to feel like she's the one doing good. Draco himself kind of gets lost. That's where he gets his opening to continue being a prat or just get worse. She pats herself on the back for taking action but the goal of the action (changing Draco) becomes less important. You get these half-starts (like the thing mentioned above) that are allowed to fade away. It's like taking only half your antibiotics for a virus or something. Each attempt that's only half given and not followed through causes the infection that is Draco to grow stronger and more immune.

Draco's difficult in a million ways, it seems. He fights any positive influence at all times and you never know when he's going to turn and bite for some reason. Anytime anyone starts to flatter themselves that they are the person he likes and who can reach him they are usually in for a fall. M.B., it's worth noting, does not seem to be this way. She doesn't seem to have any personal stake in Draco liking her or not. Sometimes he's a jackass to her and she fights back.

black_dog @ April 27 2003, 16:28:35 UTC Re: Crush

See, I'm stalking you now around different threads!

She pats herself on the back for taking action but the goal of the action (changing Draco) becomes less important.

I singled out Vector yesterday when rambling on the whole issue of "self-serving self-regarding" adults, but I think, here, you've put your finger on it perfectly. Although I can imagine Vector would have many successes behind her and many ex-students who love her, she a bit too invested in her self-image as a wise and benevolent shaper of children's lives.

And I think this is part of the brilliance of her characterization -- her good intentions are real, but her wisdom and self-control are not equal to her intentions, and at a moment of crisis she does not rise to the occasion, like Remus, but lets her mask slip because her self-regard has been wounded.

I made a mistake yesterday in attributing some cutting remarks by Lucius and Narcissa, about Vector not being a parent, to Draco. I was re-reading her exchange with Draco today, and there is actually something respectful and hopeful in the way he addresses her -- and a further irony in that she doesn't perceive it. When she threatens to punish him, he's sarcastic, but he's sarcastic in a reasoned way, comparing his own behavior to Weasley's and making the partly-reasonable point that Justin and Ernie came by their own homophobia without his help. He's nasty and he's wrong on the main point, but he's reasoning with her, asking and trusting her to clarify the situation for him, not simply defying her. Her gestures toward reasoning back (about "hurting others" and "stamping out a wildfire") are likely, for Draco, to be drowned out by her unprecedented, escalating and quite extraordinary threats.

I do stand by the general statement that Draco's defiance, and perhaps her specific sensitivity to homophobia, drove her to lash out in a rage that tore her mask off. On reflection, I wonder if it wasn't the contrast with Remus (and she aspires, I think, to be Draco's equivalent to Gryffindor's Remus) that humiliated her and set her off. When Remus spoke, both Seamus and even Ron promptly shut up, mid-rant. In front of the whole community, Vector was unable to pull off the same trick with her own supposed protege.

And she's clearly nettled about it. Her intervention in Snape's point-taking is gratuitous and petty. And one of her most telling remarks comes in an exchange with Narcissa. In the course of blaming Draco's parents for his behavior, she makes the ugly comment that Lucius and Narcissa's methods "seem to have worked admirably to raise exactly the kind of son you prize. Congratulations." It's a truly hurtful thing for Draco's "mentor" to say in his hearing.

(Interestingly, an hour later when she takes on Lucius, she makes a point of saying that "it is remarkable that your son has turned out as well as he has." I wonder if she's adjusting her tone to whatever she thinks will be more wounding for a parent to hear, or whether she has calmed down in the course of the hour, and remembered her commitment to Draco.)

I'm a bit divided on Vector's detentions. On the one hand, I said yesterday I like their "shock and awe" aspect but on the other hand they could eventually become overkill, embittering Draco further rather than making him reflect. There also seems to be a disproportion between the daily assignments and the alloted time, that suggests the detentions were designed more in anger than with good judgment.

It will be very, very interesting to see how Vector's actions develop as her immediate anger recedes. She already seems to be working to make her peace with Narcissa, even as she patronizes her just a bit ("so ablutely").

Anyway, I hope that in analysing Vector within the frame of the game, I'm still being clear about how much I admire the player. The character is fascinating -- a well-intentioned, genuinely good-hearted person who can't quite get outside her own need to seem well-intentioned and good-hearted, and can't always measure up to the wisdom or sainthood she aspires to. And the character is played with sympathy rather than satire, and with the love that is such an essential and animating part of this whole RPG.

sistermagpie @ April 27 2003, 21:18:51 UTC Re: Crush

Yay! More excellent stuff!

One of the scary things about Draco's behavior is that I think it's intended to be unforgiveable. I think Draco's all too aware of how much he wants to hurt Harry and that attacking Harry in a way that really hurts him is going to anger everyone. (In my lj-ramble on the event I compared Draco to Caleb Trask in East of Eden, if you know the climax of that book.) Spit in their face, as it were. ("Face it, Creevey, your hero's a queer.") When someone immediately jumps to Harry's defense he wants to tear them down, perhaps hoping that by hurting Harry he will make them feel like dirt because they love him.

I'm a bit divided on Vector's detentions. On the one hand, I said yesterday I like their "shock and awe" aspect but on the other hand they could eventually become overkill, embittering Draco further rather than making him reflect.

I think the detentions are intentionally humiliating and this would normally not be a bad thing. Here I think it is. Humiliation is what fueled this to begin with. It's so hard for me to explain what I mean, but...attention must be paid.

It's like...so many people in ps's life seem to think that the important thing here is to show Draco how horrendous what he did is but I think his intention was to be horrendous. I think if he could have killed Harry, cooked him up and served him to his mother in a stew like Medea he would have done it. And this aspect of his feelings, the part about his wanting to be treated with the respect and love he sees others get from their parents and he sees his parents give to others (something I think he has despaired of ever getting no matter what he does) is valid and it deserves to be respected. And yeah, there are plenty of people who grow up in his type of situation who don't turn into jerks or out people or behave the way he does but ya know, many of them do. We feel sympathy (or should) for Harry re: his treatment by the Dursleys not because Harry is nice and has dealt with his feelings in an admirable way but because he deserves better. If one's going to explore this type situation why not use someone who doesn't make it easy on us by responding to the things that hurt him with grace?

Draco has focused this anger on Harry for years. His budding friendship really didn't stand a chance against all the anger he still had--in his own way Harry was playing with fire in putting himself out there at all. And I know this is going to sound weird but in a way I think it's somehow important that we saw that Draco was in fact, quite dangerous. Not just to prove a point that prejudice hurts, although we see that clearly, but to show this is real for Draco and always was. His anger at Potter wasn't a joke, or a way to get attention or a tantrum over not getting what he wanted. This was real anger and pain and actual hatred that Harry didn't deserve, but unfortunately got for various reasons.

So when all this stuff started to come to a head, with Narcissa and Lucius and the school and there's Potter at the center of it again seeming to flaunt how easily he has Draco's mother at his feet making him homemade presents and having to make excuses for Draco's mother to Creevey...no, the golf clubs didn't stand a chance. One thing we kind of lose sight of here, I think, is that while Harry and Draco have come a long way for them, they're still only in the very beginning stages of friendship--albeit a friendship that's immediately intense because of all their past issues. Harry may be dealing with the sexual aspect already but I don't think Draco is ready for that yet.

This is why I think Draco will do something surprising at this point. And probably not in a good way. If he accepts this type of detention for this, the thing he considers the central injustice of his life I just don't think he'd survive it on some level. JMO.