Over the past few weeks*, an interesting phenomenon has been gaining steam in a section of Harry Potter fans who spend a lot of time online. This makes them a small subset of the population, but wow, are they enthusiastic about this cool new thing.
What is this cool new thing, you ask? People are asking themselves what the Harry Potter books would look like if Draco Malfoy, Harry’s schoolboy rival, was a girl. Not trans. A girl. That’s important. And they started making fanart. Then came the memes. Then the fanfics.
Thus was born the ‘Malfoid’ phenomenon, where the wizarding ‘prince’ Draco is portrayed as, essentially, a wizarding princess. A rival to Harry in school who has a secret crush on him, and they slowly come together and fall in love, and through the strength of that love, defeat the bad guy.
Aww. So cute. And I’m not being sarcastic; there is some genuinely good fanart and fanfiction popping up as the trend becomes more widespread. It’s nice to see people openly celebrating a young man and a young woman slowly falling in love and overcoming adversity together. And it’s amusing to read a rewritten scene where only the pronouns have been changed, and see how it changes- or doesn’t change- the original story.
As you may have guessed, I have words of encouragement about this whole thing, and words of caution.
First, the encouragement. There’s been an explosion of creativity surrounding Malfoid, and I love it. It’s great to see people practicing their art and writing- there’s even music about the rewritten universe- and the fandom, for the most part, has been positive and encouraging (there’s always a small percentage of jerks; ignore them). So far, the loudest grumbling has been against people who try to turn something wholesome and cute into something degenerate. It took almost two weeks before I started seeing anything that even came near Rule Thirty-Four; that’s rare for the internet. Keep pushing back against that; this is a cute trend, and I, at least, would like to see it stay that way. Also, the characters are children for most of the original story.
There are some excellent tropes that are being used in these fanfics, some of which have been desperately needed by readers, and creators haven’t been able to give them. The sweet, growing-up-together romance, the self-examination that Malfoid would have to go through to become a worthy partner for the hero, the hero and heroine coming together to fight the bad guy as one unit- these are all classic romance tropes, and for good reason. They tend to lead to healthy relationships in real life, and they make for entertaining fiction. And Western fiction has been sorely lacking in them for the past few decades- it’s all about the bickering love interests who seem to hate each other. We need less of that, and more of Malfoid.
Now for the caution. When you engage in fanfic, you’re playing in someone else’s world. JK Rowling has been very kind in allowing us to do so. Keep in mind that this was and is her world. Changing the story… well, it changes the story, and while changing Malfoy to Malfoid might make a better story arc, it also makes it less attractive to publishers of its time. Consider the nineties and early 2000s. Do you think a sweet, clean, teenage romance between a boy and a girl would reach the same heights of popularity that the original story did? I don’t. We’re only having this discussion because she wrote the original work and made it hugely popular. Ragging on her because she wrote a coming of age story instead of a romance kinda misses the point.
The trend has also started to become political. I understand the impulse of portraying a character who is so high-status that she doesn’t need to worry about a brain-to-mouth filter, and can get away with saying whatever she wants. Just remember that this started out as a sweet and wholesome trend. It’d be nice if it stayed that way. Also, the internet is forever; don’t put your name on a work that you’re likely to regret owning later. Use your judgment.
Now on to one of my personal pet peeves: people portraying Malfoid as an adult that she wouldn’t become without a whole lot of extra character development. Wanting the reward without putting in the work. Because the rewrite works for the book canon; you can get a great story with remarkably little change to the original words Rowling wrote. But I’m now seeing memes of Malfoid as an apron-wearing, cookie baking, loving wife and mother in the American middle class style, and those throw me so far out of the story, it might as well be on the other side of the galaxy. I get around it by reminding myself that it’s fanfic, but I’m worried this mindset is going to spill over into original creative works.
I’m probably more sensitive to this than most people, because I read and write historical fiction, and it grinds my gears when authors put a modern character with blatantly modern sensibilities into a historical setting.
This is not simply a temporal issue; it’s a matter of culture, and it’s relevant to the Malfoid phenomenon because a British wizarding princess would not become an apron-wearing, cookie baking, loving wife and mother in the American middle class style, without another seven books worth of character development to justify it. She wouldn’t understand those things; she wouldn’t value them; she wouldn’t have the skills to do things like bake cookies- and would feel degraded by anyone suggesting she should learn. She’s a princess; baking cookies is something the servants do, and in-universe, they’re not even human servants. If you want her to do those things, you’ve got to show why she would want to do them in the first place- and Harry, having grown up with the abusive and utterly middle class Dursleys, is not going to be the one teaching her to engage with middle class values and activities.
(Actually, that’s starting to become a fun spinoff of the spinoff- examining how Harry would change when he got together with the princess. His family was one of the old and wealthy ones, if I recall correctly, but he wasn’t raised in the style that you’d expect from an aristocratic family. So it might be more realistic for Malfoid to keep being her princessy self, and for Harry to take a level in social class, even though that’s not the point of the sweet, wholesome Malfoid trend.)
Authors and artists: you get a certain amount of leeway when it’s fanfic; everyone knows you’re playing with the original work, and accuracy isn’t usually the point. But if you go on to write and create your own original works, pay attention to cultural clashes like this. The British wizarding aristocracy is pretty obviously based on the British (real) aristocracy; learn how that social class behaves before you go putting them in situations they’d never encounter in real life, and expecting them to behave the way you want them to behave. This specific cultural mismatch is usually not a priority for Americans, because our social classes look different, and it’s easier to move between them- you gain enough money, you rise in social class; you lose all your money, you fall in social class. British social classes are somewhat financially based, but they pay a lot more attention to family trees than us colonials do.
The same goes for any characterization and development- think about what the character would value and how they’d behave based on their experiences, and if you want them to have different values or behaviors, you have to explain how they got there, or it’s going to look like you want the reward without doing the work.
The Malfoid trend is still new and developing. It’s cute; it’s wholesome; I hope it stays that way. If you’re following it, use it as a springboard to develop your skills as a creator, and go out and create original works that explore the themes that made this trend so popular.
I eagerly await the seven book series that explains why she learned to bake cookies with her kids.
*Let it be known that I wrote the majority of this post a week ago, and in the way of internet trends, the Malfoid phenomenon has already altered somewhat. Mostly to the good. The quality of the fanfiction has been high, and it’s still mostly wholesome. But my point about cultural clashes is still relevant, so I decided to let the post stand as it is.
28 responses to “Thoughts on the ‘Malfoid’ Trend”
I appreciate this thoughtful and reasoned post.
A few days ago, Mary Catelli mentioned the word Malfoid in the comments on Crossover’s blog, and I knew she wasn’t misspelling things but didn’t have a clue what the word meant. Thank you for explaining it — and thank you also for explaining that so much of the fanfic being written is wholesome. I’ll have to go check it out.
The coining of the word is quite different from what it became.
Foid is a slang term for a woman, that is a bit offensive and also inaccurate to the Malfoid meme. There is a meme format that is ‘An Chud/An Foid’, which is apparently about mocking the people who would use those two terms.
There was this dude who liked the memes, but didn’t want to use the word Malfoid, and so I sought to learn why.
Thank you for sending me down that rabbit hole, Bob.
Today I learned that ‘foid’ is short for ‘femoid’ which is what the angry boys who ain’t getting none calls girls. Fembots from Austin Powers.
Hence, Malfoid. Better than Malfem, I guess… sort of…
Dammit, Bob!
blink I could explicated then if I had known.
It’s fine, I could have typed it into DuckDuckGo and found out easily enough.
Harry Potter and Dracaena Malfoy in a retelling of The Education of Philip Jettan/Powder and Patch! 😀
Item: A lot of the Potterverse characterization is about whom raised whom, and about people who may or may not grow out of the behaviors they had already established. Draco was raised by parents of questionable decision making, and had looked up to them, and sought to imitate their behavior. He is careful with his words, in trying to imitate a fairly bad role model. I can buy a female Draco who is more careless and impulsive, but it feels to me like that requires her father to have adjusted his own behavior.
Item: I’ve been outlining towards something that is clearly derived from Harry Potter, but involves UK nationals who travel to a boarding school in America. I was more interested in some of the ‘strangers in a strange land’, and ‘does politics make sense to anyone’ possibilities.
Cool. Transparent knock-offs are even better as a springboard to develop your skills as a creator.
Maybe 10 or so years ago I came across a *very* well written one.
I wonder if it inspired the trend: https://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-16165/EllandrahSylver+Fool+s+Consequences.htm
That’s very much a favorite fanfic of mine…
Thank you for explaining this. I’ve been wondering about it.
I think it’s nice to see the kidz branching out and doing their own funz their own way.
That’s why I do, after all. No reason they’d be different.
Get out there and have fun wrong, you whippersnappers! Do it all upside down and backwards, too hard and for too long. When you’re old you will thank me for this advice. ~:D
I filed the serial numbers off and I’m making bank off my Malfoid-inspired fiction.
The whole “Harry needing someone to teach him British nobility rules” did occur to me. It would be interesting seeing a version where she essentially becomes his social attack shark.
Children from a more dangerous and unpredictable society than the usual. I’m nott sure what an analogous period in history would be, but just the fact that from age 10 up they are carrying potentially deadly implements 24/7/365 would make me wonder. They’re also in a “state of war” similar to the WoT.
Eh. I have only the barest knowledge of the original series, let alone the fanfic and its popularity. But to get from wizarding princess to cookie baking with kids, she’d have to be bad at it, at least at first. And to be bad at it at all she’d have to even have the idea in the first place, as it wouldn’t arise organically. And for that idea to take hold instead of being instantly brushed off, there would have to be a reason strong enough for it to stick in her mind.
And to even get to *that* point she’d have to have a drive, desire, or want that provides the hook to hand that idea on- something that was not the thing itself, but as a means to an end. Yep, I can see a vague sort of pathway, sure. But as mentioned, the foundation ain’t even laid and the blueprints are still whimsy.
You see this in anime fairly often, usually the rich girl is interested in the guy and is told handmade chocolates or cookies for valentines is the best way, and they end up producing very bad results.
I’m still waiting for the “CALL ME QUEEN DRACINA!” hentai and it hasn’t happened yet…mostly because I suspect that they can’t figure out how to do with Harry as a bottom (I think it’ll be Dracina/Hermine when they do) or nothing has risen far enough to the top to be translated yet.
I also think that the Internet has decided that #malfoid is as innocent as possible and considering how many ethots have been shouted down trying to monetize it…may it remain so for a long time.
But a lot of these ideas are great and I hope that the authors of them use what they’ve learned to create their own IP and keep going with good stories.
(God knows there are some of my older fanfic that should never ever see the light of day…)
a British wizarding princess would not become an apron-wearing, cookie baking, loving wife and mother in the American middle class style, without another seven books worth of character development to justify it.
Of course, one can always tear it loose and give her a different background. Lots of potential out there.
[…] THEY’RE BRINGING WHOLESOME BACK: Thoughts on the ‘Malfoid’ Trend. […]
About inappropriately applying American cultural values in a British cultural world – doesn’t Rowling sort of do this herself? One of my beefs with Rowling is that she makes Harry both a prototypical English hero AND a prototypical American one. So on the one hand he has an elite bloodline that destines him for greatness and inspires a certain awe and reverence, while on the other he is still some sort of plucky underdog who must use grit, wit and talent to demonstrate his worth to those same sneering elites. The inherent contradiction is sometimes ridiculous.
Like, oh, King Arthur? It’s a combination that’s very old, actually, the high-born child raised in obscurity so you get the best of both worlds.
“because our social classes look different, and it’s easier to move between them- you gain enough money, you rise in social class; you lose all your money, you fall in social class.”
I don’t want to make this political, but class in America is a little more complicated than that. As it is pretty much everywhere.
One of the reasons for Trump Derangement Syndrome is that he has lots of money and is at the top of the political totem pole, but has and does a lot of things that are seen as “low class”. This drives the people who aspire to be high class nuts.
Class is culture. You Americans make it harder by pretending it’s only about money in America, but it isn’t.
Oh they’ve done the Harry learning social mores by now.
https://x.com/katechon_studio/status/2112920870305845509
“would reach the same heights of popularity that the original story did? I don’t.”
That’s where we’re going to disagree. Look at the reactions. Observe what’s happening. Adding the enemies to lovers trope could have made Harry Potter even bigger than it already is.
Yes, we know it’s a coming of age story, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for romance. For centuries, men and women have yearned for romance in their lives, and that will never change. It’s a tale as old as time.
What could work is creating a parallel universe, allowing the original story to remain intact without changing anything. The original focuses on coming of age; the parallel story would focus on romance. It opens up entirely new possibilities.
Draconia (Female Draco, aka Malfoid) and Harry Potter could have a Romeo and Juliet-level story. Romantasy can be great in the right hands.
The original worked great for children, its intended audience. It also happened to work really well for adults. Part of the genius of the series is that each book represents a year of growing up (11-17), and each is written to be age-appropriate for that age.
Malfoid works well for adults, but wouldn’t work as well for children.
Another version of the Potter universe, that has been appearing on YouTube, is involving Wednesday (of the Addams family). There are several stories that have been created and published. All entertaining.