Reina Sakuya

Allow me to see if I can explain, however verbose I may be. This might be a long one! 🧵 The trend started when @redteneri's post went viral, with people instantly falling in love with the character design. There were quickly people asking REDTEN to draw her making out with other women from the wizarding world, to which he responded with “I drew this to make guys yearn again. Sorry, but stop asking me to turn it into yuri or something.” and “A few people won't shut up in my dms about how great it would be if she were trans. 1) Don't be annoying, I will block you. 2) That just wouldn't work.” This solidified that this character was made for normal people, not for a particular loud, annoying minority. In addition, those normal people immediately were taken with that word REDTEN used - “yearn”. For years now our culture has been inundated with an oppressive, grim, and depressing outlook on life. It has been unavoidable, to say the least. For women, it’s “would you choose the man or the bear,” or “it’s not ALL men, but it’s ALWAYS a man”, or merely the fact that the #1 clientele for pornography is men, while simultaneous the people shaming women for producing that pornography are, buy and large, men. These ideas stem from the valid critique that modern men have the capacity for incredible violence, hostility, and hypocrisy, and there is no shortage of stories of men doing just that. For men, it’s seeing things like Lindsay Clancy killing her children and vast swaths of people supporting her, or how it feels like 9 times out of 10, when a woman online says something, there’s an OnlyFans link in her bio, or how women seem to have opposite reactions to Shane Gillis’ gym jokes and Sydney Sweeney’s prediction market ads. These observations have led to the valid concern that modern women have the capacity for incredible violence, immodesty, and hypocrisy, and there is no shortage of stories of women doing just that. Regardless of how anyone feels on these subjects (I’m just one man, I’m definitely under no illusion that I’m going to solve modern gender wars by myself), the prognosis isn’t looking good. Popular culture reflects this - in feminist media, men are often depicted as toxically masculine or inept while women are depicted as “empowered” and without need of a man. In anti-feminist media, women are often depicted as sexually deviant or stupid while men are depicted as "empowered" and without need of a woman. I got married pretty quickly, so I can’t personally speak to this too well, but I have heard multiple stories about how horrific the dating scene is today. After all, with how much tension there is between men and women, why would we want to even be together? Enter REDTEN, and the word “yearn”. A killer character design combined with the purpose to bring desire back to male-female relationships. Then, a (rather genius, in my opinion) choice to refer to the character as Malfoid, which, on top of being a pun, was a way to gatekeep the character from that particular loud, annoying minority. Then an artist named @yunayuispink, being a normal person who fell in love with the character design, posted some fanart on Bluesky where she got insane amounts of hate because of the successful gatekeeping. Yunayu made the choice to not give in to the hate, and continued posting what she wanted anyways. This further solidified that Malfoid belongs to us normal people, and not to that particular loud, annoying minority. These things, plus another that I'll get to later, were the catalyst for the explosion of fan creations, if I had to point to it. Fanart, fanfiction, songs, and yearning. Oh, the yearning. Yearning for what? Not for the fictional Malfoid or the fictional Harry, but for real relationship. To find someone worthy of desire, and simultaneously to be someone worthy of desire. To love, and to be loved. For men, it’s the idea that they can find someone pretty and confident, who might still be a little rough around the edges, and fall in love with them. Someone worthy of being loved and desired. That they could become a Harry - someone worthy of being loved in return. That they could make sacrifices of themselves, perhaps utilizing their capacity for violence, to protect that which they love against the "Dark Lords" of this world, and that their someone would admire their sacrifice, support them when they falter against those evils, and make their sacrifice worth it. For women (once again, trying my best at diagnosis considering that I am not a man), I hope it's the idea that they can find someone handsome and strong, who might still be a little rough around the edges, and fall in love with them. That they could become a Malfoid - someone worthy of being loved and desired in return. That they could find someone who loves them enough to sacrifice for them, someone admirable, kind, and dangerous, someone who will protect them against the "Dark Lords" of this world, and that they could support when their someone falters against those evils, that they could make their sacrifice worth it. Furthermore, there has been another aspect to the trend that has inspired the creation of culture from these artists - and that is the observation many of us have had that J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World, beloved though it is, has some imperfections. These imperfections do not necessarily make the story worse or bad at all, but they do allow aspiring authors, dreamers, and yearners to "fill in the gaps", so to speak. The most impactful one that I'll point to was @MaroonR19's "fate defying expelliarmus", a photo of Harry and Malfoid both holding a single wand, simultaneously casting the spell that brought an end to the Dark Lord. This, in the opinion of many Malfoid enjoyers, would have been a perfect book-end to the canon story of Harry Potter; love stopped Voldemort that night at Godric's Hollow, and love, fully realized between two people who once were at odds with one another, stopped him again. Now, those who have read the books realize that Rowling actually did write this into the canon story (whether it was Snape's love for Lily Potter that drove him to side with Dumbledore, eventually spelling Voldemort's defeat, or the same love that Lily had for Harry rebounding, and Voldemort grafting a piece of his soul onto Harry - that one sacrifice Lily made saved him twice), but it did not resonate as firmly as this idea has. I've seen all different kinds of thoughts on Rowling's gaps in the storytelling; whether it's Ginny's lackluster romance story, Draco Malfoy's lack of a fully-fledged redemption arc, how Harry had more chemistry than Ron did with Hermione (this last critique is, admittedly, more understandable from people who only watched the movies), or the fact that the theme of love conquering evil seems to play second fiddle for fetch quests and elder wand shenanigans in The Deathly Hallows. The Malfoid-enjoying community has taken to creating art and stories that provide alternative ideas to these points, and however cringe outsiders may find it, these Harry Potter fanfictions and alternate universes have been, on the large, wholesome; notably different than the reputation that Harry Potter fanfictions from a decade and a half ago. Malfoid enjoyers are having fun spending time dreaming up scenarios where Harry and Dracaena (I'm not playing favorites with the name, just using it as it's the one I see most frequently) fall in love at the Yule Ball, scenarios in the future where they have a family with little kids running around, or where one or both of them return to Hogwarts as adults as professors. A little bit of a wholesome snapshot into where Rowling's beloved story could have gone, were the seemingly small change made to swap Draco Malfoy for a different character, Dracaena Malfoy. To me, it's genuinely impressive how much such a change improves the story. The community is very wide, and many people have different ideas, often at odds or otherwise contradicting each other. There are artists who use AI as a tool, people who use AI to entirely generate "new scenes" for an alternate universe, and artists who despise AI altogether. But despite these conflicting ideas, they all have agreed chiefly on one main idea: Malfoid is worth yearning for.