#prognosticating

I'm really interested in the Theo/Pansy/Daphne dynamic, especially since it seems like at times there is way more unresolved tension (atleast for the readers) than even compared to Draco/Hermione/Ron. You've talked about Theo being a narrative foil for Draco in the past, but wondering if the T/P/D relationships were also designed to echo parallels as well?

greenerteacups:

Oh, that's a really cool observation, I'd love to hear more about what you think. Theo/Pansy/Daphne is a sort of mixed-up messy romanto-platonic ball of... thing, which all of them agree definitely went off its proper course at some point in the past, but they disagree individually as to where. I'm especially intrigued by the idea of Theo : Draco :: Daphne : Ron/Hermione :: Pansy : Hermione/Ron. Both evoke this idea of two similar people caught around someone who resembles both of them in different ways: Theo and Pansy caught around Daphne, or Draco and Ron caught around Hermione. In both cases, you have one pureblood boy with ties to a cause that causes friction with the other two in his orbit, and a girl whose vulnerable social position complicates the life of said pureblood boy. I like both girls as the Hermione parallel in that situation, because it extracts something different either way: Pansy as the devoted childhood friend/soul-bond/Apollo-and-Artemis thing, and Daphne as a dangerous but socially unacceptable Cathy-and-Heathcliff situation. It also opens up [REDACTED FOR THE SAKE OF BOOK 6].

If I were going to take the question up-front, without directly assigning parallels, the most interesting resonance (to me) is the concept of a "suitable couple." Draco notes at several points that it would make more sense, and in many ways be easier, for Hermione to be with Ron. But that isn't what she wants; he wouldn't suit her. Hermione sees Daphne as "suitable" for Draco, but that's not what he wants, because he wants Hermione. Daphne and Theo would also, arguably, be "suitable," but in their current respective positions that would be a terrible idea. Draco and Pansy are socially suitable and in fact decently compatible, seeing as they're canonically a thing for a bit in the original books, but in this universe, they have completely antithetical commitments and loyalties firmly tied up elsewhere. All of them have someone that "matches," but that person isn't going to make them happy. Basically, nobody in this set is in love with anyone that society thinks they should be, except perhaps Ron, who's not really been rewarded for it.

“I say, are you prognosticating with a praline?? How preposterous!”

“Your pretentious precocity precipitously precipitates to a prerogative alike professionals of prejudice!”

“My preconditioning does preestablish my progressive programming that to prognosticate with a praline is preposterous!”

“You procrastinate to problematically preconstruct your predestination that pralines cannot prognosticate!”

“O damn you, precisely.”

“Premeditated, your words about prognosticating with a praline?”

“No, for I have never seen one prognosticate nor praise the precocity of a praline such as you prior to this presentation.”

“Surely, you will change your mind when prognosticating with my proportionally professorial protozoologist that is my friend, the praline.”

We’re going through a crisis you get right down to it. But our current crisis has it’s beginning back on 9/11/2001 when planes were flown into the old World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Naturally we had a reaction, a very bad reaction, and we handled the emergency rather badly.

Osama bin Laden is the cause of the current troubles, him and how we decided to handle the challenge he presented us.…

I was 100% convinced that Asami was an Equalist because her concept art had her in an Equalist uniform, but now that I actually look it's nowhere close to an Equalist uniform, what was I thinking

However, I'm still suspicious of her because of this screencap from one of the trailers, the fact we know she can fight, and that Bryke wouldn't introduce her just to add romantic tension. Amon's gone in 12 episodes, so there's no time for extraneous characters, and Asami isn't really needed to connect Mako and Hiroshi (could have just as easily been Hiroshi running him over). That means that her only purpose so far is an Asami-Korra-Mako triangle that's barely been touched on (how much has the show itself explicitly said about romance?). This implies she's going to have a larger role later on-- almost certainly as a villain (who's gonna get reformed because Avatar). (The other possibility is she's a damsel in distress, but a) that's too obvious and b) we know she can fight, so probably not.)