#veela

I do say, the canon of description of Veela does fall to a devil look like. I love the fandom portrays it because it brings more sense to it and more in-depth than what ever JKR created. I do understand why people dislike it tho , I enjoy it because some of fics that makes me into DMHP are sweet and lovely story.

This, I do have to scavenger hunt to find a good fic because many of the Veela fics portrays Draco to overly feminized because of descriptions of Veela women to be very lean and beautiful. That always falls to the impression of heteronormative dynamic. I never enjoy that kind of stuff.

Vaguely considering what exactly the author of Harry Potter's intentions were with the veela species, given what we now know are her general views of women and femininity...

Veela in the series are portrayed as at first glance, otherworldly beautiful women (and perhaps also girl children, um, ew, but this is from the woman that considered Lolita a love story...) but who are secretly 'something else' and can 'transform' into a frightening and violent form that horrifies and poses physical threat to men.

From first description this might sound empowering especially when written by a DV survivor but instead veela (and part-veela - are they creatures or not, Jo? Um...) are consistently portrayed as manipulative, untrustworthy and volatile, as well as foreign and rude.

The one veela character that's seen in any detail, Fleur Delacour, is mostly a French stereotype of a snob and also a vapid pretty girl for most of her on-page appearance. She's portrayed as the best at magic of her school, but the worst out of the other two schools, whether due to being female, French, veela or another reason is never really expanded upon.

While she is given a redemption arc of sorts in the last book by suddenly being treated more reasonably by the narrative voice as soon as she is a wife, she isn't really active in the way you might expect a skilled magic user with a high responsibility job and army role should be - and also notably stops being described as a veela at all - did JK forget that aspect of her character?

Veela are mentioned (iirc) as being incentivized to join Voldemort and the bad guys, which would narratively imply Fleur who married out is a 'one good one' stereotype. (On that note, has anyone else floated before that it really feels like JKR lifted her DH/VW1 'coalition of evil creatures' directly from the White Witch's army of fantasy monsters in the denouement of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe? At least CS Lewis had the excuse of Narnia being an explicit fantasy morality tale to justify all the 'bad' beasts joining up, JK wants to have her cake of writing a 'serious' political novel and also have everyone of questionable appearance or ethnicity being bad for bad's sake as an uncritiqued self-evident plot point...)

And I think that's the only mentions we really get. Notably, Fleur's parents aren't mentioned to be veela in DH despite appearing on-page, although the entire conceit of Fleur as-introduced in GOF was that her grandmother was a full veela, meaning at least one of her parents must also be.

Naturally JKR does absolutely nothing with the potential plot point that veela as non-humans might not even have the same rights as other wizards, despite introducing the fact that Fleur's grandmother is likely considered a Creature as her hair is in Fleur's wand, after it's established that wands are made partially from magical creature body parts (not a great world for vegans to live in!), suggesting that grand-mère Delacour might not even have the same legal right to bear arms or practice state-sanctioned magic as her granddaughter.