I can see that this is close to your heart and was difficult to write; and that it might not have been so difficult to write had it not been so close to your heart.
I do think there is some leeway in the portrayal of Lucius, even within canon: at the one end, he's a racist monster, possibly even psychotic; at the other end, he's an amoral opportunist who is only interested in power and the good of the Malfoys, someone who considered Voldemort to be a means to an end. Lucius, in some ways, is a mirror to Snape: that he is charming and handsome and has friends and loves his wife... and is evil; while Snape is horrible, ugly, nasty, bitter, spiteful, unloved... and good. And part of the power of JKR's writing is that it confronts the tendency for readers and writers to equate niceness with goodness, and nastiness with evil.(*)
I admit I do enjoy fanon!Lucius to a degree; the suave and sneaky bastard who is nonetheless good to his friends and loves his family.
What I cannot stand, however, is when Lucius is whitewashed; that is, portrayed as having been good all along, being a victim of others, of circumstance, who really wanted to be good and was forced to be bad.(**) I HATE that. I hate it for several reasons. It's lazy writing and poor characterisation. It cheapens redemption, because it isn't redemption at all, and yet the author appears to think that retroactively making things not have happened is "redemption". It dismisses the suffering Lucius caused, because "it wasn't his fault". As if it doesn't matter at all.
Contrast a "whitewashed" Lucius with another fan favourite: Angel, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One could argue that all the things that Angel did when he was Angelus "weren't his fault". And yet Angel still feels responsible, still feels guilt and remorse for those things. A whitewashed Lucius feels neither guilt nor remorse. This is unacceptable.
You're right in there being few if any portrayals of Lucius being redeemed. It is something I would love to see done well, because I love redemption: real redemption, not whitewashing. Real redemption involves turning away from the evils of the past, feeling sorry about them, rejecting them, and turning towards the long hard path of remaking oneself into the kind of person who would not do those things. Not an easy thing to write, which is why, I expect, it hasn't been written.
(*) IMHO it weakens Lucius' characterisation when he's portrayed as a wife-beater etc. - as if the author can't stand the idea that evil people might actually have some small virtues; that they have to be 100% EVIL in every way. That's as shallow in its own way as the opposite problem of demanding that one's heroes be 100% good with no flaws.
(**) Oddly enough, I've seen this portrayal more often in pre-Hogwarts AUs where Snape befriends/adopts Harry, rather than in SS/HG/LM stories.
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Date: 2012-08-28 03:27 am (UTC)I can see that this is close to your heart and was difficult to write; and that it might not have been so difficult to write had it not been so close to your heart.
I do think there is some leeway in the portrayal of Lucius, even within canon: at the one end, he's a racist monster, possibly even psychotic; at the other end, he's an amoral opportunist who is only interested in power and the good of the Malfoys, someone who considered Voldemort to be a means to an end. Lucius, in some ways, is a mirror to Snape: that he is charming and handsome and has friends and loves his wife... and is evil; while Snape is horrible, ugly, nasty, bitter, spiteful, unloved... and good. And part of the power of JKR's writing is that it confronts the tendency for readers and writers to equate niceness with goodness, and nastiness with evil.(*)
I admit I do enjoy fanon!Lucius to a degree; the suave and sneaky bastard who is nonetheless good to his friends and loves his family.
What I cannot stand, however, is when Lucius is whitewashed; that is, portrayed as having been good all along, being a victim of others, of circumstance, who really wanted to be good and was forced to be bad.(**) I HATE that. I hate it for several reasons. It's lazy writing and poor characterisation. It cheapens redemption, because it isn't redemption at all, and yet the author appears to think that retroactively making things not have happened is "redemption". It dismisses the suffering Lucius caused, because "it wasn't his fault". As if it doesn't matter at all.
Contrast a "whitewashed" Lucius with another fan favourite: Angel, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One could argue that all the things that Angel did when he was Angelus "weren't his fault". And yet Angel still feels responsible, still feels guilt and remorse for those things. A whitewashed Lucius feels neither guilt nor remorse. This is unacceptable.
You're right in there being few if any portrayals of Lucius being redeemed. It is something I would love to see done well, because I love redemption: real redemption, not whitewashing. Real redemption involves turning away from the evils of the past, feeling sorry about them, rejecting them, and turning towards the long hard path of remaking oneself into the kind of person who would not do those things. Not an easy thing to write, which is why, I expect, it hasn't been written.
(*) IMHO it weakens Lucius' characterisation when he's portrayed as a wife-beater etc. - as if the author can't stand the idea that evil people might actually have some small virtues; that they have to be 100% EVIL in every way. That's as shallow in its own way as the opposite problem of demanding that one's heroes be 100% good with no flaws.
(**) Oddly enough, I've seen this portrayal more often in pre-Hogwarts AUs where Snape befriends/adopts Harry, rather than in SS/HG/LM stories.