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Gender representations of dark fictional characters: A hermeneutic analysis of Harry Potter fan discussions on Reddit

Student: Jason Maurer

Course: Media and Communication Studies: Master's (One-Year) Thesis-VT20

Advisor: Asko Kauppinen

Date: June 7, 2020

Word count: 17,297

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Abstract The aim of this thesis was to deepen our understanding of how audiences represent male and female dark fictional characters (DFCs) by exploring how Harry Potter fans discuss four of these characters on Reddit. Drawing on affective disposition theory as a guiding framework as well as previous investigations of gender representation and online fan cultures, I collected and analyzed 117 posts (containing 9,693 comments) about four DFCs from the Harry Potter franchise. I chose two male DFCs (Lord Voldemort and Severus Snape) and two female ones (Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge) for my investigation. The data were analyzed using a productive hermeneutics approach. Fans’ representation of these characters intersected with the extent which the characters’ fictionality was salient, how they were visualized, the online culture of Reddit, and fans’ presumed identification with these characters. Bellatrix was defined by her portrayal by Helena Bonham Carter in the films and her combination of valuable masculine and feminine traits. Moreover, she was a figure of pure fantasy, which allowed fans to love her depravity. Umbridge and Snape, by contrast, were hated for intruding into the fantasy that Harry Potter offered, reminding fans of bullying and overly controlling teachers. Snape, however, was redeemed by his complexity and embodiment of geek masculinity. Voldemort was valued for his intellect and power but also criticized as a peer failing to rise to his intellectual potential; fans at turns identified with and undercut him through humor. Taken together, the results indicate a need to qualitatively explore how DFCs are received by audiences, as it can add further nuance to our understanding of how morality and gender influence media consumption. Keywords: fictional characters, villains, media fans, Harry Potter, Reddit, gender representation, morality

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Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures ...... 5

Acknowledgments ...... 6

1. Introduction ...... 7

2. Background ...... 8

2.1. Dark Fictional Characters, Gender Representation, and Audiences ...... 8

2.2. Online Fandom and Harry Potter...... 10

3. Literature Review ...... 11

3.1. Overview ...... 11

3.2. Gender Representation ...... 12

3.3. Character Engagement ...... 15

3.4. Online Fan Spaces and Harry Potter...... 19

3.4.1. Fan Studies and Gender Representation ...... 19

3.4.2 Representation in the Harry Potter fandom ...... 21

3.5. Theoretical Framework...... 23

4. Methods ...... 25

4.1. Data Source: Reddit ...... 25

4.2. Data Collection ...... 27

4.3. Data Analysis ...... 31

4.3.1. Analytical approach ...... 31

4.3.2. Researcher position...... 34

4.3.3. Data analysis procedure ...... 35

4.3.4. Trustworthiness ...... 35

4.4. Ethical Considerations ...... 35

5. Findings and Discussion ...... 36 4

5.1. Description of Sampled Posts ...... 36

5.2. The Salient Fictionality of Bellatrix Lestrange ...... 38

5.2.1. Contrasting Characterization ...... 38

5.2.2. Bellatrix’s Autopoetic Feedback Loop ...... 41

5.3. Umbridge and Snape: Everyday Hatred ...... 45

5.4. Voldemort as an Intellectual Peer ...... 49

6. Conclusions and Limitations ...... 52

References ...... 56

Appendix A: Table of Posts...... 67

Appendix B: Table of Codes ...... 74

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List of Tables and Figures

Figure 1. Timeline of release of Harry Potter books and movies (Cuntz-Leng, 2015) ...... 11 Figure 2. The basic hermeneutic circle (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009) ...... 33 Figure 3. Contrasting images of (a) a cosplay photograph of Bellatrix Lestrange from /r/harrypotter and (b) a photograph of Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange (“Bellatrix Lestrange,” 2012)...... 42 Figure 4. Bellatrix cosplay photograph. This post was closed for commenting because the poster received too many sexist and harassing comments ...... 43

Table 1. Definitions of post categories extracted from /r/harrypotter ...... 29 Table 2. Number of posts for each category and character ...... 36

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Acknowledgments I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Kauppinen, for his support and advice, and in particular for introducing me to Zotero – it has saved my life in writing this thesis. I would like to credit the original idea for this thesis – looking at how fans represent the gender of DFCs – to my friend and fellow writer, Emma. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Mia, for all her support and love throughout the last two months. It cannot have been easy to be quarantined with a thesis writer.

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1. Introduction Popular media centering on dark fictional characters (DFCs), including villains, antiheroes, and morally ambiguous characters (Black et al., 2019), are becoming increasingly popular: Todd Philips’ 2018 film Joker, depicting an origin story of the murderous Batman villain the Joker, grossed over US$1 billion throughout its theatrical run (Joker, n.d.). Maleficent, the evil witch first depicted in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty in 1959, was the protagonist of two Hollywood films in the past decade. Their popularity suggests that audiences are resonating with something within their “darkness.” This thesis is an attempt to deepen our understanding of that resonance by exploring how fans – arguably the most actively engaged subsection of media audiences – construct DFCs in their online discussions. I pay particular attention to the construction of gender, which is not only a ubiquitous feature of daily life but also naturally aligns with themes of power, sexuality, violence, and morality, the distortion of which seems to characterize our most loved and hated DFCs. I frame my results in terms of affective disposition theory (ADT, Raney, 2004), which can help to explain how gender representation influences our engagement with DFCs. I was guided in this exploration by the following research question: How do fans represent male and female dark fictional characters from Harry Potter in their discussions on Reddit? Understanding how audiences’ connection with DFCs intersects with gender representations provides us with a deeper knowledge of how fictional men and women are treated by audiences. For the media producers creating these characters, such knowledge could help them create better, more engaging characters that stay with audiences past the moment of consumption. For scholars, such knowledge would open a much wider area of investigation into how fictional men and women influence, and are influenced by, our conceptions of morality. The structure of this thesis is as follows. Section 2 contextualizes my investigation through an overview of DFCs, gender representation, and the Harry Potter fandom. Section 3 outlines past literature and theory on gender representation, character engagement (particularly ADT), and fan studies, and brings this together under an actionable framework that helped guide my analysis. Section 4 discusses the data source (Reddit), data collection 8 method, and data analysis method. Section 5 shows the results of my hermeneutic analysis and discusses these results in the context of theory. Section 6 concludes with a summary of the knowledge I have generated and directions for future research.

2. Background 2.1. Dark Fictional Characters, Gender Representation, and Audiences DFCs are wildly popular and influential: Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of the vampire Dracula in 1931 defined the character for generations (Nuzum, 2008); Lord Voldemort, the main villain of the Harry Potter series, has been invoked in analyses of prominent political issues, such as the War on Terror in the 2000s (Turner, 2005) and in relation to the dangers of media consolidation (Slack, 2007); and Darth Vader, the iconic villain of the original Star Wars trilogy, has a species of beetle named after him (Young, 2014). Beyond these large-scale examples are countless everyday ones: In an interview I conducted for a research methodology exam at Malmö University (Maurer, 2020), the interviewee mentioned invoking DFCs as exemplars of how not to act: “So if I have a friend having this issue or that issue, I say… “I mean, think of it like this, you know this character is doing that.” And oftentimes I will point to a villain, and say “He’s/she’s being Bellatrix

[Lestrange].1 Would you marry Bellatrix?” However, in that same interview, the interviewee expressed a deep enjoyment of the very qualities that he was ostensibly referencing here – Bellatrix’s wanton disregard for moral standards. His response illustrates the complexity of how audiences engage with DFCs – we may simultaneously hate them, love them, want to see more of them, and find them illustrative of larger truths. This complexity is what I believe makes DFCs such interesting representations. But what exactly is meant by “representation”? According to Hall (2013), a representation is basically how we language to create meaning. The meaning created is not a fixed process of the language or of the world, but is constructed by members of a culture: “It is us – in society, within human cultures – who make things mean, who signify” (p. 45). Following this constructivist approach, which Hall (2013) links to the work of Foucault, Barthes, and Saussure, representations are in constant flux across time and culture. They are the sites of

1 A female villain from the Harry Potter series. 9 negotiation of “truths” about the world, so examining them can tell us something about how society understand the concept or object being represented. What do DFCs tell us about ourselves and about our society? There are myriad possible answers. DFCs are both illustrative and taboo; they are metaphorical car crashes that disgust us but still draw a crowd. Our moral principles and the monitoring thereof should reject them as uniformly loathsome, and yet we may discount these failings in the name of enjoyment (Raney, 2004). Teasing out exactly why we have such conflicting reactions to DFCs can reveal what we understand about those darker parts of our lives. To begin to understand the representation of DFCs, both in media texts and among audiences, we must look at the features of those characters that are most salient in our lives. In this thesis, I pay attention to gender. Gender is our socially constructed understanding of sex-linked differences – the roles, attributes, and behaviors that we learn to assign to binary categories of “masculine” and “feminine” through social learning (Amason, 2012). The way gender is represented in media has been a particularly active area of investigation over the past few decades, often with attention to how certain constructions of masculinity and femininity are privileged and others denigrated (Armstrong, 2013; Gallagher, 2013), whether it be in news, TV shows, films (Armstrong, 2013), or books (Underwood et al., 2018). For instance, women are more likely to be invisible, portrayed as stereotypically feminine (Sink & Mastro, 2017) or violently murdered on TV (Guerrero-Pico et al., 2018), while they are more likely to be hypersexualized in action films (Heldman et al., 2016). Men, by contrast, tend to be depicted as aggressive, domineering, and promiscuous (Sink & Mastro, 2017). Studying media representations of gender is important for understanding how masculinity and femininity are constructed in society; however, to fully understand “when gender matters” (Hermes, 2013, p. 62), we also have to look at how audiences reproduce and transform gendered facets of everyday living. According to Hermes (2013), “Qualitative audience studies have arguably been the best possible expression of feminist engagement in media studies” (p. 61) in part because they help us understand “unequal gender relations without imposing ideological dogma or political correctness” (p. 61). Feminist audience studies have also helped to elevate popular culture as a viable area of study (Hermes, 2013), making it quite natural to explore fictional characters, and DFCs in 10 particular, qualitatively from a feminist approach. Such studies can bring us closer to understanding the meaning these characters have in our lives and how their gendered representations play a role in the creation of that meaning, as well as how we challenge those representations.

2.2. Online Fandom and Harry Potter The ways in which audiences engage with media representations is perhaps best exemplified in studies of popular culture fans and fandoms. According to Lanier and Fowler (2013), fans “they creatively (re)produce culture, thus contributing directly to societal discourse” (p. 284). Fans’ unique forms of engagement with media texts, particularly creative outputs like fanfiction, and the strong affective attachment they exhibit towards particular media texts arguably makes them a uniquely extreme subset of a broader audience, but as Jenkins (2012) noted, “there is no sharp division between fans and other readers” (p. 54). Thus, studying fans can help us in delineating the many articulations of how audiences construct gender. Indeed, although fans are arguably bound by their shared love of a text, this does not mean that they share ideologies or even interpretations of the same text (Jenkins, 2012; Kustritz, 2015). In fact, contestation is a key fan practice through which they “[make] sense of the world through felt and shared experiences” (Lamerichs, 2018, p. 19). For that reason, their discussions about fictional characters are a rich vein of meaning through which we can begin to understand audiences’ reception of DFCs. Nowadays, the sheer number of fandoms forces scholars to narrow their focus to avoid being buried in data. This is especially true since the advent of the internet, which has made fandoms more accessible as well as changed the ways in which fans discuss and perform their affective connection to media texts (Lanier & Fowler, 2013). The Harry Potter fandom has presented scholars with an important site through which to explore the role of digital technology in fandoms, both because the original books were being published “as the internet shifted to Web 2.0” (Walton, 2018, p. 234) and because the online fandom is immense: Harry Potter has the most stories on fanfiction.net, at over 819,000 (just under four times that of Twilight, at 220,000). Moreover, the fandom remains highly active. The Harry Potter fandom has had an enduring impact on online fandom as a whole, being a progenitor of many practices common to fandom today, such as podcasting, blogs, and 11 beta-reading (Jenkins, 2011). Moreover, given that the books were released alongside the movies (see Figure 1 for a timeline), Harry Potter provides a unique look into how fans integrate and make sense of texts across different media, particularly how they integrate the different portrayals of a character into a unified image (Cuntz-Leng, 2015). For these reasons, it is an ideal fandom to explore fan cultures and practices and the impact of fandom on the media landscape.

Figure 1. Timeline of release of Harry Potter books and movies (Cuntz-Leng, 2015)

The Harry Potter fandom is also ideal for studying the gender representation of DFCs, since the original text has so many: Lord Voldemort, the nearly immortal dark wizard responsible for the deaths of Harry Potter’s parents and much of the conflict over the course of the books; Severus Snape, a morally ambiguous teacher who troubles Harry’s school life but offers aid when needed; Dolores Umbridge, who imposes dictatorial rule over Hogwarts in Harry’s fifth year; and Bellatrix Lestrange, a dark witch with a fanatical devotion to Voldemort and his cause, to name just a few. In this thesis, I aimed to understand how fans of this transmedia franchise construct these four DFCs in their discussions on the fan subreddit /r/harrypotter.

3. Literature Review 3.1. Overview To make sense of how fans construct gendered representations of DFCs, I outline past research on how gender representations in media and how audiences engage with fictional characters. From there, I move into research on fans and the online space in which 12 they actively engage with media representations, particularly the Harry Potter fandom. Finally, I combine these research areas in my analytical framework.

3.2. Gender Representation Studying gender representation in media can help illuminate how we ideologically construct women and men and dictates their meaning and place in society. Early feminist scholars – most notably Gaye Tuchman and her colleagues – were preoccupied with the representation of women and to what extent their presence and experiences in reality were reflected in media (Gallagher, 2013). In their seminal book, Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media, Tuchman, Daniels, and Benet (1978, as cited in Armstrong, 2013), showed that women were “symbolically annihilated” in popular television programs and the news – that is, underrepresented and deprived of agency, being cast as housewives or in subordinate positions to males. In being rendered “invisible”, they were deprived of their ability to share their experience and made mere symbols of the “biases and assumptions of those who define the public—and therefore the media—agenda” (Gallagher, 2013, p. 23). Gallagher (2013) notes that these early feminist scholars focused on the representation of middle-class white women; thus, they failed to acknowledge the intersectional nature of discrimination against women (Crenshaw, 1991) and seemed to “assume that the representation of men’s experience was unproblematic” (p. 24–25). Still, their work provided a strong foundation for further work. Moreover, subsequent research has confirmed many of the observations of early scholars in television (Daalmans et al., 2017; Downs, 1981; Sink & Mastro, 2017), films (Fischer, 2010; Hoerrner, 1996; Lauzen, 2015; Neville & Anastasio, 2019), and news media (D’Heer et al., 2020). For instance, Hoerrner (1996) content analyzed representations of Disney film characters and found that only 21% of the 134 characters she examined were female. In a study of portrayals of gender on primetime television series, Sink and Mastro (2017) found that women are not only underrepresented but they also exhibit more gender-stereotypical characteristics (i.e., are family-oriented and likeable); moreover, men continue to exert dominance over women. However, representations of women and men have changed since the 1970s. Neville and Anastasio (2019) noted that in popular U.S. films in 2016, women were more likely to 13 occupy positions of occupational and social power compared to films released in 2002. Similarly, Baker and Raney (2007) found that, in children’s superhero television programs, there were few clear instances of gender-stereotypical behavior. However, in both studies, women were significantly underrepresented. Added to these findings are notions of sexualization and objectification, or the reduction of women into collections of pleasurable body parts meant for male consumption, which rose to prominence with the work of Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon in the 70s and 80s (Nussbaum, 1995). In her seminal essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey (1989) writes: “women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (p. 19). She describes the tendency for women to be displayed in such a manner for consumption by men as “the male gaze.” The male gaze has had an enduring impact on feminist media theory and it remains relevant because women are still often defined by this “to-be-looked-at-ness”: they are more likely to be sexually objectified, which manifests in terms of how their bodies are depicted (e.g., thinner body types, camera angles) and the (lack of) clothing they wear (Heldman et al., 2016; Sink & Mastro, 2017). Attention has also been paid to masculinity – as Sink and Mastro (2017) note, both women and men tend to be represented in terms of exaggerated forms of masculinity and femininity (so-called “hypermasculinity” and “hyperfemininity”) in media. The former is based on the tendency to display aggression and dominance and the latter to display submission and sexualization. However, the abovementioned foundational studies did not explore specific character types (e.g., DFCs). The representation of DFCs has been attended to in literary studies, such as Aguiar's (2001) in-depth Jungian analysis of the “bitch” (“…that vital woman, empowered with wit, anger, ruthless survival instincts…”, p. 1). She claims that these characters tend to be stereotyped in male- and female-authored fiction as either noble angels or sensuous devils lacking in purpose. However, her focus on archetypes leaves little room for nuance and she is not concerned with media beyond literature. This literary perspective is joined by research on “the violent woman” and “female action leads” in film and television, such as Heldman et al.'s (2016) content analysis of the ways in which female action heroines in films have “devolved” into hypersexualization 14 since the 1960s. Heldman et al. (2016) notes that their depiction often reinforces notions of “women’s second-class social status” (p. 3), including inferior physicality, presenting toughness or strength as a “sin” to be rectified through self-sacrifice, and, most notably, hypersexualization (which they operationally define as “‘scantily clad’, partially or fully nude, and/or presented as ‘sexualized body parts’ through selective camera angles”, p. 4) and objectification. This sexualization has been criticized as disempowering because it undercuts the character’s symbolic threat of male dominance (Arons, 2001) and because of its potential to harm the health (mental and otherwise) of women (Heldman et al., 2016). However, the focus of these studies on action leads – who are morally ambiguous at best – means that we cannot generalize their results to less moral characters who do not occupy the limelight. As for the representation of men and masculinity, violence, dominance, and power have been seen as more prototypical, along with toughness (which is valorized as opposed to denigrated), an emphasis on achieving goals and problem-solving, and an adherence to rationality and a rejection of emotion (Fejes, 1992; Hodkinson, 2017). Citing Fiske, Hodkinson (2017) notes that these images may be considered less as reflective of men’s experiences and more as “unrealistic fantasies when compared to the lack of independence, control or power which characterizes most ordinary men’s lives” (p. 257). This hegemonic masculine representation is also open to sexualization, assuming a straight female or gay male gaze (Hodkinson, 2017), which may negatively impact men (Hobza et al., 2007). However, other forms of masculinity have risen to prominence as well, particularly in the context of geek media (“geek masculinity”) – these masculinities place less emphasis on physical power and more on intellectual power but also can be characterized as an example of “failed masculinity” (Blodgett, 2020). Overall, past literature clearly indicates the importance of gender representation in media. Besides affecting how we view ourselves and our bodies, the quality and diversity of representations may influence the possibilities we feel are available to us in navigating our lives, to what extent we feel heard and understood in the cacophony that makes up modern society, and how we view and treat others. As Sink and Mastro (2017) write: “the definition of women provided by mass media content holds social significance” (p. 5). I would argue that the same is true of the definition of men. If we fail to consider 15 representation, no matter whether it is at the level of the popular culture or reactions to that culture (as in audience studies, which I will turn to next), then we will ultimately fail to understand and correct the vast power imbalances that we see across not only gender, but also class, race, sexuality, ableness, and other demographic strata.

3.3. Character Engagement Research on gender representation in media has often focused on the media texts, applying feminist theory and content analysis to deconstruct how women and men are portrayed. This fails to capture the other side of representation – that is, the work of audiences in constructing, interpreting, and otherwise engaging with representations. Scholars have long since discounted the “passive and receptive” audience conceived by early media theorists (e.g., the Frankfurt school; Hodkinson, 2017) and have more or less accepted that audiences are active interpreters of mediated messages (Hall, 2013). This understanding has produced a considerable amount of insightful research on how audiences interpret and engage with media texts, including the fictional characters populating these texts. The particular strain of audience studies examining character engagement has been located at the intersection of film studies and psychological research. These studies were primarily concerned with processes by which audience members come to enjoy fictional characters in films and television shows. Arguably the most important theory of this tradition is affective disposition theory (ADT). Initially conceived by Zillmann and Cantor (1972, as cited in Raney, 2004), and later expanded by Raney (2004), ADT explains how we come to like and enjoy characters in film/television. Its original incarnation proposed that audiences come to like or dislike (i.e., form affective dispositions toward) characters based on their specific conception of morality – that is, audiences tend to like characters that they consider to be moral and dislike characters they consider immoral (Raney, 2004). When these liked characters experience positive outcomes in the narrative, the audience member experiences enjoyment; by contrast, when the liked characters experience a negative outcome or a disliked character a positive outcome, audiences’ enjoyment may suffer (Raney, 2004). 16

However, Raney (2004) pointed out that this is far too simplistic a theory to explain audiences’ actual feelings and behaviors in connecting with fictional characters. For instance, it cannot explain enjoyment of morally ambiguous characters (i.e., characters who engage in distinctly immoral behaviors but for ultimately moral ends) or villains – we should dislike these characters because they violate our conceptions of morality. Yet like them we do. Raney (2004) offered a modified version of disposition theory to explain this problem: he posed that liking may sometimes precede moral judgment, such as when we expect a character to behave a certain way or we are more naturally aligned with that character’s personality. Accordingly, when a liked character behaves immorally, we use moral disengagement (a concept springing out of psychological research on group formation; Raney, 2004) to continue liking and enjoying the character. Moral disengagement describes the set of strategies by which we turn off our more or less constant “moral monitoring” of our environment, such as moral justification (deeming the moral violation to be a necessary or appropriate response to the situation), minimizing harm (downplaying the harmful effects of the violation), and dehumanization (depriving the victims of humanity and agency). Subsequent research has provided support for this expanded theory (e.g., Krakowiak & Tsay-Vogel, 2011, 2013; Sanders & Tsay-Vogel, 2016). Krakowiak and Tsay-Vogel (2011) conducted an online post-test study of 312 students and found that Raney’s (2004) version of ADT was supported: liking mediated the relationship between moral disengagement and enjoyment of a narrative about a morally ambiguous character, indicating that to like such characters, individuals must engage in some form of moral disengagement. They expanded on this in a later experiment (Krakowiak & Tsay-Vogel, 2013) and found that, in line with ADT, moral disengagement mediated the positive effects of character motivation and outcome on their evaluation of the characters’ attributes, which in turn influenced how much they liked the characters. Both these studies clearly supported that moral disengagement is involved in how people relate to fictional characters with undesirable qualities (e.g., selfishness)2. However, neither study examined why we connect with some characters and not others – we do not like all DFCs, after all. Some are

2 However, notably, they did not use characters from existing media properties. 17 undoubtedly more appealing or interesting to audiences than others and we are not necessarily driven to like and morally disengage with all of them. To explain in part why we connect better with some characters, researchers have looked to the concept of identification. Cohen (2001) defines identification as an “intermittent feeling” of imagining oneself as being that character and temporarily adopting their identity (p. 250), thereby more directly experiencing the narrative. Drawing on this definition, Sanders and Tsay-Vogel (2016) investigated how it factored into the ADT framework by surveying a student sample of Harry Potter fans and found that identification and moral judgments (i.e., how moral a given character was perceived as) predicted to what extent people morally disengaged from a character in the text, indicating that identification fits into ADT as well. They did not, however, fit character liking into their model, so it is not entirely clear from their results how identification affects liking or enjoyment. Nevertheless, considering the findings of earlier studies (e.g., Krakowiak & Tsay-Vogel, 2011), both may be involved. There are problems with this line of research. Character engagement researchers like Raney (2004) and Sanders and Tsay-Vogel (2016) are firmly entrenched in a positivist paradigm (Blaikie & Priest, 2017) – their aims are to elucidate the psychological mechanisms involved in how people enjoy and engage with fictional characters at the moment of exposure. Cohen’s (2001) definition of identification, while widely used, suffers from the same problem: he stresses that this is a “fleeting” sensation that occurs “during exposure to a media message” (p. 250), which would suggest that it can only occur while we are consuming a given media text. However, such studies cannot explain much beyond that moment – why some members of the audience continue to like and engage with characters long after they have consumed the media text. Relatedly, the focus of these studies (and ADT) on narrative enjoyment – which is typically defined in terms of hedonic pleasure (Tamborini et al., 2010) – as an outcome precludes our understanding of how affective dispositions, moral disengagement, and identification relate to engagement with characters outside the narrative context. Are these processes more enduring features of our relationship with a given character that play out in other modes of interaction with fictional characters across different mediated environments? Ultimately, I think that ADT could be useful for reliably predicting engagement with DFCs beyond narrative enjoyment because 18 it encapsulates why we connect with these characters; it seems a natural extension to add specifics about how we connect with these characters. It may be a matter of extending the definition of enjoyment beyond mere pleasure, such as satisfying various needs (e.g., to connect with others; Tamborini et al., 2010). It is also worth expanding ADT’s application to other forms of media – it was conceived and expanded to explain attachment to characters in films and television (Raney, 2004). There is thus a lack of understanding of how it applies to character engagement in a transmedia context. The use of positivist methodologies in these studies also limits our understanding of audiences’ own language and experiences of character engagement, which links back to representation: how do audiences themselves construct these characters (particularly in terms of gender) and how do these constructions interact with their affective dispositions, engagement, etc. towards these characters, particularly DFCs? Gender has been to some extent addressed in studies of character engagement, albeit mostly from a media effects perspective and focusing on children (e.g., Eyal & Rubin, 2003; Lonial & Auken, 1986). These studies found that audiences seemed to identify more strongly with same-gender characters than with opposite-gender ones, although this difference is less apparent among adults (Lonial & Auken, 1986; Meyer, 2009). However, these studies used quantitative methods and focused on breaking down antecedents and consequences of character engagement, without giving consideration to the social realities being constructed by audiences. Moreover, they did not consider the moral dimension so intrinsic to DFCs. I did find a qualitative study in this tradition (Meyer, 2009), which examined how violent female characters in film are interpreted by audiences. Meyer (2009) found that these characters were praised for exhibiting more feminine traits and condemned for their use of violence – thus, dominant gender ideology was essentially reproduced by audiences in their interpretations of violent women. Unfortunately, Meyer’s (2009) study is only applicable to film characters and took place in a controlled environment, meaning that it could not capture audiences’ natural discourses in interpreting characters. The lack of qualitative research on character engagement, particularly using a feminist approach, may reflect a broader trend that feminist audience research is becoming increasingly less visible in the literature (Cavalcante et al., 2017). Still, this does not mean 19 it is not being conducted. In fact, character engagement, representation studies, and audience research naturally meet in fan studies.

3.4. Online Fan Spaces and Harry Potter 3.4.1. Fan Studies and Gender Representation Fan studies arose out of audience research in the 1980s and 1990s, with Ang’s (1985, as cited in Lamerichs, 2018) study of Dallas fans being cited as one of the first fan studies. It exploded as a field with the works of Henry Jenkins and Camille Bacon-Smith on science fiction fan conventions (Lamerichs, 2018). These studies established the qualitative tradition of fan studies. They also established the tradition of examining the creative works fans base off of their favored texts, particularly fanfiction (Jenkins, 2012). The development of the field since, as Lamerichs (2018) notes, has been “highly interdisciplinary” (p. 15), particularly as fan cultures have moved online: some researchers continued in the vein of Jenkins (2012) by taking a ethnographic approach in a particular fan community (see, for example, Baym, 2000), whereas others began applying literary and textual analyses to fanfiction and the discussions surrounding these texts (e.g., Scodari & Felder, 2000) in order to explore what the original texts mean to fans and how fans play with these texts (Hellekson & Busse, 2006). Fans offer unique insight into how audiences interact with media texts because of the prominence and enthusiasm of their connection to these texts. Arguably what defines a fan – or at least what makes them an interesting subset of the audience to explore – is an affective commitment to a media text (Lamerichs, 2018; Lanier & Fowler, 2013). “Being a fan is an experience that is grounded in feeling – an admiration of texts that are used to connect to others and the world itself” (Lamerichs, 2018, p. 18). They are consumers and producers, which Lanier and Fowler (2013) note does not necessarily involve “the creation of an artifact, but encompasses the creation of value and meaning” (p. 285). Lamerichs (2018) argues that fans’ affectivity is often evident in their performance and social communications, which would suggest that their spaces – both offline and online – are primarily emotional ones, wherein fans can play out their attachments to the texts and complain about disruptions to textual integrity (Milner, 2010). Expressions of attachment 20 are not always emotional – fans may also “maintain a critical distance” to apply more reasoned aesthetic judgments (Lamerichs, 2018, p. 19). Feminism has a long tradition in fan studies, with early fan scholars believing that fanfiction was written mostly by women (Stanfill, 2020). Fanfiction and fan discussion is where gender representation has been primarily located in fan studies – particularly in the context of “shipping” (pairing characters romantically, Walton, 2018) and “slash” (i.e., shipping characters of the same sex; Allington, 2007). As might be expected given the sheer diversity of fan communities, particularly online ones, gender is constructed quite differently across fanworks and fan discussions, ranging from the resistant to the normative (Kustritz, 2015; Stanfill, 2020). For instance, in their exploration of Bronies (fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic), Hunting and Hains (2019) found that male fans reproduced traditional gender hierarchies in discussions by denigrating women’s and girl’s media through the use of masculinized discursive practices, including the application of masculine taste norms. Miller (2018), operating within the same fandom, conversely found that men constructed a form of “discordant masculinity” through their textual engagement that was ultimately progressive. The focus of these studies, however, privileged protagonists (Kustritz, 2015; Wills, 2013) or did not examine specific characters (Hunting & Hains, 2019). To my knowledge, fan scholars have not examined the gender representation of DFCs. The diversity of fan spaces makes prediction of discourses on character representation difficult, which may explain the conflicting portrayals of fandom as largely progressive or largely reactionary (Lanier & Fowler, 2013). The digital revolution has only made this more apparent. While early studies of online fandoms dealt with small private online spaces and employed ethnographic approaches to understand the cultures of these “pocket realities” (Scodari & Felder, 2000), as fandoms grew and digital technology became more integrated with social life, these realities became much more trafficked and far less distinct. Fan texts are now more widely disseminated and fans’ impact on media texts is far greater than ever before (Lanier & Fowler, 2013). Perhaps as a result, fan scholars have limited their focuses to specific fan spaces and fandoms; not doing so risks information overload. 21

The digitalization of fandom has not been without its problems. The anonymity of online fan spaces has allowed for the proliferation of toxic practices and discourses – much of which is racist, sexist, and homophobic (Guerrero-Pico et al., 2018; Massanari, 2017). One high-profile event solidly rooted in fandom is the 2014 #Gamergate incident, in which video game fans launched a coordinated campaign of harassment against female game creators and critics across multiple sites (e.g., Reddit, Twitter, 4chan). This and other sexist harassment campaigns have been attributed both to the anonymity-afforded disinhibition of online spaces and, at least in the case of geek media, the perceived threat of these female fans to male fans’ construction of masculinity (Blodgett & Salter, 2018; Massanari, 2017). Accordingly, online fan spaces are fraught with conflicting ideologies. The sites of such ideological contestation are no doubt the very activities that define fandoms – their engagement with the media texts, including their discussions about DFCs. Researchers interested in online fan communities have also privileged so-called “cult fandoms” wherein fans “manifest a great degree of involvement and expertise on the products on which they comment” (Lacalle & Simelio, 2017, p. 449). The focus on these active communities, while helpful in understanding how fans co-opt and reconstruct media texts, gives us less of an indication of how more “spontaneous fans” participate in these communities and how the online platform’s affordances encourage certain types of communication (Lacalle & Simelio, 2017, p. 452). Arguably, the openness and anonymity of popular social networking spaces – such as Reddit or Twitter – lowers the threshold for participation, giving researchers access to a broader range of fan perspectives on media texts (and hence the characters within them). Conversely, LiveJournal communities may be more closed (or perceived as such) and focused on creative production (e.g., fanfiction; Hampton, 2014), thus raising barriers to entry and making communications more intimate. For that reason, it seems necessary for researchers to expand their study of fandoms to more open online spaces.

3.4.2 Representation in the Harry Potter fandom Many scholars have explored fans’ representations of Harry Potter characters, particularly in terms of gender and sexuality, through close readings of slash fanfiction and ethnographic study of fanfiction communities (e.g., Duggan, 2017; Hampton, 2014; 22

Kustritz, 2015). For instance, Kustritz (2015) examined fans’ views on feminism and gender roles through their representation of non-canonical relationships between Hermione Granger and Severus Snape, two main characters from the series, in a Harry Potter fanfiction community. Walton (2018) examined how fans reproduced, rather than contested, heteronormative ideology in their discussions about whether Hermione should end up romantically involved with Harry or his best friend, Ron Weasley. Popple (2015) examined how Muggle Quidditch players3 struggled to enact and preserve the gender equality of the game represented in the books. Still, Harry Potter research has a number of important gaps. First, there is surprisingly little research on the DFCs. Severus Snape, arguably the most morally ambiguous character in the series, has received some attention in terms of engagement (Alderton, 2014; Cuntz-Leng, 2015). However, more villainous characters (e.g., Lord Voldemort, Bellatrix Lestrange), whose actions are less redeemable, also require examination because they are, according to ADT, less likeable and their actions are harder to justify. Second, the transmedia nature of Harry Potter has not been much considered. Cuntz-Leng (2015) attempted to do so by positing an “autopoetic feedback loop” in the portrayal of Snape. She proposed that Snape’s portrayal across the books, films, and fanfiction gradually blended over time into a uniform image of the character. This interesting phenomenon is, however, marred by a lack of description of her methods and data sources. Expanding on this feedback loop would be valuable for helping us better understand how characters blend (or not) across different media. Finally, Harry Potter fan studies have typically neglected the possible impact of platform on how fans discuss characters. These studies have examined discussions in more private fan spaces, such as Walton’s (2018) focus on Harry Potter websites, or ignored platform (e.g., Alderton, 2014). It is problematic to assume that platform does not affect how characters are discussed, particularly public platforms like Reddit or Tumblr. Reddit, despite being made up of a vast array of differing subcommunities (subreddits), may attract people with particular discourse styles (Massanari, 2013; Shelton et al., 2015). As such, it is necessary to consider the platform context when examining fan discussions.

3 Quidditch is a magical game played on broomsticks; Muggle Quidditch is a version of the game played in the real world, also on broomsticks; both are co-ed. 23

This thesis represents an attempt to address these gaps in the literature. In other words, it is an attempt to better understand gender representation in fandom and expand character engagement theory through qualitative methods while focusing on a unique public online fan space.

3.5. Theoretical Framework This thesis lies at the nexus of character engagement studies, studies of gender representation, and fan studies, bound together under a general framework of ADT. I chose ADT as the overarching framework in spite of its current applicability to primarily visual media because it offers a way of marshalling these somewhat diverging traditions for a clear analytical purpose. ADT posits that the way we feel about a character – to what extent we like them or not, which is likely to be affected by countless different factors (including how much we identify with them, our exposures to similar past characters, etc.) – influences how we morally position ourselves in relation to that character, which in turn influences our enjoyment of their behaviors and outcomes. What connects a character to an audience member is therefore grounded in affectivity and an understanding of what is good or bad (Raney, 2004). ADT therefore seems a particularly useful way of understanding fan connections with DFCs because fans are more or less defined by their strong affective engagement with a media text (Lanier & Fowler, 2013). The theory’s basic tenets can help in interpreting how fans treat the DFCs of Harry Potter by orienting me towards the nature of these affective connections (not just whether they like, hate, etc. a character, but whether they identify with that character or relate that character to some aspect of their lived experience beyond identification) and how the most salient feature of DFCs – their immorality – plays into fan constructions of these characters. Moreover, while ADT does not explicitly account for how gender representations interact with engagement with fictional characters, it does allow us to speculate on this through its consideration of identification in character liking; in other words, it offers a useful template on which to build. Overall, ADT offers a good structure for interpreting the wealth of information contained within fan discussions. 24

Another reason for choosing ADT is that that it is in dire need of further nuance. Despite work done by Raney (2004) and others to empirically support the theory, it remains overly simplistic and somewhat limited in scope because previous studies based on the theory used primarily quantitative methods. First, it assumes an overly general audience who bring to their consumption experience a set of moral principles that they would apply in reality; it does not clearly account for the possibility that audiences may have distinct moral principles depending on the genre (fantasy and science fiction in particular, given the extent to which they offer a “subversion of human norms”; Leavenworth, 2014, p. 40). This is not a weakness per se; in fact, ADT’s reliance on a quantifiable definition of morality (e.g., care, purity, Eden et al., 2015) is partly what allows for researchers to make generalizations about audience responses to fictional characters. Nevertheless, in showing that to apply unique moral principles to DFCs, I might offer researchers knowledge on which to build more specific quantitative measures of morality for fictional characters. Second, ADT only applies to the moment of consumption and does not explain how audiences carry their feelings and understanding into other forms of character engagement. Third, it does not account for how the characteristics of the character, particularly gender, may affect audiences’ dispositions. This latter point is important because it would allow us to more clearly understand how gender representations influence affective dispositions and moral disengagement. Finally, it has been strictly applied to film and television, and does not clearly cover transmedia properties. Overall, research using qualitative methods would go a long way towards bolstering and expanding the theory for use in subsequent research. My thesis, therefore, represents a novice’s attempt at fleshing out this theory through qualitative methods. First, I focus on a subsection of the audience demonstrating lasting engagement with a transmedia text (Harry Potter fans). Second, I draw on literature from gender representation to elucidate how specific elements of ADT – particularly affective engagement and morality – interact with the characters’ “to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey, 1989), masculinity/femininity, power, violence (Meyer, 2009), and more. Finally, I draw on online research of public platforms relevant to fans (e.g., Massanari, 2017) to contextualize fans’ discussions of DFCs as occurring within a relatively masculinized platform (Reddit).

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4. Methods 4.1. Data Source: Reddit The data for this thesis were taken from a subreddit of the popular social news site Reddit, which styles itself as the “front page of the internet.” Created in 2005 by entrepreneurs Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian (Fiegerman, 2014), Reddit has grown into one of the most trafficked websites worldwide, fourth only to Google, Facebook, and YouTube in 2018 (Marantz, 2018). The site is generally referred to as a “social news site,” thereby differentiating it from social networking sites like Facebook, which are primarily for meeting and connecting with other users. Reddit users (redditors) create their own communities (subreddits) around almost any area of interest and post links pertaining to those interests. As an open-source platform, redditors have considerable control over subreddits – they can even download and rewrite the entire codebase (Massanari, 2017). Within subreddits, redditors can comment on posted content and vote on that content. They may upvote posts or comments that they agree with or enjoy, which makes the post more visible in searches and front pages; downvoted content is made less visible. Upvotes and downvotes are aggregated into a score for each link or comment, which contributes to a redditor’s “karma” score – their contribution to the Reddit community (Massanari, 2017). Subreddits are mostly managed by volunteer moderators; site administrators take an extremely hands-off approach. Accordingly, Reddit has a reputation for hosting off-color and often odious content. For example, it was a primary site for “The Fappening” (where over 100 female celebrity nude photographs were leaked) in 2014 (Massanari, 2017). Because of Reddit’s relative anonymity and the fact that users can create multiple accounts and reform banned subreddits under different names (see Massanari, 2017, for examples), racist and sexist content continues to proliferate on the site. Despite its reputation, Reddit remains popular, particularly among young men (Herring & Stoerger, 2014; Reddit Statistics For 2020, 2019). Massanari (2017) notes that “Reddit’s most popular subreddits and general ethos tend to coalesce around geek interests—technology, science, popular culture (particularly of the science fiction, fantasy, and comic book variety), and gaming” (p. 331). Fandoms have a clear presence on Reddit, particularly fandoms pertaining to the abovementioned geek interests (e.g., Harry Potter, Marvel). 26

However, as both Massanari (2017) and Shelton et al. (2015) note, Reddit is comparatively underutilized by media researchers. My literature search revealed few studies of fandoms on Reddit, the exception being a study on “dark fandoms” – fandoms centered around mass or serial murderers like the Columbine shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris (Broll, 2019). One reason for this may be that Reddit’s operational platform and internal culture makes for a different, less cohesive fan space. The relative ease of entry, pseudoanonymity, and “carnivalesque” culture of Reddit (Massanari, 2017) may provide a less stable and safe space for fans to disclose their shared interests and form connections. When compared to online fan forums and message boards (which tend to be private or semi-private and dedicated to a specific text), subreddits are far more open – they are generally accessible by anyone with a Reddit account. Individuals that comment and post on fan subreddits therefore may be a mix of actual fans and trolls, people with a passing curiosity, or people expressing sexual interest in a cosplay model. Moreover, the overarching culture of Reddit, coupled with its operational structure, may make Reddit fan spaces more prone to toxic behavior, as Massanari (2017) discovered in her three-year ethnographic study. Another reason may be that Reddit is not widely known for its fandoms, meaning that fan scholars might opt for more visible sites of fan culture. Nevertheless, as Shelton et al. (2015) found, redditors often take advantage of the relative anonymity of Reddit to make deeply personal disclosures, and tend to compartmentalize their interactions on Reddit from those on other platforms. As a result, long-term relationships were almost never sustained on Reddit – “their conversations instead would shift to other applications such as Facebook, Meetup.com, or IRC” (p. 6). As such, subreddits may be isolated spaces where fans can discuss their love and modes of engagement with DFCs in a way that is different from those in more private fan spaces. For one, the social ties may be weaker, which combined with the uninhibited nature of Reddit culture, may make certain forms of engagement more intense and honest. Given the potentially shameful nature of loving DFCs – particularly those perceived as Nazi analogues, such as Voldemort and Bellatrix (SueTLC, 2007) – more fans may express engagement with DFCs on Reddit than on private fan spaces. This, combined with the searchability of Reddit and the fact that character limitations for comments and posts are 27 much greater (e.g., when compared to Twitter), makes Reddit a particularly interesting source of data on DFCs. The subreddit I chose, /r/harrypotter, also known as the Great Hall (a reference to an area of Hogwarts), was created in 2008 – just three years after Reddit was founded. As of

April 26, 2020, it has 785,8494 members. Moreover, despite the fact that the main book series ended in 2007 and the final movie came out it 2011, links about the main series (including discussions, fanworks, questions, and other types of media) are posted daily to the subreddit. Moderators hold a variety of activities every month, including discussion weeks, fan fiction discussion days, and quizzes and other challenges. Moreover, users can be “sorted” into one of four houses (paralleling the four Hogwarts Houses), each of which has their own semi-private discussion space. Posts can be given different labels (e.g., “discussion,” “fanworks”), thus facilitating easy categorization.

4.2. Data Collection The unit of analysis was the post, including the post title, content (e.g., text, images, hyperlinks), and comments. This allowed me to encapsulate fans’ competing understandings of the DFCs of interest. To ensure that posts were relevant, I conducted searches using Reddit’s inbuilt search function, limiting all results to the /r/harrypotter subreddit. I focused on two male and two female DFCs (Bellatrix Lestrange, Lord Voldemort, Dolores Umbridge, and Severus Snape) to ensure that I had enough data and because these characters offer a good range in terms of personalities and textual exposure. Snape and Voldemort, who are both male, are featured in every book and movie in the main Harry Potter series, whereas the two female DFCs are featured in less than half of the books/movies (Bellatrix is featured in three books and four movies and Umbridge in two books and two movies). Although one might argue that these differing levels of textual exposure biases comparison, fans are not limited in their discussions or affective attachments to the most prominently featured characters in a text. As noted by Jenkins (2012), “Fan critics pull characters and narrative issues from the margins; they focus on details that are excessive or peripheral to the primary plots but gain significance within the fans' own conceptions of the series” (p. 155). Less exposure may even encourage

4 As of May 24, 2020, it has 808,143 – thus, in only a month, it grew by over 20,000 members. 28 discussion, as fans will not be as bound by the textual material as they would when discussing more well-defined characters. Indeed, Bellatrix had the highest number of posts among all characters. The characters also have clear parallels in terms of their roles in the story: Umbridge and Snape, as teachers at Hogwarts, are entrenched in the protagonists’ everyday lives, acting as normalized disruptive forces who hinder Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s actions within a relatively domestic sphere. In contrast, Bellatrix and Voldemort are outside threats whose aggressive actions reshape and reorient the protagonists’ everyday lives. To obtain posts featuring discussions of these four characters, I conducted searches with combinations of the following keywords: “Umbridge,” “Snape,” “Voldemort,” “Bellatrix,” “like,” “love,” “evil,” “discussion,” “identify.” Initially, I conducted searches using only the character’s names; however, only the most relevant 250 posts were displayed, so I had to employ more focused searches in line with my research question and ADT to obtain further data. The search results were organized by relevance and were not limited by date. I selected posts that mentioned at least one of the four characters in the title or that discussed the DFCs of the series in general, in order to obtain contextual information on how Harry Potter fans discussed DFCs. Both textual (e.g., discussion prompts, questions) and visual (e.g., cosplay photographs, fanart) posts were selected, as both types featured discussions and commentary. Relevant posts were downloaded into NVivo 12 using the NCapture extension of Google Chrome (QSR International, Doncaster, Australia). I read through the posts and comments again in NVivo and removed those that did not discuss the character at length. This resulted in the retrieval of 153 posts with 10,436 comments. I subsequently removed all posts with fewer than 10 comments to ensure data manageability. From the posts, I extracted the title, number of comments, score and percentage of upvotes5, the relative date of the post, the poster’s username, the focal character(s), and the type of post (see Table 1 for a list and criteria used to define each type of post). See Appendix 1 for the full table of posts.

5 The score calculation method used by Reddit is not publicized to prevent users from abusing the system; it is some combination of the number of upvotes minus the number of downvotes (Massanari, 2017). The higher the score, the more visible the post. 29

Table 1. Definitions of post categories extracted from /r/harrypotter

Type of post Definitions Example post (username) Comparison Comparisons of two or more Who do you think was the characters or different most evil villain and versions of the same why~ (Besides character in terms of Voldermort) evilness, quality, liking, etc. (PassTheTeddy)

Character exploration Exploring facets of the Showerthought~ If character’s personality, Voldemort had actually behaviors, and narrative used tin cans and old outcomes potion bottles for his Hoxcruxes as Harry thought for a moment in HBP he would probably have survived. (RedDenimJacket) Sexuality and relationships Discussions on the sex lives Does anybody feel bad and relationships of for Bellatrix's husband characters (36105097) Inciting discussion Declarative statement about Unpopular Opinion~ character that limits his/her Snape isn't all that interpretation as a means of redeemable to me provoking discussion (White_Wolf_Dreamer)

Humor Posts containing humorous It's a good thing memes or that begin with Voldemort didn't attack puns or jokes America first (o0Infiniti0o)

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Criticism of fan object Posts that begin with a Unpopular opinion~ I complaint about the way hate movie Bellatrix characters are represented in (helloclarice-93) the fictional universe or portrayed by the actor or media producer Criticism of fandom Posts that criticize how Does anyone else hate the characters are represented in theory that Umbridge was fan fiction or other raped by centaurs fanworks, or in fan (Minxie) discussions Liking the DFC Expressions of love or Random question. As evil appreciation for a given as bellatrix is, why do DFC or discussions of why people like her so much certain DFCs are liked (myself included)~ I don’t think it’s a bad thing, I’m just curious to hear as to why (jiujitsuguy93) Fanwork Posts containing fan fiction, My Bellatrix cosplay! cosplay photographs, and (Aureliabex) fanart Other fan engagements Posts containing fan-related Friendly reminder that engagements that do not fit this is what Voldemort into other categories, such would've looked like if he as posting photos of actors hadn't gone and fucked from other media texts with his shit up. text placing these (Swankified_Tristan) photographs in the Harry Potter universe

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One challenge I faced in selecting posts was whether to divide posts by medium. Ultimately, however, I felt that doing so would overlook interesting results. Particularly, it would prevent me from exploring Cuntz-Leng's (2015) autopoetic feedback loop, which posists that the depictions of a character across different media converge over time. She writes: “The diffused nature of transmedia franchises like Harry Potter with large and productive fan communities makes it futile to distinguish text, performance, and reception, underlining even more their bond and their interdependency” (p. 83). For this reason, I made no attempt to distinguish the depictions of the character between the films and books in my selection of posts. Rather, I have assumed that fans who are still engaging with these characters long after completion of the main series have arrived at a more or less unified image of these characters, which makes distinguishing between how they receive the film and book versions “futile.”

4.3. Data Analysis 4.3.1. Analytical approach I analyzed data using the hermeneutic approach of Patterson and Williams (2002). Although they situate their approach in the field of tourism and recreation studies (being from that background), it remains grounded in the productive hermeneutics tradition of Gadamer and the authors draw on social and psychological research when outlining its ontological, epistemological, and axiological commitments and methods – they frame it, in other words, as a general social scientific method. Moreover, I found their approach accessible, well-developed, and relevant to answering my research question. The hermeneutic paradigm, Patterson and Williams (2002) claim, is an interpretivist paradigm that seeks to reach context- and time-dependent understanding through interpreting social actors’ communications (e.g., texts). It does not seek to break down phenomena into “discrete elements” but to understand them holistically. From an ontological standpoint, it holds that “the world as experienced is not solely a construction of an individual's mental processes nor merely a reflection of the external world” (Patterson & Williams, 2002, p. 14). More specifically, it holds that “there is structure in the environment” but that “individuals may experience this structure differently” (p. 15); in 32 other words, human experience is defined by “situated freedom” – not wholly being dependent on either the environment or intrinsic personal freedoms. Such experience is best captured in “ready-to-hand” modes of engagement (which Patterson & Williams [2002] base on the writings of Martin Heidegger) – that is, everyday, context- and time-dependent personal projects such as writing an e-mail or engaging in discussions online. These modes of engagement are best “viewed as an emergent narrative rather than as predictable outcomes resulting from the causal interaction of antecedent elements” (p. 18). Epistemologically, hermeneutics holds that knowledge is co-created by the social actor and interpreter, rejecting the notion that interpretation can be objective. Such knowledge relies on a “forestructure of understanding” (p. 23) – essentially an informed form of biasing by extensive review of relevant literature and reflection on prior experience – and is never universal or generalizable. Instead, multiple interpretations are embraced, with the “bracketing” practice advocated by other qualitative approaches (e.g., content analysis) being rejected as effectively impossible. In summary, then, the hermeneutic approach attempts to delineate and explore “specific instances of a phenomena” through informed interpretation, with the emerging knowledge reflecting a unique instantiation of a much broader holistic phenomenon. The ultimate goal of this knowledge production process is “understanding,” which Patterson and Williams (2002) emphasize is different from the close-ended, prediction- oriented understanding derived from positivist paradigms. Instead, understanding in hermeneutical terms is “open-ended and subject to change” (p. 28) – there is never a definite endpoint where we arrive at some form of generalizable law. The intent is to communicate what social actors experience within specific contexts based on the ways in which the interpreter (i.e., researcher) has sensitized themselves to the phenomenon of interest. A key aspect of this knowledge-generation process is the “hermeneutic circle,” which refers to the practice of constantly moving between the individual parts of a text and the whole phenomenon of interest (i.e., the forestructure of understanding generated about a given phenomenon) and the act of generating an consistent pattern of interpretation through micro-level “sub-interpretations.” Alvesson and Sköldberg (2009) illustrate this hermeneutic circle, which I have reproduced as Figure 2. 33

Figure 2. The basic hermeneutic circle (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009) I chose the hermeneutic approach for several reasons. First, it seems naturally suited to the exploration of the polysemic nature of fan interpretations. By embracing a more holistic perspective, I can provide a much richer understanding of the varied ways in which DFCs of different genders are represented in fan discussions. In doing so, I am illuminating areas where later researchers can bring in more rigorous, quantitative approaches (e.g., content analysis) to determine if my interpretations are generalizable. Second, this thesis embraces areas of study with more or less distinct traditions, bodies of evidence, and assumptions (i.e., character engagement, gender representation, and fan studies). Accordingly, I felt that it was necessary to find a “middle ground” between them wherein I could adopt an informed position (i.e., generate a “forestructure of understanding”) but nevertheless be open to new insights and understandings, which is exactly what the productive hermeneutic approach allows (Patterson & Williams, 2002). It also allowed me to embrace my extensive preunderstanding of character engagement, DFCs, and the Harry Potter fandom, instead of forcing me to “bracket” it to arrive at a more 34

“objective” understanding (as I would have done with a more quantitative approach like content analysis). I believe this has helped deepen my analysis. Finally, this approach was most familiar to me. As I come from a background of psychology and literature studies, I was more familiar with text-focused methods of analysis. I felt that embracing this competency was best suited to ensuring rigor.

4.3.2. Researcher position I have been a fan of Harry Potter since I was about eleven years old – I have read all seven books in the original series, seen all ten films set in the Harry Potter universe, and during my teenage years read and wrote Harry Potter fanfiction. As such, I already have an extensive preunderstanding of Harry Potter and some of its fan cultures. I am therefore what fan studies scholars calls an “aca-fan” – an academic who happens to be a fan (Lamerichs, 2018). The hermeneutic approach allows me to embrace this position as integral to my analysis. For instance, it allows me to explore how fan interpretations more or less draw on textual content from one medium or another (e.g., the books, films, or fanfiction). However, as Lamerichs (2018) notes, “fan studies can benefit from more nuanced discussions on the role of fan identity in relation to the research object and process” (p. 52). In this case, while my aca-fan position positions me close to the text, it does not bring me close to my object of analysis – I have never participated in discussions on /r/harrypotter and am by no means a “redditor.” I do not, therefore, have an entirely insider position. This is disadvantageous in some ways, particularly in how I interpret the contextual role of Reddit culture in fan discussions about DFCs. However, the distance has helped me engage in continual self-reflexivity about my interpretations, which is necessary for their refinement. Another major contributor to my forestructure is my status as a white heterosexual male. White male privilege is an extensively documented concept describing the ways in which white men tend to benefit from patriarchal systems of oppression in society (e.g., Case et al., 2014). Such privilege is often invisible and implicit; thus, without examination, it might lead me to overlook gendered content. Although I have strived to be self-reflexive, I may have overlooked more nuanced gendered concepts in my interpretations.

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4.3.3. Data analysis procedure I adhered to the approach outlined by Patterson and Williams (2002), eliminating steps not applicable to this thesis (as I did not conduct interviews): (1) I read through the posts and comments, (2) marked meaning units (individual comments discussing the DFC), (3) assigned thematic labels to these meaning units through an open coding process informed by my forestructure of understanding, (4) considered the interrelationships among these thematic labels, and (5) wrote the interpretive discussion and analysis of these results. Steps 3–5 took place simultaneously and repetitively; I refined the thematic labels as I reflected on the text, in line with the hermeneutic circle (Patterson & Williams, 2002). I ignored comments not directly involved in discussion of the character. I also created a table of posts (Table 2 and Appendix 1) to provide a general overview of the data.

4.3.4. Trustworthiness Patterson and Williams (2002) point out that a hermeneutic approach need should not rely on trustworthiness criteria conceived for more naturalistic paradigms. Instead, trustworthiness can be judged in terms of “persuasiveness,” “insightfulness,” and “practical utility.” Persuasiveness is defined as the degree to which readers can follow the analysts’ interpretations; insightfulness as the degree to which the analysis increases “our understanding of a phenomenon” (p. 34); and practical utility is the degree to which the knowledge generated is based on concrete theory and methods. To ensure the persuasiveness of my study, I have provided participant quotations throughout the analysis as evidence of my interpretations and I have tried to be as detailed as space allows. The insightfulness of my study lies in its attention to DFCs, who are understudied; my focus on a novel fan platform; and my comprehensive sampling procedure. The practical utility of this thesis was ensured by thorough literature review and immersion in related theory, which has helped to ground my interpretations in ADT, gender representation literature, and fan studies.

4.4. Ethical Considerations Social media research is ethically fraught, particularly in spaces with diverse standards of conduct like Reddit. Researchers must constantly be aware of the extent to 36 which content is intended as public or not and whether posters would be comfortable if this content were included in a research project (Townsend & Wallace, 2016). The latter point is quite relevant to my study: I did not seek informed consent from posters or commenters. However, there are several indications that my study is ethically sound regardless. First, my study is not human subjects research: as Moreno et al. (2013) write: ‘“if…access to the SMW [social media website] is public; information is identifiable, but not private; and information gathering requires no interaction with the person who posted it online, and then presumably the proposed project does not constitute the human subjects research” (p. 709). /r/harrypotter has no written rules on the privacy of posts, and the subreddit is open and viewable to anyone. There are private boards for each House (only accessible by members “sorted” into that House), but I did use posts from any of these boards. I did not interact with any users when gathering data. Second, I have not attached usernames to any of the quotations I selected to ensure commenters’ anonymity. A similar choice was made by Massanari (2019) in her thematic analysis of a feminist subreddit. In this way, the content is treated much more like a textual analysis. I did not encounter any unexpected ethical issues during data collection/analysis; both were relatively straightforward. Following successful completion of this thesis, I will delete the data from NVivo.

5. Findings and Discussion 5.1. Description of Sampled Posts I analyzed 117 posts containing a total of 9,693 comments over a period of two weeks. Table 2 displays the breakdown of posts by category and character.

Table 2. Number of posts for each category and character

Category Bellatrix Umbridge Voldemort Snape Multiple Total Villains Character exploration 7 10 10 3 2 32 Comparison 4 5 3 0 3 15 Criticism of fan object 3 0 1 0 1 5 Criticism of fandom 4 1 0 0 1 6 37

Fan hatred 0 3 0 0 0 3 Fanworks 16 0 1 0 0 17 Humor 1 1 9 0 0 11 Inciting discussion 0 1 4 4 0 9 Liking the DFC 6 1 1 3 0 11 Other fan engagement 2 0 2 0 1 5 Sexuality and relationships 4 0 5 1 1 11 Total 47 22 36 11 9 Note. n = 117. Posts featuring two characters are counted in both columns. See Table 1 for category definitions.

Bellatrix had the most posts (n = 47). Before data cleaning she had 66 posts in total – 16, however had fewer than 10 posts, so they were not considered in the analyses. This was followed by Voldemort, at 36 posts. These two characters also had the highest number of posts dedicated to both (n = 5), which is unsurprising, given their master–servant relationship and romantic undertones. However, a word frequency search of the entire sample revealed that the two male characters (Snape and Voldemort) were mentioned nearly twice as often as either of the two female characters: Snape was mentioned 2,141 times, Voldemort 2,012 times, Bellatrix 1,190 times, and Umbridge 999 times. The high number of Snape mentions may result from his having the most commented post (732 comments), but it also suggests that he was referenced frequently in other posts. Umbridge had the fewest despite having the third highest number of posts. As is clear from the table, several categories showed a clear slant towards one or two characters. All but one of the fanworks featured Bellatrix. Twelve Bellatrix fanworks were cosplay photographs featuring a female model (or a male and female model in one case) and uploaded by the poster. The remaining four were drawings or paintings. The sole fanwork dedicated to Voldemort was a painting of his film version. By contrast, nearly all the humor posts were centered on Voldemort; the single humor post dedicated to Bellatrix also featured Voldemort. These posts consisted of jokes (n = 5) and humorous observations about the character (n = 5); by contrast, the only humorous post about Umbridge linked her to the current COVID-19 quarantine procedures through a meme. Snape had no humor posts, but tied with Voldemort 38 for the highest number of “inciting discussion” posts. Inciting discussions about Snape uniformly debated his moral nature (either asserting that he was good or that he was evil), whereas those about Voldemort pertained to his narrative choices (n = 3) and took a devil’s advocate position concerning his morality (n = 1). The sexuality and relationship posts almost entirely revolved around Bellatrix and Voldemort, often discussing their relationship. The two female DFCs had the highest number of comparison posts (two of which compared theses characters, e.g., “Who's more redeemable~ Bellatrix Lestrange or Dolores Umbridge”), while Snape had no comparison posts. Three comparison posts were open discussions about the worst or least redeemable characters in the series. Both Bellatrix and Voldemort had posts comparing their movie and book counterparts. Umbridge tended to be compared to Voldemort and was the only character with posts dedicated to expressing hatred of her.

5.2. The Salient Fictionality of Bellatrix Lestrange Bellatrix had the greatest number of posts about her and the most fanworks, making her the most visualized and discussed DFC of those chosen. Accordingly, I felt she deserved her own section. She is an interesting mix of masculine power and feminine subordination, which viewed through the lens of ADT, served as reasons for why some fans liked her; for others, it was Helena Bonham Carter’s visualization of the character, which may have made it easier to focus on her positive traits. Working in tandem with these views was her salient fictionality as a villain. This fictionality may have allowed them to love her for her vicious traits as much as for her empowering ones. In light of ADT, the results suggest a need to expand our understanding of how morality operates in fictional worlds.

5.2.1. Contrasting Characterization Bellatrix was described as everything from “empowered warrior” to “Voldemorts [sic] sex slave.” She was, in other words, represented in highly masculine terms and highly feminine ones. For commenter, for instance, highlighted her feminine devotion: For me it is the combination of her unwavering devotion, her skills, her cruelty AND her looks. I love myself an unapologetically depraved female villian [sic], with no redemption arc and no tragic backstory to justify her ways. 39

Others ignored her subservience in favor of her magical prowess, which was described in masculinized terms: Bellatrix was one of my favorites. Was she evil? I don't think so. She was a warrior [emphasis mine], for the wrong side. She was an efficient killer for the most part, quick to take people down. She believed that Muggles and Muggleborns would destroy her world, the one she grew up in and the only one she knew. She took action to prevent that.” The obvious use of moral disengagement (Raney, 2004) in this quote (i.e., the moral justification that she was just doing what warriors are supposed to do in response to threat) played out among Bellatrix fans in other forms. For instance, commenters drew attention to her lack of shame and boldfaced honesty, which functioned as justification for her immoral nature: because she did not lie about who she was or attempt to explain away her violent actions, she was worthy of liking. One commenter wrote: “She’s not ashamed of who she is and has never had any reservations that’s why she’s so terrifying but also a really fun villain.” Bellatrix’s contrasting characterizations are not particularly surprising, as they echo earlier work on gender representation (Aguiar, 2001; Armstrong, 2013) indicating the polarized depictions of women as submissive angels and manipulative devils. However, it is interesting how Bellatrix was liked simultaneously for both stereotypically masculine traits (forthrightness, violence, and competence) and stereotypically feminine ones (loyalty and devotion). To explain this, we can look to ADT and her villainous nature: fans’ application of moral principles to her actions may already be deactivated (or entirely changed), thereby negating the censures they apply to more virtuous or morally ambiguous female characters. For instance, Meyer (2009) found that film audiences praised female characters for showing feminine traits but criticized them for using violence. However, the movie he chose (Girls Town) featured female characters in protagonist roles using violence for ostensibly justifiable reasons (getting revenge for a rape). His choice of protagonists is important because we tend to hold particular expectations about specific types of characters (Raney, 2004); in the case of female protagonists, we might be biased to view them as likeable and to some extent more moral (perhaps a holdover of decades of media depictions of female protagonists as needing to be moral and submissive), which means immoral acts 40 may be treated much more seriously. Thus, the characters evaluated in Meyer’s (2009) study may have been subjected to harsher judgment, whereas Bellatrix could be admired for her both her positive traits and her monstrous actions. Taken together, these findings highlight a potential problem with investigating fictional characters’ use of violence (e.g., Heldman et al., 2016) without consideration of character type, including whether they are coded as antagonist or protagonist – fans may praise features in the former that they would condemn in the latter. It would be interesting to examine if similar standards were applied to female heroes and villains in same genre media to clarify exactly how violence is wielded by these two types of characters. The emphasis on her possession of masculinized power, and the comparison of that power to that of other characters (one commenter wrote, “Through the books she is arguably seen as the second most dangerous character, only second to Voldemort”) is also interesting, as I believe it gets to the heart of why we enjoy DFCs in the first place: to embody and derive a sense of vicarious power. But for Hunting and Hains (2019), this sort of hierarchization is a distinctly masculinized practice, particularly within a cross- demographic fandom like Harry Potter. They describe this as an attempt at legitimization – making the text valuable and likeable despite it being “for kids” or “for girls.” Fans of Bellatrix might be emphasizing her power in part to discursively legitimate their interest in her despite her negatively coded feminine features – namely, her slavish devotion to Voldemort, a man. This tension was particularly evident in a post entitled, “I hate it when people talk about women empowerment and feminism in HP and don't include Bellatrix.” The poster claimed that Bellatrix’s prowess meant that she deserved a place among feminist icons of the series. In response, one commenter wrote: Sure, she was a good fighter and clearly high up in the Death Eater ranks. But in the same way that I'm not about to look at women who were powerful in the Nazi regime and be like 'hey look, young girls, she did really well for herself' I'm likely not going to do the same with Bellatrix. In response to this comment, the poster wrote, “Please. This is fiction and it doesn't harm any real person so don't compare it to Nazis. You don't have to agree with her ideology to acknowledge that she was a strong woman.” Thus, the expression of power may be working 41 in tandem with an emphasis on her fictionality to allow her fans to keep on liking her and deriving pleasure or meaning from her representation. But rather than a moral disengagement strategy, this emphasis on her fictionality might indicate that fans have vastly different moral priorities depending on how fantastic the character is. Indeed, some fans seemed to love her for her depraved nature (see the quote on page 34). Although ADT does explain that individuals’ moral principles affect the formation of affective dispositions (Raney, 2004), it does not account for the possibility that the degree to which a character’s fictionality is salient, or the character’s type, can change the set of moral principles being applied. Thus, it is worth considering a more nuanced conceptualization of morality in future ADT-based studies.

5.2.2. Bellatrix’s Autopoetic Feedback Loop Fans made more references to Bellatrix’s appearance (16 out of the 25 references in the code “reference to appearance”) and she was represented visually more so than any other DFC. Her appearance may also have been a reason why she was liked: some fans claimed that Bellatrix was liked purely because of Helena Bonham Carter’s (“HBC” in subreddit’s parlance) portrayal of her in the films. For instance, one commenter wrote: “I kind of love Bellatrix and I thought she must have a redeeming quality of some sort, but I think I only like her because of Helena and how her own personality and mannerisms seeped into her portrayal.” However, the liking also had to do with her appearance: another commenter, in a post titled “Can someone PLEASE explain to me why people actually like Bellatrix LeStrange”, wrote: “Helena Bonham Carter is hot, so here you go.”

42

(b) (a)

Figure 3. Contrasting images of (a) a cosplay photograph of Bellatrix Lestrange from /r/harrypotter and (b) a photograph of Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange (“Bellatrix Lestrange,” 2012).

Further evidence of HBC’s influence comes from the cosplay photographs, which all featured her curly hair, distinctive black dress with fingerless gloves, and pale skin (see Figure 3). These photographs typically drew high numbers of comments (upwards of 432) and one of them had the highest score of all sampled posts (24,119), suggesting that they were highly visible on the subreddit front page and /r/all due to the large number of upvotes. The high scores are possibly because of Reddit’s platform characteristics: these photographs might be drawing the attention of more than just Harry Potter fans, such as individuals interested in cosplay and photography and those looking for titillation. Two photographs highlighted the sexuality HBC brought to Bellatrix by posing with obvious cleavage and a sultry expression. These posts unsurprisingly drew out sexualizing and harassing comments (see Figure 4). 43

Figure 4. Bellatrix cosplay photograph. This post was closed for commenting because the poster received too many sexist and harassing comments

The sexualization of Bellatrix through HBC is even clearer when comparing with her description in the books – she is described as having “heavy-lidded” eyes, unkempt but sleek hair, “the vestiges of great good looks,” and a “skull-like” face; her body is not described at all (Rowling, 2007). Thus, fans’ images of Bellatrix seem firmly married to HBC. This directly links with Cuntz-Leng's (2015) autopoetic feedback loop. Over the nine years since the last movie came out, fans have had time to reconstruct their image of Bellatrix through consumption of her two portrayals. Cuntz-Leng (2015) noted that Snape’s status as a favorite character among fans did not occur until Alan Rickman was cast as him in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 2001. I would argue that the same is true of 44

Bellatrix. Referring back to the post “I hate it when people talk about women empowerment and feminism in HP and don't include Bellatrix,” it seems clear that some fans are drawing on HBC’s over-the-top portrayal in the films, where she is shown to be far more dependent and unstable: “’Master, I am sorry, I knew not, I was fighting the Animagus Black!’ sobbed Bellatrix, flinging herself down at Voldemort’s feet” (Rowling, 2007, "The Only One He Ever Feared", para. 52). The fact that some fans seemed to find her empowering despite her negative portrayal in the books suggests that the feedback loop is much more weighted towards the visual medium. This is unsurprising, given the “power of film to appear as objective evidence of the world” (Meyer, 2009, p. 64). It also suggests that fans want to like her, and thus may prefer the version of her that best allows them to do so: namely, the version tinged with HBC’s mannerisms and beauty and whose independence appears at least as salient as her loyalty. In effect, HBC’s portrayal may be softening Bellatrix’s negatively feminized traits (particularly her slavish devotion). As one commenter summed up in response to a redditor asking why people like Bellatrix: “i believe they want to be helen bonham carter’s version of her as she is a rather attractive women who isn’t present as super evil in the movies, beside killing sirius and the scene with hermione in malfoy manor.” HBC may also add to Bellatrix’s “salient fictionality” through her exaggerated mannerisms, which some fans liked: “One character I always thought the movies really nailed was Bellatrix. Helena Bonham Carter gives her that ‘genuinely unhinged’ feel.” Others criticized this, feeling that HBC’s portrayal was “one-dimensional.” These latter fans may have craved a greater complexity to the character, whereas the former seemed pleased with her detachment from reality (in all senses of the phrase). HBC thus may have created in Bellatrix a perfect storm of visual pleasure and violent fantasy that fans found engaging. These results add empirical credence to Cuntz-Leng’s (2015) autopoetic feedback loop and expand it to include a character who received far less narrative attention. In the future, it would be interesting to explore the autopoetic feedback loop more directly through interviews and quantitative analysis. These analyses should, I think, contrast female and male characters to see to whether the actor or actress is more or less salient in these images. 45

5.3. Umbridge and Snape: Everyday Hatred Bellatrix’s salient fictionality allowed fans to love her for her depravity. At the other end of the continuum, the close proximity of Dolores Umbridge and Severus Snape to fans’ everyday realities allowed fans to hate them without reservation for their comparatively domestic infractions (e.g., humiliation, bullying, controlling). Yet, these two characters are discussed rather differently – Umbridge is hated without reservation while Snape receives some semblance of identification. Dolores Umbridge was the only character with posts fully dedicated to expressing how much the poster hated her or calling for others to dissect why she was so hated. The status of this hatred was ambiguous: for some commenters, it was clearly “loving to hate” – the commenter might directly state as such or declare that they “hated” or “loathed” her but would prefix this with a statement suggesting that they derived pleasure from doing so: The scene in the movie when she decides she needs to use the cruciatus curse gave me chills. And she’s the main reason I’ve read the 5th book one less time than every other book in the series. I hate that woman. Loving to hate Umbridge seemed to derive from the quality of her writing (e.g., “Opinion~ This sub really needs to stop oversimplifying the character of Umbridge into 'pure evil'; it ruins the complexity of a well written character”). As a well-written DFC, she allowed the narrative to move and presented the right amount of problems for the heroes of the story to overcome. In contrast, some commenters expressed a more visceral, even physical hatred: As to who I hate more, Umbridge. Hands down. She is absolutely the least likable, least sympathetic character in the series. I want to punch her in her stupid face [emphasis mine] every time she shows up in the books or the movies. I get physically uncomfortable reading the scene where she watches Prof. McGonagall's class. She's so awkwardly hateful, if that makes sense. I emphasized in this quote the poster’s wish to do harm to Umbridge because, of the four characters, she was the only one commenters expressed a desire to harm: in the code “violent expressions,” 35 of the 38 references featured Umbridge (the other two were for Bellatrix, but were more tongue-in-cheek responses to Bellatrix cosplay photographs). The 46 severity of these expressions ranged from the relatively benign “wanting to punch her in the face” to wanting to kill her (e.g., “If I had a gun and had one bullet to kill with it'd be Umbridge”) and even the hope that she was raped in her penultimate scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (where she is carried off by centaurs). Five of the posts dealt with this rape theory exclusively. Commenters noted that the theory originated in an article on the comedy website Cracked.com arguing that the ambiguous nature of what happened to Umbridge coupled with the mythology surrounding centaurs constituted textual evidence of her rape by the centaurs: “Well uh...in ancient mythology, centaurs tend to rape human women. When Umbridge returns, she can’t walk straight and is afraid of centaurs, so...” Some commenters criticized this theory, arguing that Rowling would never imply that a character deserved to be raped (“My hesitation to believe it isn't because Rowling doesn't get into "deep issues" but because from what I know of Rowling it would be shocking that she thinks it's okay to use rape as a punishment”), while others supported it and even believed Rowling was implying it deliberately: “In Greek mythology, centaurs are known for raping women. Rowling would've known this since she got her degree in classics.” This latter faction even felt that Umbridge deserved it because she was fictional: “In real life id never say someone deserves that as a punishment of course but fuck it shes fictional. Hooray for horrible life changing trauma for that fictional bitch.” The gendered response to Umbridge is made more apparent when comparing her with Snape. While comparing the two is problematic – Snape is morally ambiguous while Umbridge is strictly a villain – the immediacy of their threats does not differ much. Snape, despite having the fewest posts in the sample, had the highest number of comments for a single post (732, “Unpopular Opinion~ Snape isn't all that redeemable to me”). A sizeable contingent of that thread (as indicated by the most upvoted comment) disliked Snape and felt that despite his ultimately siding with good, he was “a bully” and “obsessed” with Harry’s mother, Lily. Still, commenters never wished harm on him in the same way as they did Umbridge. “Bully” is an interesting word choice because it presents Snape as an everyday threat that fans, particularly young ones, are likely to have encountered. “Bully” was mentioned over 100 times across the two Snape posts with the most comments. 47

The everyday nature of Snape’s immoral acts (e.g., bullying, humiliation) echoes the reason that fans hated Umbridge so much: her realism. Take, for example, the following commenter: I think what makes her so bad is that she's real. She is every teacher or person of authority that abuses their power. And that isn't a concept that's hard to imagine. It reminds me of this horrid teacher I had, that would always give me detention because I disagreed with her literary points of view. A lot. She made me so angry that I often got into shouting matches during class, and eventually refused to come back. Contrast this with how another commenter cited their dislike of Snape: Why are people so hell bent on trying to justify the bullying of an 11 years old kid by his 30-something teacher is beyond me. I don't think there is any reasoning, other than Snape is a bully who likes to put down other vulnerable people, like Neville, Hermione and Harry, just because he can and to make himself feel a little less vulnerable. Both comments represent Umbridge and Snape as apart from the fictional world that they inhabit. Snape and Umbridge are the difficult customers, bullies, and power abusers that commenters might experience in their daily lives. Yet while fans are content to label Snape “a bully,” some are comfortable with wishing death and rape on Umbridge despite her eventual textual punishment. There are several ways to explain these results in terms of gender. The first concerns the Reddit platform, particularly its reputation as a breeding ground for sexist and racist ideology (Massanari, 2017) and its key demographic: young males (Herring & Stoerger, 2014). Although /r/harrypotter is effectively a fan forum, it is operating within the larger culture of Reddit, the relative anonymity and overarching culture of disinhibition of which (Shelton et al., 2015) may make users less concerned with social ties. Assuming that a good proportion of redditors on /r/harrypotter are young males in or fresh out of school, then both Umbridge and Snape’s symbolized threat becomes that much more real to them. They call out Snape’s bullying because they may have experienced bullying in their lives and are angered at Umbridge’s control over Hogwarts because the stress and pain that would come with that is immediate and real. In reacting to this, fans may freely utilize the 48 toxic conventions of the larger platform on which they are operating, couched in a fannish affective commitment to the text: Umbridge should be raped or killed because her presence disrupts the fantasy of a good villain (her salient fictionality) and that is something that deserves punishment. ADT can also help explain the differing treatment of Snape and Umbridge. Unlike Snape, there is nothing for fans to like about Umbridge; she has, as one fan put it, “no redeeming qualities.”6 Conversely, Snape was ultimately working against evil and had an engaging moral complexity. Many fans actually liked Snape (there were five positive posts about him, which together had 474 comments). Moreover, he embodies a particular brand of masculinity that the geek fans of Reddit (Blodgett, 2020; Massanari, 2017) may identify with, allowing them to begin liking and justifying his bullying. This geek masculinity is couched in being “an outcast” who was “bullied as a child and disliked by peers—most importantly, women—for interest in intellectual pursuits” (Blodgett, 2020, p. 185). To Blodgett (2020), “a geek is a debased man, bound to lose to his more adept peers rewards to which he is entitled by right of gender, race, and sexual identity” (p. 188). The parallels to Snape are hard to miss: Snape is bullied as a child, clever and skilled in the Harry Potter world’s equivalent of chemistry, unattractive, and carries a lifelong love for a woman (Lily Potter) who ultimately rejects him for his childhood tormenters (Rowling, 2007). Critics of Snape in /r/harrypotter even made direct reference to this notion of masculinity by calling Snape “an incel” (“involuntary celibate,” a misogynistic, mostly online movement of males expressing hostility towards women for not seeing them as potential sexual partners; Blodgett, 2020). Fans also referenced their own bullying experiences. One participant wrote, “i guess i identify with him because i went through a lot of the same things.” Taken together, fans might find it more easy to like and therefore forgive Snape. Umbridge is not likeable; because she is female and close to fans’ everyday reality, that may matter more. Unlike Bellatrix, whose possesses beauty, loyalty, and power and is far removed from reality, Umbridge “acts like she's doing what's best for people, when in reality [emphasis mine] she's being ridiculously cruel” (according to one commenter). She hides this cruelty beneath a decidedly feminine veneer: she has a “fluttery, girlish, high- pitched voice” (Rowling, 2007, "The Hearing," para. 113), prefers pink, and has an office

6 This did not stop fans from trying to find these qualities, however. 49 full of cat pictures. In hiding masculine traits (e.g., aggression, ambition) under overtly feminine ones, coupled with her ugly appearance (she is described as like a “large, pale toad” Rowling, 2007, "The Hearing", para. 111), Umbridge may be seen as embodying a kind of “pariah femininity” (Paechter, 2018) that redditors might find repulsive. One commenter wrote: “Umbridge is a manipulative woman, abusing her position of power while still trying to remain sweet. She's lying to, suppressing, dismissing and abusing her students. She's also a racist.” Thus, while fans might have found her a powerful addition to the story, they could not engage with her like they do Bellatrix or Snape. The realism that fans referred to in their discussions of Snape and Umbridge further emphasize that ADT must consider the fictionality of the characters and potentially the genre of media. The degree to which the real world is recalled by the DFC may affect how fans engage with characters as much as the characters’ traits. Moreover, their treatment of these characters might have implications for their treatment of actual women and men in mediated environments: if an individual is comfortable wishing death and rape on a fictional woman, it is reasonable to ask whether they might also level similar threats at real women. Evidence from toxic fan phenomena like #Gamergate suggest that the relationship might be closer than we might think (Blodgett, 2020; Massanari, 2017), although this should be explored in future investigations.

5.4. Voldemort as an Intellectual Peer The longest and most complex discussions in the sample of posts centered on the male characters Severus Snape and Lord Voldemort. These posts often amassed hundreds of comments (four had over 300). In contrast, posts on the female characters typically had fewer than 100 comments (the only one that did not featured another female character alongside Umbridge). The depth of these discussions, I think, in part relates to what I wrote about Snape above – redditors may experience a greater level of identification with Voldemort and Snape because they tend to be young and male (Herring & Stoerger, 2014). However, it may also relate in part to the masculinized modes of discourse typical of Reddit. As Massanari (2017) notes, Reddit is an epicenter of geek culture, which tends to revolve around certain topics (e.g., science, technology, comic books, fantasy/sci-fi 50 franchises) and utilize specific modes of discussion, including an argumentative style and the “valorization of intellect” (p. 332). Assuming that, the kinds of discussions that take place and are upvoted on Reddit probably tend towards the intellectual. This is evident throughout the character discussions for all four characters. Take, for instance, the following quote, which was a response to a commenter asking why one user found Bellatrix more evil than Voldemort: Bellatrix's torture of the Longbottoms also comes across as far more horrific and evil than anything Voldemort has ever done. Throughout the Harry Potter books, Riddle / Voldemort has always prided himself, and even boasted, about his “honesty” and “mercy” (“I am a merciful Lord”), even towards his greatest enemies, like Harry Potter. While Riddle / Voldemort is responsible for numerous deaths, he almost always prefers to kill his victims with the Killing Curse (Avada Kedavra) without torturing them first, granting them a painless, quick, and “merciful” death. In his view, Riddle / Voldemort offers “a death with dignity”, which is the opposite of what happens with someone is tortured before being killed. Usually, when someone is tortured, they face not only excruciating physical and mental agony, but also physical and mental humiliation and degradation. This comment continues at length, quoting textual evidence and even a British lord’s comment on the nature of torture. Its scholarly tone hints at a desire for legitimacy, but also aligns with Massanari’s (2017) observations about geek argumentation on Reddit. If we accept that this is a typical argumentation style on Reddit, then it stands to reason that DFCs with more textual attention – and therefore more evidence from which to draw – may receive more discursive attention. In this thesis, these DFCs happen to be male. Their maleness is relevant, however. Besides what I have already written concerning Snape’s embodiment of geek masculinity, I observed that some fans valorized masculine traits – power and intelligence – in Voldemort. More interesting were the discussions centered on Voldemort’s textual failings, particularly his pride and lack of rationality. In one post (“Showerthought~ If Voldemort had actually used tin cans and old potion bottles for his Hoxcruxes [sic]s as Harry thought for a moment in HBP he would probably have survived”), commenters criticized what they saw as stupidity in his choosing 51 powerful magical objects for his Horcruxes.7 One commenter wrote: “…encasing it in a block of lead and dropping it into the deepest part of the ocean would have protected it far better than any of his actual protections. That's not even pulling things like enchanting the Horcrux with a Featherweight charm, making it invisible, and sneaking it into a probe like Voyager or Pioneer.” These discussions took place from the position of peers who knew better: “I'd do it in an instant. When it comes to horcruxes, I'd choose quantity over quality.” Highlighting Voldemort for his intellectual failures is particularly telling because it again emphasizes the typical argumentative style of the platform and the typical redditor. Commenters even admitted outright identifying with Voldemort: “I can identify with Voldemort's quest for immortality, but not his means of achieving it, which I think Rowling strives to make clear in the series.” Yet while Redditors were both quick to uphold his power and intellect, they were equally quick to pull him down through humor. Of the 11 humor posts, eight centered on Voldemort, three of which had over 100 comments and five of which had scores in the thousands. These posts typically began with a joke (e.g., “It's a good thing Voldemort didn't attack America first” began with a pun: “American muggles would have been no-maj8 for him”) or humorous observation about Voldemort. From there, the posts leapt into explorations of Voldemort’s character using textual evidence. For instance, one post asked commenters to playfully imagine what it would have been like to live with Voldemort (“I want a series about the Malfoy's house9 and how Voldemort was just there eating toast or something”). In response, one commenter wrote: I'd imagine him mostly spending the days locked up in a study, pouring over books. Inventing new spells, learning, trying out various rituals, corresponding with foreign scholars. Personally, I headcanon him as trying to create a public image for himself where he is as least human as possible. I totally see Tom conjuring up illusions throughout the night of him standing up, still as a statue, with Nagini around him, only to creep out his followers, while he actually sleeps in a comfy bed in the next room.

7 Magical containers into which he places parts of his soul, which allow him to cheat death (Rowling, 2007) 8 Refers to the American slang for non-magical people, the parallel of the British “muggle” (Child, 2015). 9 The Malfoys are an aristocratic wizarding family who side with Voldemort during the events of the original series. 52

The creation of an almost cozy image of Voldemort here hints perhaps at what the commenter cherishes as well, which again suggests an identification with Voldemort – particularly his power and intellect. If readers are identifying in some way with Voldemort (and some clearly are), these humorizing posts may act as a form of harm minimization (Raney, 2004) in order to continue liking him in spite of the horrors he enacts throughout the series. Another, more obviously gendered example is a post entitled “Voldemort is like a preteen girl. He has a diary, a special cup, a pet he likes, a tiara, a special locket, and an obsession with a famous teenager boy.” Here, the humor is based on the notion that Voldemort, an all-powerful man, demonstrates feminine behaviors within the text. Although the humor does serve to undercut Voldemort’s seriousness as a villain (which may have been the intention), it also reinforces his status as a powerful man while subtly denigrating stereotypically girlish interests. A similar practice was observed in Hunting and Hains' (2019) study on the Brony fandom – male fans would justify their interest in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic by elevating it as an exception to typical girl media. I do not believe that the playful treatment of Voldemort is merely the result of his being male; factors other than gender are likely motivating these types of discussions. Indeed, some fans attributed debates about the male DFCs to posters’ attempts to accrue karma through posting low-effort content to generate upvotes (called “karmawhoring”). Long-time members might have noticed a tendency for humorous posts to obtain upvotes. In fact, the post comparing Voldemort to a preteen girl was a cross-post from another subreddit; while it received only 46 comments and had a score of 1,976 in /r/harrypotter, it received a score of 14,498 and had 242 comments in /r/Showerthoughts. Thus, it may have been an attempt by the poster to easily generate karma. Nevertheless, the fact that it received such attention adds further weight to the idea that the Reddit platform influences fans’ discussion of Voldemort. In sum, Voldemort’s masculine traits and textual focus naturally align with the modes of discourse on Reddit, which may make users derive greater enjoyment through performative exploration of him.

6. Conclusions and Limitations This thesis explored the ways in which Harry Potter fans on the /r/harrypotter subreddit represented four DFCs of different gender in their discussions, viewed through 53 the lens of ADT (Raney, 2004). I found that fans’ gender representations of and engagement with these characters intersected with the characters’ fictionality and visualization, the online culture and discourse styles of Reddit, and fans’ presumed identification with these characters. Bellatrix was loved for her depravity and subordination to a man, with fans seeming to draw on her highly fictional presentation in justifying this love in spite of its moral implications. Umbridge, by contrast, was hated for her proximity to fans’ everyday lives and pariah femininity, which fans used as license to direct violent sentiments (both physical and sexual) towards her. Snape was simultaneously disliked for his bullying but liked for his complexity and relatability. Voldemort, as a paragon of the intellectual power valued by redditors, was discussed as a peer and played with at length. Taken together, the results highlight how fans’ engagement with DFCs is bound up in their understandings of gender, morality, and fictionality. This has implications for character engagement research, fan studies, and gender representation studies. My results offer a preliminary evidence of the need to expand ADT further (Raney, 2004). First, my results lend support to the idea that dispositions towards fictional characters – whether they be negative or positive – may be meaningful to engagement outside of narrative enjoyment. It may therefore be worth exploring, in future quantitative studies, how dispositions affect more concrete forms of engagement with characters, such as cosplay. Qualitative research should focus on adding nuance to these affective dispositions – fans can feel many things about a character (e.g., acknowledging Bellatrix’s magical skill while also understanding she is not somebody to admire), suggesting that defining affective dispositions solely in terms of “liking” misses out on key elements influencing their connection and enjoyment of those characters. Second, the findings suggest that the moral principles applied to the judgment of fictional characters in fantasy media texts may differ substantially from the moral principles we apply in reality – when a character is purely located within a fantasy world, we might be able to enjoy what we would otherwise find despicable. It might be worth delving into the selective application of moral principles for DFCs through face-to-face interview studies with fans and audiences. Third, this thesis suggests that ADT can be applied outside of the moment of consumption and film/television. Affective dispositions towards fictional characters appear to be enduring; however, it would be interesting to explore how these dispositions change 54 through further engagement with the character. Indeed, dispositions may become far more complex as they reconstruct the character in fan spaces. As for gender representation research, this thesis indicates that it would interesting to explore how morality intersects with the representation of men and women in fictional worlds. While it is a stretch to suggest that moralities applied to fictional characters in any way impact moralities applied to the real world, investigation of the divergences between these sets of moral principles could provide meaningful information for audiences’ level of involvement in fictional worlds. As the world becomes increasingly saturated with fictional media content, it is not unreasonable to suggest that our involvement in fictional worlds is deepening. If so, it would be of interest to media producers to understand which moral principles travel across the fictional and real worlds and which are more distinct; such knowledge might make them consider in greater depth how they represent gender in media texts as well as how gender is reconstructed by audiences. In doing so, they might be able to create characters to whom audiences are even more connected. This thesis is not without its limitations. First, I did not give extensive consideration of the community dynamics of this subreddit; in other words, this thesis would have benefited from an ethnographic approach. I did not employ ethnographic methods primarily due to time constraints, even though they would have substantially improved my understanding of the argumentation styles utilized by members of this community, which in turn might have clarified how such social forms of engagement with DFCs factor into ADT. Moreover, it would have oriented me more towards the specific subcultural practices that influence how DFCs are represented in this subreddit. In the future, ethnographic methods should be employed to deepen our knowledge of how social forms of character engagement fit into the ADT framework. Second, I was not able to consider the gender of the users, which would have added value to our understanding of fans’ connection with DFCs. The anonymity of Reddit makes identification of posters’ gender difficult – redditors must expressly mention it, which is not possible to confirm. It is important to expand these results by repeating the study through face-to-face interviews. Third, although I have strived to be as self-reflective as possible, I cannot disregard the possibility that my interpretations are not unduly biased by my aca-fan status and white male privilege. Fourth, in relying on existing data, I could not clarify redditors’ meanings or deepen my inquiry 55 into specific topics that they posted about, which would have added value; I should have supplemented the data with surveys or interviews. Fifth, given time and space limitations, I could not engage in further refinement of the codes and interpretations. Finally, in choosing a hermeneutic approach, I cannot make meaningful generalizations about the results, particularly how affective dispositions influence engagement beyond the moment of consumption. My intention was merely to show that ADT studies might benefit from consideration of more extended forms of engagement to broaden the applicability of the model. Nevertheless, my findings offer some indication of what fans find attractive, interesting, and meaningful about DFCs. By exploring how DFCs become objects of fascination and fanship, we can add to our understanding of what audiences derive from these characters – what aspects of their darkness we reject and what we take away with us.

56

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33811

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Appendix A: Table of Posts

Post Date Number (April 21, of Score (% 2020 Focal Post comments upvoted) reference) Poster Character Type of Post Things that make you go EWWWWWW ~ 39 0 (50%) 3 months ago nicolettalynch All Humor Harry Potter and Sex ~ 547 215 (93%) 7 years ago mmj_gregory All Sexuality and relationships JK Rowling ether writes really awesome or really pathetic female characters. Very rarely is All Female there an in between. ~ 12 3 (60%) 3 months ago SkyFire4-13 Characters Criticism of fan object Are there any redeeming characteristics of our most hated villains~ ~ 192 52 (86%) 7 years ago cranberry94 All Villains Character exploration Discussion about motivations behind antagonists. ~ 25 10 (92%) 8 years ago Bleeding_Llama All Villains Character exploration Which character do you consider the most irredeemably evil (not counting Umbridge or Voldemort)~ ~ 22 3 (67%) 6 months ago TheToxicWyvern All Villains Comparison Who do you think was the most evil villain and why~ (Besides Voldermort) ~ 36 0 (40%) 7 months ago PassTheTeddy All Villains Comparison Who is everyone's least favorite character (besides umbridge lol cuz everyone hates her)~ ~ 54 9 (100%) 8 days ago lollipop1422 All Villains Comparison People seem to hate female villains much more than male villains. ~ 38 0 (44%) 5 months ago helloclarice-93 All Villains Criticism of fandom Villains... Yup! ~ 46 108 (89%) 4 years ago aurora31 All Villains Other fan engagement I just found out that Bellatrix and Rita Skeeter went to Hogwarts together. They were both born in 1951... somehow this has changed everything... ~ 32 105 (99%) 3 months ago kaimkre1 Bellatrix Character exploration Is Bellatrix Lestrange really a Slytherin~ ~ + Anti-Slytherin bias ~ 27 0 (46%) 1 year ago fe_felicis Bellatrix Character exploration Riddle-Hermione looks like Bellatrix. The book says the Horcrux (Voldemort) made Hermione look more attractive and if it made Hermione look like Bellatrix, it means Bellatrix was Voldemort's idea of attractive. ~ 10 7 (65%) 2 months ago helloclarice-93 Bellatrix Character exploration Hermione being tortured by Bellatrix ~ 21 9 (100%) 4 days ago maja_geuking Bellatrix Character exploration 68

Someone want to explain to me how the hell Molly Weasley beat back Bellatrix~ ~ 32 1 (54%) 20 days ago Xenosaiyan7 Bellatrix Character exploration Book Bellatrix is the superior Bellatrix. ~ 63 402 (96%) 9 months ago chinderellabitch Bellatrix Comparison As much as you all gripe about Michael Gannon not portraying Dumbledore correctly, no one seems to mention how Helena Bonham Carter made Bellatrix Lestrange a one- dimensional crazy person. ~ 17 14 (67%) 1 year ago shawnsmtn Bellatrix Criticism of fan object Unpopular opinion~ Helena didn't play Bellatrix well ~ 14 0 (43%) 4 days ago melindawson Bellatrix Criticism of fan object Unpopular opinion~ I hate movie Bellatrix ~ 19 2 (56%) 1 month ago helloclarice-93 Bellatrix Criticism of fan object Bellatrix is such a beautiful name. Why tf does everyone ruin it by calling her Bella~ ~ 18 1 (55%) 4 months ago stickymoosefred Bellatrix Criticism of fandom Bellatrix isn't that sort of ~bad girl~ ~ 35 48 (91%) 3 months ago helloclarice-93 Bellatrix Criticism of fandom I hate it when fanfics depict Bellatrix as being abused by her husband. It's so OOC! ~ 10 9 (76%) 4 months ago helloclarice-93 Bellatrix Criticism of fandom I hate it when people talk about women empowerment and feminism in HP and don't include Bellatrix. ~ 37 0 (37%) 3 months ago LucretiaLabelle Bellatrix Criticism of fandom “I was and am the Dark Lord’s most loyal servant.” - My Slytherin student Bellatrix cosplay~ 75 2542 (98%) 9 months ago tinyteaspoons Bellatrix Fanwork “Oh! He knows how to play!”- Bellatrix cosplay by WitchyBrew ft. random python from the street.~ 17 497 (98%) 7 months ago tinyteaspoons Bellatrix Fanwork 15329 Bellatrix by me from NYCC '19 ~ 432 (93%) 5 months ago victoriamichelle_t Bellatrix Fanwork Bellatrix cosplay, work in progress. ~ 168 4275 (89%) 4 years ago IsisPapyrus21 Bellatrix Fanwork Bellatrix Lestrange cosplay by F. Lovett ~ 33 592 (97%) 2 years ago f_lovett Bellatrix Fanwork For the first time I used my hair with my Bellatrix cosplay and I'm soooooo glad with it! ~ 76 3251 (98%) 4 months ago f_lovett Bellatrix Fanwork I finished Bellatrix Lestrange drawing ❤ ~ 186 9678 (97%) 1 year ago greisikertuka Bellatrix Fanwork I like to draw the characters as I imagine them instead of relying on the films...here's my Bellatrix! ~ 70 852 (99%) 18 days ago ofcabbagesandkings14 Bellatrix Fanwork My Bellatrix cosplay (for the third time!!). I 14734 can’t get enough! ~ 236 (90%) 1 year ago eilselivery Bellatrix Fanwork 69

My Bellatrix Cosplay from NYCC 2019 ~ 219 4437 (97%) 6 months ago victoriamichelle_t Bellatrix Fanwork 24119 My Bellatrix cosplay! ~ 325 (91%) 8 months ago Aureliabex Bellatrix Fanwork My cosplay as young Bellatrix ~ 38 936 (97%) 4 days ago f_lovett Bellatrix Fanwork My gf and I as Bellatrix and Sirius at NYCC. ~ 160 5776 (85%) 3 years ago hayterade Bellatrix Fanwork My oil painting of Bellatrix. (I'm 16) ~ 171 977 (83%) 8 years ago HausOfTony Bellatrix Fanwork Wanted to share with you guys my Bellatrix Lestrange cosplay work in progress, pretty happy so far! (More pictures will be posted on 13526 my Instagram!) ~) ~ 280 (85%) 1 year ago shiiva4 Bellatrix Fanwork You could say I take my Harry Potter coloring book seriously Masked Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange ~ 30 626 (99%) 1 month ago LaurelKuz Bellatrix Fanwork Bellatrix Lestrange ~ 16 42 (81%) 9 months ago savagerabbit77 Bellatrix Liking the DFC Can someone PLEASE explain to me why people actually like Bellatrix LeStrange~~~ ~ 24 16 (81%) 4 months ago sunshiney-1 Bellatrix Liking the DFC I really fell in love with Bellatrix even though I rooted against Voldemort ~ 10 12 (65%) 1 month ago st4t1cshock Bellatrix Liking the DFC I think I'm the only one in the world who loves Bellatrix. Lol ~ 11 59 (89%) 1 month ago acersavulyan Bellatrix Liking the DFC Most underrated character in Harry Potter~ Bellatrix Lestrange ~ 16 0 (50%) 2 months ago helloclarice-93 Bellatrix Liking the DFC Random question. As evil as bellatrix is, why do people like her so much (myself included)~ I don’t think it’s a bad thing, I’m just curious to hear as to why ~ 15 5 (78%) 8 months ago jiujitsuguy93 Bellatrix Liking the DFC Bellatrix before Azkaban~ ~ 24 75 (87%) 4 months ago helloclarice-93 Bellatrix Other fan engagement Bellatrix Black Lestrange. ~ 14 83 (92%) 3 months ago LucretiaLabelle Bellatrix Other fan engagement Do you think Bellatrix loved Narcissa~ ~ 13 7 (100%) 3 months ago dontpolluteplz Bellatrix Sexuality and relationships Does anybody feel bad for Bellatrix's husband ~ ~ 149 386 (95%) 4 years ago 36105097 Bellatrix Sexuality and relationships Bellatrix was always right about Snape betraying Voldy, Do you think she was really Bellatrix and skepticism or just being jealous of Snape~ ~ 13 32 (83%) 3 months ago pttep Snape Character exploration Bellatrix Lestrange vs. Dolores Umbridge~ Bellatrix and Who is the greater evil~ ~ 50 40 (86%) 7 years ago bakersdozen13 Umbridge Comparison What would Bellatrix Lestrange's stance on Bellatrix and feminism be~ ~ 30 0 (40%) 7 months ago stickymoosefred Voldemort Character exploration 70

Is Bellatrix LeStrange more evil than Bellatrix and Voldemort~ ~ 27 16 (82%) 2 years ago Nyxaus_Motts Voldemort Comparison When Bellatrix died, it was far from the first Bellatrix and time she made Voldemort scream. ~ 23 17 (71%) 4 months ago helloclarice-93 Voldemort Humor Bellatrix was in an abusive relationship with Bellatrix and Voldemort ~ 13 6 (71%) 2 months ago helloclarice-93 Voldemort Sexuality and relationships If Bellatrix and Voldemort had lived, who would Bellatrix have loved more~ Voldemort Bellatrix and or Delphi~ ~ 13 2 (62%) 5 months ago stickymoosefred Voldemort Sexuality and relationships Hey, I know that DH made it easy to forgive Snape, but let's not forget Snape is a complete and utter dick. ~ 203 173 (77%) 8 years ago showbreadrules Snape Inciting discussion Snape was a good person who went bad and then good again, and his remorse was true ~ 310 515 (83%) 3 months ago pet_genius Snape Inciting discussion I've been thinking about Snapes treatment of Neville and have come to two, possibly linked, possibilities ~ 43 14 (86%) 4 months ago RobbieNewton Snape Character exploration Snape~ A Hero Or Villain~ [Discussion] ~ 33 5 (78%) 2 years ago tendysibanda Snape Character exploration To anyone thinking that Snape’s love for Lily was creepy ~ 58 10 (59%) 1 year ago redflower22 Snape Inciting discussion Unpopular Opinion~ Snape isn't all that redeemable to me. ~ 723 5642 (86%) 8 months ago White_Wolf_Dreamer Snape Inciting discussion Snape is fucking impressive ~ 36 69 (95%) 2 months ago HoziPuzo Snape Liking the DFC snape is my favourite character. change my mind. ~ 28 3 (59%) 2 months ago birds-with-hats Snape Liking the DFC Snape was a good man, a great man. ~ 42 53 (75%) 3 months ago tubbem Snape Liking the DFC Did Snape really receive no special attention from the opposite sex throughout his life~ ~ 117 74 (91%) 4 years ago NotGuilty_666 Snape Sexuality and relationships Dolores Umbridge ~ 12 1 (67%) 4 years ago DjQball Umbridge Character exploration In book 5 when Hermione tells Umbridge about the weapon, Umbridge gets excited. Do you think Umbridge would have wanted to use that weapon to become the Minister for magic or she would still be loyal to Fudge~ ~ 11 33 (88%) 7 days ago nihalgosala77 Umbridge Character exploration Please don't downvote me but can we discuss Dolores Umbridge for a bit~ What are her positive traits~ ~ 71 20 (69%) 3 months ago TatsumaruTheTwofaced Umbridge Character exploration Umbridge ~ 18 14 (86%) 3 months ago jadeleighev Umbridge Character exploration Umbridge and the Centaurs ~ 35 7 (67%) 7 years ago crazy_dance Umbridge Character exploration 71

Umbridge and the Centaurs ~ (2) 16 13 (89%) 1 year ago PeevesPoltergist Umbridge Character exploration Umbridge doesn't get enough credit for being actually evil ~ 22 76 (87%) 8 months ago Nitemarephantom Umbridge Character exploration Was Dolores Umbridge purposely evil~ ~ 18 9 (91%) 12 days ago Meikiepeik Umbridge Character exploration What even happened to Umbridge after Hermione and Harry left her in the forbidden forest with the Centaurs~ ~ 17 4 (67%) 22 days ago Zinguu Umbridge Character exploration What if the centaurs did rape Umbridge and Hermione knew it could happen~ ~ 48 15 (63%) 4 years ago ykickamoocow111 Umbridge Character exploration Dolores Umbridge is the worst villain in the series because she is a bad person. ~ 26 42 (96%) 4 years ago pems_ann Umbridge Comparison People love to hate Umbridge, but damned if I didn't hate Aunt Marge for every second of the 12983 3 minutes of screen time she gets. ~ 316 (97%) 2 months ago DuffManSzALotAThings Umbridge Comparison Does anyone else hate the theory that Umbridge was raped by centaurs~ ~ 50 17 (78%) 5 years ago Minxie Umbridge Criticism of fandom Hated Umbridge ~ 34 403 (93%) 1 month ago Maazmello Umbridge Fan hatred The Pure Hatred I Have For Umbridge ~ 14 27 (91%) 2 months ago TheKay-03 Umbridge Fan hatred This scene makes my skin crawl. I wish Umbridge a slow, torturous, painful death. ~ 55 332 (97%) 1 day ago PeevesPoltergist Umbridge Fan hatred Umbridge's writing the quarantine rules ~ 20 1976 (99%) 13 days ago Skogsvandrare Umbridge Humor Opinion~ This sub really needs to stop oversimplifying the character of Umbridge into 'pure evil'; it ruins the complexity of a well written character. ~ 90 866 (92%) 1 year ago Ten-dollar-Ocean Umbridge Inciting discussion I don't hate Umbridge - Why do you~ ~ 21 7 (77%) 1 year ago LicieBelle Umbridge Liking the DFC Who's more redeemable~ Bellatrix Lestrange or Umbridge and Dolores Umbridge~ ~ 19 1 (56%) 2 years ago AlternateAccountPost Bellatrix Comparison Who else hated Umbridge more than Umbridge and Voldemort~ ~ 300 3610 (91%) 2 years ago MythicallyCreative Voldemort Comparison [Discussion] Pity for Voldemort ~ 21 40 (88%) 1 year ago coalface92 Voldemort Character exploration I need to know if anyone understood this about voldemort ~ 18 5 (73%) 15 days ago Robagi2002 Voldemort Character exploration Showerthought~ If Voldemort had actually used tin cans and old potion bottles for his Hoxcruxes as Harry thought for a moment in HBP he would probably have survived. ~ 342 4146 (96%) 4 months ago RedDenimJacket Voldemort Character exploration 72

Was Voldemort capable of producing a Petronas~ given he was full of hate and loathing. ~ 20 3 (80%) 22 days ago Robert_s_08 Voldemort Character exploration What are your thoughts on Voldemort as a villain~ ~ 26 3 (81%) 4 months ago charleshr Voldemort Character exploration Why did Voldemort think he was the only one who knew about the room of requirement~ ~ 22 15 (89%) 14 days ago bigfootwithwifi Voldemort Character exploration [Discussion] Voldemort's Mercy ~ 10 3 (100%) 1 year ago coalface92 Voldemort Character exploration People always ask why Voldemort didn't use the Avada Kedavra on Snape. It must have been easy to kill with the curse, he instead used Nagini to kill, which for Harry's advantage gave him time to take the memory. But every one thought it was a p 13 54 (98%) 1 day ago nihalgosala77 Voldemort Character exploration Philosophy of Voldemort~ Voldemort's biggest mistake wasn't creating Horcruxes, believing in Prophecies or going after Harry, but underestimating everyone. He was so arrogant that he believed everyone else inferior to himself & incapable of ach 15 32 (100%) 28 days ago HobGoblinHat Voldemort Inciting discussion When Harry and Hermione meet Bathilda Bagshot (Nagini).Harry goes upstairs alone with Nagini. Harry was wearing the locket and just before Harry and Hermione escape they get a glimpse of Voldemort. So at that moment 4 parts of voldy's soul were 96 1054 (99%) 8 days ago nihalgosala77 Voldemort Character exploration Movie Voldemort vs. Book Voldemort ~ 303 568 (96%) 5 years ago alwayzbeehappi Voldemort Comparison Voldemorts stupid moment ~ 24 4 (83%) 11 days ago Shadowkabs Voldemort Criticism of fan object I painted Voldemort and Framed it ~) hope u guys like it ~ 11 69 (95%) 1 month ago thiagoam2 Voldemort Fanwork Does anyone else think Voldemort is actually a massive fucking weirdo~ ~ 16 11 (77%) 23 hours ago greengiantsbaby Voldemort Humor I bet Voldemort's email password would be nagini1926 ~ 28 290 (97%) 2 months ago dangerpigeon2 Voldemort Humor I want a series about the Malfoy's house and how Voldemort was just there eating toast or something. ~ 216 3911 (97%) 8 days ago ugia_smurf Voldemort Humor It's a good thing Voldemort didn't attack America first ~ 320 3365 (95%) 1 month ago o0Infiniti0o Voldemort Humor 73

Voldemort is like a preteen girl. He has a diary, a special cup, a pet he likes, a tiara, a special locket, and an obsession with a famous teenager boy. ~ 46 1976 (91%) 10 months ago Aurintas Voldemort Humor Voldemort Taboo ~ 127 1436 (97%) 3 months ago Chefschelbli Voldemort Humor Voldemort wanted the Elder wand so he definitely wanted to learn everything about the wand so in that quest, do you think Voldemort had to read the 3 brothers story~....not necessarily but imagine the Dark lord sitting in Malfoy Manor reading T 13 8 (76%) 23 hours ago nihalgosala77 Voldemort Humor Why does Voldemort prefer Twitter to Facebook~ ~ 88 2913 (97%) 3 months ago V391Pegasi Voldemort Humor some snipers could take out Voldemort ~ 52 0 (29%) 16 hours ago goldietheswagbear Voldemort Inciting discussion Voldemort did nothing wrong. Discuss. ~ 32 0 (21%) 4 months ago isolationtoolong Voldemort Inciting discussion Why didn't voldemort just apparate to Harry's dorm and shoot him with a gun~ ~ 33 0 (29%) 7 days ago yoimnate Voldemort Inciting discussion Would you read a stand-alone Voldemort book~ ~ 316 3480 (95%) 1 year ago Dredl0rd Voldemort Liking the DFC Friendly reminder that this is what Voldemort would've looked like if he hadn't gone and fucked his shit up. ~ 142 3493 (98%) 1 year ago Swankified_Tristan Voldemort Other fan engagement The terrifying original design for Voldemort ~ 104 2877 (99%) 1 month ago ShittyUndergarments Voldemort Other fan engagement I can totally see Voldemort having sex ~ 73 9 (58%) 4 months ago helloclarice-93 Voldemort Sexuality and relationships The child of Voldemort ~ 17 3 (60%) 17 days ago MrMcGibblets85 Voldemort Sexuality and relationships Was Lord Voldemort gay~ ~ 20 0 (25%) 21 days ago Robert_s_08 Voldemort Sexuality and relationships 74

Appendix B: Table of Codes Name Definition Example

Why are people so hell bent on trying to justify the bullying of an 11 years old kid by his 30-something teacher is beyond me. I don't think there is any References to reasoning, other than Snape Bullying bullying or everyday is a bully who likes to put violence down other vulnerable people, like Neville, Hermione and Harry, just because he can and to make himself feel a little less vulnerable.

Here is where they are different: while Bellatrix certainly does more "evil" things (like killing and torturing other characters), Direct comparison of she revels in it and is proud the types of villain or outright of her twisted Comparing evils hierarchization of ways. Umbridge attempts evilness to warp her evil ways (at least, in her mind) to be morally correct, which angers me to no end. Umbridge is easily more evil than Bellatrix.

Mentioning that the Bella is cray cray. Crazy character is crazy or

mentally unstable

Let's look at Voldemort References to defend through NON-tainted eyes. Defending the DFC the DFC’s behavior or The Harry Potter books justify them were told through a thirdperson, limited 75

perspective which I think is actually kind of an unreliable "narrator" sense of narrative in that we see things basically through an eye that follows Harry around. What was Voldemort's greatest goal? He wanted to live a long as hell life, possibly forever. Sure, he did things that most wizards are too conservative to try, but his ultimate goal was not an evil objective by far.

I'm sure I'm not using this term in the correct way and I apologize for any offense caused (it's not intended!), Use of diagnostic but I believed that Diagnosing evil language to describe Umbridge was just really villainous behaviors OCD with a dollop of narcissium. She needed everything to be perfect and in its place and was obsessed by it

I had always imagined that he would have had sex with Bellatrix. Not from love but Discussing romantic the need for exerting relationships domination over her. There involving the was a hint at some kind of Discussing romantic relationships character, either affection for her at the end textually or of book 4 Book 5 (I'm paratextually stoned). If he didn't care for her at all, he'd have left her at the Ministry.

I would also posit the Use of language theory that it's nice to have suggesting empathy Empathic connection or identification a character that's chaotic or identification with evil that we can project the character; taking ourselves into, and "live an the character’s evil life vicariously through 76

perspective them" so to speak. Like, I have a dark mark tattoo, embrace that I'm a Slytherin and there's loads of bad wizards in Slytherin and all that... But irl I would be more like slughorn and also dude fuck irl Nazis there's no way I would stand for any of that. But, the books and characters like Bellatrix give us the escapism into other worlds and into other characters.

Umbridge and Bellatrix are probably the most hated Harry Potter characters and they're both women. Voldemort doesn't get even remotely as much hate as they do. Even the vile Pettigrew gets little hate compared to them. Hell, Criticisms of the even Lucius has lots of character in terms of fans. Snape is a bully and their actor, how other an obnoxious person yet he fans represent them, has such a large fan base. Criticizing character representation how they are Even women who aren't represented in the villains get a lot of hate. films or books, or I've lost count of the times how they act in the I've seen Fleur, Cho, fictional world. Lavender and Ginny being bashed. Sometimes it seems as if the only girl the fandom likes is Hermione. Almost all of the fandom's favorite characters are men even if they're assholes and much worse than the women.

I think specifically in In-depth exploration Fan exploration of character Bellatrix’s case, this was of the character 100% jealousy. She was insanely envious of Snape 77

for having such influence over Voldemort’s decision making considering her fanatical obsession with Tommy boy. I agree with the rest of the comments here that as for the rest of the death eaters, their lack of trust would have been a mixture of distrust (double agent) and disdain (Snape remained not only free but appeared highly respected by Dumbledore).

I think the sexual Voldemort people are Playful imaginings talking about was before about the character, the snake penis thing. After Fan play and humor often of a humorous he's regenerated, I always nature imagined him smooth down there, like a barbie.

She was very organized, a Attempts to identify snappy dresser, and loved Finding positive traits positive traits of the cats. character

Bellatrix is almost always made very emotionally cold/stable/strong and never cries. However it's not the case in the canon. Defining aspects of She's actually very prone to the character’s crying and cries twice in 3 Gendered character building personality in terms books. First, in the of their gender, either department of mysteries explicitly or implicitly a nd then when Voldemort complimented her in DH, she was blushing and her eyes had welled up. When he took the compliment back, she was about to cry before he made it up to her. 78

The scene in the movie when she decides she needs to use the cruciatus curse gave me chills. And she’s Expressions of hatred Hatred the main reason I’ve read of the character the 5th book one less time than every other book in the series. I hate that woman

She literally kills for her insane beliefs and Invoking other media loyalty...think harley quinn Invoking other media texts texts in relation to the level of stockholm and character instability

I loved Bellatrix in both the films and the books, such a Expressions that they nicely evil character. And Liking or loving the character like or love the of course, I am a big fan of character Helena Bonham-Carter and she is beautiful.

As someone who usually likes villains and dark characters, I would have to go with Bellatrix. She tortured people, even to the point of destroying who they were and rendering Discussion about them insane and took violent acts pleasure in it, and never Major violence committed by the once seemed to feel any character, such as ounce of remorse. I can torture or murder look passed characters being sucked up into an evil death cult, or being a generally unpleasant asshole, but taking a perverse pleasure in torturing and killing people is pretty bad! 79

Not everyone is one or the other, or either at all. He Observation of the was just a flawed person Moral complexity morally complex who did some good things nature of the character and some bad things.

Yes Moldy-shirts was the big bad and super evil, but Nicknaming the he was also charming, Nickname for character character manipulative, crazy, and rather witty.

Bellatrix was played by Helena Bonham Carter. I kind of love Bellatrix and I thought she must have a Expressing praise for redeeming quality of some the actor’s portrayal Praise for actor sort, but I think I only like of the character in the her because of Helena and films how her own personality and mannerisms seeped into her portrayal.

Its just, old tom is pretty darn smart, and was a genius, so he probably succeeded first try at all of Discussing and his spells; so it must have praising the pretty annoying for him, Praise for character traits character’s in-text when students just could traits not succeed, and thus he was stuck listening them to repeat the same spell over and over.

Praising masculinized The films never captured forms of power (e.g., the fact that this woman is Praising masculine power in women competence in battle) one of Harry's most in female characters powerful does [sic], perhaps second only to 80

Voldemort. She is his second-in-command and the only one of his death eaters that he reacts to when they die. He screamed at her death. Again, that wasn't in the film.

umbridge is twisted, and i hate her, but i do think she's a much more believable Connection of the baddy than voldemort - character to real-life becuase thats how people Real-life villain figures or otherwise are in real life: they do representing the horrible things becuase they character as realistic think they're the right thing to do (or at least the better of two alternatives)

Expressing hostility or harassing God damn Bellatrix, I'd comments towards Expelliarmus all over those Reddit toxicity other redditors or Horcruxes acknowledgment of

toxicity on the subreddit

She was deranged, psychotic, still beautiful, but terrifying, and her tattered clothing could be excused since she had just Describing or recently broke out of referring to the Reference to appearance Azkaban. I wanted to see character’s her wear something truly appearance gorgeous, keep the leather corsets, keep the big hair but make it glamorous. She is Bellatrix Black Lestrange, she is a proud pure blooded witch who 81

would want to put her status up front.

So I can only side-eye you for propping up a psychopath because you don't like Snape. Plus, you Expressions about the know, the whole involvement of the embarrassing "posting shit References to Reddit platform Reddit platform in about Snape, deleting it discussions because it got downvoted, then posting it again in the hopes of getting upvotes this time."

So many people love her and many of them confess to hating book Bellatrix and Discussing the actor only liking movie Bellatrix. and character and If she'd played her well, Blending the actor and character how they blend or people would hate her as a influence each other villain like Lena Headey as Cersei and Imelda Staunton as Umbridge.

It says in the books that she used to be hotter before Sexualizing Azkaban. I find movie references about the Bella hot af, but if you character or wanna find someone hotter Sexualization and hotness expressions of how for her younger version attractive the than the only person hotter character is than HBC is younger HBC lol

Voldemort was individually Expressions about an incredibly powerful masculinized forms of wizard, who was only Discussing male power power in male matched by Dumbledore characters who was gone by that point. He also had a massive army at his back. 82

There simply weren't many teachers to oppose him and there weren't other large, organized groups of "good guy" wizards available to come to their aid.

If I had a gun and had one bullet to kill with it'd be Umbridge. As a bonus, the Expressions of killing and blood would Violent expressions violence about the probably turn Bellatrix on character enough that she wouldn't kill more, or suck my dick and then kill me.

I think you're right there. I hope that when Order of the Phoenix is released on Pottermore we might get some information on Descriptions of how Umbridge to explain where Writing quality well the character was her prejudice comes from. written JKR writes very deep characters and I'm sure she has an amazing background story for her.

Relating the character to an involuntary Snape is absolutely an Incel celibate or chastising incel. people for doing so

Note. Some codes are not discussed in the paper due to space and time limitations; I felt these codes to be less relevant and interesting.