Lately my social media feeds have been getting flooded with art, stories and videos of fan art, stories and videos of Draco Malfoy gender swapped as a girl. She has the same white-blond hair. Same Slytherin robe. Same voice bratty, asking Potter who let him think he was a top student. And some people are calling her Malfoid. Here is what I have learned about the trend so far.
Malfoid is fan art/fan fiction and not actually a real character in the Harry Potter universe. She is not in the books, not in the movies, and not in HBO's Harry Potter series. She is merely a fan character from a trend of artists who redrew Draco as a teenage girl, usually in an anime style, and kept the part of him everyone already knows: the sneer, bratty energy and insults towards Harry Potter. The popular pieces have her mocking Harry, pouting when he does not bite, or getting into it with Hermione. Reddit gave her a fuller name, Draconia Malfoid. Malfoid is another name that is being used a lot for her on social media.
The drawing that turned it into a trend went up on September 22. (which also happens to be Tom Felton's birthday!) X user @redteneri posted an anime Malfoid making fun of Harry. That is the moment the face became a template and a starting point for fans to go crazy over it. After that we saw many different versions of Malfoid and different accounts or artists posting about it. There have even been some people that have started writing some fan ficiton stories about it.
One of the reasons some fans are obsessed with it is that it doesn't change a lot of the story, and that it could actually fit very well without bringing about a different ending to any of the books. You do not need a new movie, a trailer, or a casting announcement. You need the hair and one mean line. A fan site even spun up a visual novel titled Pure Blood & Prejudice.
Another reason it grew popular was the nickname was fairly simple and made sense. Which helps the chances of having it catch on. Malfoid is Malfoy's name smashed with "foid," which is slang taken from "femoid," a word some forums use as an insult. It honestly doesn't make a ton of sense for the nickname, but I guess it is catchy and is a unique nickname.
Honestly this Akira meme sums up what my social media feed has been over the last few days with Malfoid:
So why this character, and why now? Draco was is one of the easiest characters to redraw and still serve the same role. Six books of him insulting Harry, Hermione, and Ron. Eight movies of Tom Felton looking permanently annoyed. This is a heap of content big enough to last for a long time. This trend started late last month when a bunch of artists posted variations of the character in the same week, and the pose was simple enough to copy with her blonde hair and mug face as she tosses insults at Potter that it grew and spread like wildfire.
So to sum up what Malfoid is for those wondering: she is a fan-made girl version of Draco, drawn bratty on purpose, named as an insult/joke, and popular because the original character was already popular and well known in the franchise. The robe and house colors with the blonde hair make it easy to recognize who this character is. The Potter insults is the icing on top and makes it even more obvious. A lot of people on social media are pretty obssessed with this fan-ficiton charcter and artists are joining in with their takes on what she would look like.
Did you know about this trend? Are you one of the fans hooked on Malfoid or just annoyed and ready for the trend to die out? Sound off with your thoughts in the comments below.