Fascinating article

[icarus]

Harry Potter and the Banality of Evil

(Hey Brodie, does this sound familiar? Didn't we have this conversation back in March? *grins*)

Harry's punishment from Umbridge is similar to a scene in Kafka's The Penal Colony? Hmm.

'Beg Me For It' news. Well, I promised the next installment to my Beta today, but I've hit a snag in one scene. Almost there though.

Comments

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

More later, and I got your email too (writing response) -- read these:

Fanfic contest general description (http://www.livejournal.com/users/blackfall/24647.html?thread=216391#t216391)
Fanfic contest categories A (http://www.livejournal.com/users/blackfall/24647.html?thread=219463#t219463)
Fanfic context categories B (http://www.livejournal.com/users/blackfall/24647.html?thread=219719#t219719)

On Percy: the fandom's too quick to jump to conclusions and forgets how JKR loves to jerk us around on judging good and evil. Remember what she's done with Snape? First he's the bad guy, then he's the bastard but good guy (maybe), then he's awful but chose the good so must be noble, now he's a sympathetic nerd... and JKR says to watch him. Of course we're going to see more of Percy, and it's not going to black and white.

I don't what's so evil about Percy doing something that's pretty damned common for someone in their late teens, particularly when they're going against the family grain.

'I'm going to be a musician, don't argue with me that it's impractical! You're just trying to stop me from doing what I love! You've never taken my music seriously.'

'I'm going to be Minister of Magic and don't argue with me about the morals of those I admire! You're just standing in my way! You've always been in my way.'

There's no difference, really.

Between the lines... he's having trouble fitting into Fudge's world, and blames his family, not the biased nature of that world. That's so common. Social risers go through that all the time. They either blame their family, or they blame themselves... and the successful ones almost always blame their family.

Eventually they discover that that world is closed; they can stand on the sidelines and be permitted to enter it temporarily, but really, unless you're born to it, you don't know the rules. The kids of a social riser are the only ones who stand a chance of really being part of the upper crust, no matter how successful he is, because there's an unwritten social etiquette that Percy is just discovering I imagine.

Hmm. And JKR is recently wealthy. I think I know the source of her Percy-understanding.

I touched on that a little bit in 'Name Dropping.' I'm familiar with the phenomenon because my father was a social riser, while my stepdad was born to a rather upscale 'realm' of millionaires and rebelled against it. I watched my middle class mother (who didn't give a damn about the social politics, she just liked the house) struggle through it all, not comprehending the social rules she was breaking left and right, rules my Dad struggled to manage and my little brother (and myself, to a lesser extent) knew like breathing.

Icarus

[tinderblast.livejournal.com]

Eventually they discover that that world is closed; they can stand on the sidelines and be permitted to enter it temporarily, but really, unless you're born to it, you don't know the rules.

Oooh, exactly. Poor Percy doesn't realise that there are hierarchies within hierarchies, and that some people (is invoking the Malfoys a huge cliche here?) would never accept Percy because he's an upstart and hasn't been in their circles since forever, etc. He's probably young and naive enough to not know that all the earnestness, diligence, and hard work in the world idn't going to help him, there. And yet there's that really sad part where Percy basically spells out that he feels as if everyone 'accepts' him in spite of his background and family, and means Fudge in particular, and he doesn't see how damaging this is (to himself, psychologically) to not just admit this, but endorse it.

They either blame their family, or they blame themselves... and the successful ones almost always blame their family.

That's so interesting. I don't think I've known that many, but that just seems like such self-defeating behaviour.


Re his late-teens behaviour: Marvolo has a great lj icon: there's a hazy silhouette of a t-shirt in the background, and in the foreground the lines 'I'd send my fucking Weasley jumper back too!' I killed myself laughing at it, there was something so condensed about that gesture. Everyone has fights with their parents, or feels like the family outcast, but there was something so extreme about Sending Back the Weasley Jumper that everyone talks abut it in hushed tones, both in fandom and canon.

Anyway, will respond more soon.

brodie

[tinderblast.livejournal.com]

Once it was made clear that Sirius was an outcast in his family (I think it was Pogrebin who called him 'the Black sheep,' lol) I started to see parallels between him and Percy. It's funny that Sirius is feted for his decision (if it was a conscious decision) to symbolically remove himself from his family, yet Percy is villified for the same set of actions. Both choices were ethical decisions, in a sense,

'I'm going to be Minister of Magic and don't argue with me about the morals of those I admire! You're just standing in my way! You've always been in my way.'

I wonder how Percy will cope with knowing that he's been used by the Ministry? While it's not absolutely clear that Fudge is deliberately targeting Percy as a Weasley with information, or if someone else is maniplating Percy via Fudge, it seems clear that Percy will probably have to choose to stick with the Ministry's revamped party line, or admit that he was wrong to place so much trust in it. I see him being more like Fudge and trying to live in a state of fetoshistic disavowal ('Voldemort might be back, but we still need those cauldron bottom reports'). But I can also imagine a scene of reconciliation with the Weasleys (well, maybe not with the kids, for a long time).

I'm going to go look at the contest links, now.

brodie

[tinderblast.livejournal.com]

I just looked at the definitions, and they're pretty concise and good. I guess genres are like pornography, that old standby --- 'I know what it is when I see it ...'

If the stories are all post-June 21, then we could actually give examples of stories from within the fandom that fit the criteria.

But the post-June 21 thing is actually the part that most bothers me. While I definitely see the merit in finding and feting new stories, I also think that the old stories and authors haven't really been given their due. Not properly. So I feel conflicted about that, as I just wonder if having this date as a cut off point will create a lot of ambiguity (first date of posting on a lj as opposed to at an archive, ongoing WIP's and series, etc.).

brodie

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I agree. I was thinking about that, too. Also, not every site lists when a story was written so I'm afraid people won't nominate those stories that don't have a date on them. Plus we'd have to check... it would be a big mess. The thought is to prevent the 'heavy hitter' stories from dominating as usual.

Icarus

[tinderblast.livejournal.com]

Oh, I can totally see what you mean there, as that thought about the heavyweights occurred to me, too.

I was wondering whether we could ask people to say *why* they were nominating a story - for interest's sake, and to create a little more self-consciousness about the nomination process.

We could either send an e-mail to the author asking for the date of initial online publication, or else go by the story's archiving on a major site ... but this seems like unnecessary work.

brodie