The clock on the wall keeps ticking
May. 31st, 2006 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mhalachaiHey kids. I know it's been a while since any instalments in the big stories cam out, but life's gotten complicated. It tends to do that a lot these days, but it's all par for the course. No hiatus is planned this time, I'll keep working on all my stuff as it comes to me. You'll be happy to know, however, that the plot bunnies in my head (Beside, Booty Call) are all GONE and I can get back to the WIPs. Yay.
(All plot bunnies except for the Sheppard/Teyla twu wuv plot bunny that in my brain, but it's never EVER going to get written because it's SO sappy and has all three of my no-nos in fic writing: puppies, children and robots)
But now a serious Harry Potter question. And please, feel free to discuss.
[Poll #739507]
(All plot bunnies except for the Sheppard/Teyla twu wuv plot bunny that in my brain, but it's never EVER going to get written because it's SO sappy and has all three of my no-nos in fic writing: puppies, children and robots)
But now a serious Harry Potter question. And please, feel free to discuss.
[Poll #739507]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 06:32 am (UTC)You know, as much as I love Ginny (as I write her) I totally understand. A good chunk of HBP is a bit hard for me to get, ya know?
no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 08:17 pm (UTC)J. Michael Straczynski once promised "No cute kids, no robots. Ever." Of course, he did have a cute kid in one episode of B5 ... who DIED in the same episode, so that's ... OK? I guess.
Hmmm... a seventeen-year-old rebelling against his family!? Pursuing his ambitions!? Shocking. Except not. So, yeah, I think Percy is more understandable than Severus, who apparently hates an unknown 11 year old child on the basis of a prank 20 years in the past played by a friend of the child's parent.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 06:35 am (UTC)That's who I was quoting, actually :) I was a huge fan of B5 back in the day.
So, yeah, I think Percy is more understandable than Severus, who apparently hates an unknown 11 year old child on the basis of a prank 20 years in the past played by a friend of the child's parent.
Yeah, I'm with you on this one. The question I posed made me think about Percy's actions. If I get off my butt, some day I might write up why I wonder what Percy's really up to.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 07:48 pm (UTC)HP-ficcer extraordinaire Barb (aka LJ-user psychic_serpent) has a theory about Percy being a spy for the good guys. (Her stories and some essays are linked here http://www.geocities.com/psychic_serpent/home.html. )Unfortunately, the Percy essay doesn't have the point-by-point analysis of that letter to Ron that I wanted to show you, but the ideas are there. I particularly like this bit quoted from a different essay by strangemuses:
• The letter appears in Chapter 14, which is entitled Percy and Padfoot and the chapter focuses on secret messages. If you apply Harry's comments in that chapter about how to write a secret message to Percy's letter, a very different message appears. Remember, later Umbridge reveals that all communications to Hogwarts are being monitored, so Percy would have had to include a lot of pro-Ministry blather on top of his 'real' message out of self-protection.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 08:59 pm (UTC)There's always been something about him from the moment his character was introduced that I felt I could relate to and I guess I just see a bit of myself in Percy. So while I don't necessarily agree with him, I can see the reasoning behind what he does.
When you believe in something, everyone is always like "Great, follow that belief!" but it's hard when what you believe in is the exact opposite of what everybody else feels. Percy was in that position in the books and he chose to stick to his beliefs. They just didn't play through for him.. And I guess maybe he saw that but, rather than abandon everything as his mistake was made clearer, he clung to what he felt was right and pushed the truth away, his family with it. It doesn't make it right what he did to his family, but, hey, you said 'understand' not 'excuse'. ^_^
I could go on forever about Percy (Peter Pettigrew, too; they're actually two of my favorite characters in the series weird as that sounds. Not for their personalities or the things they've done, but because of who they are, because they're real and I can sort of understand them. o_O That does not make me sound like a good person. *laughs*) but most of the time all my thoughts pile up and end up in a huge jumble of words and I never get anything across. XD
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Date: 2006-06-01 06:47 am (UTC)If Percy is really as presented in the books, I totally understand him. He spent so long trying to live up to everyone's expectations, and when he did (in his eyes) he was ostracized. The boy cannot win.
The great thing about the HP series is the number of excellent supporting characters. It must be doubly difficult, as JKR has to handle and express all of the characters' motivation, through the biased eyes of a teenaged boy.
I can't wait until book 7, to see how things turn out :)
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Date: 2006-06-05 04:16 pm (UTC)I know, same here. I'm always wanting to see more of the supporting characters.. I think I read somewhere once that JRK said we'd see the Triwizard competitors again.. We've seen Fleur, here's hoping we'll get to see Krum again.. <3
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Date: 2006-05-31 09:02 pm (UTC)I think his ambition blinded him to the truth, but he's still human, and I <3 the Percy
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Date: 2006-06-01 06:54 am (UTC)Truer words have never been said. Percy spent his life trying to do what he was supposed to, to reach his full potential, only to be dismissed by his family. His reaction wasn't saintly; it was human and probably wrong, but understandable.
I think it's safe to say that no one handled the situation well.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 09:52 pm (UTC)snape is characterized as a petty man who hates james potter and his friends and is helping dumbledore because he's in a bind, not because he wants to... which means that all of his actions to "help" are grudging and done only with the bare minimum effort (and if he can harm harry, he will go out of his way to do so)... and that's exactly what he does...
percy is characterized as a rules-lawyering simp... the only thing i don't really buy is him turning against his family like he did... (tho if you accept that, then everything else falls in line) ... he wants to be well off because of his rather poor origins, but i don't see him turning against his family like that... disagreeing with arthur? sure. fighting with the twins? no problem. but when everyone from arthur to ginny, not to mention dumbledore and mcgonnagal are saying the same thing, i just don't see him turning his back...
no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 12:08 am (UTC)Now, the way I see it, he was a kid during a time of utter fear, when the rules had to be followed or people died, & where the authority of the Ministry was the only thing people really had top hold onto (if religion played a bigger part, I'd half expect him to become a monk or preacher.) All this translates into a young man who wants to be the best person he can, following the examples he had as a youngster.
Sev, on the other hand, gawd. If it weren't for tallented ffic writers I'd be laughing at the characture of a man that JKR made him into. The more & more she goes into the backstory of him, well, lets just say that she really should have gotten a fan to write it for her. I know he's a double agent & I know he's got a whole backlog of issues waiting to come out, but really... She's treating a character who had the potential to be one of the best in ya lit, as one would treat a loony toon cartoon about war rations (in other words, left in the shadows, undeveloped, & only shown if there's a bit of extra time in History class.)
er, I'm gonna stop my ranting now, sorry bout that.
Percy
Date: 2006-06-01 02:09 pm (UTC)As he grew older, he wanted his dad to be proud of him. I think Arthur means so much to him, more than is apparent. Somewhere along the way, the thought hit Percy that maybe if his father had worked harder and had a little ambition, then the family would not have had to go without things that they needed. He was old enough to have heard any arguments between his parents about the finances, old enough to have understood how stressed Molly had been with raising a large family. Then he vowed that he would do things differently, make something better of himself than that, so that if he had a family someday, they would never have to live like that.
Now, I can understand Percy (and Snape to some degree), whether I agree with their actions or not. I am all too familiar with having to struggle to make ends meet, and as a child I assumed we were worse off than we were. I worried so much about things I had no control over, and I worked harder in school for similar reasons that only recently I came to terms with. I loved my mom, but I did not want to be like her, uneducated and poor. I wanted to be able to pay her back for all the years when she made sacrifices for me. I did not realize until recently how much of my life was spent trying to please her, doing what I thought would make her proud. When I left college, pregnant and having to live with her again, I felt as if I had failed at life.
Having my daughter was the best thing that ever happened to me, but I didn't see things that way at first. And I still have to struggle to support my kids, married or not. I still live in poverty. But I now see others who have completed college and cannot get a job, so I see things differently now.
On a different, related topic, I also had placed my trust in certain institutions, and then had felt betrayed by them. I got A's in school, I went to Church regularly, I spoke proper English politely, I did not drink, smoke, swear or have sex, I dressed conservatively... I did so much to be the kind of person I thought I should be, yet when I was hurt, the same authorities and institutions I trusted and believed in rejected me and dismissed me. They failed me.
So, it's easy to see where Percy is coming from and to understand his actions, because I have been there. As for the Ministry of Magic, Percy was so happy to be taken seriously (or so he thought) that he could not, would not see the truth: that Fudge and Crouch had used him. He did not want to believe that he had not been hired for his own merits, which he knew were substantial. He was proud to be the youngest Ministry representative, and expected his family to be happy for him. When it didn't happen, he was heartbroken.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 02:38 am (UTC)In my mind while Percy was growing up he played the eldest of five and the youngest of three. Going by what JK said in the books (which is the only thing I go by) there is a huge age difference between the two oldest and the five youngest and both Charlie and Bill would have been in school maybe even before Ron and Ginny were born so looking after all the younger siblings would have fallen to Percy, and yet he still had two older brothers to live up to. As the eldest sibling present he would have been expected to keep his younger siblings in line, but he wouldn't have any of that slight hero-worship that younger siblings have for their big brothers/sister because of Bill and Charlie. All the responsibility and none of the benefits. Home probably wasn't fun and then at school probably all he heard was how great his older brothers were, both of which would have graduated by then. Succeeding would have been almost expected and so when he did it wasn't a shock. Percy needed to get out of the environment where he could never win, and he did. Not at first of course cause joining the Ministry would have also been expected, but when the time came, instead of deciding to conform to his family, he broke free and followed his own path.
umm, I know I had more but this was so hard to write with pretty pretty Jamie Bamber on my TV screen and I kept losing track of what I was saying anyways.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 08:04 am (UTC)The Weasleys may not be the most ambitious or affluent family, but they are the most loyal and kind. The dearth of that sort of family in my life makes it stunning to me how Percy could just turn his back on that. I understand wanting to follow your own heart, but it's not necessary to completely dismiss your loving family to do that. I also think he was a bit blinded with hero worship of Fudge – here's a powerful, influential man giving Percy the attention and respect he's never received, it'd be difficult to ignore that. Still, it's mind boggling that he'd choose Fudge over his family (and, by extension, Dumbledore). I don't care who offered/told me what, I'd never turn my back on my Mum for it! He was raised in that house, he knows the truth. I can't imagine just closing my eyes and pretending it away.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 05:07 pm (UTC)That's just it, though. He's always had a loving family; he takes it for granted, in the way that I take it for granted that I have air to breathe. People do take things for granted; I think that's understandable, and that's not the same thing as excusable or unselfish or right.
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Date: 2006-06-02 03:17 pm (UTC)Absolutely people take things for granted, I can understand that. I just personally think Snape's actions are more understandable (either way canon has him going), not that Percy's are completely beyond my scope of reasoning, lol. And I do know understandable isn't the same thing as excusable, sorry if you got that impression.
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Date: 2006-06-01 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-03 05:52 pm (UTC)Thank you,
LDBriah(watersprite99@msn.com)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-04 05:13 am (UTC)Well, I went with Severus. He's more understandable to me. I still hold onto the hope that it'll all turn out to be the plan in the end, re: HBP actions.
Percy, I find, is just a little toerag.
:)
Jaydeyn