Wings Over the Pyre

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Current Music: Deadly Snakes, The - Love Undone - I Don't Wannna Have to Hate This City (Squid's Redoubt)

You scored as Draco Malfoy, Spoilt and proud, you place high value on the purity of wizard blood and look set to follow in your father’s somewhat shady footsteps. </td> Ginny Weasley 85% Draco Malfoy 85% Lord Voldemort 75% Harry Potter 70% Albus Dumbledore 65% Severus Snape 65% Hermione Granger 60% Ron Weasley 60% Sirius Black 55% Remus Lupin 35% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is…? created with QuizFarm.com

Hotel tango to wikinger_elfe for the Quiz, but please. Draco Malfoy? His only sidekicks were retards and his leadership style was useless. You’d think I’d at least get Snape if not Voldemort, himself.

I feel cheated.

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Current Music: Frankenstein Drag Queens From Planet 13 - Songs from the Recently Deceased - I Love to Say Fuck [*]

Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?

I suppose this kind of goes without saying, really. It’s the #2 answer that’s kind of amusing:

Gryffindor.

Gryffindor? Does that even make sense? I mean, I’m kind of cunning and twisted and brilliant; that sounds more like Ravenclaw to me …

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Scooter - Beautiful Vibes

So, I'm stumbling through my usual Friends page feeds of LJ posts, and I stumble on this icon that stops me dead, attached to apost advertising the Sword of Gryffindor community:

</b></a>rj_anderson, posting in </a></b></a>syn_promo:

Psychosis: contemplative

I've just created a feed for the "Sword of Gryffindor" blog, which looks favourably at the Harry Potter books from an evangelical Christian perspective: </a></b></a>sword_gryff.

So, I caught myself in mid mental stride, and actually wondered if Harry Potter, like Narnia, is a Christian allegory, who really is Christ? And then it hit me.

Of course. Voldemort is!

Consider, Voldemort rebelled against the original, secular order of his culture and society, in order to bring a wider truth to bear. He spread his teachings and wisdom and, in turn, brought together his disciples. Tom Riddle felt the censure and persecution of the masses for the beliefs he espoused and the actions of his disciples, and then was murdered for his troubles. Still, he could not be kept in the grave and rose again to bring the light of knowledge to the people.

"I come not to bring peace, but a sword," sounds like a very Voldemort thing to say.

So, if Voldemort is the Christ-figure in the Potter allegory, what does that make Harry himself? There are a couple of options. Firstly, he might be seen as a Lucifer figure in and of himself, tempting Ron and Hermione to a secular understanding of their world, and opposing Voldemort only indirectly for most of his story. Of course, in a direct confrontation, Christ always disposes of Lucifer, just as Riddle does at the end of Goblet of Fire, so that holds. Alternately, Harry Potter may be a cypher for secularism itself, the encroachment of the State and society absent a moral vision, set against the passionate vision that Voldemort and the Death Eaters put forward. In that sense, Harry largely lives up to that role, too, acting in the interest of and at the behest of the State and the organization of his school (where modern secularism is rooted and begins), in the pursuit of Riddle's demise and discredit.

In this sense, the Snape icon become a sort of inverted Judas, a fallen disciple who appears to be working behind the scenes as one who still believes. He is torn between his knowledge of Voldemort's truth and his obligations to the secular world that has not yet embraced the satori of awakening, but ends up applying Riddle's underlying tenets in his choices and direction.

You know, I spend too much time thinking about this stuff.

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I find the strangest things. In specific, the parody-born summary of Goblet of Fire ... and don't you think I'm not looking out for you. Oh no! I've extracted the funniest highlights and stolen them away ... here:

( Goblet of Fyreie Stuff )

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Not particularly surprising, though I doubt that they'd really be interested in my teaching at Hogwart's. After all, if they were too snooty for li'l Tom Riddle, they're unlikely to want someone with my inclinations on the payroll. Now, Durmstrang, there's a school that might appreciate my Dark Arts methodologies, plus, located in the beautiful Rus. My kind of place.

Odds are best I'd be shipped home in a very small box to teach at one of the biting-edge technocratic American colleges, of course. Ah well.

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Current Music: Depeche Mode - Blasphemous Rumours (Squid's Redoubt)

Well, I've pointed you lot to a lot of things over the years, why not now a legal paper?

From the abstract:

Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy

This Essay examines what the Harry Potter series (and particularly the most recent book, The Half-Blood Prince) tells us about government and bureaucracy. There are two short answers. The first is that Rowling presents a government (The Ministry of Magic) that is 100% bureaucracy. There is no discernable executive or legislative branch, and no elections. There is a modified judicial function, but it appears to be completely dominated by the bureaucracy, and certainly does not serve as an independent check on governmental excess.

Second, government is controlled by and for the benefit of the self-interested bureaucrat. The most cold-blooded public choice theorist could not present a bleaker portrait of a government captured by special interests and motivated solely by a desire to increase bureaucratic power and influence. Consider this partial list of government activities: a) torturing children for lying; b) utilizing a prison designed and staffed specifically to suck all life and hope out of the inmates; c) placing citizens in that prison without a hearing; d) allows the death penalty without a trial; e) allowing the powerful, rich or famous to control policy and practice; f) selective prosecution (the powerful go unpunished and the unpopular face trumped-up charges); g) conducting criminal trials without independent defense counsel; h) using truth serum to force confessions; i) maintaining constant surveillance over all citizens; j) allowing no elections whatsoever and no democratic lawmaking process; k) controlling the press.

There is, of course, more, even in the abstract. (The whole paper can be downloaded in PDF from the European site, for those who don't have access to Stanford. Ah, the power of the Internet.)

The interesting thing here, as far as I'm concerned, is that I've said much the same things about the rather dire nature of the Potterverse in general. This paper covers the core issues of the government, but the wizarding attitude toward the muggle world in general is appalling, not the least reason being that some of the society were born to and presumably grew up at least a few formative years in muggle society, having seen TVs and radio, with parents one or both of whom were muggles. (Hermione is a particularly good example here; her parents are dentists, for Hades' sake, and get her in the summers. She doesn't have any muggle-born interests? Care about the well being of folks outside wizarding society and the positive and elemental good a single wizard could do in the right place? She's depicted as an empathetic and penetratingly intelligent girl. These are obvious issues.)

In that sense, its very possible to paint Voldemort as the good guy (or at least the anti-hero) in the Potterverse ... or would if good ol' Tom Riddle weren't dense as granite and completely without effective imagination. He could take over the bulk of Africa's countries with his Death Eaters and the bulk of wizarding society would barely shrug and wave a hand. He could subtly influence world events and live in the most disgusting luxury humanity can provide, and the mass of other wizards would accept it as a mild eccentricity. Riddle's mistake is in actually caring about the wizarding society that decided he was an outsider as a result of his half-muggle birth and strange acquisition of some slight ambition. In revenge, he pretty much ran rampant for several years surrounded by toadies, acolytes, and otherwise, large numbers of whom are still free and actually well placed in society, their Death Eater history an open secret. Voldemort and his folk are the only ones actively trying to turn over what's clearly an aggressive and parasitic government and, in truth, culture.

At the current rate, I expect Rob to defect to the Death Eater camp in the next book, followed by Harry finally cluing up and sitting down with Moldy-butt for tea and scones, finally deciding together they don't give a bugger for psychotic prophecies, and with Harry giving Tom the nod to go ahead and rub out the Ministry as a whole, just so long as the Eaters leave him and his alone.

Rest assured, if the Potterverse were real, I'd be writing annoyed letters to Voldemort with biting critiques of his methods and techniques.

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Music: 69 Eyes - August Moon (Squid's Redoubt)

You scored as Draco Malfoy. Spoilt and proud, you place high value on the purity of wizard blood and look set to follow in your father's somewhat shady footsteps. </td> Draco Malfoy 85% Lord Voldemort 70% Harry Potter 70% Severus Snape 65% Sirius Black 65% Hermione Granger 60% Ginny Weasley 60% Ron Weasley 55% Albus Dumbledore 55% Remus Lupin 35% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com</tr>

Draco Freakin' Malfoy? I think I've just been insulted by being clumped with the least effective character in all of Potterverse canon!

Current Mood: creative

(incandescens, this one's for you. Hat-tip to Mike for sending the image that inspired this madness.)

My friends send me the most pleasantly amusing things. In this case, its a lovely massaged image of Harry Potter and his pod of freaks from an alternate world in which goth is the new black ... or something like that.

But these things give me pause to think, and this is a bad thing to be thinking about. In fact, it made me wish I wrote Potterverse fanfic, because then I might could do this setting premise justice:

Lord Potter and the Blood-Spilled Prince

In this "what if?" alternaverse, Harry Potter is born to wizarding parents and during the ongoing attempt to subdue the wizarding world. Lord Voldemort attempts to destroy the Boy Who Lived ... giving rise to the inevitable nickname. Burned with the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead which itches and twitches at the most inconvenient times, Harry is shipped off to live with the Dursleys.

Its at this point that the universe diverges. In response to the Dursleys' ongoing abuse and eternal disdain, Potter learns to cope not by becoming a limp dishrag of a door-mat, but fuels an immense internal hatred of those who would opress him and draws in emotionally on himself, fueling random supernatural outbursts which aren't directly attributable to Harry and which correspond to very traditional haunting phenomenon. The night before Potter is spirited away to Hogwart's, the Durleys attempt to have Harry exorcised ... with nearly fatal results as the poltergeist and pyromantic activity crescendos.

Arriving at Hogwart's and feeling freer than he has in years, Harry makes the immediate friendship of Hermione, muggle-blood daughter of dentists who's decided the best rebellion she can make against the established wizarding order is to simultaneously embrace her muggle-heritage and out-sorcerer even the most hardcore of her classmates, and Ron Weasley, whose family of wizards has emasculated him for years for not being the best, or brightest, or strongest, leaving him finally to turn to only belief in himself for support.

Inevitably, Potter, Granger, and Ron are sorted by the Hat into Slytherin House, because of their slyness, ambition, or aggressive drive. Draco Malfoy, child of Death Eaters and all too aware of the machinations of Voldemort's historic plans and brutality, turns his back on the service of the One Who Must Not Be Named and is sorted to Hufflepuff, along with Crab and Goyle, though it's a near thing. Draco maintains his utter arrogance and disdain for muggle-blood, even while clinging to the steady loyalty of his friends and housemates.

Voldemort's continued awareness of Potter and his friends, plus the prophecies which precede him, convinces Riddle that the boy must be eliminated before Potter usurps Tom's place at the head of the Death Eaters, and possibly the entire wizarding world if Voldemort is as successful as he dreams. For Harry's part, its enough to revel in the freedoms of Slytherin to explore the darker aspects of potions and black sorcery, but it is Ron who finds a certain calling in the Dark Arts, rapidly outpacing even Hermione in the nocturnal aspects of the Ars Magicae. Granger throws herself, body and soul, into the most arcane and mind-warping of researches in an attempt to shock and appall others with her recklessness, but despite her exceedingly precise machinations, it is Ron who begins to incite whispers and outright fear among the House when he passes, which both angers and excites the girl. The toll on Granger's mind mounts as she reaches for ever more excessively abstracted places, fighting both with Ron and for his attention.

Dumbledore recognizes the inherent danger represented by Potter and company, but sees the necessity of forging such a powerful weapon against the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters. Betting on Potter's self-involvement to keep him from actually replacing Riddle or taking over the world, he sets Malfoy and his company at direct odds with Potter and his to monitor Potter's progress and act as a continual reminder that things could have been different. Draco is only too happy to oppose Harry, and the rest of Hufflepuff are disturbed at their exemplar's clear antagonism and elitism, but buoyed by the fact that he leads them to success and even moral victory more often than not.

The rest, I leave up to you ...