[ SECRET POST #5980 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5980 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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[Andy Warhol]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 47 secrets from Secret Submission Post #855.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. https://i.imgur.com/fVMgakP.png

[(Anonymous)]

If my grandmother had wheels, she'd have been a bicycle.

[(Anonymous)]

I heard she was.

[(Anonymous)]

"If they hadn't been Nazis, he would have been right to side with them over the Resistance, which happened to include his difficult family," is a statement that is probably true and still not a very good defense of Percy.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree - also tbh I'm really not happy with the description of Arthur. He's a pretty morally decent guy who's not especially ambitious in his career. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Calling him "a joke and buffoon who's dragging his family down" is just... shitty.

[(Anonymous)]

=\

Percy not respecting the work his dad took pride in (work that didn't hurt anyone; if anything he worked in a sector that needed more funding and when dark magic was gaining power proved that it is actually vital in the MoM) is proof enough that he's self-obsessed and more concerned with optics than actually doing good for his community (which he outgrows in the last books, so there's that for Percy).

The Weasleys were always about helping protecting those they cared for, and that included those less than them and weaker than them. Arthur's more altruistic tendencies can be a drawback but I think it proved on multiple occasions to be to his benefit, including when Percy finally admitted that he was wrong and joined in on the Final Battle.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

Percy is pretty much on the wrong side up until the last book, and good for him for finally admitting it. He struck me as a social climber desperate to be seen as potential upper-class material, ashamed of his poor and socially-awkward family, and spent way too much time sucking up to people he thought were more "respectable" and could help him get ahead.

[(Anonymous)]

I love Percy, he's one of my absolute favourites, but it's BECAUSE he's not right. He's definitely relatable though. This ain't it, man.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, though I do appreciate that he recognised that the twins did bully people, he just didn't really do anything effective about it. But he was also a teenager, and they got on his last nerve, so I don't blame him for that. And yes, him being embarrassed by his family and wanting to do things The Right Way is very relatable, but it wasn't because he was right, it was because he cared more about appearances than anything else. And then he got over his pride by the last battle, good for him!

[(Anonymous)]

I never found him relatable. At the time even I thought it was bad writing to create a member of the family who was such a straw person the readers were obviously supposed to hate on sight, lol.

[(Anonymous)]

lmao no. is this your actual opinion or did you just mine a "piss off a fandom in one sentence" reddit post?

flaws in the narrative aside I'm down for more "mindlessly sycophantic toadies who would throw their own loved ones under a bus to get ahead are wrong" tales, we seem to have phased those out over the years.

[(Anonymous)]

There's definitely enough Weasley-hating people in the fandom that I can see someone actually believing this

[philstar22]

Look, I do think Arthur's fascination with muggle stuff strays a little into questionable and mirrors certain types of real life racism. But he's not a bad person. He's trying to do the right thing, he just needs someone to say something to him. And I'm certain Hermione will get around to it at some point when they aren't all fighting for their lives.

I have massive issues with Molly and I think her parenting borders on the abusive.

But none of that means that Percy was right.

[(Anonymous)]

What I found especially uncomfortable was how much Harry seemed to wish Ron's family was his family. Molly and Arthur made much more picturesque parents from the safe remove of not actually being his parents and not being able to lord over him. I get that most people (and pretty much any wizards) would have made him less miserable than the Dursleys did, but ... there was this constant dissonance between Harry looking at them with this invisible sigh, like "wouldn't it be nice?" while I looked at them and thought, "hell no."

[(Anonymous)]

IMO, Rowling was trying to portray an Irish Catholic family in media in a good light and in some places it went... dreadfully wrong. (It is also my opinion that Molly is one of her self inserts.)

By rights, Percy is technically a Ravenclaw, not a Gryffindor. He's... a legalist. Until the last book where he gets over himself, he is the type of person who would follow the letter of the law no matter how much it hurt people b/c it is the law. Atrocities by spreadsheets. This isn't a good look for Percy, really. (Hermione could be like this too, but the narrative sets her up to be more proactive than Percy. So, thus a Gryffindor.)

Yes, the twins could be bullies. But Parenting them wasn't Percy's job. And the wizarding culture around pranks/jokes and magic in general encourages that type of bullying. So, that's a flaw in the world building that was never addressed story wise. (Ah, missed opportunities.) I mean, Remus was right there. But nooo.

Arthur is just severely overworked. In order to do his job, he has to engage in the soft corruption of the Ministry. He's underfunded, and underpaid, and never home to be able to help parent his kids, which leaves it to Molly. Who I have to agree with the above poster, is abusive. She's almost textbook female narcissist.

The Weasleys, vs. the Malfoys vs. the Grangers is one of those threads of the plot that were severely neglected b/c Rowling is not as great of an author as everyone thought she was at the time. Everyone could have been learning something from each other outside of some glaring plot hole issues. But that's just my opinion. YMMV.

[(Anonymous)]

I always saw him as a huffleduff, he just wants to work hard and fit in. Percy'sdesire is to be a functioning cog in the machinery of state. It is just his misfortune to come along while the state is in a right old state.

[meadowphoenix]

he is the type of person who would follow the letter of the law no matter how much it hurt people b/c it is the law.
I don't think this is true, and is probably why he's a gryffindor. he's definitely the type to break the law when it suits him (as is hermione to be clear). frankly, everything he did with crouch was questionable ethically for a position in government and he's not an idiot so he understood that, he was just ambitious enough to ignore it.

that said there IS a lot of gryffindor/slytherin and malfoy/weasley overlap that is only alluded to and could have some depth, i would agree there.

[(Anonymous)]

Arthur is corrupt too, albeit in minor way. But he admits drafting regulations to leave loopholes for him to pursue his hobby but prosecute anyone with a similar passion for mixing muggle and magical tech. It is played for laughs, thanks to Rowling's protagonist centric narrative, but it is objectively a form of corruption.

[(Anonymous)]

There is absolutely no reason to read the Weasleys as either Irish or Catholic. They just have red hair. They're a family of poor-but-well-meaning relations from the country, which is a perfectly well-known English trope. There's no need to drag the Irish or the Catholics into it.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

This is an interesting take. I hadn't considered that she might be doing something with the stereotype of what it is to be Catholic in Britain. (Though it seemed clear that she was trying to do something against the way red-headed kids are notoriously bullied over there, and possibly also against the way people with weird, distinctive last names suffer through school.)

Percy's partiality to rules seems to me like it had a lot to do with feeling like, in this framework, the world made sense and approval was achievable. It was something he could have if he behaved. Whereas, in the mad scrambling chaos of his home life, I get the impression that people who weren't making a spectacle of themselves just plain got overlooked altogether.

Good point about Remus, too.

[(Anonymous)]

Some of this may be true (though I think it's deeply unfair to Arthur) but young!Percy is a by-the-rules tattletaling little bootlicker who is not even fun to read about. I knew people like him when I was a kid and there was no one they wouldn't sell out to an authority figure to get a gold star.

[meadowphoenix]

Percy and Sansa from ASOIAF have the same problem at the start of their arcs, which is that they had at least one parent who was giving them an understanding of the world they lived in that was more idealistic than practical and with an utter lack of nuance. they act in the way they've been taught and get mad at their family's lack of assimilation as something that is holding them back, when of course it's that the world doesn't actually give a damn how good they are at their political and social roles even though the social veneer would give anyone the idea that that is the way to success. they can't see beyond the idealistic veil, the values society purports to uphold, to reality, where the only value is power. and what's worse is that despite being taught this, they are deeply out of step with the rest of their family, when only makes them feel more alienated.

the fact of the matter is that arthur is only "bringing down" the family because he's a blood traitor in a government who curries favor with blood supremacists. they're never going to take him seriously because he likes muggles regardless of the way that fascination demonstrates itself. percy's never going to be right unless his perspective aligns with a certain oppressive understanding of the world order.

fred and george infuriate him because they belie all his understandings of success. they are immensely successful both socially and then professionally without upholding any of those perspectives or assimilating or acting with any decorum. I think seeing them as assholes make sense but assholes are successful in HP! the people in power are all assholes, and they're the people percy wants validation from! he works for umbridge at the end there who is the largest asshole in government! their assholeness, such as it is, isn't percy's issue with them.

anyway I'm deeply sympathetic.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like I used to read screeds by OP when I was in the HP fandom several years ago. Snape was the best teachers, Percy was the only worthwhile Weasley, the Death Eaters were just trying to prevent their bloodlines getting polluted by muggers...

[flibbertygigget]

I've always felt really sorry for Percy, not because I think he was particularly good in everything he did but because he's so ridiculously average.

Like, he did everything right. He followed the rules, got a solid career after graduating, followed the Ministry pre-DH, and all he got out of it was estrangement from his family and a lot of inefficiency and corruption and mistakes from the people he'd staked his morals on. In HBP, he's still holding onto that clear path because, honestly, it would suck for him to have to go back and admit he was wrong when he can still pursue his dreams at the Ministry without actually dealing with any of his family shit. And then Voldemort takes over, and he's trapped in a position where he doesn't feel like he can go back to his family and he can't leave without putting both himself and potentially them at risk. Maybe he manages to do a little bit of good, but he's alone, and he probably feels like he can never do enough in Voldemort's borrowed bureaucracy.

And then... the war ends. He's gotten his family back, sort of, but between everything that's happened and Fred's death it's not like it can go back to how it was before. And maybe he has faith in the system at first, because better people are in charge now, people his parents had trusted when he was off being a moron, but, well, it's not enough. He's back in his old job, and the wheels turn the same way they always have, and he notices how little materially changes. And a few years pass and what little change had happened grinds to a halt.

And Percy's in a perfect position to see just how futile it is, how quickly things can go from equilibrium to horror, and he either has to ignore it or let his entire worldview collapse.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the issue is that fandom often react to characters based on "he reminds me of someone I know." And this chronically gets some characters the benefit of the doubt (like Arthur) while others almost never catch a break (like Percy).

When people don't do that, and they're not associating Arthur with some lovable, dorky dad they empathize with, or Percy with someone who told a teacher they'd broken a rule when they were twelve or whatever, the characters read quite differently to them. Or if they just have less usual associations, for various reasons.

My impression is that fandom's too quick these days to resort to personal attacks, and it shuts down the possibility for interesting disagreements: the kind where I would actually learn more about why other people learn why they feel how they feel about various characters, and vice versa.