fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1920 ]

[ SECRET POST #1920 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1920 ⌋

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

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26. http://i42.tinypic.com/21m7v28.png
[linked for... sort of scribbly porny, not really]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #274.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

On b, I think the OP's point was why is Dobby the only house elf we ever see who has that specific hangup about pay.

I always thought it was because most house elves (Winky or the Hogwarts kitchen elves) had internalized the notion that it was disgraceful and unseemly to be free or take money for services, and Dobby was among the vast minority. I thought that was pretty damn cool and realistic (especially when you compare it to stuff like internalized misogyny or racism) the way it was written (god almighty I loved Goblet of Fire. So very very much.)

But... how? How did Dobby come to not internalize that notion, seeing as we never see another house elf with his point of view? I would maybe get it if he was raised in a more liberal household, but the Malfoys are supposed to be super abusive, so where would he have even heard that there was a world out there that would accept a free house elf?
(I love Goblet of Fire too, though)

Guess some house elves, like some people, are just smarter and stronger-willed than others and can see through bullshit and realize the dangers and unfairness of some traditions. Maybe because the Malfoys treated him so very badly, probably a lot worse than in most households (worse than Crouch treated Winky, as far as we know, and certainly a lot worse than how the Hogwarts elves were treated), so maybe he couldn't convince himself his life was just dandy?

I do wish we'd gotten more backstory on Dobby though -- he'd have been such a great source of infodumping based on his experiences in the Malfoy household. Wasted opportunity IMO...

Yeah, I always expected Dobby to talk about his experience some more, especially when Kreacher was introduced. Ah, well. That's what fanfic is for, I guess.

It might be because Dobby came from THE MALFOYS.

Who are utterly shitty people, and care about little else during Dobby's stay with them beyond money, blood purity, and abusing Dobby.

Dobby might have internalized it in different ways- such as self-harm, but he might have gotten the idea that the luxurious mansion around him had to have come from SOMEWHERE, and that anywhere was better than where he was. Other house elves like Kreachur respond to kindness from his owners, which makes me think Kreachur had a better time of it than Dobby.

I also think it's a matter of the author- despite living at the Dursleys for as long as he can remember, Harry seems remarkably well-balanced as a person and internalized very little of the worthlessness the Dursleys have been trying to impress on him since he came to their house. He recognizes that although the wizarding world is a great unknown, it'd be better than being with the Dursleys- he fears expulsion most in the first few books, and when he thinks he's been expelled in POA for using wandless magic, he leaves with his trunk and owl immediately.

All house-elves self-harm when they disobey an order. I don't think there's any psychological internalizing.

Maybe it's a kind of widespread colonial mentality behavior?

On the other hand, how many other house elves do we really get to know other than Dobby? Winky, who obviously wanted to stay with Barty Crouch, and Kreacher, who wasn't happy at all serving Sirius but bound to him.

It's possible there were other house elves who wouldn't mind getting paid, but we a) just don't see them, or b) they don't dare speak up. Given the way the other Hogwarts house elves treat Dobby, any other elf with the same ideas might be too afraid to speak up. Besides, Dobby was a free elf when he negotiated the terms with Dumbledore. Any other elf might have to fear getting kicked out if they ever told their master that they wanted to get paid for a sercive they had always performed for free until now (and countless other elves were still eager to do for free).

In my headcanon, meanwhile, Kreacher and Harry always negotiate the hell out of the terms on which Kreacher works for Harry. Kreacher just wants to do his job like he's always done because he's a proper elf, but Harry wants pay him and give him off days in honor of Dobby (and because he doesn't want to risk Hermione's wrath). So once a year the two of them sit down and Kreacher tries his best to get as big a workload as possible while having to accept as less money and free time as he can get away with. (He's still very proper and respectful while telling his master to shove it. Kreacher is a very proper elf.) Harry, meanwhile, tries to negotiate the exact opposite while the rest of the family/friends just watches on in bemusement. (They had to exclude Hermione from the negotiation table after the first few years; she kept making Kreacher cry with the huge demands of pay and off days. Little did she and Harry know that Kreacher learned early on that tears were the best way to stop Ms Hermione from saying ridiculous things.)

Edit: LOL, my FMA is showing. I meant Winky, of course. Not Winry.

Edited 2012-04-05 23:50 (UTC)

I like your headcanon regarding Kreacher. I'm totally going to incorporate it into my own headcanon now. :D

Well yeah, all that is totally possible, but that's the thing- it's pure speculation. There's no evidence in the text of a whole group of house elves all eagerly waiting to be paid or freed: in fact, OotP seems to go out of its way to establish that the only house elf that the trio have ever encountered who is interested in those things is Dobby.

Well, why would the text go into things like this? It's not like Harry had any interest in these things, and most of the books are closely tied to his POV. We might have found out a bit more had Hermione been the protagonist, but as it is the lack of evidence one way or other makes sense as quite frankly, Harry didn't really care.

in fact, OotP seems to go out of its way to establish that the only house elf that the trio have ever encountered who is interested in those things is Dobby.

This is what I hoped to cover when I said other elves might be afraid to speak out because of the way Dobby gets treated by the other elves. Obviously, wanting to be free/wear clothes is wrong and makes one a freak, so any other elf that might want to be free is too afraid to admit that he's interested in these kind of things as well. Like, no elf in their right mind would tidy up Gryffindor Tower because of the hats lying around, only a freak like Dobby go there. Plus, the question is if any of the Hogwarts elves would even want to get freed; Dobby was mistreated at the Malfoy's, but even without getting paid working at Hogwarts seems to be a much better gig than the Malfoy's.

Well, why would the text go into things like this? It's not like Harry had any interest in these things
Because... why have a whole subplot that the protagonist isn't interested in? (For the record, I think he did have interest- at least interest in Dobby personally, rather than the entire moral quandry)

And if there's so much societal pressure keeping other elves from speaking up, what magical accident gave Dobby the courage to? I'd think if anything, Dobby being around and obviously happy would encourage other elves with such theoretical desires, because it's one person who would understand and that they could talk to.

And if there's so much societal pressure keeping other elves from speaking up, what magical accident gave Dobby the courage to?

Presumably the same magical accident that gave feminists in the 1800's the courage to speak up and point out how massive unfair their lives are in the face of Victorian era propriety and period-typical sexism. For thousands of years, most or all of history up until that point, women had been second class citizens to men, one step above slavery in many cases, and suddenly they were demanding the right to vote, the right to speak in public forums, the right to be treated fairly and be able to make a decent living?

Weird shit happens sometimes. There are a LOT of elements of the expanded Harry Potter universe that are hinted at but that we don't know about. I mean, take a look at love potions - what kind of a culture gets to the point where it unapologetically sells date-rape drugs over the counter? Or better yet, take a look at the education itself - there is apparently no magical education whatsoever before 11, but where do wizard-raised/pureblood kids get their education before that? They obviously learn somehow, because there weren't any lessons on how to read or write or do simple arithmetic at any point in the books.

Has there ever been a Goblin that maybe said "I don't want to be a banker! I wanna play Quidditch/be a fashion designer/sing/whatever"? Who knows, we don't really get to know them. Maybe there's some weird, inherent drive in goblins that makes them want to manage money, or maybe they are having some seriously social and cultural problems in the form of young goblins coming out to their parents that *gasp* want to do things other than banking in their lives, like maybe be a CPA instead, and concerned goblin parents are freaking out about it because oh god next they are going to do such awful things like something not money related and that would just destroy goblin society and...

Either way, we don't know, we only met a small number of them in a few very specific situations and contexts.

I can think of a lot of ways the house-elves came to be in the situation they are in right now, right down to how the fuck did we end up with an entire servile species (as the Doctor once pointed out while talking about the Ood, a servile species is pretty damn hard to evolve). Maybe Dobby is the house elf Joan of Arc, way ahead of his time in terms of his expectations of the world and setting a trend that'll take a damn long time to be picked up. Maybe he's like so many LGBT teens around the world and happens to be the only one in his scenario being open about his desires while everyone else is still being kept silent but social pressure. But it wasn't the main part of the story, and in books that get sprawly and off-track enough as it is, trying to dig too deep into the topic would've just derailed the entire books.

Presumably the same magical accident that gave feminists in the 1800's the courage to speak up and point out how massive unfair their lives are in the face of Victorian era propriety and period-typical sexism

What? How on earth is that a comparable situation? 1800s women were not slaves. They were not an actual seperate species from men. There had, in fact, been a great deal of literature written by women in previous eras discussing various rights they should be entitled to, and even some written by men that wasn't totally awful. "Second class citizens" is not the same as having no rights whatsoever, and there was precedent and lead up to all of that.

We agree that the Harry Potter world isn't totally fleshed out, of course. But neither love potions nor education before Hogwarts are issues that are brought up repeatedly in several books. The treatment of house elves is a major part of the plots of book two, four, five, six and to a lesser extent, seven. I don't think it's outrageous to expect some in-book resolution.

If Dobby was indeed the house elf Joan of Arc, that would explain a lot- some God told him to be free?

Edited 2012-04-06 02:17 (UTC)

I'm not saying those situations are identical. I'm saying both have to do with a heavily oppressed class of intelligent beings finally going "fuck you" at their oppressors, and trying to talk others of their own class into joining them.

There's a lot here that we don't know, and that in the context of the books, it makes sense that we don't have much time to delve into the issues of house-elves. House elves play a particular role in wizarding society, and that's the part Harry interacted with and saw - and he learned even more from Hermione. There are a lot of things that could've been "resolved" in the books, but that would've made them long and cluttered.

We can probably gather from context and JKR's comments about Hermione's future career that a lot of those issues have been resolved. As for how exactly? That's why we have fanfiction. Anything more detailed, while interesting and maybe even important, isn't necessarily relevant to the story.

I think I agree with you. Dobby is really in the vast, VAST minority here, like uhm, I don't know, there's no real-world equivalent that makes sense to compare it to, but to cut to the chase, here:

-Harry's POV clouds every book in almost every chapter (with very few exceptions) so we're stuck with seeing through his eyes. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and in fact, it served the series very well, but at the end of the day it does leave us asking questions, and something important to remember is that Harry actually hasn't met many house elves. He's met Dobby, and Winky, and Kreacher...but that's all he's met on a very personal level. I do think he met another one via a vision in the Pensieve, am I right? But even then, one must remember that Harry's met very few house elves.

-Someone else already said it, but I think it's obvious that a house elf would be afraid to speak up. It's a culture thing ingrained into their minds and their very BEING, to be servants, to be happy with X, not with Y or Z, and to do A B and C without fail. It's disturbing and it's scary, and people like Ron don't understand, while people like Hermione and Harry are Properly Horrified because things like slavery are wrong and only nasty evil people would keep a slave, and that's what Hermione and Harry have learned their whole lives-- but Ron's seen it, never thought much of it, etc and so on.

-I assume people look at house elves sort of like a pet, but not a beloved pet, more like a tool. Imagine if your dog cooked dinner and cleaned for you! But honestly, house elves are of equal intelligence with humans, so... -_-

-Let's not forget also that ALL beings who are "not human" are looked down on. This includes the centaurs, for one, and all dark creatures, including werewolves, and this includes upstanding citizens who happen to BE werewolves...like Remus. Who never did anything wrong and yet still suffers.

In the end being a house elf at least earns them a roof over their head, I guess, and just like with servants and/or slaves in recent and ancient times, some people are probably pretty decent or even good to their house elf, feedin' them well and stuff like that, but the people Harry knows who own house elves are either assholes or partial douchebags, and yes, I include Sirius in the latter category. I love him but he's not a nice person, not really, and Dumbledore is right in that he views house elves as "less than human" which is really sad considering Remus is a friend of his and that if Sirius, who is on the Good Guys' Side, believes something like that re: house elves, well, you can assume most of the wizarding world does, too.

I don't think Sirius considers all house elves less than human -- it seems unlikely that he (consciously, at least) believes that, given his conversation with Harry about Winky and Crouch in the cave. He certainly considered Kreacher less than human, probably because he grew up seeing Kreacher ordered around all the time and thinks of him as a pathetic ass-kissing toady towards the bigoted parents he hated so much, pretty much the diametric opposite of everything Sirius is. Doesn't excuse Sirius's treatment of him of course, just that I think his hatred of Kreacher was more a personal grudge than outright bigotry.

This. Sirius disapproved of Crouch Sr's treatment of Winky when Hermione described it to him, and told the Trio that "If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals". His antipathy towards Kreacher was personal, because Kreacher was the Black family elf who spouted the Black family values that Sirius hated and was part and parcel of the baggage of living in Grimmauld Place. Very wrong, but understandable, particularly for a man that was struggling with major issues to start with.

The same reason Remus is the only good werewolf we ever meet, I suppose. :/

Just butting in to say that I love your icon. Haar and Jill. <3

Do you have a link to the full version of the picture?

Actually, I do! I commissioned it from the lovely

kiu22 and the almost-full-sized banner is on my journal layout. There's also a cute picture by her of Haar and Jill on my profile page aaaaaaand also a cute one on my journal as my "friends only" banner. :D

The full art is so pretty!

Hahaha, I love you friends only banner. XD

I'm always excited to find other Fire Emblem fans. I got into the series kind of late (after Shadow Dragon was released), and haven't managed to find the fandom aside from following the FE tag on Tumblr.

Oh my. WELL. Half the fandom's on my friends-list. There's a writing community if you're a writer, they do challenges:

fe_contest! I used to run it but ran out of time and joy so I stopped and handed it over to friends to run instead. Of course, if you're a reader, there's a lot of 'fic on Fanfiction.net and most people from there also hang out here at LJ. :D

I'm currently deep in the Harry Potter fandom (Tonks/Remus fan, I am) sooo I'm not super into the FE fandom atm, but I do love FE7 and FE9/10 andddd of course if you happen to be a Shadow Dragon fan, I know lots of people who love that fandom as well. (And FE8.)

^Basically, if you're looking for FE fans, feel free to friend me and I'll pimp you out to the FE community as an FE fan without enough FE friends. Because more FE friends are always a good thing!

I'm not much of a writer (I only write for fun and never post anything), but I have been trying to find more places with FE fic. I'll check it out; thanks. I started looking at ff.net recently, but wasn't sure how many of the authors posted there. In some of my other fandoms, the authors try to stay away from ff.net

Harry Potter is another series I got into way too late, due to my parents not letting me read the books when I was a kid. ~~I think I spy a trend here. I'm late to everything.~~ I was deep in the Harry Potter fandom a few months ago. Well, I guess I should say I was lurking deep. I didn't find the fandom itself, but I found tons of fic, and I ended up reading several novel-lengths worth of that. I ship ~~almost~~ anything and everything in Harry Potter, but Tonks/Remus is probably my favorite canon pairing.

I'm not a huge Shadow Dragon fan, but it is the game that got me interested in the series. I like FE7 & 8 (been on a 7 kick recently, trying to get all the support conversations), but my favorite will always be Path of Radiance... and Radiant Dawn by extension, though the gameplay itself kind of annoys me in places. I haven't played the Japanese FE games yet, but I just found a patch for 6, so I'm hoping to play that soon.

Friending you now! I'm not super active in fandom because I don't write fic and I rarely draw, but it would be nice to have other people to discuss the series with, especially with FE 13 coming out soon. I think I only have one, maybe two, FE fans on my f-list. The rest of my friends don't really understand my Fire Emblem obsession. XD

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