Six Sentence Sunday

[raven_cromwell]

In one of the most bizarre personal twists of the global insanity, my writing mojo's come back after a years-long dry spell. There's a distinct cognative dissonance watching everyone else struggling through the creative mire while I'm steadily pushing along.

Anyhow, haven't done one of these in a while, but did some work on a Percy pov I'm particularly proud of, so have the opening, with the caveat: this's part of a much more elaborate colab-verse, with this particular subplot revolving round what would happen were Dumbledore not dead, but the Death Eaters had still attempted a Ministerial coup.

It took Percy a _minute—an unconscionable lapse—to realize the ringing filling his flat originated from the rarely-used bell Minister Scrimgeour had installed. The sheets came half off the bed in his scramble to untangle himself. This was a bloody disgrace; he'd be sacked before he could even give his credentials.

Minister Scrimgeour had seemed to find his performance acceptable. But rarely outstanding, and Percy had the ever-growing suspicion that no matter how far above and beyond his diligence went, he would never escape the contempt for his mistakes with Mr. Crouch.

Worse, Minister Robards—mustn't forget to say Robards instead of Scrimgeour when he exited the fire—had been _highly regarded by Scrimgeour.

Comments

[chamerion]

I almost missed this in the shuffle, and I'm so glad I didn't because it's great! Your Percy voice is spot on and I'm really intrigued by the premise (probably unsurprisingly, political intrigue is my jam). I'd love to see more of it in the future.

[raven_cromwell]

So glad you liked my Percy! He's so damn fun to write. His resentment--of poverty, of ridicule-- is so damn relateable and yet, to such a degree, he initially places the blame in the wrong place. It's such a brilliant examination, in the fifth book, of how easy it is to blame individual people within the system, rather than the leaders of the system, who're exploiting Percy and have always derided Arthur.

And then, in the sixth, he simultaneously compounds his mistake--buckets and buckets of just stupid, stubborn pride in the middle of a war God he's so young for all he thinks himself this man of the world--and is caught in political possibilities. On one side, a Ministry trying, with some fairly flawed outward facing methods--though I've always been fascinated by what positive momentum those outward facing gestures may have obscured from the reader cause we weren't in the room where it was happening. And Harry and Dumbledore, who in many ways were right to be wary of cooperation, and in many others were deeply fallible.

And here's Percy--manipulated by Voldemort, made a catspaw by Fudge--primed to grow and change through, and in this particular case--past those political developments. It's always interesting, fannishly, when Percy finally gets a mentor in a boss, be it Scrimgeour or his replacement, and how that attention from the authority he's always idolized, shapes him, for better or worse.

I was at a scifi con this weekend, and the keynote speaker talked about how the stories around the things we worship so much shape our truth. As much as truth is fact, he contended, rightly imho, that we contextualize truth into the larger story we tell ourselves. If the thing you worship is authority, stability, it is so easy! to become a Javert. Canonically, it's fascinating to see how Percy avoids that fate, though it could be equally fascinating to see him take a very Javert-esque path--this scenario hughs closer to canon, but it's a Percy possibility I've been contemplating a lot..

And, to no one's surprise also, we very much share a jam! There's this fundamental dichotomy: politics can be Nietzsche's abyss that fundamentally changes you, and as beautiful and brilliant ast its best as anything Camus imagined.