Even the god Set (or Seth) - a god of chaos, the dry lifeless desert, foreigners, and other things threatening to the Egyptian mindset, and usually falsely mischaracterized today as the “God of Evil” (nonsensical term) because of his role in the slaying of Osiris - was ultimately an upholder of ma’at. Indeed, it is his strength upon which the world ( Read more... )

In poking around more while researching stuff for my coming discussion of Severus and Voldemort for Indestructible, I discovered a curious little fact that seems fitting.

In " Indestructible Intermezzo II - Etymological Excursus," I noted that:

"Our poison synonym, ‘toxic,’ on the other hand, derives ultimately from the Greek word for bow, toxon: ( Read more... )

Indestructible Intermezzo II - Etymological Excursus

While preparing the next post with our other set of miscellaneous cards and thinking further about Severus, I started playing around with an etymological dictionary to see what hidden meanings I might uncover for the terms of our discussion. To see what sort of a resonant background layer I ( Read more... )

I've been writing up some of my thoughts on Voldemort and Severus, and it's made me realize how central flight is. Both to Severus' relationship to the Dark Lord, and to his character and arc in general. It all unfolded suddenly in my mind last night and became clear ( Read more... )

I'm working on writing up the other set of misc cards for my "Indestructible" series, and planning out the Severus-centric posts, where the real meat is. In those posts I'll be looking more at the books themselves again and quoting or referencing various chapters. There are sets of parallels and oppositions scattered throughout the books, and I'll ( Read more... )

All right, as promised here are the remaining miscellaneous bits I need to cover along with our look at Severus himself. I’ve decided to fold the discussion of occlumency in here too, since it’s not that complicated to need a long post by itself ( Read more... )

So, I'm pulling together the concluding pieces of my "Indestructible" series, in order to lay out my two readings of Severus' arc in HBP and DH. And I'm not sure which one to finish up and post next - some of them are a bit like independent cards that can go in any order, though others need to stay together ( Read more... )

Just thought I'd note, for anyone who finds it confusing to keep up with all the pieces of this Indestructible meta series as they get posted, that I'm now also putting them up over at my own archive, Alchemical Fiction.

I've set it up there as a series, with the main essays under the story "Indestructible" and the post with optional references ( Read more... )

Indestructible - Part VI - Dark Marks and Dark ArtsOk, let’s get back to talking about the books themselves for a bit, shall we ( Read more... )

Indestructible - Food for ThoughtI mentioned that there were a lot of literary and pop culture and other references occurring to me as I work on this project, and that I’d put up a list in case anyone’s interested and wants to check them out while reading my blatherings, instead of mashing them all in to the essays. So, here you go. None of these ( Read more... )