Dumbledore, Tonks, and Socks
School is crazy! I really don't know about this quarter system. A midterm after three weeks seems just a little fast. And I have a paper to write... So, once again, from the depths of my hard drive, something I had forgotten I'd written. Interestingly, I wrote this before I had ever heard of MsScribe. I thought it was crazy unbelievable crack. Silly me.
That doesn't make this thingy any less crazy, though. But at least I get to use my shiny new Rotfang Conspiracy icon version 2.0! I'm getting better at this icon thing. It could be much improved, but it's a lot sharper and better than the old version. Moving on:
"One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore.
-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, p. 214 (Scholastic paperback edition)
I propose to answer the question, once and for all, of why Dumbledore is so keen on socks: clearly, he is addicted to the wizarding version of LiveJournal, and his blogging habits require an increasing number of socks to support.
You see, Dumbledore is a BNF. In fact, he is not just a BNF, but the BNF. (His fandom is the wizarding world.) He is the headmaster, the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, and the mentor of Harry Potter, Chosen One. Every single witch and wizard with an LJ has friended him and checks daily, even hourly, for new posts on everything from his review of the latest issue of The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle to what he thinks of the jam the Hogwarts house-elves sent up to the tables that morning. If he says Gilderoy Lockhart has a few lovely lyrical passages in Gadding with Ghouls but that he finds the events themselves a tad unconvincing, within minutes he will be inundated with comments agreeing, disagreeing, flaming, squeeing over his new icon, asking if he's read poster x's entry on the same subject, etc. All this is terribly taxing, and sometimes Dumbledore just needs a break from the whole BNF scene.
Enter socks. Dumbledore has loads of fun with these. In one of his socks, he posts the poems he would not dare let anyone see if they knew who really wrote them, and enjoys the comments from all three people who actually read them without those pesky expectations everyone has of a BNF. In five or six others, he gets into debates about politics; in two of them, he doesn't worry about being polite. In still others, he replies to the comments made in his Dumbledore journal, sometimes even arguing with himself, because, well, he can, and it's fun! Sometimes he gets sympathy from his readers over it. Or if not, at least there's interesting wank to watch. It's true: Dumbledore can never have too many socks.
However, Dumbledore regrets that he cannot have RL socks. In RL, unless he majorly abuses Polyjuice, he is stuck being Dumbledore, BNF. Sure, he can turn invisible without a cloak, but that's just not the same. So when Dumbledore looks in the Mirror of Erised, he sees socks. RL socks. RL socks which he cannot have.
What would such socks look like? Like metamorphmagery, of course! Unlike Dumbledore, Nymphadora Tonks has RL socks. If she feels trapped in her life, she can look like someone else for a while and make new friends down at the pub. If she wants to experiment or indulge in something which the Ministry would not be thrilled about should they find out what their youngest auror got up to in her spare time, she can just make sure they never realize she and her alter-egos are never in the same room at the same time. If she wants to find out what someone is saying about her behind her back, she has a way of finding out - although she is not sure she really wants to know, when it gets down to it.
All these socks can be liberating for Dumbledore and Tonks, but there is a downside: they tend to fragment their personalities and compartmentalize their lives. They live in a web of lies, and often this is not so good for their mental well-being or their relationships with friends and colleagues. Plus there is always the danger that they will go Jekyll and Hyde and some of their socks will become trolls... though surely the recent Quibbler article that Voldemort is merely one of Dumbledore's socks is an outrageous fabrication. Surely.
Right?
That doesn't make this thingy any less crazy, though. But at least I get to use my shiny new Rotfang Conspiracy icon version 2.0! I'm getting better at this icon thing. It could be much improved, but it's a lot sharper and better than the old version. Moving on:
"One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore.
-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, p. 214 (Scholastic paperback edition)
I propose to answer the question, once and for all, of why Dumbledore is so keen on socks: clearly, he is addicted to the wizarding version of LiveJournal, and his blogging habits require an increasing number of socks to support.
You see, Dumbledore is a BNF. In fact, he is not just a BNF, but the BNF. (His fandom is the wizarding world.) He is the headmaster, the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, and the mentor of Harry Potter, Chosen One. Every single witch and wizard with an LJ has friended him and checks daily, even hourly, for new posts on everything from his review of the latest issue of The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle to what he thinks of the jam the Hogwarts house-elves sent up to the tables that morning. If he says Gilderoy Lockhart has a few lovely lyrical passages in Gadding with Ghouls but that he finds the events themselves a tad unconvincing, within minutes he will be inundated with comments agreeing, disagreeing, flaming, squeeing over his new icon, asking if he's read poster x's entry on the same subject, etc. All this is terribly taxing, and sometimes Dumbledore just needs a break from the whole BNF scene.
Enter socks. Dumbledore has loads of fun with these. In one of his socks, he posts the poems he would not dare let anyone see if they knew who really wrote them, and enjoys the comments from all three people who actually read them without those pesky expectations everyone has of a BNF. In five or six others, he gets into debates about politics; in two of them, he doesn't worry about being polite. In still others, he replies to the comments made in his Dumbledore journal, sometimes even arguing with himself, because, well, he can, and it's fun! Sometimes he gets sympathy from his readers over it. Or if not, at least there's interesting wank to watch. It's true: Dumbledore can never have too many socks.
However, Dumbledore regrets that he cannot have RL socks. In RL, unless he majorly abuses Polyjuice, he is stuck being Dumbledore, BNF. Sure, he can turn invisible without a cloak, but that's just not the same. So when Dumbledore looks in the Mirror of Erised, he sees socks. RL socks. RL socks which he cannot have.
What would such socks look like? Like metamorphmagery, of course! Unlike Dumbledore, Nymphadora Tonks has RL socks. If she feels trapped in her life, she can look like someone else for a while and make new friends down at the pub. If she wants to experiment or indulge in something which the Ministry would not be thrilled about should they find out what their youngest auror got up to in her spare time, she can just make sure they never realize she and her alter-egos are never in the same room at the same time. If she wants to find out what someone is saying about her behind her back, she has a way of finding out - although she is not sure she really wants to know, when it gets down to it.
All these socks can be liberating for Dumbledore and Tonks, but there is a downside: they tend to fragment their personalities and compartmentalize their lives. They live in a web of lies, and often this is not so good for their mental well-being or their relationships with friends and colleagues. Plus there is always the danger that they will go Jekyll and Hyde and some of their socks will become trolls... though surely the recent Quibbler article that Voldemort is merely one of Dumbledore's socks is an outrageous fabrication. Surely.
Right?