Amycus

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

Okay. alt_amycus needs his own discussion: two posts in an evening. And, omg, I'm terrified for alt_terry!

What do you suppose Amycus's "new regimen" lists mean?

I.
4L x 3D
Tx30
CCx4
results marginal

pigeons

II.
4L x 2D
2 pair trousers
5 CC but scattered.

I thought the first one was some sort of list of punishments in code, but "2 pair trousers" doesn't seem to fit. Perhaps he's trying experimental pigeon extermination strategies? But again, "2 pair trousers"? Am I making this harder than it needs to be?

Comments

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

T = tears? (rips rather than weeping)
T = transfigurations? (what else besides the dog might Terry have been temporarily?) If Terry turns up missing again, I'd suggest Minerva check out the pigeon population.

Benign possibilities are out there, too, of course:

L = lunch; D = dinner

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Don't know what to make of "pigeon." Maybe it's a scribble, since he's got pigeons on his mind?

L = lunch; D = dinner

Nope, definitely don't want to think about pigeons. :)

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

bleagh.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

These are the Carrows, after all. :)

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

Yes. Perhaps this is the place to say that I was rather hoping they'd fail to cast either one of the Carrows. I'm not entirely convinced that what they represent needs to walk on stage. However, we've got Evil Character #1 now, and he's being interestingly played, so I'm on board and watching for developments.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting range of evil among the characters, perhaps from cowardice to callousness to arrogance to something more perverse. So the Carrows nail down one end of that line, possibly even a step beyond Bella. He's definitely being interesingly played!

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

You pose an interesting question: are the Carrows more evil than Bellatrix?

Are we simply more invested in the Carrow's current victim? Are we more closely aware of their deeds and more distanced from the details of Bella's daily life?


Edited for oh, my eyes, that apostrophe! and, um, general stupidity.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it's fruitful to get into more or less, as opposed to just creating a typology evil, like an encyclopedia of wrongness. Bella is vicious and arrogant -- she enjoys getting her way and threatening/hurting people who interfere. But it seems purposive and controlled; she can be trusted with political missions and seems to have some sustained (if distorted) family relationships. Carrow seems to enjoy inflicting pain for its own sake -- hard to tell from just two posts, but there seems something unhinged about him, a sort of manic and playful perverseness that makes him seem completely disconnected from normal relations with people. Among the kids, Theodore seems a bit like him potentially. Not quite sure which of the kids might be a potential Bella.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I vote for conversational rules in these comments! If I went back and fixed every embarassing apostrophe or mis-spelling or grammatical lapse I made, there'd be deleted posts and muddled threads trailing behind me everywhere. :)

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

I miss Bella, actually.



*pokes her*

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

With a long stick, I hope, for your sake.

[alt-player.livejournal.com]

What a coincidence! I didn't see this beforehand, but she did in fact just post. :)

-Bella's player

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

Wow, you guys have been busy today. I just got home from work and I'm still catching up on recent posts, but I wanted to chime in with my thoughts about pigeons.

To people who live in cities, pigeons are often thought of as vermin. I did a quick google search to make sure I wasn't just imagining that, and I liked the way one Scientific American article put it (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-urban-vermin-the-most-disease-ridden-animals): "In many cities, pigeons—to take one urban animal—are reviled as flying vermin. They whitewash ledges and pick at filthy crumbs in the gutter. And, yes, these, dubbed by some as "rats with wings," do carry diseases that humans can catch."

So basically, things which are dirty, impure, infecting the people around them. To the Carrows, that would be people of impure blood, wouldn't it?

And with the "few we take home to experiment" clue from downthread, and the general similarities between Voldemort's regime and Nazi Germany (which I was just listening to a podcast about today), it's reminding me of the human medical experimentation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation) done in many of the people in concentration camps.

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

And after pigeons, he puts in the poem about maggots. Again, dirty things with an overlarge population. There's a copy of the poem here (http://www.rampantscotland.com/poetry/blpoems_maggots.htm) that gives definitions for a few of the more uncommon words, like hoasted.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

The poem is Carrow's answer to Sirius, isn't it?

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

How so?

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Well, the poem starts with 33 maggots protesting the killing of 3 maggots, and then having some internal squabbles, and then having a young leader stand up and talk about the brotherhood of maggots. It reads, especially given its date, like a mockery of democratic agitation, brotherhood of man, and all that. So if Sirius is trying to preach a message of equality and solidarity, the poem imagines maggots doing the same thing. Not sympathetically. :)

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

I could see the "bold leader" bit referring to Sirius. Why would Amycus say that to McG, though? I wish I knew more about the original context of the poem.

What I got from the poem was that it is ridiculous to attribute human thoughts and feelings to creatures like maggots who are so obviously worthless. It's comical that anybody would care about the murder of three maggots, even other maggots.

I was also focusing on the line:
"There are owre [=over] mony maggots in Geordie's hat." So, too many maggots.

And puzzling over the son's impudent response:
"Daddy, wha hath begotten us a'?
Tis a foul flyte for ane that's sae faur in the faut [=that's so much to blame]
If there's owre mony maggots in Geordie's hat" I don't really follow what he's saying or why it is impudent.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

It's possible, based on the player's hints, that the formula really isn't anything more than the formula for poisoning literal pigeons. Though the hint about experimentation is intriguing -- so is Carrow planning to transform boot into a pigeon, and do some experimental transplants and transpositions? (Ew.) Maybe he can raise the gene pool of the pigeon population! Or conversely, maybe he wants to breed magical pigeons as experimental animals to test any theories he might have about magical genetics (not that he'd have moral objections to using Muggles, but pigeons breed faster). I'm still not sure where the 2 pairs of pants come in, though.

I definitely have an urban take on pigeons, personally. :)

[alt-player.livejournal.com]

http://alt-amycus.livejournal.com/1130.html

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

So -- abundant bread and water, and none of the L and D, and we'll see what happens with this mix.

"Motivation" sounds appropriately chilling.

*watches with interest*

[alt-player.livejournal.com]

The 731 ref is very significant.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

It's the Gringotts vault, isn't it? But I couldn't figure out how it would apply . . .

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

I still think the pigeons thing is not literal. The way he says it, at the end of his first post, sounds like an insult to me. As one might say "vermin." In the next post, he says the pigeons are driving him crazy and the twittering's been worse than ever. I guess that *could* be literal twittering, but since the word twittering is often used referring to excited (trivialized) human speech, I again think that he is speaking about humans rather than birds. And the birds trying to hide when they see him part. I could see actual birds flying away, but trying to hide? That again seems to be a more human than bird reaction.

In his latest post, he says "hopefully the twitters won't be too deafening." I don't actually know how to fit that one in, since in that case he makes it sound like the twitters are something that would actually get in the way of his sleeping in (presumably) his own bed.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I'm not actually inclined to think it's literal either, I'm just thinking how ambiguous things still are. It seems to me that thinking about pigeons suddenly clarifies some idea he has about Muggles and Muggleborns -- whether it suggests an idea for an experiment, or is an actual metaphor, or something else, I wish I knew!

I wonder if the twitters are like the screaming of the lambs?