Reading Leads To...

Reading is not all about reading, you know. *nods firmly* Reading can lead to a lot of things, not least inspiring you to write your own stories. One of the best things that reading has led me to in the past, I'd almost forgotten about. In my usual panic of thinking of something to blog about, fellow Burrower Rayna gave me a couple of ideas, all of which I'm sure I'll use one day, but one of which I knew I had to use for today's post.


A few years ago, I ended up playing judge at a trial. Not a real trial, you understand, but a trial all the same. It was a few months after Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince had been released, and I was knee-deep in the forums of HPANA. At the time I was involved heavily in a topic about Lily Evans (the mother of Harry), and we were discussing her unproved (at the time) relationship with Severus Snape, the ambiguous potions master of Hogwarts. Of course, we digressed a fair bit and ended up discussing Snape's involvement in the death of Albus Dumbledore. A fellow HPANAer came up with a suggestion that he should be put on trial, simply because we were undecided whether his character was mostly good, or mostly bad.

Of course, me being me, I ran away with it. Soon there was a shiny new thread called 'The People vs. Severus Snape', and we began recruiting members for the prosecution, the defence, and the all important jury. Looking back, I'm amazed at what actually happened after that. There was a surprisingly large amount of people who wanted to take part, and though I was of the opinion that most people thought Snape was 'bad', both teams were fairly even in numbers. The prosecution and the defence created their own threads to begin gathering their evidence, while the jury opened their own place to deliberate.

The trial attracted a high number of followers, and I happen to know that a few people joined the site specifically to take part in the discussions. The number of views that the thread amassed was extraordinary, and I seem to remember that another website even stole our idea (including the title itself).

Reading these books not only led to me finding a bunch of new friends, but also allowed me to participate in one of the most interesting debates I've ever come across. The character of Snape is a delicious one, and his intentions were never quite obvious until we neared the end of the series. We speculated, of course, but we never knew for sure. The Harry Potter series, for all its flaws (because as much as I love the books, they do have flaws) captured the imagination of so many people, enough to make quite a few of these people devote hours of their time to gathering and filing evidence, and writing rebuttals and whatnot.

What followed was several months of reading pages of evidence, mediating between the two (often bickering) teams, calming the ruffled feathers of almost everyone, and being amazed at the sheer amount of hard work that both the prosecution and the defence put into their evidence posts. We were tired, we were grumpy. We had to deal with homework, snooty co-workers, homesickness, and snivelly-nosed kids. But we all pulled together and soldiered on because we were determined to see things through to the end.

The character of Snape inspired loyalty from his supporters, and fierce opposition from his, er, opposition. How many characters from a novel can you name that would do that? It's not unique by a long shot, but neither is it an everyday occurrence. The power of the written word can inspire many things.

So yes, reading is not always about the reading. It's about what can happen afterwards. What will your story inspire people to do?

Picture of Alan Rickman depicting Severus Snape, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Delusional Thursday- Was Lord Voldemort a Virgin?

You have heard us babbling about HPANA, haven't you? HPANA is where it all happened for us. What we were looking for when we stumbled onto the site, I do not know, but what we found was definitely not what we had been looking for. Because had we been looking for what we eventually found, we would not have been on HPANA in the first place.

Confused you enough? Maybe I should start again, and try and be at least marginally coherent. Unless I am mistaken, all of us joined HPANA either just before the release of Book 6 in the Harry Potter series, or soon after, and when we joined, we were looking for a place where we could read and discuss the latest theories and predictions on how the series would pan out. Pretty soon, however, we ran out of theories to discuss, but since we had made friends, we were reluctant to leave. HPANA then became a popular hang-out for the 'cool Harry Potter crowd'. We sat around sipping butterbeers, reading (and writing) fan-fiction, chatting, socialising, and holding short-story writing contests. Long before social networking became popular, HPANA was just that.

Once in awhile, to amuse ourselves, and to remind ourselves that HPANA was not just 'any site', but one devoted to Harry Potter, we threw out questions like - "Was Lord Voldemort a virgin?" The question could go either way - there is nothing in Harry Potter canon, either to suggest that Lord Voldemort was not a virgin, or to confirm that he was indeed one. Perhaps the only time virginity (or its lack thereof) could have come into focus was when Professor Quirrell sought to catch a unicorn in Book 1. According to unicorn legend, it takes a naked virgin to catch a unicorn. Professor Quirrell managed to catch the unicorn, ergo, he must be a naked virgin. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that he was not fully clothed at that point of time, so even if he was a virgin, he was not a naked virgin. How, then, could he have caught the unicorn? But Quirrell was not the only person around that night. Lord Voldemort was there too, and since he did not even have a corporeal form, it is safe to presume he must have been naked (you cannot put clothes on a body which doesn't exist, can you). Which means, if he was a virgin, he would also have been a naked virgin, and so he could have caught the unicorn.

Reason enough to conclude that Lord Voldemort was a virgin.

But considering I came up with this conclusive proof of Lord Voldemort's virginity only a few minutes back, you can be sure we spent many heated hours arguing about his virginity or lack thereof. Most people seemed to believe that Lord Voldemort must be a virgin, because (a) which woman would have him, (b) it was obvious that he has never known love in his life, and (c) he would not consider any woman a worthy recipient of the life-force of Salazar Slytherin.

While I continued to believe that Lord Voldemort would not want to risk losing control of himself by engaging in an act of sexual intercourse, none of those arguments appealed to me.

Argument (a) did not hold any water - by all accounts, Tom M. Riddle was a handsome youth, and even if he wasn't, he was the Head Boy and an exceptional student - unless the girls at Hogwarts are different from girls in other schools, they would be flinging themselves at Tom M. Riddle.

Argument (b) was the easiest to dismiss - since when has sex had anything to do with love? Lust maybe, but definitely not love.

Argument (c) called for a bit of psychology. While Lord Voldemort would not consider any woman worthy of him, he would have cheerfully procreated if he thought producing an heir would advance his cause. He would never trust any son of his, but producing or not producing a child would depend on the direction his plans for world domination took.


Clearly, though everything pointed towards Lord Voldemort being a virgin, there were no conclusive arguments to support that. But what if you flipped it around and assumed that Lord Voldemort was NOT a virgin. Under what circumstances could he have been enticed to fornicate with a woman? Would he have done so to advance his plans, or could he have been driven by a primal urge even he could not understand? What kind of woman would he have chosen as his sexual partner? A witch as powerful as himself, one with an uncontaminated bloodline, or, would a quirk of nature drive him to copulate with a lowly witch? Would he feel elated after the act, or would he be filled with self loathing? Would he do it once, and never again, or would he be driven to return again and again.

And what if the act resulted in procreation? Would he seek to destroy his young before it became more powerful than him, or would be bend the will of the child to suit his purposes? The questions refused to leave me, and I finally decided to exorcise the question of Lord Voldemort's virginity (or lack thereof) by putting it down as a story. The monthly short story challenge at that point of time required you to incorporate the line "how did you know to set breakfast for two?", a malfunctioning Remembrall, a swarm of ants, and a couple of other items I do not remember, and I chucked them all into the cauldron, and stirred it to come up with the story, 'Lady Roselyn's Riddle'. The story can be found here [the story has adult content, and by clicking on the link you are agreeing to proceed after having read the warning].

Whether you click on to read the story or not, you now know the extent to which our imaginations could stretch to accommodate the requirements of fan-fiction. Aren't you glad we switched to mainstream fiction instead?

And after reading the delusional ramblings from five years ago, if you want to guess the identity of her grandchildren, you are more than welcome to do so. When I wrote the story, I left enough clues to lead to four equally plausible contenders. I have my pet theory about which of them it actually is, but if you are a Harry Potter buff, I would love to have you guess.
____
Images - Unicorn, Tom M. Riddle