HP Halloween -- 2018

[kelly_chambliss]

This year's hp_halloween fest was its usual delight. For nine years now, I have spent October 31 kicking back in the recliner to read dozens of Halloween-themed double-drabbles. 2018 was not a disappointment: I loved the range of tones and characters. The works are so short that I get to experience all sorts of pairings that aren't in my usual circle.

My excellent gift came from none other than the fab magnetic_pole. I often put Dolores Umbridge in my list of requested characters, and this year Maggie was kind enough to scratch that particular itch for me with a revealing and complex little story -- a real treat. And very appropriate for our current dark political times. Thank you, M!

Title: The Two Faces of Power
Author: magnetic_pole
Characters: Dolores Umbridge, with mention of Rufus Scrimgeour, Albus Dumbledore, and Alecto Carrow
Rating: G
Maggie's Summary: Sometimes Halloween is a season for masks. Sometimes it isn’t.

The drabble I wrote was for honeymink, new to the fest this year. Among other fun requests, they asked for Albus and Gellert and mist. Here's the result (and my thanks to my fine beta, therealsnape):

Title: Je Ne Regrette Rien
Author: kelly_chambliss
Characters: Albus Dumbledore, Gellert Grindelwald
Rating: PG
Summary: It always starts slowly--just an eddy of mist under the window sash.
Notes: The title comes with apologies to the great Edith Piaf.

Comments

[tetleythesecond]

Great the fest was a rewarding one!

I just read your drabble and once again admire how you manage to create a mood with such few words -- yet poetically challenged as I am, I also have to admit I'm not sure my reaction to this Albus is quite in line with your intentions. I'm guessing that Grindelwald is a "daemon" for Albus, and one that he has only incompletely dealt with. Maybe he is still powerless to the allures of the destructive, or the toxic still holds some erotic fascination to him. Personally, then, I couldn't care less about his "regrets" because giving him attention or even sympathy for them would be allowing him to make it about himself, not the victims and survivors of the cult he's eroticised. I'm a bit unsure -- am I disagreeing with the premise/narrative of the fic, or is this a reaction that still falls within the range you had in mind?

[kelly_chambliss]

is this a reaction that still falls within the range you had in mind?

Definitely. I find Albus a complicated, fascinating, and disturbing character -- not cardboard, un-nuanced evil like Voldemort, but certainly not the contrasting uncomplicated Standard of the Good than some people seem to read him as being.

Thus I wanted the effect of this drabble to be ambiguous: on the one hand, Albus is wise not to be open with Grindelwald; A doesn't owe G any particular honesty in this situation, and it's smart to protect himself from whatever G might want. (I did intend the presence of G to be "real" -- that is, a genuine magical projection, not a figment of Albus's mind, though such an interpretation is possible and perhaps more interesting than the "realistic" one). Yet I also thought that G can perform this magic only because a part of A wants him to (that part, as you say, that still finds some "erotic fascination" in G).

On the other hand, the mere existence of regrets doesn't mean that A is therefore an uncomplicated admirable model of strength through resistance or of meaningful repentance. There's definitely self-absorption in his "regrets" -- I see him as someone who can't helping thinking a little better of himself for being able to have regrets. So, yes, it becomes about him and his self-satisfaction (though this does not necessarily mean the regrets aren't real). In canon, I think Albus is presented as having genuine remorse for the responsibility he bore for what happened to his sister and just the general disaster of his hubris. Yet that remorse was apparently not strong enough to seriously affect his later behavior -- he remains manipulative and basically convinced of his own superiority and righteousness. On the one hand, he has genuine regrets and at least some recognition of his flaws. But on the other hand, we don't see a lot of evidence that he learned much from all this or has used his self-awareness to change his ways.

Thus, I wanted the end of the drabble to be inconclusive. Yes, Albus has regrets; of course he does, and he should. But so what? To what end?

As you see, I have spent WAY too much time thinking about the psychological backstories of fictional characters!

[tetleythesecond]

Thank you for the explanation! I really wasn’t sure, so this is helpful! And as far as I'm concerned, there can't be too much energy going into the psychological backstory of a character. To me this is the greatest fun of writing.

I come to fics about (partially) redeemed perpetrators from a different angle, perhaps because the HP world is so full of them, and definitely because I’m German and the discussion on how to handle perpetrator-centered narratives has a history here. Here in HP fic, it seems to me that men who have flirted with fascism and sort of come back to the „right“ side (albeit without assuming full liability, responsibility and accountability) get a disproportionate share of attention as supposedly „deep“ or „complex“ characters, while the victims and survivors are often a silent mass, or sometimes foils for (ex-)/(almost-)/(maybe-)perpetrator protagonists. So I tend to approach them with more scepticism, especially when I don't see a clear distancing from the author towards their character.

I wanted the end of the drabble to be inconclusive
Ah, I get it. I guess this clashed with my expectations, because I like to know where an author stands, especially in calling out toxic masculinity. I couldn’t see the possibility for a „so what?“ in the text, maybe because it’s written from the POV of the protagonist and I couldn’t see any authorial distance. So I wondered if I was perhaps expected to feel empathy (glad I'm not *g*).

[kelly_chambliss]

I couldn’t see the possibility for a „so what?“ in the text

Which shows my limitations as a writer. I didn't want the piece to come across as either a justification for Albus or as a total condemnation. But balancing an edge is difficult to do in fiction, and one doesn't always succeed. I wanted to raise a question about whether his regrets, however genuine, served any real good, but I wasn't clear enough.

In general, while I don't think Albus needs a reader's empathy, neither do I think he's un-complex or without redeeming qualities. He's presented in canon as someone who held a racist/supremacist position as part of his core identity (seeing magical people as inherently better than non-magical ones) and who ultimately was able to renounce that position. That sort of ideological about-face is not easy, especially when one occupies a privileged position (male and a member of the dominant racial and national group) that the culture systemically validates, thus encouraging one NOT to question one's views. But the Albus of canon is someone who made that change, so I think we can see that aspect of his character as positive, even admirable. That he's never able fully to overturn his privileged viewpoint and behavior -- that's where we can hold him accountable. I hoped to suggest both those sides without actually spelling them out, but I couldn't pull it off.

But even if I had succeeded, I think it's worth reconsidering this approach. Given the power and control that such men are usually accorded in our cultures, it probably should be incumbent upon writers to avoid narratives that give them [the men] too much centrality or even too much benefit of the doubt. We probably shouldn't give a place to "inconclusiveness" in their stories at all. The culture tends to excuse them; writers should be careful not to -- and not to leave space for readers to do so, either.

So I appreciate the call-out; it's given me important things to think about. Even 200-word stories matter in terms of the cultural work they both wittingly and unwittingly do.