| hobaggins @ 2003-12-23 01:08:00 |
PS ought to have a throne of some sort, yo. Get on that right away.
Mood: 
exhausted
potterstinks finally returns to the Manor. He shares Pansy's lovely x-mas card complete with sonnet. And lo! Queenie Greenknees in Trowbridge. Does anyone want to tell me where Trowbridge is?
Nine days, yo. Have you prepared a proper gift? 
greenknees
Comments:
| redbowties @ December 22 2003, 22:18:27 UTC |
I feel sort of silly asking, but what exactly is greenknees?
 |
hobaggins @ December 22 2003, 22:20:00 UTC |
Birthday community. So people can say <3 and it's easier to follow than an nraged post. Since they get all broken-down comments and confuse poor stupid me.
(parent)| redbowties @ December 22 2003, 22:21:52 UTC |
Oh, I gathered that much. Can anyone join? Like, I could join and wish him very happy returns?
(parent) |
hobaggins @ December 22 2003, 22:23:17 UTC |
Well. Yes. That's the point. If it was exclusive why would I be posting it?
(parent)| redbowties @ December 22 2003, 23:13:02 UTC |
Good point. I was just making sure, better safe than sorry, hm?
(parent)| eponis @ December 22 2003, 23:21:10 UTC |
This card reminds me again of why, if I could sleep with any N_A female, it would so totally be Pansy. Her poem leaves just enough ambiguity such that we're not sure whether the poem's subject, i.e. Draco, is the handsome Seeker . . . or the possessor.
Personally, I lean toward Pansy intending the latter, as a way to tease Draco (compliment him, then actually be complimenting Harry) with delightful subtlety.
|
hobaggins @ December 22 2003, 23:26:48 UTC |
I am equally divided between Pansy and Turpin, man. I am tempted to post this in a poll, but I am so lazy and I fear missing some of the ladiez.
Is it in iambic pentameter? I want to know about the craft, yo. I get mixizzled up when attempting to study poetrizzle. Give me some scholar-y goodness eponizzle.
| eponis @ December 22 2003, 23:43:27 UTC |
::puts on Official Scholar-y Goodness hat::
An iambic foot is two syllables with the emphasis on the latter - dah-DUM. Pentameter means five feet per line (so for two-syllable feet, that means ten syllables). An example might be Shakespeare's "shall I comp-PARE thee TO a SUM-mer's DAY?"
The poem is definitely in pentameter, but (er, no offense to Pansy's player, because it's a gorgeous work anyway) the iambic rhythm isn't really there. The best line is probably the fourth one: "fault-LESS is HE to THE mere MOR-tal EYE."
Incidentally, if I recall correctly (it's been a few years), ideally the sonnet has semantic structure, too. The first eight lines (with an ABABCDCD structure) present a problem; the next four lines (EFEF) move toward a solution; and the final couplet (GG) gives a solution, summary, or closing twist. So structurally, the sonnet works really well: first it presents the paragon of a beloved Seeker who has a beholder who's "hard to please"; then it says how even this beholder was won over; then, in the final twist, it suggests that the subject of the poem was in fact Harry and not Draco.
::removes hat::
Eh, Turpin would be fun for a sleepover, but I just plain lust after Pansy.
|
hobaggins @ December 22 2003, 23:46:08 UTC |
Thx for the analysis eponizzle.
Pansy is scarily hot almost to the point where I am totally uninterested. And Turpin and I could trade mixtapes and hoodies.
| eponis @ December 22 2003, 23:54:27 UTC |
Yes, but Pansy and I could trade recipes. And advice on faux-dating attractive boys who like other attractive boys. And then we could make all sorts of sweet, luscious, and chocolate-based deserts. And then we could lick them off each other. And then . . .
Er, I think I'm stopping now.
| tabiji @ December 23 2003, 00:08:34 UTC |
Hahaha you're mocking me...but I'd totally be M.B.'s bitch! We'd have wicked mad sex and then we'd bully everyone around us and steal/con their chocolatey desserts away from them!
(parent)| eponis @ December 23 2003, 00:16:03 UTC |
Am not mocking you! I like M.B. too, just not exactly in that way.
And I really do have plans to write the first Fat Lady/Violet smut story in the near future, so :-P.
| vassilissa @ December 23 2003, 03:59:46 UTC |
[agrees with you about everything except the conclusion - totally about the ambiguity, but I'm not sure she doesn't also mean Harry is the possessor, to highlight that although she's the one sending him the birthday card and sonnet, Draco is Harry's, not hers. Like hers and Millicent's ball costumes: her version of abetting Draco's straight act seems to involve a lot of bringing Harry into the relationship by proxy.]
There's more. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Pansy's player did it deliberately. In fact, I'm sure she did - she obviously has a very good ear, or she wouldn't get it wrong so *right*.
The scansion's *weird* - nearly every time, you could make a change in the word order, an obvious change, that would make it scan better.
And as you said, it's really well controlled thematically, structurally and whatever the adverb is for rhyming.
It's *smart* - like those poems that deliberately don't rhyme when you expect them to, e.g. "Roses are red, violets are blue, some rhymes rhyme but this one doesn't," or W.S. Gilbert's limerick about the wasp. What you hear and what you read jangle and clash together, and it's cool. Only instead of rhymes, she's using scansion.
My favourite bit is "But luckier still his possessor would be," in which the 'would' screams at the 'his possessor', and an odd word choice to begin with.
I think we've just met Slytherin poetry. It's smart, it obeys its own set of rules, but it's *devious*.
| black_dog @ December 23 2003, 11:44:35 UTC |
I agree with you that the ambiguity is over whether Pansy or Harry is the possessor, and not so much over whether Draco or Harry is the seeker. Ambiguity rules, of course, but I can't imagine Harry, with his often-mentioned scar, being described as "flawless to the mortal eye." Or being praised for his intelligence. Doesn't feel like the poem is pointing that way, to me at least.
It's a very clever poem, but I also really enjoyed the deliberate badness of some of the individual lines -- "For so few have good looks and smarts combined." And I couldn't help but laugh at the suggestion that, say, Seamus and Ron, "harder to please," were now "breathless with adoring sighs." So this is definitely Slytherins having clever fun, being serious without being solemn.
The couplet is perfect, I think -- if we're right in reading it as about Harry while pretending to be about Pansy, it's a defiant puzzle or riddle that echoes the games PS has been playing to cover up the relationship. And I think it suggests a little of the wistfulness Pansy might feel about the relationship with each other that they at one time were exploring.
The cover note deserves comment, too. "Remember how much I love you and be happy." "I hope every wish you have ever made finds itself fulfilled." It sounds like she's wishing him well, like she loves him but knows they are not going to find happiness as a couple -- he needs to find it elsewhere.
<3's NA and Pansy's player.
| tabiji @ December 23 2003, 12:15:23 UTC |
YES! Exactly! I read it almost as a goodbye, or a pre-goodbye...like, "You're perfect and wonderful, but we know we're not going to be together. I'll have to let you go and the person you end up with (the possessor) is very lucky".
(parent)| black_dog @ December 23 2003, 00:08:43 UTC |
So, his father is someone "whose presence is always notably absent at Hogwarts." PS sounds thrilled to see Lucius, no? And "there are no words" to describe the prospect of a visit with Lucius' parents. I'm delighted to see PS quietly firing off some shots like these. It's been a while since he dared to be sarcastic to Lucius, and now he's doing it right from the Manor.
I ought to take these last nine days to reflect upon my life as an adult in the wizarding world. Or, at least, that's what I'd be doing, if I didn't have a life.
I wonder if this, too, doesn't have a Lucius-subtext. I can imagine Lucius trying to impress on him the significance of his 18th birthday, as a time to "become an adult" and perhaps join the DEs. But Draco prefers not to, because he "has a life."
Maybe. It's hard to say, as always, but I think its a defensible, possible reading. If people buy this, do you think it's meant to be something Lucius notices, a low-key warning not to take him for granted? Or is it maybe a coded reassurance to Harry, who may well have been pushing him on the DE stuff lately?
| tabiji @ December 23 2003, 00:26:35 UTC |
You know, I'm going to have to look over some entries...as I see this it seems that the ambiguity in ps' entries isn't reserved for Harry anymore, (those are a tiny bit more obvious, or maybe that's just ME) but it now seems very much more directed at Lucius and the DE future thing.
(parent) |
a_player @ December 23 2003, 01:24:25 UTC |
You're of age when you're 17 in the wizarding world, so he was talking about reflecting on the last year, just FYI.
(parent)