I suppose some of you remember the infamous 32-week suspension inflicted on me by the charmers at FA for the monstrous crime of posting a one-line answer to the question: "What religion are you?" I was recently reminded of it when reading ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ajhalluk's short fic The mark of the beast.
Now understand: AJ Hall, whatever else may be said of her (and I intend to say plenty), is a first-rate writer. Her Lust over Pendle has a deserved reputation as one of the finest novels (or "chaptered fics", to use the jargon) in HP fan fiction. And this story is nothing but well crafted. What spoiled it for me was its fantastic, even unconscious hypocrisy.
At the heart of the story, as part of its message and moral, lies a quite paranoid distrust of bureaucracy. The Ministry of Magic, as she describes it, has no redeeming feature at all. And its chief feature, in her description, is its mafia-like obsession with covering each other's arses, however bad or even criminal their original decisions. The organization she describes is corrupt, collusive, unreformable.
This is the woman who, as Ombudspoliticallycorrectexpression of FA, endorsed the injustice I suffered, handing down an opinion that could not be distinguished even in style, let alone in content, from the original disgusting sentence.
Clear, is it not? Bureaucracies are terrible things. They are stupid, self-protecting monsters that cannot be improved or reformed. They are corrupt and corrupting. So, if you happen to be given a position in one, you must do your best to fit in and suit your environment.
GK Chesterton had the right terms for people with AJ Hall's talent and character: "Horne is a sneak and a skunk. But do not forget that, like many other sneaks and skunks in history, he is also a poet."
ajhalluk's short fic The mark of the beast.Now understand: AJ Hall, whatever else may be said of her (and I intend to say plenty), is a first-rate writer. Her Lust over Pendle has a deserved reputation as one of the finest novels (or "chaptered fics", to use the jargon) in HP fan fiction. And this story is nothing but well crafted. What spoiled it for me was its fantastic, even unconscious hypocrisy.
At the heart of the story, as part of its message and moral, lies a quite paranoid distrust of bureaucracy. The Ministry of Magic, as she describes it, has no redeeming feature at all. And its chief feature, in her description, is its mafia-like obsession with covering each other's arses, however bad or even criminal their original decisions. The organization she describes is corrupt, collusive, unreformable.
This is the woman who, as Ombudspoliticallycorrectexpression of FA, endorsed the injustice I suffered, handing down an opinion that could not be distinguished even in style, let alone in content, from the original disgusting sentence.
Clear, is it not? Bureaucracies are terrible things. They are stupid, self-protecting monsters that cannot be improved or reformed. They are corrupt and corrupting. So, if you happen to be given a position in one, you must do your best to fit in and suit your environment.
GK Chesterton had the right terms for people with AJ Hall's talent and character: "Horne is a sneak and a skunk. But do not forget that, like many other sneaks and skunks in history, he is also a poet."
