Delurks, and other embarrassing old posts

[ssk7882]

Cindy shared information with us all.

> *Embarrassing* information.  Which is the very best kind of 
> information, if you ask me.

Definitely!  Especially when it is *other* people's embarrassment.  
Fortunately, nobody's been dealing with any of *my* old posts, so...

> Eloise
> Who isn't anywhere near halfway through, managed not to save the 
> few posts she did last time and has just catalogued the first 
> appearance of Fourth Man (modestly introduced as, "A stunning and 
> revolutionary new Avery theory") whilst we're on the subject of 
> Avery.

Urk.

Oh.  

<checks database>  

Oh.  Erm.  Ah.  Well, uh, okay.  So I guess someone is then.

No, it's true.  Modesty really isn't one of the more notable 
characteristics of my on-line persona, is it?  Especially back then, 
when a rather over-excitable egotism was more Elkins' gig.

By the way, if you want a smile (or even a nice cleansing bout of 
textbook hysteria), then you should go and read Cindy's delurk, which 
she reposted in message 44212, and then check out Dicey's delurk, 
message 32585.

Pretty creepy, innit?

It is telling, I think, that it is always the Tough and the Steely 
who find Sirius' laughter so very troubling.  We Nerveless Hysterics 
never seem to see anything at all strange about it.  Although I do 
note that Dicey also stuck a subtle yet unmistakable "Fie!" at the 
end of her delurk.  Oh, yeah.  Uh-huh.  Dicey had it in for that bad
bad Fudge right from the very start.

Cindy, however, apparently thought that he seemed like a pretty good 
catch.

> Eileen, who notes down Cindy's stated plan to marry Fudge (back in 
> October 2001) to use next time Cindy accuses of her having it bad 
> for Crouch Sr.

"Accuses" you?  Eileen, you *told* us all that you have a thing for 
Crouch.  You said it right there on the list, in front of God and the 
4000 lurkers and everyone.  You even requested an acronym for it.  So 
you really can't blame us if we needle you for that, can you?  

Pip exclaimed:

> Fudge!!!!  Cindy, had you been drinking? ;-)

Yes, Cindy, what *were* you thinking?  Fudge does seem personable 
enough, true, and he's likely quite wealthy.  He's got that power 
thing going for him, and the brightly colored outfits are rather 
cute, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing.  But for heaven's 
sake, the man is already married!  Or did you think that Crouch once 
had an engagement with Fudge and his *mother?* 

Tsk, tsk, tsk.  Setting your sights on a married man.  Scandalous!

I must say that I was a wee bit disappointed in Heidi's earliest 
post.  I'd been hoping for one of those early Draco messages, which I 
remember stumbling across when I was reading the archives after first 
joining this group.  IIRC, there's one back there somewhere in which 
she wrote something like, "I just can't see how people are coming up 
with this Redeemable!Draco stuff.  I think I'm going to have to sit 
down with the books and take a *really close look* at all of Draco's 
appearances in canon."

I choked on my coffee when I came across that one, because you see, 
I'd read SoC before I ever even got a Yahoo account.  So that was 
just plain *cool,* that was.  It was like sneaking a peek at Heidi 
Tandy's shoebox.  ;-)

Penny's delurk, on the other hand, was far more characteristic.  It 
was an "HP Books Are NOT For Children!" post.  

> Eileen, who wonders who will be cataloguing her arrival on the 
> list, and blushes to think about all the idiocies she posted back 
> then

Actually, I took note of your delurk while I was culling for the 
LupiFAQ, Eileen, and it was eminently sensible.  Short, but sweet -- 
and scrupulously canonical.  It was a quick list of canon evidence 
for rebirthed Voldemort not knowing about Lucius' diary plot.  Not 
exactly dishwasher safe, of course, but hey.  It was only 2001.  Pip 
hadn't come along to show us all the Light and the Way quite yet.

IIRC, you also had one about Tolstoy fairly early on.  And a Percy 
apologetic.

Geez, did any of you *know* that I was this snoopy?  It's really kind 
of *creepy,* isn't it?

Pip wrote:

> My first post was pretty lame too.

Oh no, it wasn't!  It was quite good.  (And I *liked* the Ron-mirrors-
Snape post.) And, as you say, it too was eminently sensible.

Then, that's the thing about the delurks, isn't it?  They're usually 
not all that scandalous.  People are generally too *frightened* to 
air their more scandalous views in their actual delurks.  If you want 
to see people's controversial early posts, then you want to wait 
until they've been around long enough to test the waters and summon 
their courage.

Just look at Pip's posting history, for example.  Oh, she was canny, 
Pip was.  Did she roll out the old dishwasher right away?  Nope.  She 
tested the waters first, inch by careful inch.  She delurked with a 
solid "Slytherin Is Not The House o' Evil" post. It went over just 
fine.  So then she gave NonCompliant!Lupin a little waltz.  Still no
trouble.  Then Ever So Evil Winky, and when ESE Winky still didn't 
summon any lynch mobs, she went for Coward!Sirius.  And then finally 
she floated the Pip Theory that still makes even *me* blanch: Ever So 
Evil Mother Crouch.

Oh, yes.  Pip was playing it safe.  By the time that she finally 
posted Spying Game, she *knew* that we'd all like what she had to 
say.  ;-)


Eileen:
> Why couldn't I be like Elkins who scandalized the entire list with 
> her first post and became an instant celebrity? 

Pip:
> She did? Has anyone catalogued that post? If so, could you send me 
> the message number?

Debbie:
> Send it to me, too, please. 

Whoah, guys.  Don't get too excited, okay?  My delurk really wasn't 
at all scandalous.  It was positively tame, in fact.  I proposed that 
Snape had liked his old Slytherin school chums, and that he had some 
serious guilt issues over what had become of them all.  And that we 
shouldn't necessarily assume that Frank Longbottom was a fresh-faced 
ingenue at the time of Voldemort's fall.  Hardly earth-shattering or 
controversial material, although I do seem to recall that a few 
Snapefans took umbrage at my "Severus Snape is Peter Pettigrew seen 
through the looking glass" comment.

Eileen:
> Sorry, I'd misremembered. It wasn't her first post that scandalized
> everyone. . . . I was thinking of another of her early posts...

Oh!  You mean the one in which I went all Solzhenitzyn on Moody's, 
er...character?

> ...in which she proceeded to destroy the reputation of Alastor 
> Moody...

You mean his reputation as an erratic, violent, trigger-happy 
paranoid?

That's funny.  I thought that I was *upholding* his reputation in 
that post.  ;-)

> ...and wrote, "My original de-lurk actually had some very harsh 
> things to say about Aurors, but I was too cowardly to leave them 
> in."

Like I said.  Delurks tend not to be too scandalous.  There's 
the "fear and trembling" factor to consider.

I actually had no idea that one had scandalized you, Eileen, until 
you mentioned it on the Twins thread.  The only person that I was 
aware of being particularly upset at the time was that one fellow who 
became extremely angry and told me that it was people like me wot 
caused unrest.  

> Someone then flamed her for letting the terrorists win. :-) 
> Arghhh... it was bad!

Bad?  Nah.  It wasn't bad.  It was *good,* because it meant that I 
got to needle the poor man for months afterwards by adopting that 
derogatory Bleeding Heart stereotype he had hurled at me as something 
akin to an on-line persona.  Oh, I just went on and on about those 
Bleeding Hearts, didn't I?  And about "giving the benefit of the 
doubt to the dregs of society" as well.  And about making the world 
unsafe for humanity.  Not to mention the way that I immediately 
leaped to the canons and stared firing them away for all I was worth 
at an entire *series* of Sympathy For the Devil readings.  I can be a 
bit childish that way, I'm afraid.

I suppose it wasn't really very nice of me.  But oh, it was ever so 
much *fun!*  

And besides. 

He deserved it.  


<Only subversion, and the willingness to use it>

Pip wrote:

> [Evil Thought] Oh, and if she's working through the Greek myths -
> incest. 

And there's the proof. ;-)

Well!  Now I know what *I'm* posting, the next time the list decides 
it might be fun to try to make every last one of the canon characters 
related by blood.  

You want to know what the Dursleys *really* have against Harry?  Why 
Aunt Petunia is so bitter, so keen to hide Harry from the outside 
world?  Do you want to know what Aunt Marge was *really* hinting at, 
with all of that talk about the breeding of bulldogs?  Or just what 
secret about Harry's parents Dumbledore is so very eager to hide from 
him?  And say, have you ever wondered why it should be that Harry 
looks so *extraordinarily* like James?

The truth is evident, once you look at things in just the right way.


Elkins