#defend the teachers

[loganswdc]

every day i learn something new about logan sargeant and his racing career, not just about his performance in f1 but in f2 and previous series, too. and every day i end up so sad because he genuinely has so so much potential and can do so much but he keeps being give a poor hand of cards. this guy out qualified his teammate in f2 TEN TO FOUR. and who was his teammate?? liam lawson. liam joined redbull’s driver academy in february of 2019 while logan only got to join an f1 team’s driver academy in october of 2021. that team was williams. which, as we know, hasn't exactly been the best performing team in recent years. oscar piastri got to join an f1 team’s driver academy in january of 2020 (the renault sport academy, later rebranded as the alpine academy). liam and oscar both got the opportunity to do f1 tests for YEARS prior to their f1 debuts in 2023. liam had 4 and a half years of experience in f1 cars before 2023. oscar had 3 years of experience in f1 cars before 2023. even if it was just testing and practice sessions, it's still something.

what did logan get? one measly fp2 session, post-season testing, and then jumped right in to pre-season testing in 2023. he already had a seat in williams then, so with the experience from before the pre-season testing in 2023 he got to do maybe 800km of testing in an f1 car. the others — in this case i mean oscar, liam, and heck even nyck de vris — had opportunities to drive f1 cars and gain experience for YEARS before logan. if you look at nyck de vris: he got signed to the mclaren young driver programme in 2010. he joined the audi sport racing academy in 2016.  granted, he left the mclaren programme in before the 2019 season and left audi after the 2019 season, too. but he then went to mercedes as a reserve driver and tester for 2020 and afterwards. this means he got just about a DECADE AND A HALF of teams putting their time and energy into training him to join f1.

logan got a year. one. single. fucking year. that is entirely incomparable to the other rookies from 2023, who had so much more experience before hand. and yet logan was jumped into f1 and the expectations were so high for a guy who hasn't had the chance to train and learn and gain experience.

and yet when we look at the 2022 f2 season, logan sargeant, a rookie, was 1 point off from his teammate —the one and only liam lawson — scoring p4 in the championship. he outqualified his teammate 10 to 4. he was the first american to win an f2 race (that is, of course, following the rebrand from gp2 to f2, but regardless, that’s still an important thing to note and an achievement of his that should be celebrated).

logan sargeant has so much potential and if only williams would show him a little more faith unlike what they’ve been doing, if only they’d give him the same upgrades as alex, if only they wouldn’t force him to drive a car 15kg overweight from that of his teammate’s car, if only they wouldn’t force him to use outdated rear and front wings from the season prior. then perhaps he would have a chance to show what he can do. perhaps if he wasn’t stuck in a team with a crap car who have shown zero faith (which has been vehemently obvious since the circus in australia) in him and made him absolutely miserable, a shell of himself — which you can clearly see in recent interviews and photos of him — then maybe he’d be able to show how good he really is. and maybe if williams hadn’t been so adamant about taking him out of f2 so quickly and let him develop for one more year, we’d be seeing headlines that say “logan sargeant, first american f1 driver on the podium since michael andretti in 1993.” and perhaps we could even see him winning races.

no matter what someone says about his current f1 performances — though most base that solely off of where he ends up on the grid rather than looking at his actual driving and seeing how good he is as a driver considering the crap circumstances he’s in — logan sargeant is a better driver than what everyone says. he is trying so insanely hard to get a car that is miles off from the rest of the field to place as high as humanly possible. no one can say that if you put another driver in that car that logan is driving they'd be doing better than he is now. the fact is, they wouldn't be. he's been given an absolute tractor and is expected to score points when that car isn't built for getting in the points. and yet logan managed to get p10 in the miami sprint race — which should be recognized and commended. because he was in an awful car and he absolutely shined that day. that was just the start of showing what he could do. but he hasn't been given the same resources as alex, those being the upgrades, so what more can he do compared to what he's doing now?

and i am actually sitting here crying as i type this because this is a driver who is giving it his all even when the entire world is against him, even when his entire TEAM is against him, and he is persevering to the best of his abilities. and i know exactly what it’s like to sit here, wanting to reach for your dreams and show everyone how good you are, but to have only your closest friends and family on your side, rooting for you. what it’s like to look everywhere around you and see everyone calling you crap and saying you should quit and that you aren’t and never will be good enough. to look around and see your closest friends and family cheering for you, yet feeling like crap because you aren't doing as well as you would want, feeling inferior to everyone around you.

news flash: logan sargeant is and will always be good enough. he just needs the opportunity to show it, and williams is ruining that for him.

and yes, i will defend him with my life. people who try to say otherwise can try to do the same hours — the WEEKS — worth of research that i’ve done about logan and his career because he IS a good driver and HE DESERVES BETTER.

any hate comments towards logan will be deleted, because i have neither the time nor the energy to deal with that and argue with logan haters. i've said all of what i know and can remember about him and his career above, and will add what i can as time goes on and i remember something else or learn something new. if you have the time to hate on logan, you have the time to do your research and examine the fact that he has the potential to do well, but is not in a position for that because of the abhorrent circumstances he is currently in.

thank you for coming to my ted talk. edit: i'd also really recommend reading this twitter thread!! it goes into some more depth on logan and his f2 / f1 career, and even a little bit about his f3 career. it's very informative and articulates much of logan's career and why he is a better driver than many believe very well. https://x.com/herrocult/status/1795747913588761027

[inkskinned]

one of the things about being an educator is that you hear what parents want their kids to be able to do a lot. they want their kid to be an astronaut or a ballerina or a politician. they want them to get off that damn phone. be better about socializing. stop spending so much time indoors. learn to control their own temper. to just "fucking listen", which means to be obedient.

one of the things i learned in my pedagogy classes is that it's almost always easier to roleplay how you want someone to act. it's almost always easier to explain why a rule exists, rather than simply setting the rule and demanding adherence.

i want my kids to be kind. i want them to ask me what book they should read next, and i want to read that book with them so we can discuss it. i want my kid to be able to tell me hey that hurt my feelings without worrying i'll punish them. i want my kid to be proud of small things and come running up to me to tell me about them. i want them to say "nah, i get why this rule exists, but i get to hate it" and know that i don't need them to be grateful-for-the-roof-overhead while washing the dishes. i want them to teach me things. i want them to say - this isn't safe. i'm calling my mom and getting out of this. i want them to hear me apologize when i do fuck up; and i want them to want to come home.

the other day a parent was telling me she didn't understand why her kid "just got so angry." this woman had flown off the handle at me.

my dad - traditional catholic that he is - resents my sentiment of "gentle parenting". he says they'll grow up spoiled, horrible, pretentious. granola, he spits.

i am going to be kind to them. i am going to set the example, i think. and whatever they choose become in the meantime - i'm going to love them for it.

[morganbritton132]

Eddie gets tagged in a Tiktok of one of Steve’s students. Steve clearly has some kind of cold because he keeps having to stop his lesson to cough into his elbow. The caption on the video is like, “@ [Eddie’s handle] how did you let this happen???”

But more importantly and even funnier, in the video you can hear a student respond to Steve sneezing so hard it looked painful with, “Mr Harrington, you’re giving me the ick.”

Steve’s just like, “Don’t worry. I’m not contagious.”

The student says, “…Nevermind.”

[tawney]

PLEASE pile up on me your favorite Teacher Izuku fics. Ones with some depth and personalities to the students rather than just a one-shot, I'd love to see slice of life fics with Deku dadzawa-ing his students and his students being Deku's personal problem children and all the sweet casual fluff crap 😭 all these tropes and ideas I'm seeing on twitter and tumblr are making me long and I'm close to just starting an ao3 account and writing them myself.

[lilithofpenandbook]

Literally how do you even respond to that?

[linipik]

It is Valentine's Day and seeing all the lovey-dovey couples and everyone who is interested in any sort of dating is already with someone has Lance feeling down.

--

💌Let's play~

[t-u-i-t-c]

Tokusatsu Back To School Challenge

"So you thought you could use my students like this, huh? You're gonna pay."

[kyoobie]

Based off this tweet

[localgremlinboy]

I have been sitting on these for a long time because I wanted to have some more varied stuff but I haven't had time to write anything! So here's what I've got! Honestly these are some of my favorites

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4] [part 5] [part 6]

- Whenever he's kicked out of an area or event, Oswald proceeds to start shoving anything not taped down into his pockets. He doesn't need the stuff, he just likes to be petty and ruin it for everyone else

- Bane has done a series of infomercials for various products & services that only air on late night product channels. Alfred is the only batfamily member who knows, he was doing laundry late one night and nearly lost it

- Mr Freeze writes restaurants/companies when they wrong him. Like nice formal letters, signing them and everything

- The Joker has an imdb page. Actually a lot of the villains do but like the Joker has one he updates with fun facts. Who says they're accurate but they sure are fun

- Riddler freaking hates puppets. Their soulless eyes say it all. He refuses to or "work" with puppets. That being said, Scarecrow has chased him around with Scarface once or twice "for science"

- Scarecrow has and still does write letters of recommendation for his ex students. He freaking still has Gotham University letterhead paper and everything. Honestly some of his students have gotten the job from his letter alone (maybe it's out of fear but like it's still a win), and they 100% send Jonathan thank you gifts in Arkham. He's got one of those dorky teacher scrapbooks where he keeps the thank you letters. One of his students even crocheted him a little plush scarecrow. It's like, they don't love his crimes but you know that was ol kooky professor Crane for ya

- Harvey kind of has a soft spot for sitcoms, he used to watch them with his mom growing up. One of their favorites, ironically, was night court

- Bane has a famous chili recipe and he makes one batch a year. It's fucking delicious! He makes an edition with meat and a vegetarian version too. Of course consults Ivy for home grown excellent quality vegetables and she gets first dibs in return

- the Joker has not one but TWO released albums. One is essentially a mash up of all the serenades he's made Batman listen to over the years and the other one is called "The Holidays with the Joker: Christmas selects edition"

- Scarecrow's car is a mess. He's got a work truck of course but his main car is like a wood panel sedan that he's been driving since he was a professor and refuses to get a new one. It's a fucking mess, he has like clothes, papers, garbage all over the place. He still has term papers he forgot to grade under the seats. Riddler HATES his car, with a passion

- Riddler has gone through the pain and suffering to teach all the rogues how to use discord, he had once hoped it would make their crimes more efficient. They have a group chat but it's mostly suffering on his end as all chaos ensues

- Scarecrow owns a Halloween train village he has set up in one of his lairs. It plays instrumental versions of Halloween songs as it goes around the track

- Joker will push open cups off of tables because he can. He's got the chaotic energy of a cat awake at 3 am

- Riddler and Scarecrow's friendship starts like super formal and co worker like but after like a year and a half, evolves into a weird symbiosis. Jonathan points at random ass objects or books and goes "you" when he's with Edward. Eddie has a habit of fixing or picking debris of Jonathan, usually when they're crimeing. Also one time, they were both startled so bad by Batman that Scarecrow jumped into riddler's arms like Scooby & shaggy, except they both held onto each other for a second before toppling over. Robin then unmasked them like scooby doo

- Harley & Ivy are frequent Panera customers and often get pick up orders there under "codenames" given by Harley. All the workers know who "Plantmamma" and "the quinnanator" are but like they tip great and everyone should get to enjoy soup

- Bane has one CD in his car, it's a 2010 greatest hits CD that someone accidentally left in there. Who you ask? He has no idea

- Harley has a getaway playlist preloaded in her phone for car chases

- Riddler and Scarecrow watch reality tv/game shows together. They binged all of survivor and the amazing race in a year. It was a joke at first but they both got really into the shows. They have both applied to be on amazing race together and unfortunately haven't been called back

- Joker still uses cassettes (and vinyls probably) except he mixes them himself and labels them all stupid titles like "Birthday bash #9", "Baty's mix", "what's the deal with airplane food?", "etc". But he also has a tape recorder and makes notes to himself and labels those ones too, so he gets his personal notes mixed up with his music jams all the time. He goes to put on some epic clown music and instead it's a twenty minute recording he made of himself eating fruit loops

[theespeakerboxxx]

i didnt wanna put any effort into this but if you missed the curly b/sneaky taffer the SCHOOL TEACHER saga, this is the abridged version meme i traced under the cut

[zygomaticbogblog]

encouraged to talk to babies at work because it helps their brain develop a concept of language and sound so i’ll be damned if i’m not info dumping

you, small child, will know all about the insanely powerful hit dnd podcast jrwi with charlie slimecicle, grizzlyplays, condi condifiction and spittake sideshow-act beebo bizly

[valewritessss]

My hate for love triangles stemmed from me reading Keeper of the Lost Cities in 5th grade and loving Sophitz until I found out they weren’t endgame and it pissed me off so bad (I hate being wrong) that to this day I feel bitter about it

[saintsenara]

pls can we have your takes on what dumbledore gets wrong/doesn't understand about tom riddle tysm

thank you for the ask, pal :)

i have received a flurry of asks about my main lord, lord voldemort, which form a neat triad, so this is part three of a three part meta on him:

1. what is interesting about voldemort's role in the series? [here] 2. how do i write voldemort in my own work, and why? [here] 3. what does dumbledore get wrong about voldemort?

i want to be clear that this isn’t intended as dumbledore bashing - i love that old man and i’ll defend him from a lot of the charges levelled against him in fanon [and, to be honest, canon].

it's just an analysis of how dumbledore, as a flawed human being like all of us… kind of fucks up in how he relates to voldemort. many of his mistakes are caused by personality traits which i think are fascinating: his ivory-tower detachment from reality; his projection of his own guilt and grief onto others; his tendency towards inaction in the face of the status quo; his own tendency towards being secretive and ruthless; and so on.

and, while i don’t think he can be blamed for voldemort choosing to become a terrorist kingpin, his attitude towards voldemort doesn’t entirely help the anti-voldemort cause, and perhaps he should have tightened up.

so...

what does dumbledore get wrong about voldemort?

in we go under the cut:

that voldemort is an unsympathetic victim of childhood trauma, but he is a victim nonetheless

there are no two ways about it, dumbledore and voldemort’s first meeting is disastrous and, even though voldemort doesn’t acquit himself particularly well in the proceedings [maybe don’t boast about all the children you torture?] the power differential in the relationship [dumbledore is at least in his late fifties, voldemort is eleven] means that responsibility for conducting himself fairly lies entirely with dumbledore.

however, i am going to begin this section with some dumbledore defence. i see a lot in fanfiction the idea that the young voldemort is profoundly traumatised by dumbledore setting his wardrobe on fire, which of course does seem like an incredibly cruel thing for dumbledore to do to a child who presumably has basically no worldly possessions [which is what harry immediately thinks].

the voldemort of canon, however, doesn’t seem to care that much:

Riddle jumped to his feet; Harry could hardly blame him for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions must be in there. But even as Riddle rounded on Dumbledore, the flames vanished, leaving the wardrobe completely undamaged. Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore; then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand. "Where can I get one of them?"

as we can see, any upset voldemort feels over the wardrobe disappears the minute he appraises magic’s ability to frighten, destroy, and control. similarly:

“All in good time,” said Dumbledore. “I think there is something trying to get out of your wardrobe.” And sure enough, a faint rattling could be heard from inside it. For the first time, Riddle looked frightened. “Open the door,” said Dumbledore… Riddle took down the quaking box. He looked unnerved. “Is there anything in that box that you ought not to have?” asked Dumbledore.  Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look. “Yes, I suppose so, sir,” he said finally, in an expressionless voice. [...] Riddle did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a colourless voice, “Yes, sir.” [...] It was impossible to tell what he was thinking; his face remained quite blank as he put the little cache of stolen objects back into the cardboard box. When he had finished, he turned to Dumbledore and said baldly, “I haven’t got any money.”

while dumbledore’s behaviour here frightens and unnerves voldemort, he gets over it pretty quickly - and he then transitions into being unabashed at having been caught and planning his options for how to proceed [i am wedded to the headcanon that the "clear and calculating look" is him deciding not to return the stolen objects, and to test whether dumbledore will indeed know if he doesn’t], chief of which is his need to solve his money issues.

which is to say, dumbledore’s behaviour in this meeting undoubtedly establishes voldemort’s later dislike of him - although i think it’s worth noting that the voldemort of chamber of secrets treats dumbledore as a mere annoyance, rather than someone for whom he harbours a profound, traumatising hatred [voldemort's dislike of dumbledore transitions to hate, i think, following the fake job interview] - but i don’t think it’s the misstep many interpretations of voldemort and dumbledore’s relationship make it.

but dumbledore does make some decisions in their first meeting which i think are worth exploring more critically than they often are:

dumbledore’s failure to inform mrs cole that the young voldemort is a wizard makes his existence in two worlds impossible

we know that the families of muggleborn students are normally informed about the magical world during this visit by hogwarts staff in which their letter is delivered - and that this was the case even in the late 1930s, since myrtle warren’s parents are able to come to hogwarts after her death.

dumbledore’s decision not to mention voldemort’s magic to mrs cole means that voldemort - whose sense of belonging to a family unit is already non-existent - must, then, become the only student at hogwarts whose legal guardian knows nothing about where he goes all year. potentially there are magical-legal reasons for this, but i can’t think of any particularly convincing ones.

dumbledore projects his own self-loathing onto the child voldemort and chalks his personality traits up to malice rather than neglect

dumbledore handles himself pretty well in the initial moments of his meeting with voldemort, keeping calm while he freaks out about whether he’s a doctor [as i’ve said in the previous part of this series of meta, voldemort’s fear of doctors - and especially whether it implies some deeper traumatic experience - is something worth thinking about].

his attitude changes when voldemort accepts easily that he is a wizard:

His legs were trembling. He stumbled forward and sat down on the bed again, staring at his hands, his head bowed as though in prayer. “I knew I was different,” he whispered to his own quivering fingers. “I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something.”  “Well, you were quite right,” said Dumbledore, who was no longer smiling, but watching Riddle intently. “You are a wizard.”

dumbledore will tell harry later in the chapter this is taken from that he thought voldemort’s immediate pivot to believing himself special was a red flag, indicative of the arrogance which will define his adult self.

his discomfort, although we don’t know this yet in half-blood prince, is evidently triggered by the fact that voldemort’s breathless awe at the potential - and especially the sinister potential - of his magical powers reminds him either of grindelwald or of himself.

but.

the young voldemort - a magical child surrounded by non-magical people - can do things which are objectively different and special. as he tells us:

“I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to.”

the obviously violent implication of the last two sentences aside, these abilities would be understood by anyone as so bafflingly unusual that special is a reasonable word with which to describe them, particularly for a child who has only just been given the language to explain an aspect of his personhood he has clearly always been aware of, but never understood the cause of.

dumbledore’s immediate negative response to this statement, however, is the cause of his later assessment of the child voldemort as like his adult self:

“His powers, as you heard, were surprisingly well-developed for such a young wizard and - most interestingly and ominously of all - he had already discovered that he had some measure of control over them, and begun to use them consciously. And as you saw, they were not the random experiments typical of young wizards: He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control…his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy, and domination.”

but, while the child voldemort’s cruelty is absolutely something dumbledore should have been made uneasy by - although, of course, he does nothing about it once voldemort starts at hogwarts, deciding to take a hands-off approach that harry clearly thinks is idiotic - his criticism of voldemort for being secretive [and also, later in this chapter, self-sufficient, independent, and friendless] is a bad-faith reading, based on his own loathing of the fact that these traits also describe him, of habits which are obviously caused by childhood neglect.

voldemort is secretive - as harry is - because he doesn’t have any trusted childhood confidants. he’s self-sufficient and independent - as harry is - because he has to be. he’s friendless as much because he’s a strange child with magical powers raised around other children who don’t have them - as, the text implies, is the case for hermione - as because he’s cruel.

dumbledore’s failure to have any sympathy for the fact that voldemort’s institutionalised childhood drives these characteristics - instead ascribing them entirely to deliberate choices made by an eleven-year-old in order to assert malign dominance over his peers - is a failing. indeed, it is one he will repeat with harry.

but the most egregious of dumbledore’s cock-ups in this bit of the story:

dumbledore completely fails to understand the way voldemort’s childhood grief manifests itself

voldemort - in one of the few bits of this chapter in which he actually appears childlike - asks dumbledore:

“Was my father a wizard? He was called Tom Riddle too, they’ve told me.” “I’m afraid I don’t know,” said Dumbledore, his voice gentle. “My mother can’t have been magic, or she wouldn’t have died,” said Riddle, more to himself than Dumbledore. “It must’ve been him.” 

dumbledore seems to handle this quite sensitively. on our first reading.

but when we get deeper into the text, two things emerge which make this interaction - in my sincere opinion - the cruelest thing dumbledore does to the child voldemort. 

firstly, when discussing with harry the teenage voldemort shedding his father’s name, dumbledore refers to merope as voldemort’s "previously despised mother… the woman whom, you will remember, he had thought could not be a witch if she had succumbed to the shameful human weakness of death."

but there is no implication in the above - surely the only conversation he and dumbledore ever have on the topic - that voldemort despises his mother. his statement reads like the magical thinking of any bereaved child - that his mother could have lived if she’d had supernatural powers, or there had been some sort of magical intervention, and so on. [a friend who's reading spare pointed out to me recently that prince harry was convinced for years that his mother had managed to fake her own death to escape a life she disliked, and that she would pop up any day to take him with her into her new reality. what voldemort is doing here is basically the same.]

dumbledore’s negative reaction to voldemort's words reflects his own relationship with death as ever-present - the spectre of ariana is clearly hovering constantly on his shoulder - rather than something which magic can dismiss or overcome, but voldemort choosing to think the opposite isn’t the behaviour of a pre-teen psychopath. it’s an entirely expected reaction for a grieving child, and dumbledore's response to it is unfair.

even worse though is this. when dumbledore is speaking to mrs cole, it is very clear that he realises that the child he is about to meet is half gaunt:

“And then she told me he was to be named Tom, for his father, and Marvolo, for her father — yes, I know, funny name, isn’t it? We wondered whether she came from a circus.”

dumbledore must react physically to hearing the name marvolo - who, since he can be presumed to be already on the wizengamot at this point, he is aware was sent to azkaban for defending his son's involvement in an anti-muggle attack - significantly enough that mrs cole notices it. in deathly hallows, voldemort himself is worried that dumbledore knew about his heritage from - since when else would he have learned voldemort’s full name - their first meeting:

An old unease flickered inside him. Dumbledore had known his middle name... Dumbledore might have made the connection with the Gaunts…

the child voldemort will then tell dumbledore that he is a parselmouth, a trait the gaunts must be known to possess, since marvolo and morfin both openly speak parseltongue in front of bob ogden. and yet dumbledore doesn’t mention at all that he might be able to identify a bereaved child’s - who we have no evidence at all even knows his own mother’s name - family line.

dumbledore overlooks voldemort’s grief at other points in the series - he doesn’t notice, for example, that the murder of hepzibah smith [who insults merope by suggesting she stole the locket] is clearly one of revenge, rather than gain - but it’s this sin of omission [later one of his most frequent missteps when dealing with harry] that always gets me.

that voldemort doesn’t just change his name because of his father

within five years of their first meeting, voldemort has stopped going by tom when with his friends. dumbledore will claim to harry that his decision to shed his birth name was caused by two things: his discovery that his father was a muggle and his desire to be seen as special. voldemort himself will emphasise the former in both chamber of secrets and goblet of fire - the latter of which also features his odd conviction that his father was the one who insisted on the name tom riddle.

dumbledore evidently believes that voldemort’s decision to no longer use the name tom is contemptible, and he - and later harry - will refer to him as tom whenever they come face-to-face. the narrative presents dumbledore as being unambiguously right to do this:

He raised his glass as though toasting Voldemort, whose face remained expressionless. Nevertheless, Harry felt the atmosphere in the room change subtly: Dumbledore’s refusal to use Voldemort’s chosen name was a refusal to allow Voldemort to dictate the terms of the meeting, and Harry could tell that Voldemort took it as such.

i am sympathetic to the idea that dumbledore should not be expected to refer to voldemort as "my lord" - although i don’t actually think that’s what voldemort is asking here - and i should say that i myself have written "voldemort" as being a mask the adult tom takes on and off at whim, and i think there’s space for those interpretations in fanfiction. but the evidence of canon is that voldemort lives exclusively as voldemort from the mid-1950s onwards and that he considers tom to be, without question, his deadname.

the name clearly doesn’t feel right to him even as child - he twitches "irritably" when dumbledore points out that he shares it with tom the landlord - even at a point in his life when he still feels positively towards the father whom he believes is a wizard as well. while dumbledore may be correct that he dislikes the name at this point because it’s not special enough, wanting a more unique name is not, in and of itself, a moral failing. voldemort calling himself voldemort is a completely neutral act. it is what he does under that name that’s the problem.

that dumbledore thinks it is a moral failing, however, can be explained by the backstory we learn in deathly hallows. elphias doge and muriel prewett both make clear that percival dumbledore’s arrest and imprisonment and kendra and ariana dumbledore’s deaths brought sufficient press attention that the dumbledore name was immediately recognisable and attached in the mind of the wizarding public to the various scandals which befell the family. dumbledore, who blames himself for much [or most] of what happened, clearly carries his name like a penance, and regards it as a dereliction of duty to try and escape the weight of one’s family drama by taking a new identity.

and this drives, i think, something which the doylist text doesn’t think is an issue, but which i think dumbledore is mistaken in when it comes to voldemort: that his background can be nowhere near as secret as dumbledore assumes, meaning that the only thing he rejects is a name which no longer belongs to him.

a significant number of death eaters clearly went to school with voldemort, the malfoys cannot be the only ones who have seen his teenage possessions, hagrid is seemingly aware that voldemort attended hogwarts alongside him, and dumbledore himself says in half-blood prince that people know what voldemort was once called and what he was like as teenager, but are just too scared to provide information about his life to the anti-voldemort cause. 

this leads to my belief that many of the death eaters are aware of voldemort’s blood status - lucius malfoy in order of the phoenix is clearly unsurprised to hear harry say voldemort’s a half-blood; bellatrix is furious, of course, but maybe that’s what over a decade in azkaban does to you - and are also aware that his political aims, as described in the previous meta in this series, are not the establishment of a pureblood oligarchy, but what we might term magic-supremacy. indeed, dumbledore’s interpretation of voldemort as lying to his death eaters that he’s a great pureblood champion always sits uneasily in canon alongside the fact that voldemort is shown to have enormous support among non-human magical creatures and - given how lacking the resistance to the the government of deathly hallows is - swathes of the majority half-blood population as well, which suggests that his closest supporters accept that his concern is getting the magical of any stripe behind him in order to take on the muggle world.

which is to say, dumbledore thinks that lord voldemort is a mask a half-blood man called tom riddle uses to hide his true self from his pureblood supporters. in reality, lord voldemort is just that half-blood man’s name.

that voldemort thinks the job interview is real

voldemort doesn’t lose his temper in the interview scene until dumbledore reveals the meeting - which voldemort has travelled some distance for and apparently indicated his intentions for in advance - is fake.

[he handles dumbledore deadnaming him pretty magnanimously, for example.]

dumbledore’s decision to lure him to hogwarts simply to assert his dominance over him is clearly the final nail in the coffin of their relationship, and it's another example of how dumbledore’s automatic bad-faith reading of decisions and desires which are clearly more complicated than just "i love evil" [after all, dumbledore himself acknowledges that voldemort regards hogwarts as the only place he has ever truly felt at home] is the cause of voldemort’s hatred of him, rather than that hatred being the result of voldemort being afraid of dumbledore’s goodness or perspicacity or skill, as the pre-deathly hallows text likes to imply:

Voldemort sneered. “If you do not want to give me a job -”  “Of course I don’t,” said Dumbledore. “And I don’t think for a moment you expected me to. Nevertheless, you came here, you asked, you must have had a purpose.” Voldemort stood up. He looked less like Tom Riddle than ever, his features thick with rage. “This is your final word?” “It is,” said Dumbledore, also standing. "Then we have nothing more to say to each other.”

that voldemort has a very strange - but very pronounced - sense of honour

as i have noted in the previous meta in this series, voldemort has a remarkably well-defined sense of honour. for a murderer.

his often-repeated hatred of liars, hypocrites, and cowards appears to be genuine and - for narrative reasons, since he's often required to provide exposition for harry’s benefit which dumbledore and snape can’t if they are to maintain their characterisation - he is rarely shown outright lying himself in canon, even if we’re told he's a pathological liar by other characters.

that he considers dumbledore in particular to be a hypocrite is clear in many of their interactions, especially this - which i always like - from order of the phoenix:

Dumbledore flicked his own wand. The force of the spell that emanated from it was such that Harry, though shielded by his stone guard, felt his hair stand on end as it passed, and this time Voldemort was forced to conjure a shining silver shield out of thin air to deflect it. The spell, whatever it was, caused no visible damage to the shield, though a deep, gonglike note reverberated from it, an oddly chilling sound...  “You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?” called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes narrowed over the top of the shield. “Above such brutality, are you?”  “We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom,” Dumbledore said calmly, continuing to walk toward Voldemort as though he had not a fear in the world, as though nothing had happened to interrupt his stroll up the hall. “Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit — ”

at this point in the story, the reader doesn’t know that dumbledore is taking this merciful approach because he is aware he can’t kill voldemort.

we do, however, already suspect that dumbledore’s dishonesty with harry about the prophecy is a direct cause of the chain of events which has just led to sirius’ death - as dumbledore himself will shortly admit to and as the death eaters are evidently aware of [lucius malfoy pointing out that voldemort is baffled that dumbledore didn’t tell harry about the prophecy always sends me].

voldemort’s statement - "above such brutality, are you?" - is ironic, and is a criticism of what he evidently believes to be dumbledore’s hypocrisy in performing mercy in public while regarding his men as expendable in private [and, especially, as expendable to protect harry - who he maintains right up until the end of deathly hallows has been hidden and pampered from the reality of war by a procession of cannon fodder].

it’s worth saying i think this is unfair from voldemort - dumbledore makes decisions which any general has to, and they will of course be messy and difficult; and voldemort’s characterisation of harry is always unnecessarily harsh - but it is indicative of a belief expressed by voldemort at other points in the series that dumbledore is a hypocrite, that he is a coward, that he is dishonourable, and that he is dishonest. and he isn’t entirely wrong, as the conclusion of the series reveals. 

dumbledore obviously thinks exactly the same things of voldemort. and, of course, he’s not wrong either. but, as always, there is projection from dumbledore of his discomfort with the performance and concealment his own life requires onto voldemort. and voldemort clearly picks up on it.

that his view of love as sacrificial can’t be understood by someone who has nobody to sacrifice anything for

what it says on the tin, really.

dumbledore’s past - especially his profound guilt and grief over the fact that his embrace of desire, carnality, and other "selfish" aspects of love caused his sister’s death - is the cause of his view of love as, in essence, something defined by sacrifice and loss. dumbledore always discusses love in terms of the nobility of suffering, and he never throughout the canonical series [except maybe, obliquely, at king's cross] suggests that love can be comforting, self-indulgent, restorative, uncomplicatedly pleasurable, and fun.

we see, after all, that harry has to give up a love which is all of those things - his relationship with ginny at the end of half-blood prince - in order to pursue dumbledore’s version of the concept.

harry’s own pathology - especially his enormous saviour and martyr complexes, as well as the circumstances of his own orphanhood [as i have had voldemort point out on several occasions in my writing, harry’s mother could be bothered to live long enough to die for him, voldemort can’t relate] - makes him amenable to the concept of love-as-sacrifice.

voldemort, in contrast, fears sacrifice and vulnerability because he fears powerlessness - and he fears powerlessness because he’s an orphan who would have nothing without his power [under which umbrella, of course, comes his immortality].

this is what he means by:

“The old argument,” he said softly. “But nothing I have seen in the world has supported your famous pronouncements that love is more powerful than my kind of magic, Dumbledore.”

and:

How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments.

and:

“Is it love again?” said Voldemort, his snake’s face jeering. “Dumbledore’s favourite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter — and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?”

and:

To tell Snape why the boy might return would be foolish, of course; it had been a grave mistake to trust Bellatrix and Malfoy: Didn’t their stupidity and carelessness prove how unwise it was ever to trust?

as he tells us in philosopher’s stone, there is only power and those too weak to seek it. everything can be done on one's own. it is foolish to rely on other people.

sacrifice is a concept which cannot exist within this world view.

but i think voldemort could be made to understand the idea of love-as-pleasure. after all, he is clearly someone who enjoys things - when harry is able to pick up on his moods in order of the phoenix he is happy as often as he is angry - magic chief among them. he likes shiny objects and, therefore, presumably understands sensory pleasure. he conceives of himself as someone who is generous and who gives gifts.

his relationship - whether you see it as sexual or not - with bellatrix in canon is surprisingly tender: he allows her to be physically very close to him a lot of the time, to touch him, to talk to him in a way which undermines his sinister vibe, and to be visibly pregnant with his baby [if you accept that, and i understand why basically nobody does]; and he is clearly known to spend a great deal of time in her company by the other death eaters.

he appears to genuinely like several of his minions, particularly snape. he obviously misses his mother, but nobody external to him ever acknowledges that grief. he is obviously as lost as all orphans are in a world which places a great deal of emphasis on lineage, and that is again never acknowledged.

he is someone who had a childhood which was sufficiently lonely and deprived that the concept of giving up anything he has for himself is something he can’t compute. but perhaps he could have hoarded bits of love in his little shoebox. if dumbledore could have seen why that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing...

[screechingfromthevoid]

I love the way Dorian and Ashton both talk to the Arch Heart.

Because Ashton is hell bent on dragging them down to their level. Ashton wants every bastard with a superiority complex to feel a boot on the neck for just a moment. It doesn't matter if that person has more money, more magic, or infinite power. They would be no where without the people they're standing on. The workers they exploit, the libraries they study, the worship they receive. All that power comes from the collective, the little guy. And Ashton wants all of them to come down to earth and fucking see who they've been using for the first time.

While Dorian is still stuck on the narrative that mortals are their children. You don't give birth to things that are not of you, or are completely different than you. Dorian keeps hearing "we're like you". He keeps hearing about the fear of mortality and the bonds of family. He knows that the gods and mortals are the same. And he's hell bent on reminding them that they are equals. If they weren't the same species: how could they come so close to godhood? How could a mortal become a god? Dorian speaks to the gods with no reverence, no policing of his tone. Because as they sit at the Arch Heart's table, with fake food and fake wood and fake bounty, they are equals. They are both in the same position. Dorian Storm does not think himself a god. He just knows the Gods are the same as them. Him and the Arch Heart both create and revel in beauty. Of course one gave to the other. But everyone must have a teacher. And there will always come a time where the teacher and the student can play a duet in such harmony no one can decipher who once taught who.

[poetrysmackdown]

I'm hater but I just don't believe How to Be A Dog is that good, I hope jakey dies.

yeah no feel free to sow your hater oats. that's what this competition is for