i have a laptop!

[melannen]

I got a laptop for Christmas! And I get to start using it now so that I don't waste any of the ninety-day warranty!

(It's a used Toshiba Tecra 8100 almost exactly like the one of dreamsquirrel's I broke a few months ago. We'll see if this one lasts better. I told Mom that would more than fulfill my needs, and it does so far. At least hardware-wise. (It has a DVD drive! And infrared communications!) However, the OS seems to be a very *minimal* install of win98 for some reason - it wants the CD for all the windows network stuff, and Dvorak keyboard support, and Solitaire, to name the most important so far. And of course they didn't give me the CD, and if I put on a new OS I lose the warranty. Eh. It was pretty cheap as such things go.)

I told Mom she's getting an LJ account for Christmas whether she wants one or not, so she can read stellar_dust's work posts. What account name should I give her? She's being no help. I'm leaning toward crochety. (Because she really likes to crochet. Of course. :-p)

Let's see. We had snow yesterday and I went for a walk in the woods, recklessly attempted to cross the creek on a snow-covered log, and fell in up to my waist, and dragged home wearing about fifty pounds of icy wet wool and fleece. I think I'm coming down with the early stages of Victorian Novel Disease, alas.

One of the Potterfandom newsletters linked to this entry, about class and place in the Potterverse vs. in America, and what it means that Snape is from Spinner's End. Most of the discussion there is so far off the way I think about class that I'm not even going to try diving in, but one of the discussion threads played with trying to figure out where in America the Potterverse characters would be from, if the Pottervers characters were from America. And I couldn't resist making my own list. And I was amazed at how easy it was - clearly I'd been mentally slotting the characters into regional stereotypes for *years*. Anyone else want to make their own list so we can compare our preconceptions? (or just talk about mine...)

• Potter - An old coastal South Carolina family, which counts most of its wealth in prestige, although they adapted quick to REconstruction and have always been comfortable.
  
• Evans - Upper Midwest/Rust Belt, entrenched middle class. Probably from a suburb of Cleveland.
  
• Black - Former Deep South (Louisiana?) aristocracy that's been in a steady decline since the War of Northen Aggression. Narcissa's mum was a rich New Yorker & raised her daughters there.
  
• Malfoy - Texas oil barons who send their kids to school in New England to lose the accent.
  
• Weasley - Upstate New York; they've been yeoman farmers on the same land since the 1600's, and refuse to admit that they can't make a living on it anymore.
  
• Gaunt - Somewhere in the upper Miskatonic River Valley in Massachussetts.
  
• Granger - Chicago-area; an 'old family' - sons of the Pioneers. They go skiing in Aspen every Christmas.
  
• Tonks - Boston, working-class.
  
• Snape - the factory country of New England, former mill workers; the only ones who stayed after the mills closed were academics, professionals, and drunks.
  
• Pettigrew - Southern California, lower-middle-class.
  
• Lupin - Lupin's actually Canadian (BC), but tries to pass for American, 'cause he gets really tired of the Mountie jokes.
  
• McGonagall - Small-town Minnesota or Wisconsin, probably fairly poor
  
• Longbottom - Pennsylvania, old Philadelphia aristocrats
  
• Mad-Eye Moody - the depths of West Virginia
  
• Dumbledore - Learned a classic General American accent to hide the fact that he's actually from Little Rock, AK.
  
• Creevey - Jersey.
  
• Skeeter - Also Jersey.
  
• Quirrell - Oregon, small-town upper-middle-class
  
• Umbridge - Somewhere near Kansas, married up from trailer trash, got started in politics through the local school board when she was a stay-at-home mom, before her divorce.
  
• Chang - Old San Francisco family, middle-class since the '50's
  
• Patel - Northern Virginia, professional. Second-generation immigrants.
  
• Slughorn - Cambridge, Mass., since the Mayflower. At least, that's what they claim.
  
• Lockhart - Las Vegas by way of some dirt-patch Southwestern mining town.
  
• Bones - Old Virginia aristocracy. Probably related by marriage to both George Washington and Robert E. Lee.
  
• Hagrid - the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Dirt poor. Hagrid's dad got a scholarship to teacher's college.
  
• Crouch - DC, and before that, Annapolis. Hereditary Washington insiders.
  
• Diggory - Upstate New York, old family, professionals. Probably made their stake through the Erie Canal.
  
• Riddles - Old-fashioned New England robber barons, mostly in coal.

I seem to be associating Scotland with the Upper Midwest, which means that Hogwarts is somewhere in the wilds of the Minnesota Lake Country.

Comments

[aelkiss.livejournal.com]

Neat! I guess this means you don't need a wireless card for your desktop anymore. Does the new laptop have built-in wireless or are you still using the card I gave you with the old laptop?

Also, what is "vnd"?

[aelkiss.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I'm sure I have an old Win98 CD around here somewhere, if you really want your full 90 days;-)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

We may also have an old win98 CD around here somewhere. *Where* is the question. I might rummage for it tomorrow.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

VND is medical terminology for Victorian Novel Disease.

I'm using your old wireless card; it worked fine, once I installed the drivers. And winzip to unzip the drivers.

[aelkiss.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. Do try not to die of that. I'd be ever so sad.

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

Cheap shot on the Malfoys. Especially since they're not originally from Texas. They're *from* New England-- ever notice that only one has a discernible accent? (That would be the one who hated New England the way I hated Upstate NY.)

Weasleys from my part of the world? I can see that all too well. Yet another family with ten zillion sprogs it can ill afford. Except that they know who Voldemort is-- true rural New Yorkers wouldn't say "You Know Who", they'd just say "Who?"

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Would you beleive that I didn't see the Bush parallel until I'd already posted it? I was mostly reacting to people insisting that the Malfoys were old money, when they're obviously newly wealthy and think *that* makes them aristocracy. That sort of gauche new-money says "Houston" to me, but doesn't explain the posh accent, so send the kids to Harvard. If I'd decided the money went back one more generation, I'd've probably ended up paralleling the Kennedys instead.

I didn't think too hard about making Dumbledore be from Little Rock either, though, as poor-Southern-boy-turned-effete-academic. X) I did mention that this was about preconceptions..

And the only rural New Yorkers I've known are lifelong expats, and yet ... I can see that. But I can also almost see Molly Weasely saying that to You-Know-Who. "Who? Sorry, never heard of you."

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

D'oh! I thought you were aiming straight at the Bushes, and I'm thinking "wait, they're not from Texas!" Actually, the money does go a ways back with them, although I'm blanking on the profession of Prescott's father. I'm not sure why you think the Malfoys are newly wealthy, though, is that actually in canon somewhere? I always had the impression they've had money for a long, long time.

I'm being such a bitch to rural NY, I know. My parents moved to a tiny town between Cortland and Binghamton when I was six, and it was HELL. Makes Stephen King look like a documentary and Jeff Foxworthy look effete hell. The town trend for young men was to get ripping drunk in a quarry and crash their car into a tree, then go build a new car and do it all over again. I loved Syracuse, where I was born, but that's big city to where we moved. Last time I was there was my father's funeral, and after that, everything we owned there was sold and my mother moved back to Syracuse. If I never see it again it will seriously be too soon.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's not explicitly stated in canon anywhere; just the general sneering arrogant way they throw money around, the way they never actually brag about the *specifics* of their lineage, Rita calling their house a mansion rather than a manor or estate, the way the old-school purebloods like the Longbottoms and the Blacks (and even the Weasleys) talk about them -- all of that says 'new money' to me without it ever being stated outright. But that's a long-standing debate in the fandom.

I picked Upstate New York for the Weasleys because it needed to be a place where they could *think* that they're aristocrats, while actually *being* just as trashy as the worst of Alabama rednecks, so, yeah, not so far off. That whole getting drunk and wrapping your car around a tree for fun sounds *entirely* plausible. Considering Ron actually *did* it in canon... Yeah.

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

The Weasleys... actually seem quite in tune with their culture, actually, they just aren't much a part of it. (Wait... did that make sense? I'm tired and sick with flu, so... What I mean is that they are very aware of it while seemingly deliberately choosing to flout it in some ways.) What the Weasleys seem to me are hippies. The patchy clothes, handcrafts, obviously intelligent and educated mom choosing to SAHM it, ginormous garden, funky house, etc. I know where they're from! Ithaca! Upstate, rural NY, but a college town. Every weird thing they do just hits me as very, very deliberate. Sort of a "look at us, we work in government, but we SO don't need your social mores oppressing us!" They're the anti-Dursleys: once well-off people choosing to be bumpkins. Just look at how they view need. Molly cheerfully does without, says "we'll manage". Petunia is *terrified* that the Masons won't like them and therefore will choose not to go through with the career-making deal for Vernon. Okay, one is supposed to be nice while the other isn't, but it also tells me that one has lived through serious, grinding poverty and the other hasn't. IMO, anyway.

I can see where you think the Malfoys are new money, I just don't think it was intended. And there's one very important difference between real old money and wizarding old purebloods-- one is actually endangered as a culture and the other isn't. Lucius Malfoy has chosen to make himself a mascot, a walking representation of everything he sees his culture as being and he sees as being at risk (in which he's actually right-- it truly is at risk and it truly is vanishing). New money out the tags of their lifestyle to prove a point, and I think the Malfoys do too-- just, it's a different point. (As much as I want to mess with his head by forcing him to live in the Muggle world for a while, I feel sorry for Lucius. I know. I'm weird.)

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

Oh... and I kinda disagree on the Evanses being entrenched Middle Class. There's a lot of behavior I see in Petunia that reminds me of my mother, who is very much a child of the Great Depression. The social climbing, the obsessive house proudness, the giving ten thousand presents and spoiling Dudders rotten, it speaks to me of someone who has been poor, married out of it, and desperately fears ever going back.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

You know, that's true - I must've been thinking of the Dursleys instead there. I'm tempted to say that the Evanses were like my family, and farmers before the Depression, factory workers after, and sent their kids on to college. But still eastern-Midwest Ohio-area.

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

The fact that "I" am a marginal presence in that conception goes a long way toward explaining why I don't think I *could* compose a Potter-in-America regional map!

(But, on that note, what is Californian about the Pettigrews? I think I might have them be from Colorado.)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Well, this is the map of someone who's only crossed the Mississippi twice in her life, so my knowledge of the East is a lot more detailed than my knowledge of the West. Which is why it would be cool to see you post your own version!

I made Pettigrew Californian because on the original thread somebody said he ws from the bad part of LA, and the image of Peter dressed up like Eminem really tickled my fancy. Even though Eminem is actually from Detroit. But, no, I actually couldn't see Peter being inner-city, he'd be suburban poor, or from what was a good part of town in his mum's day and is now just a bit tired and run down. But I want him to be from California because he's just barely good enough to hang out with the Eastern aristocrats, but not really quite presentable. And my image of Southern California is about half derived from the general Beach Boys idea of tanned and surfing, and about half from being in love the The Three Investigators when I was nine, so I see Peter thinking all time, while he's at boarding school, that he *should* be like Malibu Boy (or at least Xander) when he's really just, you know, fat pasty white kid like lots of the white kids in Southern California.

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

Ah, I get it! That makes sense to me, actually, when it's in terms of Peter's status among friends and not the Pettigrews' social/class status ... which for some reason I thought you were referring to even though several of the *others* you named were more personality- than family-driven. :P

The thing is, I'm not sure I could make my own version! I don't know whether I'm a fluke or whether most people here have a coherent and historical knowledge of the social makeup of the US, but I might lean toward the latter. Apart from vague ideas about Midwesterners, New Englanders, and Southerners, we don't really have a sense of those regional types in our blood, and what types we do know don't play a big part in everyday conceptions of America... At least, I read into some of it when I was young (and no one does historical stereotypes like children's lit, yay!), but even when I took AP US Hist in 10th grade, I was basically stumbling across a whole social fabric that I'd never even known about before. Very odd. I always loved historical fiction about America, but placed it in relation to myself very similarly to the way I placed historical fiction about Europe. Or rather, I identified strongly with it, but not the same way I identified with books about Indian tribes, Canadian adventure novels, or fantasy books that I placed very early in my own woods and islands. So my knowledge of "America" isn't really *there*.

Of course, I did pick up *some* knowledge of the kind. Napoleon Dynamite is hilarious to me not so much because of the general 80s/90s humor, but because they so live in small-town Idaho.

gr

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

or whether most people here don't have **