Fans of Alternity

I was just making a post about recent events when this went up! I'll repost it in a comment, so we can focus all discussion in one post.

This is, as promised, a very eventful couple of days!

A few comments:

1. Pansy is quoting Muggle songs (http://alt-pansy.livejournal.com/4422.html) Behind Blue Eyes (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/w/who/behind+blue+eyes_20146515.html) and Mack the Knife (http://www.erenkrantz.com/Music/Lyrics/MackTheKnife.shtml). She mentioned listening to her father's music in a previous post, and seems to be doing it again ("daddy's singing to me").
She explicitly compares Lucius to Mack the Knife. I think it's an apt comparison. I don't know Behind Blue Eyes very well, but from reading the lyrics I wonder if she's talking about Lucius again, or perhaps her own father. Based on the stuff we've heard from her about her father, and the fact that he listens to Muggle music, I wonder if his own beliefs were somewhat more complicated than the Death Eater party line. And I wonder how he died.

2. Dennis Creevey (http://alt-dennis.livejournal.com/778.html) was given to Harry as a personal servant. So far he's a very interesting character. He's got the whole house-elf happy-to-serve attitude. It's much more unsettling on a human than on a house elf. How many years younger than Harry is he?

3. It sort of makes me angry at the world that Hermione didn't get to be the one to save the day when she met the troll, like she does in canon. It was working together Ron and Harry that made them like and respect each other and become friends afterward. Sounds like in this case she was just the damsel in distress, and I doubt we'll be seeing any friendship or mutual respect as a result.

4. I spotted what I am pretty sure is a reference to Cassandra Claire's Draco Trilogy (http://alt-draco.livejournal.com/2776.html?thread=37080#t37080). (The line in the fic is "You're in Gryffindor!" sneered Draco. "Your idea of a cunning plan is 'Everybody on the count of three'!")

5. I really like the friendship (http://alt-theodore.livejournal.com/2513.html?thread=52945#t52945) between Teddy and Michael. It's very sweet and cheerful and accepting. I always enjoy it when they talk to each other.

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zorb

1. I suspect Lucius and her father had a lot in common, so the comparison (which I agree is right on) could apply to both. Their similarities conflate the two in her mind, but it does seem like her father may have had a greater influence on her in his differences from Lucius.

2. Dennis is most likely three years younger than Harry, according to canon, not counting his Flinty appearance in the Hog's Head during OotP.

3. Well, she wasn't the biggest agent in the original attack, either, aside from telling Ron what to do. But yeah, I don't think this is the start of a new friendship between them all any more than the discovery of Fluffy was. It should build relationships a little among the boys, and maybe shake something up with Harry's identity as a Slytherin.

4. Hah! I thought that was from something, but couldn't remember what.

5. Teddy and Michael are fantastic. Along with them, my other favorite friendships at this early stage are Hermione and boot, and Ron and Pansy.

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2. So Dennis is 8. He would be a third grader if he were in American school. It's interesting how even the more open-minded kids feel fine saying he's gross and creepy. Not Neville and Ron, but Pansy and Sally Anne and Harry, all of whom I might have expected to be a bit more sympathetic, for various reasons.

3. Oh, I had misremembered the scene and thought Hermione was the original one to use the levitation spell. Oops. But I'm still sad that this isn't the start of a new friendship for Hermione.

5. Yeah, I love those other two as well. Ron and Pansy seem to be quite a good match for each other as friends. I wish we got to see more of Hermione and Boot talking to each other. Their characters are interesting, but I'd like to see more of their interactions. They clearly care about each other, but everything they say to each other has to be so guarded. I wish they had more of a chance to have fun and enjoy each other's company sometimes. I actually wish there could be more secret groups, like Order Only. But instead of inviting Terry into the order, allow a Mudbloods Only code for the three of them to get to chat without other people seeing them, or whatever. I mean, there's no reason why it would be a good idea for either Voldemort (gives them a chance to plan against wizards) or the Order (gives Dennis the chance to tip off Voldemort about the existence of such secret journal spells), but it would be great for me!

Also, come on Pansy! Make (http://community.livejournal.com/hpalternity/9159.html?thread=61895#t61895) the connection (http://alt-harry.livejournal.com/3664.html?thread=60496#t60496)!

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alt-sally-anne.livejournal.com

Oh come on. He sits there and stares at you and stares and stares and stares with that weird little smile on his face the whole time. TELL ME you people wouldn't be creeped out, even if he is just eight.

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Oh, I totally believe that 11-year-olds would feel that way and say it. But picking on the weird kids for being weird is still sort of bully-like behavior, and if he were a student at least there would be more of a chance that another student or a teacher would feel sorry for him and stick up for him a bit. Or teach him how to act in a way that won't attract so much negative attention.

I mean, you don't need a social caste system for a couple fifth graders to laugh at and tease a third grader if they could convince him to try to climb up a staircase that kept turning into a slide and making him fall down. But the fact that he can't actually refuse without getting pretty badly punished makes it start to seem a lot less funny. It seems like even Sally Anne and Pansy feel that way a little.

And I personally like players posting here with their journals, because that way we know whose player we're hearing from, and it's sometimes hard to tell with the alt-player account.

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alt-sally-anne.livejournal.com

Er sorry I'm not sure we're supposed to post with our character accounts instead of alt-player. :-D

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alt_moderator

No worries. ;) It's your choice.

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I wouldn't mind seeing a troll but I'd rather not see it up close until I've learned a few more spells. 'Wingardium Leviosa' can't possibly take out a troll more than once.

Now there's a sensible girl! Clearly Ravenclaw would have been a possibility for you if you'd not been placed in Slytherin!

:)

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1. I'm with you in wondering how Pansy's father died.

As far as I can tell, she gives Lucius too much credit if she thinks he's conflicted about his actions. I'd like to think her father merits the "Behind Blue Eyes" allusion; I don't see it for Lucius, and I suspect that Pansy is beginning to see Lucius more clearly, too.

3. Word. Hermione's not just a damsel in distress in this version; she's a Mudblood in distress, so Draco can't even believe Harry bothered. Bleurrgh. It's another of the heartbreaking things about this AU: if she'd showed any sign of knowing enough magic to get them out of that mess, she'd have been "destroyed" for sure. We've got to settle for Pansy (so healthy!) or Sally-Anne (so capitulating!) as a replacement for Hermione's central contribution to the story? That's going to be hard to take in the long run. Argue if you will that canon!Hermione doesn't fully provide gender balance to the books, but we're a step off that pace here, so far.

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Oh, wait! I just reread Pansy's post, and suddenly it seems REALLY clear that she does mean Behind Blue Eyes to be about her father. In fact, that's what "daddy's singing to me" must mean. She thinks of the narrator of that song as like her father, so listening to that song is like her daddy singing to her.

I think her father changed his mind about being a DE and was killed for it, like Regulus in the books.

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I think her father changed his mind about being a DE and was killed for it, like Regulus in the books.

I'm not sure that Lucius would honor his role as Pansy's stepfather if her father had been an open traitor. Perhaps he would see a duty to train this pureblood child to be a true follower unlike her parent, but I think his attitude towards her would be different. (And I think Bella, at least, if not Lucius, would have mentioned Mr Parkinson's treachery if he had been a known blood traitor.)

We are certainly seeing some evidence that Pansy's father was more complicated and more broadly cultured than a good, unquestioning servant of the LP need be. I really like this piece of the emerging story. I hope that Mr and Mrs Parkinson turn out to have been as interesting as the early evidence hints hints they were/are.

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Well, maybe Pansy's father was killed immediately after he changed his mind, so that nobody except Lucius and Voldemort know about it. And that's why nobody would have mentioned it. In fact, I think Lucius has specifically said that Pansy's father died fighting for the current regime. But that could be a lie, since that version of the story puts Voldemort in a much better light than the other.

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Look at the *time* Pansy posted about her father singing to her.

--Pansy's player

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longstrider.livejournal.com

Note for those too lazy to go look, the daddy singing post is 3:01 AM... something weird is going on (as if we couldn't tell)

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Mighty late for a little girl to be awake and posting, isn't it?

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The time stamps are so tricky to take as evidence in this game (especially as the different time zones of various players influences the time stamp that I see). That said, I do take notice of chronology of posts and it was clear that Pansy posted that very late. She and Sally-Anne seem to be night owls, don't they?

But. What, dear player, are you suggesting? That she was sleep-walking and sleep-writing?

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Even for a night owl, that's awfully late, don't you think?

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Certainly. But ... what does that signal? It's a time when everyone else was finally in bed and she could be alone with her thoughts. You are hinting there's more to this but I'm not sure what. Ghosts? Firetalk with a daddy who is not dead but in a far-away timezone? You've got me grasping at straws!

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Pansy keeps me guessing too. She really keeps me on my toes and surprises me all the time.

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Or... maybe a Pensieve with memories of her father's? Or a diary of his that she is reading (maybe some sort of horcrux-diary, although that would radically change my thinking about his character)?

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Did she... wake up from a dream and write down what had happened in her dream?

She says "Who is Macheath" which sort of indicates that maybe she's getting these ideas without actually hearing the songs and making the comparisons herself. As if someone else is giving her hints about her father and about Lucius, but doing it in code?

Is any of this on the right track at all?

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Yes.

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Okay. So if she's getting whispers in her dreams from beyond the grave(?), perhaps we have a Hamlet-style hint from a father that he's been murdered. Lucius as MacHeath, Mack the Knife, suggests that he is a murderer for personal advantage.

It would certainly suit my sense of Lucius that he might have murdered her father and then inserted himself into Pansy's life as her god-father and "protector". A shark, indeed.

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There is no canon precedent for contact from beyond the grave. In fact, at the end of book 5 they specifically go into that you can either become a ghost or "pass on" and that if you choose the latter option, there's no way to make contact. A ghost or portrait of her father could also be conveying things to her, but I think the yes meant that this was related to a dream, so I'll leave aside those ideas for now. If it's her father communicating to her, then I'm pretty sure that means he's alive.

There *is* precedent for communication through dreams. The connection between Harry and Voldemort in book 5 is the only time I can think that it happened, though. And that may be because of the Harry-is-a-horcrux thing. But we know at least some sort of mind-to-mind contact is possible through magic, or else there would be no need for Snape to know Occlumency.

So if a living person were communicating to Pansy through her dreams, possibly doing it by sending dreams of her father... who would it be? Would it need to be someone in close proximity to her? It would have to be somebody familiar with Muggle music, and someone know knows Lucius and her father well.

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Or maybe it's just a random dream dredged up by a hazy memory of her father.

Stay tuned!

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Heh. Occam's razor says yes!

Nevertheless, you know, sometimes it's useful to dream up a million crazy theories, so that it will be easier to recognize if one of them starts coming true. :)

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All true.

Maybe it was just a dream that was processing the stuff of the day. After all, she was told earlier that day that she doesn't know Lucius as well as she thinks (by Sirius, who had just called Lucius a murderer -- of Muggles). The particular pieces of music may be things half-remembered from her father's collection (he must have had eclectic musical taste).

Why does a shark have so many teeth?
I can't help thinking the answer is "The better to eat you with, my dear."

Edited to correct the quote and to note that the player posted while I worked on this reply. Interesting.

Edited Date: 2008-11-02 04:16 am (UTC)

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Good points. I agree that communicating-through-dreams stuff seemed to be sort of heading towards a dead end, since I can't think of anybody who would both want and be able to do that. And I like your connection to Sirius having called Lucius a murderer.

Also, your post fits perfectly with what alt-player just said. So... mystery solved, I think?

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The thing about McNair and the troll vs. canon is that without sour-tempered Snape with his built-in animosity for Harry, we don't have as much to bind us to this bit of plot or to direct us to see it as something that concerns Harry. We're similarly distant from the mysterious/malevolent presence of the dangerous monster in the third-floor corridor, though I take it that Draco has reminded us of its presence and of the fact that he and Harry and Hermione stumbled across it earlier in the term (http://alt-neville.livejournal.com/3936.html?thread=46944#t46944). These heavily monitored journals where the students can't speak candidly are making it difficult to get certain bits of plot into play. (That and the absence of a narrator hovering around Harry's pov.)

Things I want to know more about:

Pansy's "daddy's singing to me" post?

her "head's all weird"

is he very good at singing the party line

Of course, I'm also curious to learn who really turned the troll loose and why, but that, I accept, will come out in due course over the next several months.

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zorb

My current wild theory on the troll is that it was Pansy who released it, under a curse (Imperio or otherwise). That would explain her confused post after the fact, reminiscent of Ginny in CoS.

As for who cursed her, I'm still deciding whether it was a DE during one of their private chats earlier in the day or someone outside the castle during one of her walks with Ron.

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An interesting idea!

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Wrong, alas.

--Pansy's player

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Thanks for helping us stay on track.

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Happy to oblige! You guys are really smart, too.

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1. I really hope it was an accident. I don't know what purpose it would serve to do it deliberately. And it would mess with my understanding of Harry's character, which is basically that he thinks of himself as a decent and friendly guy and doesn't understand that some of the things he says and does are actually pretty horrible. In other words, I don't think he'd be mean on purpose, though he frequently seems to do mean things without noticing.

2. The doll's head thing is a bit weird, but I've certainly known normal fifth graders who had equally weird things (I am a substitute teacher in 1-6th grades, so I see a lot of 11-year-olds). My interpretation of "daddy's singing to me" is in my earlier comment in this post. I think it's a reference to her father's Muggle music that she listens to. It is a really odd way to say it, though.

And I am still not convinced that a spell was cast on Pansy at any point last night, although it wouldn't totally surprise me if one had been.

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Harry's player here.

It was a real accident.

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Thank goodness. This game can be so difficult to interpret, and this was a particularly challenging example. Hermione couldn't have said if Harry had deliberately, maliciously ruined her work (she'd have said it was an accident even if that had been the case), but it is possible to imagine that Harry or someone else would have thought it inappropriate for the Lord Protector to be given a book copied by a Mudblood, so it was plausible he might have done it with that reason -- or that he might have done it just to plague the Mudblood. I agree with

brimtoast that it would have altered my understanding of Harry's character if he had done it for either of those reasons (so it was really important to know). And, of course, Harry didn't describe the incident in his post (but he wouldn't have in any of the scenarios, so that was no clue).

Anyway, I really appreciate that you took time to clarify that point for us.

And, um. You are doing a great job, Harry's player! You and everyone else -- this weekend has been such a treat! -- but I'm especially impressed with how Harry comes across in this game because your task is a really ticklish one to show how he's been influenced by his upbringing and how that has made him different than his canonical character while leaving some core that is "Harry Potter". All of which to say, "Thanks!"

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